Bell Tower, Spring/Summer 2012

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The Alumni Magazine of the University of Arkansas - Fort SmithBell TowerBell Tower

11 Garrett Lewis ’01 / 17 Hall of Fame / 24 ‘A Project in Humanity’ / 28 Class Notes

UAFSUAFSA Day in the Life on Campus

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COVER PHOTOGRAPHS by Zack Thomas & Steven Jones (lower right)

The idea behind our “A Day in the Life” feature (p. 18) was to capture the life of the campus in candid photos—as opposed to photos in which the subjectswere aware of the camera. By and large, we managed that, either taking trulycandid shots, or at least getting people to more or less ignore us while weworked. So this shot of Art & Theatre Chair Don Lee taking it easy for a minutein front of a wall of student paintings in the Ballman-Speer building didn’tquite fit in. But we knew we had to run it somewhere…

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IN THIS ISSUESPRING/SUMMER 2012 volume 3, number 1

17 24

2 FROM THE CHANCELLOR ‘It’s still like that today’

4 GRAND + WALDRONdegrees up | gold medal | Drennen-Scott honor | earthquakes | class of 2024 | Otto Lang | alumni actress | finding mummies | iPads in education | dental hygiene

11 5Q Garret Lewis ’01, weather man

12 SENSE OF PLACE Breedlove 121

14 KNOWLEDGE BASE Tuning up your own PC

15 EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITY Champ Williams, multimedia specialist/filmmaker

16 LIONS LOWDOWNvolleyball championship | 100 wins for Newman | Lions live online | Danielle David | DeWayne Shepard ’82

fea t u re s

18 A DAY IN THE LIFEUAFS through the lenses of photographers Steven Jones and Zack Thomas

24 ‘A PROJECT IN HUMANITY’ How Westark helped welcome 50,000 Vietnam War refugees to America over the course of six tumultuous months in 1975. By Eric Francis and Bell Tower staff

28 ALUMNI + FRIENDSget involved! | class notes | Joe ’54 and Wilma Hopkins Reed ’55 | alumni advisory council | egg-stravaganza | alumni weekend 2012 | Lap Bui ’93

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UAFS BELL TOWER 1

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2 BELL TOWER spring/summer 2012

From the Chancellor

As the introduction to thisissue’s cover story says, thoseof you who attended FortSmith Junior College—oreven Westark—might barely

recognize today’s University of Arkansas –Fort Smith campus. After all, literally not asingle building remains from the FSJC days,

and, although many Westark buildings arestill in use, we’ve done a significant amountof building and renovation since joining theUniversity of Arkansas system back in 2002.

Right now, for instance, we’re gettingclose to finishing the Learning and ResearchCenter at Boreham Library—a major addi-tion that will more than double the squarefootage of the existing Boreham Library.Scheduled to open in time for the fall 2012semester, the center will serve as the linch-pin in our decade-long transformation intoa premier regional university.

But it’s not only our physical campusthat might look unfamiliar to those of youwho attended more than five or ten yearsago. Our student body has also changed dramatically—growing to nearly 8,000 and

getting younger and more diverse, both eth-nically and geographically—and our facultyhas grown at a similar pace. Likewise, ouracademic offerings—including more than 30 bachelor’s degree programs—haveexpanded tremendously. Additionally, ourconnections to local business and industryhave deepened as we’ve become more andmore involved in the economic developmentof our region.

But I’m here to assure you that despitethe growth and change, UAFS is fundamen-tally the same institution you remember, nomatter what it was called when you attended.

A few years back, I had the pleasure ofhaving lunch with Randy Wewers ’58 and a number of students. Randy, who is nowchair of the new Alumni Advisory Council(see p. 30), spoke passionately to the stu-dents that day about the teachers he’d had atFort Smith Junior College—about how muchthey cared about him, how much they taughthim, how hard they pushed him. He saidthey had made a profound difference in hislife that still affected who he was today.

Back then, FSJC was an institution dedi-cated entirely to teaching and learning thatprided itself on its deep connection with thecommunity and counted as one of its great-est strengths the individuals who taught andlearned and worked there. It was a specialplace that produced thousands of graduateslike Randy (who would go on to serve asChief Technology Officer of the creditreporting company Equifax) and helped thecommunity and the region.

What I remember best from that day,though, is that when Randy stopped talking,one of the students spoke up and said, sim-ply, “It’s still like that today.”

PAUL B. BERAN, Ph.D.Chancellor

‘It’s Still Like That Today’

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^̂Bell TowerSpring/Summer 2012Volume 3, Number 1

The University of Arkansas – Fort Smith

CHANCELLORPaul B. Beran, Ph.D.

VICE CHANCELLOR FOR UNIVERSITYADVANCEMENT

Marta M. Loyd, Ed.D.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI AFFAIRSElizabeth Underwood

EDITORZack Thomas

CONTRIBUTORSBryce Albertson, Eric Francis

PHOTOGRAPHERCorey S. Krasko

ART DIRECTORJohn Sizing

www.jspublicationdesign.com

ADVISORY BOARDDr. Paul B. Beran, Chancellor;

Dr. Ray Wallace, Provost; Dr. Marta M. Loyd,Vice Chancellor for UniversityAdvancement; Mark Horn,

Vice Chancellor for University Relations; Dr. Lee Krehbiel, Vice Chancellor for

Student Affairs; Elizabeth Underwood,Executive Director of Alumni Affairs; Jeff Harmon, Director of UniversityMarketing and Communications

BELL TOWER is published semi-annually by the

University of Arkansas – Fort Smith Alumni

Association, P.O. Box 3649, Fort Smith, AR 72913,

for alumni, friends, and faculty of the University.

Tel: (877) 303-8237. Email: [email protected].

Web: www.uafs.com.

SEND ADDRESS CHANGES, requests to receive

Bell Tower, and requests to be removed from the

mailing list to [email protected] or UAFS Alumni

Association, P.O. Box 3649, Fort Smith, AR 72913.

LETTERS ARE WELCOME, but the Publisher

reserves the right to edit letters for length and

content. Space constraints may prevent publica-

tion of all letters. Anonymous letters will not be

published. Send letters to belltower@uafs. edu or

Bell Tower Magazine, P.O. Box 3649, Fort Smith,

AR 72913.

Views and opinions expressed in Bell Tower do not

necessarily reflect those of the magazine staff or

advisory board nor of the University of Arkansas –

Fort Smith.

Contents ©2012 by the University of Arkansas –

Fort Smith.

With University of Arkansas SystemPresident Dr. Donald R. Bobbitt (left) at aDecember 2011 commencement ceremonyon the UAFS campus.

COREY S. K

RASKO

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The UAFS Annual Fund is here!The UAFS Annual Fund is here!Since 1928, our students have had big dreams.

Alumni and friends can help make those dreams a reality through annual giving at UAFS.

To learn more about the Annual Fund: www.uafsalumni.com/annualfund

479-788-7920 • [email protected]

03r2_UAFS_SPSU12:toc & letters 6/1/12 8:10 PM Page 3

DESPITE A SMALL DECREASE in total students for the 2012 spring semester—theresult mainly of stricter financial aid rules—the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded byUAFS is trending sharply upward. The trend began in the 2010-11 academic year, when theuniversity awarded 531 bachelor’s degrees, a 27 percent increase over the 419 awarded in2009-10.

This academic year saw another marked increase, with 373 bachelor’s degree candidatesfor May 2012. Combined with the degrees already awarded, that makes a projected total ofaround 650 bachelor’s degrees for 2011-12, an increase of about 24 percent.

Additionally, the number of credits taken by juniors and seniors in 2010-11 was up nearlyseven percent over the previous year, while the number of students returning after the previ-ous semester was up three percent. “These increases continue to demonstrate the importanceof the university’s retention efforts,” said Provost Dr. Ray Wallace, “with advising and academic early alert programs playing an important role.”

Grand+WaldronCAMPUS NEWS AND NOTES

”“Any drive toward singularity is a drive toward extinction; the absenceof diversity is vulnerability.

—SOCIOBIOLOGIST REBECCA COSTA, author of The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction, speaking Feb. 20 at UAFS to an audience of students, faculty, staff, and community members


Bachelor’s Degrees Up Sharply Over Last Year

Investmentin GoldQUICK—YOU’VE GOT a doctor’s order to give your patient one 125-milligram tabletper 25 kilograms of patient weight, and thepatient weighs 165 pounds. How manytablets do you give him?

You could sit down and work out howmany kilograms are in 165 pounds and thendivide that by 25. Or you could just askLidiana Quezada, who can come up with the answer a lot faster than you can.

In 2011, as a senior at Fort Smith’sNorthside High, Quezada won gold in theMedical Math competition at the SkillsUSANational Championships, sound-ly beating not only the 14 otherhigh school students she wascompeting against, but also theseven college students takingthe same exam.

At the time, Quezada wasalso a student at the WesternArkansas Technical Center—a program at UAFS thatallows area high school students to earn college credit—and her gold was the first national medal for the WATC chapter ofSkillsUSA, a nationalorganization for highschool and college studentsenrolled in technical, skilled,and service programs.

Now about to start hersophomore year as a nursingmajor at UAFS, Quezada, who has her education paid forwith a variety of scholarships,including one from WATC andone from SkillsUSA, saysmath and measurements just come naturally to her.Must be nice...

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UAFS expects to award some 650 bachelor’s degrees in the 2011-12 academic year, up more than 20 percent from the year before.

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^̂points of prideHonored with the Committee’s ChoiceAward at the Arkansas State Festival ofthe Kennedy Center American CollegeTheatre Festival, the UAFS production of Anton Chekov’s Three Sisters. Severalstudents also won individual awards foracting, honor crew, publicity design, andlighting design. “Chekhov is considered bymany theatre professionals to be some ofthe hardest material in the business,” saysUAFS Theatre Director Bob Stevenson.

Published by the University of OklahomaPress, Parley Pratt and the Making ofMormonism, a 351-page book co-edited byUAFS Spanish professor Greg Armstrongand associate English professor DennisSiler, who also co-wrote the book’s intro-duction. Pratt, who Armstrong calls“arguably the third most important individ-ual in early Mormon history” after BrighamYoung and Joseph Smith, was murderednear Van Buren in 1857 by the estranged,legal husband of one of his plural wives.

