+ THE AHONORS COLLEGE 2012 3 6 14 35 Back to the Future 2 Dean’s List Architects have designed a new home for the Honors College 3 On Campus in historic Ozark Hall. See interview pp. 4-5. Save the Date: Jane Goodall 11 Pop Quiz Field Notes 12 Class Notes Our students are shooting film, taking leadership roles, tackling Impact of 25K big issues and being honored at the White House. See pp. 16-23 for snapshots of discovery, creativity and service across campus and beyond. 23 Honor Roll 24 Alumni Profile Honors & Arias Alumna Sarah Mesko found her voice and made the grades in the Honors 28 Alumni Updates College. Now she’s winning success in a tough field: opera. See p.24. 35 Road Trip On the cover Animal myths from Aesop to Disney inspired Luke Knox’ Honors College thesis – a multimedia art installation featuring his original work and found objects. View the video: Dean’sDean’s ListList The First 10 Years, and the Next s we prepare to celebrate + Our new home in Ozark Hall the 10th anniversary of the is under construction and slated for AHonors College, I’d like to completion next summer. At long share with you an unconventional last, honors students from across dean’s list—not a roster of students campus will have an elegant and who make all A’s, but a short list of spacious place of their own in which what makes me very proud about to study, socialize and meet with how the Honors College has taken Honors College faculty and staff. shape in its first decade and what For more on the design thinking makes me look forward with great that has shaped our new home, see anticipation to the next one. “Back to the Future,” pp. 4-5. Looking back over the first ten Looking ahead to the next ten years I’m especially proud that… years I’m confident that… + More than 500 of our top + The Honors College faculty members teach, mentor community will grow even stronger, and help honors students. They do both as a physical neighborhood, this not as a job requirement, but thanks to the new honors wing because they enjoy working with of Ozark Hall and to upcoming students who are up for a challenge, changes in on-campus housing, and and they also enjoy collaborating as a social network bringing together with each other to create rich students from all majors to focus interdisciplinary experiences for their talents, expertise and passions honors students. (See pp. 14-15 for on big and important issues. the latest round of interdisciplinary + Student- and faculty-led service courses being developed by our learning initiatives like those you faculty; you may wish, as I do, that can read about in this magazine will you could sit in on every one of inspire honors students, alumni, these classes). Our outstanding faculty and staff to make service Honors College and honors learning ubiquitous among the program staff members also go the honors community. extra mile to help students get the + During the university’s most out of their honors experience. upcoming capital campaign the + Our students and alumni are strategic initiatives put forth by the not only bright and hardworking but Honors College will translate into also creative and open to challenges expanded and enriched experiences of all kinds, in school and beyond. for the next generation of honors They are truly amazing, and you can students. see for yourself why we are so proud of them by reading about their research, creative work and service Bob McMath in Field Notes, pp. 16-23 and Alumni Dean of the Honors College and Updates, pp. 28-34. Professor of History 2 + University of Arkansas Honors College OnOn CampusCampus SAVE THE DATE THE HONORS COLLEGE IS TURNING 10 lumni, join us for a birth- Aday celebration October 4-5, 2012. + Festivities will begin Thursday, October 4, at 5 p.m. with an alumni reception where we will announce the first recipients of our new Young Alumni Awards. + On Friday, October 5, enjoy a private tour and lunch at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, heralded by The New York Times as “the first major institution dedicated to American art- ists in 50 years … [one that] seeks to bring high art to middle America.” Connect with old friends, professors and Honors College staff at our barbeque and help us blow out the candles on a really big birthday cake. We’ll wrap up with the Jane e are partnering with the Goodall lecture and book Distinguished Lectures Committee W signing. to bring legendary primatologist and conservationist Dr. Jane Goodall to campus. Dr. Goodall will speak at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 5, at Barnhill Arena. For more information, visit Her lecture, “Making a Difference: An honorscollege.uark.edu/ evening with Jane Goodall,” is free and all alumni.php. are invited. No tickets are required, but come early to get a good seat! A