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

Student research and creative works winners announced

Janea Snyder — Fri, 04 May 2018 21:47:21 +0000

The winners of the 2018 Student Research and Creative Works Showcase at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock were announced during an awards ceremony May 1 in the Student Services Center. Students presented more than 150 research and creative works April 12 in the Jack Stephens Center. Student projects were judged on the novelty and clarity of their research, the soundness of their methodology, the potential application of their findings, and the student’s ability to explain their project to an expert and lay audience. A complete list of winners and their projects include: Undergraduate Winners Art First Place: Corrie Green, “The New African-American Women:Exploring Intersectionality in Non-traditional Casting” First Place (tie): Thomas Jackson, “Concept Statement for the play Art by Yasmina Reza” Economics First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “The 1920 Merchant Marine Act: An Outdated and Protectionist Law Disturbing Economic Growth” First Place (tie): Logan Vickery and Nick Stevens, “The Cost of Responsibility: Impacts on Rental Prices of the Implied Warrant of Habitability” Education First Place: Madison Christie, “Visual Verse: Translating English Poems into ASL” Second Place: Cameryn Kirkham, “Teaching Charlie May Simon as an Author, Artist, and Arkansan” Engineering First Place: J’von Jackson, “Venturi Scrubber Design for Syngas System” Second Place: Begros Asgeirsdottir, “Utilization of Rainwater for Cooling House Interior” Life & Physical Science First Place: Davonte Hokes, “Investigation of Bio-Inspired Polymeric Coating for Improvement in ORR Activity of Amidomacrocyclic Cobal (III) Catalyst Complexes” Second Place: Emily Anderson and Cordell Gilreath, “Development for Lyme Disease” Third Place: Marina Avram, “Algal Oculata Biotemplated Water-Splitting Nanocatalysts Nickel/Iron Oxides” Social Science First Place: Abigail Resendiz, “Financial Impact of the Jones Act” Second Place: Emily Elam, “500 Fiddle Tunes: Transcriptions of Billy Mathews’ Old-Time Archive” Third Place: Cynthia Wyman, “Intellectual and Hungry: Assessing the State of Campus Food Insecurity” Technology First Place: Deepali Lal, “Are Alcohol Establishments Marketing Crime?” Second Place: Yumeng Ye, “A Project – First Approach to Teaching Entity Resolution and Identity Management” Humanities First Place: El-Noor Ahkter, “The Color of Women” First Place (tie): Michael Caysido, “Aram II’yich Khachaturian and the Use of Folk Songs in His Compositions” Second Place: Emily Junkans, “Phonetic Features of Native Spanish Speakers Learning English” Physical Science First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “Novel Renewable Resource Based Nanocomposites for Removal and Recovery of Phosphorus from Contaminated Wastewaters” Second Place: Nathan Taylor, “Ionizing Radiation Protection by Inhibition of PP2A” Second Place (tie): Samantha Macchi, “Supercapacitor application of phosphorus and nitrogen co-doped carbon materials from renewable precursor materials” Service Work and Professional Application First Place: Rebecca Moreira, “How Spanish Interpreting at the 12th Street Clinic Can Lead to Medical School” GRAD��Vlog��ýTE WINNERS Biology First Place: Diamond McGehee with M. Lahiani, F. Irwin, and M. Green, “Investigation of the Effects of Carbon –Based Nanomaterials on the Metabolomics Level in Plants” Engineering First Place: Trigun Maroo, “A Novel Gripper System for Corrugated Box Grasping and Manipulation for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” First Place (tie): Ali Abdulhussein, “Facile fabrication of a free-standing superhydrophobic and superoleophilic carbon nanofiber-polymer block that effectively absorbs oils and chemical pollutants from water” Health Science First Place: Asween Marco, Naveen Patil, Jane Voyles, Yan Egbe, and Leonard Mukasa. “The Threat of Tuberculosis Transmission Among the US-born: Lessons from Two Outbreaks, Arkansas” Second Place: Elizabeth Burnham, “The Social (Media) Social Work(er)” Life Science Second Place: Rebekah White, “Toxic Effects of Copper and Nickel on Synechocystis PCC 6803” Life & Physical Science First Place: Amita Nakarmi and Rebecca Moreira, “Phosphate Removal From Contaminated Waters” Second Place: Dane Hudson, “Cylic Electron Flow Prevents Photoinhibition in Solanum habrochaites Under Drought Stress” Physical Science First Place: Busra Ergul, Mahbuba Begum, Nancy Kariuki, and Deborah Myers. “Oxygen Reduction Reaction Activity of Platinum Thin Films with Different Densities” First Place (tie): Daniel Nde, “Algae-Biotemplated Water-splitting Nanocatalysts for Efficient Oxygen Evolution Reaction” Professional Studies First Place: Thu Nguyen, “Do In-house Investor Relations Professionals in Real Estate Management Use PR and Strategic Communications Principles?” Second Place: Raad Alawajji, Zeid A. Nima, Ahmed K. Hashoosh, Karrer M. Alghazali, Emilie Darrigues, Nigel Kelly (undergraduate), Ashley Strohmeyer (undergraduate), and Ali Abdulhussein (presenter). “Fabrication of Transparent Superhydrophobic Polytetrafluoroethylene Coating” Social Science First Place: Jennifer Watkins: “Why don’t they listen to me: A qualitative interpretive meta synthesis of a child’s perception of their sexual abuse” Second Place: Margaret Kealy-Machella, “What’s App: Little Rock AFB Mobile App Communication Plan” Systems Engineering First Place: Rajat Singh, “Flexible Control of Synergistic Group of Muscles” Technology First Place (tie): Tuja Khaund and Samer Al-Khateeb. “Analyzing Social Bots and their Coordination during Crisis Weather Events” Second Place: Evan Xiangwen Liu, “Deep Neutral Networks Self-taught Learning” Second Place: Chen Xu, “Monitoring Traffic through IDS on OpenStack Cloud” In the photo above right, ��Vlog��ý Little Rock student Corrie Green (right) talks about her project, “The New African-American Woman: Exploring Intersectionality in Non-Traditional Casting,” to Jana McAuliffe, who was judging student works at the Student Research and Creative Works Showcase. Photo by Benjamin Krain

