A PUBLICATION OF THE ARKANSAS SCHOOL FOR MATHEMATICS, SCIENCES AND THE ARTS

SUMMER 2014

ASMSA’s Dr. Jon Ruehle on sculpting art, molding minds

Artist. Scientist. Teacher.

Last year, several members of our campus community began discussing the factors that make ASMSA unique and the qualities we want people who have yet to interact with us to know about our work.

First and foremost, we take pride in being Arkansas’ high school. Students this year come to us from 54 counties, 81 representative districts and all 35 senatorial districts. Students from the Delta, others on the lake and still more from cities across our state come to ASMSA to be a part of a community of learning with many of the state’s most promising young minds.

Each ASMSA student has the potential to do great things. It’s simply a matter of what they choose to do and who they will choose to become through hard work, dedication and persistence. No matter what they accomplish, we hope they aspire to do the extraordinary.

We also discussed the programs, classroom experiences, research opportunities, residential life, student support and digital learning components of ASMSA. We asked what traits come to mind when describing our students. Whether it was the institution or the people who make it so special, one word kept coming up: remarkable.

Every day, we strive to provide remarkable experiences that move our state forward. And at the heart of the word remarkable is the reason we do what we do: Arkansas. You don’t see it? It’s right there — AR.

reseARchers. ARtists. scholARs. visionARies. Sure, it is a bit cheeky, but that’s why we like it. It is recognizable, visible

and applicable to both the school’s identity and mission. It reinforces the notion that our accomplishments and future successes are deeply rooted in the Natural State. No other school does what we do, so we’re definitely proud to embrace this public declaration.

You will begin to see this statement throughout our campus, in our admissions materials, in advertisements as well as a new television commercial airing over the next year. As students, staff, parents, alumni and friends, we hope that you are as excited as we are to tell all of Arkansas and the rest of the world about the remarkable things happening at ASMSA.

Corey AlderdiceDirector

DirectorCorey Alderdice

Dean of Academic AffairsBob Gregory

Dean of StudentsWilliam Currier

Director of FinanceJaNan Abernathy

Director of Admissions and Public AffairsKelli Fram

Board of VisitorsLuther Lowe (’01), ChairKaren Garcia, Vice ChairLeigh Merry, SecretaryHayward BattleDonna CasparianDonna HutchisonCynthia A. Miller, Ph.D.

Ex-Officio RepresentativesArkansas Science & Technology AuthorityMarta Gwyn Collier

Arkansas Department of Higher EducationShane Broadway

Arkansas Department of EducationMary Kathryn Stein

Department of HeritageJoy Pennington

ASMSA Parents AssociationAmanda Hogue-Nall, President

ASMSA Student GovernmentSophia Ly (’15), President

Tangents is published by the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, a campus of the University of Arkansas System.

For more information about ASMSA, visit our website at www.asmsa.org or call 1-800-345-2767.

Editor and Graphic DesignDonnie Sewell

Graphic DesignFred Zipkes

20 Have Room for Cake?Baker Teresa Hall provides tasty and beautiful desserts for the dining hall.

24 WatchPointA team of students develop an app to help keep track of smartphones. 26 Take Her AdviceCounselor Diana Arms says the timing right for her to retire.

2 Alternative BreakStudents spend their Spring Break volunteering for charity organization.

18 Eyes in the SkySergei Lupashin (’01) develops easy- to-use UAVs for practical purposes.

12 A New AdventureMath instructor Bruce Turkal retires after two decades at ASMSA.

#ASMSA

inthisissue

features

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Anna Reckling (’15) celebrated Teacher Appreciation Week by taking selfies with her teachers.

SUMMER 2014

Page 6

/ARMathSciArts

ASMSA celebrates 20 years, 2,000 grads

at Commencement.

On the Cover: Dr. Jon Ruehle displays several of his bronze sculptures using a unique process using hollow wax. Story on Page 14

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A group of five students and two residential mentors spent their Spring Break in Selma, Ala., volunteering with the Freedom Foundation, an organization that promotes unity within the community through programs for youth. Making the trip were, front row from left, Kim Le (’15) and Angelina Anderson (’15); second row from left, residential mentor Margaret Humphrey, Katelyn Lauderdale (’14) and Meagan Brazier (’14); and third row from left, Laura Lin (’14) and residential mentor Jennifer Goodwin. Below: Humphrey holds a child at a daycare the group visited.

Spring Break — two words that when put together may bring many images to mind. Perhaps it’s the sun reflecting off the water during a trip to a local lake or to the beach. May-be it’s that your dad acted silly with a cartoon character during a fam-ily vacation. Or it’s just the shadows in your room caused by the midday sun as you wake up from a blissful morning of sleeping in after a late night of hanging out with friends.

Alternative take on Spring Break

Photos courtesy of Jennifer Goodwin

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But for five ASMSA students and two residential mentors, there was no water or cartoon characters or sleeping in (though there were late nights hang-ing out with friends) during their Spring Break this year. Instead, the group spent a week in Selma, Ala., volunteering with the Freedom Foundation, an orga-nization that promotes unity within the community through programs for youth.

Participating in an Alternative Spring Break was the idea of Margaret Humphrey, a first-year residential mentor at the school. Humphrey participated in two Al-ternative Spring Breaks as a student at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas. Her first trip was to St. Louis and the second to Selma, working with the Free-dom Foundation. She hoped to be able to volunteer on another Alternative Spring Break in Selma again.

“When I went to St. Louis that first year, it was a great trip. But something about Selma really made me want to go back,” she said.

Humphrey was discussing her desire to partici-pate in another Alternative Spring Break in Selma during ASMSA’s Spring Break with fellow residential mentor Jennifer Goodwin. During their talk, Good-win said she would be interested in participating, too. They both thought it would be really cool if they could take some kids with them as well.

They spoke to Bill Currier, dean of students, about the possibility of taking students on the trip. He en-couraged them to apply for an ASMSA Innovation Mini-Grant to help cover some of the trip’s expenses. The goal of the program was to test out new ideas, tools and experiences that engage ASMSA students.

Within two weeks of first proposing the trip, Humphrey and Goodwin were awarded a grant for $2,000. They also knew which students were going. Three seniors — Katelyn Lauderdale of Cabot, Mea-gan Brazier of Batesville and Laura Lin of Stuttgart — and two juniors — Angelina Anderson of Hum-phrey and Kim Le of Little Rock — were chosen after filling out an application, writing several short es-says, getting recommendations from a faculty mem-ber as well as a residential mentor, and an interview with Humphrey and Goodwin.

Humphrey said her contacts at the Freedom Foun-dation were excited about the ASMSA group because there had not been a high school group volunteer be-fore. It would be a new experience for the Freedom Foundation as well as the students, who likely had never experienced something similar to what waited for them in Selma.

Important history

Selma is a small town of about 20,000 people in western Alabama that sits on the banks of the Ala-

On a mission:Student volunteers

for Thailand tripAs a student at Lee University in Cleveland, Tenn.,

this fall, Meagan Brazier (’14) plans to study anthro-pology, the study of humans, including their cultural characteristics, customs and social relationships.

She’ll get to do a little bit of anthropology work this sum-mer in Thailand — mixed in with lots of missionary work. Brazier will spend the month of July in Thailand volunteering at an or-phanage for girls rescued from prostitution, teaching conver-sational English at a university level, working on relief projects and evangelism through drama. She will be a team member of Real Impact Missions, which was created in 1985 and has sent mission teams to more than 50 countries.

Brazier has long been interested in doing mis-sion work overseas. That interest was piqued when her older sister Courtney participated in a Real Im-pact Missions trip to Thailand while she was in col-lege. “She also helped me not sugarcoat what the trip may actually be. I know there will be hardships to face, but I know I can overcome them,” she said.

Brazier wasn’t sure at first where she wanted to go. She was trying to decide between Africa and Thailand. “I didn’t want to go somewhere that I wanted to go just because it was fun. I wanted to go somewhere that I was being led by God to go to and it would be difficult for me,” she said.

Brazier was set to travel to the African nation of Burkina Faso, but the kidnapping of more than 200 girls by a militant group in nearby Nigeria led to a change in plans.

Individuals pay for their own trips with Real Im-pact Missions. Brazier’s trip was going to cost al-most $3,800, not counting airfare to and from Mi-ami, where she will meet her other teammates, and extra spending money for the trip.

Brazier started working an afterschool job, held fundraisers at local restaurants and sold T-shirts to try to raise the money. Believer’s Community Church, her hometown church in Batesville, donat-ed $800 toward the trip. Her Hot Springs church, New Life, planned to help as well. Someone even left an unmarked envelope with $100 in it in her room at ASMSA.

Brazier

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bama River. About 80 percent of its population is black and 18 per-cent white according to the 2010 Census. More than 27 percent of the population is youth under the age 18.

