University of Arkansas System Information

The University of Arkansas System comprises six campuses within the state of Arkansas; a medical school; two law schools; a unique graduate school focused on public service; a HBCU, statewide research, service and educational units for agriculture, criminal justice and archeology; and several community colleges. Over 50,000 students are enrolled in over 188 undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs.

Legally, the entire system carries the name University of Arkansas. Nonetheless, to avoid confusion with its flagship campus in Fayetteville, the system usually refers to itself as the University of Arkansas System and the Fayetteville campus usually refers to itself as the University of Arkansas.

(Neither one is officially independent of its parent campus, though the Bowen School of Law is on a separate campus from UALR proper)

The original and flagship campus was established in Fayetteville as Arkansas Industrial University in 1871 under the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. The system now includes both of the states land-grant colleges, as UAPB was later designated as such under the 1890 Morrill Act; it left the system in 1927, but returned in 1972. The Division of Agriculture and UAMs forestry programs also contribute to the systems land-grant mission. The Division of Agriculture includes the statewide Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES) and the Cooperative Extension Service (CES). AAES and CES were managed by the dean of the College of Agriculture and Home Economics on the Fayetteville campus until 1959, when the Board of Trustees established the statewide Division of Agriculture as a unit of the U of A System.

The University of Arkansas System as an organized educational alliance (system) could be said to date from the founding of UAPB (1873) or perhaps UAMS joining the system (1911). The Division of Agriculture was established in 1959 as a statewide system unit with its own line-item appropriation from the state Legislature. University of Arkansas President David Wiley Mullins, along with the Board of Trustees, brokered a series of mergers in the late 1960s. The Little Rock and Monticello campuses joined the system in 1969 (UALR) and 1971 (UAM), and UAPB returned to the system in 1972. In 1975, a University of Arkansas Board of Trustees policy officially adopted the name "University of Arkansas System" as an alternative identification for the system, along with the present names of the campuses, in order to allow the Fayetteville campus to continue its identification as the "University of Arkansas". The policy has been amended over the years as other campuses were added.

The administrative offices for the University of Arkansas System are located in Little Rock.

Up until 1982, the president was the chief administrative officer of the Fayetteville campus and the University of Arkansas System. In 1982, the position of chancellor was created to be the top administrator at the Fayetteville campus, and the title of president referred only to the University of Arkansas System.

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