Mary Ann Rollans of Russellville puts her energy into people and projects, just to name two of her passions.
Her hometown has been the primary recipient of her efforts, including the River Valley Arts Center, which she helped start 40 years ago.
Rollans, 71, will be honored March 1 as Patron of the Arts at the 11th annual Beaux Arts Academy Awards ceremony, sponsored by the arts center.
“As a resident of Russellville, if you love your community, you’re going to find ways you’re going to enhance your community,” Rollans said. “I’m the type of person, if I see a need, I’m going to find a way to address that need. I take the initiative to say, ‘Yes, I think this is what we should do.’
“I’ve been involved in economic development and community service most of my life, and educational excellence.”
Judy Murphy, who attended Russellville High School with Rollans, called her friend “a go-getter and a doer.” Murphy was the 2016 Patron of the Arts Beaux Arts Academy winner.
“I don’t think I’ve met anyone who enjoys life as much as she does,” Murphy said of Rollans. “She has pushed me to do things that I probably would never do or support. She thoroughly enjoys life, whether it’s family or travel or whatever. The other thing that pops in my mind is her support … of church, community.”
Murphy said Rollans not only helped start the River Valley Arts Center, but she also was a founder of the River Valley Hospice Home, “and the list just goes on and on.”
Rollans retired in 2015 after a 45-year career in education, which started in an English classroom at Russellville High School and ended at Arkansas Tech University as professor of education and dean of the College of Professional Studies.
At Tech, Rollans was responsible for developing seven new degree programs, including the first accredited emergency-management bachelor’s degree in the United States.
In Russellville, she has served with countless civic and nonprofit organizations and played a leadership role in many of them. She was president of the Rotary Club, the Russellville Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and the Arkansas Tech Alumni Board.
Rollans was also appointed by then-Arkansas Attorney General Bill Clinton to serve on a task force to study the penal system in Arkansas.
“They put us on a bus, and we went to every prison in Arkansas. That was quite eye-opening,” she said. “The facilities were very nice.”
In 1978, when Rollans heard that industry leaders who visited Russellville kept giving the city low marks for not having an arts center or a symphony, she decided to help change that.
She led a feasibility study to see if Russellville should pursue founding an arts center.
“It was all very positive,” she said of community feedback.
Rollans said she researched funding avenues and met with corporations and educators, and the group recruited “visible people with influence” in Pope, Johnson and Yell counties to “promote and get on the bandwagon with time and money.”
Rollans said she always has three main concerns in every endeavor: “Are we enhancing our quality of life, providing educational excellence for our students and improving the economic status of the community?
“That was the first thing we said. … We can address the three areas with an arts center. Now we’ve got the performing arts center at the high school, and the Symphony Guild brings the Arkansas Symphony in. We had nothing at the time,” she said.
She credited the late Mack VanHorn, a Russellville businessman, with helping get the arts center off the ground financially.
“He was called Mr. Russellville,” Rollans said. She also said the late Marge Crabaugh was “a force in Russellville” and helped lead the charge.
After years behind the scenes, the first River Valley Arts Center opened in a borrowed building on West Main Street. A few years later, the former public-pool bath house in City Park was renovated for use as the arts center, and it’s still there, full of intricate and colorful exhibits, a classroom and more.
Artist-in-residence Winston Taylor designed and created special pieces of blackware pottery, featuring a Spirit Bear emblem, for all the Beaux Arts winners.
Rollans said that makes the honor even more meaningful.
“That’s a treasure to have that, anything by Winston,” she said.
Other Beaux Arts Academy inductees are David and Betty Snellings, Lifetime Achievement Award; Ashley Miller Davis, Performing Arts; and Doyle Young, Visual Arts.
Although Rollans has been a longtime supporter of the arts center and the Russellville Symphony Guild, do not confuse her with being artsy.
“I’m not an arts person; all I can do is write,” she said, laughing. That skill has served her well.
An English-education major at Arkansas Tech, she earned a master’s degree in English and speech at the University of Central Arkansas and a doctorate in higher education administration from the University of Arkansas.
“My whole life, I wanted to be a teacher,” she said. Her father was career military, and her mother was a math teacher.
Rollans’ first job was teaching English at Russellville High School, where one of her daughters later taught English in the same room. After a stint at Capitol City Business College, which later closed, Rollans earned her master’s degree and was hired at Arkansas Tech in academic affairs as special projects director, which included grant writing. She helped secure more than $6 million in funding from outside sources.
She added affirmative-action officer to her role, was a professor of education and started working toward her doctorate.
“Then I was promoted to dean of the College of Professional Studies in ’97. I started seven new degree programs, one in emergency management and a master’s degree in homeland security,” Rollans said.
