PAR T V I : T H E F I R S T Y EAR S OF R EGI ON AL U N I V ER SI T Y, 2006– 2012
zation. The conferences have been successful in attracting highly regarded scholars to read their recent and ongoing work, scholars such as Tom DeBlack of Arkansas Tech University, Jeannie Whayne and Ann Early of the University of Arkansas, Daniel Littlefield of UALR’s Sequoyah National Research Center, Angela Raj-Walton, and Russell Lawson of Bacone College.
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organizing regional tournaments and elementary school tournaments. Nor is computer and commercial art design neglected in the Art department. Assistant professor of design Travis Brown has devoted time and expertise to restoring family photographs damaged by the Joplin tornado of May 2011. Katie Harper instructs in the letterpress and book arts program, funded in part through grants from a private foundation. Students print placards, posters, and complete books on letterpress equipment located in the basement of the Gardner Building. Some printing effects inherent in this method still cannot be duplicated by modern offset or digital processes.
The Fort Smith National Historic Site celebrated its 50th year as a national park in September 2011 and UAFS was a partner in the proceedings. One event held during the celebration was in Judge Isaac C. Student Kevin Smith presents his Parker’s courtroom at the site and Undergraduate Research Symposium featured the trial scene from the findings to an audience. movie True Grit. English instructor Roy Hill gave a remarkable performance of The Theatre Department produces plays—both the “Rooster” Cogburn, rivaling the portrayals by John standard repertoire and original productions such Wayne and Jeff Bridges. Hill also coached the UAFS as Imogen, written by UAFS theatre director Bob air rifle team. Three full-time and five part-time Stevenson, which took the 2010 Directors Choice employees of the Fort Smith National Historic Site Award and the Repondents Choice Award at the are graduates of UAFS. One of them, Loren McLane, Arkansas State Festival of the Kennedy Center a UAFS honors graduate, received a full graduate American College Theater Festival. scholarship and earned his master’s degree in history from the University of Missouri–St. Louis, Math-science success rates in recruitment and where he worked on the Scott Joplin Memorial retention of students are a model for the rest of the Project—an urban museum memorial to the great campus, and the student-friendly attitudes are capmusician. tured in remarks that 2009–10 Speakman Award winner and then assistant professor of mathematics The Music and Art departments at UAFS offer Gabriel Matney made to the Foundation Board in classes with some of the most noted and notable May 2010. Gabney outlined his boyhood in Tulsa, faculty. The Music department includes jazz saxospelling out some extraordinary opportunities that phonist Don Bailey, composer Chuck Booker, he seized upon which led to his career in higher vocalists Edward White and Elizabeth Momand, education where he now supervises K–12 Education and band director Alexandra Zacharella—who are majors who are pursuing a mathematics specialty. not only award-winning teachers in their fields, but He told the board members in his address that his because of their numerous showings, presentations, supreme desire was to assist UAFS students in their performances, compositions, commissions, and mastery of mathematics so that they, too, could fulrecordings, are wildly popular with the campus fill their dreams and reach a level of satisfaction that community. Zacharella, raised in New Jersey, woncomes from achievement and accomplishment in ders now if she is properly called an Arkansan, an the classroom and in their communities. To that Arkansawyer, or an Arkansian. end, he was dedicating his professional life. Art professor Ernest Cialone’s works are well Math professor Jill Guerra, whose college algebra known through art shows, publication, and private students frequently remark on her ability and collections. His second vocation—he is a chess patience in getting a most difficult subject across to master—keeps him busy teaching those skills and