University of Arkansas Fayetteville Garners More Recognition

Northwest Arkansas would not be what it is today were it not for the presence of the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. The cultural and economic impact is so large as to be difficult to quantify, but definitely contributes to our high quality of life.

A few recent, very disparate happenings--which some might find surprising--have attracted national attention to the university and our corner of the world.

First, James Patterson, internationally acclaimed New York Times best-selling author of mysteries and children’s books, has created eight additional teacher-education scholarships at the University of Arkansas for academic year 2014-15. Mr. Patterson gifted the first eight James PattersonTeacher Education Scholarships to U of A in 2013-14. Arkansas is one of 20 universities nationwide that is the recipient of these scholarship funds.

Recipients will receive $6,000 each. In order to be eligible, a student must be enrolled full time in an education program in the College of Education and Health Professions and have expressed an interest in pursuing a career as an elementary school teacher with a focus on reading and literacy.

The deadline to apply is July 21. More information is available by emailing llfoste@uark.edu.

Next, Jingyi Chen, assistant professor of physical chemistry at U of A, has been included in a list of the world’s most highly cited researchers in 2014. The list, Highly Cited Researchers, is compiled annually by Thompson-Reuters.

To make the list, scientists must rank among the top 1 percent most cited for their subject field and year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact.

Dr. Chen works in the field of nanomaterials. (A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter - approximately 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair.)

And lastly, Bob Harrington, professor and 21^st Century Endowed Chair in Hospitality in the Bumpers College at U of A and an expert on food and wine pairing, has been filmed for a documentary due out later this year. The documentary focuses on the evolution of current thoughts on wine and food matching.

Harrington was selected based on his systematic food and wine pairing approach, which he presented in his 2008 book, Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience.  His approach is based on empirical relationships that seem to drive a feeling of match and is based on 12 main interacting relationships of wine and food elements.

These three examples from extremely different fields have received recognition in different ways. Perhaps you are as surprised as I was to find these people in little old Arkansas. It used to be that for almost everything, the attitude was “thank God for Mississippi”, as Arkansas ranked at or near the bottom in most lists and studies. That appears to be changing….