UA Little Rock Faculty Senate President Retires After More Than 40 Years of Service
After more than four decades of dedicated service, Dr. Joanne Liebman Matson is bidding farewell to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock this summer.
Known for her unwavering commitment to academic excellence and faculty advocacy, Matson has left an indelible mark on the university community.
“This is a bittersweet time for me,” she said. “This has been a good place to work. I’ve liked it in many ways, especially in the earlier years when it was growing. It felt like there was a lot of opportunity.”
While she was finishing her dissertation with the University of Minnesota, Matson first came to UA Little Rock as an adjunct instructor in 1983. By the following year, she was hired as an assistant professor in the Department of English.
“They were hiring so many people in the English Department at the time because they had gotten approval for a new master’s degree in technical and expository writing (TEW),” she said. “There were six people teaching in the TEW program when I first started, and that was before we even had a bachelor’s degree.”
She served as the freshman composition coordinator from 1986 to 1992, and it was a fast-paced position.
“In those days, we had about 100 sections of freshman composition every semester,” she said. “We taught classes from seven in the morning to nine at night. At the time, you couldn’t even find a room for all these comp sections. I would often wander campus looking for empty classrooms. The biggest problem was finding enough teachers.”
Eventually, Matson approached Chancellor Jim Young in the late 1980s, and the department hired 12 full-time instructors to cover the many composition courses. By 1992, Matson had changed roles and was taking a turn at administration by serving as associate vice chancellor of academic affairs in the provost’s office.
“My primary role in that position was faculty development,” she said. “By 1995, the university was required by our regional accrediting body (then called North Central, and now called Higher Learning Commission) to start assessing student learning outcomes. This was a very stable time for the university. I worked in that position for nine years, and I think there was one dean change in that time. When my second son was born in 2000, my oldest son also started first grade. That is when I decided to go back to teaching so I could have a more flexible schedule and be with them after school.”
While Matson had been working in the provost’s office, the Department of English had undergone a major change and split into two departments. Instead of returning to the English Department, Matson joined the faculty of the newly established Department of Rhetoric and Writing.
“What I really like about being at the university is the fact that every 10 years or so I could change and do something different,” Matson said. “I loved everything I did. I’m not a faculty member who totally focuses on a single subject matter. Over the years, I have published and presented on so many different topics. And I’ve become involved in so many different projects on campus, from writing across the curriculum to exploring the county’s wastewater systems.
It was fun to become the freshman comp director and take on a new challenge. I loved going to the provost’s office to learn more about administration. Later, when I returned to teaching, I started teaching the first composition classes online, and I provided training to other teachers.”
Matson joined the William H. Bowen School of Law’s part-time law program in 1989 and graduated with her Juris Doctor in 1995. While Matson never practiced law, she had hoped to become a university attorney, but the University of Arkansas System didn’t have campus attorneys at the time, and with her husband’s job as the co-owner (with his brother) of a construction company, she couldn’t move.
“I kept my law license active until last year,” she said. “I regularly taught a legal writing class, and I worked with many pre-law students.”
Matson has also been highly involved in Faculty Senate and has served multiple terms since the 1980s. She’s been a continuous member since 2012 and served as vice president since 2013, before becoming president in 2022. The same year Matson donated $25,000 to create an endowed student scholarship named in honor of her parents, the late Judith and Jerome Liebman, that benefits rhetoric and writing students.
Once she retires, Matson is looking forward to spending more time with her husband and two sons, Cameron and Jared, as well as getting more involved in her synagogue, Temple B’nai Israel, where she is a board member.
“I am especially interested in studying for a Bat Mitzvah, which I didn’t have when I was 13 because the practice was out of favor in Reform Judaism at the time. Now, a lot of adults are doing it. It means that I will be studying for a year, learning enough Hebrew to lead a service. It’s exactly what I love to do, study and learn.”
