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Graduates of four of the region’s smallest school districts will be able to attend Arkansas State University-Mountain Home without paying tuition or mandatory fees under a scholarship the college announced Monday.
The Dr. Roger Simons Promise Scholarship is paid for by a gift from Simons. It will be open to graduates of Cotter, Flippin, Norfork and Yellville-Summit high schools who enroll at ASUMH, beginning with the classes of 2027.
The college announced the program during an afternoon event at the Vada Sheid Community Development Center on campus.
The award works as a last-dollar scholarship. Students first apply federal, state and institutional aid to their bill, and the scholarship covers whatever tuition and mandatory fee costs remain.
To qualify, students must enroll at ASUMH, file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and any other aid applications available to them, and keep up satisfactory academic progress.
The money is meant to carry students through an associate degree or less. That includes workforce certificates, technical programs and the two-year degrees that transfer to four-year universities.
“This is about much more than a scholarship. It’s about possibility,” Chancellor Bentley Wallace said. “There are talented young people across our communities with tremendous potential who want to become nurses, teachers, welders, business owners, first responders, healthcare professionals and skilled tradespeople.”
Wallace said the barrier for those students is rarely ability.
“Too often, the greatest obstacle isn’t ability or determination,” he said. “It is uncertainty about how to pay for college.”
The four districts sit at the edges of ASUMH’s service area. Cotter and Norfork are in Baxter County, while Flippin and Yellville-Summit are in Marion County. All four are small rural districts that graduate a fraction of the seniors Mountain Home High School does each year.
Those Mountain Home graduates already have a similar path. The Mountain Home Promise, a partnership between Mountain Home Public Schools, the Mountain Home Education Foundation and ASUMH, covers remaining tuition for graduates who enroll at the college.
Wallace pointed to that program as the model for what the new scholarship is meant to do.
“Locally, we have seen the wonderful success of the Mountain Home Promise,” he said. “Through that program, we have seen increases in the college-going rate and degree attainment. More students complete degrees and credentials.”
Promise programs have spread across the country over the past two decades as a way to raise the share of residents with a college credential. The idea is that a clear, simple guarantee changes behavior early, prompting students and families to plan for college years before graduation rather than deciding at the last minute whether they can afford it.
For north central Arkansas, the college is framing the gift as workforce policy as much as charity.
“Our employers need skilled workers, healthcare professionals, technicians, tradespeople, educators, business leaders and entrepreneurs,” Wallace said. “The strength of our communities depends on developing local talent and creating opportunities for that talent to thrive right here at home.”
Wallace said the scholarship grew out of a conversation with Simons about what he wanted his money to accomplish.
“When Dr. Simons shared with us his desire to create a scholarship at ASU-Mountain Home that would bring significant change to the lives of students and their families, we began a conversation about impact and legacy,” Wallace said. “When we presented the idea of expanding Promise opportunities to these four districts, he immediately supported the idea and signed on to the project.”
Wallace said the donor chose people over other options.
“Dr. Simons could have chosen many ways to invest these resources. Instead, he chose to invest in people, young women and men he may never meet,” he said. “And because of that decision, lives will be changed.”
Superintendents from all four districts spoke at the event.
Cotter Superintendent Jayme Jones built his remarks around five things he said scholarship money does beyond paying a tuition bill. He listed breaking generational poverty, pushing students toward higher academic expectations, opening college to families who had assumed it was out of reach, encouraging graduates to stay civically involved, and keeping educated young people working in the area as teachers, business owners and civic leaders.
Jones said scholarships clear the primary hurdle to higher education for families facing financial hardship, and that a single college graduate can change a family’s economic trajectory for generations.
“Higher education is not a privilege reserved for the wealthy,” he said.
Flippin Superintendent Kelvin Hudson framed the gift against the work districts already do to clear obstacles from students’ paths. The cost of college, he said, was the one barrier local schools had never been able to remove on their own.
“Our students are bright. They’re resourceful, and they work hard,” Hudson said.
Hudson said the scholarship will benefit students across two counties and strengthen the local workforce by making more residents employable.
Norfork Superintendent Richard Blevins told the room that 78.6% of students in his district qualify for free or reduced-price meals. A child who needs help getting breakfast and lunch, he said, needs help getting to college.
Blevins also spoke about his own roots in the county his district serves.
“Both my mother’s family and my father’s family homesteaded right here in Baxter County,” he said.
Yellville-Summit Superintendent Wes Henderson stressed that the scholarship reaches students pursuing technical and vocational certificates, not only those transferring to four-year universities. He said demand for that kind of training keeps growing.
The college also unveiled a new logo for the scholarship during the event. Simons joined representatives from each of the four districts for the unveiling.
Taking part were Jones, Richard Blevins of Norfork School District, Kelvin Hudson of Flippin School District and Wes Henderson of Yellville-Summit School District. Todd Shields, president of the Arkansas State University System, also attended, along with Christy Keirn, ASUMH vice chancellor for institutional advancement.
“It is a promise of opportunity. A promise of access. A promise of a brighter future,” Wallace said. “And thanks to Dr. Simons, it is a promise we can keep.”
ASUMH is a two-year college serving north central Arkansas. It offers university transfer programs, career and technical education, workforce training and community education.