Tech’s emergency-management degree program was the first one accredited in the country. She had a good ally in that endeavor, James Lee Witt, a Dardanelle native and then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“James Lee Witt and I were good friends and grew up together,” she said. “I got a $50,000 grant from the president (Bill Clinton). I got a call, ‘This is James Lee. I’m on Air Force One, we’re flying over. I just got approval from the president to give you that $50,000 you wanted.’ I was just jumping up and down.”
Rollans said the money funded a weeklong symposium on emergency management, and the Arkansas Educational Television Network joined Tech to broadcast the symposium all over the world.
“That’s when we started getting countries all over the world calling us and sending students,” she said.
Robert C. Brown of Russellville, who was Arkansas Tech’s president from 1993-2014, said Rollans’ list of accomplishments and contributions is impressively long, but the emergency-management program is at the top.
“Years ago, before 9/11, we decided that we were going to put together a program in emergency management. I knew the person to get that done would be Mary Ann,” he said. “When we wanted to initiate a program or do anything that was innovative, she was always the go-to person. She made it the first accredited emergency-management program in the United States, … and really, at one time, it was the largest in the country. The university has benefited tremendously from that. It’s still a vital program. ”
Its success was because of Rollans’ leadership, he said.
Rollans went to Washington with Witt and spent 1 1/2 weeks going through mitigation-response training and the skill set needed for emergency management. Rollans developed the curriculum and emergency-management program with Kay Goss of Fayetteville, then associate director of FEMA.
“She and I became dear friends, and she taught in our program as an adjunct,” Rollans said. “She is an expert in the field.”
Tech’s students became proficient in the field, too.
“Everything I wanted them to do was hands-on,” Rollans said. “When Katrina hit, I took my students out, and we set up a triage.” When refugees were brought to Russellville on buses, amid the work of the American Red Cross and medical personnel, “we let our students get hands-on experience in dealing with the aftermath of an emergency. They left with excellent experience.
“It was really beyond my imagination what we did with that program,” she said.
Brown recalled that he challenged Rollans to put the emergency-management program online and set a goal of 1,000 students to be enrolled.
“In a few short years, she had accomplished that,” he said. “The point of this is, she is a person of enormous talent and enormous energy.”
Rollans traveled to China four times, including twice at the Chinese government’s invitation, to set up emergency services.
Today, Rollans mainly travels with her grandchildren.
“I told my grandkids when I retired that I’d take them on a one-on-one trip when they graduated from high school,” she said.
So far, she’s taken a granddaughter to see the Macy’s Day Parade in New York City, where they had front-row seats, and a grandson skydiving over the Grand Canyon.
“I didn’t skydive; he skydived. We did take a helicopter ride; we did the rim,” she said.
Two more grandchildren will graduate next year, and she has an elk-hunting excursion and a trip to Tuscany Valley planned.
“That’s how I”m spending my retirement money. I said, ‘We’re going to spend my money while I’m still alive. … I’m not going to die and let them travel and have fun without me,’” Rollans said.
“I’m enjoying my total freedom, but I miss Tech,” she said.
Her three primary activities now are the arts center, River Valley Hospice Home and the Russellville Rotary Club.
“My next goal — I always have to have a project — I want to write a grant where we have some umbrella organization, an arts consortium, for all this funding,” she said.
Brown will introduce Rollans at the Beaux Arts Academy event in March. He said any one of her endeavors could be an entire career for someone else, yet she has continued to help the community.
“She devotes that great creativity and energy to all sorts of places, and I’m very pleased that she’s done that for the arts center,” Brown said.
Rollans said she was “kind of surprised” when she was notified that she had won the Patron of the Arts award.
“In fact,” she said, “I asked them, ‘Can you give me the criteria? What have I done that I qualify for this award?’”
She was told the recipient is “someone who promotes the arts, and I’ve been a promoter,” she said. “I love to get on a soapbox and tell people about something when it’s wonderful.
“I don’t do things for recognition, but you look back and think, it’s nice that someone appreciates 40 years of effort. It’s 40 years that I’ve been involved with the arts center,” Rollans said.
“You start looking back on your life and say, ‘What are you involved in that you’re proud of?’ People will remember that you were there — maybe not everything you did, but that you made an effort to improve the community,” she said. “People will recognize that I gave a lot of my years to improve the quality of life in Russellville because this town means a lot to me.
“I’m close to Tech; I’m close to the high school. I’m close to this whole town.”
Rollans said her work to help establish the arts center was out of love for the community.
“We needed this,” she said. “It’s something I did out of love and passion.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.