Selma is best known for a cou-ple of events. The first is the Bat-tle of Selma during the Civil War. Selma’s foundries and naval yard made it a target late in the Civil War. Union Gen. James H. Wil-son led an assault on Confeder-ate troops, including soldiers led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, at Selma on April 2, 1865. Union forces eventually overpowered the town’s fortifications and sent Forrest and many of his troops into retreat. Union soldiers looted the town after Confederate forces retreated.

The other notable event took place almost 100 years later and became known as Bloody Sun-day. Selma was a focal point for the Civil Rights Movement be-ginning in 1963. Local civil rights leaders in the Dallas County Vot-ers League began organizing with national leaders to protest segre-gation and voter registration in-equalities in the town.

By January 1965, the DCVL joined with Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Stu-dent Nonviolent Coordinating Committee leaders to bring atten-tion to the lack of voting rights of blacks throughout Alabama — es-pecially in Selma. Efforts to regis-ter black voters in Selma had been met with much resistance from white leaders.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, about 600 civil rights marchers decided to walk the approximate-ly 50 miles to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery to petition the state legislature for reforms in the voter-registration process in the first of what would become called the Selma to Montgomery marches.

The marchers began their

journey at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church. They made it about six blocks out of town before they were met by local and state law enforcement officers at the Ed-mund Pettus Bridge. The officers used billy clubs and tear gas to turn the marchers around. Almost 20 people were injured in the in-cident. The violent encounter led the national press to call the event “Bloody Sunday.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a symbolic march of 2,000 people to the bridge for a prayer session the following Tuesday. On March 21, 1965, after a federal court order that would prevent police from interfering with a march was issued, about 8,000 people left the church on a march for Mont-gomery. By the time the march reached the capital city, approxi-mately 25,000 had joined it.

Changing attitudes

Today, Selma is still segregat-ed in many ways — segregated in mindset and actions rather than through legal means. According to the Freedom Foundation, the local country club has yet to ad-mit a black member. Because of

the population base and where people live, some of the schools in the public school system have all black students. One private school that was established in June 1965 admitted its first black student just five years ago.

“A lot of us thought that every-where had been integrated,” said Anderson, one of the two juniors who went on the trip. “Getting to Selma and seeing it’s not equal, it’s not what we’re used to. It’s not like that there. [Blacks and whites] are in different groups.”

The Freedom Foundation is a nonprofit group that started in Colorado but moved to Selma after a member passed through the town on a civil rights his-tory tour. The foundation saw the need for an organization to work with youth in the town that could make a positive impact. It does so through Alternative Break oppor-tunities that bring diverse groups in to volunteer with the organiza-tion as well as the Random Acts of Theatre Co., or RATCo.

RATCo is a youth theatre pro-gram staffed by volunteers that teaches self-expression, confi-dence and leadership through performing and visual arts. The

Laura Lin (’14) reads to a child at one of the daycare and afterschool sites ASMSA students and residential mentors visited during their Alternative Spring Break trip to Selma. To view more photos from the trip, visit http://asmsa.me/alternativespringbreak14.

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goal of the program is to encourage youth ages 3 to 21 to learn how to find their voice while participating in community service projects, leadership develop-ment and performance tours.

ASMSA students had the opportunity to volunteer with RATCo as well as helping at a local daycare, working in the foundation’s afterschool programs and helping renovate the Tepper’s Building, a histor-ic building in downtown Selma. The Tepper’s Build-ing will serve as the future site for the foundation’s youth programs, a training and education center and the foundation’s national headquarters.

“It will be for students from all over Selma,” Bra-zier said. “It will be a place students can come and be themselves.”

The group made their day of working at the build-ing a competition with the other volunteer groups, Humphrey said. They worked to remove debris from the building by filling up buckets on upper floors and using a pulley system to lower the buckets to be emp-tied into a wheelbarrow and taken out of the building.

The trip had an educational purpose as well. The students spent one day touring significant civil rights sites in Selma and Montgomery. They also participated in a day of nonviolence training that in-cluded a guest speaker. Lynda Lowery was one of the youngest participants in the Bloody Sunday march. An officer hit her in the head that day, and she later passed out when tear gas was deployed. She woke up in a hearse. She saw her sister being placed in a vehicle and thought she had died. Lowery was wor-ried because she was supposed to be looking out for her sister that day.

Lowery participated in the March 21 march to Montgomery. In various accounts, she described that day as one of the scariest periods of her life when she realized the Alabama National Guardsmen federalized to protect the marchers included some of the same people who had been on the bridge to stop the marchers before.

Growing closer

For all the differences they experienced, it was the times the ASMSA group spent with the youth of Selma that were the most encouraging, each of them

said. It gave the volunteers a chance to bond with the people they were there to help.

“After one or two days of talking and dancing, I felt like we could be best friends,” Le said.

Lauderdale said she felt very comfortable around the Selma group. “I actually got up and danced and sang to songs. That’s not what I would normally do,” she said.

The students and ASMSA residential mentors grew closer as well. The group spent the week in Sel-ma in a house provided by one of the volunteers. Most nights they had group meals at the house, with each person taking turns preparing the meal or washing the dishes. They also gathered together each night to talk about what they had done that day and what they had learned.

Each person also kept a journal about the trip. Humphrey said it was important not only to get each person to reflect about their personal experiences on that day but so that, in the years that follow, they will have a record of what they were thinking, what they learned and what they shared.

Le said the week served as an inspiration for her. “It makes me believe that if they (Freedom Founda-tion volunteers and the kids involved with the orga-nization) can do something that great with their life, so can I,” she said.

Le and Anderson both said they would go back again next year if Humphrey and Goodwin take an-other group. Until then, Humphrey will remember the experience of this year — which she says was better even than last year.

“Last year was great, but this year was so much better. There weren’t as many colleges this year, and the way the volunteers surrounded us and embraced us was great. This year, we got to know the volun-teers a lot more. They legitimately wanted to hang with us all the time,” Humphrey said.

Currier said the trip was so successful that he plans to fund another trip during next year’s Spring Break from his budget.

“One of the things we stress [at ASMSA] is citizen-ship,” Currier said. “I felt that the program more than justifies the expense. It offers people unique opportu-nities to bond. They get to spend quality time together to learn each other’s values.”

‘One of the things we stress [at ASMSA] is citizenship. [The program] offers people unique opportunities to bond. They get to spend quality time together to learn each other’s values.’

Dean of Students Bill Currier,on why he thought it was a good idea for an ASMSA

group to participate in an Alternative Spring Break

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ASMSA celebrates 2,000th graduateASMSA celebrated two mile-

stones during its commencement ceremony for the Class of 2014 on May 24 — the 20th graduating class and the 2,000th graduate since the school opened.

The Arkansas General Assem-bly created ASMSA in 1991. The first class of students arrived on campus as juniors in August 1993 and graduated in May 1995. In-cluding the 96 graduates of the Class of 2014, 2,031 students have graduated from ASMSA.

Jessica Nguyen of Sherwood was recognized as the 2,000th graduate during the ceremony. Nguyen is the daughter of Hong Thi and Ban Van Nguyen and at-tended North Little Rock High School East prior to ASMSA.

Nguyen said she was very ex-cited when she was told she would be recognized as No. 2,000.

“I was very shocked,” Nguyen said the day before graduation. “I think it’s such an honor, and com-

pletely random, that I was chosen the 2,000th graduate. I really en-joyed my time here.”

She said ASMSA has been life changing.

“There were a lot of tribulations,

but I feel I’m a better person for it. I really enjoyed this environment and the fact that I found people similar and compatible to me and teachers who respect me and en-courage me to learn and do well.”

Nguyen will major in chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Dr. Yang Xu, a member of the Class of 1999 and an internist in Hot Springs Village, was the com-mencement speaker. Xu said ASMSA students have two signifi-cant advantages: “the experience of living on their own away from the umbrella of your parents” and the ability to handle college-level course difficulty, which will have prepared them for their chosen in-stitution of higher learning.

“These skills will serve you well in the years ahead. You are, by most measurable factors, far ahead of the pack. However, don’t become complacent. Press your advantage; stay ahead. Go on to

Jessica Nguyen (’14) of Sherwood said she was surprised and honored to be ASMSA’s 2,000th graduate during its 20th commencement ceremony.

20 years, 2 milestones

do great things, but more importantly, go on to do the things you’re passionate about,” he said.

Xu shared his experience of growing up in China before moving to the United States as an 8-year-old. The family was considered middle class in China, his father an art professor and his mother a school ad-ministrator.

That changed once his family moved to the U.S., and Xu said at first he was determined to earn a degree in a field that would allow him to avoid financial strug-gles. Thus he chose to become a doctor.

But during medi-cal school, XU realized that it was more im-portant to find an area that he was passionate about than to worry strictly about making good grades or money.

“I realized that when you aren’t passionate about something, being ‘very smart’ isn’t always enough,” he said.

