Five years ago, the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff created a new academic emphasis to prepare students for a growing local industry — gaming and casino management.
The university offers a Master of Business Administration degree that allows students to concentrate on gaming and casino management, hospitality or business analytics.
But the degree hasn’t attracted a lot of enrollees, at least not yet. The program has “about four” students currently and has one graduate, according to Lawrence Awopetu, the interim dean of the university’s business school.
The school started the program after Arkansas voters in 2016 approved three casinos, including one that became Saracen Casino Resort in Pine Bluff. Awopetu said the program’s uniqueness and the relative newness of the gaming industry in Arkansas may contribute to the low number of enrollees.
“It is a relatively new graduate program and very niche for Arkansas,” he said.
The MBA program’s curriculum offers instruction in core competencies like finance, compliance, operations, marketing and risk management, “especially as it relates to casino management,” Awopetu said.
The program is working on recruiting more students, possibly from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, which also offer casino gambling, Awopetu said.
Carlas Smith, the program’s sole graduate, completed the degree in 2024 but doesn’t work in the casino industry. Smith, 57, is a procurement officer for Heifer International, buying products and managing purchasing contracts in countries from Bangladesh to Uganda for the Arkansas-based international nonprofit. She’s also the night auditor at the Residence Inn on Shackleford Road in Little Rock, where she reviews the hotel’s transactions each day.
Smith, who also holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, said the high salaries of casino general managers compelled her to pursue the field. After graduation, she considered working at Saracen or Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, but neither offered a career better than the one she already had.
She would still like to work in casino management and had hoped a casino might open in Russellville and offer additional opportunities, but that casino never got off the ground. Even if Smith isn’t able to enter the industry, she said, the degree prepared her for the career she has now.
“The things that I learned helped me with what I currently do even though it’s not in hospitality,” she said. “But it helped me drive financials for what I do, because it was like a refresher for me.”
Todd Gold, the senior director of hospitality at Saracen, plans to enroll in the UAPB MBA program. Gold, who oversees the dining and lodging operations at Saracen, earned a bachelor’s degree in hospitality and tourism management from UAPB last year. Gold graduated from culinary school in Memphis in 1993 and later earned two associate degrees, but returned to school at around 50 years old to earn a bachelor’s degree, taking two classes a night for seven semesters.
Gold, 53, also has extensive restaurant experience, which includes having co-owned the Little Rock restaurant chain the Purple Cow and working as the corporate chef at Acxiom. Gold also started the Arkansas Culinary School, which he later sold to what is now the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College, and continued to lead the school as a dean.
Today, Gold manages 550 of Saracen’s approximately 1,000 employees and is taking a semester or two off from school while he helps open Saracen’s 318-room hotel.
“Being an academic dean for almost 13 years, education is important,” he said. “I need to stand behind that, just because of my background in academia. It is important. Being a lifelong learner is something we all need to do.”
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