I have been reading up on the history of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock lately. The recent announcement by UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson that he will retire next year has set me to thinking about the history of Arkansas' "urban university."
Occasionally one will hear an old-time Little Rock resident refer to the school as Little Rock University -- LRU, as it was commonly called before it was renamed UALR in 1969. But, in its first years of life, the college was Little Rock Junior College.
The college got its start in 1927 when the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville ceased offering undergraduate college courses in Little Rock. It was an era when two-year colleges were popping up all around the nation. For example, 17 junior colleges were established in Texas alone between 1922 and 1929. The first two-year college in Arkansas was Crescent College at Eureka Springs, an institution founded in 1908 to educate female students.
The El Dorado School District established a two-year college in 1925, two years before the one in Little Rock. The first black two-year college in Arkansas, Dunbar Junior College, was created in 1929 as an extension of the highly regarded Dunbar High School in Little Rock.
The moving force behind the establishment of LRJC was John A. Larson, the principal of Little Rock High School (now Central High School). Larson, who was the first dean of the school and later its president, was able to recruit a faculty of considerable skill and scholarship. I had the good fortune to know two of the original faculty members, James H. Atkinson, who taught history and served as chairman of the history and economics department, and Miss Pauline Hoeltzel, a renowned teacher of German and English who later became the first woman to serve on the Arkansas Highway Commission.
The new Little Rock Junior College had the good fortune to attract the interest and considerable financial support of former Arkansas governor and businessman George W. Donaghey. On July 1, 1929, Donaghey named LRJC as the only beneficiary of a trust valued at more than $2 million. This endowment provided much needed financial stability for the fledgling college.
After only two years in existence, LRJC received full accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools in 1929. Within a year, enrollment jumped from 119 students to 347. The school received another major boost in 1931 when it was relocated from the high school to the former U.M. Rose Public School at 13th and State streets.
Little Rock businessman Raymond Rebsamen donated 80 acres of land to the college in 1947. Located on the east side of the unpaved Hayes Street (which would later become University Avenue), the Rebsamen land provided a permanent home for the junior college.
Within four years of its founding, community boosters and campus leaders began calling for the junior college to become a four-year institution. However, the Great Depression of the 1930s hamstrung the fledgling school, and it would be 1957 before it expanded into a senior college.
A citizens' committee chaired by the prominent entrepreneur Gus Ottenheimer laid the groundwork for the expansion to senior college status. The appointment of a dynamic new LRJC president, Carey V. Stabler, in 1956 also boosted the expansion to four years.
In 1957, the LRJC board voted to expand the school to full four-year status. The old junior college name was replaced with Little Rock University, although substantial sentiment favored "Donaghey College," in honor of its benefactor.
Little Rock University grew steadily during the 1960s, with course offerings expanding from 80 in 1956 to 500 in 1967. Enrollment in 1969 reached 3,500 students.
In 1969, the Arkansas Legislature added LRU to the state educational system, merging the college with the University of Arkansas and creating a "UA system." Renamed the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the institution grew rapidly after G. Robert Ross became its chancellor in 1972. He emphasized the school's unique status as an urban university. Within 10 years of joining the UA System, UALR had an enrollment of almost 10,000 students. Under Ross' dynamic leadership, UALR added graduate programs as well as a law school.
Sadly, Chancellor Ross' strong leadership style was not well received by James E. Martin, the chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville -- who, in what seems a direct conflict of interest, also served as president of the UA system. The system board fired Ross in 1982.
Recent chancellors have continued the expansion of the university. Chancellor James H. Young made the mistake of expanding the UALR basketball program into a big-time conference and thereby saddled the school with heavy athletic expenditures. Chancellor Charles Hathaway convinced the Arkansas General Assembly to fund the creation of a new Cyber College in 1998. Longtime political science professor Joel Anderson became president in 2003, and he is known for dramatically expanding the physical campus to the north and south, including purchasing the University Plaza Shopping Center at Asher and University avenues. Anderson also oversaw the development of a nanotechnology center in 2012.
In recent years UALR has faced the challenge of declining enrollment, though it seems to have stabilized.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at [email protected].
NAN Profiles on 10/11/2015