ARKANSAS: Winter 2022

For members of the Arkansas Alumni Association Inc.

For members of the Arkansas Alumni Association Inc. Winter 2022

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS BENEFITS

CAMPUS PERKS

As a member of the Arkansas Alumni Association, you are invited to experience the University of Arkansas and enjoy your member discounts across campus. Take a course through Osher LifeLong Learning Institute, break a sweat at the HPER, or take in a show at Faulkner Performing Arts Center. These discounts and more are available to annual or life members of the Arkansas Alumni Association.

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Apply for borrowing privileges without paying a fee. Unlimited in-person access to databases, online journals and physical resources.

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UREC

10% discount on semester or annual memberships. Members get access to all of the University Recreation benefits, like fitness equipment, swimming pools, and outdoor sports equipment rentals.

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Season tickets at the student rate of $55 and $5 off on individual tickets.

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Free access to RazorLink online professional network, a platform with the purpose of encouraging mentoring relationships & career conversations between U of A students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends.

University of Arkansas Global Campus 10% discount for non-credit professional development courses (unless noted otherwise).

WINTER 2022 Learn more about the benefits of membership at join.arkansasalumni.org.

Tumors

The

Photo by Chieko Hara

Campus View

Jean-Francois Meullenet Interim Dean Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Roles as director of the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and also now interim dean of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences have given me a unique view of the outstanding forms of education, research and service projects conducted by many of our faculty, staff, students and scientists.

Efforts in those areas represent the college’s commitment to the U of A’s land-grant mission. With help from the entire Dean’s Office staff and our associate and assistant deans, we are currently prioritizing outreach, increasing our statewide presence, diversity and bettering the student experience.

Recruiting statewide is a high priority, including our natural connection to Arkansas 4-H and Arkansas FFA. As we aim to educate current students and place graduates in the field, we want students from every corner of the state to know we welcome them and want Bumpers College to be their first choice to receive a quality education.

The Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service has an amazing reach in Arkansas with offices in all 75 counties, and we want county offices to become more familiar with Bumpers College and the great asset it can be to students in their communities. I know that Extension Service could be a great partner for attracting more students to Bumpers College.

A key to increasing our recruiting efforts also includes diversity of our student body. We are building on progress in this area by appointing professor Jackie Mosley to assistant dean for diversity, equity and inclusion.

Mosley is known across campus and by major employers for her skills and abilities as a trained administrator in the Intercultural Development Inventory. This fall, she became the first U of A faculty member to earn a national teaching award from the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, winning the U.S. Department of Agriculture Excellence in College and University Teaching Awards for Food and Agricultural Sciences.

(Continued on page 63)

Publisher Arkansas Alumni Association

Executive Director

Brandy Cox Jackson ✪ M.A.’07

Editor Charlie Alison ★ B.A.’82, M.A.’04

Associate Editor Catherine Baltz ✪+ B.S.’92, M.Ed.’07

Creative Director Eric Pipkin Photo Editor Russell Cothren ✪ Photographers Chieko Hara Whit Pruitt B.A.’16

Writers & Contributors

Kendall Curlee Laurence Hare

Jennifer Holland B.A.’04, M.Ed.’08

Andra Parrish Liwag Matt McGowan John Post Mark Rushing ✪ B.A.’93 John Thomas B.A.’11 Hardin Young M.F.A.’04

MEMBERSHIP SYMBOLS

✩ Student Member; ★ Member; ★+ Member, A+; ✪ Life Member; ✪+ Life Member, A+

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Arkansas, Exclusively for Members of the Arkansas Alumni Association, Inc. (ISSN 1064-8100) (USPS 009-515) is published quarterly by the Arkansas Alumni Association, Inc. at 491 North Razorback Road, Fayetteville, AR 72701. Annual membership dues are now $55 per household and a portion is allocated for a subscription to Arkansas . Single copies are $6. Editing and production are provided through the UA Office of University Relations. Direct inquiries and information to P.O. Box 1070, Fayetteville, AR 72702-1070, phone (479) 575-2801, fax (479) 575-5177.

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ARKANSAS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Mission Statement

The Arkansas Alumni Association connects and serves the University of Arkansas Family.

Vision Statement

The Arkansas Alumni Association will be nationally recognized as a model alumni relations program.

Value Statement

The Arkansas Alumni Association values: • service • excellence • collaboration

• relationships • diversity • learning • creativity

Arkansas WINTER 22-133

All photos by University Relations unless otherwise noted.

Cover photo: Whit Pruitt

Please recycle this magazine or

Photo by Russell Cothren

EDITOR’s NOTE:

Due to the timing of Chancellor Robinson’s appointment, this announcement will be followed by a fuller story about Robinson’s vision for the Fayetteville campus in the spring edition of Arkansas magazine.

Robinson Named Chancellor Veteran Campus Professor and Administrator

Takes

Reins

BY JOHN THOMAS B.A.’11

The Board of Trustees approved the selection of Charles F. Robinson, as the permanent chancellor of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

The board voted unanimously to appoint Robinson, who has served as interim chancellor since Aug. 16, 2021, to a three-year employment term as chancellor.

“Dr. Robinson has proven to be a very good steward of the university and its land-grant mission during his time as interim chancellor,” Bobbitt said. “He now has the opportunity to cast a broader vision for advancing the university as a leading public research university in the region and raising its status on the national stage. He has a unique ability to inspire others and to relate to the many different constituencies across the university, and I look forward to working with him to help make his tenure as chancellor a success.”

Robinson said he was eager to get to work.

“I’m looking forward to serving our campus in its entirety and greatly appreciate the support and confidence shown in me to lead the university and advance our land-grant mission,” Robinson said.

Robinson is the seventh chancellor in the U of A’s history since the position was created in 1982 and is the first AfricanAmerican chancellor or president to lead the Fayetteville campus since the university’s inception in 1871.

Named interim chancellor in August 2021, Robinson has served in numerous roles at the U of A during the past 23 years, beginning as an assistant professor

of history in 1999 and including director of the African and African American Studies Program, vice provost for diversity, vice chancellor for student affairs, and as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic and student affairs.

During his time at the U of A, he has led several projects focused on student recruitment and success, including a college readiness program for underrepresented students, a major restructuring of the Division of Student Affairs and a $10 million scholarship effort for first-generation Arkansans who grew up in lower-income households.

Under his leadership as vice chancellor for Student Affairs, the university constructed Adohi Hall, a $79 million campus project that is the only residence hall in the United States to use crosslaminated timber, a construction process that reduces environmental impact.

Robinson also oversaw a $22 million expansion of Pat Walker Health Center and led strategic planning for the university’s Student Success Center, a 71,000 square foot facility focused on increasing access to services on campus for all students. Each innovation has helped to better position the university to serve students during a time of record enrollment.

Robinson holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Houston, a master’s degree in history from Rice University, and a doctorate in history from the University of Houston.

Charles F. Robinson Chancellor

Photo by University Relations.

Documenting Primate Diets

Doctoral Student Earns International Fellowship

BY JOHN POST

An international doctoral student has earned a prestigious fellowship to conduct research to document diets of primates in the wild.

Putu Pujiantari M.A.’21, a doctoral student in environmental dynamics, earned the Franklin Mosher Baldwin Memorial Fellowship, allowing her to travel to Borneo in her home country of Indonesia to conduct research into primate feeding and further study their feeding adaptations in changing climates and habitats.

Despite the dire need for additional research on how climate change affects animals in the wild, impacts of global warming and extreme weather are understudied for primates due to their adaptable nature and broad diet. Pujiantari’s work will help fill a void of research around how primates adapt to changing environments.

“The importance of this study is to pinpoint their ecological adaptation, like changes in diet, dispersal patterns, physiological responses and survival, so that we can understand how to protect them from extinction,” she said. “Primates are an umbrella species, which means that by protecting them, we indirectly protect many other species that make up the ecological community of their habitat.”

Her research continues a childhood passion, when she became interested in nature and wildlife after watching Steve Irwin documentaries. After studying biology as an undergraduate, Pujiantari attended a symposium on primatology, which sparked her curiosity in the field.

“Five of the six speakers were females and from other countries, and all of them had spent more than two decades in Indonesia to study primates,” she said.

“After the symposium, I started to read journal articles about primates and found out that most primatological research in Indonesia was done by or in collaboration with international researchers. At that point, I decided to no longer be just an attendant - I wanted to become their colleague.”

After studying primate feeding behavior for four years in the wild, Pujiantari realized she needed a different perspective on her studies. That led her to the U of A due to Peter Ungar’s work on dental microwear, a field of research focusing on inferring diet and behavior in extinct animals that was not yet available in Indonesia.

“It was a great opportunity for me to expand my knowledge, not only about ecology, but also feeding ecology, from an anthropological perspective,” she said. “After I finished my master’s degree in anthropology, I became eager to learn about how the digestive system of primates would respond to changes in dietary choice due to climate change and anthropogenically-induced landscape changes.”

The Baldwin Fellowship is a prestigious international fellowship intended for students with citizenship in a country where there are limited opportunities for advanced education and research related to human origins.

“The Baldwin Fellowship is the most prestigious award a student from the global south can get to study in fields related to human evolution,” said Peter Ungar, distinguished professor of anthropology and director of environmental dynamics. “With this award, Putu joins an elite

(Continued on page 62)

Puju Pujiantari

Photo submitted.

Dedication in Waves

Using Imaging Technologies to More Precisely Pinpoint Cancerous Tissue

BY JENNIFER HOLLAND B.A.’04, M.Ed.’08

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer for women in the U.S., and many women find themselves facing recurrence of the disease over time. Magda El-Shenawee is working to reduce this threat through new imaging technologies that help surgeons make more precise decisions about cancerous tissue during lumpectomies.

“When the surgeon takes the tumor out, what remains?” El-Shenawee queried. “It’s hard to determine where the cancer ends and healthy tissue begins. If the surgeon doesn’t remove enough, the cancer comes back. And if too much healthy tissue is removed, the patient risks having a mastectomy. Preventing it from metastasizing is the key, and the margins we examine help ensure the correct amount is being removed.”

Using a new imaging technique involving terahertz frequencies — a frequency range found between microwaves and infrared waves –El-Shenawee and her team can help surgeons more accurately determine the appropriate amount of cancerous tissue to remove by making it easier for them to clearly see tumor margins during lumpectomies.

El-Shenawee notes that the percentage of second surgeries is nearly 25%, adding stress to an already highly charged emotional experience. “Imagine,” she said, “being a woman who has just undergone your initial surgery only to find out that the cancer has returned and another operation must be scheduled.”

It’s a problem she’s not tackling alone; in fact, there’s an entire army of researchers

across the country and the world who are trying to combat the disease. El-Shenawee realizes that what she contributes to the research is an important part of the solution.

“It’s amazing the amount of work being done nationwide,” she said. “And yet, one out of eight women still gets breast cancer.”

Embracing Challenges and Tackling Life’s Landmines

El-Shenawee’s story began in Egypt, where she grew up knowing that she always wanted to be an engineer. Her father, who was a mechanical engineer, tried to dissuade her from this path and encouraged her to consider medical school instead. “Engineering is hard for women,” he warned. “You will suffer.” El-Shanawee knew he wanted to protect her from the treatment she might receive as a woman in a predominantly male field, but she was undeterred. “It’s a very challenging position for women,” she said. “But I like a challenge, and I like being able to accomplish something and make a difference.”

She found her research focus as a postdoc at Northeastern University, where she worked on a project detecting landmines made of plastic, which – unknowingly –would launch a career focused on using imaging techniques to solve complicated real-world issues.

Enter terahertz radiation, which is unique in that it is non-ionizing – unlike x-rays, which can expose patients to

Left, Magda El-Shenawee is fighting breast cancer using terahertz technology at the University of Arkansas.

Photo by Russell Cothren.

El-Shenawee enjoys working with the students in her lab to solve challenges that arise during the research process.

additional cancer risks from exposure over time. El-Shenawee uses this technology to differentiate healthy breast tissue from cancerous tissue to help save lives.

Tissue, Tumors and Terahertz Technology

El-Shenawee’s new research centers on diversifying the way signals are sent and received through cancerous tumors – called wave polarization – and the different results they yield. She and her team produce many different images using the terahertz technology and layer them to get a better, fuller picture of the composition of the tumor in question. Their biggest breakthroughs come from imaging freshly excised tumors and comparing those results to the findings from a pathologist, who helps interpret the images. All this simulates what could

eventually be done in an operating room, given the appropriate equipment, training and time, to help ensure all cancerous tissue is being removed and the maximum amount of healthy tissue remains.

Currently, more than 50% of the freshly excised tumor tissue examined can be differentiated, but El-Shenawee wants that total to increase to at least 90%.

“It’s exciting to get meaningful results,” she said. “We’re not doing this research to satisfy ourselves. We want to publish it and help other researchers.”

From Intrigue to Inspiration to Implementation

El-Shenawee was introduced to terahertz technology at a workshop and was immediately intrigued, though she had no equipment available for her research. Various grants have allowed her to

Photo by Russell Cothren.

purchase equipment and set up her own lab, working with her U of A students and collaborating with fellow faculty members along the way. The students who work in El-Shenawee’s lab are right by her side, gaining first-hand knowledge about problem solving and critical-thinking skills.

“The good students are everything,” she said. “I have the ideas, but they implement them. It takes some time to train them, and they have to be self-motivated, but they have all found very good jobs in national labs, U.S. companies or with other universities after they have moved on. They inspire me, and if they don’t, I inspire them.”

The terahertz technology used by El-Shenawee and her team is housed in a couple pieces of equipment: one that is designed to scan tumors and smaller cancer samples and another used for bigger applications. Grants provided the funding

for her research instrumentation, and she continues to finesse its capabilities by determining what it is picking up on the scans and what it is not. It’s a continual process of trying, tweaking and trying again.

“I tell students all the time that we don’t make jumps in research – we take small steps,” she said.

A closer look at one of ElShenawee’s lab samples.

Photo by Russell Cothren.

Priority on Arkansas First Metrics Show Gains in Retention and Graduation Rates

BY MARK RUSHING ✪ B.A.’93

The progress the U of A is making in advancing its land-grant priorities is easy to see in the metrics used to produce the annual U.S. News Best Colleges rankings. The university’s improvement in areas related to student success stand out.

our work is not finished. We can and will continue to improve in these high priority categories in the years to come.”

The university also increased its graduation rate for students receiving Pell Grants from 54% to 55%, but the university has identified this as an area for improvement.

“Students with the lowest degree of financial security are also the most likely not to complete their education, so we have to do more to support their success,” Robinson said. “That’s a big part of our land-grant responsibility — to not only provide students from Arkansas access to higher education, but also to provide the resources needed to help them graduate and launch successful careers.”

A student at the university’s Student Success Center inquires about a tutoring class. The center brings together programs such as tutoring, peer mentoring and a writing studio, each of which helps students persist in their studies and finish their degrees.

Photo by Russell Cothren

In 2021, for the fourth year in a row, the U of A set all-time records for its firstyear retention rate (87%) and graduation rate (70%), both up 2 percent from the previous year. The university also continued to close the gap between the expected and actual rate of graduation for its students. While the difference was once close to double digits, the gap has now been reduced to only 2% (70% graduate rate vs. 72% expected graduation rate) in the latest rankings.

“The categories that matter to us, those related to our land-grant mission to advance Arkansas, are on a positive upward trend,” said Chancellor Charles Robinson ✪. “It’s exciting to see because

Earlier this year, the university announced $1 million in additional scholarship funding dedicated to students from Arkansas. Combined with a previous $5 million increase in scholarship funding devoted solely to in-state students, the university has grown scholarship funding for Arkansas students by $6 million since 2019.

