Jennifer Methvin

New chancellor has love for community colleges

Jennifer Methvin, the new chancellor at Arkansas State University-Beebe, stands in the middle of campus at the start of her second week at the White County community college July 9. She spent the previous four years as president of Crowder College in Neosho, Mo.  Methvin, a native of Holly Grove, started her teaching career at ASU-Beebe in 1991.
Jennifer Methvin, the new chancellor at Arkansas State University-Beebe, stands in the middle of campus at the start of her second week at the White County community college July 9. She spent the previous four years as president of Crowder College in Neosho, Mo. Methvin, a native of Holly Grove, started her teaching career at ASU-Beebe in 1991.

Jennifer Methvin has a passion for working in the community-college arena of higher education.

Methvin is the new chancellor for Arkansas State University-Beebe. She started her position July 1 after a four-year run as president of Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri.

“I don’ think there is any other level of education, and I realize I’m probably biased about this, that changes lives in a positive way any more than a community college does. We change the trajectory of an entire family for generations.”

Methvin is replacing Roger Moore, who served as interim chancellor following the resignation of Karla Fisher, who had replaced longtime chancellor Eugene McKay in 2016.

Methvin, 52, has worked in a community-college setting her entire professional career.

She grew up in Holly Grove and graduated from Marvell Academy in Marvell in 1984. She earned a bachelor’s degree in creative writing and English from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville in 1988. Methvin earned a master’s degree in creative writing and English from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater in 1991. From there, she started her foray into the community-college scene at ASU-Beebe.

“While I taught at OSU as a graduate student, my first experience in the community-college classroom was here,” Methvin said. “I was here about a year and a half, teaching adjunct for ASU-Beebe, UCA (the University of Central Arkansas), UALR (the University of Arkansas at Little Rock), whoever had sections for me to teach.”

While working as an adjunct instructor, Methvin taught pre-college English.

“I just love that student who was eager to learn and not quite ready for the college-level writing but eager to get there,” she said. “That’s a pretty fun way to make a living.”

Methvin also taught English Composition 1 and 2.

She left ASU-Beebe and took a job as the first full-time faculty member at ASU-Beebe’s Newport campus.

“After the legislation that created the community-college system in the state, we had a lot of vocational schools looking to make the transition,” Methvin said. “That is when Newport joined ASU-Beebe as a branch campus.”

ASU-Newport, as it’s now known, started as White River Vocational Technical School in 1976 and joined ASU-Beebe in 1992.

“I had the privilege of being the first general-education faculty to be sent to Newport,” Methvin said, referring to her position as an assistant professor of English, which she started in January 1993.

“I don’t know if anyone could start a career in community-college work in any other way,” Methvin said. “We got to do everything from the ground up. I got the privilege of directing the [school’s] first play and starting a literary magazine. I was also involved in the hiring of additional faculty. I was the first of many general-education faculty who were hired over the first two or three years.”

After an eight-year stint at Newport, Methvin left the ASU system and taught English and became coordinator of Off-Campus Credit Courses at the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville.

“Our sons were getting close to school age then, and we needed to narrow the gap to where my husband worked and where I was working so that pickup and drop-off at day care were a little more efficient,” Methvin said. “Here was my first-ever administration job, and I was the person who started the dual-credit program with high schools while at UACCB. I got to work closely with high school counselors and high school students while I also continued to teach English. Then I stepped into the division chair when it came open.”

In July 2005, Methvin made her way to south Arkansas, serving as vice chancellor for academics at the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope until May 2014.

“It was really a wonderful experience,” she said. “I got to be involved in the expansion to the Texarkana campus. It was just a lot of good progressive work in the state of Arkansas in the late ’80s and early 2000s.”

While at Hope, Methvin earned a doctorate in community-college leadership from Walden University in Minneapolis.

Methvin wanted to have the opportunity to be in the top spot at a community college at some point in her career.

“At that time, there weren’t going to be very many Arkansas opportunities that I would want to take advantage of in the next few years,” she said. “We looked at Crowder, and it was a great fit. It’s a great institution, very much like this institution here (ASU-Beebe). It’s a residential two-year college. It’s a larger service area, nine counties.”

Methvin said Crowder, along with all community colleges in Missouri, is an independent school with its own elected board of trustees, instead of being part of a university system.

“For that reason, the two-year colleges in Missouri work well together,” she said. “It’s very collaborative.”

