University of Arkansas

When Cameron Mercer started helping University of Arkansas students move out of their dorms during his freshman year, he was simply trying to make some extra spending money. Four years later, the business he built from those early move-in and move-out jobs has grown into Boss Hog Moving Co., a student-focused moving company serving Northwest Arkansas. Mercer says the Master of Science in Product Innovation (MSPI) program at the Sam M. Walton College of Business helped him think differently about how to scale it.

Graduate business students from the Sam M. Walton College of Business are gaining national recognition for venture ideas developed in the classroom, earning top placements and prize funding across a series of high-profile pitch competitions this academic year.

The U of A's Italian Program proudly welcomed 17 outstanding students into its chapter of Gamma Kappa Alpha, the national Italian honor society, during its annual initiation ceremony in April. Gamma Kappa Alpha recognizes exceptional academic achievement in the study of Italian language, literature and culture at colleges and universities across the United States and Canada. The honor society promotes a deeper appreciation of Italy's rich cultural heritage while encouraging continued scholarly excellence among its members.

Emanuel Ferrari do Nascimento, a U of A master's degree student in crop, soil and environmental sciences, has been named a 2026 Borlaug Scholar by the National Association for Plant Breeding. Nascimento, who is from Brazil, is part of the Arkansas Soybean Breeding program, led by assistant professor Caio Canella Vieira in the Department of Crop, Soil and Environmental Sciences.

Students achieving academic excellence have been named to the University of Arkansas Spring 2026 Dean's List. The honor recognizes undergraduates with GPAs of 3.75-3.99 and law students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher. The Spring 2026 Dean's List is available online. Students on the Chancellor's List who achieve a 4.0 grade-point average for the semester while completing at least 12 credit hours of coursework, also automatically earn recognition on the university's Dean's List.

The U of A is recognizing students for earning a place on the Spring 2026 Chancellor's List. To qualify, undergraduate students must attain a 4.0 GPA for the semester while completing at least 12 credit hours of coursework. The Spring 2026 Chancellor's List is available online. All students on the Chancellor's List also automatically earn recognition on the university's Dean's List, which honors undergraduates who achieve a minimum grade-point average of 3.75 for the term while completing at least 12 credit hours.

The American Oil Chemists' Society recently recognized two food science researchers with the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station for contributions to science in their field. Ali Ubeyitogullari, an assistant professor of food engineering, was presented with the society's Health and Nutrition Division New Investigator Research Award, and Sumanjot Kaur, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Food Science, received the Thomas H. Smouse Memorial Fellowship.

The Latino Alumni Society hosted its 2026 spring Meritos Latinos event on May 8. This annual event celebrates the achievements of our graduating student leaders and honors the society's 2026 award recipients. As a proud part of the Arkansas Alumni Association, Latino Alumni Society events are open to all U of A alumni and friends interested in coming together to celebrate community and achievement.

Colton Godsey, a rising second-year student at the U of A School of Law, has been selected as a Civil Rights Fellow in the 2026 class of the Center for Equal Opportunity. This fifth annual class is the largest, most competitive class of fellows to date as the organization received a large volume of highly qualified applications from across the nation. In August, Godsey will join the seminar-style fellowship program in Washington, D.C., for in-depth instruction in civil rights case law, enforcement practices and public policy while engaging with notable law and policy experts, litigators, former government officials and other prominent thought leaders. He will also receive media training.

U of A graduating senior Anna Fielder has been awarded the highly competitive Critical Language Scholarship to study Russian in Kyrgyzstan this summer and Princeton in Asia to Kazakhstan in the 2026-27 academic year.

Nine students in five different majors in U of A's Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences received nine annual academic awards from the college at its annual student honors and awards reception.

RIOT Robotics, a robotics club from the U of A, earned the Design Award at the 2026 STORM robotics competition, held April 11 in Oklahoma. STORM, the Student Tele-Operated Robotics Mission, is an annual intercollegiate robotics competition hosted by the University of Oklahoma that challenges teams to build robots capable of completing real-world engineering tasks from a remote location.

Three U of A School of Journalism and Strategic Media students have received spots in the selective Dow Jones News Fund program, a record for the school. Keelin Fisher, Cooper Gant and Casey Mann were among 79 college students chosen out of more than 800 applicants for the training and paid summer internship program.

Nine students and alumni from the University of Arkansas have received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and one was recognized as an honorable mention. The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is one of the nation's most competitive and prestigious awards for graduate students pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees.

Jacob Holmes, a senior in the Department of Industrial Engineering, has been named the 2026 College of Engineering Outstanding Senior at the U of A. The college presents this honor each year to a graduating senior whose dedication to campus and the engineering profession reflect the values of the college.

"Around one in four students at the University of Arkansas are first-generation students," says Miceala Morano, a senior from West Fork. "I'm proud to be a part of that one in four, especially since my path to Senior Walk began with literal pennies.

