Student Resources

UCA Student Eryka Williams Earns Title Of National Intern of the Year

University of Central Arkansas student Eryka Williams has been named National Intern of the Year through the Cooperative Education and Internship Association.

Earning the award was the icing on the cake for Williams.

“It was on my birthday when I found out I won nationals,” said Williams. “It was great. It was fabulous. I felt like I was on fire, to be honest.”

Interning with Hewlett Packard Enterprise since Jan. 11, 2016, Williams accomplished multiple goals and delivered a high level of quality in all of her projects. Being accountable, communicative and achieving 100 percent on-time delivery on every project assigned afforded her the opportunity to be named UCA’s Intern of the Year, prompting her to apply for CEIA Intern of the Year.

Dr. Jim Downey, chair of the Department of Management Information Systems, nominated Williams for the UCA Intern of the Year designation.

“Eryka is a student in one of the most technical majors on campus and one of the most difficult ones. She has excelled. She is resolute in her pursuit of learning the material, and in my class, she was not satisfied with just learning,” he said.

After completing her internship, Williams now serves as the support cutover lead for the Americas region for 54 human resources and payroll applications and is now employed at HPE where she continues to model excellence and make an impact in the workplace making herself and UCA proud.

“Not only does Eryka deliver results, but she does it with a smile on her face. She comes in every day with a positive attitude and motivates others around her,” said Hannah Osborne, William’s supervisor at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Williams is a management information systems major from Cabot and graduates in May 2017.

UCA Sugar Bears Receive Honor From Arkansas Legislators At State Capitol

The UCA women’s basketball team was honored by the Arkansas House of Representatives and the Arkansas Senate at the Capitol on Feb. 28, 2017 for their success this year and last year’s historic run to the Southland Conference tournament championship, as well as their trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Go Sugar Bears!

Artist In Residence Dr. David Cutler Proves To Be Truly ‘Savvy Musician’ At UCA

Dr. David Cutler, author of the 2010 book “The Savvy Musician,” visited the University of Central Arkansas as artist in residence Feb. 19-21.

During his first night at UCA, David Cutler and his music were featured in “Concert and Conversation: Borrowing, Stealing, and Breaking the Rules” at 7:30 in the Snow Fine Arts Recital Hall.

“Concert and Conversation” was reimagining what music can be. The event began at 7:30 in the Recital Hall and featured several of Cutler’s compositions.

Cutler balances a varied career as a jazz and classical composer, pianist, educator, arranger, conductor, collaborator, concert producer, author, blogger, consultant, speaker, advocate and entrepreneur. In fact, a recent career diagram illustrated that he maintains no less than 24 income streams!

One of the world’s leading voices on arts leadership, career, and Cutler’s book “The Savvy Musician: Building a Career, Earning a Living, & Making a Difference” was heralded by Jeffrey Zeigler of the Kronos Quartet as “Hands down, the most valuable resource available for aspiring musicians.”

Cutler is director of Music Entrepreneurship at the University of South Carolina, and he also teaches there.

Cutler, one of the world’s leading voices on arts career and entrepreneurship training, has offered ground-breaking seminars for organizations such as the Julliard School, Dutch Classical Music Meeting, New World Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Music America. In 2013, he founded The SAVVY Arts Venture Challenge, an experiential workshop that trains participants to innovate, collaborate and build arts-businesses from the ground up. In June 2016, he directed a College Music Society Summit focused on the future of 21st century college music schools.

Residency activities, all free and open to the public, included:

Feb. 19, 7:30 p.m. — Public concert featuring compositions by Cutler performed by UCA music faculty in Snow Fine Arts Center Recital Hall. Concert includes a conversation on creating innovative experiences and opportunities in music.
Feb. 20, 7 p.m. — Community presentation: “Doing the Wrong Thing and How It Can Lead to Success in the Arts” with Q&A and reception, UCA Downtown, 1105 W. Oak St., Conway.
Feb. 21, 10:50 a.m. — Public presentation: “How Music Education Can Change the World (and Why it Often Doesn’t),” Snow Fine Arts Center Recital Hall.
Feb. 21, 1:40 p.m. — Public presentation: “A Life in the Arts: Nine BIG Ideas on Career and Financial Success,” Snow Fine Arts Center Recital Hall.

RecycleMania Competition Kicks Off At UCA

February 5 marked the beginning of the 2017 RecycleMania Competition at UCA! You can track our recycling progress here!

UCA hosts a commingled recycling program, which means recyclables do not have to be segregated when thrown into the bin.

At all sport event locations, UCA has placed large recycling containers shaped like plastic bottles to help promote the recycling of plastic bottles.

