Welcome to the December 2024 Round Up of the Fulbright REVIEW Blog

Hello Fulbright College friends, supporters, families, faculty, staff, alumni, and students,

It has been such an honor to serve as dean and work alongside so many amazing folks here in my first semester at the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.

The December edition of the Fulbright REVIEW highlights some of those very people and reflects on some of our biggest triumphs of the year.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading about some of our many amazing students, faculty, staff, alumni, donors and community members who are achieving great things both inside and outside of the classroom, in research, in service to our community, and beyond.

On a brief personal note, I had a great time at the fall graduation ceremony this past weekend. I greeted each and every Fulbright College graduate as they crossed the stage. Being able to celebrate these moments of transformation is an incredible privilege and reminds us of the impact we have on our students and the world. 

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and my team via fulbright@uark.edu.

May you have a festive holiday season and new year filled with peace, health, prosperity, and joy!

Sincerely,

Brian E. Raines
Dean, Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences

HIGHLIGHTS:

In top news, we welcomed our newest alumni during commencement this weekend, announced a new president of the University of Arkansas System, and celebrated our chancellor being named a leader of the year.

In this issue, readers can get to know a duo who helped create a new mental crisis and community response program, a scholar who is translating a medieval bestseller, and the winner of our top playwrighting award.

Then, meet three students who thanks to three scholarships and the donors who created them are each a step closer to making their educational and career dreams come true, and a group who is reconstructing the ruins of Pompeii using AI.

Next, learn how our bat virus researchers in Africa discovered important information about how the bats roost, check out how we’re preserving historical documents related to the Arkansas Constitution, and find out the long-term effects suspensions and expulsions have on students.

You can also meet a highly accomplished Rhodes Scholarship finalist, the students who make up our award-winning Mock Trial team, and the four winners of a prestigious public administration scholarship.

Afterward, get to know an international student whose passion for coffee opened up a new career path, and our 13 faculty members who made the list of the top 2 percent of cited researchers worldwide.

We also recently hosted nearly 400 Japanese language learners in the language proficiency test, opened a new center dedicated to smart ferroic materials in partnership with major international institutions, and created a new partnership to strengthen Arkansas’ data science workforce.

Additionally, our researchers discovered how social media could help combat loneliness, and we launched two new podcasts – one centered on poetry in Arkansas, and another focused on the Ozark Marshallese community.

Next, meet the faculty members who were recently recognized for outstanding scholarship on neurodiversity in public relations, and a mathematician who helped organize an international research conference.

On the publication front, we’ve also got a new book on changes in campaign finance laws to explore, as well as a new interdisciplinary book exploring the evolution of legacy media and how things now go viral.

Finally, meet an alumna returning to the college to help bolster our fundraising efforts, and help pay tribute to a professor emeritus who spent nearly 40 years teaching and serving the U of A community.

And, if you’d like to learn more about the extraordinary people, initiatives, projects and activities that make up Fulbright College, please visit our Facebook, Twitter / X, Instagram or LinkedIn social media channels. Our handle is @uarkfulbright on all.

As always, we’ll keep providing you with more new stories at fulbrightreview.uark.edu. We hope you’ll stay tuned.