Former President Bill Clinton, whose career in public service was sparked by a desire to lift up his native state, told a sold-out crowd packing the Jack Stephens Center Thursday night that the decision by UALR leaders to entice internationally renowned chemist Mary L. Good to be the inaugural dean of the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology will have a profound impact on the state of Arkansas.

“I think 50 years from now, when you look back, you might think that the establishment of the College of Engineering and Information Technology and the luring of this astonishing woman into this job may wind up being the most significant thing this institution has done since its creation,” Clinton said.

Clinton delivered the keynote address Thursday, Nov. 19, at an evening gala celebrating the 10^th anniversary of UALR’s Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT).

“It was a remarkable page in the history of the state of Arkansas,”  Bill Bowen, former dean of the UALR law school and former chief of staff for then-Gov.  Clinton, said of the event.

More than 500 local, state, and national business and scientific leaders  attended the reception and dinner on UALR’s campus, just a block from the new six-story, state-of-the-art EIT building that will open in the spring, to salute  Good, the college’s founding dean.

Honorary event chairs Thomas “Mack” McLarty, a former White House chief of staff, and retired Acxiom chief executive officer Charles Morgan said proceeds from the $250-a-plate gala will establish a new fund for the college, the EIT Dean’s Endowment.

Echoing President Clinton’s “bridge to the 21^st century” theme, the creation of UALR’s Donaghey College is making sure Arkansas is a player in the innovative businesses of the new age. Students at EIT have opportunities to prepare for careers from engineering to computer science to high-tech construction management.

“UALR’s Donaghey College is really an avant-garde version of an engineering school today,” UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson said. “Not only does it bring a great faculty, but it also attracts a level of students that are often a cut above what you routinely see coming to universities. This is a college that has a spirit, a mood, a momentum to it that makes me very optimistic that it is going to continue to be on the cutting edge.”

When the college was founded in 1999, 380 students were enrolled. Today, its 1,000 students represent hometowns in 67 of Arkansas’ 75 counties. For several years, EIT has attracted more graduates from the residential Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts than any other institution.