University of Arkansas

Despite coming from halfway across the state, thanks to the U of A's Engineering Career Awareness Program, Montavius Eason already had "great friends" before arriving for his freshman year at the U of A. The program, also called ECAP, is designed to support students with financial need, particularly first-generation college students, as well as students from areas that are less well-represented at the U of A. ECAP offers financial assistance and a three-week summer bridge program to help students transition into university life. Throughout their time on campus, students receive continuous support and resources, including mentorship, professional development and career guidance.

John Plavcan and Abigail Ross, two doctoral candidates with the Graduate Program in English, have received Dissertation Research Awards for 2026 from the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. The grants, each for $8,000, are annually presented to Ph.D. students who have been nominated by their departments and selected by the college. Plavcan and Ross will use their awards to travel for the purpose of researching their respective dissertation projects.

Competing alongside leading researchers from around the world, honors biomedical engineering student Connor Robinson earned third place for Best Overall Poster at the 2026 International Microphysiological Systems Society World Summit in Washington, D.C., in May.

Four University of Arkansas students have received English Teaching Assistant Awards through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and one student has been named an alternate for the prestigious international exchange program.

Recent U of A graduate Maddie Gwinner is starting her career in Germany this fall, and she had the fortunate problem of choosing between two prestigious programs: the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) and the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. The CBYX Program is a year-long cultural immersion fellowship that provides 65 American and 65 German young professionals with the opportunity to spend one year in each other's countries, and the Fulbright program selects Americans to teach English in a variety of countries abroad.

The University of Arkansas honored its most recent graduating class with a series of spring commencement ceremonies. Recordings of ceremonies are available on the U of A YouTube channel, and printed program books are available online. For more information, please visit commencement.uark.edu.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.