Displayed at the Abecedarian Gallery in Denver as part of a juried exhibit,Alphabook: A Celebration of Letters, a bookwith a handcrafted cover designed by sen-ior Graphic Design major Kristin Catlett.Catlett designed and bound the book in acourse taught by Katie Harper. The Denverexhibit, titled “Hand Lettered,” featuredartists from California to New York andFlorida to Minnesota, as well as two inter-national artists. Catlett was the onlyArkansas artist represented.

Awarded first place in the Video Promo category at the South CentralBroadcasting Society Annual RegionalUndergraduate Student Electronic MediaCompetition in Austin, UAFS MediaCommunication majors Aaron Hodges and Nick Kyrouac, for “UAFS MediaCommunication Promo,” a video made fora course taught by Dr. Susan Simkowski.Another student, Josiah Gorham, tooksecond place in the Video PSA categoryfor his public service video, “Islamophobia.”This academic year is the first for theMedia Communication major at UAFS.

Named Student of the Year for 2011 by the Arkansas Nursing Students’Association, UAFS senior Jake Malone, for outstanding academic and clinical work as well as for his community activitiesand his efforts on behalf of the UAFSStudent Nurses Association. The UAFSStudent Nurses Association also won theCommunity Health Award from the stateorganization for the students’ work collect-ing suitcases, duffel bags, backpacks, and

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UAFS Honored for Drennen-Scott Restoration

DONA RINNE

The Excellence in Preservation through Restoration Award, accepted in January by Drennen-Scott site director Tom Wing (middle), recognizes an intensive six-year restoration effort byUAFS and its project partners.

“I CAN HONESTLY SAY say this was one of the most special events I have had the honorto attend,” says Tom Wing, director of the Drennen-Scott Historic Site, of the January cere-mony at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion where he accepted the Excellence in Preservationthrough Restoration Award from the Historic Preservation Alliance of Arkansas.

The award recognized the university’s work on the Drennen-Scott House in Van Buren,which dates to the early 1830s. In May 2011, after an intensive six-year restoration effort, theuniversity opened the historic house and grounds as not only a public museum but also aworking lab for history and archeology students. In its first seven months of operation, it had already seen more than 5,000 visitors from across the country.

The restoration was helped by more than $5 million in grants and by numerous stake-holders—the City of Van Buren, the Arkansas Department of Heritage, Historic ArkansasMuseum, Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resource Council, Crawford Construction, theArkansas Archeological Survey, the architectural firm of John Milner Associates Inc., and,perhaps most importantly, Caroline Bercher of Lavaca, Scott Bulloch of Van Buren, andDrennen Bulloch of Little Rock, fifth-generation descendants of original owner JohnDrennen.

“The Drennen-Scott project provided UAFS with an incredible opportunity to save a local historical treasure while gaining a laboratory for UAFS students,” says Wing.

MORE ONLINE: Learn more about the Drennen-Scott Historic Site or plan a visit atwww.uafs.edu/humanities/drennen-scott-house.

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IT WAS 10 TIMES stronger than the onethat leveled San Francisco in 1906—strongenough to topple chimneys in St. Louis, ringchurch bells in Boston, and awaken sleepersas far away as New York City. Great sprays of sand and water shot dozens of feet into theair. The Mississippi River ran backwards.

And you thought the tornados here were bad.

This is what happened back in 1811 and

1812 when the New Madrid Seismic Zone hadits last big shakeup. Located in Arkansas,Tennessee, and Missouri, the New Madrid isthe most active series of faults in NorthAmerica west of the Rockies, experiencing anaverage of 200 quakes per year, most toosmall to be felt, but about once every 200years, there’s a big one.

Now, after a series of small quakes cen-tered in Oklahoma rattled windows in

Greater Fort Smith in 2011, the New Madridin particular and earthquakes in general aregetting more attention in the region.

“We know why earthquakes happen, but we currently have no way to predictwhen,” says physical sciences instructor Chris Knubley, resident earthquake guru atUAFS. Last time, quakes as strong as 8.6 onthe Richter scale leveled the town of NewMadrid, Arkansas, for which the fault systemis named. Back then there wasn’t much elsearound. Today there’s much more at stake,and many scientists believe we’re overdue.

In November of 2008, FEMA proposedthat a New Madrid quake measuring 7.7 onthe Richter scale would cause “widespreadand catastrophic devastation” across 11 statesincluding Arkansas. In 2009, researchersfrom the University of Illinois and VirginiaTech ran a similar study, and the resultsweren’t pretty: 86,000 casualties, including3,500 fatalities; 715,000 damaged buildings; 7.2 million people displaced; and direct eco-nomic losses exceeding $300 billion—all froma quake 12 times weaker than the 1812 big one.

There’s no reason to prepare forArmageddon, though. “If a big one occurred,we would feel it, but we wouldn’t get a lot ofdamage,” says Knubley. According to theFEMA study, what we should prepare for is avast influx of refugees. Anyone rememberHurricane Katrina? Magnify that by severalorders of magnitude.

Though Fort Smith won’t be destroyed,some damage would likely occur. People couldstill be hurt, so if an earthquake hits, Knubleyrecommends getting outside as quickly as possible, or if you can’t get outside, get under a door frame, and avoid glass at all costs.

Just because we won’t get much damagefrom a New Madrid quake doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be prepared. After all, saysKnubley, there are “ancient faults below theEarth’s surface that we can’t see that can stillbe active.”

Sleep tight.—Bryce Albertson ’12

The kids in the Oaklawn Visual andPerforming Arts Magnet School in HotSprings, where Kristin Bath-RodgersGordon ’09 teaches fourth grade, aren’tshort of brains or talent. Far from it, infact. But, because many of them comefrom low-income families and haveparents who didn’t go to college, relativelyfew of the students go to college either.In response, the school came up with

Early College Awareness Days. One day a month, the kids wear college T-shirts andtalk about college and careers. So Gordon called the UAFS Alumni Association, andwe sent her a little care package with shirts for all her kids.“They like UAFS because it’s different,” she says. “Most of them have hog shirts

or National Park Community College shirts, but they want to wear UAFS because I went there. And they think the lion mascot is pretty cool.”

The New Madrid Seismic Zone appears near Arkansas’s northeast corner on aUSGS map showing ground acceleration in g force with a two percent probability of exceedance (PE) in the next 50 years.

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The Next Big OneWhat a New Madrid quake means for Fort Smith

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personal hygiene products for foster children.

Accepted to graduate or professionalschool, over 90 percent of UAFS biologymajors who applied. Students were accept-ed into medical schools in Arkansas andOklahoma, pharmacy school, chiropracticschool, and numerous other graduateschools. In addition, all three of last year’sBiology with Teaching Licensure graduatessecured teaching positions—two inArkansas and one in Oklahoma.

Ranked among the top 10 percent in thenation, nine UAFS business students whotook the Major Field Test last academic yearas seniors. The test is administered at busi-ness schools nationally to measure studentmastery of key concepts and principles aswell as knowledge expected of students atthe conclusion of their majors. The nine students’ names are now displayed in theCollege of Business Student Hall of Fame.

Selected to participate in the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, biologyprofessor Ragupathy Kannan, who, as a partof the project, observed dozens of highschool and junior high biology lessons andscored each using a rubric developed byStanford University’s Center for Assessment,Learning and Equity. The MET project’s goal isto determine ways in which effective teach-ing can be measured fairly and consistently.

Decorated with numerous medals at theFort Smith ADDY Awards, 14 UAFS stu-dents, who brought home a total of 18awards, including nine golds. Most of theawards were in the student category, butseveral students actually won awards in theprofessional category for work done whilecompleting internships. The ADDYs are theadvertising industry’s annual awards cere-mony to recognize excellence in advertising.

Named to the principal clarinet positionwith the Tulsa Symphony, assistant musicprofessor David Carter, who was selectedafter a blind audition followed by a mainstage concert. Carter, who came to UAFS in 2009 and has played with the TulsaSymphony since 2006, has also been principal clarinetist of the Dearborn,Michigan, Symphony Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra.

Reprinted as part of Missouri’s obser-vance of the Civil War sesquicentennial,“Killed by Rebels: A Civil War Massacre andIts Aftermath,” a scholarly article by BobFrizzell, director of library services at UAFS. The article, originally published in 1977 in theMissouri Historical Review, appears this yearin A Rough Business: Fighting the Civil War inMissouri, a book of selected articles on theCivil War from that publication.

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Drawing from LifeAMONG THE MOST REMARKABLE THINGS ABOUTthe work of Otto Lang is the simple fact that until“Drawing from Life” opened in February at UAFS, ithad never before been exhibited publicly. Given tothe Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock by his son’swife, Lang’s drawings and watercolors recall an erabefore the use of photography in magazines andnewspapers outmoded professional illustrators.But “Drawing from Life” included much more thanLang’s sharply observed illustrations; the exhibitalso encompassed masterful academic figurestudies, evocative sketches of land- andcityscapes, and direct-observation drawings of a universe of characters. Born in Ohio in 1866, Lang died in Little Rock in 1940.

Pau-Ko-Tuk, Wisconsin, 1895, pencil

on board

Discussion between Two New York Businessmen, 1920,

pen and ink on paper

Figure Study, early 1900s,

charcoal on paper

Willow Creek Trout, early 1900s,

watercolor on paper



Grand+Waldron

Miss CongenialityACTRESSMiranda Martinez ’92 has diedon camera before, but never quite so grue-somely as in The Ouija Experiment, releasedthis spring. “It’s like, let’s watch and see howlong it takes,” she laughs. And that agonizing,

bloody death isn’t the half of it; she thencomes back as a corpse possessed by an evil spirit.

But even covered in fake blood,Martinez—who went by Susan Mirandawhen she was at Westark—hasn’t lost thezest for life that helped her win the MissCongeniality title in the 1991 Miss WestarkScholarship Pageant. “The blood comesout,” she says, “and you know you’re mak-ing a mess, but it’s so much fun!”