Luther Lowe, a mem-ber of the Class of 2001 who has served on the ASMSA Board of Visi-tors for several years including most recently serving as chairman of the board, made a sur-prise announcement during the ceremony.

Lowe, who was on-stage to certify the stu-dents as eligible gradu-ates of the institution, issued a challenge. He said that, while sitting onstage during the pro-gram, he had donated $10,000 to ASMSA. He challenged parents, alumni and friends of the school to show their ap-preciation for the opportunities ASMSA offers it stu-dents by donating as well. He said he would match up to another $10,000 raised for the school by the end of June. The “20 For 20: Match Challenge” raised $10,666 in addition to Lowe’s gift.

Seniors Bryan Hernandez of Clinton and Chris-

topher Carver of Blytheville both spoke about how ASMSA, their classmates, teachers and families as well as others helped them grow as individuals dur-ing their two years at the school.

Hernandez said the school helped him grow not only academically but socially as well. He met peo-ple he would call family, and it was those people who helped him endure the challenges and enjoy

the community that are the essence of ASMSA.

“I found my niche. I found my home away from home,” he said. “The little things mat-ter here. The people matter here. The toll my grades took on me never matched the happiness that the people here have given me. I feel invicible here. Two years in and I have no regrets. Every sin-gle day here I honestly feel like a king.”

Carver said he was not sure at first about attending a residen-tial school three-and-a-half hours away from home. Once he was here, however, he eventually realized that it was the best place for him to be.

“I have never felt more accepted than on the campus of ASMSA, surrounded by my peers, residen-tial mentors and even teachers,” he said.

Carver said each of the graduates will face problems in the future, but they should be en-couraged.

“You do not know the answers to all of these problems yet, but you know how to face them. You have learned the re-search method, studied the masters of the field and exercised your minds over and over again on white-boards, and best of all, you have made connections with some of the strongest minds of our generation just by sitting with them at lunch,“ he said.

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students graduated as part of ASMSA’s 20th class.

ASMSA Class of 2014

BY THE NUMBERS96

$16 million

in scholarship offers were made to class members.

was the average ACT composite score graduates earned.29.3

34% will be the first in their family to earn a college degree.

71% of the graduates have declared a major in a STEM subject.

73% will continue their studies at an Arkansas university.

To view photos from the commencement ceremony, visit http://asmsa.me/asmsagrad2014.

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Sergei Lupashin (’01) has what some may consider an unusual use for a retractable dog leash.

There’s no puppy to be found on the end of the leash. What you will find is a Fotokite, an unmanned aerial vehicle that has the op-portunity to change how the world views news events, disasters, large celebrations and other events.

The Fotokite is a quadrocopter, a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that has four small motors and propellers that help lift the

Eyes in the SkyPhoto courtesy of Ryan Lash/TED

Sergei Lupashin (’01) demonstrates how easy it is to use a Fotokite, an unmanned aerial vehicle he helped create, by launching three of the vehicles at once at TED2014 — The Next Chapter in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Video from each of the three vehicles is displayed on the screen behind him. Lupashin spoke at the conference as a TED Fellow.

Alumnus developing easy-to-use UAVs that can

play a practical role in news gathering, rescue operations

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vehicle into the air. The idea for the Fotokite grew out of Lupash-in’s research at Cornell Univer-sity in New York as well as doc-toral and postdoctoral research at ETH Zurich in Switzerland.

The Fotokite is attached to a tether, in this case a retractable dog leash that allows the user to guide the UAV without the use of a remote control. There is a small camera mounted to the bottom of the vehicle that is connected to a video transmitter that al-lows images to be sent directly to a computer or other device to broadcast the live video.

“It’s kind of like a flying smartphone,” Lupashin said dur-ing a interview from the compa-ny’s research office in Zurich. “It has all the same sensors, in par-ticular the inertial sensors. All the magic happens in how those sensors are used. So the quadro-copter, the Fotokite, can inter-pret that data from the sensors and where it is relative to you so it can stay in the same spot or do some other intelligent behavior.”

The sensors allow the Fotok-ite to move with its user without being directed to a certain spot by other means. One of the best examples of this can be seen on Lupashin’s YouTube channel. In one video, a Fotokite is given to a person on a sled. The sled-der travels down a path with the Fotokite following behind. The distance between the Fotokite and the sled remains the same throughout the ride as does the Fotokite’s altitude.

Two videos on Fotokite’s You-Tube channel offer extended views of the vehicle’s capabili-ties. In one scene filmed at the Burning Man festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, a person on bicycle guides the UAV around the festival, and again it main-tains its distance and altitude. Another clip shows scenes from the Fotokite as it travels with a

guide riding on a truck around the festival.

The videos of the Burn-ing Man festival are examples of what role Lupashin, his co-founder James Rapoport and their team members think Foto-kite can play in covering events. More than 60,000 people attend the weeklong festival each year, and the Fotokite was able to pro-vide some unique views.

Lupashin and the Fotokite team envision the vehicle being a useful tool for journalists to use when covering events, breaking news, demonstrations and other newsworthy activities. They also see a use for the device by emer-gency workers during disasters and accidents. Archaeologists could use it to document their digs.

One event in particular served as an inspiration for the development of the Fotokite. In December 2011, thousands participated in a protest against the government and elections in Moscow.

A group of Russian UAV pi-lots filmed the protests, and they had to wear orange vests to let people know to stay back while they were flying the remote-controlled vehicles, according to a Wired article about Lupashin and Fotokite. The footage pro-vided visual documentation of the size of the protests, but the remote-controlled UAVs weren’t feasible. For safety reasons, the pilots were essentially unable to move through the crowd.

“It’s kind of the original inspi-ration for a problem that needed solving,” Lupashin said. “There’s some recent perspective that’s really eye-opening, but essen-tially unless you’re the govern-ment, it’s inaccessible, especially if it’s crowded or a demonstra-tion.

“It’s easy to develop technol-ogy, but it’s difficult to develop

Sergei Lupashin was one of 21 Fellows who participated in TED2014 —The Next Chapter in Vancouver. Here is a sample of the other Fellows from around the world who were selected to present at this year’s conference.

Andrew BastawrousKenya-based ophthalmologist who has created PEEK, a low-cost smartphone ophthalmic tool that delivers eye care in some of the world's most challenging places to those who need it most.

Kitra CahanaCanadian documentarian and concep-tual art photographer currently docu-menting nomadic communities in the United States and the slow recovery of her father, paralyzed from a brain stem stroke.

Shohini GhoseTheoretical physicist who examines how the laws of quantum mechanics may be harnessed to develop next-generation computers and novel protocols like teleportation.

Erine Gray American software developer and founder of Aunt Bertha, a platform that instantly helps people find social ser-vices such as food banks, health care, housing and educational programs.

Kathryn HuntBiological anthropologist and Near Eastern archaeologist researching cancer in the skeletal remains of ancient peoples. Her Paleo-oncology Research Organization (PRO) seeks insight into how genetic and environmental factors have played a part in the evolution of the disease.

Robert SimpsonBritish astronomer who creates online platforms to cultivate a community of citizen science volunteers worldwide – crowdsourcing science. Projects cover a wide range of disciplines, from hunting for exoplanets to decoding whale lan-guage to mapping the Milky Way.

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solutions. By focusing on this, and also like (the) Fukushima (Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 that was caused by a tsunami) to some extent, it helps to ground yourself in terms of what are you actually solving. In Fukashima, they couldn’t get that per-spective for months.

“In a way, it felt like a failure of robotics. The tools that are developed for those areas are quite compli-cated. People have to be very proficient in operat-ing (remote control UAVs), they’re very expensive, (and) they’re never in the right place. So we set out to create something much more versatile. The idea is if a 5-year-old can use a Fotokite to take a picture of their dog then maybe a journalist could use it in a real situation or a firefighter.”

Changing perspectives

One of the challenges Fotokite faces is changing people’s perspectives of UAVs. Quite often the word drone is used to describe the vehicles. However, that word has developed a negative connotation in some circles, particularly as unmanned drones are used in military missions.

“I’m not going to use the d-word,” Lupashin said with a chuckle and smile. He uses the term aerial ro-botics to describe his work with the quadrocopters. His team works hard to differentiate the Fotokite from the common perception of a drone. Instead of

focusing on the technology itself, they focus on what it does and the purpose it can serve.

“It’s too bad that all of these devices get swamped into this one big category. It’s kind of like calling bull-dozers tanks. It’s good to show that we have some-thing different. Highlighting it’s not a drone helps in that story because you end up explaining what pre-cisely is different,” he said.

The biggest difference being that there is a physi-cal connection to the operator. It lets those who may see the Fotokite flying know exactly who is using it and that it is under control.

“Everyone knows you’re responsible for this ve-hicle. This machine is being operated by this person. There’s no ambiguity,” he said.

