Nancy Ellen Talburt serves as Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at the University of Arkansas (UofA) and is also Director of Summer Sessions. Areas of oversight and activity include academic policy; campus governance and the Faculty Handbook; teaching support; curricular change and catalogs, program review, accreditation, and assessment; and academic issues involving students.

Prior to joining the UofA as an assistant professor of English, Nancy spent a year in post-doctoral study of linguistics and literature at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard following three years as assistant professor of English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. At the UofA, in addition to serving as associate professor and professor of English, she has served as associate director of libraries and director of records. Her bachelor’s degree is in biology and math education from Arkansas State University; her master’s and doctoral degrees in English from the UofA.

In addition to more than fifty scholarly and professional presentations, she was written invited articles for such publications as the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers, the Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, and Great Women Mystery Writers and chapters and essays for other books. With Lyna Lee Montgomery, she edited A Mystery Reader for Scribner’s.

Professional service includes elected terms as president of the national Popular Culture Association, national program chair for mystery fiction, a member of the Institution Actions Council for the North Central Association, state representative to the ACT corporation, and representative on the College Board Southwest Regional Council. By invitation she has served as consultant, keynote speaker, and workshop presenter on assessment for the State of New Mexico and the University of South Dakota, along with other institutions. She chairs accreditation teams for the Higher Learning Commission of the NCA, and has presented invited workshops at the annual NCA meeting on self-study, report writing, organizing team visits, and writing team reports. She chaired the Arkansas Commission on Community-Based Rehabilitation for five years, serving also as an ex-officio member of the Board of Corrections. She was awarded the Distinguished Citizen Award from Alpha Gamma Delta International in 1989.

Back to Provost Office Personnel