Past Presidents

2011-2025 Donald R. Bobbitt

During the leadership of Dr. Donald R. Bobbitt, the UA System underwent a vast transformation that not only expanded the number of campuses, divisions and units, but also capitalized on pooling its diverse offerings and leveraging its collective resources to operate more efficiently as a system. Highlighting that effort was the addition of UA – Pulaski Technical College and UA – Rich Mountain Community College in 2016 and the addition of East Arkansas Community College in 2024.

Bobbitt’s tenure saw the growth of new leadership across the system’s campuses, divisions and units, with new chancellors or chief executive officers recruited and hired at 17 of the system institutions, resulting in the most diverse leadership team in system history. He also oversaw the implementation of the UA System’s largest-ever systemwide project, Project One, bringing each of the institutions onto the Workday platform to manage all finance, human resources, academic and student information functions. Through this effort the system has realized better alignment and easier exchange of data among the institutions.

Other systemwide projects conducted under Bobbitt’s leadership include implementing collective contracting for the Blackboard learning management system, launching the UA System solar energy project, creating the UA System Workforce Response and Training Center, and starting the state’s first 100 percent online institution, the University of Arkansas System eVersity, in 2015, which later merged and expanded with the acquired University of Arkansas Grantham in 2021.

Visit here for a more detailed listing of the UA System’s progress under Bobbitt’s leadership.

Bobbitt is the inaugural holder of the endowed chair in presidential leadership at the UA System, established in 2015 by the late Charles E. Scharlau, former chairman and CEO of Southwestern Energy Company and past chairman of the UA Board of Trustees. While serving as president, Bobbitt continued to keep active in his scientific discipline and served as chair of a National Institutes of Health Study Section for 8 years.

1990-2011 B. Alan Sugg

Under the leadership of Dr. B. Alan Sugg, enrollment in the UA System surged from some 30,000 students on five campuses to almost 70,000 students across 17 campuses and units. Also during this time, the colleges and universities of the UA system granted nearly 150,000 academic degrees. His tenure also saw $2 billion in new construction and major renovation projects completed on UA System campuses.

Sugg attended the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, on a track scholarship. Upon completing his undergraduate studies at the UA, he was commissioned into the U.S. Army and stationed in Germany. He later received his master’s degree from the University of Arkansas and his doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Oklahoma.

Prior to becoming UA System president, he served higher education in the state of Texas for 22 years, including 13 years as president of Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi.

1984-90 Ray Thornton

During a time of tumult for administrative leadership on the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville campus, Ray Thornton was named president of the University of Arkansas System. The Board of Trustees had offered the chancellorship to a new candidate after the brief tenure of B.A. Nugent, but the candidate abruptly rejected the chancellorship upon hearing that Thornton’s predecessor, James Martin, had resigned as president. Thornton was hired as president the same day, having served as president of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro the previous three years.

Prior to ASU, he had served as a congressman from Arkansas’s 4th District and before that as Arkansas attorney general. He received his bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1950 and a law degree from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in 1956.

During his presidency, Thornton orchestrated removal of the president’s office from the Fayetteville campus to a separate administrative office in Little Rock. Thornton left the presidency in 1989 and returned to politics, serving three terms in Congress. In 1996, he was elected an associate justice on the Arkansas Supreme Court, before retiring in 2004. He most recently served as a fellow at the William Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Others:

1980-84 James E. Martin

1974-80 Charles E. Bishop

1960-74 David Wiley Mullins

1952-59 John Tyler Caldwell

1947-51 Lewis Webster Jones

1941-47 Arthur M. Harding

1939-41 J. William Fulbright

1913-39 John C. Futrall

1905-12 John N. Tillman

1902-05 Henry S. Hartzog

1894-1902 John L. Buchanan

1887-94 Edward H. Murfee

1884-87 George M. Edgar

1877-84 Daniel H. Hill

1875-77 Noah P. Gates

1873-75 Albert W. Bishop

1871-73 Noah P. Gates