UALR Chancellor Joel E. Anderson has announced that Charles Cansler, the university controller at North Carolina State University, has accepted the position of vice chancellor for finance and administration at UALR. He will start July 27.

Cansler will replace Bob Adams, who is retiring July 1.

“Mr. Cansler brings a unique variety of experiences in finance, technology, and process re-engineering that will be very valuable to us,” said Dr. Anderson. “As a former business owner, he brings an entrepreneurial ‘can do’ spirit and high energy level to higher education.”

During his four-year tenure at North Carolina State, Cansler was responsible for $1.4 billion in annual expenditures of the tier one research land grant university. NC State has 34,000 students and over $300 million of annual expenditures in sponsored research. The institution has offices in every county in North Carolina, including 34 research farms as well as international locations.

In addition to his controller responsibilities, he chaired numerous committees, including the Financials Steering Committee, the Administrative Processes Review Committee, and the Outreach and Engagement Strategic Steering Committee – Financial Subcommittee. He was instrumental in assisting NC State to more fully monetize its intellectual assets and intangible property.

Prior to joining NC State, he founded and ran The Cansler Group, a higher education information technology consulting firm specializing in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems and business process re-engineering. The Cansler Group completed projects at more than 30 universities that geographically spanned the United States from Stanford University to Boston College to Florida International University. Regionally, Cansler consulted at Baylor University, Southeastern Louisiana University, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Southern Mississippi.

Cansler received a bachelor’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1988 and earned an MBA from Baylor University in 1999. He joined PeopleSoft in 2000 and began consulting in higher education. He was licensed as a CPA in Georgia where he practiced public accounting. Prior to practicing public accounting, Cansler was an Internal Revenue Service agent.