��Vlog��ý Little Rock class creates digital archive of long-lost Phillips County death certificates

Ajani Oyindamola — Wed, 14 Feb 2018 14:51:12 +0000

A history class at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has created a new digital index of Phillips County death certificates from 1917 to 1922. Dr. Brian Mitchell’s American Urban History Class created the index during the fall 2017 semester and donated the archive to the Arkansas History Commission so it can be made available for public use. “This project is an important addition to the commission’s collections as it is currently the sole record of African American deaths in the county for that time period,” Mitchell said. “The index would be helpful for future research on public health issues in the region, identifying many of the Elaine Massacre’s victims, and of vital importance to African-American genealogy in the state.” Mitchell went on to note that “students don’t always understand the importance of history as an academic pursuit or understand what public historians do, but classes like this allow them to see how history is useful for the general public.” The class has already received a thank-you email from one amateur genealogist who used the archive to track down the never-before-found death certificate of her great-grandfather. He died in Phillips County in 1918 from an “epidemic.” Students who participated in the class include John Anderson, Tarrie Boggs, Grant Burress, Mark Ford, Laura Fuentes, Corrie Green, Kevin Hill, Benny Mutoni, Ellis Thompson, Christian Weaver, Nicholson Weaver, and Domorion Williams.

The death certificate of Leroy Johnston, who was one of the four Johnston brothers killed during the Elaine Massacre. Leroy had recently returned from fighting in World War I, where he served as part of the 369th Infantry more popularly known as the “Harlem Hellfighters.”

Mitchell’s current research involves creating a digital archive of records related to the 1919 Elaine Massacre. Through his research, he discovered that long-lost death records for Phillips County residents were kept at the Keeshan-Lambert Funeral Home. “The death certificates had been missing from the historic record for a long time,” Mitchell said. “The reason for their absence was the policy in the county at that time was for the coroner to take possession of their own records when they retired. When the coroner retired, the family kept them. Fortunately for the people of Arkansas, the family owned a pretty notable funeral home. Instead of the death certificates being disposed of, they remained in the records of this funeral home. The family donated the records to the Arkansas History Commission.” Since the county’s main newspaper in Helena, The Helena World, did not print many obituaries for African Americans at the time, these records may likely be the only record of death certificates for African Americans in the county during that time period. Mitchell is also hoping the archive will help identify members of the Elaine Massacre that occurred in the first week of October in 1919 in Elaine, Arkansas. Historians have been unable to discover how many people died during the Elaine Massacre. Estimates run from 17 to nearly 800.

