Universities are a hotbed for unsung heroes. Jim Lynch, retiring this month after 30 years, is one of the many inside jewels at UALR whose work is invaluable, but lots of people on and off campus don’t understand what the heck he does or why he does it.

Those of us who rely on Jim as Director of Institutional Research for collecting, retrieving , reporting, and interpreting interesting and mundane data in all sorts of combinations and decimal points know the institutional treasure we’re losing.

We also know that Jim is now free to climb out of bed as late as he chooses and chase a life passion – recording Arkansas’s  early black civil rights activists while they’re  still around to share their stories.

We wish our friend well. Vice Chancellor Bill Walker claims he’ll miss hearing Jim’s robust radio voice that carries from one end of the second floor of Administration South to the other.

Says Bill, “Joni (Lee) and I have worked with Jim for over 20 years and have enjoyed every minute of it.  He has one of the keenest minds I have ever seen, and the university is losing a great resource in Jim.”

Good luck, Lyncho. We’ll miss you!