His Monday he said was an exciting one of continuing to get acquainted with the people and practices involved in running the two-campus institution. “I’m going through the process, getting familiar with the institution, just the normal things you do on the first day. I had good communication with the Board of Visitors and the foundation board this morning. So it has been a really nice morning,” Tompkins said.
He has personalized his office to the extent of bringing in photos and situating the furniture, favoring a big wooden desk in the middle of the room with a small circular table and cozy chairs around it. “The biggest things always are going to be pictures of the family. I've got a couple of those hanging around here.. They’re the reason I do what I do, and so just having that reminder around is something that I've just always done.”
In keeping with his priority on the student experience, Tompkins said some of his early efforts have involved making sure the campus is ready to host them after a week of Winter Storm Fern-related closure. He said he and the Interim Chancellor and Current Vice Chair of Academics Laura Clark saw to the matter of student safety as the sleet and snow thaws. “The faculty and the staff did a wonderful job in that,” he said. “And so we just came in and said, ‘Okay, our students are ready. Let's roll.’”
Thankfully only a few repairs proved necessary, he added. “We were blessed not to be dealing with some of the things that have happened, between chicken houses and awnings and the collapses and those types of things, we've been really blessed.”
Tompkins was highly complimentary of the way UAHT and people living in the region have made his transition from North Arkansas College in Harrison, where he was Vice President for Technical Education and Workforce Development at North Arkansas College.
He said that his focus at UAHT in in the coming months will be on development, a byword in academia that refers to organized training for employees, but which Tompkins defined in this case a bit more broadly. “We're going to be focused on development, and that is developing our students. We’re going to develop ourselves, and we're going to develop our community, and we're going to exceed expectations, doing all three of those,” he said.