Lupashin said it helps to actually show people the Fotokite in use, thus the Burning Man trip was a good experience. Trade shows and conferences, such as the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference at the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at New York University last year, provide additional op-portunities.

At these demonstrations, Lupashin deploys a Fotokite to show how easy it is to operate the vehi-cles. They are light, compact and one can fit in a case about the size of a briefcase.

Perhaps the biggest event at which Lupashin has had the opportunity to discuss Fotokite was the TED2014 Conference held in Vancouver, Canada, in

Watch Sergei Lupashin (’01) demonstrate how a Fotokite operates at the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference at the Engelberg Center on

Innovation Law and Policy at New York University at http://

asmsa.me/darclupashin. Watch videos of Fotokites in

action at the Burning Man festival at http://asmsa.me/burningmanfotokite. Watch

one of Lupashin’s favorite tests, pulling a Fotokite along with a sled, at http://asmsa.

me/fotokitesled.

Photo courtesy of Ryan Lash/TED

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March. Speakers share new ideas across a wide range of topics, in-cluding technology, entertain-ment and design. This was the 30th anniversary TED conference.

Lupashin was named a TED Fel-low for the 2014 conference. The application process is open to any-one in the world in any profession. Only 21 were selected out of the more than a thousand who applied, he said. His selection was a fantas-tic moment not only for Lupashin but for the whole Fotokite op-eration as well. He said that when you’re involved in the startup of a small company such as Fotokite there can be a lot of bad moments, but other times there can be some really high moments. This was one of the high moments for the com-pany and for Lupashin personally.

“It’s a really cool group of peo-ple, like artists, photographers, political figures, technical people like myself,” he said.

Each fellow makes a presenta-tion at the conference. The fellows had weekly classes that began three or four months before the conference that covered topics to help them prepare for their pre-sentation.

Lupashin took the opportunity to launch three Fotokites at once during his presentation.

“I tried to really hammer down the message of how accessible and easy to use they are. An op-erator with a regular remote-con-

trolled vehicle wouldn’t have been able to do that,” he said.

Lupashin said the conference was a good place to figure out if an idea is worth pursuing. He said it was an amazing experience that not only resulted in a high-level exposure for Fotokite but was a very educational experience for him as well. Hearing all of the other speakers in an environment where everyone loves to discuss their ideas was a fantastic oppor-tunity, he said.

Lupashin described his time at ASMSA in a similar fashion. He said one of the strengths of the school is to bring together really interesting people.

Born in Russia, he moved to Ar-kansas from New Jersey once his parents took jobs at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. While at the school, he made many friends, including a few with whom he created a com-puter science club.

The club offered them the op-portunity to go to various compe-titions, including ones where they competed against colleges.

“I think that really brought us together and pushed me and oth-ers to really learn. I can’t repeat this enough, just having really in-teresting people around, some of which were really curious and re-ally pushed themselves to learn (was one of his most valuable ex-periences at ASMSA),” he said.

‘It’s easy to develop technology,

but it’s difficult to develop solutions.’Sergei Lupashin (’01),

discussing how focusing on finding answers to real-world

problems helped focus his Fotokite research

Photo courtesy of Ryan Lash/TED

ASMSA ON FILM

Two unique courses offered at ASMSA are Documentary Filmmaking and Folk Music and Acoustics. Students create projects that demonstrate their combined artistic and technical talents. In some cases, students from both courses work together and produce pieces that reflect ASMSA’s artistic side. Below are a few samples of what students worked on during the spring semester.

To view the videos, visit http://asmsa.me/docfilmvids.

Goodbye, ASMSA

Members of the Class of 2014 share their memories of ASMSA in this video shot and edited by Doc Film student Christopher Carver (‘14).

Where We Are Going

Members of the Folk Music class wrote this original song that features vocals by Baleigh Almond (‘14), left, and Coleman Herman (‘14). The music video was edited by Doc Film student Lukas Young (‘14).

Papa’s Waltz

Bryce Montgomery (‘14), pictured above, and Coleman Herman wrote this song with lyrics adapted from Theodore Roethke’s poem “My Papa’s Waltz.” Doc Film student Seth Gilchrist (‘14) directed the music video.

Mechanical engineer. Fireman. Riverboat worker.

Each is a job Bruce Turkal has held at sometime during his life. Each position has offered him a different adventure.

For the past 31 years, Turkal has been a teacher, a profession that he did not expect to make his career but one that he says has been the most exciting in many ways. The last 20 of those years have been spent at ASMSA. With the death of his mother last year and his daughter’s high school graduation this year, he thought it was time to consider retirement. Turkal decided it was time for a new adventure, so he retired at the end of the school year in May.

“I was an adventurer when I was young,” Turkal said. “So I’m getting that adventurer blood back, and I’m starting to think I need to do some things I always wanted to do.”

Turkal, 64, became a teacher in 1983 after serving as a substi-tute teacher for a week for a friend the year before. He didn’t have any intentions on making teach-ing his career, but wanted to do it for a year just for the experi-ence. He found that teaching had something in common with being a fireman and a riverboat worker — it was exciting.

“I got hooked on teaching; I just loved it,” Turkal said. “It’s one of those jobs where I actually enjoyed going to work. My previous jobs,

engineering and all, I felt like I got up in the morning going ‘Oh, I have to go to work.’ I didn’t look forward to it. That [first] year I taught, it really was an adventure I thought was exciting. I enjoyed it. That one year, I fell in love with teaching.”

He decided to get certified in math and physics and took a job at Bigelow High School in Perry County. He spent 10 years at the school transforming the math program. He faced the challenge of developing a math program at a school where teaching math was not a high priority, he said. By the time he left, the school was pro-ducing some top-level students who helped the school win a few math competitions

Turkal spent two years at Greenland while his former wife taught at the University of Arkan-sas. When his wife returned to the University of Central Arkansas, they moved back to Conway and he returned to Bigelow. Turkal joined the ASMSA staff for the 1994-95 school year, the second year ASMSA was open.

He spent two years commut-ing from Conway, sometimes spending nights in a spare room on the sixth floor of the former Residential Life Building. He said there were numerous times he’d wake up at 2 or 3 a.m. and have to stop kickboxing tournaments that were taking place.

Once his daughter Claire was born, he knew he couldn’t keep commuting. Eventually the family moved to the Hot Springs area.

Family time

Sixteen years later, Claire would end up at ASMSA as well — as a student. Claire graduated in May as member of the Class of 2014, ASMSA’s 20th graduat-ing class. Considering the size of the faculty and the school’s cur-riculum, it’s not surprising she be-came one of his students.

He said he may have acted a lit-tle differently when he first saw her in his class. He said there may have been stories from his other careers or other experiences that he would

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Ready for a new adventureTurkal ends

teaching career after

two decades at ASMSA

Bruce Turkal advises a work group in his Math Modeling class about light-source factors they should consider while working on a reflector project. The students were tasked with building the best reflector they could from a cardboard box. They had to take into account the radius of the reflector, how tall it was and how far away from the light source it would be.

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share in other classes that he held back in her class. One advantage was that he had the opportunity to interact with her every day.

For Claire, having her father as a member of the faculty had some advantages. Many of the teach-ers and the other students already knew her when she enrolled. She also was very familiar with the academic building, having spent lots of time at the school with her father as she grew up.

She described ASMSA as “more like home to me than school.” That familiarity and having her father on campus played a positive role in her decision to attend ASMSA.

“If I had lived two hours away and not have had anyone here, I probably wouldn’t have come. It was good to have him right here,” she said.

Claire said she enjoyed her father’s teach-ing style and looked up to him as a teacher. She said he is ener-getic and never stops moving in the classroom. She said he was easy to learn from and that he always made sure stu-dents understood not only how to do something but why they were doing it. “He’ll have a real-world answer and why it applies and why you should know it,” she said.

Turkal said how a teacher ap-proaches the class, his energy and his interaction with the students is still the most critical aspect of a classroom.

“I’ve always valued myself as a high-energy, pretty intense teach-er,” he said. “I think that’s been my strong point. So I think a big part of the teaching process is finding more than one way of presenting the material so the kids can under-stand it. The bread and butter of teaching is going to be the style of the teacher in the classroom.”

Noted career

Turkal is known to tell his stu-dents stories about his life. Some of the most popular are about his two years as a riverboat worker on the Mississippi River or the years he spent during his 20s as a fireman.

He also is known to pull out his guitar to play and sing to help break up the monotony of long classes.

Music has long been a big part of his life, he said. He learned to play guitar while in college. He helped start DolphinStock, the an-nual student music show, 20 years ago and still performs at least one set with other faculty members.

His start in teaching can some-what be traced back to his love of music. His first job after graduat-ing from Carnegie Mellon Univer-

sity with a degree in engineering was with a firm in Denver. He was eventually transferred from Colo-rado to Montana, and he decided he wanted to do something that would allow him more free time.

