- University News Archive - 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock /news-archive/tag/arkansas-state-university-beebe/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Tue, 26 Feb 2019 14:03:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock alum using caving skills as a way to help others /news-archive/2019/02/26/alum-caving-kayla-saptoka/ Tue, 26 Feb 2019 14:03:51 +0000 /news/?p=73535 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock alum using caving skills as a way to help others]]> A recent graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock celebrated the new year with a bang 鈥 by helping to rescue a caver in distress in a remote part of Arkansas.聽 On Dec. 30, 2018, a woman took a hard fall and sustained injuries in a cave in a remote part of Newton County in northwest Arkansas. Dr. Kayla Sapkota, who graduated 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock last fall and is a business instructor at Arkansas State University-Beebe, answered the call from one of her friends who was caving with the injured woman and rushed to join the rescue effort. After traveling three hours to the cave, Sapkota and three others entered the cave around 3:30 a.m. on New Year鈥檚 Eve. They joined the first rescue team, who entered the cave a few hours earlier to prepare the trail. After locating the patient, it took nearly 13 hours to arrive back at the surface . 鈥淭here was a group of skilled cavers who went into a challenging cave, and one woman fell from a ledge that was about 20 feet high,鈥 Sapkota said. 鈥淭hey were about four hours travel time into the cave. She had a fractured humerus, a broken pinky, and acromioclavicular separation (shoulder separation). We got to her, assessed her injuries, and made sure she was fed and kept warm. We discussed a plan together to extract her. She could walk and was willing to try to get out on her own. It was challenging to get her up the ropes and through some of the squeezes in the cave, but she was very dedicated to getting out. She was underground for over 30 hours.鈥 Sapkota and the other cavers involved in the rescue are not part of any official caving rescue team. They are members of a tight-knit community who came together to help a fellow caver in need.
Kayla Saptoka conducts habitat research in a cave in Arkansas for the Cave Research Foundation.

Kayla Saptoka conducts habitat research in a cave in Arkansas for the Cave Research Foundation.

鈥淲e are people from different parts of the caving community that came together. It鈥檚 not a big community,鈥 Sapkota said. 鈥淲e utilized an unofficial network of cavers from Arkansas and Missouri to organize a rescue. The county sheriff was there as well as local search and rescue teams. They were open to allowing people with caving experience to help in this work. It was really a community effort. It was a bunch of people who are like-minded with the same experience working together to accomplish a goal.鈥 At the end of the day, Sapkota was relieved that the rescue teams were able to make it out of the cave safely with the injured caver. 鈥淚 was certainly relieved,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 start getting tired until maybe the last hour of being in the cave. It鈥檚 amazing what adrenaline can do. When I got to the top of the cave, I realized I was pretty tired by then. I got some food and changed into some warm clothes. I was also thankful to my husband, Pradeep Sapkota, also a 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock alum, who drove me home,.鈥 Sapkota graduated from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock in December 2018 with a Doctorate in Education in Higher Education with a concentration in faculty leadership. She also has an MBA from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock and bachelor鈥檚 degrees in economics and finance and Spanish from Arkansas Tech University. Prior to attending 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock for her doctorate, she worked at Philander Smith College as director of institutional research and assessment and as an instructor of business administration and computer science. She first started caving more than a decade ago with her friends while attending Arkansas Tech. Today, she has cave rescue training and serves as the national vice president of the Cave Research Foundation, where she regularly maps caves and inventories their biological life to fulfill the foundation鈥檚 mission to document cave life and habitat.]]> Research study outlines business faculty views on teaching social media /news-archive/2018/07/12/kayla-saptoka-research/ Thu, 12 Jul 2018 13:52:34 +0000 /news/?p=71084 ... Research study outlines business faculty views on teaching social media]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock doctoral student and professor are investigating how professors are preparing business students for their future careers by assessing their implementation of social media in the classroom.聽 Kayla Sapkota, of Cabot, is pursuing a Doctorate in Education in Higher Education with a concentration in Faculty Leadership. She became interested in exploring the use of social media in the business curriculum during a course, College Teaching Problems and Issues, taught by her dissertation advisor, Dr. Jim Vander Putten, associate professor of higher education. Their paper, 鈥,鈥 was recently published in the 鈥淏usiness and Professional Communication Quarterly.鈥 鈥淚 did my MBA at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, so I am very interested in technology and exploring how business communication and technology go together in the college curriculum,鈥 Sapkota said. 鈥淏usiness is my area, so this is a topic that is relevant to my field.鈥 Sapkota, who plans to graduate in 2019, will work as an instructor of business at Arkansas State University-Beebe this fall. Prior to attending 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, she worked at Philander Smith College as director of institutional research and assessment and as an instructor of business administration and computer science. Sapkota conducted a qualitative study where she interviewed 11 business communication faculty members about their perceptions and usage of social media in the classroom and analyzed their course syllabi. 鈥淥verall, participants accepted social media鈥檚 importance as a business tool, but did not reach a consensus about its inclusion in the curriculum,鈥 Sapkota said. 鈥I found that there was agreement by faculty members that businesses use and need social media and that it is, in general, helpful. There was not consensus on how to address it in the classroom, and there was mixed usage as well. Some faculty members addressed social media in the classroom heavily, and others stayed away from social media and just mentioned it in passing.鈥 She also found that faculty members often compartmentalized the personal versus professional use of social media. While most of the faculty members utilized social media for personal use, there was discomfort about using social media for professional reasons, Sapkota said. 鈥淭he main result of the study was a list of guidelines to use in the business communication classroom and what items to address in the courses addressing social media,鈥 she said. Publishing the paper with Vander Putten helped Sapkota prepare for her dissertation, which focuses on assessing if the college curriculum for marketing majors teaches students the digital skills that are necessary to succeed in today鈥檚 job market. 鈥淎s a future faculty member, it was a really good experience to have had before I graduate, and I have had excellent guidance from Dr. Vander Putten,鈥 she said. 鈥淚 do feel like I have been more prepared for my dissertation research as a result from having done this paper.鈥 Sapkota and Vander Putten鈥檚 research is similar to a technology adoption question posed two decades ago on whether college faculty members would incorporate the use of email in their teaching. 鈥淭he importance of Kayla鈥檚 study is investigating the extent to which college of business communication courses are adequately preparing students for jobs that involve social media work,鈥 Vander Putten said. 鈥淚t is similar to the introduction of email into the college campus. When I first came here in 1998, I met some faculty who believed email was a can of worms best left unopened. Older faculty members were not as likely to adopt it. I think there is some generational stratification among faculty that pertains to this issue as well.鈥]]>