Interested in joining the Peace Corps? Here’s your chance to learn more.
Ray Shand, Peace Corps Recruiter, has scheduled an information session in Little Rock.
When: 6:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 31
Where: Central Arkansas Library System, Main Location, 100 Rock Street, Little Rock AR, 72201, (501) 918-3000
Contact: Dr. Jacek Lubecki, Coordinator of the International Studies Program, jxlubecki@ualr.edu, (501) 683-7029
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Community Chorus, Concert Choir, Chamber Choir, and Women’s Chorus will present Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in a joint concert on Saturday, March 21 at 8 p.m. The concert will take place at Second Presbyterian Church, located at 600 Pleasant Valley Drive in west Little Rock. Dr. Bevan Keating will conduct the combined choirs and a mixed orchestra comprised of professional symphonic musicians and members of the UALR Community Orchestra.
In addition, the concert will feature appearances by the Mount Saint Mary’s Girls Choir, directed by Kim Abbott, and the Parkview High School Choir, directed by Carolyn Foreman. In total, more than 150 singers and orchestral players from the Greater Little Rock area will participate in the production.
The event brings together members of the UALR Community Orchestra and the UALR Community Chorus for their first joint effort. Dr. Victor Ellsworth, chair of UALR’s Music Department and founder of the UALR Community Orchestra, said, “This concert culminates my twelve years as chair and realizes one of my most important goals for the Music Department: to integrate itself with the community.” Ellsworth, who started the community orchestra eleven years ago, will retire from UALR at the end of June.
This performance also marks the fifth anniversary of the debut of the UALR Community Chorus. Founded by Keating in 2004, the chorus includes nearly 90 singers drawn from UALR students, faculty, and staff, and communities in central Arkansas. The non-auditioned choir is open to singers at all levels of musical ability who wish to participate in choral masterpieces accompanied by professional musicians. “This organization offers a wonderful opportunity to be involved in a large singing group, to sing great works that are only possible with a chorus of our size,” said UALR Community Chorus president Tracy Johnson.
Tickets for Carmina Burana are $15 for general admission. To reserve tickets, call the UALR Music Department box office at (501) 569-8993, or visit the UALR Music Department office in Room 151 of the Fine Arts Building on campus. UALR faculty, students, and staff are admitted free of charge, but must present their UALR identification at the Music Department office during normal business hours when reserving tickets. For a map of the UALR campus, visit http://ualr.edu/www/features/map/.
For more information about UALR’s choral ensembles, visit http://ualr.edu/music/voice.
For more information about the UALR Community Orchestra, visit http://ualr.edu/music/index.php/home/ensembles/community-orchestra/.
The Little Rock Writing Project (LRWP) at UALR is seeking applicants for the Invitational Summer Institute, a four-week workshop for teachers and administrators. The Summer Institute is open to teachers and administrators at all grade levels, kindergarten through college, and to teachers in all subject areas.
Funded through the National Writing Project (NWP), the Institute will be held from Monday, June 29 through Thursday, July 23 on the UALR campus. The deadline for applications is Friday, March 13. For an application, log on to ualr.edu/writingproject, or call 501-944-2174.
Dr. Sally Crisp, Department of Rhetoric and Writing and director of the LRWP, said that the application process for the four-week institute is competitive. “Teachers who attend the Summer Invitational Institute can earn six hours of graduate credit, with their tuition, fees, and books fully paid for through our grant funding,” said Crisp. “We keep the Summer Institute small enough for in-depth teaching demonstrations and lots of collegial interaction among the teachers.”
The National Writing Project “model” begins with an annual summer institute at each site, led by university faculty and K-12 teachers, and also includes continuity follow-up and professional development outreach. The idea is for teacher-leaders to take their expertise in teaching writing back to their schools and districts. The Little Rock Writing Project, an NWP site, began 13 years ago and has thus far worked in partnership with many area schools, providing professional development for teachers. The LRWP also sponsors summer Young Writers Camps in Little Rock and Benton for elementary age children.
