PAR T I I I : T H E COMMU N I T Y COL L EGE ER A , 1974- 1998
A few months later, Bell & Howell Company accepted Gibbons into a project along with a number of other authors and offered to market one of her programs, Psychology Tutor. She worked on the project over a year before it unfortunately had to be canceled due to production costs. As a consolation, the company returned reproduction rights to all the authors, and Gibbons gave the tutorial program to the Learning Assistance Center. As a result of her pioneer work with computer programming, Gibbons received the first Whirlpool Master Teacher Award in 1980. Other faculty who received the award for achievements in their fields include: Martha Efurd (1981), Mary Copeland (1982), John Preas (1983), Calline (Dipboye) Ellis (1984), Betty Price (1985), Paul Leggett (1986), Jerry Center (1987), Anita Hammack (1988), Bill Lacewell (1989), Ron Floyd (1990), David Meeks (1991), Sharon Winn (1992), Mary Jane Keel (1993), Terry Polinskey (1994), Henry Q. Rinne (1995), Edward R. Levy (1996), Robert W. Lowrey (1997), Emma Watts (1998), David Craig (1999), Lori Norin (2000), Ann Scott Winters (2001), Myron Rigsby (2002), Jo Alice Blondin (2003), Lynda Nelson (2004), Billy D. Higgins (2005), Carol M. Warner (2006), Ragupathy Kannan (2007).
Joel Stubblefield: Strategy and Growth
Fort Smith native Joel Stubblefield was a product of DuVal grade school, Fort Smith Junior High, and Fort Smith High School. He attended Fort Smith Junior College in 1955 at the rather young age of 16 because he had skipped third grade in school. Stubblefield was far more interested in his 1942 Chevrolet automobile than college his freshman year and did not distinguish himself as a student. Seeking a fresh start in 1956, he attended Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, majoring in business. In order to support himself, Stubblefield went through Reserve Officer Training Corps (which paid $27 a month) and obtained a commission as an officer in the U.S. Army. After fulfilling his military obligation he went on to obtain a master’s degree in business administration from Syracuse University (New York) and thereafter continued his career in the Army. Twenty years later, he decided to retire and seek a position in Arkansas, leaving his job as Resource Manager
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or the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. Stubblefield visited Fort Smith and Fayetteville every Friday for several months in 1980, looking for a job, even though everyone told him there was no work. Whirlpool, the largest plant in Fort Smith, had just laid off 3,000 workers, and there was little reason to expect that work would be available in other companies. Looking through the newspapers one day he saw an ad for dean of business affairs at Westark Community College. He turned to his wife and said, “That’s it, that’s the job I want.” In the meantime, however, he had applied for and received an offer for the number-two financial post at the University of Arkansas. While a moving van was being loaded at Stubblefield’s Fort Leavenworth residence, President Kraby called to offer him a position at Westark. Stubblefield immediately accepted and phoned Fred Vorsanger at the University of Arkansas to let him know he would be going to Westark. He reasoned that in Fort Smith he would be one notch higher on the administrative ladder as dean of business affairs. He accepted a salary of $22,000 per year, which was about half of his armed services retirement pay at the time. Stubblefield worked from August 1980 through April 1983 in the business office: supervising payroll, purchasing, cafeteria, bookstore, buildings and grounds, insurance, and fringe benefits. As James Kraby said: He burned the midnight oil. I’d drive by at nine o’clock, coming back from a social event in town, and I’d see his office light on. I had to be careful what I asked him to do because he would stay up all night to get reports to me by the next morning, when I really didn’t need them until the following week. In April 1983, Kraby obtained a position in Arizona, and the Board of Trustees named Stubblefield as his interim replacement. Stubblefield retained his own position as dean of business affairs, which by then had been changed to the title of vice president for finance and administration, and handled both jobs through September 1983. He was surprised that he had been named interim president because there were others with longer tenure who could have been chosen. He wanted to determine the scope of his duties as interim president, and asked at a meeting of the board when they appointed him: