- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ý Little Rock hosts events commemorating 62nd anniversary of Desegregation of Central High School

Ajani Oyindamola — Wed, 25 Sep 2019 16:34:28 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will host two events commemorating the 62^nd anniversary of the desegregation crisis at Little Rock Central High School in partnership with the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site. The ��Vlog��ý Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law will host a conscience conversation at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 26, in the Friday Courtroom. Featured speakers will discuss their roles in the civil rights movement. They include Rev. Peter Johnson, a member of the NAACP and Southern Christian Leadership Conference activist who worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Sterling Plumpp, a poet, author, educator, and critic; and Judge Wiley Branton Jr., an Arkansas circuit judge. Omavi Shukur, a civil rights attorney and former legal clerk at the Equal Justice Initiative, will facilitate a conversation on applied strategies, impact on communities, and activism today. In the second event, a conscience conversation with members of the Little Rock Nine will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Donaghey Student Center Ledbetter Hall. The speakers include Elizabeth Eckford, author and member of the Little Rock Nine; Jane Hill Williams, one of the original 10 students selected to desegregate Central High School in 1957; and Dr. Sybil Jordan Hampton, the first three-year African American graduate of Central High School. Dr. Terrence Roberts, psychologist and one of the Little Rock Nine, will facilitate a conversation of the impact of the desegregation crisis, examine the speakers’ narrative roles in the civil rights movement, and discuss their activism today. J.A. Fair High School band, choir, and theater students will perform a selection of civil rights-themed songs to begin the program, while a book signing will follow this event. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, call 501-374-1957.

Central High School student mentored by ��Vlog��ý Little Rock professors wins more than $60k for outstanding research

Ajani Oyindamola — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 16:46:28 +0000

When most people think of tea and molasses, their thoughts don’t stray any further than the kitchen.�� Meghana Bollimpalli, a Central High School student who was mentored by two chemistry professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, saw the potential to create a less-expensive renewable energy source that has earned her more than $60,000 in scholarships and prize money from science fair competitions. Meghana Bollimpalli, 17, of Little Rock, worked from October 2017 to March 2018 with chemistry professors Dr. Tito Viswanathan and Dr. Noureen Siraj on her high school research project to turn renewable waste materials like molasses and used tea leaves into electrodes for supercapacitors. Siraj, who mentored four high school students during the 2017-18 school year, said Bollimpalli was a talented and inquisitive student with a gift for chemistry. “The good thing about Meghana is she is always very interested,” Siraj said. “When a high school student comes in my lab, I want to make sure they don’t work as a technician without understanding the science behind the experiments. I push them to think creatively about the science. I push them to think a little bit deeper.” ��Ǳ��貹��’s novel, low-cost approach for synthesizing materials could greatly cut the production and energy costs of making electrodes for supercapacitors, which are used as energy sources in electronic devices including cars and medical equipment. She found that combining common substances like tea and molasses with nitrogen- and phosphorus-containing salts in a commercial microwave formed a powder that could be used as a coating for electrode-like materials, giving them similar properties of more expensive metals like platinum. “There is an increase in the demand for energy due to the alarming rate at which we are using our nonrenewable resources and the increase in population worldwide,” Bollimpalli said. “To address this demand, we need to find an environmentally and economically feasible way to store our energy. Supercapacitors are devices that address this demand due to their great properties such as portability, long cycle lifetime, and high energy density. But the problem is, in order for a supercapacitor to actually work, it needs a great electrode.”

��Vlog��ý Little Rock chemistry professors Dr. Noureen Siraj (left) and Dr. Tito Viswanathan (right) mentored Central High School student Meghana Bollimpalli (center) on her project to create carbon-based electrodes for supercapacitors. Photo by Ben Krain/��Vlog��ý Little Rock Communications.

Electrodes in today’s market are usually made from expensive metals like platinum, gold, and palladium and can cost thousands of dollars. To address this problem, Bollimpalli created carbon-based electrodes for under $1 using renewable waste products such as tea powder and molasses. She won a total of $58,000 in in May at the 2018 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was one of two Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award winners, taking home $50,000 as one of the top three presenters at the event, which attracted student researchers from 75 countries. She also won $5,000 for the Best of Category award in chemistry and $3,000 for a first-place finish in the chemistry category. So far, ��Ǳ��貹��’s project has won more than a dozen awards at six competitions in three states, winning about $61,000 in scholarship and prize money. She most recently was a Gold Medal recipient at the Genius Olympiad in Oswego, New York, in June. In March, she won a $1,500 scholarship as one of the top two award winners at the State Junior Science and Humanities Symposium in Russellville. At the Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair in Conway, she won four awards, including the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality Quest Award, which landed her a summer internship with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality. “I am very thankful for everyone who helped me with this project. Science is not an individual project. You have to have a collaboration and have the perspectives of many people,” Bollimpalli said. “Dr. Tito and Dr. Siraj were patient in answering all my questions and proofreading my paper and exploring ideas and concepts with me. Dr. Siraj has a way to telling you things that make it stick.”