She and producer Josey Wells—aNorthside High graduate like Martinez—were in town in April for a local screening of the independent horror film, which wasshot in just over a week with a “no-string”budget of around $1,000. Still, the film—being distributed according to an old modelcalled “four-walling,” in which the produc-ers rent theaters to screen the movie andthen receive all box-office revenue—haspacked houses across Texas and Arkansasand is still gaining momentum. —BryceAlbertson ’12

MORE ONLINE: See a trailer for The OuijaExperiment and more photos of Martinez onset at www.belltowermag.blogspot.com.

Dig ThisUAFS students map probable locations of buried mummies

IT WAS ON THEIR third day at Huaca Pucllana—a massive, pre-Inca adobe pyramid risingright in the middle of the Miraflores district of Lima, Peru—that the UAFS team got a goodidea of what the anomalies detected by their ground-penetrating radar actually were. Thatmorning, one of the local archeologists showed them a number of spots where wind and timehad cleared away enough dirt to reveal parts of mummies buried in the top of the structure.Those spots, they realized, formed a rough semi-circle. And that semi-circle was completed bythe spots they were identifying with their radar.

Because it can take a year or more to obtain permits for archeological digs in Peru, theUAFS team still doesn’t know for certain if the dozens of “hotspots” they identified in May 2011at Huaca Pucllana hold mummies or something else. What they do know is exactly where thosehotspots are. Using a combination of radar to find underground anomalies and sophisticatedGPS and GIS technologies to map the site and create a grid system, the 20 students, faculty,and professionals on the team provided the Huaca Pucllana staff with something they’ve neverhad before—incredibly precise maps of the site with transparent overlays showing hotspotslikely to hold remains or artifacts.

MORE ONLINE: Learn more about the project at www.belltowermag.blogspot.com.

Over the winter, we decided to launch Blog Tower(www.belltowermag.blogspot.com) as a handyplace to publish everything we can’t fit in the printedition or that comes up between issues. Which got uswondering how many of you all are bloggers yourselves.

It didn’t take long, for instance, to find ChristenMoon Krumm ’07, who runs her own site atwww.christenkrumm.com and also frequentlycontributes to the popular blog Blissfully Domestic.

So, do you blog? Email us a link at [email protected] and we’ll share yoursite in a future issue. And, while you’re online, take a minute to check Blog Towerfor more stories and web-only extras.

TELL US ABOUT IT

With ground-penetrating radar,

a UAFS teamsearched in May2011 for possibleburial sites atopthe pyramid at

Huaca Pucllana.

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UAFS BELL TOWER 9

IMAGINE OPENING YOUR biologytextbook to find an illustration of a single-celled organism, like a paramecium. Nowimagine zooming in to take a closer look atthe cilia—tiny, hair-like structures surround-ing the paramecium. Now, zoom out, tap yourforefinger on “animate” and watch the littleguy flail and rotate in an attempt to avoidanother little critter that wants to have it for breakfast.With one picture, you learned not just

what a paramecium’s cilia are, but how theywork and what they’re for. And after seeing itin motion and scintillating color, you’re morelikely to remember it. But you’re a tactilelearner, so you copy a few frames from thevideo and draw in a speech balloon thatmakes the paramecium say “Ahh! A didini-um! Spin for your lives!” You laugh, but moreimportantly, you learn.If your textbook can do that for biology,

just imagine what it can do for music theory,graphic design, or even automotive repairclasses. But wait. A textbook can’t do all of

that stuff. That’s where the iPad comes in —or at least where it will come in, according to Dr. George Schmidt, whose AccountingInformation Systems (AIS) class is pioneeringthe use of iPads in UAFS classrooms.Due to the “do it this way every time”

nature of their jobs, accountants aren’t knownfor breaking the mold. “Cutting edge account-ing” sounds like either an oxymoron or some-thing that could lead to a prison sentence. Butfor Schmidt and his students, this isn’t aboutbeing cutting edge. With many real worldaccountants already using iPads every day tobring their clients up to speed, this is aboutgetting students ready for the workforce.In Schmidt’s class, those familiar with the

iPhone’s similar interface caught on quickly.Those who weren’t took about three weeks tocatch up, and in today’s fast-paced businessworld, that’s time a prospective employer justdoesn’t have. “This is where accounting isright now. Imagine where it’ll be in five years,”says Schmidt. “Students who don’t know thistechnology won’t get those jobs.”

The iPad is not only an incredibly power-ful teaching tool, but it could turn out to becost effective for students, too. The hardcovertextbook for the AIS class costs a whopping$321. The electronic version? Only $92.Withthat kind of savings over traditional text-books, an iPad, currently selling for around$500, could pay for itself before the end offreshman year. But since AIS is the only classat UAFS currently using iPads and electronictextbooks, that’s not the case now.The students in Schmidt’s class, howev-

er, didn’t have to spend a dime, thanks to acorporate sponsorship from Beall Barclayand an anonymous gift to the UAFSFoundation that was designated to purchasethe iPads. The only catch? At the end of thesemester, the students had to give themback. With over 400,000 apps now availablefor the iPad—everything from accounting toAngry Birds—it was a good thing for UAFSthat there’s not an app that teaches Kung Fu.They might have a fight on their hands.—Bryce Albertson ’12

Education? There’s an App for That!How iPads can improve classes and save students money at the same time

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Thanks to a corporate sponsorship from Beall Barclay and an anonymous gift to the UAFS Foundation, every student in Dr. George Schmidt’sAccounting Information Systems course received a new iPad to use for this spring semester.



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“OUR STUDENTS LOVE to see thosekids, and those kids love to see our students,” says dental hygiene instruc-tor Pam Davidson of the annual tripshe makes with her CommunityDentistry class to Mena,Arkansas, to apply preventivesealants to the teeth of secondand sixth graders from theAcorn, Mena, Wickes, andVan-Cove school districtsin Polk County.

Sure, kids love goingto the dentist, right?Well, in this case, theyactually do, dozens ofthem tumbling off thebus in their Februarycoats and into a com-munity dental clinic, allsmiles and enthusiasm.They are, after all, get-ting out of school for thebetter part of a day.

But it’s more than that.It’s also the infectiousexcitement of the UAFS stu-dents, who love the chance towork with children. They startout doing sealants on each other—which of course isn’t very much fun—before graduating to the patients whocome into the on-campus clinic. The vastmajority of those patients are adults,though, so the opportunity to work withkids is special.

For having had little practice, the stu-dents are incredibly good with them, joshingand teasing here, coaxing and comfortingthere, but always managing in the end tomake it fun. “Your molars have lots ofgrooves where cavity bugs can hide,”explains one hygiene student to a rapt seven-year-old in a pair of neon-framed sunglasses she’s given him to shield his eyes from the bright light, “so what we’regoing to do is fill up those grooves and

make your teeth smoother.”The painless procedure—basically paint-

ing a clear resin onto the chewing surfaces ofnewly erupted six-year and twelve-yearmolars—protects teeth from decay for aboutfive years, helping get kids through the timewhen we’re most prone to tooth decay.

That added protection is an especiallybig deal in rural, lower-income areas like

Polk County, where kids may have littleor no access to dental care. In fact,the first question the students ask each little patient is, “Haveyou ever been to the dentistbefore?” The answer isn’talways yes.

Working in teams oftwo, the hygiene studentsrun four rooms at a timewhile two dentists fromthe clinic circulateamong them, screeningeach kid for decay,abscesses, and otherproblems that requireimmediate attention. It’sno substitute for regular,complete exams, but forthe kids who don’t getthose exams, it can makeall the difference in theworld.Each of them leaves with

not only new sealants and ascreening, but also a new tooth-

brush, an instructional pep-talkabout hygiene, and, Davidson hopes,

the idea that going to the dentist isn’tso bad after all. It’s an idea that does seem

to have taken hold as the kids recount theiradventures excitedly to one another whilewaiting for the bus back to school.

But the Polk County kids and the UAFSstudents aren’t the only ones excited aboutthe annual trip. So is Davidson, who sees itas a chance to show her students a side ofdentistry few of them may ever see again. “I know that most of my students will leaveand go into private practice,” she says, “but there’s a world of people out there whojust can’t afford private-practice dentistry.Getting students out there and getting them excited about community dentistry is tremendous.”

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Everybody Wins (Except the Cavity Bugs)Dental hygiene students learn by doing, sealing kids’ teeth in a Mena clinic

Working in teams of two, UAFS dentalhygiene students apply decay-preventingsealants to more than 100 Polk County elementary schoolers every February.


UAFS BELL TOWER 11

1Do TV meteorologists do their ownforecasts, or do you just get them

from the National Weather Service?

As far as the day-to-day forecast goes, webuild all that ourselves. I can access all thecomputer models I need. Around here, it’salways different. The models go out 15 or 16 days, but they’re only really accurate forabout seven. Yesterday it looked like therewas going to be a big outbreak of cold airnext weekend. It may or may not happen.But I know that my job is going to be com-pletely different from this week. There’s not many places in the world that have this kind of weather.

2Can a meteorologist forecast any-where, or does it take time to learn

a region’s weather?

I can forecast the weather really well—although some people might disagree—inthe mid-South, the plains, and the southeast.As far as regional forecasting, it’s not some-thing you learn in school; it’s more skills thatdevelop on the job. There’s a lot of nuancesand weird stuff that really just take experi-

ence to learn. For instance, around here,there’s a River Valley east wind that onlydevelops when the south wind is at about2,000 feet or so, and when that happens theRiver Valley stays colder than NorthwestArkansas.

3Power Doppler, Super Doppler, Mega Doppler, and so on—do

different stations really have differentweather technology?

It’s just a marketing and branding thing.Back in the ’90s, Doppler was huge. NationalWeather Service Doppler came out in 1988.Then TV stations started to get it; it startedwith Gary England in Oklahoma City atKWTV. After that, if you didn’t have Doppler,you were nothing. But everybody has theirown Doppler now. We’re all running it, andit’s essentially the same at each station.

4Climate change has gotten so politicized it’s hard to know what’s

science and what’s spin. What do youthink about it?

I do think there’s climate change taking

place, and I tend to believe some of what’soccurring is likely man-made. I don’t know if it’s all CO2 emissions, though. Some of thestudies show that, and some of them don’t.At the same time, I think the earth goesthrough natural cycles and that climate isaffected by things like solar cycles. There’s aheated debate going on right now within theAmerican Meteorological Society over anofficial statement about climate change, anda recent study by George Mason University—that I participated in—found that the majori-ty of television meteorologists don’t believein man-made global warming.

