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Chancellor Christina Drale provided her vision and priorities for the University of Arkansas at Little Rock during the University Assembly on Oct. 9.  “The state of UA Little Rock in 2020 is good and getting better. We have a clear course ahead of us, and I look forward to making that journey with you. I would submit to you that the singular lasting value that we must hold dear is the transformational value of education,” Drale said.

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A retired University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has made a planned giving agreement that will honor his love of Arkansas history and encourage more students to enter the field for years to come. Dr. Vincent Vinikas, professor emeritus of history who taught at UA Little Rock for 34 years, has donated a revocable trust, worth an estimated $100,000, to UA Little Rock along with his collection of materials about American history.

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NuShores Biosciences, a spin-off company of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has received a three-year, $2.8 million contract from the Medical Technology Enterprise Consortium, a biomedical technology consortium associated with the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. The contract will enable NuShores to develop intelligent automated production of its NuCress™ bone void filler scaffold products using its factory-in-a-box concept. Key collaborators on the project include UA Little Rock and MiQ Partners of Cincinnati.

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Sonny Rhodes, associate professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Mass Communication, is the 2020 recipient of the Arkansas Press Association Journalism Educator of the Year award.

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The Arkansas Small Business and Technology Development Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received a $125,000 grant to assist companies pursuing federal Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer grants and contracts.

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The U.S. Department of Education has awarded the University of Arkansas at Little Rock a $2.1 million, five-year grant that will help more students succeed and graduate from college.

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The Windgate Foundation has made a high-impact gift of more than $3 million to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock that will help educate generations of future artists.

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Dr. Anne Williamson, a nationwide expert in housing policy, has been selected as the new director of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Her research areas include housing policy, community development, citizen participation, and tax policy.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. The two-year project will include the creation of an economic recovery plan as well as the development of a history of the economic impact of COVID-19 on the state.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) Lab has received approval from the Arkansas Department of Higher Education (ADHE) to become an established research center on campus.“By designating COSMOS as a formal center, UA Little Rock will be a leader and pioneer in social media analytics and social media forecasting,” said Dr.

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In partnership with Kairos Research, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to develop a web-based tool and app to detect bot accounts on Twitter.

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While 2020 has been a year full of challenges, the generosity of supporters of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has resulted in the university’s highest fundraising year to date with UA Little Rock alumni and friends donating a record-breaking $47,941,061. 

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received state and federal approval to award a services contract to NuShores Biosciences LLC for Generation 1 manufacturing of the NuCress bone void filler scaffold products. This contract is funded by a $5.6 million grant awarded by the Department of Defense to UA Little Rock in 2019.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has received a $443,854 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop unique deep learning methods to identify key cell networks in complex diseases. Dr. Mary Yang, professor of information science and director of the Midsouth Bioinformatics Center at UA Little Rock, will conduct research that will help doctors and scientists further understand how complex diseases evolve and develop in the body as well as how to identify effective drug targets.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is offering Master of Business Administration (MBA) students the opportunity to embrace the best of on-campus and online learning through a new flexible MBA program.

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Research from the Little Rock Congregations Study at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock shows that religious leaders in Little Rock are growing more concerned with the issue of race relations.

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Dr. Jan P. Springer, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, has been named the new director of the George W. Donaghey Emerging Analytics Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.The Emerging Analytics Center (EAC) is a research center that is home to an energetic group of researchers, faculty, and students performing innovative research and development in technology, infrastructure, and applications for virtual and augmented realities, immersive visualization, interactive technologies, as well as cybersecurity and the Internet of Things.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is introducing a new four-year degree program in cybersecurity in the fall 2021 semester to help meet the rising demand for cybersecurity professionals. The Bachelor of Science in cybersecurity will prepare students for challenging and rewarding careers dedicated to protecting the privacy of individuals, the security of society’s infrastructure, and national security.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock doctoral student has been selected for a highly competitive postdoctoral scholarship at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Emilie Darrigues, a doctoral student in applied science with an emphasis in chemistry who is graduating in May, is one of four students selected for the UAMS Translational Research Institute Health Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship Postdoctoral Training Program for its class of 2022.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received the largest single gift in the institution's 93-year history, announced during the May 21 meeting of the Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas. The $25 million gift from an anonymous donor will support the university’s strategic enrollment management plan and help UA Little Rock students achieve a world-class education.