At UCA, we have a committee called SEED that organizes and promotes recycling and sustainability for the University. SEED stands for Sustainable Environment and Ecological Design, and the committee encourages, reviews, develops, recommends and provides information about proposals that can enhance UCA’s role in the local and national environmental community. The committee is comprised of faculty, staff and students.

For more information, contact Adam Hensley, Recycling and Custodial Services Manager, at 501-450-5386 or ahensley@uca.edu

UCA to Hold Events To Commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066 & Internment of Japanese-Americans During World War II

“’An Artist’s Sense of Purpose’: Art, Activism, and Community in Conway,” events will commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066 and the internment of Japanese-Americans During World War II, Feb. 20-27, 2017, sponsored by UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication, the Hendrix College Asian Studies Program and the Japan Outreach Initiative.

Schedule of Events
Feb. 20-24
· On view: selections of artwork from the Gould-Vogel collection of Japanese-American Internment art and artifacts (on loan from the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies), 10 am- 5 pm M-F (with extended hours until 7 pm on Thursday), Fireplace Room, McCastlain Hall, UCA

Feb. 21-27
· On view: sculpture display, “Life Interrupted: 10 Internment Camps,” by Nancy Chikaraishi, daughter of Rohwer Internment Camp survivors, Mills Library, Hendrix College (Free and open to the public; no tickets required)

Feb. 22
· 4:30 pm, Commemorative Ceremony, featuring Ms. Aya Murata, Coordinator, Japan Outreach Initiative, Mills Library, Hendrix College (Free and open to the public; no tickets required)
· 4:45 pm, Community Forum/Conversation: “WWII Internment and Conway: Lessons for Today,” featuring Hendrix College President Dr. William Tsutsui, Rohwer survivor Richard Yada, and Dr. Edma Delgado Solórzano of UALR, Mills Center Rm. A, Hendrix College (Free and open to the public; no tickets required)
· 7:30 pm, Film Screening, “Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration” (2015, 1 hr. 20 min.; written and directed by Vivienne Schiffer) and Q & A with Richard Yada, Rohwer survivor, Mills Center, Hendrix College (Free and open to the public; no tickets required)

About “Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration” (2015, written and directed by Vivienne Schiffer) “Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration” explores the effect of the Japanese American incarceration experience in Arkansas during WWII on the generation that was born after the camps closed, the unlikely tale of those Japanese Americans who remained behind, and the even more unlikely tale of how a small town Arkansas mayor of Italian descent became a legend in the Japanese American community. But with its themes of the complexity and hypocrisy of race relations in America, journeys toward forgiveness and healing, and cross-community understanding, the film transcends regional and cultural constraints unlike any other film on the incarceration experience (courtesy of IMBd).

About Nancy Chikaraishi: Nancy Chikaraishi’s parents were prisoners in the Rohwer, AR, Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Listening to her parents tell their stories of how this major event impacted their lives, prompted her to create artwork (paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture) that illuminates the costs of racial discrimination. The artist wrote: “Xenophobia remains a relevant issue of the 21st century. By acknowledging the racial injustices inflicted upon Japanese Americans during WWII, I hope to bring awareness to the consequences of fear based on otherness and prejudice.” Chikaraishi currently lives in Springfield, MO, where she is the assistant professor of architecture at Drury University.

About Executive Order 9066: On February 19, 1942, in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, giving the Secretary of War the power to designate military areas from which “any or all persons may be excluded,” and authorized military commanders to initiate orders to forcibly remove 120,000 Japanese Americans and persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to ten internment camps in seven western states, including two in the Arkansas Delta (Rohwer and Jerome). Approximately 17,000 “evacuees” were brought by train to Arkansas where they were imprisoned behind barbed wire for three years.

The University of Central Arkansas and Hendrix College have unique connections to the history of Japanese Internment during World War II.

UCA graduate Mabel Rose Jamison was a Caucasian art teacher at Rohwer who saved her students’ artworks, later displaying them to publicize the injustice of internment. They are now held at the Smithsonian, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Butler Center in Little Rock.

After visiting the Arkansas camps in 1943, Hendrix College art faculty members Floy Hanson and Louis and Elsie Freund staged an exhibition of artwork by renowned artist and Jerome internee Henry Sugimoto at Hendrix in 1944. After meeting Sugimoto at Hendrix, English professor Paul Faris visited Rohwer in 1945, where he photographed life in the Arkansas camps while his wife Ann conducted oral history interviews with internees. These experiences, Henry Sugimoto later recalled, inspired “an artist’s sense of purpose” to document and remember the experience of internment.

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