5How do you decide who has to standout there in the wind and the rain?

It’s the new guy! No, seriously, the decisioncomes from our news director. But typicallythe chief meteorologist will be on the airanchoring, and either the morning guy or the weekend guy will be out in it. But Iprefer actually to be out in it. I love storm chasing. I got to cover Hurricane Lili back in2002, and it was a blast. Being underneathsevere weather is really what I love to do.

WEATHER MAN:Garrett Lewis ’01By the time Garrett Lewis ’01moved to Alma with his family as asixth-grader, he was already, he says, “a full-blown weather nerd.”Fascinated not only with the weather itself but also with telling itsstory, he spent hours watching overnight broadcasts from TheWeather Channel that he’d recorded on old VHS tapes.

That fascination never waned. While at Westark College, hescored an internship with KFSM-TV, Fort Smith’s channel 5, andwas placed with one of the station’s meteorologists, whoremained a mentor even after Lewis graduated from Westark andwent on to pursue a degree in geosciences at Mississippi State.

By 2002, he was doing part-time weekend weather at KFSM

while still finishing his MSU degree. In 2003, he was promoted tofull-time morning weather and then, in 2004, at the ripe old age of23, to Chief Meteorologist, a position he has held ever since.

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1. Production designer: Half of UAFS’sdynamic duo of theatre instructors, PabloGuerra-Monje serves as production designeron all Theatre@UAFS plays and teachescourses in the design/technology track, whileBob Stevenson directs the plays and teachescourses in the acting/directing track. Guerra-Monje came to UAFS four years ago, when an extraordinarily good drama club led byStevenson morphed into a brand-new major.Originally from Spain, Guerra-Monje hasearned master’s degrees both there and in the U.S., where he studied at the University of Memphis.

BREEDLOVE 121:The Scene ShopADJOINING THE BREEDLOVE AUDITORIUM, WHERE UAFS’S THEATRE PROGRAM—nicknamed Theatre@UAFS—produces its plays, the scene shop is one of the liveliestspaces on campus. “Theatre,” says Assistant Professor Pablo Guerra-Monje, “is the mostcollaborative of the arts,” a fact that becomes readily apparent after just a few minutes in the shop, which bustles with students—some of them from other programs—workingon dozens of different jobs, both inside and, on nice days, outside its roll-up door in theshadow of the Bell Tower.

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2. THEA 1503: Theatre students typicallytake Stagecraft, a required course for themajor, during the second semester of theirfreshman year, getting a quick glimpse of thebasics of producing plays—“a little bit of sce-nic construction, a little bit of scenic painting,a little bit of sound, a little bit of lighting, a little bit of costumes, a little bit of makeup, a little bit of props,” as Guerra-Monje puts it.

After Stagecraft comes Fundamentals ofDesign. “In order to be successful in design,”says Guerra-Monje, “you have to know thematerials and the techniques.” Later, asupperclassmen, students in the design/technology track take entire courses

focusing on specificareas like lighting design.

3. Production board:It’s remarkable howmany individual jobs areinvolved in producing a play. The productionteam on Imogen, forinstance, a recent original play byStevenson that wonnumerous awards, takesup an entire page in the program. Just forstarters, there are light-ing designers, electri-cians, costume andmakeup designers, a costume crew, riggers,sound designers, a sceneartist, a shop foreman, a publicity designer—virtually all of them stu-dents. The productionboard shows who’s doingwhat on the next play.

4. Power tools: Beforethey start working onanything, students learnabout power tools—chopsaws, table saws, bandsaws, circular saws,reciprocating saws, heatguns, staple guns, and a host of other fun stuff.“We go tool by tool,” saysGuerra-Monje. “Some of the guys have used

power tools before, but a lot of othershaven’t.” It sounds like a perfect recipe forsevered fingers or worse—a bunch of inexpe-rienced 18-year-olds operating dangerouspower tools in close quarters. But Guerra-Monje says safety comes first, and he obvi-ously means it; there’s never been more than a dinged knuckle or two in the shop.

5. Platform: In the early stages of its con-struction, a platform doesn’t exactly look likesomething you’d want to stand on eight or ten feet above the stage. But that will change;platform legs are braced at least every fourfeet, and the whole thing is assembled with

nuts and bolts as opposed to screws, whicharen’t as strong. And anyway, standing on a platform is relatively tame for actors inUAFS productions, which frequently includelots of trapeze work and even actors “flying”with climbing ropes and harnesses. It soundsabout as safe as the power tools, but again,there hasn’t been a single glitch. “We check all our rigging over and over,” says Guerra-Monje.

6. Flats: A staple of stagecraft for more than300 years now, canvas panels stretched overwooden frames are lightweight, easy to store,and can be repainted or “re-skinned” for thenext play. Painted by students to representwalls, doors, signs, skies—just about any-thing, really—today’s flats are typically madeof one-by-four lumber.

Flats are unique in their simplicity andreusability. In fact, most of what’s built in theshop is specific to a particular play. “Everyproject is a completely new thing,” saysGuerra-Monje. For instance, in A MidsummerNight’s Dream, produced this spring, some ofthe trees on stage needed to move around, sothe production team had to design and makespecial backpacks to serve as limbs andfoliage for actors on stilts.

7. Light plot: Stage lighting and scenery are as carefully choreographed as the actors’movements, and light plots—detailed draw-ings of the theatre space—show studentsexactly where to hang and focus the lightsand where to put the scenery. The plots—drawn by the student in charge of lightingdesign using a computer program that calcu-lates exactly what effect a light will produce,given its angle, height, and distance fromstage—also specify the intensity and color of each light for each scene.

8. Shop floor: The shop floor changes colorwith virtually every play the theatre studentsproduce. The weird yellow and green patternsare left over from South Pacific, produced lastwinter. The crew made 16-foot palm trees outof PVC pipe bent to shape with a heat gun,then cut thin plastic sheeting for the fronds,and finally painted the plastic fronds yellowand green, leaving their image on the floor. “It will get covered pretty soon with the nextshow,” says Guerra-Monje.

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Knowledge Base


IT’S TOUGH TO GO online these days—or, for that matter, listen to the radio or visitan office or electronics store—without hear-ing the pitch: All your clunky old PC needs is atune-up to purr like a kitten again! And it’ll onlycost you $25. Or $50. Or more.

Like that $150 “fuel injection and induc-tion service” the mechanic says you need, it’sone of those things you wish you could askan unbiased expert about. Fortunately, we’vegot one: IT Chair Dr. Rick Massengale.

For starters, says Massengale, the adjust-ments and fixes that are part of most PCtune-up services can indeed speed up yourcomputer considerably by, in the simplestterms, removing unneeded stuff and arrang-ing the important stuff in a way that makesit easier for your computer to find.

“A lot of people don’t realize,” saysMassengale, “that every time you hit theinternet you collect residual files, and thosethings build up on your hard drive. Thefuller your hard drive gets, the more yourcomputer has to go back and forth to get thepieces it needs. It’s kind of like filling a gal-lon bucket one cup at a time.”

Additionally, saved information, overtime, gets “fragmented,” so that the informa-tion needed to perform a given task might be scattered in lots of different locations.

But, says Massengale, anybody who can follow directions and click a mouse can handle the necessary cleanup and rearranging. The main steps are repairingdisk errors, getting rid of residual and junk files, defragmenting your hard

drive, and zapping spyware.Windows comes with built-in utilities to

do all but get rid of spyware, and several reli-able anti-spyware programs, like Microsoft’sSecurity Essentials, are available as freedownloads. Run the Check Disk utility to findand repair “bad sectors,” the Disk Cleanuputility to free up space on your hard drive by

purging unneeded stuff, and the DiskDefragmenter utility to rearrange informationfor quicker access.

Massengale says defragmenting is partic-ularly important, and he “defrags” once amonth. Disk Cleanup and Check Disk utili-ties should be run weekly. Specific stepsdiffer slightly between Windows versions,but step-by-step instructions can be foundin the Help section. All three utilities canalso be automated—sort of like set-ting your car to change its own oil at regular intervals.

For casual do-it-yourselfers,

built-in Windows utilities are generallysafer than third-party tune-up software,although in many cases not as effective. Ifyou’re considering downloading third-partytune-up software from one of the dozens ofsites pushing it, investigate carefully; somesites are legitimate, while others are scams.

If you run into complications, or if you’d just rather let someone else do thework, Massengale says services offered byoffice supply chains are likely safe enough,although they offer little or nothing morethan you can do yourself.

So when do you really need a profes-sional? When your computer gets a virus,says Massengale. “That’s not something you want to try to take care of yourself.” He also warns against attempting to repairissues with your computer’s registry.Although registry-cleaning software is popular, he says, “you start tinkering in aregistry, you can very quickly give yourcomputer a lobotomy.”

MORE ONLINE: Ready to tune up yourWindows XP, Vista, or 7 machine? FollowMassengale’s step-by-step instructions for running the Check Disk, Disk Cleanup,and Disk Defragmenter utilities atwww.belltowermag.blogspot.com.

“The fuller yourhard drive gets, the more your computer has

to go back and forth. It’s kind of like filling a

gallon bucket onecup at a time.”

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Time for a Tune-up?Why PCs slow down and how to get them back up to speed


EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITYChamp Williams, Video Guy/Filmmaker

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IIt’s the end of February, and Champ Williamscan feel spring coming—something he regardswith a mix of anticipation and just a bit of

dread. “I can already hear the frogs croaking atnight,” he says, and then lets out a long sigh. “Guessit’s time to gear up again.”This will be his thirdseason working on Ozarks Underwater, a one-hourdocumentary about the lesser known aquatic lifein our region.

But it’s not as if Williams, a multimedia specialistat UAFS, has been doing nothing over the winter. He puts in at least a half-hour a day maintaining therather improbable film studio he spent 14 monthsbuilding inside an old metal horse barn on the out-skirts of Fort Smith just over the Oklahoma line.

