[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 8216]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO DR. ED COULTER

 Mr. PRYOR. Madam President, Dr. Ed Coulter was once told by a 
colleague in the education field that most individuals spend their 
lives helping, tweaking, making something better, but seldom having the 
chance to create. Ed grasped on to that last word and has spent the 
last 17 years of his professional career doing just that: creating 
something remarkable for the community and town of Mountain Home. On 
June 30, 2012, Ed Coulter will serve his last day as chancellor of 
Arkansas State University Mountain Home, ASUMH, and today I wish to 
thank him for his dedication to public education in Arkansas and his 
commitment to the people of Mountain Home.
  Ed's love of learning and teaching goes back to an early age. At age 
10, his parents, Bill and Evelyn Coulter, purchased a resort on Lake 
Hamilton in Hot Springs, AR. Ed found an early thrill in teaching by 
helping countless resort guests learn how to ski and enjoy the water. 
This love of teaching and his parents' encouragement to acquire a 
quality education led Ed to enroll at Ouachita Baptist University, OBU, 
in Arkadelphia. It was here that Ed met his first wife, the late Fran 
Dryer of Mountain Home. Ed would graduate magna cum laude with a 
bachelor of science in education, and the very next year he would also 
graduate from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with his 
master's in education.
  Needing 3 years of professional experience before continuing his 
education, Ed served as a junior high principal in Mountain Home before 
ultimately obtaining his doctorate degree. With the degree in hand, Ed 
and Fran returned to Arkadelphia and OBU, a place they would call home 
for the next 25-five years. In this span, Ed served as assistant to the 
president and also as the vice president for administration. The latter 
position taught Ed a great deal about budgeting, fundraising, and 
building new buildings. These skills would come in handy when Ed was 
called back to Mountain Home in 1995 as chancellor of ASUMH.
  Mountain Home long had dreamed of providing a high-quality education 
to its community and north central Arkansas. Truly a community effort, 
a group of dedicated citizens raised enough funds in the 1970s to 
purchase a church building to serve as the school. Ed's job as 
chancellor would be to take the school from this church building where 
he and Fran were married, and transform it into a modern university. 
With 78 acres of land purchased in a nearby field, Ed set a vision for 
the new campus and started the task of making that vision become a 
reality.
  Seventeen years later, ASUMH has expanded from a small community 
college to a thriving institution that today serves over 1,500 people. 
Ed's tenure as chancellor will be remembered for the rapid expansion of 
the campus; however, Ed's impact extends far beyond the physical 
buildings. Due to his leadership at ASUMH, thousands of students and 
Mountain Home have been forever changed by having a first-class 
university in the local community.
  As Dr. Ed Coulter starts the next chapter of his life, I know 
Arkansas State University Mountain Home and the Arkansas education 
community will miss his leadership and guidance. I thank him for his 
many decades of service to the people of Arkansas, and I wish him all 
the happiness as he and his wife Lucretia travel and enjoy time with 
their 13 grandchildren.

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