However, coming back to Arkansas and Beebe was a great opportunity, she said.

“It wasn’t very hard to think about that being a good opportunity for me and my family,” she said. “We’re Arkansans. Being in central Arkansas certainly puts us nearer to my family. We weren’t terribly far from my husband’s family in Neosho, but we’re not any farther away from them. That’s a helpful thing to spend the long-term end of my career at a place where I can be close to home.

“It’s the quality and the heritage of this place and the people. There are still people who were here when I was here back in the early ’90s.”

Chuck Welch, president of the Arkansas State University System, said the search committee that picked Methvin was impressed with her on several levels.

“The committee, first and foremost, loved her experience,” he said. They felt like it fit perfectly and that she would be able to move right into this job.

“Secondly, they loved her focus on students. She talked a lot about student success and modeling your programs in a manner that maximizes students’ success. They also liked the fact that she knew the state, since she’s from Arkansas.”

Welch and Methvin previously worked together in Hope, where he was chancellor.

“I was able to speak to her work ethic, to skill sets, to the kind of person she is,” Welch said. “Obviously, that helped, too. We knew she had a great track record. There was overwhelming support for her. It was a nice process and a nice end result.”

Methvin said ASU-Beebe is the premier community college in Arkansas.

“When you are thinking about who is setting the standard in Arkansas for comprehensive community colleges, the history of this place, the success of this place — it’s ASU-Beebe. It’s an incredible place.

“The growth of this campus, the 90-year history of this institution — when you think of Arkansas community colleges, this one is it. This was the premier one, I said during the interview process.”

Methvin said there are lots of opportunities at ASU-Beebe.

“Rural community colleges are where I’m most comfortable,” she said. “I think I’m most effective in providing education opportunities, and we’re in the middle of a great initiative in our nation of not just focusing on who we can give access to higher education but focusing on how we can facilitate those students’ success.”

Methvin said the things that ASU-Beebe offers nontraditional, noncredit students are great.

“The vast array of what we do — career and technical education, noncredit workforce education that most people don’t know about — is awesome,” she said. “We’ll take a parent and help them understand that their son choosing our John Deere program, for instance, is a great stop for a really great career. For that young man, it’s possibly a better career than choosing a transfer career with a degree. They are not lesser careers for students with lesser skills. There’s a lot of math, technology and science involved. This is not our grandfather’s blue-collar work.”

Methvin said there wasn’t anything about ASU-Beebe that didn’t attract her to the position.

“This is an ideal place to continue the community-college mission,” she said.

Methvin said coming back to ASU-Beebe is a homecoming.

“Walking into this office suite (the chancellor’s office in State Hall), is a little bit of a shock,” she said. “This is a historical building, and I’m proud that I get to have an office in it. I wrongly made the assumption that they had the beautiful new student center, and I thought my office would be there. No, it’s right here in State Hall in the middle of campus.”

Methvin was certified to teach high school, but college is where she wanted to be.

“I think people have an inclination to be more successful in education at a certain age level,” she said. “I have a cousin who is a superintendent in the state. He’s argued forever that middle school is really a particular type of passion and talent. I think the same is for community colleges. It’s a particular style and passion. You have such a diverse group of students to work with. You have traditional 18-year-olds who just came out of school and are shocked that they don’t have to sit in class from 8 to 3. You have parents who are trying to put food on the table and are still trying to earn a credential. It’s a lot of diversity.”

Methvin said she knew she was cut out to be a college teacher.

“I intended to go to graduate school to teach English at the college level,” she said. “I knew enough from my student teaching that I would be OK in a high school classroom, but I would be a disaster in a middle school or elementary school classroom. But I thought I could work better with that diversity and that group of adults. It was my calling.”

Working in a university system versus working for an independent college has its advantages, Methvin said.

“Having the system office, it helps us keep an eye on the Legislature,” she said. “I had no assistance with that whatsoever. It was me. Being able to share resources, like insurance and legal teams, it’s a great saving for the taxpayers. But it’s also a great way to have colleagues. One of my things, and people here will be tired of hearing me say this, is my fundamental belief is that no one is as smart as all of us. That’s what the system creates. I have fellow chancellors that I can say, ‘Hey, how are you all dealing with this?’”

Methvin said she plans on ASU-Beebe being the last stop in her education career.

“That is the intention,” she said, “but I’ve got a ways to go and a grandbaby on the way in central Arkansas. That’s the cherry on top.”

Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.

Upcoming Events