University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Chancellor Anthony Graham can empathize with students who arrive at UAPB with challenges.
He grew up in a town in rural southeastern North Carolina and had no thoughts of higher education for much of his young life. He nearly failed out of college before finding his path.
But his empathy should not be confused with low expectations.
“Lowering the bar doesn’t help students. It hurts them,” said Graham, who officially began his new role July 1, 2025.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
During a recent interview in Pine Bluff, Graham said, “We have bold, audacious plans here, so the best is yet to come for UAPB. I’m maniacal about student success. Student success is the game here, period.”
That means “high expectations and accountability,” he said.
Graham wants UAPB to become a Research 2 university, as defined by the American Council on Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and eventually achieve Research 1 status, the highest tier.
The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville is the only R1 school in the state, defined by a threshold of $50 million in total research spending and 70 research doctorates awarded annually. Arkansas State University, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have R2 status, meaning $5 million in research spending and 20 research doctorates awarded annually.
UAPB and the University of Central Arkansas are classified as “Research Colleges and Universities,” a designation that acknowledges schools that spend more than $2.5 million on research annually but offer few or no doctorate degrees and historically haven’t been recognized for research activity.
Graham said R1 status “won’t happen overnight — it’s a 10- to 20-year plan. … Imagine what that would mean not only for UAPB, but this city, county, community, region and state.”
The chancellor also has more immediate challenges on his hands.
Among first-time entering, degree-seeking students who graduated high school in 2022 or 2023 and enrolled at UAPB, 65% required at least some remediation — the highest percentage among the state’s 10 four-year public universities, according to the Arkansas Division of Higher Education.
UAPB’s retention rate for the fall 2023 cohort was 64%, below the state average of 79% for four-year public universities.
UAPB’s four-year graduation rate for the fall 2020 cohort was 15%. Its six-year graduation rate for the fall 2018 cohort was 40%. The averages for the state’s four-year public universities were 43% and 55%, respectively.
Graham is intently focused on improving the four-year rate, not the six-year rate now favored by many schools, with his “four, no more” strategy.
“We want you to come in, get a quality education … and leave in four years prepared for the workforce,” he said.
Retention rates must improve for graduation rates to rise, and Graham believes in creating an “educational ecosystem” before students even arrive on campus.
“For me, everything is data-informed,” he said. “We know who they are coming in and what they need. I don’t view any students as having ‘baggage,’ but ‘luggage,’ and we can help them to the next location.”
FROM KINSTON TO CHAPEL HILL
Graham previously served as a professor, provost, vice chancellor for academic affairs and interim chancellor at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina. He was also a professor and dean of the College of Education at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in math from UNC-Chapel Hill, as well as a master’s in secondary English education and a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from UNC-Greensboro. Before working in higher education, he taught high school English.
His hometown of Kinston, N.C., “reminds me of Pine Bluff,” Graham said. It’s a close-knit community with a history of agriculture, a place “where everybody knows everybody and invests in you,” he said.
His mother did not attend college because she had to care for her family at a young age, but she inculcated service into Graham and his siblings. On holidays, she’d make a large meal and insist her children bring food to the “downtrodden” in the community, he said.
Like Pine Bluff, Kinston is challenged by crime, poverty and racial inequality, which Graham noticed as early as kindergarten, when he was bused from one side of town to an elementary school on the other side, next to a country club and rows of expensive homes.
“I never felt impoverished, because I was surrounded by love, but I was quiet in class — not engaged — and had a short fuse,” he said.
He had no plans to go to college until eighth grade, he said, when his language arts teacher had the class write short stories. Graham authored a tale about a GI Joe on a deserted island so impressive he was moved to the “advanced” section.
“That was the first time I thought I might be smart, that I might have potential,” he said. The teacher “pushed me; she would not let me take any step backward.”
In high school, though, Graham did “only enough to get by,” which haunted him when he arrived at UNC-Chapel Hill.
“In college, you need to engage. If you don’t understand the machinery, you’ll be chewed up by it,” he said.
A turning point came when he talked to an academic adviser who asked him the same question Graham now asks students: “What would you do in your life that you would enjoy even if you didn’t get paid?”
He focused on English, and ultimately ended up on the dean’s list.
Graham says he wishes more educators would share their life stories with students. “It’s very rare to have a perfect path in life, but sharing your challenges, and how you overcame them, can give hope to others,” he said. “It shows you’re human.”
PINE BLUFF AND UAPB
Graham has had many discussions with Mayor Vivian Flowers about the vital role UAPB plays in the community.
“There’s an opportunity here for economic, social and community growth, with the university working collaboratively, because I hope we can keep young professionals in this area,” he said.
Of course, “to keep that talent here, we need industry and jobs,” he said.
Flowers is determined to help Graham’s vision for UAPB succeed. “I’m committed to his leadership, and he to mine,” she said. “I believe we’ll see a lot of things come to fruition this year.”
Flowers is focused on new investment, economic development and public safety, she said. The city is working with UAPB to improve street lighting and other infrastructure and to establish a police substation in cooperation with university police.
The community and the university also aim to create more internship opportunities for students and to work together to seek grants and state funding.
In September 2025, UAPB announced a $2 million investment to strengthen enrollment pipelines, modernize student services and enhance long-term fiscal sustainability. It was one of eight historically Black colleges and universities (HCBUs) nationwide that received a grant from the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the nation’s largest organization exclusively representing the Black college community.
UAPB will use its funding to establish PRIDE RISES, a program to boost recruitment and support for students.
UAPB’s fall 2025 headcount of 2,010 was essentially flat from the previous fall’s 2,005, said Margaret W. Taylor, director of planning and institutional research. Graduate enrollment was up more than 4%, to 196 students, while continuing and re-admitted students also increased. Total undergraduate enrollment was 1,802.
The university is also building a new student success center, a health and science building and a center for AI and data analytics.
TURNAROUND POTENTIAL
UA System President Jay B. Silveria said Graham’s leadership is a good starting point for a university that has struggled in recent years with declining enrollment and low graduation rates.
That’s in part because of his experience and understanding of 1890 land-grant institutions, a group of historically Black institutions that includes UAPB. Graham and others are “realistic about where (UAPB) is, not trying to be something it’s not or can’t be,” Silveria said.
UAPB has an “opportunity to be innovative and try to attract some different students, because it can’t just be about the 18-year-olds who want that (particular) experience,” he said. UAPB must “play to its strengths,” such as an acclaimed aquaculture program, STEM, and agriculture, “not areas where there is not a return on investment.”
UAPB’s “land-grant mission tells us who we are, so we need to lean into that identity and make everyone aware of who we are, how we do things, and our return on investment and impact,” Graham said.
Graham believes UAPB can follow a similar path as North Carolina A&T, where he worked for nearly two decades. The nation’s largest HBCU, with more than 15,000 students, North Carolina A&T has roughly doubled enrollment over the past 15 years under the leadership of former chancellor Harold Martin.
It did so by refocusing on its original 1890 land-grant mission, Graham said.
Upon accepting the chancellor’s job in Pine Bluff, Graham embarked on a listening tour through the campus, community and state. One constant he heard was that UAPB is “a hidden gem.”
“I hate that phrase, though. No gem should ever be hidden,” he said.
“The United Negro College Fund found in 2024 that UAPB had an annual economic impact of $191 million, and if UAPB just disappeared, that (money) would disappear, too,” he said. “We have to get our message out — that we help you move up (life’s) ladder.”
CORRECTION: Graham officially became the chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff on July 1, 2025. An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect starting date.