Q&A WITH DR. CHUCK WELCH, PRESIDENT OF THE ARKANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY SYSTEM Henderson State officially became a member institution of the Arkansas State University System on February 1. For Reddies who may not be as familiar with the ASU System, can you please give a brief introduction?
The Arkansas State University System is based in Little Rock across the street from the State Capitol in the historic Winthrop Rockefeller Building and serves almost 38,000 students annually on campuses in Arkansas and Queretaro, Mexico, and globally online.
As the second-largest system, we serve as a significant collective voice on state higher education issues. Henderson is the system’s seventh member institution and just the second four-year university. Additional members include Arkansas State University, a four-year Carnegie R2 research institution in Jonesboro with degree centers at ASU-Beebe, ASUMountain Home and ASU Mid-South in West Memphis. The $100-million, privately funded Arkansas State University Campus Queretaro opened in September 2017. The system’s two-year college institutions include ASU-Beebe, with additional campuses in Heber Springs and Searcy and an instructional site at Little Rock Air Force Base; ASU-Newport, with additional campuses in Jonesboro and Marked Tree; ASU-Mountain Home; ASU Mid-South in West Memphis; and ASU Three Rivers (formerly College of the Ouachitas) in Malvern. The Henderson campus is already seeing the benefits of being part of the ASU System, including a new enterprise system implementation. What other opportunities do you see for collaboration across campuses? Our Accelerate ASU initiative with Huron Consulting in 2017 enabled us to perform a comprehensive operational and programmatic review of the System. It identified many opportunities to increase revenues and become more efficient operationally. Early implementation efforts have been very successful. Centralized information technology functions have led to substantially lower group pricing for software and labor savings. Our new strategic research department is providing critical data to help us make informed decisions. We see additional opportunities in areas such as procurement and payroll services.
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HENDERSON MAGAZINE
