When professor Robert Norvell isn’t in the classroom, he’s enjoying nature. 

Norvell is a lecturer in criminology at the University of Central Arkansas. 

“I am a semi-retired criminal defense attorney. I had a law firm down in Palm Beach County. I was a prosecutor, then a public defender, then I did private criminal defense. I just fell in love with teaching, then I wanted to transition to full-time teaching, and I had been adjuncting at a university down there, and I put in applications and I had three offers and I chose UCA because my sister lives in St. Louis,” Norvell said.

This is Norvell’s third year working at UCA. 

“What I like [about working at the University of Central Arkansas] is I am a first-generation lawyer, so I do not come from a background of attorneys. I appreciate that many of our students are first-generation students, who maybe their families haven’t been to college and they don’t have that background. I think that that is exciting. I like UCAs mission to serve their students. I also think we have some good leadership at the school. I think there’s broad engagement. I’m an advisor for SGA and I love to see the student leadership taking charge and doing good things,” Norvell said.

Outside of being a teacher, Norvell enjoys hiking.

“I’ve been out west and climbed some mountains out there,” Norvell said.

Norvell spent seven days and six nights out of his winter break hiking Mount Kilimanjaro, the largest mountain in Africa. 

Norvell was with a group of people who were also on this excursion but he did not go there with anyone he knew.

Their group would set up tents every night at the planned stopping points and stay for the night then continue the next day. 

“This is something that I’ve wanted to do, and it’s been on my bucket list because of a couple of reasons. Number one, I love hiking and I love adventure. Number two, there are expiration dates on my parts — my knees and things like that. There’s that quote ‘When you want to do it you better do it now. If not now, when?’ So I decided to get out there and get this done. This was my first time going on a lengthy excursion adventure in a foreign land, and this was as exotic as it gets,” Norvell said.

Once Norvell’s group got to the top they had about 30 minutes to look around and take pictures, then they started their two-day descent back down to the bottom. 

Norvell said he had always loved being outdoors and hiking, but when he moved to Arkansas he had more opportunities to do so. 

“I think Arkansas is a really beautiful place. In training for this, I climbed Mount Pinnacle over and over and over again. I also went out to Mount Nebo. I think the natural state has a lot going on,” Norvell said. 

Norvell is still involved in climbing as he goes to the Little Rock Climbing Center.