Matthew Moore: Earlier this year, the University of Arkansas introduced a new provost and executive vice chancellor of academic affairs, Indrajeet Chaubey. And while he may be new to the role, Chaubey is not new to Fayetteville.
He grew up in India, where I was the first in my family to graduate college and also the first in my family to step on a plane and fly out of India.
Indrajeet Chaubey: And when I did that, I came here to the University of Arkansas to pursue my master's degree.
Moore: Wow.
Chaubey: So this is the home for me outside India.
Moore: What was it about the University of Arkansas then that really drew you to wanting to come and study here for, you know, a postgraduate degree?
Chaubey: This was around 1990, 1991, when I started applying for graduate school. Now, remember, that was pre-internet time. I had to literally write a letter to different universities, request them to send me information about them, go through that information, which arrived several months later, and then decide which one was a good fit. As it turned out, University of Arkansas was the first one to respond to my requests. And when I looked at the programs, when I looked at the information that was in the information packet, I felt like this would be a good fit. So I applied. I applied to the University of Arkansas along with several other universities, and one more time, University of Arkansas was first to respond with the positive admission decision as well as an assistantship offered to me. I knew at that time that this was a place I wanted to be at because of the connection I felt, because the way they responded, and I felt like this was a place that really wanted me to come and become a graduate student.
Moore: This was not only a place where you studied, but it was also the place where you had your very first faculty position. What does it mean to come back now after all of this time, to go from being a graduate student, eventually becoming a faculty member, to now you’re the academic leader here at the University of Arkansas?
Chaubey: That’s right. University of Arkansas not only launched my graduate career, but it also launched my faculty career. My first tenure-track faculty position was right here in biological and agricultural engineering, and I really flourished as a faculty member because of the collaborations I had within the department, across the college, and across multiple colleges. I had colleagues who were eager to work with me, who were eager to collaborate with me. I had mentors who were deeply interested in my success, and that provided a solid foundation to build my teaching and research career. It also goes back to my graduate education experiences, where I really thrived as a graduate student, and those things I have used as a foundation to build my successful faculty and now administrative career.
So the opportunity to come back and serve as the provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, it’s a privilege. It’s a great honor for me. Over time, I have worked at multiple land-grant universities. And what distinguishes land-grant universities is the very mission of providing educational opportunities to the daughters and sons of the soil, creating innovation, generating new knowledge through research, and then translating that to directly benefit the communities that we serve. That’s the mission of a land-grant university.
University of Arkansas being the flagship land-grant university in the state, the opportunity to come here and make an impact at scale, where we are facilitating the success of every student who comes through our door, where we are creating an environment for faculty to have nationally and internationally recognized programs in their research, in their creative endeavors, and take that to serve every corner of the state is a tremendous opportunity, and I’m really excited to have that.
Moore: Two major elements of your work when you were at the University of Connecticut included enrollment growth and external research funding. How did you see that manifest in your work there, and how do you hope to continue that trajectory here?
Chaubey: I am very proud of what we were able to collectively accomplish during my deanship at the University of Connecticut. We were able to increase our undergraduate enrollment by 20% over a six-year period I was dean there, our graduate enrollment by 45% during the same time, and our research funding doubled.
What I see here at the University of Arkansas is tremendous positive momentum we have going. This year, we welcomed a record number of students on our campus, 34,175 students. And this record number was on top of another record number that happened last year. When I look at our research success last year, our research expenditures were $230 million. These are significant upward positive momentum, and I’m super excited with this. I am excited to be a part, in my current role, to further accelerate that momentum that is happening in terms of life-transformative education for every student who is coming to us, in terms of working with University of Arkansas leaders to help support faculty success in looking at complex societal issues and bringing research solutions, and then translating those solutions to actually make an impact in Arkansas and beyond.
Moore: When we think about enrollment growth, and as you’ve said, and as we’ve noted here on Ozarks at Large more than a few times, year after year, we seem to be hitting even more students and growing even more every year. And as you think about your academic experience dealing with watershed, dealing with infrastructure, dealing with places, and making sure that there’s enough sustainability in a place to sustain the people who are there, how do you think about that in tandem with your encouragement and your movement to helping to make sure that the University of Arkansas continues to grow in such a way?
Chaubey: Student success is really big on my mind, and student success is really big on the minds of our chancellor as well as all academic leaders. Students first has always been a priority to me, and that’s what drives me day in and day out. We want to make sure that every student who is coming to us, they are getting equal opportunities to succeed. They are getting life-transformative education that will put them on the path to economic and upward social mobility, but also they are getting their degrees in a timely manner as well as they are not leaving with a huge educational debt.
So all those parameters are on my mind and on the minds of University of Arkansas leaders all the time. That’s what we are working with. When I look at the growth in enrollment, it gives me a lot of confidence that we have the confidence of these students and their families who are trusting us with their education, as opposed to many other two- and four-year schools around the country who are struggling to maintain enrollment and who are really worried what is going to happen with the high school graduation cliff. We are in a very strong position. Our goal is how we can continue to drive excellence in the education that we provide to every student.
Moore: Yeah. And as you kind of alluded to there, we’ve heard for quite some time that this enrollment cliff is coming. How do you think about it here at the University of Arkansas? You talked about being prepared for it. What do you think that will look like here? Do you think it’s inevitable, first of all?
Chaubey: First of all, enrollment cliff, I am convinced that it’s absolutely inevitable because all the data that you look at, and you look at the number of students who are in the junior high school and high school, there is going to be a significant decline in the number of high school graduates starting this year, perhaps until 2040 or 2041. Based on which report you see, a decline anywhere from 5% to 15% is predicted for Arkansas. So that is going to impact how many students we have to recruit.
We are putting a lot of focus on recruiting students from every county within the state, as well as looking at out-of-state students. But providing educational opportunities to students from Arkansas has been a highest priority and will continue to be our highest priority. We will continue to recruit students from every part of the state, getting in front of them and presenting them the value of University of Arkansas education and how committed we are to their success once they’re here — what all the opportunities we provide, not only within the classroom but outside, in terms of getting engaged in research, in terms of study abroad opportunities, in terms of being engaged in extracurricular activities, and how that supports their success and their overall growth as a student here.
That will continue to differentiate us from other programs, which I am hopeful will enable us to continue to attract a good number of highly qualified students who will come to us for their education.
Moore: When you think back to that young Indrajeet who landed on a plane at Drake Field — first time stepping foot into the U.S. many years ago — here you sit now. What would you tell him?
Chaubey: Coming to the University of Arkansas was one of the best decisions that he made, that I made. It was not an easy decision, being the first one to go away 8,000 miles from home to a place that was completely unknown, to a culture that was very unfamiliar, and come here and be supported and thrive the way I have thrived, to have truly the life-transformative education that has served as a foundation upon which I have built my personal and professional life and career. That was, hands down, one of the best decisions I made.
Having the opportunity now to come back home, third time in this role as the provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, to take that responsibility seriously is what I will tell him. Give the students the opportunity that I had as a graduate student, for them to thrive and be successful the way I have been, and not lose track of that responsibility will be the biggest message I will give to old Indrajeet.
Moore: Indrajeet Chaubey is the provost and executive vice chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Arkansas. He joined me yesterday in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio Two.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
