Jim Hammons, Ph.D.

Professor of Higher Education Leadership

Jim Hammons currently divides his time between teaching doctoral courses focused on  management/leadership and college teaching, chairing dissertations (92 and counting), writing (over 100 articles, book chapters and books), and providing service to  community colleges and universities (over 300 in 51 states and provinces). He has been a Coach with Achieving the Dream since 2006. As a Coach, Dr. Hammons works with five colleges in five states. His special interests are creating and maintaining a sense of  urgency about  the importance of student success in both the  college and  the  community, gaining acceptance of the need for full and part-time faculty  development, and involving both faculty and chairs in planned change.

Dr. Hammons spent his early community college years in two very different two-year institutions (a vocational-technical college in Illinois and a large multi-campus college in Florida before he had  the unique opportunity to serve as founding Dean of the College in a new  community college in New Jersey.  In Florida, he supervised one of the first developmental studies programs in the country. In New Jersey, he helped steer the college to full regional accreditation two years after admitting students and was responsible for developing a continuous entry-exit development studies program and for leading both full and part-time faculty in implementing an outcomes-based-learning centered instructional approach that resulted in very low attrition.

Dr. Hammons left full-time administration to pursue his long time goals of teaching and leading a practitioner-oriented higher education doctoral program preparing both faculty and administrators. After “learning the ropes” at Penn State’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, he moved to the University of Arkansas where he put down roots.

Educational Background: Dr. Hammons holds a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin; a Master’s from Southern Illinois; and a bachelor's from Northwestern State (Louisiana).