UAMS dean joins yoga session to build campus community

At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Nursing in Little Rock, Dean Sarah Rhoads took a front-row mat beside students and employees for a 45-minute Yoga With the Dean session that turned a campus wellness class into a test of connection.

Rhoads, Ph.D., DNP, participated as a student rather than an instructor, even though she said yoga was new to her. That gave the session a plainspoken quality that fit its setting: instead of a polished demonstration, the room became a shared practice space where leadership and the rest of the college moved through the same guided sequence.

Ava Coleman, the College of Nursing’s assistant director for student enrollment, said the event was meant to foster community and ease stress at the end of a rigorous academic year. Coleman also said the session gave participants a chance to socialize with Rhoads, underscoring how the college used the class to make leadership feel more accessible in a high-pressure environment.

The event also carried the weight of Rhoads’s recent arrival in the role. UAMS announced on May 13, 2025, that Sarah Jane Rhoads would become dean of the College of Nursing effective Sept. 1, 2025, replacing Patricia Cowan, Ph.D., RN, who retired after nearly 40 years in nursing and about a decade leading the college. UAMS later invested Sarah J. Rhoads into the Linda C. Hodges Endowed Dean’s Chair during a May 7, 2026 ceremony, adding another visible marker to her first year in office.

UAMS has also described Rhoads as a native Arkansan and former faculty member returning to the university, a background that helps explain why a low-key yoga session could land as more than a wellness break. In a college where stress and hierarchy can shape daily life, Rhoads’s choice to sit in the front row made the message easy to read: the point was not to observe the practice from a distance, but to share it.