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

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

Mid-October at the University of Arkansas is truly stunning. The weather has turned crisp. The leaves are starting to change color and fall, and all of our students are deeply focused on their midterms (hopefully!)

It’s a great time to be here at the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and this October edition of the Fulbright REVIEW covers some of the many excellent events, incredible research, outstanding scholarship, awesome alumni achievements, and more taking place this fall.

I want to take a moment to again thank our phenomenal Fulbright College staff. Last week was the annual U of A Staff Appreciation Week, but our appreciation for our staff and all they do each day to help make our college the wonderful place it is extends year-round.

In top news, the U of A has been experiencing record-setting success in student achievement, enrollment, and research and economic impact, we’ve named a new head of our college’s student success initiatives, and we’ve introduced three more leaders who are already making a positive impact.

Our college listening tour is in full swing. The associate deans and I have met with numerous faculty and staff teams, as well as many alumni, donors, and community partners. The conversations have been insightful, thoughtful, and incredibly helpful. I’m looking forward to additional great sessions ahead as we visit and learn from more of our constituents soon.

On a personal note, my family and I are so pleased to have returned to Arkansas after many years away, and I am so very lucky that my office is on the top floor of Old Main. I have a firsthand view from my desk of the changing foliage across the Ozarks.

And when I walk up the hill to get to Old Main each day, reading the names of our graduates going back to the first class reminds me of both the huge responsibility and the enormous privilege that our faculty and staff share in Fulbright College. We have the responsibility and the privilege of supporting our students, engaging in our research, and pursuing meaningful community engagement and creative expression, all with the aim of fulfilling the land grant mission of the U of A. What an incredible honor.

Homecoming festivities are occurring across campus this week, and I can’t wait to participate at my new institution. I don’t want to be greedy, but I’m also really hoping for even more to celebrate this weekend on the football field! #WPS

Thank you for your continued engagement with our college and the Fulbright REVIEW, and 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:

In addition to setting new records and naming new leaders, in the October 2024 Fulbright REVIEW we also feature two of our most recent graduates who were honored during the Arkansas-wide Razorbug Diploma Tour.

Readers can also get to know a beloved Educator of the Year, congratulate a former college leader who is headed to the Provost’s Office, and cheer on a group of student-journalists nominated for multiple Emmys.

Then, meet a rock-star chemist on the brink of a new breakthrough, a researcher who won a grant to help treat incarcerated women, and a historian featured on a podcast about Arkansas legend Daisy Bates.

We also recently named seven new Sturgis International Fellows, providing them with $15,500 each to study aboard, and one of our schools was recently awarded reaccreditation.

You can also see how we’ve been celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month, also known as Latine/x Heritage Month, and learn about some cutting-edge metabolomics equipment our researchers obtained.

Next, meet the newest cohort of our Distinguished Doctoral Fellows and Doctoral Academy Fellows, an award-winning literary translation student, and a doctoral candidate working to better understand Parkinson’s disease.

You can also help us congratulate a graduate student who won an international prize for examining democracy and art restitution, and a researcher who won a prestigious award for his work on stress and memory.

Afterward, learn about where new genes come from, meet a research team working to expand geosciences innovation, and see how salt intrusion could affect water quality.

In publication news, one of our English professors received a coveted favorable review from a top source, and one of our political scientists published on voter identification laws and their effects in a top journal.

Three more faculty members also released new books on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, on social network analysis, and an open online Spanish business textbook.

Finally, help us congratulate an Italian professor honored with a New York fellowship, and a German faculty member who received an SEC grant.

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.