A Georgia educator will be the next president of the Arkansas State University System.
The system’s board of trustees on Wednesday unanimously approved the hiring of Brendan Kelly, president of the University of West Georgia since 2020, to become the third president of the ASU System.
Trustee Price Gardner, who chaired the board’s search for a new president, said the university system would prepare a a five-year contract for Kelly, whose annual salary will be $450,000. Kelly will live in the system’s Little Rock home.
By comparison, Donald Bobbitt, the University of Arkansas System‘s president, signed a contract last summer that kept his salary at $510,000 annually and that would use private funds to contribute $150,000 to a deferred compensation plan.
Kelly will start in the position no later than Oct. 1, but a specific date hasn’t been decided yet. Until then, Robin Myers will continue as interim president.
Kelly will succeed Chuck Welch who left the system in January to head the American Association of State Colleges & Universities in Washington, D.C.
“We are excited to welcome Brendan Kelly as our new System president,” Gardner said in a news release. “We believe Dr. Kelly’s experience and outstanding record of achievement throughout his career will continue the growth and development of our System and lead us in addressing the ever-changing challenges facing higher education and our focus on student success.”
Kelly also has served as chancellor at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg and Greenville from 2017-20 and was appointed as interim president of the University of South Carolina in 2019. He was vice president of university advancement and president of the UWF Foundation, Inc., at the University of West Florida in Pensacola from 2013-17. He taught for 13 years in Florida and Michigan.
In the release, Kelly said he is “humbled by the opportunity to lead the ASU System because it represents one of a handful of roles in the United States in which one has the ability to influence and shape higher education throughout an entire state.”
The ASU System serves almost 35,000 students annually on campuses in Arkansas and Queretaro, Mexico, and online.
You can read the full news release here.