These increases in scholarship funds, in addition to the tuition partnership with U of A community colleges through the Arkansas Transitions Academic Program, are providing much-needed support to help students from every corner of the state afford to pursue a world-class education, making the U of A an attractive destination.

While the university showed improvement in other categories used by U.S. News, including increasing faculty

Of Politics and Religion

Historian Examines Early Modern British World

BY LAURENCE HARE

Historians of Great Britain, like those of many other nations, have increasingly set their accounts within a global frame, looking more broadly across the horizon for ways to understand developments closer to home.

The approach is evident in a new historical anthology, Political and Religious Practice in the Early Modern British World, published by Manchester University Press in the United Kingdom and co-edited by Freddy Dominguez, associate professor of history at the U of A.

Along with his co-editor, William J. Bulman, professor of history at Lehigh University, Dominguez brings together experts in the political and religious history of British, European and Atlantic world history to explore the ways in which the political nation expanded in premodern England.

Across 12 chapters, Bulman and Dominguez weave together cutting-edge perspectives on what Bulman describes as “the emergence of narratives of practice set in their English, British, European, Atlantic and global contexts.”

More specifically, the editors draw together scholarship on political and religious practices in the Elizabethan and Stuart periods extending from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries. Some of these practices are familiar to students of politics and religion, such as managing war abroad, navigating political conflict at home or setting the rules for commerce. Others are seemingly more mundane, including the practice of “life-writing,” ballot-casting or annotating scripture.

And others are somewhat surprising, including a chapter on Bible theft and another on the notion of political and religious celebrity. Together, they add up to a nuanced portrait of a complex public sphere emerging within Early Modern Britain and of an increasingly far-flung “British world” informed by events and practices on the continent and across the Atlantic. Moreover, the chapters offer interesting takes on the influence of debates about gender roles, early moves toward secularization and the slow turn towards majority rule.

At the U of A, Dominguez teaches courses on Early Modern Europe, Tudor-Stuart England and the wars of religion. In addition to his most recent work, he is also the author of Radicals in Exile: English Catholic Books During the Reign of Philip II, published by Penn State University Press.

He is also completing forthcoming books on Luisa de Carvajal: The Politics of an Anglo-Spanish Life and Bob Dylan in the Attic: A Study in History, which will be published by the University of Massachusetts Press.

Freddy Dominguez

Photo submitted.

Twenty Years of Transformation Graduate School

Celebrates Distinguished Doctoral and Doctoral Academy Fellows

BY JOHN POST

Computational physics research with the potential to lead to breakthrough fiber optics communications. Multiple startup companies centered around innovative technology. Nationally acclaimed novels, poetry collections and nonfiction works.

These are but a few of the discoveries and creative activities carried out by Distinguished Doctoral Fellows and Doctoral Academy Fellows since those endowed positions were created in 2002 through a recordbreaking gift from the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation. The fellows program expanded and elevated graduate education at the U of A, leading to breakthrough research, impactful creative activity and transformational opportunities for the more than 650 students who have graduated from the program.

The fellowships offer nationally competitive financial packages to approximately 65 outstanding doctoral students each year, both from Arkansas and beyond, helping to recruit top students for research and scholarly activity — work that not only drives economic development in Arkansas, but serves as a rising tide that

raises all ships across campus.

“This was a transformational gift,” said Curt Rom ✪+ B.S.A.’80, interim dean of the Graduate School and International Education. “When you put a top scholar in a laboratory or a studio or an innovation enterprise, everybody around them gets lifted by that talent. They improve the quality of the laboratories or studios where they work, and having more highly-accomplished graduate students enhances our ability to recruit topnotch faculty who want to come work with them. There’s a ripple effect of these students across campus.”

“One of the goals of the fellowship programs is to attract graduate students who might not otherwise have considered the University of Arkansas as a destination of choice,” said Vicky Hartwell B.A.’06, M.S.’21, director of graduate fellowships, enrollment and graduation services for the Graduate School. “As part of my role reviewing the fellowship nominations, I see students coming from all regions of the country and from countries around the globe. Many of our doctoral fellows fall in love with the state, and choose to stay here after graduation.”

Leah Hamilton

Ph.D.’11

For Leah Hamilton, a Doctoral Academy Fellow graduate, the fellowship provided crucial funds that allowed her to earn a doctorate in public policy she wouldn’t have been able to pursue otherwise.

“I would not have the career I have today without the fellowship,” Hamilton said. “The fellowship allowed me to reach my goal of completing my education debt-free. Now, I am a poverty scholar and spend my time

thinking about how to reshape the social safety net to support all families.”

Hamilton decided to pursue a career in public policy after working in foster care for several years, where she saw firsthand the “devastating effects of poorly-designed social policy.” She wanted to change that policy to help children and families.

Now an associate professor of social work at Appalachian State University, Hamilton has been able to realize that dream. In addition to her work as a professor, she also serves as the senior fellow at the Jain Family Institute and faculty affiliate at the Social Policy Institute of Washington University in St. Louis. As a co-principal investigator on a team analyzing the temporarily expanded Child Tax Credit’s effects

on employment and other factors, she gave briefings to the White House and the Senate Joint Economic Commission. She has also been able to advocate for stronger public policy through her work featured in multiple national publications including The Washington Post, CNBC, The Atlantic, Forbes, Vice News, National Public Radio, Fortune and Fast Company.

“I’m very grateful,” she said of the fellowship.

Hamilton is one of countless success stories to graduate from the fellowship. Graduating fellows have gone on to academic careers at prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins, Emory University, Boston University, Yale University and the University of Oxford. Not only that, but others have gone on to work at organizations including NASA, Microsoft, Intel, the U.S. Department of Defense, Apple, General Mills, Nestle, Bank of America, NVIDIA, Toyota, Walmart, Tyson and the National Science Foundation.

“Because of their involvement in research, science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship, they’ve been hired by some of the top companies in the country, and now we find our graduates working across the globe, whether it be in an international university or for multinational corporations and being located

internationally,” Rom said.

But fellows have also made an indelible impact on the state of Arkansas as well, solving problems that will help the state’s residents.

“A number of the Doctoral Academy Fellows and Distinguished Doctoral Fellows are working on projects that are very relevant to the state of Arkansas, whether that be a business or engineering or an environmental science or agriculture problem,” Rom said. “The research they’re doing, in combination with their faculty mentors, are solving real-world problems with science-based information to help elevate Arkansas.”

“Many of our fellows are also working on problems related to quality of life, whether that be nutrition, diet or health and science,” Rom said. “The technology they’re discovering or creating is being applied in medical fields, nutritional fields and even across our agricultural enterprise to have a more vibrant, viable sustainable food system.”

Not only that, but the research conducted by fellows has also driven economic development in the state. The fellows’ work has often been commercialized, with graduating fellows becoming entrepreneurs helming startup businesses centered around their technology.

Matthew Leftwich B.S.Ch.E.’99, M.S.Ch.E.’01, Ph.D.’10

One of those fellows is Matthew Leftwich. A 2010 Doctoral Academy Fellow graduate and Arkansas native, Leftwich has participated in the startup of five small businesses in Northwest Arkansas, culminating with Nanomatronix LLC, where Leftwich serves as chief executive officer. He has generated more than $20 million in research and development commercialization funding for start-ups over the last 25 years, in addition to leading four successful product launches for space and military applications.

Now, he serves as director of the Materials Science and Engineering Graduate Program, where he is helping other doctoral students realize the potential of their research.

“The Doctoral Academy Fellowship allowed me to remain in Arkansas to complete my academic goals while pursuing my career goals in parallel,” Leftwich said. “If

the Doctoral Academy Fellowship and microelectronics –photonics program did not exist, it is entirely possible that I would have chosen to relocate out of state, and the local impact I have had may not have blossomed. Not only did the fellowship help prepare me for success, it was an enabling factor to my success, and allowed me to achieve my goals here in Northwest Arkansas.”

As for the future of the fellowships, Rom sees continued expansion of doctoral education across campus as colleges replicate their own fellowships in their areas.

“I think the future of this fellowship program is quite bright,” Rom said. “The success of these fellowships has created the opportunity for colleges and departments to raise money for additional fellowships. So, we see a range of other fellowships that are modeled on our graduate school fellowships that are now emerging in colleges. They want to create additional success through their philanthropic gifts.”

Messenger of Mass Timber

Dean Peter MacKeith Champions a Transformation in Construction and Design

BY HARDIN YOUNG M.F.A.’14

Take a drive through Bentonville, Arkansas, and you may find yourself passing by the 350-acre construction site of the new Walmart headquarters. You’ll need to imagine for now the urban park ambition of the project

— an active, sustainably-principled landscape surrounding offices and amenities — but the new campus taking shape might soon resemble a young forest.

No less than 1.1 million cubic feet of cross-laminated

timber will be used in the construction of offices for an estimated 15,000 employees — timber harvested from Arkansas forests and finished in Arkansas mills.

Cross-laminated timber is a form of mass timber, also known as engineered wood, created from a range of wood products and adhesives that is stronger and more durable than regular lumber. Usage of mass timber is rapidly changing the architecture, engineering and construction industries, with both major economic and environmental benefits.

A clear line can be drawn from work being done at the University of Arkansas to the decision to utilize this wood technology by the world’s largest retailer. The U of A has been at the forefront of advocacy of mass timber and wood products, as well as architectural and construction design education emphasizing mass timber, for nearly a decade. Faculty have argued that it presents the best path to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly future, with the added ability to boost the Arkansas economy. Walmart’s decision to use cross-laminated timber is an emphatic next step in a much larger, more expansive vision of a greener future for Arkansas and beyond.

Spreading the Seeds

Perhaps the person most responsible for the rapid spread and investment in mass timber in Arkansas is Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design. Appointed dean in 2014, MacKeith brought with him an enthusiasm for mass timber acquired while living and working in Finland, where its use is much more widespread. (Finland promotes itself these days as a “forest superpower.”)

Arkansas, it seemed to MacKeith, was not unlike Finland, with its vast acres of forestland. Equally, MacKeith saw inspiration and innovation in the use of wood exemplified by the architecture

of Fay Jones, the school’s namesake and most celebrated graduate, whose elegant lumber structures like Thorncrown Chapel dramatically display how creative design can transform a simple material into something greater.

“In architecture education, when reviewing student work, we often speak of ‘missed opportunities,’” MacKeith said. “As I see it, the Fay Jones School could not miss the opportunity to make good on the example of its namesake and legacy, and on the surplus opportunities of the state’s greatest renewable resource — its forests — and on the imperative necessity of responding to both environmental challenge and economic potential. We are a school committed to design in the public realm, for the public good, and we can address these commitments in large part through the forests.”

Mass timber has a number of important properties. Finished CLT panels are lightweight yet strong. The prefabricated wood panels also are fast and easy to install and generate almost no waste on the construction site. Importantly, wood is also a carbon sink, storing carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere. It’s estimated that one cubic meter of glued laminated timber, or glulam, another form of mass timber, stores about seven hundred kilograms of carbon dioxide. Structures on the scale of Walmart’s corporate headquarters will potentially keep thousands of tons of carbon out of the atmosphere. Conversely, creating cement burns carbon. Cement production worldwide is estimated to produce 8% of all carbon emissions.

This confluence of economic, environmental, technological and educational reasons, as well as for the sheer beauty of wood constructions, has led MacKeith to advance the use of mass timber in Arkansas. He encouraged the creation of classes for architecture and design students focused on mass timber, including graduate level classes. He participated in panels and sponsored seminars. He met with

Left, the University of Arkansas is leading a transformational change in construction and design, thanks to the visionary leadership of Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design.

Photo by Russell A. Cothren

Gov. Asa Hutchinson J.D.’75 and business leaders like Steven Anthony J.D.’86, president of Anthony Timberlands, and John Ed Anthony B.S.B.A.’61, chairman of the company’s board, who are both U of A alumni.

Perhaps most importantly, he convinced U of A leaders to begin building with it.

Completed in 2018, the annex was the first major facility on campus to utilize cross-laminated timber paneling along with a glulam structural frame.

Proof of Concept

The university’s first foray into mass timber design and construction was also its first big success: the University Libraries’ high-density storage annex, where less frequently requested books are stored south of the main campus. MacKeith introduced the project’s architects to the potential of mass timber through seminars and conferences.

While in the scheme of things it was a modest structure — little more than a warehouse — the project demonstrated immense value, saving the university $1.1 million in construction costs and achieving substantial completion weeks ahead of more conventional methods.

The next proof of concept was an order of bigger magnitude: Adohi Hall, an $80 million, 200,000-square-foot, 708-bed living-learning community. Innovative in its approach to student housing on campus and in its commitment to environmentally responsible design, Adohi Hall represented a major investment in, and success for, mass timber design.

Cross-laminated timber panels were

Lab — Piece by piece, Fay Jones School Dean Peter MacKeith is leading the way to advance the use of mass timber in Arkansas.

Photo by Russell A. Cothren

used in floors and ceilings, while columns and beams were made from glulam. An additional challenge was that, despite Arkansas having the third largest timber industry in the country, all of the engineered wood had to be imported from Austria, as no state mills that had the capacity to produce the prefabricated lumber existed yet.

MacKeith’s advocacy over the years, and the university’s willingness to practice what it was preaching, coincided with Walmart leadership’s own thinking about considering mass timber design for its new headquarters. The confluence of university and corporate interests led to conversations with Structurlam Mass Timber Corporation, a Canadian company, which decided to open a facility in Arkansas, enticed by $1.5 million in tax

incentives from Gov. Hutchinson’s Quick Action Closing Fund. The company subsequently made a $120 million investment in a new mill in Conway, Arkansas, that now employs 130 people. It has dedicated a third of its output to supplying timber for Walmart’s home office.

More mills and other forms of wood manufacturing are expected to follow.

Branching Out

Spurring the production and use of mass timber in Arkansas and beyond is only the beginning for MacKeith and the Fay Jones School. In the fall of 2021, the U of A broke ground on the

Adohi Hall — Opened in 2019, Adohi Hall is actually two five-story residential buildings connected by a third building used as a common area.

Photo courtesy of Timothy Hursley.

Anthony Timberlands Center

— More than 62,000 cubic feet of timber will be used in the construction of the Anthony Timberlands Center, and the landscape will include native species such as southern yellow pine, black gum, tulip poplar, water oaks, sycamores and maples.

Anthony Timberlands Center for Design and Materials Innovation, located in the Windgate Art and Design District in south Fayetteville. The nearly 45,000-square-foot structure will be a driver of innovation in wood design and product development while promoting the use of Arkansassourced timber and wood in architectural design, construction techniques and product design.

“My life’s work has been the management of [Arkansas] forests and the manufacture of products from them,” said John Ed Anthony, who made the lead gift with his wife, Isabel. “Modern technology and innovation are now offering us the opportunity to take giant leaps forward in the utilization and application of this renewable and sustainable resource. The creation of the new design center under the leadership of Dean Peter MacKeith

will place our university in a leadership role in this endeavor.”

The center will centralize all of the Fay Jones School’s multiple timber and wood design initiatives, house the school’s existing and expanding design-build program and fabrication technologies laboratories, and serve as the new home to the school’s emerging graduate program in timber and wood design.

“The greater benefits and value of this extraordinary design initiative will accrue to the citizens of this forested state,” MacKeith said of the new center, “in both environmental and economic terms.”

The Future of Wood

As mass timber grows in popularity, the need for innovative design and research

Rendering courtesy of Grafton Architects.

will become even more important. One area researchers will study is how moisture affects cross-laminated timber structures in various climates, such as temperate, humid or arid locales.

Associate professor of architecture Tahar Messadi noted that researchers are focused on studying the moisture in cross-laminated timber panels to optimize their full potential. Messadi, along with engineering faculty member Cameron Murray, is conducting a two-year study on these issues, with Adohi Hall as a realtime, real-world test case.

