Welcome to the July 2024 Round Up of the Fulbright REVIEW Blog
Hello Fulbright College friends, supporters, families, faculty, staff, alumni and students!
I am writing to introduce myself as the new Dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and to share my first message in the Fulbright REVIEW.
My tenure as dean officially started July 1, and the welcome I have received since then has been friendly and warm. As I get to know Fulbright College, I take great comfort in our mission to enrich lives by fostering peace through education, which is a message that seems to resonate now more than ever.
Joining the college has been a homecoming for my wife and me. She grew up in Arkansas, and I moved to the state as a young teenager before moving away for graduate school and a 22-year career in Texas as a math professor and administrator at Baylor University.
We arrived in Fayetteville on June 27th, and our movers showed up with our belongings four days later. So, we camped in our mostly empty house with our sons and two big dogs while we explored the area and discovered many incredible things around Fayetteville.
We got library cards right away (what an amazing library!) We tried what feels like dozens of new, fantastic restaurants. We explored the parks and the Razorback Greenway, and we really enjoyed the cooler (for us) weather.
In the coming months I will embark on a listening tour, and I hope to engage with as many of you, our friends and alumni, as possible. Be on the lookout for details soon.
I also have some new leaders that I want to introduce to you starting with a team of top-notch new fundraising professionals, our incredibly talented new Director of the School of Art, and our highly-accomplished new General Manager of KUAF.
In the meantime, I look forward to catching up with you again soon and to working together on behalf of Fulbright College to support the land grant mission of the U of A!
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and my team via fulbright@uark.edu. We’d love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
Brian E. Raines
Dean, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences
HIGHLIGHTS:
This July Fulbright REVIEW is also a celebration of our phenomenal faculty, with stories highlighting the 2024 recipients of our King, Nolan and OMNI endowed faculty awards, as well as the winners of our annual teaching, research and advising awards.
You can also join us in this heartfelt celebration of our outgoing dean, and meet one of our award-winning historians, a ceramicist named a top fellow in her field, two world languages faculty who both recently published new books, and a duo selected for service teaching awards.
Then, learn how our faculty are redesigning U of A’s calculus curriculum to better serve our students, and creating new resources to help students build ePortfolios to be more career-ready.
Next, check out our classes in American Sign Language, see how our music educators participated in a recent advocacy day in D.C. and learn about a sustainability partnership that resulted in new student-designed recycling trucks.
After that, get to know a public policy alumnus who is now president of a university, and an alumna who along with her family is fighting to improve education throughout Arkansas.
We also have a new interactive campus map for you to explore, and the winners of our studio art career start up grants from the Windgate Foundation for you to meet.
Finally, be sure to spend some time with our Arabic and Middle East Studies program students and young alumni who are excelling, the newest members of our Italian academic honor society, and this year’s outstanding Bodenhamer Fellows.
To keep up with all things Fulbright College, you can also visit our Facebook, Twitter / X, Instagram or LinkedIn social media channels. Our handle is @uarkfulbright on all.
We’ll also keep providing you with more new stories at fulbrightreview.uark.edu, so stay tuned.