While working as an engineer, he met some friends through mu-sic — the riverboat captains. While working for them, he met a friend from Conway with whom he would share an apartment during his time off from his riverboat job. That friend was the teacher he would eventually serve as a substitute for at Bigelow.

Turkal passed his love of music to his daughter, as well. Claire said she doesn’t remember a time when her father did not play guitar.

Claire said she started singing when she was little, but it was be-

cause of her father that she start-ed playing the guitar during her preteens. This past year, she won the Garland County’s Got Talent student contest using her guitar and singing talents.

Turkal also loves to play tennis and go sailing. He said many of the men his age in Hot Springs Village, where he lives, have switched to playing doubles, but he plans to play singles until he’s 80.

He also served as the tennis coach for the boys and girls teams when ASMSA had its own athletic teams. His boys teams won the 7AAA Conference titles in 2004 and 2005 while the girls team was conference runner-up in 2005.

As for sailing, he plans to visit his brother in Florida this summer and sail in the Gulf of Mexico. He has sailed lakes in Colorado and Arkan-

sas for more than 35 years and is looking forward to a new chal-lenge of sailing in the gulf.

He said he is consider-ing moving to Florida full-time,

which would give him more oppor-tunities to take his sailboat out on the water. Turkal said he also may consider going back into teaching.

For now, Turkal plans to take it easy and spend at least a couple of years traveling and “do some inter-esting things.” He said he’s going to miss the people at ASMSA — both his coworkers and the students.

“I think this was the perfect working environment for me the last 20 years,” he said. “I’ve been an extremely lucky individual; this has been an incredible experience for me.

“One big thing I’ve loved about teaching here is that you have the time to be really creative and to de-velop your own classes. We could create courses that we find inter-esting and that students want.”

‘I think this was the perfect working environment for me the last 20 years. I’ve been an extremely lucky individual; this has been an incredible experience for me.’

Bruce Turkal, speaking about his two decades as a teacher at ASMSA

Is Jon Ruehle a scientist doing art, an artist doing science or someone doing both?

The question leads off Ruehle’s biography on the ASMSA website. Ruehle’s primary job at ASMSA is serving as an instructor in the Sci-ence Department, where he teaches microbiology, zoology, immunology, botany, neurology and developmental biology.

Ruehle used his knowledge as a professional sculptor to also teach a 3D art class during the spring semes-ter. Students learned how to produce wax sculptures that could be cast in bronze.

Ruehle earned a doctorate in de-velopmental genetics from the Uni-versity of California at Davis as well as a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Cali-fornia at Berkley. Before coming to ASMSA in 2007, Ruehle taught at UC Davis, St. Mary’s College of California and University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

He has been a professional sculptor since 1974, when he sold his first piec-es to Zantman Art Galleries in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif. Since then, his work has been featured in public and private collections worldwide, including the National Academy of Design in New York City and the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, Wyo.

His works mostly focus on wild-life. For Ruehle, his sculptures provide an insight to how the animals actu-ally live. Whether it’s a boar rubbing against a tree stump, a wolf on the

hunt, a bear catching fish in a river, a sporting dog with a bird in its mouth or a bird in flight, his goal is to present that animal in a manner that shows them in their natural habitat, not in an idealized and artificial pose.

“I sculpt as part of my academic training and intellectual interest,” said Ruehle, adding that he always does extensive field and background re-search on an animal before he uses it in one of his sculptures. “All of the pieces I do are demonstrating some kind of behavior, and it’s not just to depict some kind of carousel animal. So many pieces that you see that are wildlife art you can almost see the stake stuck up through their belly that goes up and down on the carousel. They don’t look like anything out in the wild.

“Somebody said once, and I thought this was the ultimate compliment, my sculptures are the kinds of things the animals would give each other for birthdays and Christmas.”

Molding a class

Bob Gregory, dean of academic affairs, asked Ruehle last winter if he would be interested in teaching a sculpture class. Ruehle had never had a student be serious about learn-ing how to sculpt from him. There had been several that may have asked about it, but they never followed through, he said. He also had never

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taught an art class before.For Ruehle, it was important

that he would focus on teaching technique, not creativity. The cre-ativity would come from each in-dividual student.

In his own artwork, Ruehle works directly in wax rather than making a clay sculpture first. Clay requires making a rigid metal ar-mature of the final pose at the beginning of the process. Then a mold must be made of the clay model to produce a hollow wax that can be cast using the lost-wax process.

As a self-taught artist who learned to sculpt in foundries, Ruehle developed his own tech-nique of producing a hollow wax from the beginning. Hollow wax can easily support its own weight, even in fairly large sculptures without an internal armature.

Using flat sheets of wax a quarter of an inch thick that can be warmed so they can be easily formed, Ruehle can quickly cap-ture a shape the same way sheet metal is formed into car parts or other designs.

Once he has the basic shape, Ruehle then begins to work on the details of the piece. Using the hol-low wax provides more flexibility. If he does something that he doesn’t like, he can reheat the wax with a heat lamp and make it more mal-leable, making changes possible. If he was working in clay or another medium, he would be stuck with the original, Ruehle said.

“If you don’t like one of the legs, you cut it and move it wher-ever you want. Or you can warm it up and twist the body. You can reach inside and push the wax out or push it in when it’s hollow. It’s a very quick and very immediate process,” he said.

Ruehle said he is the only per-son he knows who uses this par-ticular technique. Ruehle’s meth-od creates a hollow-wax sculpture which can be used to create a mold allowing editions of the original image to be cast or for the bronze casting itself, creating a unique bronze. He didn’t know how well it would translate to the classroom.

It apparently translated very well.

“The kids at the end of 12 weeks were about where I was after 15 years of work,” he said. “These kids are amazing. I told them what to do and they go, ‘O.K., get out of the way. We’re going to do it.’

“Evidently the technique is very amenable to first-time people. It doesn’t take years and years of fiddling with [intermediate stages of molds and armatures] because you get the image so immediately, see what to do right away and you can make changes so easily.”

He said the ability of the stu-dents to get what they wanted right away was very satisfying.

The class was held during the same class period as Paint-ing I and II. The classrooms were across from each other, and paint-ing students would sometimes wander across the hall to see what the 3D Art students were creating. Ruehle said that will likely encour-age more students to take a 3D art class in the future.

As a part of a growing slate of arts coursework under the new Humanities Emphasis this fall, an-other 3D Art class is planned. Dan

Dr. Jon Ruehle, left, advises John Sifford

(’14) on the next step of Sifford’s sculpture during

Ruehle’s 3D Art class, which he taught for the first time

during the spring semester. Ruehle is a biology instructor at ASMSA, but he has

been a professional sculptor since 1974.

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McElderry, a longtime ASMSA Spanish instructor who also pre-viously taught art, will lead the class. McElderry emphasizes de-sign, so his class will focus on multiple mediums. Students may do a wire-based sculpture that focuses on balance in design or a paper sculpture that encourag-es them to think about color in a three-dimensional space.

Ruehle said he hopes to have the opportunity to teach his class again. The experience has also led him to consider teaching private classes, something he would not have done in the past.

Gregory said the class was suc-cessful on many levels and that he hopes to offer it again. Classes such as Ruehle’s sculpture class demonstrate that ASMSA believes in lifelong learning. While stu-dents may know Ruehle initially

from their biology classes, the art class allows them to see his inter-est and ability in art.

“[Ruehle’s] art class demon-strates that we don’t work in little boxes,” Gregory said. “When he creates a creature, he has to know the anatomy of the animal. He has to think about the physical design of how to support this structure. You can see in this creation how math and science and art are in-corporated together. That’s an important piece for us. It’s neat for kids to see how to put all these pieces together.”

Please accept this gift

Ruehle’s work has been fea-tured in galleries around the world. In 2000, he was selected by an international panel of museum directors and art dealers as one of

the 50 most influential contempo-rary wildlife artists in the world.

At least two Texas governors own complete collections of his pieces. Another was given to Wal-ter Cronkite as a retirement pres-ent, he said. He has sold more than 2,000 pieces since the mid-70s, he said.

Martin Wood, the owner of Col-lector’s Covey in Dallas, suggest-ed that Ruehle sculpt a longhorn, and the edition of 50 castings sold out in a weekend. Wood then con-vinced the University of Texas to use a special edition of the long-horn bronze as gifts in recognition of major gifts to the school total-ing at least $250,000.

“You go into somebody’s office in Dallas and see the longhorn sit-ting on their desk, you go ‘Hmm-mm, I know who you are,’” Ruehle said.

Ruehle’s sculptures are being

Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, right, proudly displays a wolf sculpture (inset) by Dr. Jon Ruehle, left. Beebe received the sculpture during the Community of Learning Luncheon in May in recognition for his contributions to ASMSA, including championing state funding for the construction of the Student Center. Also pictured is Director Corey Alderdice.