Learning more about how wood will perform in various climates will help inform protocols and procedures regarding manufacturing of the panels — as well as transportation, construction and installation — that may demand a tailored response for different regions.

Researchers will also continue to explore how wood byproducts, like sawdust so fine it has the consistency of flour, can be conserved and put to better use. Even though cross-laminated timber manufacturing is more efficient than traditional methods, up to 15% of material can be lost in production. Fay Jones School associate professor Frank Jacobus, among others, is examining how leftover wood flour might be used in 3-D printing or molded into large building blocks held together with more environmentally friendly adhesives.

In 2021, the U of A Community Design Center released a report, Wood City: Timberizing the City’s Building Blocks, commissioned by the Weyerhaeuser Giving Fund. The report envisions, and strongly advocates for, increasingly wooden cities built from mass timber. In addition to what’s been said above, Wood City sees the greater longevity of mass timber as a public good that promotes biophilic design — design that increases the occupant’s connectivity to nature.

Beyond research and education, the value and impact of the “Arkansas timber project” will soon take demonstrable form for citizens through the affordable housing

prototypes being developed by John Folan, director of the Urban Design Build Studio AR HOME LAB and head of the Department of Architecture. Grants from the U.S. Forest Service, Bank OZK, the Alice L. Walton Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and the Weyerhaeuser Giving Fund are being used to support the development of sustainable, affordable mass timber housing prototypes for diverse regions throughout Arkansas.

In a 2022 interview, MacKeith stated, “As an architect, Fay Jones taught us that a two-by-four is much more than just a two-by-four. An architecture school can be much more than an architecture school. A university can be much more than a university. We can play a role in making the Arkansas forests far more valuable.”

He continued, “We know value-added manufacturing can increase the value of our Arkansas forests tremendously. We know affordable housing can be built from mass timber. Let’s graduate students who care about things like affordable housing and healthy forests. Let’s graduate students who can connect the dots in these areas. We’re in the middle of the timber belt. We’re perfectly situated logistically. Let’s take advantage of that.”

Ultimately, the U of A and the Fay Jones School will continue to be at the forefront of design, construction and advocacy in the use of mass timber, for the greater good of the state, the environment and the economy.

The 2022 Sturgis Fellows

Five Arkansans Earn Prestigious Fellowship

BY ANDRA PARRISH LIWAG

Five new freshmen, all Arkansans, have joined the distinguished list of Sturgis Fellows in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences this fall.

The 2022 class members are:

• Aaron Garcia, of Bryant.

• Addie Jones, of Harrison.

• Coy Morris, of Jonesboro.

• Samantha Stark, of Fayetteville.

• Tara Young, of Van Buren.

“One of my favorite moments each fall has been when we get to welcome our newest Sturgis Fellows to campus,” said Todd Shields, then-dean of Fulbright College. “These are some of the most astounding and impressive scholars, and it is an honor for us to be able to help further their education. We’re excited for them to join the Fulbright College family and to see what each will accomplish next.”

The Sturgis Fellowship is the U of A’s oldest and one of its most esteemed fellowship programs.

It awards each fellow $80,000 over four years, covering tuition, room and board, and providing support for educational

tools such as computer hardware and software, high-quality musical instruments, professional journals and participation at academic conferences.

Sturgis Fellows must pursue a major within Fulbright College, complete an intensive academic program and graduate with honors. They are also encouraged to study abroad. The fellowships are made possible by the continued support of the Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable and Educational Trust.

“For the past three and a half decades, because of Roy and Christine Sturgis’ generosity and the legacy they’ve created, dozens of incredible scholars have thrived in Fulbright College,” said Lindsey S. Aloia, director of the Fulbright College Honors Program. “And because of their vision, the Sturgis Fellowship remains one of the most prestigious, sustained fellowships at the University of Arkansas.”

“We’re happy to welcome the five newest 2022 scholars and to cheer them on and support them in their future successes,” she added.

Aaron Garcia

Addie Jones

Coy Morris

Samantha Stark Tara Young

The 2022 Sturgis Fellows

Aaron Garcia is a graduate of Bryant High School, where he was valedictorian. As captain of the Bryant Quiz Bowl team, he led the team to its first state finals appearance in which he also earned the state MVP award. He additionally served as president of the local Beta Club chapter, which promotes community involvement and academic success. Outside of school, he volunteered in his church’s children’s ministry by leading small groups on Sunday mornings. Garcia plans on majoring in economics and becoming a financial adviser. His parents are Andy and Radeanna Garcia.

Addie Jones is a graduate of Harrison High School, where she finished first in her class. She served as vice president of her Family, Career and Community Leaders of America chapter; president of the History Club; vice president of the Arkansas Association of Student Councils; and participated in theatre, choir, quiz bowl, cross country, track, Key Club and the Miss Arkansas’ Outstanding Teen Organization. She also founded the non-profit Bright Beginnings Books, which has given away over 7,000 new books to children. Jones plans to major in English and journalism, specializing in advertising and public relations. Her parents are Marcus and Angela Jones.

Coy Morris is a graduate of Valley View High School, where he was salutatorian, a National Merit Scholar and an AP Scholar with Distinction. He ran cross country and track, was All State for cross country his senior year and served as president of Jonesboro’s Mayor’s Youth Council. He was on the executive board of Keep Jonesboro Beautiful, founded and served as president of the Valley View Political Action Club and was on the executive board of the Northeast Arkansas Chain Reaction Youth Council. Morris is a graduate of Arkansas Governor School and plans to study social science. His parents are Mike Morris and Cassey Cloninger.

Samantha Stark is a graduate with high

honors of Haas Hall Academy, where she served as a founding leader of Science Club, co-director of the academy’s talent show and captain of its cheer team. Through Haas Hall’s Science Club, she developed and shared experiments with over 100 underserved elementary students in Oklahoma. She served as a volunteer for Apple Seeds, a community farm dedicated to educating children, and was selected a U.S. Presidential Scholar Semifinalist and National Merit Finalist. Stark plans to major in biology and chemistry to pursue a career in neuroscience. Her parents are Jennifer and Robert Stark.

Tara Young is a graduate of Van Buren High School, where she received a High Honors College Preparatory diploma. Additionally, she was an AP Scholar with Distinction and served as the secretary for her school’s chapter of the National Honor Society and the Lambda chapter of Delta Beta Sigma. She was also a member of a pre-professional competitive dance company and created an organization called Fresh Start VB, which collected hygiene products for students in her school district. Young plans to study psychology. Her parents are Todd and Carman Young.

The Sturgis Fellowship

The Sturgis Fellowship in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences was established at the U of A in 1985 through the generous philanthropy of the Dallas-based Roy and Christine Sturgis Charitable and Educational Trust with an endowment of $2 million. The program’s success led to additional gifts in 1992 and 1998, bringing the total program endowment to $10 million.

With only 16-20 Sturgis Fellows on campus at any given time, each receives the kind of individual attention from the director, associate director and staff of the Fulbright College Honors Program that delivers a memorable and productive college experience.

A Snapshot

The Trajectories of Three Honors Graduates

BY KENDALL CURLEE

The Honors College is 20 this year, and we have plenty to celebrate: cutting-edge courses, exceptional students and dedicated faculty, to start. For the best evidence of the college’s success, we look to the lives honors alumni shape for themselves. Here are three early graduates who have excelled in their fields — but their trajectories are not without challenges and occasional setbacks. All three are changemakers committed to advancing their professions, from making breakthroughs in science to ensuring that all voices are heard.

Linking a Bionic Hand to the Human Brain

In a video shared by Luke Osborn B.S.M.E.’12, summa cum laude, Johnny Matheny, who lost his left arm to cancer, sits down at a piano and, using his prosthetic arm, slowly but surely picks out “Amazing Grace.”

“It’s a really powerful testament not only to how far some of the technology has come, but also the motivation that Johnny has for pushing the boundaries and showing what’s possible,” Osborn said. What’s really amazing here? Matheny went beyond the gold standard of rehabilitation — restoring function — to learn something new. “Johnny didn’t know how to play the piano before his amputation,” Osborn said.

Osborn began tinkering with robotics as an honors mechanical engineering student at the University of Arkansas. He went on to earn a doctoral degree in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, where his research team pioneered the development of an “e-dermis,” a layered rubber and fabric finger covering equipped with sensors that, applied to prosthetic hands, allows amputees to feel pressure and pain. Now a senior researcher in the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, he is helping to lead studies that analyze how Matheny and another amputee are deploying their latest innovation: a state-of-the-art, highly customizable Modular Prosthetic Limb.

The tricky business is connecting the sensory information from residual nerves in the arm to the brain and then back to the prosthetic arm. The researchers began with phantom limb syndrome –– the lingering perception that a missing limb is still there –– and figured out how to put it to work. “The nerves in the arm still exist, and still go up to the brain,” Osborn said. “What we do is send small electrical pulses to find where the nerves are in the amputated limb.” Working through years of trial and error in the lab, Osborn’s team has managed to locate those “sweet spots” where residual nerves are located. When these nerves are stimulated electrically with sensors, amputees feel as if someone is touching their hand – restoring sensation they thought was lost forever. “You know, it’s a very emotional experience,” Osborn said. “A lot of times it’s a feeling they haven’t felt in a long time. It opens up the question, ‘What else can I feel? Is there a wider range of sensations I can experience?’”

The Modular Prosthetic Limb can help close the loop by linking sensory and motor pathways. Sensors placed on the arm of the amputee measure muscle activity generated by remaining motor nerves. These electrical signals are translated to the prosthetic limb, which sees and interprets them to move in a particular way. Machine learning allows

Top: Luke Osborn with the Modular Prosthetic Limb, which enables amputees to sense and react to stimuli.

Top right: Johnny Matheny tries on the prosthetic limb with sensors providing feedback. Middle right: A prosthetic finger and thumb practice a delicate pickup.

Above right: Osborn and colleagues in the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.

Photos courtesy Johns Hopkins University

users to tinker and customize the system so that they can navigate tasks of daily life with greater ease.

When asked about remaining challenges, Osborn laughed and joked, “So many! I’ll have a job for a long time.” Making the prosthetic limb comfortable and reliable are critical to ensuring that they are used, but Osborn is most passionate about tackling the biggest obstacle. “How can we restore and refine that sense of touch so that you can you feel the difference between a hot cup of coffee and a cold coke from the fridge? Or even different fabric textures?” He hopes that continued exploration of the e-dermis and hightech prosthetic devices will lead to new breakthroughs.

Osborn credits his training at the U of A to “teaching me how to think like an engineer … to think about a problem critically, and how to go about solving it.”

He worked with professor Min Zou on his honors thesis, which focused “on surface engineering, trying to add bumps and tiny features on the nanoscale to surfaces to reduce friction and wear,” he recalled. That work led to his first two publications and helped him recognize “the excitement and value and joy that comes from trying to answer questions that nobody has been able to solve yet.”

Osborn’s innovations have attracted international attention. He was selected by Forbes as one of “30 Under 30 in Science,” and his discoveries have been written up in Wired, The Atlantic and World Economic Forum, among others. Most recently, the e-dermis material that he helped to develop was pictured in National Geographic’s June 2022 cover story, “The Power of Touch.” Although his days in the lab stretch long, he’s made time to mentor 29 undergraduates and interns, and offers this advice to current students: “Research has taught me it’s okay to mess up. The reality is that there’s hundreds of iterations of a process before you get it right.”

Covering All Community Members

Master gardeners from around the state are gathering at Larry Galligan’s farm in West Fork, and honors alumna Antoinette Grajeda B.A.’08, magna cum laude, M.A.’16, is there, shotgun mic in hand, to document the tour for a new podcast project. It’s a tough day for Galligan, who is low on water thanks to a pump giving out. “Last time I was

here, you had too much water,” Grajeda said, and Galligan responded, “Well you know, we’ll just deal with it.” So it goes in the life of a farmer, and to some extent, in the turbulent field of journalism, a career path that Grajeda fell into by accident. “I came to the UA with a lot of AP credits from high school and had no clue what I wanted to do.” Like many honors students, her interests were wideranging, but her prowess as a writer prompted her adviser to suggest that she try journalism.

“Suddenly I was in a space where I didn’t know anything; I felt very behind,” she recalled. But thanks to some nudges from journalism professor Gerald Jordan, Grajeda started writing for The Traveler, The Razorback yearbook and soon expanded into broadcast media at KXUA and then UATV, where she initially worked behind the scenes. When friends decided to launch a Spanish-language broadcast Grajeda agreed to help with scripts and editing, not feeling comfortable speaking Spanish live on air. But “the first day, somebody didn’t show up, … so they threw me out there. I was like, as long as I can read the prompter, it’s fine. I ended up doing it in two languages.”

Grajeda’s can-do attitude and commitment to inclusive communications in all formats have propelled her career. She parlayed a student internship into jobs in local media, initially in print at The Morning News, where she was among the many laid off in 2009, when newspapers contracted dramatically. Fortunately, she was able to pivot to local NPR affiliate KUAF, where she had been working part-time to translate interviews recorded for the paper into content for the Ozarks at Large news program, simultaneously developing content for the paper’s website.

“They were testing the idea of making Ozarks at Large a daily show and experimenting with HD channels –– I cut my teeth on that,” Grajeda recalled. Over the next 12 years, she worked her way up through the ranks at the station, creating content that ranged from live radio kickoffs for the Fayetteville Roots Festival, cohosted with Kyle Kellams, to an annual Christmas show that she produced on her own, with bands performing their favorite holiday songs, interviews, stories and special guests. “So one year I got to interview Santa Claus,” she said with a laugh. “I remember hearing shows on the radio when I was kid, when they would read A Christmas Carol or something … so that felt like my gift to the community.” Grajeda’s multimedia experience ultimately led to an exciting opportunity in 2020, when she was selected to be editor-in-chief of Arkansas Soul, a digital media platform geared towards people of color.

“I like new challenges; I like new projects,” she said. “And I think one of the things that I had definitely clued into was just the importance of highlighting people who are often invisible.” Arkansas Soul gave Grajeda the chance to cover communities of color fully with the robust documentation that’s too often confined to the dominant culture at most news organizations. “With marginalized communities, oftentimes, it’s just when there’s a tragedy or a policy conflict or something,” she said, citing 2020 coverage of the Marshallese community’s high death rate from COVID-19. “And to me, that’s not equitable, because you’re not covering all of the facets.”

Despite the pandemic shutdown, Grajeda managed to launch a roundtable podcast that explored critical topics during tough times, from #BlackLivesMatter to

Opposite: Antoinette Grajeda leads a panel discussion at the SoulCon conference, organized to provide a forum for media professionals of color. Top and above: In the field, Antoinette Grajeda documents a farm tour led by Larry Galligan, above right.

Photos by Chieko Hara

representation in politics. Grajeda has long been involved in mentoring young journalists and helped to organize the SoulCon conference last spring to provide a forum for media professionals of color. One week after that conference, upon return from a much-needed break, she was laid off from Arkansas Soul due to funding issues. Although it was a gut punch, Grajeda said, “What’s been so humbling, shocking and gratifying is how many people have reached out. … You have your people, your community to support you when times get hard.”

Ever resilient, Grajeda’s on to the next thing — she’s helping Arkansas PBS launch its first podcast, The Growing Season, which documents the lives of farmers across the state. In August, Grajeda announced that she had been hired as a senior reporter at Arkansas Advocate, a new independent, nonpartisan newsroom where she covers race and equity, immigration, education, health and economic development. “Things work out how they’re supposed to, and you end up where you’re supposed to be. It’s never a direct path — never never!”