Or, more accurately, he spends that time main-taining the studio’s tenants—a cast of dozens ofstrange aquatic characters living in 28 tanks up to1,200 gallons, from tiny but predaceous pondhawklarvae to massive, prehistoric alligator snappingturtles, as big as 150 pounds.

Water has to be changed, pumps fixed, filterscleaned, chemicals balanced, animals fed. Andtheir food, of course, has to be collected. Thenewts, for instance, like pieces of earthworm. The snapping turtles favor freshly caught carp.

This is the less glamorous side of wildlife film-making, which, surprisingly, isn’t all done outdoors.

Because it’s nearly impossible to film certain crit-ters in the wild—especially underwater and upclose—filmmakers like Williams collect specimensand painstakingly recreate their habitats.

Busy as he’s been over the winter, though,Williams, like his subjects, shifts into high gearcome spring—still maintaining the studio and tak-ing care of its residents, but also collecting speci-mens, filming in both the studio and the field,scouting locations, editing late into the night. He’sdetermined to finish the film before the year is out.

Frankly, though, it all sounds a little far-fetched—a 28-year-old guy converts an old barninto a custom film studio, captures an incrediblecollection of rarely seen aquatic animals, and then makes a compelling documentary, all working single-handedly on a shoestring budget.

Or it would sound far-fetched if you didn’tknow that Williams had simultaneously earned adegree in film at the Brooks Institute and anotherin marine biology at Cal State Northridge. Or thathe was a certified scuba instructor. Or that he’dalready won an Emmy in 2008 for a short about a struggle between a limpet and a starfish.

But in light of those things, it’s a safe bet thatOzarks Underwater will be making the rounds atfestivals next year—and that Williams will finallybe enjoying some downtime.

“Busy ashe’s beenover thewinter,

Williams,like his

subjects,shifts intohigh gear

comespring.”

Champ Williams nose to nose with an alligator snapping turtle in the White River.^̂

UAFS BELL TOWER 15



100 Wins for NewmanON HIS WAY TO transforming the Lions from a premier junior college program into anup-and-coming NCAA Division II power, men’s basketball coach Josh Newman has racked up quite a few W’s—115 to be exact.

Number 100 came on November 16, 2011, as the Lions shot a sizzling 58 percent from thefield—including 9 of 17 from 3-point range—to beat Southeastern Oklahoma State 83-71 at theStubblefield Center. Sophomore guard Jake Toupal finished with 25 points and shot 5 of 10from 3-point range.

“It’s remarkable to think back on all of those wins, but moreimportantly all those kids who were a part of that,” Newmansaid after the game. “All those kids have been instrumental inthis experience I have had here at UAFS. I would like to thankthem personally because without them none of this would haveever happened.”

Newman, who finished his sixth season as theLions’ head coach with a 115-67 overall record,coached the team during their final three seasons of NJCAA membership, compiling a 70-25 record,with one Bi-State Conference East Division cham-pionship and consecutive appearances in the semi-finals of the Region II Tournament, along withconsecutive Top 5 rankings in the national polls.

He has coached and helped develop nine players who have been drafted or played in theNBA, including first-round draft picks KirkSnyder and Javale McGee, and has coached 41 players who have pursued careersoverseas. He has also coached and recruited 47 former junior college players who havegone on to play at Division I programs.

Lions Lowdown UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS - FORT SMITH ATHLETICS

JAMIE M

ITCHELL

Junior Heidi Luks (right) was named MVP of the Heartland Conference Tournament.

TournamentChamps!AFTER LOSING TO St. Edward’sUniversity twice in the regular season, theLady Lions claimed their first HeartlandConference Tournament championship inNovember by stunning the No. 1 seedHilltoppers on their home court in fourhard-fought sets.

How did coach Jane Sargent’s Lady Lionsstun the favored Hilltoppers, who had onlybeen beaten once in the regular season by a conference opponent? Defense. UAFS collected 16 total team blocks and held St.Edward’s to a paltry 0.096 hitting percent-age. The Hilltoppers had been averaging a0.218 hitting percentage. Five Lady Lionshad double-digit digs, too.

Junior middle hitter Heidi Luks wasnamed MVP of the tournament andHeartland Conference Player of the Year.She was joined on the All-HeartlandConference Team by senior right-side hitterFabiane Nass, senior outside hitter MorganBanner, and junior setter Whitney Hale.

Although the Lady Lions went on to losein the first round of the Region Tournament,they had already made history as the firstUAFS team to win a conference tournamentat the Division II level. And next seasonlooks, if anything, even more promising.

Men’s basketball coach Josh Newman, who broke the 100-win mark last November, finished his sixth season at UAFS with arecord of 115-67.

Until not too long ago, if you wanted towatch a Lions game, you had to be there to see it. Now all you need is an internetconnection. Starting in fall 2011, UAFS live-streamed all its volleyball and men’s andwomen’s basketball games, complete withcommentary provided by the Fort SmithRadio Group. Watch for baseball comingsoon. Catch the action at www.uafs.edu/university/athletics-live-stream.

CATCH THE LIONS LIVE ONLINE

COREY S. K

RASKO


Off-track: In cross country, unliketrack, you run anywhere and everywhere,surface-wise. It can be grass, gravel, maybe alittle mud. At our conference meet in Laredo,the course was actually in the desert. Thereare lots of hills, and you might have a fewhay bales or logs thrown in, too. Also, crosscountry is one race, so you might have 200other girls that you’re competing against.Especially for the first half-mile, you’ve kindof got to fight to get a spot sometimes. It canget pretty rough.

Work ethic: I’ve never really felt likeI’ve had natural, pure-out talent. I knowGod has blessed me with some talent, but I think my success is because of my workethic. There’s a lot of talent out there, but thecommitment it takes, especially at the colle-giate level, is rare. Not many people want toget up at five o’clock in the morning and gobust out 10 miles. This summer our trainingmileage was 60 or 65 miles a week. On the

weekends we’ll run anywhere from 13 to 16miles. And then we also do track workoutsand a lot of cross-training—swimming,weights, core. It’s a lot of work.

Individual accomplishment: Notonly is it a team sport, but really it’s an indi-vidual sport too. You have to kind of self-motivate, especially in a race, and that’ssomething I love about it. Your coach can’ttell you to run a certain play or do a certainthing. Mentally, it’s very tough—I thinktougher than physically. You do have differ-ent positions that you run in a race, but ulti-mately it’s you, the clock, and 200 othergirls. I like the rush you get at the end of the race, too, looking back and saying,“Wow, I did that, I accomplished that.”

Pigeon toes: I’m actually very pigeon-toed. I don’t know if that helps me or not,but when people look at me, they automati-cally go, you’re a runner aren’t you? Yep.When you run you naturally have to pronate

a little bit, and so it takes less energy for me.When I run, my stride is perfectly straight.

Big plans:We’re a new program, butlast year our guys got third in conference.We’re still working on developing our girls’program. We have about 10 committed girlsright now. Some of our freshmen from thispast year, myself included, are having tokind of build the team from the ground up.But both teams are definitely headed in theright direction, and our goal this year is conference wins for both men and women.

UAFS BELL TOWER 17

Welcome Back, Shep!LIONS ATHLETIC HALL OF FAME BASKETBALL COACH GAYLE KAUNDART HAD Aknack for discovering talented players in unlikely places, and DeWayne Shepard ’82wasproof of that. Shepard played for Helena-West Helena Central High School, an easternArkansas Class AAAA school not often frequented by college coaches in the late 1970s. The Cougars weren’t among the state’s elite teams during Shepard’s senior season, either,which further limited his exposure.But Kaundart’s instincts in signing Shepard were dead-on. As a freshman, “Shep,” as he

was known by his coaches and teammates, was a key factor in the Lions’ magical 1980-81season, during which they won the Bi-State Conference, the NJCAA Region II Tournament,and the NJCAA National Tournament. In the tournament final, he scored 19 points, collected10 rebounds, and was named MVP as the Lions beat Lincoln College 67-50 to win their first-ever NJCAA National Championship.This winter, Shepard—along with former teammate Brian Kelleybrew, volleyball star

Paula Castro Abbott, and Fort Smith Junior College basketball players Jim Jay and BobBlaylock—joined his coach in the Lions Athletic Hall of Fame, which now includes 17 formerplayers, coaches, and friends. Meet them all at www.uafortsmithlions.com.

On the RunCatching up with cross country standout Danielle David

LAST SEASON, AS A FRESHMAN, Danielle David emerged as a star of UAFS’s fledgling women’s cross country program, leading the team at every meet and turning in a school-record time of 24:57 in the Heartland Conference Championship 6k, where she finished 13th. We slowed her down long enough to ask her a little bit about the sport sheloves—including why anyone would willingly participate in it.

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DAY IN THE

LIFE

that there’s a lot happening on a university campus like thisone, but we never realized quite how much until photographerSteven Jones and Bell Tower editor Zack Thomas set out oneTuesday in April to document all of it in photos. Starting at 7 a.m. and working until 10 p.m., they traversed campus fromSebastian Commons to Crowder Field and the Fitness Centerto the Gardner Building, shooting more than 1,000 images in a vain attempt to somehow capture it all—the teaching and the learning, the work and the play, the bustle and the quiet,the living and striving and dreaming.So, did they succeed? Of course not—not even close. But

they did find plenty of telling little bits, the kinds of momentsand scenes that, taken together, might offer at least a revealinglittle glimpse into the life of this place and the people—students,faculty, and staff—that make it what it is.For those of you who were here recently, who know that

life so well already, we hope these images trigger a bit of nos-talgia for your days at UAFS. And for those of you who attend-ed Westark or Fort Smith Junior College and might barely recognize today’s university, we hope they make you feel likeyou know just a little bit more about this place that is, in itsown way, a part of all of us.