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used for a similar honor at ASMSA as part of the Display Your Sup-port program. Members of the ASMSA Founder’s Society will re-ceive a limited edition bronze hog. Gifts of at least $50,000 earn do-nors membership into the society.

Vicki Hinz, development spe-cialist for ASMSA, was enthu-siastic about offering Ruehle’s sculpture as a gift for the school’s benefactors.

“The most heartfelt and impact-ful acknowledgments come from those who directly benefit from a donor’s generosity — ASMSA stu-dents,” she said.

“Dr. Ruehle’s teaching philoso-phy is inspiring and his desire to give back to the school and the students he loves by sharing his art of sculpting is an incredible gift.”

At the Community of Learning Luncheon in May, Ruehle present-ed one of his pieces, a wolf, as a gift for Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, who was recognized for his con-tributions to ASMSA, including championing state funding for the construction of the Student Cen-ter. Beebe is an almnus of Arkan-sas State University in Jonesboro, whose mascot is the Red Wolves.

Ruehle said he is pleased to of-fer one of his sculptures for mem-bers of the society. It’s a unique opportunity for him to help the school raise money that will ben-efit the students.

So which is it?

Back to the question first posed by Ruehle himself on his website biography page. Is he scientist do-ing art, an artist doing science or someone doing both?

He still has the first drawings he made when he was 2 years old. He said he never drew stick fig-ures, and his artwork continued to progress as he grew older.

By the time he was 5 and 6, he was building things. When he was

in the fifth and sixth grade, his family lived in Washington, D.C. He would visit the Smithsonian Institution and study the scale models.

“My little fingerprints are prob-ably still on the glass,” he said.

He would go home and make scale models of Roman siege ma-chines, including catapults that he would use to shoot spitballs in class.

When the teacher saw the mod-el, instead of getting in trouble, he was asked to tell the class about it, he said.

He dropped out of college with a semester left to finish his bach-elor’s degree in 1971 after becom-ing disillusioned by the possible commercialization of his research at the time. After spending two years in South America, he re-turned to the U.S. by 1973.

His love of art grew with him. He took a class in casting bronze at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art one summer. Class members had to make a wax to prepare for the lost-wax process.

He then took a job in a foundry to learn more about the process and was soon “fixing” the waxes to be cast for clients. He learned to sculpt directly in wax rather than using clay as is most common. Within a year he was able to sup-port himself by his wildlife sculp-tures.

He chose not to return to school until the late 1980s, finally finish-ing his bachelor’s degree at Cal Berkley and going on to graduate school in 1989 at UC Davis, where he had his first teaching experi-ence. He earned his doctorate when he turned 40.

He found that he enjoyed teach-ing, but throughout that time, he continued to work on his art — the one thing that was the constant from his youth.

So the answer to the ques-tion may best be answered by his views of himself as an artist and teacher.

“I’m a professional artist, and I’m a teacher by avocation. So I teach because I enjoy it. I sculpt because I have to,” he said.

Dr. Jon Ruehle discusses the disection of a sheep’s heart with students in his biology lab. Ruehle said that while he could make a living as a professional artist he teaches because he enjoys it.

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We’re No. 1!

Fialkowski, Duke win top overall awards

ASMSA won first place overall at the 2014 Southwestern Energy Arkansas Science and Engineering Fair held at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway in April. It was the second year in a row ASMSA won the title of “Best in State School” at the state competition. Three students placed in the top five overall invidually. Bryan won second place, Fialkowski third place and Yeongwoo Hwang (‘14) of Jonesboro was fourth overall. Hwang won an all-expenses paid trip to the ISEF in Los Angeles as the top competitor who had not already qualified for the international competition.

Science Fair & SRSThe annual West Central Regional Science Fair and Senior Research Symposium was held

Feb. 26-28. The two competitions are the culmination of yearlong Fundamentals in Research Methods (FIRM) projects. There was a bit of added excitement to this year’s awards ceremony as the historic

Majestic Hotel adjacent to campus caught fire the night of Feb. 27, delaying Feb. 28’s award ceremony and forcing campus to close early because of air-quality concerns.

Kevin Fialkowski (‘14) of Heber Springs won first place overall in the Science Fair. Fialkowski’s project focused on a way to make perishable prescription medicines more portable without requiring refrigeration. Russell Bryan (‘14) of Conway won second place overall for his computer science-based project that focused on a random number generator produced by Brownian motion. Fialkowski and Bryan won an all-expenses paid trip to the International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) that was held in Los Angeles in May. Merin Duke (‘14) of Pine Bluff won first place in the SRS for her project “The Controversy Behind the Sistine Chapel Restoration.” Pictured from the left are E. Taylor Stone (‘14) of Little Rock, fourth place overall, Science Fair; Fialkowski; Morgan Willis (‘14) of Horatio, third place overall, Science Fair; Duke; and Bryan.

Byran won a special award from the Association for Computing Machinery for his project. He received a $200 prize and a complimentary ACM Student Membership. Twenty-seven students have represented ASMSA at ISEF over the last decade, garnering nine awards. ISEF also featured a wall listing the names of every student competing in this year’s fair. From the left are Bryan, Hwang and Fialkowski.

Bryan wins special award at ISEF

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One day, Teresa Hall was standing in line at a grocery store waiting to check out. In front of her was a couple speaking to each other.

“They said ‘It smells like birth-day cake,’ ” Hall said.

That may very well have been the case since Hall spends her days creating all kinds of wonderful desserts from scratch, including birthday cakes, for the Dolphin Bay Cafe, the student dining area. Hall is the head baker for ASMSA’s dining services, and her desserts are one of the highlights of each day’s menu. It’s hard to pass up the desserts, and often it’s even harder to choose just one.

And that doesn’t even take into account the many special decorations Hall has done over the years — from making a cake shaped and decorated like the Student Center for the dedication of the building to the Minions from “Despicable Me” that helped celebrate students’ birthdays one month. The desserts look as good as they taste.

As for the couple’s comment about the smell, Hall’s husband made a good point when she told him the story. “He said it’s bet-ter than smelling like a chicken house,” she said with a laugh.

Hall has been with Ameriserve since 2010 when she saw an ad for a baker’s position

at the school. She already knew her daugh-ter Ashley Clayborn (’12) had been accepted to attend ASMSA. The family was living in southwest Arkansas, but an opportunity to move to Hot Springs presented itself.

Hall applied for the job, although she had never served as a baker before. She had an advantage, however. She had 20 years of ex-perience as a cake decorator. She knew how to make a cake look really special.

She had learned how to decorate cakes while working at a grocery store chain in Hope. She was a cashier, but one day the bak-ery was shorthanded and she was asked to go help. Hall told them she didn’t know what she was doing, but agreed to help out. They put her to work on a cake.

“It just came natural. I was icing the cake, and they said, ‘You’ve done this before.’ I said, ‘No, not really.’ Some people it just comes natural to, and some it doesn’t. It’s easy for me, but other people will say ‘Gosh, how do you do that?’ That’s the way I feel about other people when I see them sewing and making things like that. That’s out of my realm of pos-sibilities, but it’s easy for them,” Hall said.

When she interviewed for the job, Hall made it clear that she hadn’t baked from scratch before. Beth Jaeschke, food services director at the school, said that didn’t matter.

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Have room for cake?

In ASMSA’s Dolphin Bay Cafe, the answer is usually a resounding ‘Yes!’

‘It just came natural. It’s easy for me, but other people will say ‘Gosh, how do you do that?’ That’s the way I feel about other people when I see them sewing and making things like that.’

Teresa Hall, ASMSA’s baker, on her cake-decorating ability

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“I can show you how to bake the cake, but I can’t decorate it,” Jae-schke said. Hall’s cake decorating talents more than made up for her lack of scratch-baking skills, she said. “It’s great because there are a lot of advantages I have that a lot of (Ameriserve’s) other schools don’t because she’s so talented. I’ll send pictures of specific ones to my boss and the other directors. I’ll get a response with a ‘wow’ or a ‘I wish my baker could do that.’ ”

Early on, Hall relied on box mix-es and recipes, keeping it simple. She said there were some flops along the way, but she learned quickly. Now she bakes almost everything from scratch or takes a recipe and adapts it.

When she first started, she stuck to one or two desserts a day. Now there are usually at least four or five out at one time, including one sugar-free dessert.

She said she always tries to stay ahead of herself so that she doesn’t run into a time crunch that can’t be overcome.

“Decorating a cake is a step-by-step process. I plan it out in my head. It has to be baked and

cooled before I can ice it. It’s a lit-tle stressful at times, but I always do well under stress,” she said.

Special treats

Students and parents send her their favorite recipes, and she’s usually able to accommodate them. For example, one mother let Hall know that she always bakes chocolate muffins for her son’s birthday. His birthday one year was going to be during the school week. Hall surprised him with chocolate muffins.

“He was grinning from ear to ear. It was something from home, something his momma did for him. I love to see these kids smile,” she said.

