High Profile: Laurence Benedict Alexander

UAPB chancellor has assembled a first-rate team that helped him turn the school around.

“People are shy about admitting, even to themselves, that they want to lead an institution. For the first time, I said,‘Yes, I’d like to lead.’ … Once you admit to yourself that’s what you want to do, it comes down to the opportunity.” -Laurence B. Alexander, UAPB Chancellor.
“People are shy about admitting, even to themselves, that they want to lead an institution. For the first time, I said,‘Yes, I’d like to lead.’ … Once you admit to yourself that’s what you want to do, it comes down to the opportunity.” -Laurence B. Alexander, UAPB Chancellor.

Laurence Alexander recalls feeling uneasy as he started a summer job working for his hometown newspaper, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, in 1981.

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“He’s exceeded my expectations, and they were very high. He’s turned around the enrollment drain. He has the faculty working very closely with the students so that retention and graduation rates are improving. And he assembled a first-rate team to administer and manage the institution.” — Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, about Laurence B. Alexander, UAPB Chancellor.

"That was out of my league," Alexander says. "Most of the kids I worked with had come from the Ivy League. I was the kid from the projects in New Orleans."

SELF-PORTRAIT

Laurence Alexander

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: Oct. 31, 1959, New Orleans

BEST ADVICE TO ENTERING FRESHMEN: Learn to manage your time, budget your money and study like it is a privilege and an honor.

GROWING UP I THOUGHT I WOULD become a broadcast journalist.

FAVORITE SUBJECTS IN COLLEGE: American Constitution and civil liberties

BIGGEST STORY WHILE WORKING AS A JOURNALIST: An in-depth look at the major gaps in the New Orleans area levee flood-protection system — two decades before Hurricane Katrina flooded the city through many of the same gaps.

IF I COULD CHANGE ONE THING, I would make education the state’s highest priority.

FAVORITE PINE BLUFF LUNCH SPOT: Grider Field Restaurant

I’D LIKE TO VISIT each stop on a Wonders of the World tour.

I WON’T miss the opportunity to highlight the exciting positive transformation currently underway at UAPB and credit the faculty, staff, alumni and stakeholders who are making a difference in the lives of our students.

GUESTS AT FANTASY DINNER PARTY: Terron Armstead, Dean Baquet, Daisy Bates, Helen Gurley Brown, Ursula Burns, Kenneth Chenault, John Grisham, Torii Hunter, John H. Johnson, Barack Obama, Sidney Poitier, Colin Powell

ONE WORD TO DESCRIBE ME: grateful

And not just any projects. Alexander spent his first 10 years in the Desire Projects in the city's Ninth Ward, as impoverished and crime-ridden a public housing development as existed anywhere in the nation.

But Alexander was already on an educational trajectory that would encompass graduate school, law school, teaching and eventually administration in one of the nation's biggest institutions of higher learning, the University of Florida.

Today he's putting that background to work as chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a historically black college that calls itself "the flagship of the Delta." Alexander took over in 2013 as the school was facing a long list of problems, from falling enrollment and student performance issues to NCAA penalties against the school's athletic teams.

"He's exceeded my expectations, and they were very high," says Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System. "He's turned around the enrollment drain. He has the faculty working very closely with the students so that retention and graduation rates are improving. And he assembled a first-rate team to administer and manage the institution."

Recalling Alexander's interview for the job, Bobbitt says, "It was clear that he viewed this as more of a calling than a job."

"With his humble background, he understood our kids," says Calvin Booker, a Waste Management Inc. executive based in Atlanta and president of the national UAPB alumni association. "I think he was ready to put the burden on his shoulders and give back to his community."

Alexander is measured in conversation, and has a fondness for bow ties that give him a professorial air. But he has also been known to wear a jester's hat and take king cake to the office during Mardi Gras. Occasionally he breaks into song, his favorite being a snatch of "Tin Man" by the band America: "Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man/That he didn't already have."

The not-so-subtle message, according to Janet Broiles, his chief of staff: "We already have what we need. We just need to make it work."

Alexander lived with his mother, three sisters and a brother in the Desire Projects. They got by on food stamps and what his mother made working as a dispatcher for a cab company. Alexander says his mother, grandmother and teachers pushed him to excel and made him believe he could achieve what he wanted. His mother was eventually able to buy a house on the city's West Bank in Jefferson Parish. Alexander wanted to be a broadcaster like the journalists he saw on local TV and the reporters on the TV show Lou Grant.

"I really liked what I perceived as the power of the press to get things done," he says.

He earned a degree in communications and drama at the University of New Orleans, writing for the college newspaper, Driftwood, and serving as its editor. The paper's adviser, Dave Womack, became an influential mentor. It was Womack who suggested that Alexander focus on print journalism, attend graduate school and apply for a summer job at The Times-Picayune, where Womack had worked.

Alexander earned a master's degree in journalism in two years at the University of Florida at Gainesville. Back in New Orleans, he worked two years at The Times-Picayune covering all the usual beats for a young reporter -- cops, courts, local boards and commissions. Mostly, he wrote about crime.

"At one time, I really thought I was the homicide reporter," he says. "Working at night, we rolled on every homicide and every fire. It was difficult but you've got to report the news."

One of the journalism pieces he's proudest of was a look at problems in the local levee system, two decades before it collapsed as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Alexander's goal was to cover the U.S. Supreme Court for The Wall Street Journal or some other national publication. He researched the biographies of some reporters who were doing that and found that many had law degrees. So did Dave Womack. Alexander enrolled in law school at Tulane University in New Orleans. He finished in two years while working weekends at the newspaper.

Also while at Tulane, Alexander started dating a fellow New Orleans native he'd known since both were communications majors at UNO. He and Veronica married a year later. "We started out as just great friends," says Veronica, who had a young son. "He was ambitious, he was focused, he was fun. He made me laugh a lot."

