All the members of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Science, and the Arts’ (ASMSA) internationally recognized database team will become UALR Trojans in the fall.

Ethan Brown of Van Buren, Harry Hull of Conway, and Kathy Thornton and Grant Beasley of Fayetteville will attend UALR’s Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT). They placed first in the United States and fifth in the world in the Oracle Academy Global Data Modeling Competition.

In the international competition, three Romanian teams took the top spots and fourth place went to a team from Somalia. This is the first time in several years a team from the United States has finished in the top 10.

The competition “challenges student teams to analyze business requirements and develop a data model, a sophisticated process that is typically taught in the university setting and is critical to building database systems,” according to information from Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company.

The students created an imaginary nonprofit organization that tracked weather data to follow global warming.

“All three of these students will make a great addition to our computer science program in EIT,” said Katie Young, EIT’s assistant dean for academic affairs. “They are bright, involved in a rich variety of extracurricular activities, and enthusiastic about creating future innovations. We look forward to having them in the fall.”

Wednesday, May 14, EIT will welcome 60 of its 100 entering scholarship recipients – members of the Trojan Class of 2012 – for Orientation Day.