PINE BLUFF — The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff chancellor will resign in the wake of an internal audit that led to the firing of four campus employees and triggered an Arkansas State Police investigation.
Lawrence Davis Jr., 74, did not state a reason for leaving in a campuswide e-mail released Thursday. His resignation is effective May 25.
“Over these years with limited resources I served to the best of my ability,” Davis wrote to faculty, staff and students. “However, I am now anticipating the realization of other aspirations.”
The son of a former UAPB chancellor, Davis has been leader since 1991 of the 3,200-student historically black university. He is the longestserving of any of the state’s public university leaders.
Davis did not return messages left at his office and home phone numbers Thursday.
University of Arkansas System President Donald Bobbitt said Davis had been discussing his resignation for several weeks. Bobbitt said he had not asked the chancellor to step down.
“But I think we would have to be naive not to think that some of the events of the past couple of weeks have worn on him,” Bobbitt said of the internal audit and the reaction to it from students and alumni. “There’s been a lot to do, and it has been a trying time.”
UA Sys - tem spokesman Ben Beaumont said the chancellor, who has two years remaining on his contract, is finalizing an early-retirement agreement. Under that agreement, Davis would forfeit his tenure, and the system would pay Davis his current $190,000 salary for one more year, Beaumont said.
Bobbitt said he plans to appoint an interim chancellor while he conducts a national search with the assistance of students, faculty, staff and alumni.
He said many UAPB students are “absolutely committed to the experience they’ve had” at the school.
“I expect that if that has been a prevailing opinion for some time, there are folks out there who have the same passion” to lead the campus, said Bobbitt, who became system president in November.
UA trustee David Pryor of Little Rock said “to the best of my knowledge,” no trustees had sought Davis’ resignation.
“I’ve admired Chancellor Davis for a long time,” Pryor said. “I think he’s done a great deal for that campus.”
Statements from UA System leaders and from UAPB did not connect Davis’ sudden resignation to a recent investigation that uncovered $700,000 of payroll and purchasing transactions that violated university spending controls at the Harrold Complex, a student dormitory.
But the decision to leave before the end of the fiscal year on June 30 is unusual among campus leaders. Davis had told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in November that he did not plan to retire this year.
“I’m feeling real good right now, and I’m not ready to leave just yet,” he said at the time.
Davis fired four employees — including his assistant, Rita Ticey, and two of her family members — in February, shortly before the final draft of the internal audit was released.
The investigation showed Ticey, also employed as a student-housing supervisor, bypassed payroll and purchasing controls, employed family members, approved purchases that violated university policy, overpaid some workers and signed reimbursement forms to herself on the chancellor’s behalf.
Because Davis — who authorized Ticey to sign his name on documents — and Ticey had bypassed university rules for approving and documenting spending, auditors were unable to verify whether $497,532 in payroll expenses and $239,348 in purchasing expenses were made properly, the report said.
The investigation, which covered spending between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2010, followed a tip left on the UA fraud hot line.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler said Thursday that an investigation into the matter was ongoing.
After the firings, UAPB students responded with skeptical yells and laughter as Davis answered questions about the investigation in a campus forum. At that event, he justified the spending by saying the Harrold Complex — once plagued with mice and mildew — urgently needed repairs, and he offered to show students receipts detailing how funds were used.
“We don’t feel like he told 100 percent truth about what happened,” sophomore Daniel Williams said Thursday on campus, which was largely empty because of spring break. “He was beating around the bush. He was avoiding questions.”
Sophomore Edward Hayes said he was troubled by the audit’s findings.
Davis “should have known better,” Hayes said. “He has no respect from me anymore.”
But Davis still had support among some faculty members, who said they appreciated his approach to leadership.
George Herts, UAPB’s interim dean for graduate studies and continuing education, called Davis’ resignation “heartbreaking.”
“He has worked so hard to keep the institution together, make the place look good, keep strong academic programs and he has been very, very positive,” Herts said.
UAPB has a history of financial difficulties.
Shortly before Davis — formerly a professor and dean — became chancellor, the UA System had taken out a private bank loan to make payroll while campus leaders worked to fix a $3 million deficit.
Then-Chancellor Charles Walker had resigned, and then-system President B. Alan Sugg had transferred him to a job off campus while the UA System finished an audit.
Davis was a local favorite selected to lead the campus after a national search.
“I felt like if I had not hired him, I would have been looking for a job,” Sugg told the Democrat-Gazette in November.
Davis took over at UAPB as the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics handed the Golden Lions football program one-year suspension for rule violations. He extended that hiatus for an additional year while he worked to correct the university’s financial situation.
Davis helped expand campus facilities, boost funding for the university and win approval for the campus’s first doctoral degree, an aquaculture and fisheries program.
Simmons Bank Chairman Tommy May, a former UA trustee, called Davis “an outstanding man and an outstanding leader.”
“I know that UAPB has come a long, long way under his leadership, both academically as well as financially,” he said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 03/23/2012