“In our partnerships with schools, we hope to see schools move toward a writing culture,” said Crisp. “A writing culture leads to a spirit of inquiry and, of course, widespread use of writing in the school.”
The UALR Anthropology Club will host a lecture by Dr. Jonathan Marks, anthropology professor from the University of North Carolina, on Thursday, March 12, 2009, 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the UALR Fine Arts Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Marks’ lecture, Darwin’s Ventriloquists, will address the persistent invocation of political ideologies and contemporary scientific racism. His academic research has included human evolution, various studies of human genetics, the anthropology of science, molecular genetics and cytogenetics.
Marks received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, Tucson (1984). He also holds masters degrees in anthropology and genetics.
He is the author of several books including Why I Am Not A Scientist: Anthropology and Modern Knowledge and The Un-Textbook of Biological Anthropology set for publication in 2009.
For more information, call the UALR Department of Anthropology at (501) 569-3173.
The UALR Clay Guild will host James Tisdale, ceramist artist and director of the ceramics program at the Austin Museum of Art School in Austin, Texas, on Wednesday, March 11 and Thursday, March 12 on the UALR campus.
On Wednesday, Tisdale will hold a demonstration of his work 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm in Fine Arts Building room 156. Later, he will present a lecture from 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm in room 157. On Thursday, Tisdale will lead another demonstration from 9:00 am to noon in room 156. Both demonstrations and the lecture are free and open to the public.
According to his website, www.jimtisdale.com, Tisdale describes his art as “an outward manifestation of my views toward the world around me. These expressions are highly influenced by many things, but mainly by my rural, devout upbringing in Mississippi. This in itself is a web of contradictions. I draw upon both the beauty, and the ugliness of this region and its impact.”
For more information about these events, contact Stephen Driver, ceramics instructor, at (501) 569-3163 or at smdriver@ualr.edu.
The William G. Cooper, Jr., Honors Program in English at UALR hosts a lecture on poet Phillis Wheatley, a forerunner of the African American literary tradition, by Illinois State scholar John Shields at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 11.
The lecture in Room D at UALR’s Donaghey Student Center, is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the lecture. For more information, contact Dr. Zabelle Stodola, director of the William G. Cooper, Jr., Honors Program in English at UALR, kzstodola@ualr.edu and (501) 569-3161.
Shields, a distinguished professor of English at Illinois State, is an international authority on this complex and contradictory figure who arguably stands at the head of the entire African American literary tradition. His reinterpretation of Wheatley is, as he says, “devoted to redirecting attention away from the phenomenon of her condition as a slave toward a fair and balanced consideration of her texts.”
The author of more than 100 articles and books, Shields has served on three national literary boards, and received four National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellowships, a NEH Conference Grant, and a fellowship in Cornell University’s Society for the Humanities, among other grants.
Shields’ 2001 publication of The American Aeneas: Classical Origins of the American Self garnered two national awards and led him to found the Center for Classicism in American Culture. He has also published an edition of Wheatley’s work with Oxford University Press and authored the recently published book Phillis Wheatley’s Poetics of Liberation: Backgrounds and Contexts.
The College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences announces the 2009 Undergraduate Research Awards. The awards are for research completed during the 2008-2009 academic year by undergraduates within the college.
Departments are encouraged to nominate their top students to compete for the research awards. Applications should include an abstract or summary of the research project (up to two pages) and a letter of support from a faculty member assisting with the project, as well as contact information for both the applicant and faculty mentor. Please note that this event is separate from the University’s Undergraduate Research Expo and students are encouraged to apply for both events.
Supporting materials such as photographs, DVDs, or recordings may be submitted as needed for creative projects. Selected students will then be given an opportunity to present their work in a format appropriate to their disciplines, such as papers or presentations, at the Undergraduate Research symposium on April 14th.
$500 will be awarded to the first place winner; other prizes and recognition will be given to distinguished projects.