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An historic marker was unveiled March 6 at Little Rock National Cemetery to signify the location where Frank Moore, a member of the Elaine 12, is buried. Moore, a World War I veteran, was one of a dozen men who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death for their alleged roles in the deaths of five white men during the 1919 Elaine Massacre, the deadliest racial conflict in Arkansas history.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture has launched a virtual exhibit to commemorate the 1919 Elaine Massacre, the deadliest racial conflict in Arkansas history. The exhibit, “Elaine Race Massacre: Red Summer in Arkansas,” is an interactive experience based on historical resources, including photographs, scholarly essays, and educational resources that can be used by historians, teachers, and students.

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The Associated General Contractors (AGC) of Arkansas has donated $30,000 to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to establish a fund to support the Building Information Modeling (BIM) Lab for construction management and engineering students. 

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Two leaders of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have donated $25,000 to honor academic units who are going above and beyond the call of duty to support student success.

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A graduate of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law is hoping his gift of nearly $270,000 will help other Arkansas law students complete their education. Wylie Cavin III, a 1986 graduate of the William H. Bowen School of Law, has donated $269,000 to the law school.

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The Blue & You Foundation for a Healthier Arkansas presented the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a $68,357 grant to support continuing education for healthcare professionals. The grant will allow UA Little Rock to launch and maintain a nationally approved continuing education program to provide continuing education opportunities for nursing students, healthcare professionals, and emergency response professionals.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock will help create a free cybersecurity curriculum for Arkansas high school students as part of a new partnership announced Dec. 9 at UA Little Rock’s College of Engineering and Information Technology. The Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) Office of Computer Science will partner with UA Little Rock, the Arch Ford Education Service Cooperative’s Virtual Arkansas division, and the University of Central Arkansas to develop a three-year cybersecurity curriculum and course pathway.

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock announced a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to support the development of potentially life-saving bone regeneration technology during a Nov. 15 visit from Sen. John Boozman. The visit celebrated on-campus research initiatives that the senator championed for federal support.

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The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded the University of Arkansas at Little Rock a $5.6 million grant to advance the NuCress™ scaffold, a groundbreaking bone regeneration technology. The NuCress™ scaffold is in the final stages of moving from the laboratory to the surgical theater, with potential future uses in both military and civilian hospitals. The new award from the DOD’s Joint Warfighter Medical Research Program will help facilitate this transition by funding critical go-to-market research.

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The Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received nearly $2.5 million to develop and implement a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) program that identifies and serves academically promising second- and third-grade students in Arkansas.  

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The new chancellor of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has started her term with an investment in the future of faculty members at UA Little Rock. Dr. Christina Drale, named the university’s eighth chancellor by University of Arkansas System President Donald Bobbitt on Sept. 12, will donate $25,000 over two years to create an endowed fund to support the university’s Academy for Teaching and Learning Excellence.

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Two University of Arkansas at Little Rock researchers have used a novel approach to quantitatively portray legislative change in Ukraine to provide a view into the larger political dynamics of the country.

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The Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust has gifted $2.25 million to the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture to preserve and educate the public about the history of Arkansas, including the notable contributions of Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller. 

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The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is one of five institutions sharing a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a multi-scale integrative approach to digital health. This collaborative, multi-institution grant will be used to promote smart health in Arkansas and West Virginia. 