Rethinking Architectural Practice

Ayo Yusuf B.Arch.’06, cum laude, is grateful to experience success in a challenging profession. He’s concluding his three-year term on the board of directors of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIANY) and currently works in New York City as a senior associate at Perkins Eastman, a prominent global design firm. Ayo, who prefers to be called by his first name, has been an integral part of the senior leadership and management team leading the 40-year-old firm’s largest project to date: concurrent development of the master plan and building designs for an international academic medical center complex, with a 700-bed teaching hospital, research center and five different colleges — representing 3.9 million square feet of development. But the project, planned to take place in eight phases over 3½ years, is currently churning through phase three after three years of work.

“In a relatively young career, this has been a great project, but it’s revealed several fracture lines in the profession, at least for me,” Ayo noted. He’s concerned about the role that architects themselves play in the prevailing undervaluing of architectural services: “We’re contracted to develop three concept designs but end up coming up with 43 on the way to three. We’re not getting paid for 43. Not only does this have a ripple effect on

morale, especially for younger team members, it also sends the wrong message to our clients about the value of our time and efforts.”

Ayo brings this passion for improvement to the AIANY Board, where he advocates for different voices and points out perennial problems to address. He was selected to serve on the steering committee for the organization’s inaugural Political Action Fund, which promotes the need for architects to engage in design diplomacy. To ensure that architecture, planning and design are a priority for elected officials, he and his fellow steering committee members surveyed politicians running for office on issues such as affordable housing, sustainability, transportation and safety. They published the various positions as an educational tool and public service to the AIANY membership. “As architects, we’re problem solvers,” he said. “We shouldn’t wait for people to come up with a vision for us to execute — we should be more proactive to design the vision.”

Ayo ascribes his gift for multilayered scenario planning to his childhood chess-playing days and has recently become intrigued by a relatively new field: foresight strategy/futures thinking. “Certain places, like the Googles of the world, build this practice into their culture,” he remarked. “There are places that build a team and insert a devil’s advocate — whose role is to constructively make the team aware of the blind spots that may exist in their plans. Those who ask, ‘What happens if we got our assumptions wrong?’ are increasingly valued,” in fields ranging from engineering to government policy work.

Time will tell where Ayo’s career takes him, but he credits his parents and his time at the U of A with setting him on the path to success. “Imagine coming from Lagos, Nigeria, to Fayetteville, Arkansas. I spoke with quite an accent. I would ask questions in my classes, even though people didn’t understand everything I said,” he recalled. “It was important for me to present myself authentically, and that builds confidence.”

Part of the first honors program cohort from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, Ayo recalls his mettle-testing final year at the U of A, simultaneously working on his honors thesis, juggling a demanding capstone studio and applying to graduate schools. He asked Marlon Blackwell, distinguished professor of architecture, for a letter of recommendation, “and Marlon said, ‘Are you serious? Comp studio is so involved — you won’t have time!’” Blackwell eventually appreciated Ayo’s determination and subsequently wrote that letter, which Ayo credits for his acceptance to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where he completed a master’s degree in urban design.

Before Ayo left for Cambridge, he remembers Blackwell commending him for developing a brilliant idea for the capstone studio project on his first try and then revealing why he’d asked Ayo to explore other options. “Marlon wanted to see how much conviction I had for my original idea,” he recalled. “His parting message for me was to trust my instincts, that I have very good instincts.” Those are words Ayo lives by and hopes to pass on to others: “To be successful on a project, you must have faith in yourself — moxie! Determine what’s important to you and stick with it.”

Opposite and above: Ayo Yusuf stays on the go in New York City, where he serves on the board of the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Photos by Virginie Blachère

The Energy Frontier Team of Physicists to Develop

Next-Generation Semiconductors

BY MATT MCGOWAN

A team of researchers led by ShuiQing “Fisher” Yu, electrical engineering professor at the U of A, will receive $10.35 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to establish an Energy Frontier Research Center.

Greg Salamo, assistant professor Jin Hu, associate professor Hugh Churchill and assistant professor Hiro Nakamura — and several researchers at other institutions.

The four-year grant is part of the Energy Department’s $540 million in research funding to universities and national laboratories focused on clean energy technologies. The ultimate goal is to create and develop low-carbon manufacturing processes that will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The grant will establish the Center for Manipulation of Atomic Ordering for Manufacturing Semiconductors, the first Energy Frontier Research Center in Arkansas. The center will be dedicated to investigating the formation of atomic orders in semiconductor alloys and their effects on various physical properties.

This research program will enable reliable, cost-effective and transformative manufacturing of semiconductors, the essential material used in computers and other electric devices.

In addition to Yu, the team comprises four colleagues in the Department of Physics — Distinguished Professor

The award is based on the multiinstitutional team’s recent discovery that atoms in the alloy silicon germanium tin, a semiconducting material, demonstrate a short-range order in a periodic lattice. Short-range order refers to the regular and predictable arrangement of atoms over a short distance, usually only one or two atom spacings. This discovery had a significant effect on the energy band gap and led to the exciting hypothesis that material properties in semiconductor alloys could be designed and fabricated by manipulating the order of atoms.

“We particularly thank the institutional support from U of A, which played a critical role in proposal completion and will assist center operation,” Yu said.

The U of A will lead researchers from Arizona State University, George Washington University, Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, Dartmouth College, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of Arkansas Pine Bluff, University of Delaware and Sandia National Laboratory.

From left: professors Greg Salamo, Hiro Nakamura, Shui-Qing “Fisher” Yu, Hugh Churchill and Jin Hu in one of the university’s physics labs.

Photo by Whit Pruitt

TikTok, TikTok Doctoral Student Researches Social Media as Teaching Resource

BY SHANNON MAGSAM

TikTok has been trending in Stefanie McKoy’s M.Ed.’09 life for a solid year. The U of A doctoral fellow’s research focuses on how K-12 teachers use the platform to help manage their classrooms.

She recently won a Three Minute Thesis competition — as a representative of the College of Education and Health Professions — by boiling down her many months of research to the most pertinent parts. Having presented at more than 20 conferences in five states before the competition helped prepare her for the challenge.

McKoy’s original thesis has since morphed into her doctoral dissertation proposal. If it’s approved, she’ll be immersed in the video creation world of TikTok for at least another year. She’s already a Ph.D. candidate and graduate assistant in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and she recently presented research to her doctoral committee — the first step before entering the dissertation phase. She shared about classroom management challenges that preservice teachers face on the job, obstacles that are now heightened in the digital world.

Her research has a practical application in the classroom. “I hope my research helps novice teachers navigate the growing world of social media teaching resources as they begin leading and managing their own classrooms,” she said.

McKoy taught elementary school for 13 years before leaving to become a full-time graduate assistant at the U of A. “As a mom and wife, it was hard to leave the classroom security to

pursue my passion for learning,” she said. “I taught third grade for 10 years, fifth grade for three years and gifted for three years.”

But she’s excited to work with students at the college level. As a graduate assistant, she’s also able to teach U of A undergraduate and graduate-level courses to students focused on special education, gifted and talented education, and teacher preparedness.

McKoy holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Missouri State University and earned a master’s in educational technology leadership from the U of A in 2009.

In addition to her love for teaching and research, she’s a prolific writer. McKoy has written 14 books for Kagan Publishing that provide kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers with engaging lesson plans in various subject areas. She recently collaborated with COEHP assistant professor Lorien S. Jordan in the Educational Statistics and Research Methods Program to publish a book chapter on netnography, a qualitative method for researching social media. Another book chapter has been accepted, and the two are also finishing two research projects on social media topics.

Over the past year, McKoy worked alongside her adviser, professor Marcia Imbeau, to move U of A gifted coursework online to reach a wider audience.

The experiences she’s gaining in the curriculum and instruction program fuel her overall passion, which is learning.

“I love to understand myself and find the answer to what, why or how,” she said.

Stefanie McKoy

Photo Submitted

Professional Pathways Students and Alumni Growth Through Mentorship

BY LISY MCKINNON ✪ B.A.’97

The Arkansas Alumni Association entered a comprehensive partnership in September 2020 to broaden the scope of career conversations between alumni and current University of Arkansas students. RazorLink, the U of A’s premier career access platform, has grown steadily since then, connecting Razorbacks nationwide.

In October 2022, RazorLink V2 launched new personalized content that is more relevant to learners at every career stage and age. This platform is ready to set students and alumni on a course of self-discovery, social capital building and a lifetime of professional success.

The most promising addition to our platform is the integration of more than 170 career paths, which users can explore independently or with the help of alumni and friends already working in those positions. Learners on

the platform will discover how their major might map to potential career paths. Through career stories, alumni can share deeper insights about their career journeys, giving the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind their career steps.

From an improved sign-up experience to a redesigned, goal-oriented homepage, RazorLink uses artificial intelligence to create unique recommendations for each user. It also provides intuitive, engaging online experiences with actionable step-by-step guidance to drive each user closer to their career goals. Whether you are a student exploring graduate school or a graduate preparing to make a career pivot, more complete profiles will allow for better guidance toward those who can help.

The Pathways module has been enhanced to help students build their confidence before launching them

into conversations. It empowers users to explore topics such as life design and informational interviews. Finally, our RazorLink Groups, one for each academic college and a handful more for special interest communities, offer resources and opportunities to connect with others around particular discussion topics.

We hope that RazorLink will make mentoring relationships like the one between Dr. Juan Balda and Ph.D. candidate Roderick Gomez Jimenez B.S.E.E.’19, M.S.E.E’22, far more common. The two met up in the spring of 2019 when Jimenez was completing his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. Balda had seen promise in the young student, and Jimenez was pondering “what’s next?” Fortunately, this conversation led to Jimenez’s return to the U of A the following summer. He has since completed his master’s degree and will earn his Ph.D. in May 2023.

Their mutual interest in power engineering was foundational to their professional relationship, but other career conversations have proven just as valuable as the technical skills taught. “One issue

with all graduate students: they don’t like to publish.” When Balda is confronted with such a student, he doesn’t hold back. “Whether a Ph.D. student is planning to go into industry or remain in academia, publishing demonstrates their skills.” In academia, publishing is a validation of your research capabilities; in industry, the work you publish is an important metric in evaluating your potential for developing new products. Another valuable insight gained from conversations between the two men included how Jimenez could use his Ph.D. to improve life in his home country of Panama.

RazorLink can make one-to-one relationships like the one between Balda and Jimenez more frequent and meaningful. The networks and relationships that can be built through the platform could have far-reaching and positive impacts on students and alumni alike. Join RazorLink today by visiting razorlink.arkansasalumni.org If you have questions about the platform, please send an email to mentoring@arkansasalumni.org

Opposite page: Dr. Juan Balda (left) and Ph.D. candidate Roderick Gomez Jimenez (right).

Shared Excellence

Career conversations and mentoring relationships don’t just develop within common disciplines; they can also arise from other shared goals. Wendy Echeverria, B.A.’17, an alumni scholar and graduate student in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, also considers Juan Balda a mentor.

“I worked with Dr. Balda for almost three years. I was the multimedia communication specialist for the Electrical Engineering Department, and to be honest, when I first started working with his team, I was nervous because I wanted to do a good job. Still, I didn’t know

if I would. I learned so much during my time with Dr. Balda in the Electrical Engineering Department, and I’ll always be grateful. It was then that I realized that I wanted to be in the public relations and advertising field, but I wanted more, so I decided to return to school. It was hard for me, but I’m grateful that Dr. Balda always supported my decision. Yes, he was my boss at one moment, but he became my mentor and friend. He’s given me advice and support through some anxious times, and I’m so grateful. He’s someone I look up to and hope to be like someday.”

Balda describes Echevarria as an employee who put her heart into continuous learning and cultivation of her skills. She wasn’t shy, and one attribute she shares with Jimenez is her willingness to take advantage of everything available as she pursues her goals. “She has a lot of energy and passion for her work,” states Balda. On a foundation of shared excellence, great relationships can grow.

Photo by University Relations and submitted

Photo by Sydney Mulvenon, B.A.’22

Once Students, Forever Razorbacks

President’s Letter

This past year our beloved University of Arkansas celebrated 150 years of service. How time flies — and it is hard for me to believe that I was roaming this campus just 50 years ago — 1969-1973. I loved every day on campus. I met and married my wife, Sheroll Smith Walker ✪+ B.S.E.’75, there. We took a couple of classes together and had one professor who insisted that it would be better if we did not sit together — he mentioned a lack of concentration. He was right!

Many things have changed, yet our university traditions remain true. Homecoming parades and pep rallies, intramural sports, football weekends … oh yes, and class. Back in the 70s, we actually had concerts in Barnhill Arena — B.J. Thomas, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Loggins and Messina, and Neil Diamond performed. I understand an effort is under consideration to create similar opportunities as we welcomed Garth Brooks to Donald W. Reynolds Stadium last spring!

A few of you will remember standing in line at the “old” Student Union on Maple where some of the 11,000 students gathered daily for lunch. The Union made the best hamburger in Fayetteville on an open grill. Today, our campus serves more than 30,000 students, and the lunch options are amazing, including Chick-fil-A or barista coffee. The students are still standing in line for their favorite items! We also stood in line for our student tickets to football games, and now the students stand in

line for football, basketball and baseball tickets. Again, TRADITION!

The growth and transformation of campus are so amazing and appealing to students from Arkansas, across the nation and around the world. The new Student Success Center is a testament to our university’s commitment to students. Our university provides students with an education as well as a support system that will prepare them for any career they choose. This university has been blessed to have so many generous donors who care about students and their success.

Your alumni association also continues to adapt and grow in support of all our alumni and to meet the changing expectations. We are tradition keepers and relationship builders. As we continue to live our mission to connect and serve the U of A family, I hope you will support your alumni association and spread the word about this great institution. If you haven’t joined one of the local chapters or connected with an alumni society, please do. I would ask you to let me know if there are better ways to serve you as an alumnus.

We are One Razorback Nation!

