Lynda Coon Reappointed Dean of Honors College

After an extensive five-year review, Dean of the Honors College Lynda Coon has been reappointed for a third five-year term by Provost Indrajeet Chaubey. Coon's third term begins July 1.

Earlier this spring, faculty, staff, students, university administrators and external stakeholders were asked to provide feedback on Coon's most significant administrative and programmatic accomplishments, any challenges she encountered as dean and any areas that required improvement. Recommendations for strengthening the performance, effectiveness and administration of the Honors College were also provided.

Coon was first appointed as dean of the Honors College July 1, 2015. As dean, she oversees programming, grants and curricula related to honors education; serves as the administrator of the fellowship selection process; and leads donor engagement and alumni outreach.

"The Honors College plays a vital role in enriching undergraduate education at the University of Arkansas," said Provost Chaubey. "I am pleased to reappoint Dean Coon. She has continued to expand opportunities for students across disciplines, preparing them for advanced research, prestigious fellowships and grants, and careers that focus on community engagement and public service."

Since 2015, Coon has led a series of transformative initiatives that have strengthened student success and elevated the Honors College's national profile. She established the Futures Hub, a resource that helps students connect their honors experience to career and post-graduate goals, and created the Natural State Fellowships to recruit and retain top local talent. Through Honors Arkansas, she built partnerships among honors colleges across the state, fostering greater collaboration and educational opportunities for students at both two-year and four-year institutions.

Coon has advanced scholarship and thought leadership in honors education as co-editor of two open-access books. Her most recent volume, Honors Education at Public Research Universities: Leadership Perspectives and Insights for an Uncertain Age (Routledge, 2026), draws on the expertise of honors leaders from more than 200 public universities and positions the U of A as a national leader in honors education. Earlier, she co-edited Human Privacy in Virtual and Physical Worlds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), an interdisciplinary examination of privacy that brought together scholars from the humanities, social sciences, fine arts and STEM fields through the Honors Arkansas collaboration.

She integrated the Office of Undergraduate Research into the Honors College, centralizing support for student scholars across campus. She also expanded global opportunities by launching the Dublin Internship Program and introducing the first Honors Passport experiences in Asia. Nationally, she raised the university's profile by hosting the Honors SEC conference and founding the Council on Honors Education.

Under her leadership, Honors College enrollment has grown even as academic standards have become more rigorous, including higher GPA requirements for admission. At the same time, the college has strengthened its commitment to the state by increasing both the number and proportion of Arkansas students among its honors population, demonstrating that academic excellence and access for Arkansas' highest-achieving students can advance together.

"Coming to work with the Honors College team each day, together devising new ways to enrich the lives of our ambitious scholars, is the privilege of a lifetime," Coon said. "I am honored to have received an opportunity to continue this work, perfecting our honors mission in Arkansas, the region and the nation."

The Dean Review Committee was chaired by Cheryl Murphy, vice provost for distance education. Other members of the Dean Review Committee include:

• Laurence Hare, Department of History, executive director of undergraduate excellence and global engagement 
• Michelle Gray, Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation; department head 
• Eunjoo Cho, School of Human Environmental Sciences, professor and assistant dean of Bumpers Honors Program 
• Noah Pittman, Honors College, associate dean 
• Alex Nelson, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, assistant department head for student success and associate professor 
• Leen Samman, undergraduate student

"I'm grateful to the Dean Review Committee for their careful and comprehensive work during this review," Chaubey said. "Their engagement with campus stakeholders provided valuable insight and reinforced my decision to reappoint Dean Coon to continue leading the Honors College."

More About Coon

Coon joined the U of A faculty as an associate professor in 1990 and became a full professor in 2011. Prior to her appointment as dean of the Honors College, she served as the chair of the Department of History. Her administrative experience also includes serving as the associate dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the director of the Religious Studies Program.

From 1998 to 2004, she directed the Humanities Program and the Honors Humanities Project (H2P), a four-semester sequence supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities that became a part of the academic foundation of the Honors College. She served as the inaugural director of the Humanities in Rome study abroad program in 2001. She's also received several awards, including the Charles and Nadine Baum Teaching Award and the Fulbright College Master Teacher Award.

She is a historian of the later Roman Empire and early medieval West. Her recent publications have discussed Dark Age rainbows, theologies of color in the early Middle Ages, sirens in liturgical books and the history of Jesus in the period, ca. 600-900.

Before joining the U of A, she was a visiting assistant professor at Bates College. She earned her doctorate and master's degree in history from the University of Virginia, and she received her bachelor's degree in history from James Madison University.

About the University of Arkansas: As Arkansas' flagship institution, the U of A provides an internationally competitive education in more than 200 academic programs. Founded in 1871, the U of A contributes more than $3 billion to Arkansas' economy through the teaching of new knowledge and skills, entrepreneurship and job development, discovery through research and creative activity while also providing training for professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the U of A among the few U.S. colleges and universities with the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the U of A among the top public universities in the nation. See how the U of A works to build a better world at Arkansas Research and Economic Development News.