The son of a Baptist pastor, Anthony Graham grounded his presentation to University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff stakeholders in the passage, albeit from a 1910 Theodore Roosevelt speech, “Man in the Arena”:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds …”
UAPB is the arena where Graham would like to take command. He met the public Friday inside the STEM Conference Center for the second Campus Conversation of finalists for the school’s chancellorship.
“I boldly, courageously and unapologetically step into the arena,” Graham declared in his rich baritone.
Currently, Graham is a tenured professor of education and former provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. He was interim chancellor at the HBCU from 2023-24 and previously dean of the College of Education at North Carolina A&T State University.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
His learning experiences had their fair share of adversity. Graham highlighted his lack of an early childhood education experience, frequent suspensions in grades K-3 and absences in grades 4-7, identity as a student with special needs and a 2.8 grade-point average with a 740 score on his SAT.
An eighth-grade teacher who elevated Graham from a low-performing English class to a high-performing one allowed him to see education differently, he said. Graham was academically suspended from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a 1.892 grade-point average in the spring of 1996, but a chance meeting with the director of academic advisement helped him graduate the next year.
“I am obligated to ensure student success is always at the forefront of what we do,” Graham said, citing the two faculty influences. “For every door you close in someone’s face, you may be pushing them away. If you keep your door open and invite people in, you might be talking to the next provost of the university.”
Graham is a teacher at heart. Within that role lies his core values of trust, excellence, accountability, continuous improvement, honesty, equity and respect, he outlined.
“I am maniacal about student success,” Graham said. “I am maniacal about making certain we create an environment for our students to have a phenomenal experience and to make sure that they succeed.”
Like the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s Robert C. Mock Jr., Graham was asked to discuss the role of a university founded under the Second Morrill Act of 1890, which established land-grant institutions for Black students who were discriminated from studying at those founded under the First Morrill Act of 1862. UAPB is one of 19 land-grant historically Black colleges and universities in America.
Secretaries for the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Agriculture under President Joe Biden identified an underfunding of $12.6 billion combined by 16 states including Arkansas between 1987-2020. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed the problem last May by announcing the 1-to-1 match of federal land-grant funds for UAPB and exceeding the 2023 allocation by $2 million.
Still, Graham highlighted, schools established under the First Morrill Act of 1862, such as the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, have endowment assets totaling $45 billion, compared with $1 billion for the 1890 institutions.
“We have to see obstacles as opportunities, and these are obstacles right in front of us,” Graham said. “We have to figure out how to reframe, revision and how to lean into these spaces so we can benefit and maximize the institution.”
Two solutions Graham offered are an intentional focus on access, affordability and student success; and a “laser-like” focus on research, extension and entrepreneurship. The ballroom audibly took to his idea for an ecosystem of academic excellence – recruitment and retention, relevant degree programs and curricula, investments in teaching, coordinated integration of high-impact practices, and return on investment analysis by degree programs.
Among his stated leadership experiences, Graham helped Winston-Salem State increase its research portfolio by 217% and overhead recovery by 112%, and the school has seen an average annual financial investment of $9.2 million a year in research and development.
The next chancellor at UAPB, Graham said, must be a visionary, person-focused servant leader. That leader promotes excellence, emphasizes accountability, focuses on student success, is an inclusive and collaborative alliance builder, and is a lifelong “leader learner,” he diagrammed.
Two more candidates for chancellor, UAPB finance and administration vice chancellor Carla Martin and Fisk University (Tenn.) provost/vice president for academic affairs Robert Z. Carr Jr., will meet the public next Wednesday and Friday, respectively. The Campus Conversations for each will begin at 2 p.m.
Attendees are invited to complete surveys for Mock and Graham by clicking on their links.