An example of last year’s first place winner’s work can be seen here.
Deadline for nominations: March 9, 2009
Submit proposals or send questions to:
Joe Giammo
Department of Political Science
Stabler 603
jdgiammo@ualr.edu
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UALR Gender Studies program will host two lectures by Kami Fletcher, UALR alumnae and author of The Niagara Movement: The Black Protest Reborn, on Wednesday, March 4. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
The first lecture, “Black Women’s Activism in the Niagara Movement” will be held at noon in Stabler Hall Room 111. Fletcher will present her second lecture, “Black Sexual Politics” at 1:00 pm in Stabler Hall, Room 107.
A native of Pine Bluff, Fletcher received her master’s degree of public administration from UALR in 2003 and a master’s of arts in women’s studies from Texas Women’s University. Currently, she is an instructor in the Women’s Studies Department at TWU. Her research interests include activism, resistance, and identity formation concerning black women; race and gender formation in the African Diaspora.
Fletcher is currently serving in her 5th year with the Denton, Texas Human Services Advisory Board. She also serves as Advisor for a TWU campus organization SAY - Socially Aware Youth.
For more information about Fletcher’s lectures, contact Sarah Beth Estes, associate professor of sociology and coordinator of the gender studies program, at (501) 569-3191 or at sbestes@ualr.edu.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Community Chorus, Concert Choir, Chamber Choir, and Women’s Chorus will present Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in a joint concert on Saturday, March 21 at 8 p.m. The concert will take place at Second Presbyterian Church, located at 600 Pleasant Valley Drive in west Little Rock. Dr. Bevan Keating will conduct the combined choirs and a mixed orchestra comprised of professional symphonic musicians and members of the UALR Community Orchestra.
In addition, the concert will feature appearances by the Mount Saint Mary’s Girls Choir, directed by Kim Abbott, and the Parkview High School Choir, directed by Carolyn Foreman. In total, more than 150 singers and orchestral players from the Greater Little Rock area will participate in the production.
The event brings together members of the UALR Community Orchestra and the UALR Community Chorus for their first joint effort. Dr. Victor Ellsworth, chair of UALR’s Music Department and founder of the UALR Community Orchestra, said, “This concert culminates my twelve years as chair and realizes one of my most important goals for the Music Department: to integrate itself with the community.” Ellsworth, who started the community orchestra eleven years ago, will retire from UALR at the end of June.
This performance also marks the fifth anniversary of the debut of the UALR Community Chorus. Founded by Keating in 2004, the chorus includes nearly 90 singers drawn from UALR students, faculty, and staff, and communities in central Arkansas. The non-auditioned choir is open to singers at all levels of musical ability who wish to participate in choral masterpieces accompanied by professional musicians. “This organization offers a wonderful opportunity to be involved in a large singing group, to sing great works that are only possible with a chorus of our size,” said UALR Community Chorus president Tracy Johnson.
Tickets for Carmina Burana are $15 for general admission. To reserve tickets, call the UALR Music Department box office at (501) 569-8993, or visit the UALR Music Department office in Room 151 of the Fine Arts Building on campus. UALR faculty, students, and staff are admitted free of charge, but must present their UALR identification at the Music Department office during normal business hours when reserving tickets. For a map of the UALR campus, visit http://ualr.edu/www/features/map/.
For more information about UALR’s choral ensembles, visit http://ualr.edu/music/voice.
For more information about the UALR Community Orchestra, visit http://ualr.edu/music/index.php/home/ensembles/community-orchestra/.
UALR Theatre students will perform Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, Feb.19-22, 26-28, and March 1. Sunday performances are at 2:30 p.m. and all others are at 8 p.m.
Admission is $5 for students and $7 for general public. Call 501-569-3456 to purchase tickets.
Endgame is an intriguing play by Beckett, whose other works include Waiting for Godot. Crafted in the absurdist style, its deceptively simple dialogue is rife with symbolism and hidden meaning.