The best place to do research

Bollimpalli has been conducting research at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock with the help of mentors since she was a freshman. She first worked with Dr. Shawn Bourdo in the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Integrative Nanotechnology Sciences to create bioplastic samples to address the amount of plastic waste in the ocean. She synthesized bioplastic materials that could be used to create fast-acting biodegradable plastic shopping bags. “Regular plastics take hundreds of years to degrade, but the bioplastic samples I synthesized biodegraded in a week after you threw them away,” she said. In 2017, Bollimpalli worked with Dr. Anindya Ghosh, professor of chemistry. They used waste carbon dioxide to produce an eco-friendly, less-expensive cyclic carbonates, which are used in lithium ion batteries and pharmaceutical products like lipstick. “I want to continue doing research at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock because I have had great mentors and research opportunities here,” Bollimpalli said. “I love the professors and mentors and labs. I’d like to work again with Dr. Tito and Dr. Siraj, and I definitely want to stick within the chemistry department. I am lucky to be one of the few, the professors are willing to mentor. It was a great opportunity to learn so much and to meet all of the people at the international competitions. Getting all of this knowledge before I go to college is going to really give me a step up in college.” The Chemistry Department faculty at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock is highly active in research as evidenced by funded research grants, publications, and patents. At the undergraduate level, faculty in the Chemistry Department mentored 15 Undergraduate Research Signature Experience awardees, all of whom presented at the 2018 Student Research and Creative Works Showcase and some at the Chemical Society National Meeting in New Orleans.

History professor to discuss 1967 Little Rock School Board crisis

Jenny Lambert — Mon, 05 Mar 2018 17:06:46 +0000

After the 1957 desegregation of Central High School, a coalition of blacks and whites banned together to elect school board members who would comply with federal court orders and work to completely desegregate schools in Arkansas’ capital. To fulfill these requests, the school board hired a team of researchers from the University of Oregon to construct the most effective plan to fully desegregate the Little Rock School District. “The Oregon plan ignited a controversy that threatened investments in white neighborhoods, reinvigorated segregationist sentiments, and permanently divided the city,” said Dr. Barclay Key, professor of American History at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. The school board’s attempts outraged the public, and the plan was eventually halted. In 1967, segregationists gained control of the school board, scrapped the plan that the previous board members had established, and for several years following, did little to comply with desegregation laws in order to maintain the status quo for middle and upper class whites. During his Evenings with History presentation, Key will discuss the Oregon plan, analyze the results of the 1967-68 Little Rock School Board elections, and interpret the long-term consequences for the city’s refusal to desegregate its schools. The talk will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 6, in the Ottenheimer Auditorium in the Historic Arkansas Museum, located at 200 E. Third St. in Little Rock. Refreshments will be served at 7 p.m. Key joined the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock faculty in 2012 after teaching one year at Iowa State University and five years at Western Illinois University. He obtained his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Alabama, Master of Divinity from David Lipscomb University, and master’s and Ph.D. in history from the University of Florida. Key is the author of “Race and Restoration: Churches of Christ and the African American Freedom Struggle,” and has published chapters in two edited collections from the University Press of Florida. The Evenings with History series is sponsored by the University History Institute. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock students may attend the event at no cost, but admission for faculty, staff, and community members depends on subscription to the institute. For more information, contact the Department of History at 501-569-3235.

John Kirk to reflect on 60th anniversary of desegregation of Central High School

Ajani Oyindamola — Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:49:45 +0000

Dr. John Kirk, director of the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will present a lecture on the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School as part of the Evenings with History series.�� The talk will begin at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7, at Historic Arkansas Museum, 200 E. Third St. in Little Rock, with refreshments served at 7 p.m. Sixty years have passed since the dramatic events surrounding the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School, which led to President Dwight D. Eisenhower deploying federal troops to ensure the safety of nine black students, known as the Little Rock Nine. Kirk’s talk reflects on how the events have been depicted by historians within the context of the broader Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. It also explores how popular culture representations of the school crisis have influenced and shaped intellectual debate in theatre, film, essays, poetry, and music. Additionally, the lecture will examine how different approaches to the school crisis by historians from local, state, regional, national, and international perspectives have produced different understandings of the events that unfolded in the city. “In many ways, the historiography of the 1957 Little Rock school crisis provides a microcosm of the wider trends that have shaped historical representations of the Civil Rights movement,” Kirk said. The Evenings with History series, sponsored by the University History Institute, features presentations by ��Vlog��ý Little Rock faculty members sharing their current research. Admission to the series is by subscription to the University History Institute, although visitors to individual talks are welcome to attend for free. ��Vlog��ý Little Rock students may attend free of charge.

