TRI-LAKES AREA — Randall Wight is probably the most easily recognized member of the faculty at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
With his large stature and even larger personality, blond hair and deep blue eyes that may see more of the world than most other people’s, the soon-to-be dean of the W.H. Sutton School of Social Sciences is easily identified by his black overalls and white dress shirt.
“I have been wearing this for more than a decade,” said Wight, a teacher of biological psychology. “I just gave 20 pair of overalls to a thrift store, and I have 20 more at home.”
During those 10-plus years since he adopted his mode of dress, he has formulated at least four answers as to why he selected the daily ensemble.
“First, I need the pockets,” Wight said.
He then proceeded to pull out a pocket watch, a knife, pens, a selection of magnifying lenses, a book, a wallet, a checkbook — he was stopped as the pile grew on his desk.
“I would rather spend my money on books instead of clothes,” the professor added. “I also don’t have to think about what I am going to wear in the morning.”
To Wight, the black is selected over the more usual blue denim as a matter of style and taste.
“Black is dressy,” he said. “I have worn them to the opera in Paris, to a London Philharmonic Orchestra concert in Great Britain, and all over the world.”
He mentioned the overalls’ comfort and that they are cooler in the summer, but Wight said there is a fourth reason he always wears the clothes, which are unorthodox for an academic.
“I like to see the way people react to me and how they treat me,” the psychologist said.
Wight said he hopes people will take the time to learn about him more by talking with him than from his clothes.
“I also hope it says I don’t take myself too seriously,” Wight said.
Born in Fayetteville, his parents moved to his father’s home state of Ohio, where Wight lived until his family returned to Arkansas when he was in the second grade. The family lived in Dardanelle, near his mother’s family home in rural Yell County.
The future professor and dean was an avid reader, but admits he might have been considered a “problem student” in elementary school.
“In the third grade, I did something, and I was sent to the library every day during that class,” Wight said.
Being sent to a large quiet room filled with books was a good solution to him, as well. He said he began to read the books on psychology that were in the school library.
“As a third-grader, I maybe didn’t understand very much, but after more than 20 years of study, I still don’t understand much,” Wight said. “But the idea of what was thought and perception, memory and what it means to be human was interesting.”
That interest stayed with him as he attended Arkansas State University and went on to graduate school at what was then called Memphis State University.
“I am a first-generation college student, and I just wanted to stay in school,” Wight said. “I got into biological psychology and brain structures and their relationship to behavior.”
With a biological approach to the study of behavior and his graduate specialties of neuroscience, visual cortex and perceptual processes, he still took more than a scientific approach to being human.
“We are a lot of interacting chemicals,” he said, “but we are a lot more than that — and I am not exactly sure what ‘that’ means — just like a work of art is not only dabs of color on canvas, but a lot more.”
This acceptance of something more than chemical interaction is an important part of Wight’s
approach to his work, his field and his teaching.
“Perhaps I am not as focused on my academics as I should be,” he said, “but I met someone at a conference once who said the focus of his life was on a 2-millimeter-square area of the brain. That is a special focus, but it leaves out so much.”
Wight said he has a broad range of interests, including art history, music, literature and other sciences.
“I’m an intellectual gypsy,” he said. “I think it is good to have a complex sense of the world. I like finding the commonality of things that don’t appear to have anything in common at all.”
Only months after completing graduate school, Wight joined the faculty at Ouachita Baptist University in 1986.
“I’ve had this same office ever since,” he said.
In 1998, he was named dean of the School of Interdisciplinary Studies after helping to create the program. Wight stepped away from that post to return to teaching as chairman of the department of psychology at OBU in 2003.
On July 1, he will take over as dean of the School of Social Sciences, which includes the history, political science, psychology and sociology departments.
Asked why he was returning to the duties of a dean, Wight quoted President John Kennedy’s remarks to a gathering of Rice University officials in Texas, the evening before the president was killed in 1963.
“He was talking about why we were going to the moon,” Wight said. “He asked the group at Rice why their football team played the University of Texas every year. ‘We do the things that are hard,’ Kennedy said. It is a hard job, and I am ready for the challenge.”
Wight said the new challenge will take him out of his comfort zone in psychology, as he works to raise the visibility of the school. Wight’s broad outlook on academics and the world will help him lead a multidisciplined school.
OBU President Rex Horne described Wight as one of Ouachita’s finest classroom teachers.
“His dedication to scholarly excellence, wide-ranging knowledge, strong communication skills and administrative experience will serve him and Ouachita well in this new position,” Horne said.
Citing Wight’s multiple leadership roles,” OBU Vice President for Academic Affairs Stan Poole said Wight is well-equipped to assume the job.
“He has developed relationships across campus,” Poole said. “His energy, creativity and vision will allow him to build on the strong foundation already in place.”
The many aspects of the job fit Wight’s approach. He said he sees the world as an overlapping series of maps.
“There are road maps, topographical maps, population maps, political maps, climate maps — all of the same area,” he said. “It is a mistake to reduce anything to a single framework.”
That approach has helped blend the professor’s science into the mission of the university.
“It is another overlapping map,” Wight said. “There is no conflict, but there is sometimes tension when people forget there is not only one framework. I am not afraid to look for God behind the planets. These are pressing issues for everyone, and issues that need to be studied and that merit conversation.”
Wight said no one has complete understanding, and that incompleteness brings humility.
“I’m just one small guy trying to make sense in the world,” Wight said. “I’m trying to learn, and I am counting on what I learn to make sense.”
Perhaps the common sense of everything will come easier to someone wearing overalls.