Go Hogs,

Don Walker ✪+ B.S.A.’74 President, National Board of Directors Arkansas Alumni Association

University Relations

Past Presidents of the

1923-24 Joseph Kirby Mahone ✪ B.A.’07

1924-25 Robert Hill Carruth B.A.’11

1925-26 James E. Rutherford ✪ B.A.’22

1926-27 Winston Lee Winters B.S.C.E.’06

1927-28 J.L. Longino B.S.E.E.’03

1928-29 Alfred Boyde Cypert B.A.’12

1929-30 James William Trimble B.A.’17

1930-31 G. DeMatt Henderson B.A.’01, LL.B.’03

1931-32 Dr. Jasper Neighbors M.D.’18

1932-33 Scott D. Hamilton B.A.’24

1933-34 Charles A. Walls B.A.’07

1934-35 Arthur D. Pope B.A.’06 1935-36 John C. Ashley B.A.’11

1936-37 Beloit Taylor B.A.’19

1937-38 John P. Woods ✪ B.A.’09

1938-39 Glen Rose ★ B.S.E.’28, M.S.’31

1939-40 Claude J. Byrd ★ B.S.A.’25

1940-41 Charles Frierson Jr. ’29

1941-42 John B. Daniels B.S.A.’33

1942-44 G. DeMatt Henderson B.A.’01, LL.B.’03

1944-45 Dr. M. L. Dalton M.D.’32

1945-46 Jack East ✪ B.S.E.’24

1946-47 Steve Creekmore ★ B.S.B.A.’11

1947-48 Maupin Cummings ✪ B.A.’32

1948-49 Roy Milum BA’04, LL.D.’58

1949-50 Paul Sullins ✪ J.D.’37

1950-51 Francis Cherry LL.B.’38

1951-52 J.C. Gibson B.A.’24, M.S.’38

1952-53 George Makris ✪ B.S.B.A.’37

1953-54 Edward B. Dillon Jr. ★ LL.B.’50

1954-55 Beloit Taylor B.A.’19

Arkansas Alumni Association Board of Directors ALUMNI

1955-56 Louis L. Ramsay Jr. LL.B’47, LL.D.’88

1956-57 Stanley Wood ✪ B.A.’23

1957-58 A.L. Whitten M.S.’40

1958-59 W.R. “Dub” Harrison B.A’.20 1959-60 E.M. “Mack” Anderson ✪+ B.A.’32

1960-61 Warren Wood ✪ LL.B.’32

1961-62 Owen Calhoun Pearce B.S.B.A.’41, LL.B.’41

1962-63 James C. Hale B.A.’33

1963-64 Jack East Jr. B.S.B.A.’48

1964-65 J. Fred Patton ✪+ BA’29 M.A.’36 1965-66 P.K. Holmes Jr. ✪ BA’37 LL.B.’39

1966-67 William H. Bowen ★ LL.B.’49

1967-68 Guy H. Lackey ✪+ B.S.B.A.’49 1968-69 Robert P. Taylor ✪+ B.S.B.A.’47, M.S.48 1969-70 John Ed Chambers B.A.’39, LL.B.’40 1970-71 Chester H. Lauck ’25

1971-72 Nathan Gordon ✪+ J.D.’39 1972-73 Charles E. Scharlau ✪+ LL.B.’51 1973-74 Carl L. Johnson ★ B.S.B.A.’47

1974-75 R. Cecil Powers ✪ B.S.B.A.’30

1975-76 J.C. Reeves ✪ ’25

1976-77 Elizabeth (Sissi) Riggs Brandon ✪+ B.S.E.’55

1977-78 Roy Murphy ✪+ B.S.I.M.’49

1978-79 Fred Livingston ✪ B.S.B.A.’55

1979-80 Tracy Scott ✪ B.S.E.’53

1980-81 Edward W. Stevenson ✪+ B.S.B.A.’60

1981-82 Fred Livingston ✪ B.S.B.A.’55

1982-83 Don Schnipper ✪+ B.A.’63, J.D.’64

1983-84 Mary Trimble Maier ✪+ B.A.’49

ARK ANSAS

1984-85 Bart Lindsey ✪+ B.S.B.A.’67

1985-86 W. Kelvin Wyrick ✪+ B.S.E.’59

1986-87 Larry G. Stephens ✪+ B.S.I.E.’58

1987-88 Rebecca Shreve ✪+ B.S.E.’60, M.E.D.’63

1988-89 Robert T. Dawson ✪+ B.A.’60, LL.B.’65

1989-90 Gregory B. Graham ✪+ B.S.B.A.’70, J.D.’72

1990-91 Blake Schultz ✪+ B.A.’51

1991-92 Chuck Dudley ✪+ B.S.B.A.’76, M.B.A.’77

1992-93 Harriet Hudson Phillips ✪+ B.A.’72

1993-94 Richard Hatfield ✪+ B.S.B.A.’65, LL.B.’67

1994-95 Jenny Mitchell Adair ✪+ B.A.’62

1995-96 Jack McNulty ✪+ B.S.B.A.’67 J.D.’70

1996-97 Sylvia Boyer ✪+ B.S.E.’63

1997-98 Morris Fair ★ B.S.B.A.’56

1998-00 H. Lawson Hembree IV ✪+ B.S.A’83

2000-02 Jeffery R. Johnson ✪+ B.A.’70

2002-04 Edward Bradford ✪+ B.S.E’55, M.ED.’56

2004-06 Brian M. Rosenthal ✪+ B.S.B.A.’84

2006-08 Kenny Gibbs ✪+ B.S.B.A.’85

2008-10 Gerald Jordan ✪+ B.A.’70

2010-12 Steve Nipper ✪+ B.S.B.A.’71, M.B.A.’73

2012-14 John Reap ✪+ B.S.B.A.’70

2014-16 Stephanie S. Streett ✪ B.S.’91

2016-18 Don Eldred ✪+ B.S.B.A.’81

2018-20 Teena Gayle Gunter ✪ J.D.'92, LL.M.'97

2020-22 Ron Rainey ✪ B.S.A.’91, M.S.’93, Ph.D.’01

Dylan Hollums ★ B.S.E.’10

Society Leader Spotlight

BY CATHERINE BALTZ ✪+ B.S.’92, M.ED.’07

Dylan Hollums has been involved with the Armed Forces Alumni Society since its founding in 2017 and currently serves as the secretary on the society’s Board of Directors.

A native of Northwest Arkansas, Hollums is a 2010 graduate of the Human Resource Development program in the College of Education and Health Professions. However, his educational journey to his U of A degree was circuitous. After graduating high school, he decided to leave the area to attend college. Hollums earned an associate degree in aeronautics from Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in September 2001.

“It was a rocky time,” Hollums said, and the prospects of getting an aviation job after 9/11 were slim. He enlisted in the Air Force Reserves, which opened his eyes to the fact that he could receive pay to get the training he had just paid someone else to teach him. “Not only did they teach me the skills that I learned in my associate degree in the Air Force for avionics, but then, they also gave me money to continue my pursuit of a bachelor’s degree,” Hollums said.

Hollums moved back home and enrolled at the U of A to study civil engineering. He was, however, a new father and a full-time staff member at the U of A Police Department while trying to pursue his degree as a

full-time student. He explored different programs and reached out to a “fairly new program,” the human resource and workforce development program. Hollums gained a mentor in Phil Gerke M.A.’00, Ph.D.’13, the coordinator of student services for the program at the time. With the flexibility of the online classes and working the overnight midnight shift as a 911 dispatcher for the UAPD, he could be a full-time parent. Hollums said he “got to live and breathe everything U of A.” His favorite memory of the U of A is seeing the beautiful sunrises coming up over Mount Sequoyah and its first beams of light just hitting Old Main while he was working with the UAPD.

A member of the 188th Fighter Wing, Arkansas Air National Guard, Hollums is the public affairs officer for Ebbing Air Guard Base in Fort Smith. He serves as the commander’s representative and coordinator for community and media relations for both internal and external audiences.

Captain Hollums served with the Air Force Reserve 513th Maintenance Group, Tinker Air Force Base 2001-2007 as a guidance and control operator and joined the Arkansas Air National Guard as an avionics technician in 2008. Hollums served as director of inspections in 2019 before he joined the public affairs team full time in January 2020. In addition to his military service, Hollums worked full time at J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. from 2013-2019.

Hollums said the most unique place he Called the Hogs was in Afghanistan, when 188th deployed to Bagram Airfield. In 2012, they filmed a shout-out to the U of A featuring a Hog Call. View the video by Staff Sgt. Neal Uranga at https://bit.ly/3FrhBfQ.

Association membership “helps him reconnect with my fellow alumni,” Hollums said, and offers networking and other benefits. When asked what advice he would give recent graduates, he said, “It’s not too early to come back; you’ll always have a home on campus.”

The Armed Forces Alumni Society’s mission is to foster and enhance relationships between alumni, faculty, staff, students and their families who are current and former members of the armed forces. The society includes representatives from every U of A college and school and across all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations and generations of living alumni. Members of the Armed Forces Alumni Society engage with the university and each other across the world. To get involved with the society, visit www.arkansasalumni.org/afas.

Left, Dylan Hollums at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House under the Bill and Jo Ella Toller Bell Tower.

Photo by Catherine Baltz.

Above, Screenshot of video by Staff Sgt. Neal Uranga

Calling All Hogs Home 100 Years of Tradition

The 2022 University of Arkansas Homecoming celebration took place Oct. 28 to Nov. 5. The U of A family celebrated 100 Years of Tradition commemorating this long-standing tradition, which began with the first Homecoming parade held on Nov. 16, 1922. While the

weather necessitated the cancellation of this year’s parade and pep rally, Homeoming was a success. The U of A family came together throughout the week to celebrate the university and each other.

Homecoming Kickoff

The Associated Student Government, in partnership with the Alumni Association, hosted the Homecoming Kickoff on Friday, Oct. 28, on the Arkansas Union Mall. The kickoff included Hot Dogs with Head Hogs, a caricature artist, music, corn dogs and funnel cakes. Big thanks to Razorback athletics, the Razorback Foundation, Big Red and DJ Derrick, who helped make the event successful.

Photos courtesy of @UARKASG Facebook

Pack the Pantry

The Jane B. Gearhart Full Circle Food Pantry hosted the sixth annual Pack the Pantry Food Drive from Oct. 31 through Nov. 11. At press time, Pack the Pantry donations are still being counted. More than 11,400 items have been counted and eight more bins are still to be tallied.

Senior Walk Dedication

On Friday, Nov. 4, the association hosted the annual Senior Walk Dedication for the Class of 2020. The event began with a brunch at the Inn at Carnall Hall featuring Class of 2020 alumni Jared Pinkerton, Kate Truitt and Lauren Love. The brunch was followed by a ribboncutting at the corner of Cleveland and Garland, which included photo opportunities.

Homecoming Online Auction

The annual Homecoming Online Auction welcomed bids from Oct. 28 through Nov.11. It raised more than $25,800 through the generosity of 200 donors who attracted 333 bidders (125 winners) vying for 255 different items. Proceeds will benefit our alumni scholarship program for years to come.

Photos by Whit Pruitt, University Relations

Photos courtesy of Jane B. Gearhart

Full Circle Food Pantry Facebook

Homecoming Court Event

ASG and the Alumni Association hosted a Homecoming Court event at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House in place of the Pep Rally. ASG introduced 2022 Homecoming King Jason Collins and Queen Karlie Barnett.

NPHC Homecoming Step Show

The U of A’s National PanHellenic Council hosted the 2022 NPHC Homecoming Step Show on Friday, Nov. 4, in the Arkansas Union. Alumni, family and friends supported the historically Black fraternities and sororities as they performed and competed in step and dance. The return to campus of the traditional Homecoming Step Show for the first time since 2019 featured the DJ talents of Derrick Dansby. Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. placed third, and Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc. placed second. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. took first place.

Photo Derrick Dansby Facebook

Photos courtesy of Parice S. Bowser Facebook

Photos by Beth Dedman

MEMBERSHIP HAS ITS BENEFITS

Hog Wild Tailgate

The association hosted its annual Homecoming Hog Wild Tailgate at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House before Arkansas faced off against Liberty University. The Homecoming Court and alumni awardees mingled with guests. Attendees enjoyed an elevated view of Hog Town, a front-row seat for the start of the Hog Walk and a pep rally led by the Razorback Marching Band and Spirit Squads.

Photos by Catherine Baltz and Beth Dedman

Alumni Alumni

Awards Celebration

The association hosted the 77th Alumni Awards Celebration Reception and Awards Dinner at the Fayetteville Town Center on Nov. 4. More than 350 alumni and friends joined in celebrating and honoring the accomplishments of 13 alumni, faculty and friends. The following day, the awardees were presented on the Frank Broyles Field at Donald W. Reynolds Razorback Stadium during the Homecoming Game.

Celebration Photos by Catherine Baltz

Photo by Julie Simpson

Photos by Deb Euculano

Celebration Photos by Catherine Baltz

Homecoming Game and Halftime Show

At halftime, the Razorback Marching Band performed its halftime show, and the Homecoming Court made an appearance on the field. During the court presentation, Chancellor Charles Robinson crowned the Homecoming King, Jason Collins, and the Queen, Karlie Barnett.

Bumpers College Alumni Society Tailgate

The Bumpers College Alumni Society hosted its annual Homecoming Tailgate on the Hawkins Family Terrace and the Maudine Sanders Student Plaza and Garden.

Photos submitted

Photos by Whit Pruitt, University Relations

Working Hard and Learning About Ourselves

2022 First-Year Alumni Association Endowed Scholars

Each year the Arkansas Alumni Association receives hundreds of scholarship applications from incoming U of A first-year students. After an extensive review, two applicants are selected as recipients of the Alumni Association Endowed Scholarship. Engaging smiles and welcoming personalities are the first things you will notice about the 2022-23 first-year student recipients.

Do not be fooled.

L.A. Cate and Emma Flager embrace hard work while pursuing their U of A degrees. During a recent conversation with Cate and Flager, they expressed enthusiasm for opportunities to strengthen their selfsufficiency, make new friends and participate in the numerous activities available on campus.

Laura Abigail Cate, “L.A.” to her friends, is a Fayetteville native for whom the U of A has always been a central part of life. Cate admits to having many interests but has chosen to triple major in biological engineering, mechanical engineering with an aerospace concentration and pure mathematics.

Cate said her greatest challenge at the U of A so far is overcoming “reverse procrastination,” wanting to complete so much coursework that she must remember to make time for sleep and self-care.

Fluent in French, she has enjoyed conversations with French international students. She also says living on her own for the first time is rewarding, even though she surprised herself by now enjoying household chores. Cate expects to fully enjoy her time as a student and looks forward to “being an alumna, supporting the (Arkansas Alumni) Association and helping fund scholarships for the students that come behind me.”

Emma Flager excitedly spoke about how welcomed she feels on campus and how she truly knows she belongs here. A graduate of Rogers (Arkansas) High School, Flager is following in the footsteps of many family members by attending the U of A. She is majoring in psychology to help fulfill her dreams of helping children in the foster care system through animal therapy. Flager enjoys spending time with new friends and shared that a group of them enjoyed laying on the Maple Hill lawn watching as Jupiter passed overhead.

Flager said her biggest challenge at the U of A so far is learning how to figure things out on her own, but she has enjoyed it because it has taught her that she is strong enough to handle it.

She said, “I look forward to learning more about myself than anything at the U of A, for I believe education plays a key role in discovering your beliefs, passions and personality. Education opens doors, and those open doors allow you to find your true self, which I am looking forward to the U of A doing for me.”

Photo by the Arkansas Alumni Association

Photo submitted Photo submitted

New Application for Old Problem Alumnus

Spencer Jones Invents Device to Prevent Dislodgment of IVs

BY SHANNON MAGSAM

Spencer Jones B.S.N.’13, an alumnus of the Eleanor Mann School of Nursing, was working the night shift on a busy medical-surgical floor when the idea for a breakaway device for IV catheters was born.

“I would routinely have five to six patients at a time. Virtually all of them had IV catheters, and it felt like they were constantly failing,” he said. Most of the time, the tubing was getting pulled out, which happened for various reasons: patients tripped over the tubes, they would catch on a door handle in the bathroom or they’d snag on a bedrail during transfers to wheelchairs or gurneys.

“It was frustrating because I didn’t have any tools at my disposal to prevent these complications from happening,” he said.

Jones knew breakaway devices were used at gas station pumps and for magnetic laptop chargers. “So, the concept wasn’t new. It was just a new application of an existing concept,” he said.

His patented and trademarked SafeBreak Vascular technology — which allows nurses to quickly switch out failed IVs without a new catheter or additional needle sticks — was approved by the FDA in May 2022. It took three years.

“That was probably one of the happiest moments of my life. I cried as soon as we got off the Zoom call with the FDA,” Jones said. “It took years longer than we thought it would to get FDA clearance, and I was starting to feel a little imposter syndrome, to be honest. Having to tell friends and investors ‘No clearance yet, we’re still in regulatory’ for three years got really old.”

While FDA clearance was a massive weight off Jones’ shoulders, he had to quickly shift into sales mode, “which any entrepreneur can tell you is equally as challenging,” he said.

Jones is the founder and chief technology officer of Lineus Medical, and more than half of his company’s employees are either current U of A students or alumni. “Of the nine employees we have, three are alumni and two are students,” he said. “We’ve also leveraged the intern program at the U of A multiple times. It’s such a great way to get talented support and a unique learning opportunity for the interns.”

