Sandra Robertson, director of budget, planning, and institutional research, and Dorothy Truex, UALR’s first female vice chancellor – two women executives from UALR’s present and past – will be inducted into the Arkansas Council for Women in Higher Education (ACWHE) Honor Roll at the organization’s spring meeting from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday, April 29, in the Legends Room at UALR’s Jack Stephens Center.

“Dr. Truex was a trailblazer and a model for women in higher education across the nation,” said Dr. Joel E. Anderson, UALR’s chancellor. “Thanks to her example and her mentoring, many younger women have aspired to leadership and have had great impact on this university and on other organizations across the state.”

Her tenure at UALR coincided with the national push for women’s rights in the 1970s. She pushed for more career and personal options for women and girls, but was no “women’s libber.”

“When everyone screams, nobody hears,’’ she said at the time. Today, Truex said it is still important for women to support themselves in the workplace.

“I don’t really know if women today know how complicated it was,” she said of the struggle for women to break the glass ceiling in higher education. “That was why this organization was so important.”

Founded in 1979 to function as a support group for Arkansas women in higher education, the organization is open to all administrators, faculty, and staff members who are involved with higher education.

Its mission is to promote positive institutional change for women in higher education, promote the examination of higher education policies, regulations and practices in order to improve the status of women on university and college campuses, and accumulate, analyze and disseminate data to indicate the position of women on university and college campuses.

Truex practiced what she preached about mentoring other women in higher education when she noticed a bright young woman working in the UALR Learning Development Center. She thought Dr. Sandra Robertson “needed more important things to do.”

Truex touted Robertson to campus administrators, particularly to then new Provost Joel Anderson who hired her as assistant to the provost.  Since then, Robertson has risen through the administrative ranks at UALR to become the director of budget, planning, and institutional research.

“Sandra Robertson, who was a young protege of Dr. Dorothy Truex, has taken advantage of her powerful position as director of budget, planning, and institutional research to mentor younger women and provide them significant professional development opportunities,” Anderson said.

“She is one of those rare persons who combines caring, good humor, and bluntness in an attractive, even charming way. Her associates both love her and fear her – and learn much from her.”

“Dr. Truex has been a powerful role model, friend, and mentor to me,” Robertson said. “Even in her retirement, Dorothy has been a personal inspiration. How many women take up competitive ballroom dancing in their seventies and win prize after prize while at the same time writing several novels about their experiences? I would not be where I am today without her encouragement, wise counsel, and the sometimes less than gentle push to do more.  She kicked me out of my comfort zone more than once, while always supporting my out-of-the-box ideas.”

A third inductee, Mary Robertson, clinical instructor and assistant dean for Student Services in the UAMS College of Nursing, also will be honored Friday.

Betty Jo Stevens, former women’s athletic director at UALR, will speak at the conference on obstacles faced by women in higher education.

Other speakers include Dr. Susan Aldridge of the National Park Community College in Hot Springs and Dr. Karen Wheeler of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.