She bakes a cake to celebrate the students’ birthdays each month. She will also make cupcakes, one for each student whose birthday is that month, labeled with their name. The cupcakes often compli-ment the cake design. For example one month each student had an in-dividual Minion cupcake. She’ll ask the students for suggestions just to get away from the traditional cake

decorations.“I’m always worried if they are

going to get it, but they always get it. I like to pull up a cartoon from when they were kids. They were so excited about the ‘Rugrats’ cake,” she said.

She said she tries to use a lot of fresh fruit in her recipes as well. Some of the students prefer the fruit desserts to something heavy. Her favorite desserts to make are different kinds of bars with dried fruit, chocolate and many other fillings and toppings. But no mat-ter how creative she gets, there is one dessert that beats all others.

“Their absolute favorite dessert is chocolate chip cookies,” she said, with a big smile that is famil-iar to anyone who has visited the dining hall. “No matter how many I make, they are all gone by the end of the day. One day I baked almost a thousand cookies. They ate ev-ery single one of them.”

Mom away from home

Her willingness to give an ex-tra effort for the students comes naturally to her. She cares for the

These are just a few samples of treats that Teresa Hall has baked during her tenure at ASMSA. To view more photos of cakes and other desserts by Hall, visit http://asmsa.me/teresahall.

Photos courtesy of Teresa Hall

When ASMSA computer sci-ence instructor Carl Frank re-ceived his invitation to be induct-ed into the Arkansas Academy of Computing, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to accept.

The organization recognizes professionals who have provided at least 25 years of service to-ward the computing industry and the state of Arkansas. One of the requirements for induction, how-ever, is that honorees must attend the annual induction banquet.

The day before he received no-tice of his induction, Frank had committed to taking a team of ASMSA students to the first High School Start-up Weekend at the Uni-versity of Ar-kansas Clin-ton School of Public Ser-vice in Little Rock. Partici-pants would spend 54 con-secutive hours over a weekend developing a viable startup busi-ness and presenting it to a team of judges.

The conflict worked itself out, and Frank and six others were in-ducted into the Academy during the Arkansas Academy of Com-puting ninth annual Induction Banquet at the Springdale Coun-try Club on April 4.

Frank said he felt honored and proud to be an inductee. Frank’s father, Ben, attended the banquet to witness his son’s induction.

“My dad was tickled to attend with me,” Frank said.

Frank, 51, said his induction will help him to continue to serve as an advocate for computer sci-

ence education in Arkansas. He serves as president of the Arkan-sas chapter of the Computer Sci-ence Teachers Association and is president of the Glen Rose School Board, on which he has served for 13 years.

Frank said his teaching and work experience combined with his leadership roles provides him an opportunity to advance computer science in Arkansas. Frank said it is important for the economic well-being of the state for Arkansas schools to produce computer science students. Many of those students end up going out of state to work for Google, Intel, Microsoft and other large technology companies, leaving a dearth of qualified professionals in Arkansas.

There are perhaps a dozen schools in Arkansas, including ASMSA, that have true computer science programs, he said. Many of the other schools are teach-ing basic computer classes, such as mobile applications or other courses based on AP computer

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students, and being the parent of an ASMSA graduate, she un-derstands the stress parents go through.

“I love these children,” she said. “I tend to get involved in their lives. There have been situations where the school was shut down, and par-ents can’t drop everything to come pick them up. I’ve been in contact with the parents and they ask can my child come to your house for a few hours. Even though these are some of the top students in Arkan-sas, they are still kids. Of course they can come home with me.”

She also understands all of the concerns parents have about their children being away from home. Hall had the advantage of working on campus when Ashley attended. She would see her almost every day. She was also always in close vicinity of Ashley’s teachers, so if there were problems, she could address them quickly.

That experience helps her re-late with parents of new students. Parents tend to ask her a lot of questions.

“I do think it’s comforting for some of these students. I’m willing to be their mom when they need it. Sometimes they do. Sometimes it’s something as simple as getting something for them from Walmart. Sometimes it’s just having some-one there to talk to,” she said.

Outside of work, she does bake some at home, but she said her family doesn’t actually eat a lot of sweets. She doesn’t have any in-terest in starting her own bakery.

“I’ve worked in a specialty bak-ery. On Fridays and Saturdays, it was really stressful. Here, I get to decide what I’m making, and as long as I make my timeline, it’s not so stressful,” she said.

The owners of a local bakery offered her a job, but she turned it down, saying she enjoys having Spring Break and the summers out of school.

And she’d miss the kids, too.

Computer science instructor inducted into academy

Frank

See Frank, Page 27

How often do you misplace your phone? For some people, that may never happen considering how often they are texting, checking email, tweeting, taking a selfie or maybe — just maybe — using it for a phone call.

But what if you do tend to leave your phone? How often have you left it behind at a restaurant or at home when you go out? A team of ASMSA students created a solu-tion for that — an app that will alert you when you move a certain dis-tance away from your phone.

The app would be for use on smartwatches. The general pub-lic may have become more famil-iar with smartwatches thanks to recent ads for Samsung Galaxy

Gear. Those who pay attention to tech news are familiar with earlier brands, including Pebble, which raised millions of dollars in a Kickstarter campaign in 2012.

Imagine your smartphone re-duced to the size of a watch that includes apps that operate inde-pendently on the device or in tan-dem with your smartphone.

The WatchPoint app would al-low a smartphone to connect with a smartwatch using Bluetooth technology. Once a person wear-ing a smartwatch with WatchPoint installed moved a set distance away from the phone, an alert sound would let the owner know they were leaving their phone be-hind. The app would allow users to

set a certain distance before it is-sued the alert.

The students developed the idea for the WatchPoint app dur-ing the first High School Startup Weekend held April 4-6 at the Uni-versity of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. The weekend was organized by Noble Impact, a nonprofit organization committed to engaging kindergarten through 12th-grade students through the intersection of public service and entrepreneurship.

Startup Weekends bring to-gether potential entrepreneurs to pitch business ideas. Teams form around the top ideas, and the teams then begin building the business, including developing a

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Student-created app tracks smartphone

From the left, ASMSA team members Jacob Johnston (’15), Kali Fleming (’15) and Jacob Horne present information on WatchPoint, at the first High School Startup Weekend presented by Noble Impact. For more photos, visit http://asmsa.me/hsstartupweekend.

Photos courtesy of Noble Impact

fered the team several advantages. While other teams went home after the competition, the WatchPoint team was able to continue working on the app while living on campus. They also found lessons learned at ASMSA — such as presentation, in-terpersonal and time management skills — were important at the event.

Johnston plans to take advan-tage of several opportunities this summer that would help the com-pany. He planned to attend an en-trepreneurial program at the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology; the School’s Out Hackathon in San Antonio, Texas; and a Pebble hack-athon in Palo Alto, Calif.

Johnston’s team placed fifth out of 78 teams at the School’s Out Hackathon, an event that fo-cuses on software projects.

ASMSA computer science in-

structors Carl Frank and Nick Seward as well as Director Corey Alderdice served as the team’s mentors at the Startup Weekend.

Alderdice said the team’s idea is an exciting one. He compared the students’ venture to the op-portunity for app developers in 2007 when the iPhone was intro-duced. At that time, the iPhone only did what Apple said it would do, he said. Now smartphone app development is big business.

“It is a space that has yet to be defined. It’s neat to think about this group of students and others who are entering that space as kind of pioneers in a frontier hasn’t quite been tested or figured out just yet. What better place to start than something that’s still very mallea-ble,? Alderdice said.

business model, a logo and market validation. The teams then pitch their business ideas to a group of judges for feedback. Some team members take their Startup Weekend ideas and turn them into true startups. Others use the weekend to make new connections and learn new skills.

Teams from 11 schools com-peted in the High School Startup Weekend, with some schools bringing more than one team.

The ASMSA team, made up of five juniors, did not start meet-ing until a couple of days before the event. Team members held a couple of brainstorming sessions where they shared ideas, choosing four or five they deemed worthy of further exploration. Once the event started, the team decided to focus on the WatchPoint app.

The original idea for the app came from Jacob Johnston from Greenbrier. Johnston said he had the basic idea for the app sev-eral years ago. He said each team member added to it until finally the team had developed “this super awesome thing by Sunday. We kept patching up the holes until there were almost no holes to be filled.”

Other team members included Kyle Adkins of Benton, Kali Flem-ing of McCrory, Jacob Horne of Russellville and Abbigail Stoops of Yellville.

The team spent the weekend researching the viability of their product, developing a business plan, working on a logo and color scheme, developing social media sites for the company and more in preparation for a presentation to

the judges on Sunday afternoon. Some teams had a head start on their plans before coming to the event.

One of the biggest hurdles the team faced was proving that its product was a viable business venture. Several of the judges questioned whether smartwatch-es would become popular enough for WatchPoint to become viable, much less profitable.