Jones loves that moment when fellow nurses see the technology for the first time at trade shows. “Their faces light up,” he said. “Usually, they immediately say, ‘I could’ve used this last week when that one patient tripped on their tubing!’ Half the time they say, ‘I bet a nurse invented this,’ and I get to say, ‘Yes, indeed!’”

Nurse and alumnus Spencer Jones created the FDAapproved and trademarked SafeBreak Vascular technology to prevent IV dislodgement, helping patients, nurses and medical facilities’ bottom lines.

Photo Submitted

Chancellor’s Reception

In July, the Chicago Chapter hosted a reception featuring Chancellor Charles Robinson ✪ and Associate Vice Chancellor Brandy Cox Jackson ✪ M.A.’07

10450 Suzanne Davidson ’74 10451 Erik Christopher Sward ’07

10452 Dr. Lindsey E. Sward ’05 10453 Colin Todd Andreas ’04 10454 Morgan Andreas 10455 Stephen Patrick Penor ’95 10456 Miranda Penor 10457 Dr. Brian C. Platt ’12 10458 Leah B. Platt 10459 Jerry Wayne Jones ’65 10460 Gene Chambers Jones ’64

10461 Bart Simmons ’10, ’11

10462 Gardner S. Andreas ’01 10463 Leah D. Andreas

10464 Tammy L. Cagle ’86

10465 Richard M. Schmiedeke

10466 Jack Joseph Williamson ’05

10467 Dalton Person ’16 10468 Claire E. Person ’13 10469 Kay Holland ’64 10470 George R. Holland 10471 Stephen L. Pemberton ’81

10472 Nancy Pemberton 10473 Henry C. Kelley Jr. ’77 10474 Stephanie Dailey Kelley ’79

10475 Elaine Olson 10476 Donnie Davis ’93

10477 Mark W. Saunders 10478 Ginger Saunders 10479 Brent McDiarmid 10480 Ruby McDiarmid

10481 Mary Graydon Jessen ’83

10482 Scott Jessen

10483 Dr. Joseph Jabo ’14

10484 Liliose Mujawimana

10485 Dr. Stuart McGehee Taylor Sr. ’74, ’76

10486 Dr. Charlotte Russell Taylor

10487 Louie Graves III ’70

10488 Paul R. Davis ’20

10489 Stephen Darr ’77 10490 Jill Holman LeCompte ’88, ’92

10491 Phillip Lang 10492 Elizabeth Lilly McLaughlin ’96

10493 Scott Alan McLaughlin ’96 10494 Judy Huneycutt 10495 Calvin Huneycutt 10496 Brian Richard Burns ’86 10497 Rebecca L. Burns 10498 Robert T. Billingsley ’67 10499 Ruth Billingsley 10500 Lauren A. Zulpo ’14 10501 Jim B. Serna ’82 10502 Deborah E. Serna 10503 Robert Edward Tehan ’70, ’76

10504 Linda J. Quinlivan 10505 Richard Martial Welcher ’99, ’04

10506 Christi R. Welcher ’98

10507 Dr. William D. Hammers ’67, ’76

10508 Beverly Hammers

10509 Dr. Alice R. Griffin ’17

10510 Dr. Darlene Zeh Millard ’76, ’82

10511 Lindsey R. LeverettHiggins ’19 10512 Leon Higgins

10513 Shannon M. McGee ’95 10514 Veronica McGee 10515 Gina Martin Briley ’84 10516 Robert H. Briley Jr. ’84 10517 Wendy M. Stewart ’21 10518 Cornelius D. Boone ’03, ’07 10519 Tea’ Boone ’07 10520 Bruce G. Luttrell ’78 10521 Ronnie G. Caveness Jr. ’91

10522 Dr. Leigh Ann Ellis ’90, ’17 10523 Melinda D. Allison ’03 10524 Jeremy B. Allison 10525 Sonya L. Hunt-Gray ’85 10526 Tom Weiss ’63, ’65 10527 Jane K. Weiss 10528 Karen Sue Ward ’75 10529 Thomas H. Ward Jr. ’77 10530 Kathie A. Hess ’00 10531 Nick W. Hess 10532 David E. Love 10533 Kimberlie A. Love

Photos submitted

EECAS Tailgate

The Engineering Early Career Alumni Society hosted a tailgate on Oct. 1 at the home of Micky and Marybeth Mayfield.

Watch Parties in Chicago

The Chicago Chapter hosted watch parties at Joe’s on Weed Street. There, local alumni gather to Call the Hogs, cheer and slap 5’s.

Photo submitted

Photos submitted

YOUR AD COULD BE

Visit www.arkansasalumni.org/advertising or email advertising@arkansasalumni.org for more information.

Southwest Classic

The Arkansas Alumni Association and the university’s New Student and Family Programs hosted a SWC Hog Wild Tailgate on Saturday, Sept. 24. Alumni, parents, students and Razorbacks fans all had a great time cheering on the Hogs. Special guests included former Razorback athlete D.J. Williams, Chancellor Charles Robinson ✪ and Vice Chancellor for Advancement Mark Power ★+.

Football for Scholarships

The Chicago Chapter is your 2022 SEC Flag Football Champion! Thank you to everyone who participated. We are looking forward to next year. The chapter won $200, which will be contributed to next year’s Chicago Alumni Chapter Scholarship Fund.

Calling the Hogs in Dallas

The Dallas Alumni Chapter hosted several watch parties at KSP Henderson to cheer on the Hogs!

Photos submitted

Photo submitted

Black Alumni Society Tailgates

The Black Alumni Society and the Division for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion host Razorback home football tailgates. The tailgates promote engagement, connections, diversity, equity and inclusion. Other sponsors for the tailgates are Beam Suntory, the Center of Multicultural and Diversity Education, the Dr. Barbara A. Lofton Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the New Family and Student Programs, Latino Alumni Society, PRIDE Alumni Society, Armed Forces Alumni Society, Indigenous Employee Impact Group, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and the Arkansas Alumni Association.

College Clinic

Kansas City Alumni Chapter board members and University of Arkansas admission counselors participated in the Shawnee Mission College Clinic on Oct. 12.

Photos submitted

Hog Wild Tailgates

It has been another spirited season for Hog Wild Tailgates at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House.

Alumni and friends gathered to support the Razorbacks. We enjoyed the Razorback Marching Band and Spirit Squads and special guest appearances.

We hope to see you again in 2023; bookmark www. arkansasalumni.org/ hogwildtailgates to watch for details.

Thank you to WealthPath Investment Advisors for sponsoring the tailgates on Sept. 3 and Oct.1.

Yesteryear

1872

• A bookshelf with donated books is included in the university’s first building, and it becomes the genesis of the present-day University Libraries.

1902

• During this time the university’s military department was under supervision of the United States government. The armory was supplied with 300 Springfield cadet rifles, 300 sets of infantry equipment, 27 swords, national colors, flags and signal equipment, all of the same model as those used

at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

1912

• Percy Hinton is elected captain of the football team, and the track team elects Russell May.

• The College of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Engineering is divided into the College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering.

1922

• Thanks to a monetary gift from the class of 1922, the southeast entrance of campus is reconstructed.

• The University Weekly publishes a special ROTC

edition and cites U of A President John C. Futrall as the inspiration for the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps nationwide.

• Thanks to a monetary gift from the Class of 1922, the southeast entrance to campus at the corner of Dickson and Arkansas Avenue is rebuilt with curving walls rising to square columns on either side.

1932

• Total student fees for the 1931-32 academic year are $25 per semester.

• This year marks the fifth year that student dances

were supervised by the Student Social Committee. All social functions of the university students were under the control and supervision of the Student Social Committee, which controls the dates for social functions, conduct at dances, finances, orchestras and all other details.

1942

• The 1942 Razorback yearbook is dedicated “to those University of Arkansas alumni and students who are now serving and who will soon serve in the Armed Forces of the United States and her allies.”

From left, U of A President David Mullins; former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who gave the commencement speech in 1972; and Palmer Pilcher, vice president for academic affaris, are greeted by veterans of the Vietnam War protesting Rusk’s support of the war during the early 1960s.

1972 Razorback

• The Arkansas Traveler feels the effects of the war and drops from a bi-weekly to a weekly publication the second semester. Due to a decreased enrollment and a lack of news, the Board of Publications thought such action was necessary, and the staff agreed.

1952

• The university creates a Nursing School in cooperation with the Medical School in Little Rock.

• Colonel Henry Neilson heads the Army ROTC program, by then 79 years on campus.

• Student Pat Summerall ✪ B.S.E.’53, later one of the great American sports broadcasters, greets Xavier Cugat and his jazz orchestra for the annual Gaebale festival.

• Edith Mae Irby ✪ B.S.’52 is the first African American student to earn a Doctor of Medicine from the University of Arkansas Medical College in Little Rock.

• The two earliest known Asian faculty members, Paul Kazuo Kuroda and Ngeu Faung Tsang, join the faculty — Kuroda in the Department of Chemistry and Tsang in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

1962

• The university’s high school is discontinued.

• Lance Alworth B.S.B.A’62 is named an All America football player.

• The university predicts that enrollment might exceed 40,000 students by the year 2000.

1972

• Playing before a firsttime sell-out crowd in the Liberty Bowl at Memphis, the Razorbacks battled the Tennessee Volunteers for the first time since 1907. In the final minutes, two

disputed calls against the Hogs turned sweet victory into agonizing defeat.

• Space for an “Ethnic Center” is allocated in Memorial Hall, the old student union, for use by all campus ethnic groups. This was a forerunner of the Multicultural Center.

1982

• By the end of the 1982 school year, the College of Business Administration is the largest college on campus with nearly 4,000 students.

• The College of Arts and Sciences is named in honor of J. William Fulbright B.A.’25, a former student, professor, U of A president and U.S. senator.

• Construction begins on the Bell Engineering Center, closing the southern end of Campus Drive.

• The Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House, at that time just referred to as the Alumni Building, opens at the corner of Razorback Road and Maple Street, giving alumni and fans a place to call home when visiting campus.

1992

• Former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton speaks to a crowd on the Old Main Lawn during Homecoming Week on Oct. 23, two weeks before being elected president of the United States.

• The Walton Arts Center opens its doors to Northwest Arkansas residents. More than 8,000 people attend the preview, which includes more than 1,000 artists and performers.

• Hill Hall, built as the third men’s residence hall on campus and home to the Department of Journalism for two decades, is demolished to make room for expansion of Mullins Library.

2002

• Former Kent State coach Stan Heath is hired to coach the Razorback basketball team. Heath replaces coach Nolan Richardson ✪, who led the Razorbacks to a national championship during his tenure from 1986 to 2002.

2012

• The sculpture commemorating Silas Hunt’s enrollment in the University of Arkansas and his life is unveiled just north of Old Main and west of the present-day Student Success Center.

Two members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority, hair teased to the breaking point and faces with the “scary clown” look, perform in a circus-themed dance during the Greek Variety Show in 2012.

From Senior Walk

Let us know about your milestones and anything else you would like to share with your classmates — births, marriages, new jobs, retirements, moves and more. Please include your degree, class year, and when applicable, your maiden name. To provide the most thorough coverage of alumni news, we publish notes about members and non-members of the

Class Notes

1960s

William B. Wheeler

★ BA’64 MA’65 of Tulsa, Oklahoma, published his latest book, Missing Palm Tree: Stories of America’s Clandestine Service

Arkansas Alumni Association and will indicate membership status for reference. You may send us news or simply update your information. Since the next issues of Arkansas are already in production, it may be a few issues before your item appears. Submit your news online at www. arkansasalumni.org/classnotes; by mail: From Senior Walk, Arkansas Alumni Association, P.O. Box 1070,

Fayetteville AR 72702; or by email: records@arkansasalumni.org.

These symbols indicate Alumni Association membership: ✩ Student Member ★ Member ★+ Member, A+ ✪ Life Member ✪+ Life Member, A+

Susan Walk Burnett ✪+ BA’68 of Houston, Texas, was named the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Most Admired CEOS from the Houston Business Journal on Sept. 1. She is the first woman to receive this award for this event. Sue was also named to the Top 100 Women

in Staffing in the U.S. by Staffing Industry Analysts. Her company, Burnett Specialists, was recently named the number one Placement Firm and the number three Staffing Firm in Houston by the Houston Business Journal

1980s

Carolyn Diane Shoemaker ✪ BSA’81 of Fayetteville is one of the Employees of the Year for 2021-22 named by the Staff Senate. She

is a project and program specialist with the Office of Graduation and Retention within the university’s Student Success Center.

John R. Clark ✪+ PHD’83 of Fayetteville is the recipient

Photo by Chieko Hara

of the 2022 Chad Finn Ambassador Award by the American Pomological Society. As a distinguished professor of horticulture at the U of A, he has been working at the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment States as a fruit breeder and researcher.

David Macchiarolo ★+ BSEE’84 of High Point, North Carolina, is an undersea system architect and engineering project manager at General Dynamics Mission Systems in Greensboro.

Jim Harris ✪ BSBA’85 JD’88 of Rogers retired after 22 years of service at the U of A.

He was an associate vice chancellor for University Advancement.

John Smart JD’87 of Dallas, Texas, is listed as one of The Best Lawyers in America for 2023.

1990s

David Eugene Shinn ★ BSEE’90 of Seaford, Virginia, is the associate director for labs and facilities in the Engineering Directorate at NASA’s Langley Research Center. David has over 32 years of experience.

Melinda Allen ★ BSBA’92 of Springdale is director of total rewards at the U of A Human Resources. She will help the leadership team focus on the division’s mission of “building a productive campus community where all can thrive.”

Betty Sharp AA’95 BSE’06 MED’09 of Farmington retired after 45 years of

service at the U of A. She was a complex gift specialist in University Advancement.

2000s

Barrett J. Hipes ✪ BM’03 of New York City, New York, is the associate vice president for student development at the Julliard School, having previously served as dean of student development and founding director of Julliard Alan D. Marks Center for Career Services and Entrepreneurship.

Jeremy M. Battjes ✪ MED’05 EDD’16 of Fayetteville is the recipient of the 2022 Financial Affairs Service and Innovation Award. The award was created to recognize those throughout the U of A who make significate contributions to the university through bold, innovative and creative approaches to common, everyday university problems.

Patricia Gamboa MED’07 of Fayetteville is the assistant dean for the Graduate School and International Education.

William James Richardson BSBE’07 of Fayetteville is an associate professor in the Ralph E. Martin Department of Chemical Engineering at the U of A.

Sandy Sehon BSHES’07 of Fayetteville is the Employee of the Year in the College of Engineering.

2010s

Wendyam Fernand David Traore PHD’10 of Van Nuys, California, completed a National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program, funded by an NSF grant, to explore the commercialization of a new type of high-torque electric motor and controller for robotic applications. The team was also awarded the ICorps program’s New York ICorps Hub Spirit Team Award.

Katie Terrell MBA’12 of Fayetteville received a 2022 Innovation in Accounting Education Award presented by the American Accounting Association.

Autumn Lewis Spicher ✪ BA’14 MPA’21 of Fayetteville was selected for the ”Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s: 40 under 40,” which honors 40 individuals under the age of 40 who were nominated as best in class by their peers in all industries.

Madeline Fogel BA’11 of Chicago, Illinois, was selected by her peers as one of The Best Lawyers: Ones to Watch in America for 2023.

Molly K. Throgmorton MA’11 of Fayetteville received the Society of Research Administrators International’s ”Future of the Field” award. The recognition program highlights the up-and-comers of research administration demonstrating leadership among their peers and institutions in innovative ways.

Charini Indumini Urteaga BS’14 MED’19 of Fayetteville is the U of A Global Campus Employee of the Fourth Quarter. The designation was given based on her exceptional service and support to U of A faculty who teach online and on campus.

