Dizzying expansion

— When I returned to Northwest Arkansas in 1995 as the editor of the Northwest Arkansas Times, the University of Arkansas listed an enrollment of 13,719.

How jaw-dropping it’s been to watch the campus expand and beautify into a record 2012 enrollment of more than 24,500.

Moreover, everywhere one looks on the hill above Fayetteville, cement trucks are pouring. There’s a new child-development center and fitness centers, more improvements to the Mullins Library-and on it goes.

The university has even acquired a former corporate headquarters for its uptown Fayetteville campus. Online enrollment has soared from 2,500 in 2008 to 6,000 today and new major fields of study are being added as never before.

Still, the UA strives to rise ever upward from its recent designation for “up and-coming” U.S. public universities in U.S. News and World Report. The new goal is a to become a “Top 50 research institution”with enrollment of 30,000, considered average for an SEC university today.

All this growth and recognition also naturally raises the challenge of maintaining competitive salaries that can attract and retain a top-notch faculty. And that’s still a significant area that needs some help.

The Legislature is duty-bound, in my view, to work closely with the state’s flagship land-grant university to make certain it can financially maintain this acceleration. Such cooperation and balance between tuition costs and state funding is as vital today as supplying adequate fuel for a Saturn rocket midflight.

In from the cold

Hooray for newly elected Benton County Sheriff Kelley Cradduck. He finally got an unexpected invitation from outgoing Sheriff Keith Ferguson to visit the sheriff’s office for a brief orientation with the staff before he unpacks his bags there next month.

You may recall that Ferguson had for months steadfastly refused to allow Cradduck to enter the office before his term starts. As a result of that cold-shouldered approach to welcoming his successor, Ferguson invited withering criticism, including right here in this little space.

But now that the ice finally melted, I say good for the outgoing sheriff for exercising some wisdom in inviting Cradduck inside and even providing a vehicle for him to use in visits with county officials before being sworn in.

I spoke with Cradduck while he was in Camden for a new-sheriffs’ orientation. He said he was grateful for Ferguson’s sudden and unanticipated invitation. “I believe being able to speak to them helped put the staff’s minds at ease about me,” he said.

“I hope it did, anyway. The invitation came better late than never.” Transforming society

The United States that I grew up in, along with my fellow post-World War II baby boomers, sadly is not what today’s youth have in store. The signs of a democratic republic mutating from that forged by its founders become increasingly evident everywhere I look.

My advice is to prepare for the consequences of what we the people who’ve come before you have accepted and now left for you.

For example, the directive known as Obamacare levied on the nation’s population by its elected officials is poised to have government force medical doctors to the water’s edge. But how can it make them drink, or even choose to remain physicians?

Dr. G. Keith Smith, a veteran board certified anesthesiologist and founder of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, put it bluntly: “The consideration of the next best alternative use of an individual’s time and resources is innate, something that each and every one of us does without even thinking.

“The belief that American physicians won’t do this is both naive and arrogant. It may represent one of the greatest miscalculations in the bloody history of central planning. And what will ‘medicine’ look like if the ‘providers’ work begrudgingly, under terms that they see as detrimental to their own interests and their patients?”

Physicians in this country will always be physicians, Smith added. They just might not choose to be practicing medicine.

Amy helped a lot

Deepest apologies to Amy Chiodo, for somehow overlooking her name in the list of contributors to my newly released CD of 14 favorite timeless columns called Rhythms of Life from a Southern Journalist.

Amy not only provided the introduction, but joined the entire Chiodo family at the MDA Central Casting Studio in the NWA Mall in organizing and producing the CD and my new website.

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Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.

Editorial, Pages 15 on 12/04/2012

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