John Kirk commemorates integration of Central High School with Little Rock Nine

Ajani Oyindamola — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 14:05:53 +0000

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the integration of Central High School, John Kirk, director of the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, signed copies of his books on African American civil rights history in Arkansas along with members of the Little Rock Nine. On Sept. 2, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called out the National Guard to prevent nine African American students, known as the Little Rock Nine, from integrating Central High School. Kirk was invited to participate in the book signing and discussion on the integration of Central High School with five members of the Little Rock Nine on Sept. 23 as part of the Little Rock Central High School National Historic Site’s participation in Arkansas Peace Week. Reliving history with members of the Little Rock Nine was both “humbling and enlightening,” Kirk said. “What is remarkable about the Nine is not just what they did back then in 1957 as teenagers in desegregating Central High, but what outstanding models of civil rights heroes they have continued to be ever since,” Kirk said. “Still today, sixty years later, they rise to their responsibilities with incredible good humor and grace, while continuing to be steadfast and uncompromising in their ideals and in their pursuit of justice and equality.” Kirk autographed copies of his books, “Redefining the Color Line: Black Activism in Little Rock, Arkansas, 1940-1970” and “Beyond Little Rock: The Origins and Legacies of the Central High School Crisis.” Members of the Little Rock Nine shared their stories with members of the public and encouraged students to continue to be strong and strive for equality. “The most memorable and clear collective message from the Nine is that the struggle for educational equality continues today, and that they are still very much part of that ongoing struggle,” Kirk said. In the upper right photo, Dr. John Kirk (middle) speaks with members of the Little Rock Nine, Dr. Terrence Roberts (left) and Melba Pattillo Beals (right), during a book signing at Central High School.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock center creates virtual exhibit commemorating 60th anniversary of desegregation of Central High School

Ajani Oyindamola — Thu, 21 Sep 2017 17:59:53 +0000

The Center for Arkansas History and Culture at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has created a to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of Little Rock’s Central High School and the legacy surrounding the historic events.�� “This is a very rich collection of material that is visually appealing and easy to navigate,” said Dr. Deborah Baldwin, director of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture. “The interactive timeline presents events with photos of locations and participants, and the oral histories have been digitized so that one can see and listen to the speaker. The web exhibit designer has done a wonderful job of meshing this historic event with its still current issues.” On Sept. 2, 1957, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus called the National Guard to prevent nine African American students, known as the Little Rock Nine, from integrating Central High School. The students were eventually allowed to enter school on Sept. 25, after President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard, removed them from Central High School, and replaced them with the 101st Airborne who escorted the students to school. Integration was later delayed by the closure of all public high schools in Little Rock during the 1958-59 school year, also known as the Lost Year. The virtual exhibit provides viewers a broad range of perspectives on the desegregation crisis through commentary by witnesses, scholars, and journalists. The website features a media gallery with digitized archival photos, editorial cartoons, documents, and television news coverage of the crisis as well as oral interviews with members of the Little Rock Nine. The exhibit also includes a look at the FBI’s investigation into the Central High School Crisis and disturbing rumors of Arkansans preparing for violence and a review of how other countries reported on the events at Central High School during the.�� For educators, the exhibit includes educational materials with lesson plans covering the Little Rock Nine, Civil Rights activist Daisy Bates, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Lost Year.��

Members of the 101st Airborne escort the Little Rock Nine in and out of Central High School to ensure the students’ safety during the 1957 integration of Central High School. Photo courtesy of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture.

John Kirk, director of the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity, said the impact of the events of 1957 is still culturally significant today, six decades later. “The 1957 Little Rock school crisis remains an internationally renowned landmark in the ongoing struggle to secure equal access to education for all students,” Kirk said. Chad Garrett, director of technology and digital initiative, and Jared Craig, website coordinator, created the virtual exhibit. This exhibit grew from the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s participation in the Central High Integration 60th Anniversary Committee. The is one of many events honoring the 60th anniversary of the integration of Central High School. More information can be found at the. In the upper right photo, a sign in front of Little Rock Central High School declares the closing of the city’s four public high schools, thus beginning the Lost Year of 1958-1959. Photo courtesy of the Center for Arkansas History and Culture.��

John Kirk to serve on panel discussing media coverage of Central High School integration

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 12 Sep 2017 16:50:40 +0000

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor will be one of five panelists discussing crisis media coverage during the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School in 1957.�� One of the panelists is Dr. John Kirk, the George W. Donaghey Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Anderson Institute on Race and Ethnicity. He is also a commentator on civil rights history on K��Vlog��ýR 89.1 FM in Little Rock. The panel, “,” will begin at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 13, at the Darragh Center Auditorium in the Central Arkansas Library System Main Library, 100 S. Rock St. in downtown Little Rock. Admission is free and open to the public. The event, which is organized by the, is one of many events commemorating the 60th anniversary of the integration of Central High School. Additional panelists include:

Phyllis Brandon, a former reporter and editor for the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Ernie Dumas, a columnist with the Arkansas Times and a former reporter and editor for the Arkansas Gazette.
Bill Lewis, a former Arkansas Gazette reporter.
Tafi Mukunyadzi, a reporter with The Associated Press.

Brandon, Dumas, and Lewis all worked as reporters at Little Rock’s daily newspapers in 1957 and helped to cover the events.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ý Little Rock hosts events commemorating 62nd anniversary of Desegregation of Central High School

Central High School student mentored by ����Vlog��ý Little Rock professors wins more than $60k for outstanding research