Welcome to the January 2025 Round Up of the Fulbright REVIEW Blog

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

Happy new year and new semester. I hope you enjoyed a restful and rejuvenating holiday season.

Last year ended really well in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. December graduation was a huge success. I was privileged to shake the hands of over 400 talented graduating students as they walked across the stage to the cheers of their friends and family. On the personal front, we welcomed extended family to Fayetteville for the holidays and mostly just stayed put and rested. 

The new year is also off to a terrific start. We made it through a massive snowstorm, well massive in my opinion at least. Students returned for classes, and we are poised for a great year ahead.

A few friends shared this moving story about a Geosciences alumnus whose bond with a former professor is just incredible. It highlights the transformational impact of the work of Fulbright College. If you are looking for some inspirational viewing, I highly recommend it!

In the meantime, we’ll continue to share all the college’s top news, accomplishments, and more with you right here in the Fulbright REVIEW, so we hope you’ll join us for it all and enjoy the January edition.

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.

Sincerely,

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

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

In top news, we recently named the inaugural Humanities Center Fellows, and received $750,000 from the Division of Higher Education to support the interdisciplinary Data Science Program.

We also celebrated the chancellor agreeing to an extension of his tenure in the role, and the University of Arkansas System President beginning his new role – you can read his first campus message here.

In this issue, readers can also get to know an art major who created a video game for her honors thesis, a faculty group who created a podcast about writing with AI, and double major named a finalist for a prestigious foreign affairs fellowship.

Plus, you can meet four students who, thanks to four scholarships and the donors who created them, are each a step closer to making their educational and career dreams come true, and the 70-plus geosciences alumni who came back to campus to participate in the department’s first-ever alumni summit.

Next, learn how one of our centers used data to help showcase the history of Devil’s Den Park through a new interactive website, and check out how we’re improving the state’s workforce and economy through research and training in STEM fields.

You can also save the date for the upcoming Celtic studies conference, and meet a student research group that gathered valuable data to better understand voter behavior and public opinion.

Then, help congratulate the 43 newest members of our Lambda Pi Eta communication honors society, and celebrate a mathematician who has served the college for 40-plus years.

Afterward, get to know a double major recognized nationally for her academic achievements, and a language professor whose latest work won an international essay prize.

Additionally, students achieved remarkable success at the National Model United Nations Conference, and this musical group’s album surpassed 25,000 streams on Spotify and recently garnered an industry award.

Finally, meet a researcher who is examining the elusive nature of liquid brines on Mars, and the award-winning composer who conducts the University Symphony Orchestra.

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.