HOW WE SEE IT UA Makes The Honor Roll

— Congratulations to the University of Arkansas, which is now among the 108 higher education institutions out of 4,633 in the nation to be granted the highest designation given by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Gov. Mike Beebe recently came to Northwest Arkansas and said, at an unrelated event, that Arkansas has finally broken free of its image as a backwater. We are a contender now. The university’s new status is exactly the kind of thing thegovernor was talking about. The entire state should be proud.

University chancellor G. David Gearhart made the announcement of the new status on Monday, saying the accomplishment was important to Arkansas “because it’s good for our economy. It enhances our state’s reputation as a place where businesses, industries, entrepreneurs and innovators can partner with a worldclass teaching and research university and succeed.”

The university’s particularly proud because so much of the aggregate score of this ranking takes serious account of research expenditures, among other factors such as staffing and doctoral conferrals, according to a UA news release and the Carnegie Foundation’s website.

We wish the university more success in attracting talented researchers, further enhancing recognition among top universities, and drawing better students.

The improved status can only help.

The Carnegie report comes as the university disputes a January report by the National Center for Higher Education Systems that shows research productivity at UA must improve, among other findings. The center was hired as consultants and the report was paid for, in part, by the state Department of Higher Education.

Gearhart - not a man known for his sharp tone or stinging rebukes - strongly contested the earlier report’s findings.

Aims McGuinness, a center associate who met with university officials, was described by Gearhart as “condescending and presented predetermined findings.

He did not listen and scoffed that our lack of funding was not a major contributor to our current degree output.” It goes on in that vein for quite a bit.

This latest development certainly indicates Gearhart has a good university’s reputation to defend.

In a somewhat related development, the director of the Arkansas Higher Education Department, Jim Purcell, is named to be the next higher education commissioner in Louisiana.

In an ironic touch, former Louisiana Higher Education Commissioner Sally Clauson resigned June 8 after drawing attention for retiring for one day in the previous year so she could collect retirement benefits in addition to her regular salary. That retirement hadn’t been approved by the full board that oversees the commissioner.

Public employees “retiring” and keeping their jobs is something we’re all too familiar with in Arkansas.

Purcell has held the Arkansas position since 2008. We wish him well.

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Casualties of War

To honor the men and women in our armed forces and remind our readers of their sacrifices, the Northwest Arkansas Times is publishing Department of Defense announcements identifying Americans killed in active military operations. Sgt. Patrick R. Carroll, 25, of Norwalk, Ohio, died Feb. 7 in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suff ered when insurgents attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. He was assigned to the 319th Military Intelligence Battalion, 525th Battlefield Surveillance Brigade, XVIII Airborne Corps, Fort Bragg, N.C.

Opinion, Pages 14 on 02/27/2011

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