FAYETTEVILLE -- Matt Waller will lead the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville after serving as interim dean since last year.
Waller, 51, will formally step into the job May 1, UA announced Tuesday. His appointment comes after an internal search this spring.
Last year, Waller was named interim dean after the departure of Eli Jones, who left UA to become business dean at Texas A&M University.
Waller will earn a salary of $400,000, a raise from the $310,000 salary he's been earning as interim dean. He will also hold the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair in Business, with $60,000 of his $400,000 salary coming from private funds that established an endowment for the Walton chair, UA spokesman Steve Voorhies said.
Jones earned a salary of $392,044 at UA before he was hired by Texas A&M at a salary of $425,000.
Waller joined UA in 1994 as a visiting assistant professor. He said enrollment in the college has grown from just over 2,000 students to about 5,800. UA had a total enrollment of 26,754 as of this past fall.
"It looks like in 2016 we're going to have over 6,000 students, just in the Walton College," Waller said.
Waller has helped lead a push at UA to expand executive education. He said the college will also work to retrain workers affected by the downturn in the oil industry, offering education in areas such as data analytics.
Those efforts can help the state by improving the workforce and also bring in revenue for UA, Waller said.
In higher education, "there's less funding coming from states, and tuition is even harder to come by because a lot of students wind up taking on a lot of debt," Waller said. Industry partnerships in research, such as with the new retail-focused McMillon Innovation Studio, can also bring in revenue, he said.
Waller said he knows he will be judged in part by how much money he raises for the college.
"We've had quite a few gifts, but we need to keep getting them, scholarships in particular," Waller said, adding that a $50 million gift in 1998 from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation has helped improve the quality of faculty and students. The college now has a strong reputation nationally in several areas, he said, including for those interested in the consumer packaged goods industry.
He also talked about Walton College becoming more active in the Little Rock area, in part through collaborations with other UA System campuses. Waller said he's also begun discussing ways to do so with Warren Stephens, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Little Rock-based Stephens Inc., a private investment bank.
"He has a lot of ideas about how the Walton College can be more linked to Little Rock. So, right now, we're in the visioning stages of that," Waller said.
A researcher in retail supply chain management, Waller helped found UA's supply chain management department when it was established in 2011.
"I have been very impressed with Matt Waller, as a person and as an administrator," Chancellor Joe Steinmetz said in a statement. "Walton College is a vitally important part of the University of Arkansas mission to our students and to our state. I am confident that we have found the best person for this important position."
Waller earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Missouri. He earned a master's degree and a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University.
Metro on 04/27/2016