Just as Alexander was finishing law school, Womack intervened again. He was leaving for a job at Temple University in Philadelphia and thought Alexander would be perfect for the position he was vacating at UNO. Alexander says he'd thought about going into teaching "way later in life," but decided to take the opportunity. He became the only full-time member of UNO's four-person journalism faculty.

IN THE CLASSROOM

Alexander began developing the teaching methods and style he'd use over the next two decades, but the job with UNO only lasted a year before his mentor called again.

Womack was becoming chairman of the journalism department at Temple -- "a big league, accredited journalism department" in Alexander's description -- and there was an opening for a faculty member. Alexander was hired as an assistant professor.

Alexander, asked to explain his connection with Womack, says the older man saw potential in him he didn't even know existed. "We clicked. This guy was influential. I actually followed around in his footsteps."

In Philly, Alexander worked on the copy desk of The Philadelphia Inquirer during summers when school was out. He coached his sons' youth baseball and basketball teams and might have stayed at Temple if not for an ugly faculty strike and offer from his alma mater, the University of Florida, then and now one of the largest universities in the nation with a journalism department to match.

Alexander taught media law and editing at UF. Four years after his arrival, he got tenure and was named chairman of the department. "I was honored they saw that much in me in such a short time," he says.

Veronica says her husband loved teaching and was good at it. Students constantly stopped the pair on campus to talk to him, which she considered remarkable because he lectured to classes of 200 to 300 students.

But Alexander was already thinking about what he needed to move up the ladder in academia. After getting full professorship in 2003, he went back to graduate school for his doctorate in higher education at UF, when he was in his mid-40s. He calls it a "nontraditional pathway" to the upper reaches of academia.

In 2006, he was promoted to two administrative roles simultaneously. He was director of the office of graduate minority programs, leading the recruitment of minority students for grad school and proving adept at securing funding for that purpose. He was also associate dean of those graduate programs, which included nearly 12,000 students in 200 programs across 16 colleges.

"It required me to really get out and get to know the chairmen and administration and deans of all the departments," he says.

For that reason, Alexander says, taking a job such as chancellor was "not that big of a leap." But it did require a mindset adjustment. Alexander applied for the UAPB job because he "was looking for a chance to lead."

TO BE A LEADER

"People are shy about admitting, even to themselves, that they want to lead an institution. For the first time, I said, 'Yes, I'd like to lead.' ... Once you admit to yourself that's what you want to do, it comes down to the opportunity."

Alexander first applied for the open provost job at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He wasn't hired, but system officials were impressed and encouraged him to apply for the UAPB job.

He is UAPB's ninth chancellor. When he took over, the school's enrollment had fallen from nearly 3,800 in 2009 to 2,615 in the fall of 2013. Officials blamed the economy and the closing of the school's popular nursing program, which had been shut down by the Arkansas State Board of Nursing due to high failure rates among its graduates on the state licensing test and inadequacies found in the curriculum and faculty qualifications.

"We needed to act quickly," Alexander says of turning around enrollment. "Everything else is built around it."

Under Alexander, the school began an aggressive campaign to bring in students, adopting a new logo and using billboards, TV and newspaper advertisements featuring the smiling faces of college-age models. A bus tour of high schools introduced UAPB students and faculty to prospective freshmen in person.

"I felt like we needed to reintroduce UAPB to Arkansas," Alexander says. "It had kind of faded to the background." UAPB has a small percentage of nonblack students and the advertisements represented them as well. "We really tried to craft it to promote diversity," Alexander says.

In 2014, Alexander's first full year on the job, enrollment fell again, though not as much as the previous year. In 2015, the school saw an increase in overall student population, including a record number of incoming freshmen.

When those things happened, Alexander let the staff know he was proud of them.

"We celebrated," he says. "It was an accomplishment that everyone was involved in."

Alexander has overseen the creation of strategic and master building plans for UAPB that would take it through 2020. They call for construction of new residence halls, a nanoscience and biotechnology building, new track and soccer facilities and a student center that would serve as the core of campus activities, along with renovation of some existing structures.

He says he's lobbying state officials for additional money but knows much will have to come from major foundations, corporations and individuals. There has already been an increase in donations, including $250,000 from Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield to endow a professorship in the nursing program, which was restarted last year.

Alexander also lobbied the NCAA on behalf of the school's athletic program, getting penalties reduced from a two-year ban on all post-season play to a one-year ban on the football, basketball and baseball teams.

In college rankings by U.S. News & World Report, UAPB has moved from 35th to 29th in the category of historically black colleges and universities.

To keep in touch with students, Alexander holds what's called a "Tower Talk" by the campus' landmark bell tower once a semester. It's a chance for students to make suggestions and ask the chancellor anything they want.

"These are not sermons," he says. "I enjoy taking tough questions."

This year, he was able to tell them there will be a Starbucks on campus.

Veronica says it's a rare night when her husband doesn't attend a school concert, athletic contest or some other event. They've settled into a university-owned house about three miles from campus. Active in ministry in Gainesville, they're looking to be similarly involved in Arkansas. Veronica works for the Arkansas Department of Labor in Little Rock.

One son, David, graduated from UAPB last fall and is considering graduate schools. The other, Tyler, is in the biomedical sciences doctoral program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science. Veronica's oldest son, Brandon, lives outside Gainesville with his wife and two children.

Alexander has also thrown himself into community activities, serving on boards and committees in Pine Bluff and Jefferson County. Any unease he might once have felt about his background is long gone. At UAPB, he accepted a challenge he feels well-prepared for.

"I don't need to look for purpose in my life. It greets me at the door every day when I walk in."

High Profile on 08/21/2016

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