Southern Arkansas University

About the Book

Southern Arkansas University (SAU) is a comprehensive regional public university located in Magnolia, Arkansas. This work tells the story of SAU, beginning with its origin as a residential agricultural high school, the Third District Agricultural School (TDAS), established in 1909. The Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union lobbied across the country for such schools, a progressive educational reform endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt. After Governor George W. Donaghey and the Arkansas legislature acted to create four schools, small farmers and others raised matching funds to locate one institution in Columbia County. TDAS began its first semester on January 3, 1911, with five instructors and seventy-five students. This work fully covers the school’s transition to a junior college, Magnolia A&M, in 1925 and to a four-year institution, Southern State College, in 1951. Its years as Southern Arkansas University since 1976 are dealt with more briefly. This work chronicles the activities of students and faculty as well as presidents. It also places SAU’s history in the context of Arkansas’s evolving higher education system during the 20th century. For a century, these four schools have given thousands of men and women, who otherwise would not have had the opportunity, the means to a higher education and achievement. Among the more famous alumni are Hollywood director and producer Harry Thomason, Tyson Foods CEO Leland Tollett, and NCAA football coach Tommy Tuberville.

About the Author

James F. Willis, University Historian at Southern Arkansas University, is an alumnus of the school, class of 1967. Awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, he attended Duke University where he earned a Ph. D. in 1976. He taught one year at Little Rock University before returning to his alma mater in 1969. He took early retirement in 2005 to research and write SAU’s centennial history. He is also the author of Prologue to Nuremberg: The Politics and Diplomacy of Punishing War Criminals of the First World War (1982, greenwood Press)