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UAFS through the lenses of photographers Steven Jones & Zack Thomas

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It probably goes without saying

18_UAFS_SPSU12:feature 5/18/12 3:48 AM Page 18

10:53 a.m., Pendergraft Health Sciences Center

7:30 a.m., Reynolds Bell Tower

4:14 p.m., Campus Green

12:12 p.m., Smith-Pendergraft Campus Center


8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00

8:11 a.m., Baldor Technology Center

9:26 a.m., Pendergraft Health Sciences Center

9:39 a.m., Reynolds Bell Tower

10:14 a.m., Baldor

Technology Center

10:21 a.m., Gardner

10:32 a.m., Lion Plaza

10:35 a.m., Boreham Library

10:45 a.m., Math-Science


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UAFS BELL TOWER 21

00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:0010:46 a.m., Math-Science

11:00 a.m., Fitness Center

11:10 a.m., Gardner

12:10 p.m., Lion’s Den dining hall



12:40 p.m., Lion’s Den dining hall

1:14 p.m., Reynolds Bell Tower


1:46 p.m., advisement offices


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2:20 p.m., Crowder Field

2:31 p.m., Lion’s Den

South lounge

2:43 p.m., Pendergraft


3:20 p.m., Ballman-Speer

3:38 p.m., Learning and Research Center at Boreham Library

COREY S. KRASKO

4:01 p.m., Lion’s Den courtyard

4:33 p.m., Breedlove

4:37 p.m., Lion’s Den courtyard

4:49 p.m., Lion’s Den courtyard22 BELL TOWER spring/summer 2012


M O R E O N L I N E : Editing those 1,000+ frames down to the 38that appear on these pages was one big job. See some that didn’tquite make the cut at www.belltowermag.blogspot.com.

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UAFS BELL TOWER 23

5:40 p.m., Smith-Pendergraft

Campus Center


9:19 p.m., intramural field

5:03 p.m., Boreham Library

8:09 p.m., Lion’s Den North lounge

5:27 p.m., Sebastian Commons

9:59 p.m., Lion’s Den North



WHEN WESTARK DEAN OF STUDENTS HAROLD CAMERONgot to the Fort Chaffee Relocation Center to start a refugee educationprogram in the late spring of 1975, there weren’t even chairs for thestudents to sit on. In fact, even though refugees from the VietnamWar had been flooding in since April, there wasn’t much of anythingin the way of a program to teach them the basic English and lifeskills they’d need to survive in America.

Initially, a church-affiliated group of volunteers had undertakenthe project, but soon the Department of Health, Education andWelfare, the federal agency responsible for the refugees, realized it was going to take a great deal more than local volunteers. In the meantime, Westark had offered to help. “As a community

’A Project inHumanity’

How Westark welcomed 50,000 Vietnam War refugees to America over

college,” Cameron says, “we sort of hadthe philosophy that we were obligated tooffer assistance to any educational thingthat needed to be done and that wasn’tbeing done by another institution oragency.”

When the Westark offer came in,HEW was already negotiating with theVirginia-based Center for AppliedLinguistics, but ultimately Westark waswilling to undertake the project for sub-stantially less money and HEW awardedthe college the contract. No one, at thetime, seems to have understood the sheerenormity of the task, including Cameron,who would lead the project more or lesssingle-handedly.

Initially, he said, he and other collegeleaders had thought he would spend hismornings at Chaffee and his afternoonson campus. Soon, though, he was work-ing 10- and 12-hour days at Chaffee andstill not keeping up. “If I had knownwhat we were getting into,” he says now,“I of course wouldn’t have done it. It wasjust too much for one person. It was avery difficult, difficult thing.”

Among the first things to be done, obvi-ously, was building benches for studentsto sit on. But all the benches in the worldwould do no good without teachers, andthe number of eager volunteers wasquickly dwindling as summer bore downon the un-air conditioned buildings at

When Harold Cameron (in white shirt) started the program, he planned to

divide his time between the Westark campus and Fort Chaffee, but soon

he was working 10- and 12-hour days at Chaffee.

‘Able to start teaching school’

UAFS FILE PHOTOGRAPHS

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the course of six tumultuous months in 1975

With materials in shortsupply, teachers in Westark’srefugee education program

frequently employed whatever books, magazines, ornewspapers they had on hand.

UAFS BELL TOWER 25

by E R I C F RANC I S& B E L L TOWER S TA F F


Chaffee. “It got hotter and hotter and hotter,” Cameron says. “Andthe enthusiasm began to wane. And it became more and more diffi-cult to get volunteers.” So Cameron recruited whoever he couldfind—schoolteachers who were off for summer break, college stu-dents, local housewives with time to spare—and put them on theWestark payroll. Later, under a second contract with HEW, he wasable to hire refugees as teaching assistants.

He also had to figure out what to teach and how to do it with essen-tially no teaching materials. “We didn’t know what we were doing,”Cameron says, “but we knew to teach them survival English.” Some ofhis instructors would bring in whatever books, magazines, and news-papers they had on hand, and photos Cameron has from those daysshow copies of the Arkansas Gazette spread out on classroom tables.

Eventually, Cameron traveled to Camp Pendleton in California, site of another refugee relocation program, and discovered they had an entire curriculum for their instructors. While he was there, hemade copies of the material to bring home to Fort Smith, then copiedit for his own teachers. “I rented a big Xerox machine and ran thatstuff off by the hundreds and thousands,” he says. “That’s reallywhen we were able to start teaching school.”

Another hurdle was acquiring the equipment needed for the pro-gram, especially televisions and cassette players. After one time-con-suming attempt to navigate the proper channels, Cameron was leftwith little option but to circumvent them. “We just didn’t have thetime,” he says. “I sent people downtown and got TVs and recorders.We used so many cassette tapes we ran out of them—we copied thosetapes by the hundreds.” Ultimately, Cameron managed to get actuallabs made with numerous listening stations.

He also arranged for the local cable television provider to wire thecamp with a two-channel closed circuit TV system to show children’sprograms like Sesame Street and The Electric Company. The ElectricCompanywas the favorite among the refugees, because it was difficultto figure out how words were formed when they were spoken bySesame Street’s Muppets.

‘People wanted it to be over’Looking back across almost 40 years at the success of the effort at Fort Chaffee, in an era when computers were still unknown to thevast majority of people and the concept of English as a second lan-guage was known but not necessarily widespread, the accomplish-ments of Westark at the relocation center become all the moreremarkable.

Over the course of about 26 weeks that year, more than 50,000refugees passed through Fort Chaffee—where they stayed anywherefrom a few days to a few months while waiting to be placed withsponsor families around the country—and the majority of themlearned at least the rudiments of English, driving, shopping, and job-hunting from Cameron’s team. At the peak of the program, Cameronand his teachers were running some 30 classrooms for 12 hours a day.

“I knew the significance of what we had to do out there,” saysCameron. “It was an enormous program and an enormous undertak-ing. I knew we had to do a good job to help the people, to preparethem as best we could, even though we had people moving in and out.”

And a good job is exactly what Cameron and Westark did, despitethe challenges. That good work did not go unnoticed at the time,either; both the Associated Press and The New York Times publishedarticles about the project while it was in operation. Remarkably, too,Westark’s program at Fort Chaffee—one of four operating at thattime—was the only one run by an agency outside the Department of Education.

But the success of the program was forgotten quickly. “I had stacksof books, a lot of material, when the program was over,” Cameron says.“I thought there would be a number of agencies or organizations thatwould want to hear what went on at Chaffee. Not a one.”

But Cameron says he understands why so little attention waspaid to the program outside the local area: Vietnam fatigue. “We hearnow how people are war-weary with Afghanistan,” he says. “That’sexactly what went on in 1975. People wanted it to be over. I gave a


“I knew the significance of what we had to do out there. It was

(Left to right): Initially, there weren’t even chairs for the students. By the end of the program, the instructors had well-equipped language labs with multiple headsets. During the latter part of the program, Cameron was able to hire refugeesas aides. A closed-circuit TV system was used to show educational programming.


little 10-minute presentation to the board of directors of the college,and that was it. That even surprises me today.”

’Somebody came in … every day’Of course, the program wasn’t forgotten so quickly by the peoplewho benefitted from it—people like Long Nguyen, who was in hismid-twenties when he left everything he knew behind. “I got on aship when Saigon fell, all by myself,” says Nguyen. “I came throughthe Philippines, shipped by the Navy.”

From the Philippines he was flown to Guam and then sent toAmerica—along with hundreds of thousands of other fleeing SouthVietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians who had been allies of theAmericans during the conflict. Once on these shores, Nguyen wasassigned to the relocation center at Fort Chaffee (others were at EglinAir Force Base in Florida, Camp Pendleton in California, and FortIndiantown Gap in Pennsylvania) and flown to Fort Smith.

“I learned English and tried to learn something about how to lookfor a job,” he says. “Somebody came in and talked about it every day.”Like most of the refugees, Nguyen’s stay at Fort Chaffee was brief,only two or three months. He was placed with a sponsor family in El Dorado after that, but in 1976 he moved back to Fort Smith.

“I went out and found a job and worked and worked until aboutfour years ago,” says Long, who is now 65. He worked at Trane formost of his career, then owned a gas station for 10 years, and is stillliving in Fort Smith.

‘The first things they taught us’Another was Thao Le, who was 32 and had been living in a relocationcamp in Thailand for more than four months when he learned hewas being relocated to America. On Sept. 15, 1975, he set foot for thefirst time in Arkansas. “It was very different,” he says. “We came

over here and can’t speak any English.”Every day, Thao attended classes and studied. There were

interpreters around to help translate, as well as some refugees whoalready spoke English. “The first things they taught us? House,things in the house, bowl, chopstick, spoon, fork,” he recalls. “Lateron, outside things—car, clothing, school, job, factory. Then theytaught about government, mayor, city, governor, state.”

Thao only stayed at Fort Chaffee for a month before being placedwith a sponsor family in Tennessee. But six months later he moved backto Fort Smith where he had a cousin, and he’s lived in the city ever since.

“I worked for North American Foundry for about a year for $2.20an hour,” he says. “After that, luckily, I applied for GE. They paid me$4.10 an hour. I worked there four years, and it was sold to AmericanStandard, and I worked 27 years there.”

Thao also attended Westark Community College in the eveningsafter work, studying English and math. He’s been retired for nineyears now, and every Saturday he gets together at the VietnameseCommunity Association with several other former refugees whocame through Fort Chaffee.

And then there’s Ngoc-Thuy Thi Tran, one of the early arrivals atFort Chaffee, who, when she boarded an airplane to leave Vietnam,was venturing outside a war zone for the first time in her life. Once she got to Arkansas, she never left. She met Cameron while in the pro-gram, and the two fell in love. They’ve been married now for 33 years.

