Arkansas A&M College was 59 years old when Dr. John Porter Price first broached the idea of merging the institution with the University of Arkansas.

   Price, a Monticello physician, had been appointed to the Arkansas A&M board of trustees in 1967 by newly-elected Governor Winthrop Rockefeller. It was Rockefeller's dream that Arkansas should have a university system with a governing board that controlled all state institutions of higher education. Rockefeller never achieved his goal, but it did result in a move to merge Arkansas' smaller colleges.

   Price's initial suggestion, made at a board meeting in 1968, was met with shock and snickers. Two board members laughed out loud.

   Not that a merger hadn't been discussed before. A&M and UA officials had explored the feasibility of combining the A&M forestry program with the forestry faculty at Fayetteville, a limited merger with the objective of securing a long-sought accreditation of the forestry program.

   Despite the A&M board's initial reaction, Price persisted. In 1970, Price and another Rockefeller appointee to the A&M board, Lawrence Derby of Warren, pushed for talks with then UA President David W. Mullins to explore the possibility of a full merger.

History - Gov. Dale Bumpers signs Act 9 of the Arkansas General Assembly authorizing the merger of Arkansas A&M with the University of Arkansas.

   With the wheels in motion, it took less than a year to bring both parties together. January 20, 1971, Governor Dale Bumpers signed legislation merging the two institutions, with the merger officially completed July 19, 1971.

   Arkansas A&M College is now the University of Arkansas at Monticello.

   Thirty-five years after the merger, UAM Chancellor Jack Lassiter calls the event "the most significant in the history of the institution."

   "With the merger, UAM achieved university status and gained access to all the resources of the state's largest system of higher education," he said. "It has helped us accomplish things more quickly with the full weight of the UA System behind us, from increased funding and enrollment gains to the addition of graduate education to becoming part of the statewide Division of Agriculture. And most importantly, the merger was instrumental in achieving unconditional accreditation for our academic programs as well as specialized accreditation in a number of areas, including forestry, which was a goal that had not been realized."

   The move to merge Arkansas A&M with the University of Arkansas can be traced to a myriad of problems facing A&M in the 1960s. The college had been censured by the American Association of University Professors for the firing of a controversial faculty member. A state funding formula based solely on enrollment and student credit hours had created a financial crisis. And the school was struggling to retain accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools as well as achieve accreditation for its teacher education and forestry programs.

   Accreditation of the forestry program had been a dream of A&M officials since its inception in 1945. But no matter how hard the College tried, their appeals fell on deaf ears. The Society of American Foresters, the national accrediting agency for forestry education, considered A&M too remote and too small.

   "I don't believe we could have ever expected to receive SAF accreditation without the full weight of the University of Arkansas System behind us," says Lassiter. "The members of the accrediting teams that came here were from large campuses and they judged Arkansas A&M as being too small with too few resources. It was an unfair judgment of the quality of the forestry program and the institution as a whole, but it was a perception that couldn't be eliminated until we became part of the UA System."

   When A&M officials approached Carl Whillock, assistant to the UA President, with the idea of a merger, they expected to be rebuffed. Instead Whillock and Mullins were both agreeable.

   From an UA standpoint, the merger meant increasing its political influence to all corners of the state and garnering more power in the state legislature. For Arkansas A&M, the merger would strengthen its case for accreditation and add the prestige of attaining university status. Merger was also seen as a way out of the school's budget problems.

   The UA and Arkansas A&M boards met in Little Rock September 20, 1970 and agreed to pursue the merger of the two institutions. The merger received the immediate support of Arkansas' forest industry. John "Mutt" Gibson pushed the merger bill through the Arkansas Senate while Bennie Ryburn, Jr. and G.W. "Buddy" Turner of Pine Bluff steered the bill through the House of Representatives.

Bigger and Better Things - Claude Babin, the last president of Arkansas A&M College and the first chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Monticello, addresses state legislators, UA administrators and members of the boards of trustees of the UA and A&M on the day Arkansas A&M merged with the University of Arkansas. Standing to Babin’s left is UA President David W. Mullins.

   Dr. Claude Babin, who served as the last president of Arkansas A&M College and the first chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Monticello, called the merger "the one great event in Southeast Arkansas for which there has been universal agreement."

   Thirty-five years after the merger, UAM is fully accredited and holds mature institution status from the North Central Association of College and Universities and holds specialized accreditation in teacher education, music, nursing, social work and forestry. The long-sought dream of SAF accreditation for the forestry program finally came 13 years after the merger in 1984.

   The University has expanded its academic offerings to include graduate education in teacher education and forestry. Technical education was added when Forest Echoes Technical Institute in Crossett and Great Rivers Vocational-Technical Institute in McGehee merged with UAM in 2003 to become the UAM Colleges of Technology at Crossett and McGehee.