Graduation week is nearing as I sit on the porch of the Inn at Carnall Hall, a hotel on the campus of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. An angry spring thunderstorm is making its way through northwest Arkansas.

I pass the time on this Tuesday afternoon visiting with a man who made his way through similar storms on his way out of Shreveport. His daughter is a 2026 UA graduate, and the family is having a special dinner for her at Ella's Table, the restaurant inside the hotel (a former women's dormitory).

A few hours later, I'm eating dinner at Ella's as the man's party gathers across the room. One of the young lady's professors, Curt Rom, joins the group. Rom is a longtime professor in the school's Department of Horticulture, and it's evident that he's beloved among students at the table.

As a student, Rom majored in horticulture at UA and hoped to earn a degree in business as well. About three-fourths of the way through his degree program, he fell in love with the genetics and physiology of fruit crops. After earning a master's degree and doctorate from Ohio State, Rom was hired at Washington State to do research on apples and cherries.

"I came back to Arkansas and was hired as a faculty member in fruit crops, primarily apples and peaches, doing breeding physiology and crop management," he says. "The tree fruit research program was canceled in the late 1990s so I shifted my emphasis to sustainable and organic farming, as this was an emerging area."

Though Rom is an internationally known agricultural researcher, his interaction with the students at Ella's makes it evident that he's the embodiment of Chancellor Charles Robinson's student-first approach.

As I listen to Rom and the students exchange

stories, I think to myself how much I enjoy being on college campuses. I grew up in a town with two four-year institutions of higher education and later spent five years of my career as head of the association that represents Arkansas' private colleges and universities. My oldest son decided to follow an academic path, having recently been hired as a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

"I was interviewed for a magazine in 1975 and at that point said my two chosen career paths were to be a U.S. senator or a university professor," Rom once told an interviewer. "I chose the latter one for a number of reasons. When I was a young person, I started working at summer camp at age 12 and continued until I was 24. Teaching young people has always been deeply important to me."

Early the next morning, I find myself in Chancellor Robinson's office. Like Rom, Robinson was drawn to teaching at an early age. He joined the UA faculty as an assistant professor of history in 1999 and was promoted to full professor in 2011. He later moved into administration as vice chancellor for student affairs and later as provost.

In November 2022, Robinson was hired as the school's first Black chancellor. He had served as interim chancellor since August 2021. For more than a year, members of a divided UA Board of Trustees debated who the next chancellor should be. Finally, Monticello attorney Cliff Gibson, the board chair at the time, brought the issue to a........

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