Caylin Cierra Craig BA’16 of Dallas, Texas, is an associate in the Dallas office of Crowe & Dunlevy. A member of the Bankruptcy & Creditor’s Rights and Litigation & Trial Practice Groups, Craig’s litigation practice focuses on a variety of commercial disputes in which she represents individuals and companies in state, federal and bankruptcy court.

Margaret Livingston

Hindman MS’17 PHD’20 of Fayetteville received the Association for Play Therapy’s 2022 Student Research Award based on her article “The Adult Public’s Perception of the Utility of Play Therapy.”

and how different types of sediment accumulation interact with each other over millennia.

2020s

Joy E. Clark MFA’20 of Fayetteville received the Arkansas Arts Council 2022 Individual Artist Fellowship awards. After receiving her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the U of A, she currently works for local nonprofits Art Ventures and The Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow.

Presentation in the area of physiology and reproduction at the Poultry Science Association Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

In Memoriam

1940s

Austin Bollen ✪+ BSEE’47 of El Dorado on July 31.

Adedoyin Ayomide Abe BSME’18 of Fayetteville received the Anderson Graduate Fellowship for the 2022-23 year from Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society. She will continue her graduate work at the U of A researching surface engineering and lubrication technologies.

Carrie Catherine Ortel MS’18 of Fayetteville received the American Society of Agronomy Nelson Yield Limiting Factors Graduate Students Scholarship and a Crop Science Society America Gerald O. Mott Meritorious Graduate Student Award in Crop Science.

Kelly M. Sanks MS’18 PHD’21 of New Orleans, Louisiana, received the Graduate School and International Education Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her research seeks to deepen understanding of how marsh sediment shapes and impacts river deltas

Amanda Grace Fleming BSHES’20 of Little Rock received an American Wine Society Educational Foundation/ Banfi Auction Scholarship. Fleming’s research is focused on “Investigating Quality Attributes and Wine Production Methods of Arkansas-Grown Grapes.”

Jada Miller BS’20 of El Dorado received the Benjamin Lever Tuition Fellowship. This award is highly competitive and only given to qualified students who reflect both the U of A’s commitment to academics and diversity.

Solomon Opeyemi Ojo MS’20 of Fayetteville received the 2022 Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship by the International Society for Optics and Photonics. His research focuses on innovating semiconductor materials growth and advancing nanofabrication techniques.

Parker Johnston Straight BSA’20 of Rockwall, Texas, received the Award of Excellence for Best Oral

Rebekah Inez Brau PHD’21 of Rogers received the 2022 Distinguished Dissertation Award from the U of A’s Graduate School and International Education. Her research is focused on the optimal balance of human judgment and analytics in specific areas of the supply chain such as demand planning.

Putu Mas Itha Pujiantari MA’21 of Fayetteville received the Franklin Mosher Baldwin Memorial Fellowship. The fellowship will allow her to travel to Indonesia to conduct research into primate feeding and further study their feeding adaptations in changing climates and habitats. The Baldwin Fellowships promote the study of human origins and include things such as primatology.

Julia L. Rogers ★ BSBA’21 MPACC’22 of Dallas, Texas, is an audit and assurance assistant in the Dallas office of Deloitte.

Faculty and Staff:

Cynthia Nance ✪ of Fayetteville was recently reappointed dean of U of A School of Law. Nance previously served as dean from 2006-2011.

Mary Nicholson Davis BSE’48 of Jonesboro on Sept. 13.

Wilma Spiller McCauley BA’48 of Fort Smith on Aug. 28, 2020.

Joyce Carroll Dillingham BA’49 of Little Rock on July 15.

James P. Foster ✪ BSBA’49 of Fort Smith on July 29.

Arthur B. Holiman Jr. BSBA’49 of Benton on June 2.

James Edward Stice ★ BSCHE’49 of Austin, Texas, on July 16.

1950s

Margaret Villee Compton BSBA’51 of El Dorado on July 29.

Alva D. Glidewell Jr. BS’51 of Centennial, Colorado, on March 25, 2021.

Colleen Fortune Thaxton BSE’51 of Newport on July 30.

L. D. Horn BSPH’52 of North Little Rock on July 7.

N. Eugene Coe ★ BSBA’53 of Fort Worth, Texas, on May 5.

Burton L. Elliott BSE’53 MED’56 DAS’68 EDD’71 of Fayetteville on Aug. 3.

David L. Mast BSPH’53 of Mountain View, Missouri, on Sept. 4.

James Miner BS’53 MS’54 of Pittsburg, Texas, on May 12.

Fred A. Philpot BSBA’53 of Hobbs, New Mexico, on Aug. 5, 2018.

Geraldine J. Shaw MS’53 of Hineston, Louisiana, on Feb. 25, 2017.

Meade P. Shaw MS’53 of Hineston, Louisiana, on June 14.

Rosemary Farnsworth

Erickson BSE’54 of Fresno, California, on Aug. 25.

Evelyn Dickinson Weaver FS’54 of Fayetteville on May 12.

Jerry Carter ★ BS’55 of Little Rock on July 25.

Stephen H. Dill BSE’55 PHD’65 of Kansas City, Missouri, on Aug. 22.

Bill Fisher ✪ FS’55 of Paragould on Aug. 29.

William Aubert Martin ✪+ JD’55 of Little Rock on Sept. 3.

Leon C. Cowling MED’56 DAS’61 of Merritt Island, Florida, on Aug. 26.

Melba T. Elston MED’56 of St. Louis, Missouri, on July 19.

Dorothy Saunders Fortney BSBA’56 of North Little Rock on Sept. 9.

E. C. Gilbreath BSBA’56 LLB’63 of Fort Smith on Aug. 27.

Lynn Jordan ★ FS’56 of Hot Springs Village on Aug. 4.

J. Michael Shaw ★ BSBA’56 LLB’59 of Fort Smith on July 6.

William L. Stanley BSA’56 MED’64 of Marked Tree on Sept. 28.

Keith D. Essex BA’57 of Little Rock on Sept. 16.

Sylvia R. Gist ✪ BSE’57 of Stuttgart on July 18.

Stanley Morris Harmon BA’57 of Ballston Lake, New York, on May 23.

Lloyd Donald Lewis BSBA’57 of Little Rock on Sept. 25.

Jo McGuire McDonald BSHE’57 of Jonesboro on July 28.

Billy J. Wiles BSPH’57 of Siloam Springs on July 14.

Jim Frazier BSCE’58 of Helena on July 28.

George E. Loss MED’58 of Little Rock on Sept. 7.

J. D. Chastain ★ BSEE’59 of Siloam Springs on Sept. 28.

Rodger Willis Duncan FS’59 of Searcy on Sept. 1.

Franklin D. Harrison MED’59 of Conway on Sept. 23.

Elmer V. Krehbiel MS’59 of College Station, Texas, on Sept. 18.

Gaylon E. Miller ★ BSA’59 of Hazen on Sept. 2.

Max Sutton ★ BA’59 of Fayetteville on July 14.

1960s

Ralph E. Balch BSE’60 MA’61 of Nashville on July 5.

Doyne Turner Hogan MA’60 of Denton, Texas, on July 11.

Nona Proctor Dumas BA’61 of Hot Springs on Aug. 26.

Carrol Noble MED’61 of Bellingham, Washington, on May 14.

William R. Ragland ✪+ BSEE’61 of Hilton Head, South Carolina, on June 22.

Anne Bowman Sloan ✪+ FS’61 of Fayetteville on Aug. 5.

Richard C. Waring MS’61 of Liberty, Missouri, on July 4.

Martha Henard Brown MA’62 of Kingsport, Tennessee, on Aug. 7.

Harold L. Culp BSME’62 of Little Rock on July 23.

Mary Ann Greenwood ✪+ BSBA’62 MA’72 PHD’79 of Fayetteville on Sept. 17.

Mary Smith Lewall BSE’62 of Jonesboro on Sept. 16, 2017.

Jack Dickey Mahle Jr. ✪+ BA’62 of New Smyrna Beach, Florida, on July 24.

Ronald Jones Pyeatt BSBA’62 of Sidney, Nebraska, on Aug. 17.

Tennie Russell BSE’62 MED’75 of Bentonville on Sept. 10.

William Aubert “Bill” Martin ✪+

J.D.’55

Dec. 7, 1931-Sept. 3, 2022

Col. William Aubert “Bill” Martin was born in Warren on Dec. 7, 1931, to Aubert and Christine Martin. He was a 1955 graduate of the University of Arkansas School of Law. Martin made the most of his time on campus: he was a member of Phi Delta Theta, editor of the Razorback yearbook and the Reserve Officers Training Corps.

He went on to serve in the U.S. Air Force in various overseas assignments, including traveling to Turkey and Japan, until he was promoted from lieutenant to colonel. His promotion to colonel brought him new work assignments as the Air Force chief of Claims and Tort Litigation and staff judge advocate of the General Court Martial jurisdictions. After retiring from the military in 1983, Martin began a second career as a lawyer in Little Rock. He soon became executive director of the Arkansas Bar Association and served for 13 years. As an active member of the Pulaski County Bar Association, he helped found the Pulaski Bar Foundation.

Martin was a life member of the Arkansas Alumni Association and an active volunteer with the Central Arkansas Chapter. Martin was always there for chapter events and contributed many years of service to the chapter. He was an active member of the chapter board, including serving as chair on for multiple terms.

In 2001, Martin was presented with the Morris Fair Heart Award. The Heart Award honors a unique individual who exemplifies the volunteer spirit, enthusiasm and commitment that is the core of alumni group involvement. He also became a member of the Law School Committee from 2017 until his death. Outside of his direct involvement with the association, Martin was also an avid photographer; alumni and staff could recognize Martin at events by his camera and knew they could count on him to share the photos he took with all who attended.

Martin is survived by his wife of 59 years, Mary Lou Mauderly Martin; three children; and five grandchildren.

Photo submitted.

Mary Ann Greenwood ✪+ B.S.B.A.’62, M.A.’72, Ph.D.’79

Aug. 14, 1940-Sept. 17, 2022

Mary Ann Greenwood of Fayetteville was born in Little Rock to Deane and Mary (Bates) Salee and grew up in Pocahontas. She earned a bachelor’s degree in banking and finance, a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate in economics and finance from the University of Arkansas. While a student, she became a member of Zeta Tau Alpha.

Greenwood was an early industry adopter of the fiduciary advisory model and a national leader in the economics profession. She founded M.A. Greenwood and Associates, an investment advisory firm, in 1982. It is the region’s oldest locally owned independent wealth management firm, now known as Greenwood Gearhart Inc. She managed the firm for more than 30 years before retiring in 2015. She also devoted her time and counsel as a mentor. She shared her knowledge with many interns and other young professionals who have gone on to successful careers in finance.

She received the Citation of Distinguished Alumni from the Arkansas Alumni Association in 2013. In 2015, the Sam M. Walton College of Business recognized her with its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Throughout the years, Greenwood and her husband, U of A Dean Emeritus Reed Greenwood ✪+ B.S.E.’61, M.Ed.’62, Ed.D.’74, demonstrated a strong commitment to advancing student success by establishing scholarships in the Sam M. Walton College of Business and the College of Education and Health Professions.

She served as a trusted adviser on numerous boards and committees in support of the U of A. Greenwood was a member of the Board of Directors of the

U of A Foundation Inc., Campaign Arkansas Steering Committee, Dean’s Executive Advisory Board for the Walton College, Arkansas Alumni Association National Board, Campaign for the 21st Century Steering Committee and the U of A Board of Advisors. Greenwood was a life member of the Arkansas Alumni Association and a founding member of the Towers of Old Main giving society.

“Mary Ann was a delightful supporter, champion and advocate of the University of Arkansas,” said Chancellor Charles Robinson. “Her volunteer leadership spanned not only many years, but supported many functions, projects and activities, always with an eye toward supporting students. Even as recently as during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Ann and her partner and spouse, Reed, were thoughtful to establish an emergency support fund for students who were affected. That’s emblematic of Mary Ann’s leadership, priorities and passion for the University of Arkansas. She will be greatly missed.”

“The university would not be where it is today without the knowledge and wisdom that Mary Ann shared with us,” said Mark Power, vice chancellor for advancement. “Her devotion to improving the lives of others leaves an inspirational legacy on this campus and in the state of Arkansas. We will remember her compassion and friendship.”

Greenwood’s involvement did not stop with the U of A. She had served as a member of the Walton Arts Center board, the Arkansas Economic Development Commission and the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis – Little Rock Branch and supported numerous other organizations.

She is survived by her husband of 60 years, Reed; daughter Anne Sallee Greenwood B.A.’00, M.A.’03; son Robert Reed Greenwood FS’03; and one grandson.

Michael E. Cissell BSBA’63 of Hot Springs on Sept. 25.

Benjamin F. Clardy Jr. BS’63 MS’64 of Mabelvale on Sept. 14.

Larry D. Loux ✪+ BSE’63 of Fort Smith on Sept. 30.

Flora Mitchell Lyon BSE’63 of Farmington on Aug. 6.

Larry L. Clark MA’64 of Wellington, Kansas, on Sept. 9.

Sid Fitzgerald BSCE’64 of Mabelvale on Sept. 20.

Howard H. Mohr MA’64 of Cottonwood, Minnesota, on Sept. 4.

Muriel Eloise Rickard MED’64 of Scottsdale, Arizona, on Sept. 10.

Johnna W. Ayres BA’65 of Cabot on July 13.

Kenneth H. Castleberry MA’65 of Texarkana, Texas, on July 25.

Joe Davis BSBA’65 of Houston, Texas, on Sept. 1.

Marilyn K. Fuller MBA’65 of Blossom, Texas, on July 14.

Photo submitted.

Bob J. Rice BSBA’65 of Fort Smith on Sept. 17.

Dorothy Seaton ✪+ BSE’65 MED’68 of Fayetteville on Sept. 13.

Ronald O. Fowler ✪+ BS’66 MS’70 of Fayetteville on Aug. 24.

Richard D. Hall ★ BSBA’66 of Searcy on July 29.

Jerry Wayne Medlin BSIE’66 of Napa, California, on July 6.

Gene Woodall MS’66 of Little Rock on Sept. 6.

John H. Allen BSBA’67 of Springdale on Aug. 7.

Karen Hess Inlow ★ BSE’67 of Tontitown on Aug. 31.

Wendell A. Sharpton MED’67 of Austin, Texas, on June 12.

Jesse Glenn Walker MED’67 EDD’73 of Sherwood on July 8.

Stan Baney BA’68 of Cabot on July 27.

Betty Scarborough MA’69 MBA’93 of Fort Smith on July 25.

Wallace D. Williams MA’69 of Weatherford, Oklahoma, on Sept. 17.

1970s

Dwight L. Goodwin MBA’70 of Little Rock on Sept. 14.

James M. Hester ✪ BS’70 of Benton on July 17.

Sharon Ann Morgan Penick BSBA’70 of Little Rock on Aug. 29.

Ann Porter BA’70 of Helena on Oct. 2.

Beth L. Shanks BSE’70 of Little Rock on Aug. 7.

Barbara A. Smith BA’70 of Joplin, Missouri, on Aug. 3.

John Alter BSBA’71 of DeWitt on Aug. 8.

O. Fred Harris Jr. BA’71 JD’73 of Champaign, Illinois, on Sept. 12.

L. K. Larimore PHD’71 of Kansas City, Missouri, on Sept. 25.

Gail Power MED’71 of Bentonville on July 11.

Lance J. Besser MS’72 PHD’83 of Belton, Texas, on June 22.

Willis M. Ponder BSEE’72 of La Grange, Texas, on Sept. 19.

