Last week, the UCA Foundation affirmed the board of trustees previous action increasing President Lu Hardin’s salary from $190,000 to $210,000 recognizing a highly successful first year at the helm.
Earlier this month, the board of trustees voted unanimously to raise Hardin’s salary from $190,000 to $210,000 including the Foundation supplementing the salary with private funds to bring it line with administrators at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
In addition, the board extended Hardin’s contract to five years. He was hired in September of 2002 and granted a three-year contract. Former UCA Board Chairman Rush Harding III of Little Rock said the salary will show that Hardin is “a leader … of a flagship institution.”
Hardin has raised $1 million in private funding over a 60-day period. According to Harding, the president visited with about 15 individuals and “batted a thousand.?
?That’s what happens when you hire a people person.” Harding said.
Hardin was director of the state Department of Higher Education in Little Rock for six years prior to coming to UCA.
He made the removal of UCA ‘s 2000 censure by the American Association of University Professors his top priority and saw that come to fruition in June by a unanimous vote at the AAUP meeting in Washington D.C. At that meeting, Hardin received a standing ovation from the delegates and returned earlier this month to keynote the group’s meeting in Indianapolis.
His efforts regarding removal of the censure took the national spotlight in a big way when the university was profiled in the July 11 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle has an international readership of 500,000 and is seen in the offices of faculty and university administrations in colleges and universities around the world.
Hardin directed a highly successful marketing campaign over the past year that brought in the largest freshman class in the school’s history and the second largest in the history of the state.
-Jim Brosam