‘An unforgettable … exchange’As the number of refugees entering America began to dwindle, the federal government shut down its Indochinese Relocation Centers at the other sites and routed all refugees through Fort Chaffee, which was finally closed just before Christmas of 1975.

In the less than seven months that it was in operation, though,the program substantially changed both Westark and Fort Smithitself. Although refugees were “sponsored out” to families across theU.S., many, like Le and Nguyen, returned to Fort Smith. Others, likeTran, never left, and today, more than 5 percent of the city’s popula-tion of 82,000—approximately 4,500 people—are of Asian descent,while Asian-Americans constitute only 1.2 percent of the overall population in Arkansas. At Westark, much of the equipment fromthe program went into service on campus with the college’s A/VDepartment and its English as a Second Language program.

Ultimately, though, the outcome of the program was greater than any of that, as expressed nearly 40 years ago in the conclusionof a report on the project:

The contractual objectives and obligations of the second contracthave been met, but there is no way to sum up all involved in thissix-month project in humanity … Ours was an unforgettable people-to-people exchange. From the over 100-degree heat in summer classrooms to the first snowfall just before Thanksgiving,the Americans and Indochinese suffered and learned together ...The human contact between Indochinese and Americans hasallowed thousands not only to acquire basic English skills but toestablish relationships which restored confidence in the ability ofhuman beings to transcend cultural barriers and appreciate ineach other those qualities which make for universal brotherhood.

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an enormous program and an enormous undertaking.”——————


1940sWarren E. McLellan ’41, a notedWorld War II pilot who flew in thePacific Theatre, passed awayAugust 24, 2011. He is survived byWanda Stewart McLellan ’42,whom he married in 1944, and bytheir two sons, six grandchildren,and eight great-grandchildren.

1960sRamon Elkins ’61 is a semi-retired accountant who doescompassion ministry in Ecuador.He is also involved, throughCentral Christian Church, with anumber of international studentsfrom UAFS, who, he writes, have “broadened his vision of the world.”

Gary C. Hicks, M.D. ’68, nowretired in Oklahoma City, served

as a missionary doctor to theDominican Republic for 20 yearsbefore returning to the U.S. to fly for Northwest Airlines.

1970sCharles R. Preston ’72wasrecently named to the adjunctgraduate faculty in the Program in Ecology at the University ofWyoming and was invited to convene a plenary session at the Fourth International WildlifeManagement Congress in Durban,South Africa, in July 2012.

Robert ’74 and RhondaBishop Yarberry ’78 retired atthe end of the 2011-12 academicyear after 37 and 28 years, respec-tively, in education.

Allyson Dalley ’79 earnedher bachelor’s degree from theUniversity of Texas at Arlington


Alumni+FriendsDROP US A LINE!

Let us—and the people you went to school with—know what you’ve

been up to! Please take five minutes to sit down and tell us what you’ve

been up to since your time at UAFS, Westark, or FSJC. Tell us about

your job, your family, your hobbies, your adventures, your plans—what-

ever you want to share with other alumni. We love to get photos too,

and we’ll happily run them in this section.

Be sure to include your name (and your name while you were in

school if it has changed since then) and the year you graduated or the

years you attended. Email your class note to [email protected] or mailit to Alumni Office, UAFS, P.O. Box 3649, Fort Smith, AR 72913.

Get Involved!

With the springsemester nowover, I must say

your Alumni Association haskept a very busy calendar forthe last several months,recapped below. If youmissed out on our eventsthis spring, though, it’s nottoo late! Most of ouractivities will becomeannual traditions. As you read through our spring recap, I encourage you to think about how you would like to become a part of this in the future. If you have any questionsor would like to get involved, please contact me or visitwww.uafsalumni.com.

• Former athletes returned to campus to celebrate thewomen’s basketball program with Coach Whorton.

• Our alumni office brought breakfast to alumniemployees at Arkansas Best Freight and USA Truck.

• Our Student Alumni Association produced manyevents, including a clothes drive for Fort Smith’s Golden RuleClothes Closet.

• The Easter Bunny and our Numa mascot were joined bynearly 200 alumni and their children at our Alumni EasterEgg Hunt.

• Little Rock-area alumnimingled with current studentsat a reception at the Manees House in North Little Rock.

• The 1972 baseball team reunited with Coach Crowderand Coach Harpenau at a pre-game reception.

• The UAFS community celebrated Numa’s Birthdaywith cheer performances, hot dogs, and cookie cake.

• The Alumni Advisory Council and Young AlumniCouncil held meetings at the Alumni Center.

This fall, we’ll continue to provide opportunities for youto connect with UAFS at events like Freshman Convocation,Career Week, Alumni Weekend, and, of course, AlumniReunions! If volunteering at any of these sounds like fun,please don’t hesitate to contact me at (479) 788-7026 [email protected].

Sincerely,

ELIZABETH S. UNDERWOODExecutive Director of Alumni Affairs

KAT W

ILSON ’9

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and then her master’s fromTarleton State University. Sheworks at a Christian counselingoffice and runs the websitewww.studentloanlist.com.

After graduating, Claire Flynn ’79moved to Denver, then Houston, then back toArkansas. Along the way, she has been an ESL teacher, a writer,a director, an administrator, atutor, a nanny, and part-owner of a quilt shop.

1980sAfter spending 20 years teachingEnglish at Alma High School,Cheryl Mickle WatsonHigginbotham ’80moved toRamsey Junior High in 2004 toteach oral communications. Sheis now in her 29th year of teach-ing. One of her two sons will be a freshman at UAFS this fall.Jack James ’81 earned his

bachelor’s in secondary educa-tion from UCA and marriedShelley DePierne James ’86,who holds a bachelor’s in busi-ness from UCA. Shelley works at Golden Living; James teachesat Lavaca Schools. The couplehave four children, two of whomare students at UAFS.George McGill ’81 recently

announced his candidacy for the Arkansas House ofRepresentatives in District 78,which includes downtown FortSmith and the north side. He is a 1990 graduate of LeadershipFort Smith.Angela M. Perkins ’82

worked for 24 years as an RNbefore transitioning to the oil andgas business, in which she hasworked for 10 years. “What Ilearned in the nursing programgave me more than just a career,”she wrote. “It gave me hope to live in the now.”

Brett Peters ’87was recentlypromoted to the position of presi-dent and CEO of Hawkins-WeirEngineers, Inc. Peters also servesas president of the MountainburgSchool Board and is a member ofthe Citizens Bank & Trust board of directors.

1990sJim Mills ’92, who teaches histo-ry at the University of Texas atBrownsville, recently publishedMemories of Fort Brown and Other Select Interviews: An OralHistory Project.

After playing basketball atWestark, Neil Rice ’92went onto play at Idaho State and then,for a short time, played profes-sionally in Japan. He lives in Fort Smith with his wife and four children and works atGeorgia-Pacific.Dr. Ken Jones ’94, who

recently defended his disserta-tion, is an assistant professor ofinformation systems and supplychain management atOklahoma’s Northeastern State University.Dr. Vance Johnson Lewis

’97 has completed his doctoralstudies in business managementand higher education atOklahoma State University andhas joined the faculty in theDepartment of Management at the University of CentralOklahoma.

2000sSusan Mastin DeWoody ’00was recently promoted to dean of degree completion and directorof non-traditional programs atJohn Brown University.

After graduation, AaronMatthews ’04 earned a master’s in divinity from theMissionary Baptist Seminary in

Little Rock. He currently serves assenior pastor at Southside BaptistChurch in Alma.Roneka Jackson Grooms

’05married Brian Grooms ’09-’11 in 2009, and in 2011 they wel-comed a son, Brian Grooms, Jr.James Perry ’06 and Jodi

Weaver Perry ’07welcomed adaughter, Cadence Joy, in 2011.Jeremy May ’07 has just pur-

chased his first business, CarnivalParty, in Greenwood.

Carrie Anne Craig Feero’08—who holds a master’s fromJohn Brown University and worksat Perspectives Behavioral HealthManagement—married RyanFeero on December 11, 2010 inFort Smith. She starts her doctor-ate in counselor education andsupervision this year.Samantha Dooley ’08 com-

pleted her master’s in curriculumand instruction at Arkansas Statein December 2011. She teachesseventh- and eighth-grade mathat Alma Middle School.

In 2011, Zane Hight ’09wonVisa’s “You + 10” Super Bowl

Sweepstakes, in which the oddsof winning were 1 in 10.9 billion.Among the 10 friends he chose to take to the game were CharityBilyeu ’11 (pictured with Zane)and his sister, current UAFS student Ashley Hight.

2010sThis January, Jason ’10 andMandy Lasiter Keyes ’03welcomed a son, Lawson Jace,weighing 7 lbs., 14 oz. and measuring 20 inches long.

Alicia Wieburg ’10marriedMike Parker ’11 on May 14, 2011.Alicia, who is currently in graduateschool, has secured a positionwith Rich Products Corporation;Mike has accepted a position at Walmart’s home office inBentonville.John Shane Griffin ’11 has

finished his first year of law schoolat the University of Arkansas andwill do an externship this summerwith the Sebastian CountyProsecutor’s Office.Trae Norton ’11will be

attending the William H. BowenSchool of Law at UALR this fall. “Ilook forward to applying the workethic that was shaped at UAFS tolaw school and representing myalma mater proudly,” he writes.Mary Moore Manus ’10

works as a licensed practicalnurse at Cooper Clinic. She andher husband, Joshua, are expect-ing their first child this year.



Alumni Advisory Council Named“The purpose of the Alumni Advisory Council,” says Executive Director

of Alumni Affairs Elizabeth Underwood, “is to create a network of com-

mitted alumni leaders for the Alumni Association. The Council will offer

insight and direction for future alumni programming and will also con-

tribute leadership and support. All members have a passion for UAFS,

whether their history was with Westark or Fort Smith Junior College.”

The new, eight-member council met on April 28 in Fort Smith, where

they elected officers and discussed the mission and vision of the Alumni

Association. The council will meet twice a year on the UAFS campus and

twice more by teleconference. Additional members will be added annually,

with applications accepted in the spring. Contact Underwood at (479)788-7026 or [email protected] for further details.

