Bowen Grads, Students Take Various Helms

The board of trustees of the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System has selected former Arkansas senator and UALR Bowen Law School graduate George Hopkins of Malvern, class of 1987, as executive director for the nearly $10 billion system. Hopkins will fill the post vacated in October by Paul Doane, who resigned. Hopkins, a Democrat, served as a state senator from 1987 to 2000. He served on the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Public Retirement for eight years, six of them as the committee’s Senate chair. Other UALR Bowen standouts making the news recently include:

• Arkansas Court of Appeals Judge Larry Vaught, ’79, has been named chief judge of that court for a four-year term.
• Edward Oglesby,’89, Brian Ratcliff, ’88, of El Dorado, and Don Taylor, ’89, of Fayetteville have been inducted into the American Board of Trial Advocates.
• Jim Jackson, ’93, has been named a Mid-South Super Lawyer for the third year by Law & Politics magazine.
• Michelle Strause, ’86, of the Farrar Firm in Hot Springs is President of the Garland County Bar Association.
• B. Alex Timberman, a second-year student at the Bowen School, has been elected as the Southwest Regional Director for National Asian Pacific American Bar Association for the 2008-09 term. Timberman represented the Bowen school at the group’s recent meeting in Seattle. The Bowen chapter of the association was founded last year through the initial efforts of Chang Y. (David) Pyun.