LITTLE ROCK — As president of the University of Arkansas System, B. Alan Sugg has built a reputation as a quiet leader who isn’t afraid to stand behind the scenes while others take credit for the progress he helped to orchestrate.
Chancellors of the system’s five universities and five community colleges describe their boss as a consensus builder, a legislative liaison who’s navigated relationships with four governors and hundreds of lawmakers, and a man who’s helped every college and university in the state — not just those in the UA System.
Sugg, 73, has held the job since 1990, the longest tenure of any president since the modern system was formed in 1969.
Today, he hands the title to new President Donald Bobbitt, most recently the provost and vice president for academic affairs at the University of Texas at Arlington and a former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Educators and lawmakers discussing the transition lean on a weathered cliche, saying Bobbitt has “enormous shoes to fill.”
“I don’t think we could have possibly picked a better person,” former UA Trustee Jim Blair said of Sugg. Blair was on a two-member interview committee that eventually selected Sugg, a Helena native, UA-Fayetteville graduate and then-president of Corpus Christi State University.
“The only thing I wish is that he would have been 20 years younger so we could get 20 more years out of him,” Blair said.
In his decades at the helm, Sugg has overseen great changes in the system, adding the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, five community colleges and the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.
He has hired the current chancellor on every campus in the UA System, a role he has consistently called one of the most important parts of his job.
“That’s where I get my kicks, seeing the wonderful things happening on our campuses,” Sugg said. “I’m most proud of the leadership we have there.”
The job of finding campus leaders started early in Sugg’s tenure.
In his first day on the job, he drove to the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff after reading an article on the front page of the Arkansas Democrat. The school, which had a $3 million deficit, was being investigated over dozens of athletics violations and allowing ineligible athletes to play football.
Sugg took out a private bank loan to make payroll, had the system’s financial officers work on the university’s campus to right its books and met with coaches and the UAPB athletic director.
Sugg quickly found a new chancellor for the historically black university, selecting Lawrence A. Davis Jr.
“Once I was appointed, he let me make the decisions and he supported me,” Davis said. “He’s been the most caring and sensitive president we’ve had in terms of the special mission at UAPB.”
Chancellors said Sugg listens more than he talks and avoids the temptation to “micromanage” their campuses.
UA-Fayetteville Chancellor G. David Gearhart said, “He does not play games. What you see is what you get.”
Sugg talks about community college programs designed to reach poor students in the Delta with as much pride as internationally known research at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Steven Murray, chancellor of Phillips Community College of the University of Arkansas, credited Sugg with the “vision” to add two-year schools to the system when many were skeptical of the idea.
During Sugg’s tenure, the UA System grew from about 30,000 students on five campuses to more than 70,000 students and 18,000 employees among 17 campuses and units.
Campuses also completed $2 billion in new construction and major renovation projects.
Gov. Mike Beebe called Sugg “a true Southern gentleman” who left the UA System “bigger and stronger than he found it.”
But his presidency was not without contention.
In 2004, former Razorback basketball Coach Nolan Richardson, who is black, filed a lawsuit claiming his March 2002 firing was racially motivated. He listed Sugg, Chancellor John White, UA trustees and Athletic Director Frank Broyles as defendants.
U.S. District Judge Bill Wilson Jr. later ruled the outspoken Richardson could not prove his claims but tempered his ruling by saying Richardson’s beliefs of discrimination were “clearly not unreasonable” based on evidence presented in court.
“I really have a lot of respect for Nolan Richardson and what he accomplished,” Sugg said. “That made it really hard for me to go to trial.”
Richardson’s media contact did not respond to a request for an interview.
Athletics drove other difficult decisions as well.
Sugg was asked to decide the appeal of four Razorback basketball players accused of gang raping a 34-year-old Springdale woman.
After hours of deliberation, he announced plans to reduce the players’ punishment as determined by a UA disciplinary board. A visibly nervous Sugg, sweat glistening from his forehead, told media he couldn’t find proof of rape in the documents he reviewed and ruled that the players should sit out a season-opening tournament in Hawaii and participate in educational seminars about their “inappropriate” actions. It had been reported but never confirmed that the board originally suspended the players for a year.
Sugg said in a recent interview that he has never felt complete peace about his decision.
“That was a gut-wrenching experience for me,” he said.
Blair said Sugg handled the matter with integrity.
“With that many institutions to look after, a spoke in the wheel is bound to break somewhere,” he said. “But Alan is unflappable.”
Sugg, the son of a schoolteacher mother and superintendent father, said he was motivated to work in higher education because he saw it as a way to help people
As a child, he thought of becoming a minister. As president of the Student Government Association at the UA-Fayetteville, he saw how administrators became invested in the lives of students, echoing the qualities he’d seen in his parents.
“I think people should always be treated with dignity and respect,” Sugg said. “They should feel like they’re worth something.”
Leaders say Sugg’s influence extended across higher education in Arkansas.
When the Legislature voted last spring to mandate the Arkansas Department of Higher Education to design a new funding formula, Sugg invited interim Director Shane Broadway to lunch to start the discussion, Broadway said. Sugg had already assembled UA campus leaders to discuss how the new funding model would affect their institutions.
Dan Ferritor, chancellor of the Fayetteville campus when Sugg started as president, said Sugg successfully championed other measures to boost funding for college and universities in the state. That included a statewide sales-tax increase supported by then-Gov. Bill Clinton that created the Educational Excellence Trust Fund.
He also traveled around the state talking to “anyone who would listen” to drum up support for a savings bond issue to fund campus capital projects.
One of those projects is Daniel E. Ferritor Hall on the Fayetteville campus.
“It is classic Alan Sugg,” Ferritor said. “He gets the bill passed, he gets the money, and then he advocates that the building be named for someone else.”
As Bobbitt starts his new job, Sugg will stay on in a new, temporary role, advising him during the transition.
He’ll continue to work in the UA System administration building that now bears his name.
“I’ve loved every minute of it here,” Sugg said. “No one wants the next person to succeed more than I do.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 10/31/2011