The team presented figures that projected smartwatch use would explode in the next five years. One study projected 35 mil-lion smartwatches in use in 2015, Adkins said, with the number top-ping 400 million by 2018.

That includes Google getting into the wearables market with Motorola and LG smartwatch-es and talk of Apple producing

an iWatch or a next-generation, wearable successor to the iPod. Now is the time to get in on the ground floor of the technology, the students said.

“For now, we’re trying to stick to the main idea and get it done and get it out on the market so people can see who we are and what we’re trying to do before a giant, like Samsung or Apple, get ahold of it,” Johnston said. “This is the genesis of wearable technol-ogy, and we are implementing our ideas straight into the beginning.”

For Fleming, some of the best advice came from judge Greg Scruggs, a defensive end for the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks. He said the students should keep the mindset of an underdog, she said.

Being an ASMSA student of-

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‘This is the genesis of wearable technology, and we are implementing our ideas straight into the beginning.’

Jacob Johnston (‘15)

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If you happen to see a road-side vegetable stand this sum-mer in Conway that is donating its proceeds to ASMSA, don’t be surprised if you see Diana Arms hawking the extra tomatoes and other vegetables she will grow in her garden.

Arms retired at the end of the school year after serving 15 years as a counselor. One of the first things she plans to do this sum-mer is raise a garden. Her past at-tempts haven’t been as successful as she’d like because she and her husband would take vacations in June or July, the months she was off. While she was gone on vaca-tion, the Arkansas summers would burn up anything she had planted.

When a coworker asked what she would do with all the extra tomatoes she might end up with, someone else suggested Arms start a roadside stand with all the benefits going to ASMSA. Arms laughed and said she thought that sounded like a good plan.

She said her husband, Jon, a professor of Spanish language and literature at Hendrix College in Conway, had been trying to get her to retire for three years. He has cut back his teaching schedule at the college after more than 40 years at the institution.

Arms said she tried to retire twice before but that she just didn’t have the nerve to do it. In February, she let Bob Gregory, dean of aca-

demic affairs, know that she was thinking about retiring this year and would have an answer for him after Spring Break in March.

After 15 years of living be-tween two residences — her Con-way home and her home in Hot Springs Village — Arms decided it was time retire. That doesn’t mean she won’t have ASMSA on her mind on Aug. 1 when the new school year begins.

“I’ll have regrets I’m sure. I’ll probably have withdrawal symp-toms come Aug. 1. Or I’ll think in October, ‘Ohhh somebody needs to write letters for National Merit Scholarship.’ I’ll wonder who the kids will be,” she said.

Arms became a counselor at

Diana Arms visits with a student in her office during the spring semester. She retired at the end of the school year after serving 15 years as a counselor at ASMSA.

Arms decides time right to retire

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ASMSA in 1999, but it wasn’t the first time she had been on campus. She was a recruiter for Hendrix for 21 years before becoming a counselor at ASMSA. She had been on cam-pus many times to recruit ASMSA students to Hendrix. Arms spoke to the first class of students as juniors and then she began to attend each year’s college fair.

When the previous counselor decided to leave ASMSA, she let Arms know that she would recommend Arms for the job if she applied. Arms didn’t have a degree in coun-seling and questioned whether that would be a problem.

Arms said she was hired in October 1999 for her ability to get students into college, which would be beneficial for ASMSA’s graduates. She later earned a certification in secondary school counseling from the Uni-versity of Arkansas at Little Rock to go along with her bachelor’s degree in art from Hen-drix and master’s degree in higher education administration from Vanderbilt University.

Once Arms was on campus for sever-al years, she saw that many new students needed help to transition once they arrived on campus. She started the Peer Mentor program, using a select group of students to help mentor their classmates in various sub-ject areas. Arms would work through study hours at night four nights a week, overseeing the program in its infancy in the old library.

The original plan was to only offer the program during the first semester, but it became so successful that administrators suggested that the program continue for the whole year.

Arms said it was also important for her to focus on the social skills of students in ad-dition to academics. Whether it was helping them deal with a roommate or classmate or a breakup or even which fork or knife to use in a formal setting, Arms was there to help. Students today may be more tech savvy and be more involved socially online, but they still have the same issues.

“They still miss home, still miss mom and dad and their family. They still have trouble getting along with a roommate. Some have study issues. Some have social issues,” she said.

“That was probably my favorite thing — working with students, getting to know them as a person and watch them grow and de-velop.”

science curriculum, but the classes are taught by fac-ulty who aren’t necessarily trained in computer science.

“There is not a state cer-tification for computer sci-ence teachers in Arkansas,” he said. “ Some of the classes are taught by math teachers, some by business teachers. Computer classes are being taught in more schools in Arkansas as they try to add value to their particular in-stitution or school district.”

Each ASMSA student must take at least one computer programming course as part of the required curriculum. Available courses also cov-er programming languages such as Java, C++ and Python. There are also unique course offerings such as game pro-gramming and AI/robotics.

Frank said the main focus of the Academy in the past has been to award scholar-ships to students and teach-ers. At the business meeting that was held along with the induction ceremony, mem-bers discussed how impor-tant it is for the Academy to develop partnerships with the Computer Science Teachers Association and the Arkan-sas STEM Coalition, perhaps even having a computer sci-ence summit.

Frank joined the ASMSA faculty in November 1995. He had recently returned to Arkansas after serving on the faculty at Cameron Uni-versity in Lawton, Okla. He interviewed with a commit-tee that was leading a search for a network administrator for ASMSA, but there was also a computer science po-sition open. Frank took the computer science position,

although he also spent part of his first year as the net-work administrator for the campus.

Frank had previously taught at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, his alma mater, and worked in the private sector as well. It was his interaction with students that always drew him back to education. It was also the students who led him to accept the full-time faculty position at ASMSA over the network administrator position.

“I’ve really enjoyed teach-ing. I accepted the job. I didn’t know the salary, and I didn’t know if they made teachers live here. I was just ready to get back into the classroom,” he said, indicat-ing how much he wanted to remain in the teaching field.

He decided to become a teacher thanks to Clarence Durand, a computer science professor at Henderson State who served as Frank’s undergraduate adviser.

Frank served as Durand’s tutor and grader. Many of the students who Frank tu-tored gave positive com-ments about his ability to help them. Durand encour-aged Frank to get his mas-ter’s degree so he could one day return to Henderson to teach.

After earning a master’s degree from Southern Mis-sissippi University and a public sector job, he would return to teach at Hender-son and get to call Durand a colleague for a time.

With Frank’s induction into the Academy, he gets to once again call Durand a colleague. Durand was in-ducted to the Academy in 2008.

Frank Continued from Page 23

HELP US SHARE YOUR STORIES

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End Note

Prominently displayed on one of the walls of the Administration Building’s lobby is an exhibit we call Dolphin Echoes. It features photos and brief bios of a few of our more than 2,000 alumni in Arkansas and beyond who are carrying ASMSA forward into the broader world.

We’re proud that the first thing our guests think about when they arrive on campus is our alumni’s many accomplishments. These emerging leaders set the standard for what the current generation of ASMSA students should aspire to achieve and re-minds our employees of the difference the program makes in the lives of talented young Arkansans.

We try to celebrate many of those accomplish-ments with feature and news stories in this publica-tion and on our social networks.

These are important stories that we want to tell and our readers need to hear. Perhaps just as impor-tant, we need to share word of these accomplish-ments with the legislators and other stakeholders who make ASMSA a place where such stories can continue to be written or are at least an introductory chapter.

Our alumni remain an essential part of our com-munity of learning, and we also want to share your personal, professional and family milestones. We

want to hear about your new job or a promotion, the happy announcements of marriages, and the cele-bration of a new addition to the family.

We’re missing that connection — that tangent if you will — between our alumni and the institution. In future issues of Tangents, we plan to feature a sec-tion of such news called Dolphin Echoes that mirrors the visual reminder on campus of the importance of our alumni.

For that to happen, however, we need your help by sending us news. Let us know about the exciting new job offer you just accepted. Be proud of the master’s or doctorate you just earned. Tell us about the spe-cial recognition you received. Brag about the album that is going to be your big break. Send us photos of your new bundles of joy or of the happy couple at your wedding.

The simplest way to do this is by sending your news to alumni@asmsa.org.

If you prefer snail mail, you can send items to ASMSA, Attn: Donnie Sewell, 200 Whittington Ave., Hot Springs, AR 71901-3408. Be sure if you send photos, however, that you let us know if you want them back and include a return address.

We look forward to hearing from you and so do your former classmates and teachers.

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Create something together.

Final Frame

When presented with the challenge of building a robot for competition, ASMSA students could have used a variety of materials for the project. Instead of playing it safe, they asked themselves what would no one else be crazy enough to use. The team soon decided on corrugated cardboard as a unique and intriguing option. Their choice proves that ASMSA students will most always take on a challenge rather than seek the obvious answer.

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