Longtime faculty members retire

Dr. Fred Buzen, Fred Zipkes end longtime education careers at ASMSA

Dr. Fred Buzen and Fred Zipkes, two longtime members of ASMSA’s faculty, retired at the end of the 2022-23 academic school year. Buzen, a chemistry instructor, had been at the school for 22 years while Zipkes, a graphic design/ photography instructor, had a 15year tenure.

Buzen came to ASMSA in 2001 after completing the coursework for his Ph.D in biochemistry at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. He decided he wanted to be a college professor while working on his master’s in chemistry at Kansas State University. The professors there did lab work, field work, and taught classes.

He already had field and lab work experience working as a research scientist for the Olin Corp. and Ouachita Baptist University as well as a technical representative for SKW Trostberg. When he saw the ad for a chemistry instructor at ASMSA, it was an opportunity to teach as well.

The original goal was to work on his dissertation on nights and weekends that first year of teaching at ASMSA. Things didn’t work out as he had planned.

“I was barely a half a step ahead of the kids that first year. I wrote my dissertation that summer and defended it in the fall. I was probably putting in 80 hours a week trying to stay ahead of the students that first year,” he said.

Charlie Cole Chaffin, who was also a chemistry teacher at the time, encouraged him to stay the course, telling him that he’d be his best four years in.

By his third year of teaching, Buzen was invited to help with a summer workshop for other chemistry teachers. He also eventually taught college classes at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock for 17 years as well at National Park College. He found that his students at ASMSA performed better than his college students.

“Most of the time I’d give the same test there as here, and almost always they did better here than they did there,” he said. “If I teach to a high level, the students will achieve more than if I teach to a lower level. I believe in interaction rather than they just sit there and listen to a lecture. I encouraged them to try to answer questions.”

One of the early courses Buzen enjoyed teaching was a teamtaught course called The Science of Art with former humanities instructor Dan McElderry. Students would learn about painting and sculpture among other art topics.

Buzen took a photography course as an undergraduate student at the University of Maine in his home state. He suggested they add a unit on black-and-white photography to the class. It went well, and McElderry said they should continue to do it.

“We taught students how to take a photo, develop the film, and print it. We discussed composition and what went into the wet chemistry for the process. It was really cool. We’d get together and evaluate the pictures. We had some pretty good pictures come out of it over the years,” he said.

He eventually team-taught the course with Zipkes when he began teaching photography courses.

As for his retirement, Buzen said he has plenty to do on his 115-acre farm near Arkadelphia. He grows hay on between 25 to 30 acres of it and wants to work on building up some of the pasture land to grow more hay. He also plans to get back into woodworking and go fishing more often. He also wants to work on his barbecue game with a smoker he had custom-made.

“People I’ve talked to have said I’ll like it,” he said about retirement, but I’ll miss the interaction with students and other faculty members. I’ll miss my friends.”

For Zipkes, this was the second time he has retired. The first was after almost four decades working as a creative director for several advertising firms, including firms in New York, San Franciso, and Dallas.

He decided to move back to Hot Springs, where he grew up, after leaving the advertising business.

Stevens wins National Silver Key in Scholastic Art and Writing contest

Michaela Stevens (’24) earned recognition in the 2023 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards national competition.

Stevens received a National Silver Key for her poem “expired film” in the writing competition. She advanced to the national competition by earning a Regional Golden Key in the competition earlier this year.

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is sponsored by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. It is among the nation’s most prestigious program for creative teams and is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Previous awardwinners during the competition’s history include Andy Warhol, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Tschabalala Self, and others.

Stevens was on her way home from an ASMSA Global Learning Program trip to Spain when she found out she had won the National Silver Key. She told her friends who were sitting with her in the airport and then texted her mom.

“I was pretty surprised but really excited,” she said. “This award definitely encourages me to keep writing and competing with my poems. To know that people really appreciate my writing is exciting so I just want to keep writing and improving.”

She wrote “expired film” during the summer of 2022 while her family was driving to Orange Beach, Ala. The poem is inspired by her homesickness for Serbia, the country in which she grew up.

“I started thinking of all the things stopping me from going back to Serbia and how I wish I could just drive myself back,” she said. “But that’s not possible, and even if it was, my life never seems to go where I think it is going to, so I don’t think I actually arrive at my destination.

“I wrote the poem specifically during my family’s drive to Alabama, and I started thinking of my life as a road trip. I get distracted and take circuitous paths to get places. I accumulate good and bad memories along the way. All that is to say that this poem is about missing a home you can never go back to but accepting that and living your life nonetheless.”

Once he was back in the area, he taught adjunct courses at Henderson State University and Ouachita Baptist University, both in Arkadelphia.

He decided he wanted another challenge and applied for a new position at ASMSA as a graphic design instructor as well as a publication designer for the school. Once he was on campus, he began picking up additional courses including the first photography class he team-taught with Buzen that included the chemistry-side of photography. He also was handed the yearbook, something he had never taught before.

Hardware and software advancements required that students not only be able to adapt but for Zipkes to do so as well. Sometimes he was learning along with his students, he said. In his photography course, however, the change from film to digital cameras that provided an easy way to take photos automatically didn’t fundamentally change his approach. He still required students to take their photographs using the manual settings.

“I think they found using manual to their advantage. They discovered how they can control their shot,” Zipkes said.

The same outlook applies to the advances in graphic design. While continuous updates in software make design tasks possible or easier, the same basic principles still apply.

“Design is still design. Fashion changes taste,” he said.

The key was getting students to take those changes and learn to think creatively. To help facilitate that kind of thinking, Zipkes would use a student-critique system.

“Everyone sees each other’s work and does a critique after every assignment. It would challenge them to think about how else could they have done something. It gets them to think,” he said.

Zipkes said he plans to spend his time traveling, visiting his family, and painting.