book sale and signing will follow her remarks. Photo: Jane Goodall. © Michael Neugebauer. Note: Dr. Goodall does not Space for the Crystal Bridges tour is limited; handle wild chimpanzees. This orphan sign up early to reserve your spot! Top: chimpanzee lives at a sanctuary. interior gallery; below: view of upper pond from gallery bridge. Photography by Timothy Hursley. University of Arkansas Honors College + 3 OnOn CampusCampus Back to the Future: Updating Ozark Hall magine a spacious, oak-paneled room bathed in natural light Ifrom a series of bay windows. A group of H2P students gather by the fireplace to work on a class project while nearby, assistant dean Maribeth Lynes meets with a prospective honors student and her father. Down the hall Kelly Carter, the college’s fellowships, grants & awards budget officer, chats with a freshman fellow in a sunny office, and upstairs, Dean Bob McMath leads a meeting with honors faculty in a well-appointed conference room. In the courtyard, more students blow off steam with a quick round of Frisbee. Beginning next fall, Honors generations to come – and enable claw – it was missing the wing that College students, faculty and the Honors College and its new would complete the courtyard,” staff will be able to work, study neighbors, the Graduate School and Brewer said. Heating, cooling and and kick back in their new home Department of Geosciences, to do electrical systems also needed to be – a 21,000-square-foot addition their work better. updated to bring the structure up to historic Ozark Hall. The “What is rewarding about a to 21st century standards. renovation and expansion project project like this is that it will bring One benefit of age: Ozark Hall will breathe new life into the something from the past back to features materials throughout Collegiate Gothic structure and life again – and this facility needed that are rarely found in modern provide a much-needed signature help and work,” Brewer said. Ozark construction. Two types of space for the Honors College in Hall has welcomed many tenants limestone grace the exterior: blue- the heart of campus. Robert A. over the years and has morphed gray Batesville limestone laid in M. Stern Architects of New York significantly since the first phase, parallel random ashlar courses and City, a leading architecture firm then known as the Classroom buff-colored Indiana limestone renowned for designing buildings Building, was completed in 1940. that is used for “trim” stone at for the nation’s most prestigious The second phase of construction the windows, building details and and beautiful college and university in 1947 added a second full wing to quoins. “The masonry is a beautiful campuses, designed the addition the planned quadrangle, and part building material, an incredible in collaboration with Arkansas firm of another, stopping short of the asset that we inherited,” Brewer Wittenberg, Delony & Davidson full build-out because the existing enthused. “Inside, the hallways Architects. Gary Brewer, a principal Commerce Building was in the way. have beautiful terrazzo floors and with Stern, believes the completed When the Commerce Building was solid oak doors with oak casings.” project will help to define the removed in the early 90s, Ozark The design team is taking great character and identity of campus for Hall resembled “a lobster with one care to preserve what is there and 4 + University of Arkansas Honors College A 21,000-square-foot addition to Ozark Hall will provide a permanent home for the Honors College. Opposite page: Student lounge. Renderings by Tom Schaller/Robert A.M. Stern Architects and WD&D Architects. match the original masonry and provide a visual anchor to that end nice middle ground.” woodwork in the new addition. of the student promenade.” Inside, the design team has The new Honors College wing Eric Silinsh, a design associate focused on creating spaces filled will feature some design flourishes with Stern who researched with natural light that invite flexible – a grand entrance, ranks of original plans and studied vintage use. Finishes are classic, timeless beautifully detailed bay windows photographs of Ozark Hall, noted neutrals that impart warmth and – that build upon the design that this design approach was also comfort: honey-colored oak, rough- vocabulary of the existing building. informed by the campus’ 1925 cut bluestone, leather upholstery, “We considered the obvious, to Plan. and geometric carpets in muted mirror the north wing, which “All of these buildings were greens, golds and the occasional consists of classrooms,” Brewer said. intended to have a punctuation pop of persimmon. “But to use that window rhythm in piece – a part that was different,” “Oscar Wilde said, ‘It is only the honors wing, with its lounge Silinsh said.