The University of Arkansas Libraries, Honors College and Division of Research and Innovation are pleased to announce the winners of this year's Undergraduate Research Week competition in each of the research categories.

A graduating senior in Italian, Carson Hamilton (Italian minor), has been selected for the Study Intercultural Training Experience (SITE) Fellowship, a prestigious international opportunity for recent U.S. graduates. Hamilton will spend the 2026-27 academic year in Gavirate, near Varese in Italy's Lombardy region, serving as an English-language teaching assistant in a local high school under the guidance of a faculty mentor.

The Division of Student Affairs is celebrating two seniors whose leadership has left a lasting mark on campus. Yannick Tchio Tiombo and Anna Morrow were named recipients of the Spring 2026 Henry Woods Student Leadership Award, an annual honor recognizing two graduating seniors demonstrating outstanding records of leadership. Each student received a $1,500 scholarship.

Each year, Apparel Merchandising and Product Development students are tasked with creating original designs for the Enclothe fashion show. When junior Lillyanna Gigerich began developing her garment for the show, she wanted the project to call attention to suicide awareness and prevention. To bring that vision to life, she turned to the University of Arkansas Libraries for help connecting research with design.

University of Arkansas students are transforming their college experiences into powerful digital portfolios that showcase their readiness for the workforce - and some are earning top honors for their work. Through reflection, storytelling and design, these award-winning ePortfolios demonstrate how students are connecting what they've done in college to where they are going next.

The College of Education and Health Professions recognized more than 100 students at its annual awards ceremony, celebrating their academic success along with the effort, mindset and commitment it took to make these achievements possible. Dean Kate Mamiseishvili applauded their determination, quoting New York Times best-selling author Koby Yamada's children's book, Finding Muchness: "How you do one thing is how you do everything. And anything worth doing is worth doing well."

Satchel Flammang, a U of A student with a passion for research and language learning, will head to Europe this fall after earning the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship to pursue graduate studies in biomembrane science. Flammang was one of 21 students selected from an applicant pool of 3,100 global applicants for the MemBioMed Erasmus Mundus master's program, an international graduate program focused on biomembranes and their applications in neuroscience, biochemistry and pharmaceutical sciences.

Thirty students were named Senior Scholars for 2025-26, and each department in U of A's Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences has named its outstanding students for the year. Seventeen students are First-Ranked Senior Scholars, signifying a 4.0 grade point average with all coursework completed at the U of A, and 13 are Senior Scholars, signifying students with the highest GPA (also all 4.0s) with at least half of their coursework completed at the U of A.

The U of A Department of Industrial Engineering celebrated the achievements of its students during the annual Capstone Symposium and Student Awards Banquet at the Arkansas Union Verizon Ballroom. The full day of events highlighted a year of hard work, innovation and collaboration between students, faculty and industry partners. Industrial Engineering Department Chair Chase Rainwater said, "The Capstone Symposium and Student Awards Banquet are among our department's most important events of the academic year. They showcase not only the technical excellence of our students, but also their ability to create impact for industry partners."

U of A alumni Sherman Black and Lynnette Reeder Black have announced this year's recipients of the Black and Reeder Scholarship, which is awarded to Greenwood High School students and U of A students from Greenwood seeking degrees in engineering or business. Caden Slate will graduate from Greenwood High School in May and plans to study marketing at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. She will be a first-generation college student. Ben Pschier, a senior in electrical engineering from Greenwood, will also receive the Black and Reeder Scholarship for the 2026-2027 academic year. Pschier said high school experiences with soldering, robotics competitions and coding classes led him to the field.

The Alpha of Arkansas Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa held its annual initiation ceremony in May at Hillside Auditorium. The chapter inducted 94 new members from this year's graduating class at the university. Each new initiate signed the book, which has been used for the last 94 years to record names of Phi Beta Kappa members at the U of A, and promised to have paramount regard for moral character and scholarly attainment in the election of future members. They each received a certificate along with a light blue and pink cord to wear at commencement. Provost Indrajeet Chaubey addressed the new initiates and their families as the keynote speaker.

Fulbright College senior Jenna Klewsaat knows that persistence pays off in the end. Klewsaat, who is originally from Colorado, came to the University of Arkansas in 2020 and has overcome numerous obstacles, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet Klewsaat persisted, never giving up on her dream of graduating and seeing her name on Senior Walk.

When Katie McKay walks across the graduation stage this May, she'll be the third McKay sibling to earn a degree from the U of A College of Engineering. Her older brothers pursued computer engineering and computer science, but she took a different path, one that would lead her to discover a passion she never expected.

One student's goal to get more involved outside of academics paid off with two internships after getting connected with the Office of Entrepreneurship & Innovation (OEI).