quote:
Sources confirm a rumor that has been circulating since last night.

G. David Gearhart, chancellor of the University of Arkansas, will announce today his plans to retire as leader of the flagship UA campus.

He will return to a faculty position. I don't have details yet on the date of the retirement or financial terms of the change, if any. I'd expect he'll stay through this academic year to allow time for a job search.

Official sources say they have no information on the move.

He'll likely say a desire to return to teaching and family led to the decision.

Inevitably, the news will include his split with University of Arkansas System leadership — President Donald Bobbitt and the Board of Trustees — over the System's move into the eVersity.

The Fayetteville campus resisted providing a loan for startup costs of the program, but the Board of Trustees insisted. Members of the Board weren't pleased, either, when the day of a planning session on the eVersity that the UA campus in Fayetteville rolled out a major advertising effort on its own on-line courses.

Gearhart also endured some controversy with the legislature over a deficit in the university advancement division.

More recently, I'd been informed members of the Board weren't too happy to see they weren't on the guest list for those entertained by Gearhart in his sky box at the Texas Bowl, in which the UA defeated Texas. I learned through an FOI request at the time that the seven UA board members got seats for the game on the goal line.

A reader notes, as I should have, how Gearhart inflamed legislative bigots by expressing opposition to the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce's decision to oppose a civil rights ordinance that included housing, employment and public accommodation protection for LGBT people. Legislators had threatened financial retaliation against the campus. Another plus on his record was advocacy for immigrants, not exactly a popular cause with many legislators.

Gearhart, 62, became chancellor in 2008 after 10 years in charge of university advancement.

PS: In my haste, I didn't notice what autocorrect had done to a misspelling in my original lead. I didn't mean to cast this news as a "reform," as the original version had it, but rather as a "rumor" confirmed by sources.

PPS — In other Gearhart family news, the UA campus announced today that his brother Jeffrey Gearhart and wife Lisa had given $200,000 to establish an endowment to advance diversity in the legal profession. Jeffrey Gearhart is a Walmart executive. The money will go to scholarships to attract "underdeveloped communities" to the law school in Fayetteville. This sort of affirmative action is another thing not highly in favor at the Arkansas legislature, I can't help but note.