Chancellor Appoints Panel to Review Crisis Planning

UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson today appointed a six-member task force to bring fresh eyes to campus safety issues. Anderson announced the appointments at the UALR Board of Visitors meeting. Jane Dickey, vice chair of the Board of Visitors who is a Little Rock attorney at the Rose Law Firm, will chair the Chancellor’s Special Committee on Campus Safety. Other committee members, chosen for their expertise in safety, law enforcement and crisis communication, will include Little Rock Police Chief Stuart Thomas; William C. Temple, FBI Special Agent in Charge for the State of Arkansas; Baptist Health Community Health Director Sandra J. Brown; Rob Ulmer, UALR professor of speech communication; and Jeff Walker, UALR professor of criminal justice. Over the next two months, the panel will be responsible for reviewing UALR’s crisis response plans and capabilities in light of a Feb. 27 campus shooting incident and will offer recommendations for future campus safety initiatives. The committee will also review the University’s general policies and practices for campus security. “Federal safety reports show that UALR has earned a good grade in safety for many years, but we are going for an A-plus,” Anderson said. “This panel will bring fresh eyes, objectivity, expertise, and much relevant experience to a matter that is of paramount importance to UALR and to me – the safety of our campus community.” Dickey, an active community leader, was the first chair and is a commissioner of Central Arkansas Water and has served as president and is a member of both Fifty For the Future and the National Association of Bond Lawyers. She was co-founder and first president of Volunteers Organization for Central Arkansas Legal Services and has served as president of The Downtown Partnership. Thomas has risen through the ranks at the Little Rock Police Department over the past 30 years. After joining the Patrol Division, he has served in burglary and homicide and narcotics units. In 1995, he was promoted to assistant chief of police and became the department’s 36th chief of police in 2005. Temple brings a variety of investigative and crisis management experience from his 30 years in the FBI. He has served in several FBI Field Offices as well as at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. He has served the State of Arkansas on two different tours of duty since 1995. As the Special Agent in Charge for the State of Arkansas, he is responsible for leading the FBI in responding to any school shooting incidents or other crisis events that may occur in the state which fall under the FBI’s investigative jurisdiction. Brown, who has master’s degrees in public health administration and nursing, is co-chair of the Vision Little Rock Public Safety Work Group and has co-chaired the committee for Today’s Heroes and the Little Rock public safety tax initiative. A member of the Pulaski County Public Safety Task Force, Brown co-chaired the Pulaski County Jail Tax Initiative. She serves on the Alltel Arena Board of Directors and the Mayor’s Commission on Homelessness. Walker is a noted researcher in criminology and law enforcement, computers in criminal justice, legal issues concerning the police, and gang behavior. An international lecturer on terrorism, Walker serves as the co-director of the Center for the Study of Environmental Criminology, which examines the relationship between neighborhoods and crime, and is a past president of the National Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and the Arkansas Criminal Justice Association. Ulmer is an internationally recognized expert in crisis communication. As one of the first researchers to focus on finding positive results from a crisis, Ulmer developed an approach that is now used throughout the business and health industries as a way to communicate crisis-driven information effectively. The author of three books on crisis communication, he has brought national recognition to UALR for being one of the top 10 programs nationally for research in public relations.