Letter from Provost January 17, 2023

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Graduate Assistants,

Welcome back to campus! I hope you all had a great winter break.  While I served as Interim Provost for 16 months, I’m excited to start my first full semester since being appointed to the permanent position. I am honored that Chancellor Robinson has entrusted me with this responsibility.

As we kick off a new year and a new semester, I want to thank you for your commitment to the University, and your extraordinary work, contributions, and dedication to our students and their success.  I also want to share some things my team and I are planning for 2023.  

I will continue to work with Chancellor Robinson to oversee academic affairs as well as support the overall goals of the University of Arkansas, starting with the priorities Chancellor Robinson addressed in his first 100-days plan as well as continuing to advance student success, augment the research enterprise and make the university an employer of choice.

Over the coming months, we will also begin to address the vacancies and interim positions in units within Academic Affairs across campus.  I look forward to working with the faculty and staff in those units. I will update the units and the Faculty Senate with plans in the coming weeks.

I will also continue working with Chancellor Robinson and others to develop a short-term strategic plan outlining how our campus will advance the three priorities the Chancellor has outlined.  Key to advancing student success and our research enterprise is creating a plan to support the growth and development of our tenured and tenure-track faculty. We will increase the number of tenured and tenure-track faculty and secure endowments and other partnerships to further advance faculty teaching and research.  Our faculty, post-docs, and graduate students are the very heart of everything we do – to build a better world through research and discovery and to educate the next generation of Arkansans.

As we work to grow our faculty and expand our research enterprise, we aim to do so strategically, using data and strategic analytics to improve our overall academic excellence and inform the decisions we make as an organization. To further support our research initiative and align with our goals as an R1 research university, we recently renamed the Office of Institutional Research as the Office of Strategic Analytics & Insights.  We have hired a new Director of Strategic Analytics & Insights, Brandon Bayles, to lead our effort to become a more data-driven institution. Brandon has a wealth of experience in data-centric roles. I hope you read more about this new office and how it will help augment our research enterprise.

As Provost, I hope to engage with you in the coming months.  I will hold events to do just that and get your valuable feedback on how we can best achieve our shared goals to advance the University. Our faculty and staff make the University of Arkansas such a great institution--you make us able to deliver on our mission as a land grant research university.  You help us provide world-class academics and life-changing opportunities to students across the state.  You fulfill our mission to make the world a better place.  We wouldn’t be the U of A without all of you. I am excited and honored to be part of such a talented university community.

I am deeply grateful to YOU for all you do. Good luck this upcoming semester!

Best Regards,

Terry Martin, Ph.D.

Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Professor of Electrical Engineering