University of Arkansas at Little Rock

It is with great pleasure that I announce the appointment of Dr. John A.
Kuykendall to the Higher Education faculty effective January 5, 2009. Dr.
Kuykendall will serve as Assistant Professor of Higher Education. He will be
responsible for coordinating the Master¹s program in College Student Affairs
and will serve as the content expert for the doctoral concentration in
Student Affairs Administration. Dr. Kuykendall comes to us from Marquette
University where he has been serving as co-director of the College Student
Personnel Administration (CSPA) program engaging in such functions as
assisting with the recruitment, admission, and orientation of incoming
cohorts of Master¹s students as well as teaching graduate courses in the
CSPA program.

A native Arkansan, John Kuykendall began his baccalaureate studies at the
University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff where he earned a B.S. in Biology
Education. His Master¹s studies took him to Christian Brothers University
in Memphis, Tennessee where he earned a M.S. in Educational Leadership. For
his doctorate, John selected the Department of Educational Leadership and
Policy Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, one of the top Student
Affairs programs in the country where he studied under George Kuh, Edward
St. John, and Don Hossler as well as many other distinguished scholars.

Dr. Kuykendall¹s dissertation research focused on the effects of college
major choice for diverse students and the impact that major choice has on
student persistence, particularly among African Americans. His current
research interests include: 1) college access for diverse populations; 2)
student involvement and retention; 3) pre-college experiences of high school
students who want to pursue science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) fields; and 4) the persistence of diverse graduate
students toward the achievement of a doctoral degree. Dr. Kuykendall plans
to continue these lines of scholarly inquiry and to seek external funding to
support these important projects.

Please give Dr. John Kuykendall a warm UALR welcome. We hope to keep John
as a member of the UALR College of Education faculty family for a long, long
time and your expressions of excitement and support will go a long way
toward making him feel at home with us.

Sincerely,

Greg Barrett
Associate Professor of Higher Education and
Doctoral Program Coordinator

Dr. Alicia Cotabish, a faculty member in the Gifted and Talented program, was selected as a 2008 Distinguished Alum by Texas A & M-Texarkana. . She will be honored by the university at a dinner on November 8th.

Marquis Cooper is an award winning educator, father, minister, professional school counselor and author of Guidance N Action.

Marquis holds a B.A. degree in Elementary Education, a M. Ed degree in Counselor Education, and is currently seeking a Doctorate in Education Administration from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He has worked as a classroom teacher for six years in the Little Rock School District and for the past four years, he’s served as a professional school counselor in both Arkansas and Tennessee.

Guidance ~N~ Action is a program designed to produce more entrepreneurs and self empowered students across all disciplines. Guidance ~N~ Action helps students to develop and maintain greater coping and adaptation skills toward school while enhancing their understanding and conceptual outlook of life. Through his innovative work, Marquis expresses his passion for helping students tap into and use the infinite power that we all possess; a power that he believes can change the world.

…for more information, visit his website at
http://guidancenaction.com/default.aspx

Amanda camp, a graduate whose dissertation was chaired by Dr. Diane Gilleland, just got acceptances to the following two journals: Educational Research and Evaluation: An International Journal on Theory and Practice, and the Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, & Practice. The first was accepted with no revision and the editor indicated “excellent reviews” and for the second the editor stated “… your very fine revision for your already excellent manuscript.”

Camp, A.G., Pearson, L.C., Gilleland, D., & Vander Putten, J. (2009).
Women’s path into science and engineering majors: A structural equation
model. Submitted to Educational Research and Evaluation: An International
Journal on Theory and Practice, in press.

Camp, A.G., Pearson, L.C., Gilleland, D., & Vander Putten, J. (2009 or
2010). Differentiating between women in hard and soft science and
engineering disciplines. Journal of College Student Retention: Research,
Theory, & Practice, in press.

Dr. Carolyn Pearson was named Executive Editor of The Journal of Educational Research, which brings great prestige to the college and the department.  Years of hard work and a steady quality of scholarship have now resulted in this national recognition with the 7th ranked journal in education.

Dr. Tamekia Love Brown, a recent graduate of  the doctoral program in Educational Administration and Supervision, was guided by Dr. Gail Hughes to turn her dissertation into a presentation for the Mid-South Educational Research Association 2007 meeting and then to submit the manuscript for publication to the Journal of Research in Education. The manuscript was accepted for publication (with no revisions) for the September issue!

Dr. Rudo Tsemunhu will be presenting a paper entitled The Nature of Female Educational Leadership in Zimbabwe at the Women in Educational Leadership Conference to be held at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE on October 12-13.

Three doctoral students in HIED won acceptance for their paper to be presented at the National Symposium on Student Retention and are now in contention for a $2,000.00 award for the best, best practices paper. Under the direction of Dr. Mark Fincher, the students Rhonda Carroll, Lily Kersh and Ellen Grace will travel to the symposium to make their presentation where Dr. Fincher will also present a paper.

Claudia Griffin, Higher Education doctoral student, has been been selected as a Fellow for the 2008 National Summer Data Policy Institute on the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and National Science Foundation (NSF) databases to be held in Washington, DC.