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Arkansas State University-Mountain Home is marking 31 years, a milestone that traces to its official establishment on July 1, 1995. What began in repurposed buildings downtown now sits on roughly 140 acres of rolling hills south of the city.
The school serves about 1,500 students a year as the two-year, open-access campus of the Arkansas State University System in north central Arkansas. Its reach runs from short-term workforce credentials to associate degrees and a nursing pipeline that feeds Baxter Regional Medical Center.
Roots in the community
ASUMH’s story starts well before 1995. North Arkansas Community College began offering evening classes at Mountain Home High School in 1974, the year after voters turned down a tax to build a community college in town.
The effort grew over the next two decades. Backers bought the former First Baptist Church and McClure Chapel in 1985 to house a new vocational-technical center. That center became Mountain Home Technical College, one of 13 technical colleges the Arkansas General Assembly created in 1991.
The ASU System took the campus under its wing on July 1, 1995, establishing Arkansas State University-Mountain Home. Ed Coulter was named its first chancellor and given a clear charge to build a real campus. The school adopted blue and green as its colors, for the area’s lakes and mountains, and took the TrailBlazers as its mascot.
Building a campus
The community answered the call. An initial 78 acres was announced within weeks of the school’s founding, and the campus expanded from there.
Donors stepped up early. The Roller family and Roller Funeral Homes of Arkansas pledged $500,000 in 1995 to endow the first building, and all four of the first campus buildings were fully endowed before construction began.
Coulter and his wife, Dr. Fran Dryer Coulter, led the fundraising. A Mountain Home native, she left a full professorship at Ouachita Baptist University to help build the school in her hometown. The couple broke ground with Gov. Mike Huckabee in 1998.
The big move came in January 2000. More than 1,000 residents and students marched from the old downtown site to the new campus, and classes opened in the Dryer, McClain and First National buildings the next day. Huckabee returned that April to deliver the dedication address.
Three decades of growth
The milestones kept coming. ASUMH held its first commencement in 1996, awarding 25 degrees and 14 certificates, and passed 1,000 students for the first time by 1999.
The school earned its own accreditation in 2003 through the Higher Learning Commission, having previously carried it through ASU-Jonesboro. Enrollment topped 1,500 for the first time in 2009.
The campus kept expanding. The Health Sciences Building opened in 2008, followed in 2010 by the Vada Sheid Community Development Center, a 65,000-square-foot hub with an auditorium seating more than 1,600, a great hall for the arts and an outdoor amphitheater.
Blazing new trails
Today ASUMH is organized into three schools: Arts & Sciences, Business & Technology, and Health Sciences. It is known for its Fran Coulter Honors Program and a nationally recognized funeral science program.
Leadership has passed through three chancellors. Coulter served 17 years before retiring in 2012, followed by Robin Myers, who led the school for 11 years.
Dr. Bentley Wallace, a Mountain View native, became chancellor in 2023. He was named this year to a national committee of the American Association of Community Colleges, a sign of the growing profile of a school that started with a few night classes in a high school building.