The death certificate of Calvin Miller, who Mitchell believes is a previously unidentified victim of the Elaine Massacre, states that Miller died on Oct. 4, 1919, due to a hemorrhage.

“Despite being considered one of the largest race riots in American history, there has never a single identified grave for a black massacre victim.” Dr. Mitchell is hoping that the recovered “death certificates will assist in the identification and the locating of victims’ graves.” “I was fascinated by the fact that you can have that many people missing or disputed and have no records of who died. It’s one of these mysteries that you want to keep pursuing. It’s important to the families of these individuals that there is some accounting of their death. I’ve met a few family members of the individuals who went to prison. For many of those families, they think it is important that some commemoration of all these people be put into place.” The records themselves make it difficult to identify possibly victims of the Elaine Massacre, since many do not list a cause of death or burial site and could have been issued months after the actual death occurred. “The hypothesis we have come to is that many of these death certificates were made up when family members showed up to look for their dead loved one,” Mitchell said. “Many people don’t show up until the following year (1920), and these death certificates tell very little about how their loved ones died or how their bodies were disposed of.” The Phillips County death records span from 1917 to the early 1950s. Mitchell has plans for future classes to continue archiving the records and making them available for public use. In the upper right photo, members of Dr. Brian Mitchell’s class include: Back row (L to R): Ellis E. Thompson; Domorion Williams; Grant Burress; Kevin Hill; Benny Mutoni; and Nicholson Weaver. Front Row: John Anderson; Dr. Brian Mitchell; Corrie Green; and Tarrie Boggs.

��Vlog��ý Little Rock student accepted to SpringboardNYC program

Ajani Oyindamola — Fri, 19 May 2017 13:09:22 +0000

When Corrie Green was a sophomore at Wilbur D. Mills High School, a friend begged her to join the Forensics Team, where students compete by performing short scripted pieces and improvisations. It was there that Green, 20, of Sherwood, developed a love of acting that has only grown stronger since she started attending the University of Arkansas at Little Rock as a theater arts and dance major. “I fell in love with acting in high school,” she said. “I got to ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, and I loved it even more. I started growing and learning more about the different methods of acting.” Green is on her way to becoming an even better actress since she has been selected to participate in the highly competitive American Theatre Wing’s program. Held June 5-16 in New York City, the intensive two-week summer program is described as a “launching pad to a career in the theatre and an exclusive introduction to the culture and community of New York Theatre.”

Corrie Green. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/��Vlog��ý Little Rock Communications

“For two weeks, I will take intensive acting classes coupled with business-oriented classes of how to survive in a big city like New York as an actor and how to market yourself in a way to survive in your industry, how to get money, how to get points,” Green said. “It’s all about learning how to be a working, living artist.” She is only the second ��Vlog��ý Little Rock student to be selected for the program. The first student, Marquis Bullock, was the first student ever selected from the state of Arkansas. Green was also one of a select group of students who received a two-thirds scholarship for her program tuition. Her cohort will include 35 acting students chosen from hundreds of applications from across the country. During the program, Green will attend workshops, seminars, master classes, field trips to theaters, and Broadway performances. Participants will be special guests at the rehearsal broadcast for the Tony Awards and then work as seat fillers during the show. The purpose of the SpringboardNYC program is to provide students with insight into the business of theater while connecting them to a network of working professionals and colleagues. Green also volunteers as an assistant coach to the Forensic Team at Mills High School. At ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, she performed in “The Learned Ladies,” “On Walking/Walking On,” “Fringe Festival,” and “Stop Kiss.”

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

Student research and creative works winners announced

����Vlog��ý Little Rock class creates digital archive of long-lost Phillips County death certificates

����Vlog��ý Little Rock student accepted to SpringboardNYC program

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

��Vlog��ý Little Rock class creates digital archive of long-lost Phillips County death certificates

��Vlog��ý Little Rock student accepted to SpringboardNYC program