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Two University of Arkansas at Little Rock students are in awe over all the support shown for their dog rescue shelter simulation game, whose $16,000 fundraising campaign on Kickstarter was reached in just over 48 hours.“We have been totally blown away by the amount of support that we’ve received for this project,” said Olivia Dunlap, one of the UA Little Rock graduate students who created “To The Rescue.

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As Arkansas honors the 100th anniversary of the Elaine Massacre this year, a University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and alumnus are uncovering more secrets surrounding one of the worst race massacres in the country’s history. 

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Dr. Nitin Agarwal, director of the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been awarded a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to develop ways to track emerging cyber-social threats and strengthen social cybersecurity research infrastructure.

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Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have developed a new and inexpensive method to fabricate thin film electrode materials for supercapacitors that produce higher power at a lower cost. 

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock faculty member is hoping to make visits to healthcare professionals easier for patients and other health workers who are deaf or hard of hearing by researching a prototype transparent surgical face mask that allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing and non-native English speakers to read lips.

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At age 15, Vickie Austin left high school in Wynne, Arkansas, after becoming pregnant with her first child, though she always intended to finish her education. More than four decades later, she graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

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Arkansas is well known for its location on the Trail of Tears, the pathway the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Chickasaw, and Seminole tribes traveled through the state in the 1830s to new lands in the Indian Territory in modern-day Oklahoma. Few people, however, know about Arkansas’s history as the first and only state in the country to legally evict its entire free black population.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock student has received a $2,750 Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) award from the Arkansas Department of Education to research an outdated maritime law that lawyers invoked in an attempt to avoid or limit legal damages sought by victims and their family members in a tourist boat accident that killed 17 people last summer.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock graduate student is shedding light on long-overlooked contributions black communities in Arkansas made to the World War I effort. Crystal Shurley, an archivist at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies who completed her Master of Arts in public history in December 2018, wrote her thesis on the history of the Arkansas Colored Auxiliary Council, an early archivist group that was active during World War I and has remained a relatively undocumented part of Arkansas history.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor is part of an international research network that has been awarded more than £15 million pounds, or $19.6 million, to address gendered dimensions of injustice and insecurity around the world. Over the past two years, Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, associate professor in the UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs, has traveled to war-affected countries across the world as part of the Justice, Conflict and Development Network.

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An article written by University of Arkansas at Little Rock researchers, students, and collaborators has been accepted for publication into “Nanoscale,” a peer-reviewed scientific journal, as well as included in the 2018 Nanoscale HOT Article Collection. The article, “Quantification of cellular associated graphene and induced surface receptor responses,” presents a new, combination-based way to quantify and analyze the effect of graphene at the single cell level.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor’s research has shown that local access to legal drugs at the county level reduces opioid and heroin-related mortality rates. In states that have medical cannabis laws, the researchers found that mortality rates among non-Hispanic white men related to opioids and prescription opioids declined by 6 to 8 percent in counties that have dispensaries, when compared to counties that do not have dispensaries. Meanwhile, mortality due to heroin overdose in non-Hispanic white men due to heroin overdose declines by more than 10 percent.

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In commemoration of the centennial of the World War I, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Sequoyah National Research Center has published the website “American Indians in World War I” in partnership with the United States World War I Centennial Commission to commemorates the service of 12,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives who served in the war, mostly as volunteers.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock history professor and his graduate students are making headway into a mystery 99 years in the making. Dr. Brian Mitchell and his graduate students in the Intro to Public History Class have followed a trail of clues through cemeteries, public records, and databases as part of their search to discover what happened to a dozen black men wrongfully sentenced to death in a time of great racial turmoil in the aftermath of the 1919 Elaine Massacre.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and doctoral student have received a $20,000 Google AI research grant for their research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Dr. Xiaowei Xu, professor of information science, and Tolgahan Cakaloglu, a doctoral candidate in computer science, received the grant for their project, "Contextual Advanced Text Representation via Improved Deep Language Model by Utilizing Side Information."

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New research at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock digs into assumptions about the influence of bots on people’s opinions.