Chancellor Potts brings extraordinary experience to the new position of chancellor. His biographical summary, included here as a PDF attachment, will indicate a range and texture of activities that easily makes him the most qualified campus executive to ever be appointed for the Jonesboro campus or, perhaps, for any of the state’s universities. His previous tenure as a university campus president, his association with several large university systems, his services as a trustee for several institutions, and his activities with higher education support organizations indicate that will come here with impressive and strong leadership credentials.

He comes to us with skills as a lawyer and educator to address our needs and opportunities. Dr. Potts is a listener, network builder, sponge for data and information, and zealous champion for the intellectual basis for our enterprise. He is regarded by many to be a "southern gentleman" with a talent for analysis and organization.

He believes in the importance of good teaching and quickly realized that is the true strength of ASU. He also recognizes our potential as an important research contributor and collaborator in our state and region. He knows that universities like ASU will drive the economies of their areas, and he states that we will create prosperity because of our successes. He is a true believer in our potential, but he also acknowledges and appreciates that we already have become a mature and productive university.

It has been interesting to hear Dr. Potts talk about his previous work in areas that will require his attention on the Jonesboro campus. He has experience with many of the same issues we face at ASU, including shared governance, mascots, research infrastructure development, formula funding, legislative lobbying, capital fundraising campaigns, student support, academic freedom protection, diversity throughout the campus, community relations, and many other "irons in the fire" at Jonesboro.

But, he states that he is not coming here with answers to the questions raised by all of those issues, but rather as one who is willing to join the discussion among those interested to move these topics forward. How does he intend to do this? By listening to and talking with you and others about the issues affecting higher education.

Chancellor Potts will be interested to know what individuals on campus have to say and he will seek out ways for those conversations to occur. His personal history indicates that he is approachable, accessible, and friendly in these exchanges.

He emerged from the recent search process with high marks from the campus and community interviewers who met with him. The chancellor search process appears to have been a successful effort to identify and attract qualified candidates, to have presented them to a range of campus and community constituents, to have created a process that invited commentary about the candidates, and that finally advanced several preferred candidates for consideration for appointment as chancellor.

Credit must go to a dedicated Search Advisory Committee that reviewed prospects, invited applications, and built the pool of finalists. The committee kept its counsel and rigorously sought to maintain the confidences so important to a successful search.

In some respects the committee composed of our colleagues and neighbors did a better job than a professional search firm could have done, because they had the knowledge to measure each prospective candidate in terms of the fit and relation to our type of university. The committee brought their own collective sense of, and experience with, ASU to the consideration of each prospect. The result was an extremely strong pool of candidates from which a selection was made.

The Board of Trustees, which authorized the chancellor search process, was able to review credentials, commentaries, and the observations of the Search Advisory Committee to determine which of the candidates were considered to be most capable to address the future at ASU. The board was able to make its selection and appointment based upon a well-organized and thorough process that was organized by and for the campus. That was shared governance in action.

Thanks to all of you who took part in the process, who met the candidates, and who expressed your opinions. And thanks to the Trustees who encouraged and allowed the campus-based search, and then accepted and endorsed its outcome.

There are several aspects of the recent process that are worth noting.

The appointment of the Jonesboro chancellor completes a process that began in 1991, and was formally expressed in 1999 when the Trustees launched an initiative to create an entity known as the Arkansas State University System. What has emerged in the last 15 years is a collection of campuses; the comprehensive campus at Jonesboro, and two-year campuses at Beebe, Newport, and Mountain Home. Each of these campuses is now separately accredited, organized, funded, and individually differentiated. Operational sites of these campuses are now located in Jacksonville, Heber Springs, Searcy, Bald Knob, Paragould, and Marked Tree. The campuses extend their services to Blytheville, West Memphis, Forrest City, Piggott, Tyronza, Lake Village, and Little Rock. More than 17,000 persons are enrolled in these locations, and many thousands more are affected directly by this system of campuses every day.

If we can imagine that collection of campuses and their activities and the communities in which they occur as a dynamic force, we can visualize an extraordinary platform on which a range of educational services and products can be developed in an interrelated way to be provided to a region that greatly needs to be better educated.

If we can envision a systematic approach to link our capabilities as teachers, researchers, and service providers to the communities and their citizens who value our efforts enough to pay for them with their taxes, and if we can demonstrate to these citizens a good return on their investment, then we can see our direction and future as a university.

It is a bright future.

Thanks for reading First Friday. If you have comments about this material or any aspect of ASU, please contact me at president@astate.edu.