Finalists for ASU business college dean to visit campus

The final two candidates for dean of the Neil Griffin College of Business at Arkansas State University will visit the Jonesboro campus within the next week.

Jason Garrett of Union University in Jackson, Tenn., and Jim Washam, a faculty member at Arkansas State University, will be vetted by a search committee during the visits.

The search committee will conduct interviews and campus presentations, ASU Provost Alan Utter said. Each candidate will make a public presentation open to the campus community. Both sessions will be in the Delta Center for Economic Development.

Washam will be on campus Thursday and Friday (June 2-3). There will be a meet and greet reception for campus and community members Thursday, and then his public presentation will be held Friday.

Washam is the interim dean of the Neal Griffin College of Business. He joined ASU as a finance instructor in 1989 and became an assistant professor in 1992. Twice serving as a chair of the accounting, finance and law department from 2000 to 2004, then economics and finance from 2004 to 2008, Washam has been associate dean and three times the interim dean. Promoted to associate professor of finance in 2000, Washam holds the McAdams Frierson Professorship of Bank Management. Washam earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at ASU. He got his Ph.D. from the University of Mississippi.

Garrett will visit the campus Monday (June 6). He is the dean and professor of marketing in the McAfee School of Business at Union, most recently guiding the university through a discipline-specific AASCB accreditation visit.

Garrett received a master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis and his bachelor’s from Oklahoma Baptist University. He joined Union as its dean of business in January 2017 from Bradley University. Garrett began his academic career at Bradley as an assistant professor in 2006 and was promoted to associate professor of marketing in 2012. Before working at Bradley, he was a research assistant and graduate instructor while completing his Ph.D. at the University of Missouri.