Jim Sugg ★ BSBA’72 of Jonesboro on July 8.

Terry Robert Verhage BA’72 of Tucson, Arizona, on Aug. 19.

Ivan H. Howitz MS’73 of Prattville, Alabama, on July 28.

Allan F. Pruitt JD’73 of Joplin, Missouri, on Sept. 26.

Benjamin E. Mitchell MS’74 of Paragould on Sept. 23.

Richard Dean Nordstrom PHD’74 of Fresno, California, on Aug. 12.

Robert E. Allain BSA’75 MS’78 of Springdale on Aug. 14.

Thomas Floyd Crocker BSA’75 of Fayetteville on July 31.

Kenneth E. Goatcher BSBA’77 BSBA’81 of Bryant on Aug. 2.

Bill F. Mears BS’77 of Harrison on Sept. 26.

Larry Reed BSE’77 of Neosho, Missouri, on Aug. 19.

Cynthia Cole Fisher MBA’78 of Little Rock on Sept. 5.

Richard L. McComas BSBA’78 of Harrison on July 19.

Timothy H. Mitchell BSA’78 of Coconut Creek, Florida, on Sept. 2.

1980s

Richard W. Bundrick BSBA’80 of Fayetteville on Aug. 25.

Lawrence K. Gundrum Jr. ✪+ EDD’80 of Livermore, California, on Dec. 2021.

Dana Stone Hoover BSBA’82 of Springdale on Aug. 6.

Robert A. Jackson JD’82 of Whitton on March 11, 2014.

Judith Metcalf May BA’82 ADN’83 of Rogers on Aug. 24.

John Clayton Randolph BA’82 of New Orleans, Louisiana, on Sept. 23.

Gina Green King BA’83 of Fayetteville on Oct. 7, 2020.

Randy Boyd BSA’85 of Little Rock on Sept. 15.

Raymond Eugene Boyles JD’85 of North Little Rock on June 23.

Vaughn McCray Jr. BSA’85 of Springdale on July 15.

Katherine Murray BA’85 MA’89 of Corrales, New Mexico, on Aug. 20.

Patty Ann Swanson MED’85 of Cabot on Sept. 12.

Jacqulyn Maye Bivins AS’86 of Rogers on Sept. 23. Amin Yazdanian PHD’86 of Washington, D.C., on April 1.

Ken Earhart BSBA’87 of Fayetteville on July 12.

Robert Neal Jeffrey JD’87 of Conway on Aug. 27.

Carolyn Diane Berry MED’88 of Pine Bluff on Aug. 28.

Kent L. Floerke EDD’88 of Gainesville, Kansas, on May 24.

Paul E. Roth ✪ BSBA’88 of Fayetteville on July 8.

1990s

Kay Flynt FS’92 of Rogers on June 11.

Karla Breeding Trammell BFA’93 of Bolivar, Missouri, on July 6.

John Rutledge Moore FS’97 of Fairfield, Iowa, on June 27.

Timothy Gail Traxson BSBA’97 of Fayetteville on July 12.

Kevin Henry BSBAE’99 of New York, New York, on Sept 2022.

Monica Sue Jones FS’99 of Bentonville on Aug. 27.

Dianna Sue Reyes FS’99 of Fayetteville on July 23.

Charolette Elizabeth Smith FS’99 of Fayetteville on Sept. 26.

2000s

David J. Krueger BSBA’01 of Bella Vista on July 24.

Reta D. Johnson MS’02 of Little Rock on July 22.

2010s

David Reed Churchill FS’15 of Fayetteville on Sept. 13. Edward J. Peterson LLM’18 of Macon, Georgia, on Jan. 24.

2020s

John M. Foster Jr. BA’22 of Havana on Oct. 2.

Friends

Frank Bonner ✪ of Temecula, California, on June 16, 2021.

Henry W. Foster Jr. ✪ of Nashville, Tennessee, on Sept. 29.

Chuck N. Walker ✪ of Akron, Ohio, on Feb. 3.

group including many leading researchers in the discipline. This is a testament to her potential and the promise of her planned research program. The whole Environmental Dynamics program is proud of her.”

“I am excited to receive the Baldwin Fellowship, and with its help, I hope my research can be used for conservation-related decision making and become a reference for more advanced research in the future,” Pujiantari said.

The Environmental Dynamics program is an interdisciplinary program within the Graduate School and International Education that studies the complex interactions between natural systems and human activity.

More information is available on the GSIE website.

The Baldwin Fellowships are named after Franklin Mosher Baldwin, a distinguished attorney who took a lively interest in the search for human origins. Hoping to honor her late husband’s dual interests in early humans and education, his widow embraced the idea of a program to educate African scholars in prehistory and paleoanthropology. The first Baldwin Fellowships were awarded in 1978. Today, the Fellowship has been expanded to include studies in primatology and is available to citizens from any country that does not have the programs or facilities available to fulfill the students’ human origins research goals. More information can be found on The Leakey Foundation website.

(Priority on Arkansas First continued from page 10) salaries, the fact that the number of U of A classes with fewer than 20 students decreased by 9.2% hurt the university in the rankings.

The university also lost ground in student selectivity, a metric that is not part of the land-grant mission at most public universities in this designation, which are working to grant greater access to students in their state.

“Accessibility and student success expressed through retention and graduation rates are very important to the University of Arkansas,” said Suzanne McCray ✪ B.A.’78, M.A.’80, M.A.’90, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions. “And we’re setting records in those areas.”

For the second straight year, the U of A enrollment set a record for student body size, topping 30,000 for the first time, with more than 7,000 degree-seeking new freshmen for the 2022-23 academic year, and setting records for the number of Arkansans enrolled as well as in the incoming class.

The 11th day snapshot, required by the Department of Higher Education, indicated overall enrollment for fall was 30,936 (including undergraduates, graduate students and law students), an 8.3 percent increase over the previous year and one of the largest increases in the last decade.

The new freshman class hit an all-time high of 7,099 students enrolled for the first time, a 17.1 percent increase over last year. This is the second consecutive year of unprecedented single-year growth in the freshman class.

One of the university’s top land-grant priorities is to provide access to higher education to Arkansans, and that

mission continues with a record 15,479 students from the state of Arkansas and a record 2,835 students from Arkansas in the freshman class.

“University of Arkansas enrollment is booming,” said Robinson. “We have record overall enrollment and highest ever new freshman enrollment. I am most proud of the record numbers of Arkansans in the freshman class and in overall enrollment. This continued growth underscores that the U of A is a destination institution attracting students both in Arkansas and from across the country. The freshman class will have the highest incoming GPA in our history; these students are prepared to succeed. This is all good news for our campus and for our state.”

In addition, the university’s record incoming class of more than 7,000 also set a record for the highest GPA for new degree-seeking freshmen at 3.77.

Out of 234 institutions ranked as Top Public Schools by U.S. News, including more than 50 institutions being added to the category in latest ranking, the U of A is tied for 87th with four other public institutions, including Louisiana State University. The U of A joined six others in a tie for 78th among national public schools in the previous ranking.

Several university programs were also ranked among the nation’s best, including undergraduate business, which tied for 39th with several others including the University of Alabama, University of South Carolina and the University of Tennessee. The Supply Chain Management program in the Sam M. Walton College of Business tied for 10th in the nation with Georgia Tech.

President

Don Walker ✪+ ’74, Fayetteville, AR

Past

✪ ’91, ’93, ’01, Little Rock, AR

City, AR

She is adviser to the U of A’s chapter of Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences.

team, and we recently switched to a professional advising model and added two advisers to better serve the needs of our students.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Class of 2023

Tori Bogner ✪ ’13, ’16, Fayetteville, AR

Kathleen Gonzalez ★ ’11, Rogers, AR

Cecilia Grossberger-Medina ★ ’08, Fayetteville, AR

Regina Hopper ✪ ’81, ’85, Alexandria, VA

Robert Koenig ✪ ’90, Leawood, KS

Wes Shirley ★ ’99, ’02, Fayetteville, AR

Cameron Sutherland ★+ ’11, ’14, Fayetteville, AR

Shambrekia Wise ★ ’08, Dallas, TX

Class of 2024

Amy May Hopper ✪ ’15, Belton, MO

Chris Johnson ✪ ’93, Little Rock, AR

Bobby Jones ✪+ ’84, Savannah, GA

Faheem Khan ✪ ’91, Lewisville, TX

Connie Lewis Lensing ✪ ’74, ’77, Memphis, TN

Nathan Looney ✪ ’09, Little Rock, AR

Courtney Norton ✪ ’07, Fayetteville, AR

Oliver Sims ✪ ’85, Carrollton, TX

Kristine Stover ✪+ ’81, Tulsa, OK

Cedric Williams ✪ ’93, Forrest City, AR

Class of 2025

Heba Abdelaal ✪ ’11, Ramstein, Germany

Steve Berner ✪ ’69, Oklahoma City, OK

Judy Simmons Henry ✪ ’81, ’84, Little Rock, AR

Sarah K. Hudson ★ ’07, ’10, Washington, DC

Lauren Love ★ ’19, Ann Arbor, MI

Daniel McFarland ★ ’15, Baltimore, Maryland

Bill Stovall ✪+ ’72, Charleston, SC

Richard Welcher ★ ’99, ’04, Fayetteville, AR

Kristen Collier Wright ✪ ’98, ’01, Forrest City, AR

MANRRS is a university-wide student organization housed in Bumpers College. The club’s purpose is to promote inclusion and advancement of members of ethnic and cultural groups under-represented in agricultural and natural sciences, and related fields, in career preparation and participation.

Efforts in DEI and with MANRRS are huge assets in connecting with students and families throughout the state.

Once students are on campus, we serve them by guiding them through their academic journey. The Waldrip Student Center is home of our student services

This staff regularly visits with students regarding advising, changing majors, career services, scholarships, personal matters and more. To strengthen those efforts, we recently consolidated student experience services under the direction of assistant dean Lisa Wood.

With increased focus on these areas, we hope you see more Bumpers College students and graduates in every area of the state as we grow our relationship with the Extension Service and other partners. In turn, we hope this leads to more and more potential students realizing we should be their first and obvious choice.

UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION

1. Publication title: Arkansas

2. Publication number: 9515

3. Filing date: 10/18/2022

4. Issue Frequency: Quarterly

5. Issues published annually: 4 6. Annual subscription price: $24.00 7. Office of publication: PO Box 1070 Fayetteville, AR, 72702-1070 8 General business office: Same as 7.

Extent and nature of circulation

9. Publisher: Brandy Cox Jackson PO Box 1070, Fayetteville, AR 72702-1070

Editor: Catherine Baltz PO Box 1070, Fayetteville, AR 72702-1070

Managing editor: Charlie Alison 106 Davis Hall 1 University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701

11. Known bondholders, mortgagees, or other security holders holding one percent or more of total amounts of bonds, mortgages, or other securitites: none. 12. Tax Status: Has not changed during the preceding 12 months. 14. Issue date for circulation data: September 21, 2022

Interim Director of Marketing and Communications

Lisy McKinnon ✪ BA’97

Becky Afonso ★, Special Events Coordinator; Lisa Ault ★ BSBA’94, Associate Director of Business Operations; Catherine Baltz ✪+ BS’92, MED’07, Assistant Director of Communications; Tim Barker ★, Fiscal Support Analyst; Collin Brunner ★ BSHES’10, Assistant Director of Revenue Management; Beth Dedman ★ BA’20, Digital Media Specialist; Callie Free BSBA’19, M.Ed.’21, Assistant Director of Internal Relations; Mary Kate Harrison ★ BA’15, MA’17, Executive Projects Coordinator; Katie Leonard ★ BSBA.’19, Alumni Scholarship Assistant; Shamima Majid, Fiscal Support Analyst; Elaine Olson ✪ Administrative Specialist-Alumni Programs and Special Events; Patti Sanders ✪+ BSA’08, Associate Director of Alumni Scholarships; Julie Simpson ★, Associate Director of Facilities and Special Events; Joni Thompson, Administrative Assistant, Emma Veidt BSBA’19, Assistant Director of External Relations

OFFICERS

President Ron Rainey

Treasurer Kristen Collier Wright ✪ ’98, Forrest

STAFF

Associate Vice Chancellor for Alumni and Executive Director of the Arkansas Alumni Association Brandy Cox Jackson ✪ MA’07

Director of Alumni Programs and Special Events

Deb Euculano ✪ Director of Finance Hal Prescott ✪

Qvid Ergo de Illis Porcis!

How About Those Hogs!

Eric Goldberg, a professor at MIT, spoke to the U of A Honors College earlier this semester about the role of hunting as an aristocratic power play in medieval Europe. “I kept noticing that, wow, these kings are spending a lot of time hunting. It just struck me as interesting and peculiar,” Goldberg said. “And usually, as a historian, when you come across something that seems weird to you, you’re on the cusp of making an interesting insight.” Among the documents Goldberg came across while combing through Carolingian chronicles, law codes, poetry and art of Charlemagne’s period, he found that village folk were eating local animals, while elites were feasting on venison and wild boar. “Every piece of evidence is a puzzle, and we read it on two levels,” Goldberg told the students. “What does it tell us about hunting? And how does this represent power?”

A wild boar as drawn in a medieval illuminated manuscript.

Image courtesy of Eric Goldberg

$200 cash back bonus offer*

The Arkansas Alumni Association Customized

Maximize your cash back by choosing how you earn rewards

Carry

• Get a $200 cash back bonus if you make at least $1,000 in purchases in the first 90 days of account opening*

• To change your choice category for future purchases, you must go to Online Banking or use the Mobile Banking app.1 You can change it once each calendar month, or make no change and it stays the same.

• Contactless card – The security of a chip card, with the convenience of a tap

To apply for a credit card, please visit bofa.com/ arkansasalumni

This offer is unique to this solicitation. Our credit card offers may vary, and this offer may not be available elsewhere. You can take advantage of this offer when you apply now.

Earn 3% and 2% cash back on the first $2,500 in combined purchases each quarter in the choice category, and at grocery stores and wholesale clubs, then earn unlimited 1% thereafter.

For information about the rates, fees, other costs and benefits associated with the use of this card or to apply, please visit bofa.com/arkansasalumni Residents of the US and its territories only. See full disclosure for details.

* Bonus Cash Rewards Offer. You will qualify for $200 bonus cash rewards if you use your new credit card account to make any combination of purchase transactions totaling at least $1,000 (exclusive of any fees, returns and adjustments) that post to your account within 90 days of the account open date. Cash Advances and Balance Transfers are not purchases and do not apply for purposes of this offer. Limit 1 bonus cash rewards offer per new account. This one-time promotion is limited to customers opening a new account in response to this offer and will not apply to requests to convert existing accounts. Your account must be open with active charging privileges in order to receive this offer. Other advertised promotional bonus cash rewards offers can vary from this promotion and may not be substituted. Allow 8–12 weeks from qualifying for the bonus cash rewards to post to your rewards balance. The value of this reward may constitute taxable income to you. You may be issued an Internal Revenue Service Form 1099 (or other appropriate form) that reflects the value of such reward. Please consult your tax advisor, as neither we, nor our affiliates, provide tax advice.

1 Mobile Banking. Mobile Banking requires that you download the Mobile Banking app and is only available for select m obile devices. Message and data rates may apply. By opening and/or using these products from Bank of America, you’ll be providing valuable financial support to Arkansas Alumni Association. This credit card program is issued and administered by Bank of America, N.A. Visa and Visa Signature are registered trademarks of Visa International Service Association, and are used by the issuer pursuant to license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. Bank of America and the Bank of America logo are registered trademarks of Bank of America Corporation. The Contactless Symbol and Contactless Indicator are trademarks owned by and used with permission of EMVCo, LLC.

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Hogging the Road