The inaugural class includes:

Terrence S. Carter of Arkadelphia, Upward Bound director at

Ouachita Baptist University.

Rebecca Hurst of Fayetteville, co-founder and managing partner

of Smith-Hurst, PLC, a regional law firm in Fayetteville.

Karla Jacobs of Fort Smith, a community volunteer who has

served as president of the Fort Smith Museum of History, the Volunteer

Connection, and the Children’s Service League.

Chester Koprovic of Fort Smith, chair of Boyd Metals, SVC,

KOPCO-NWC, and Butler and Cook, Inc.

Warren L. Rapert of Coppell, Texas, vice president for finance and

CFO with the transportation and logistics company Trans-Trade.

Pamela Tolliver Rice of Arlington, Texas, administrative coordina-

tor for a six-doctor specialist medical practice in Dallas.

Rick Rice of Arlington, Texas, manager of campus services at Dallas

Theological Seminary.

Randy Wewers of Atlanta, retired senior vice president and chief

technology officer of the credit reporting agency Equifax.

MORE ONLINE: For more complete bios of council members, visit

www.belltowermag.blogspot.com.

Carter Hurst Jacobs Koprovic

Rapert Tolliver Rice Rice Wewers

LION FILE

55 Years and CountingBack in 1953, Joe Reed ’54was fresh out of the Army and astar on coach Ted Skokos’s Fort Smith Junior College basket-ball team. Wilma Hopkins Reed ’55was homecoming queen.She thought Joe was cute, he clearly knew a good thing whenhe saw one, and they married in 1957.

“The wedding was set for April,” says Joe.“Anyway, I gotthe flu. I never been so sick in all my life.”

“The cake was already baked, so the bakery had to put itin the freezer,” says Wilma, who doesn’t seem tomind this story at all. “Everybody who knew himthought he was just trying to get out of it.”

“Boy, I was sick!” Joe says. “But a week later, theydressed me up and took me to church and I got mar-ried. It was April 12, and there was snow all over theground.”

Today, 55 years later, the Reeds are both retiredand living in Little Rock.

So, any advice for newlyweds from the couplethat’s made it work for so long?

“It isn’t easy!” Wilma says, laughing brightly.Then, turning to her husband, she adds, “I guess itwas good you were out of town a lot.”

“You know, that makes a lot of difference,” agrees Joe, whotraveled often as a federal credit union examiner. “I retiredeight years before she did, and I did most of the cooking forthose eight years. And she didn’t complain one time aboutsupper.”

“Nope,” Wilma says.“I thought I was pretty good, but I don’t know,” says Joe, in

that sly way experienced husbands have of fishing for a com-pliment.

“He did pretty well,” says Wilma, in that sly way experi-enced wives have of giving one when it’s well-deserved.— Eric Francis

Joe ’54 and Wilma Hopkins Reed ’55 with Numa duringAlumni Weekend, October 2011.

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ALUMNI EGG-STRAVAGANZA—With brilliant sunshine and thetemperature hovering just below 90, it was almost too warm for thefirst UAFS Alumni Easter Egg Hunt, held April 1 on the UAFS campus.Around 70 adults and 120 kids showed up for face painting, pictureswith Numa and the Easter Bunny, and a joyful scramble after the1,500 goody-filled eggs scattered across the Campus Green andunder the big oaks on either side of it.

Wanted: Photos from Your Time at UAFS!Here at the alumni office, we’ve got a complete library of yearbooks,

from FSJC’s first year all the way through 2003, when yearbook publi-

cation stopped. We refer to them all the time, and alumni love flipping

through them at events.

But it seemed like a shame that we have no similar record of what

went on here from 2003 until now, so we decided to do something

about it. The Alumni Association is leading an effort to create a

“decade book”—a yearbook-style publication covering UAFS’s first

10 years as a university, from 2002 to 2012.

So where do you come in? We need your photos from those years!

Please email pictures of student activities, events, athletics, campus,

etc., along with caption information like names, dates, and locations to

[email protected]. You can also send prints to Alumni Assocation,UAFS, P.O. Box 3649, Fort Smith, AR 72913, and we’ll scan themand get them right back to you.

ZACK THOMAS



Alumni+Friends

LION FILE

At four, Lap Bui ’93was drifting, along with a dozen or morefamily members, in his aunt’s fishing boat miles off theVietnamese coast, slowly starving while the family waited andhoped an American ship would rescue them. After perhaps twoweeks at sea, one did, and dropped Bui and the others in Guam.Three months later, they were at Fort Chaffee, just outside FortSmith, along with thousands of other refugees from theVietnam War, waiting to be “sponsored out.”

At 14, after spending his childhood in Kalamazoo, Michigan,where a Catholic church had sponsored the family, Bui wasback in Fort Smith, attending Northside High. The family hadreturned because one of Bui’s sisters lived in town and they hadan opportunity to buy a gas station and Vietnamese grocery.They still weren’t well-off, though, and Bui worked throughouthigh school.

At 19, he was a sophomore at Westark Community College,still working full-time but also holding down an internship atBaldor Electric Company, where he worked with theapplications team, studying electric motors and motor failures.

Now, at 41, Bui, who lives in Fort Smith with his wife andyoung daughter, is back on campus, dressed comfortably in awhite polo shirt, jeans, and a new pair of cowboy boots. Henever left Baldor (a member of the ABB Group), and he’s nowone of the company’s international directors of businessdevelopment, traveling the globe to oversee its technical andcommercial support centers.

On the terrace outside the Lion’s Den dining hall, he and hisyounger brother Bao, a successful IBM executive, are reflectingon leading lives they couldn’t possibly have dreamed of 37 years

ago on that boat in the South China Sea—and on the relentlesshard work that got them where they are. “It’s quite humbling,”says Bui, whose parents speak little English and whose motherdoesn’t read or write in any language, “but we’re proud of ourachievements, too. It was just work ethics and the determinationto better oneself—I think that was probably the key.”

Alumni Weekend Set for Oct. 19-20We’ve set the date for Alumni Weekend 2012: Friday, October 19, and Saturday, October 20. Please save those dates for a great weekend of camaraderie, reminiscence, and fun, with receptions, meals, tailgating, and entertainment. Alumni weekend will again coincide with Homecoming, so we anticipate the whole campus coming together to celebrate! Watch the mail for your invitation coming soon, and stay tuned

to www.uafsalumni.com for developing details. Remember too thatAlumni Weekend is for all alumni and friends of UAFS, Westark, andFSJC. If you don’t receive an invitation but would like to join us, pleasedon’t hesitate to give us a call at (877) 303-8237. If you’d like to help outas a volunteer, call the same number or email Alumni Executive DirectorElizabeth Underwood at [email protected].

Lap Bui ’93 at the Lion Den dining hall, April 2012.

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‘I COULD JUST HEAR IT’—Fort Smith Symphony DirectorJohn Jeter didn’t know exactlywhat he was getting himselfinto last spring when he askedDon Bailey (right), director of jazz studies at UAFS, tocompose a musical history ofrock and roll for the symphony.Neither did Bailey, it turns out,who started writing over thesummer, took a sabbatical towrite through the fall, andfinished the piece just in timefor the April 25 premiere.

The conductor’s score forthe resulting symphony is 419pages long, with 39 songs—allof them original—evoking thework of 33 artists ranging fromRobert Johnson to Lady Gaga.The concert itself featuredelaborate staging and lightingand a cast of nearly 200,including not only thesymphony, but also UAFSstudents, faculty, and staff;several local musicians likeguitarist Gary Hutchison; andeven Mayor Sandy Sanders as narrator.

So how do you write anoriginal song that soundsunmistakably like a particularartist—Little Richard, say, orHendrix, or Chicago? Well, saysBailey, first you pick a few oftheir signature hits and analyzethem musically and lyrically to form an idea of what it was that made them sound like they did (or do).

“I’d make a bullet list of what they were about,” Bailey says. “Chord progression,kinds of chords, kinds of lyrics,kinds of time stuff they did. If they liked to write in minor keys, for example, or they likedsyncopations, or they really likedguitar solos. Then I’d make achord chart, and then I’d startsketching out the melodies and counter-melodies.” Theresult was a song that wasunmistakably Nirvana, or Kiss,or Metallica—but wasn’t.

Bailey wrote by hand with asharp pencil, working from eightto 14 hours a day, mostly at aback table in the local Panera.“It had to be a restaurant,”Bailey says. “There had to benoise. But I couldn’t listen torock. Panera plays a lot ofclassical and easy listening, and I could write like an animalunder that stuff. The weird thing was I hardly ever used any instruments. It was just allin my head. Most people have to sit at a piano with a pencil intheir mouth. I could just hear it.”

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IN 1969, REGISTRATION TOOK PLACE IN THE OLDgym (today’s Fitness Center, which was, at the time, the newgym), where students stood in line with their paperwork at a series of stations while faculty members manually trackedenrollment in each class section.

One of those faculty members was Carolyn McKelveyMoore (seated), who had come to Westark the year before to start, from scratch, the Associate Degree Nursing (ADN)program and was admitting her very first class that year.

Moore would go on to lead not only the highly successfulnursing program but the entire Division of HealthOccupations until 1984, earning her doctorate along the way.

Then, in 1987, after a stint as Dean of Instruction at acommunity college in Texas, Moore returned to Fort Smithas Executive Director of the fledgling Westark Foundation,where she grew the institution’s endowment from less than$100,000 to more than $20 million over the course of her 15-year tenure.

In 2002, when she left UAFS to serve as Senior VicePresident for Institutional Advancement at Sparks HealthSystem after more than 30 years of service to the university,the Carolyn McKelvey Moore School of Nursing at UAFSwas named in her honor.

Today, she remains a treasured friend of the university,still active in fundraising and still charming everyone shemeets with her light-up-the-room smile.

NONPROFIT ORG.U.S. POSTAGE

PAIDPERMIT NO. 479FORT SMITH

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Bell TowerUAFS Alumni AssociationP.O. Box 3649Fort Smith, AR 72913

A Look Back

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Documents

Bell Tower, Spring/Summer 2012