Senior Bianca Mayo says one of the best days of her life was receiving a text from her mother saying she had been accepted as a Gates Millennium Scholar. “I actually made her drive up to the campus because I didn’t believe her,” she said.
Mayo, a Pine Bluff High School graduate, is the only Gates Millennium Scholar at UALR. She graduates in May with a double major in history and philosophy.
She said the scholarship created an open door where there was none.
The fully-funded scholarship is provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has awarded more than $314,000 to UALR since its inception. The program was created in 1999 and has produced over 18,000 scholars.
“It has lifted a major burden off my shoulders and allowed me to focus solely on my education. It has created opportunities for me to help others, and I am eternally grateful,” Mayo said.
Mayo’s love for history comes from her father who influenced her pursuit of the major.
“He would recount a different historical battle or event to me every day,” she said.
But it was by chance she found an interest in philosophy after taking an ethics course and instantly falling in love with it. She joined the UALR Ethics Bowl Team to foster her new interest and quickly added Ethics as a second major.
“I can honestly say I have really developed a love for philosophy because it allows me to question the world around me and my place in it,” Mayo said.
Her eventual goal is to work on a hospital board as an ethicist.
Mayo wants to pursue a master’s degree in philosophy and public health or history education, although she is still exploring her options. She added that she had some of the best mentors at UALR.
“I have been given amazing opportunities with the backing of my professors,” said Mayo. “I couldn’t have asked for better.”
While he was in high school in Africa, Jean Lambert Kubwimana knew that he wanted to be an engineer. “I felt it would challenge me the most,” he said.
During his last year in high school, Kubwimana was selected for the Rwandan Presidential Scholar program, a coveted honor bestowed upon some of the best and brightest students in Rwanda. Continue reading “With family 8,000 miles away, Rwandan tackles challenges and graduates”
When asked if she could summarize her career in three words, Senior U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright replied without hesitation.
“I am blessed. I am fortunate,” she said.
Pausing, she added with a smile, “That’s six words, isn’t it?”
Wright, a former chief judge, professor, assistant dean, and law clerk, has journeyed far and accomplished much.
She’ll share some of that journey with the public on Saturday, May 16, when she delivers the keynote address to UALR Bowen School of Law graduates.
The talk will be recorded and later aired by the C-SPAN network, which is criss-crossing the country highlighting various commencement ceremony speeches. Bowen’s commencement is set for 12:30 p.m. in the Wally Allen Ballroom of the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock.
A family affair
Born in Texarkana to a family of lawyers, Wright decided to pursue law because of academic interest and familial influence.
She received her juris doctorate and master of public administration from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville following an undergraduate education at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia.
Immediately after graduating law school in 1975, Wright served as a law clerk to J. Smith Henley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The following year she started teaching at UALR Bowen School of Law where she would remain for the next 14 years.
An opportunity presented itself to Wright in 1990 when her former employer and mentor, U.S. House Representative John Paul Hammerschmidt, recommended her to President George H.W. Bush for the vacancy of the Eastern District of Arkansas.
“I never set out to be a judge,” she said. “The opportunity knocked, and I decided to take advantage of it.”
During this time, she also served as chief judge of the district for seven years.
In 1998, she received national attention when she dismissed the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones against President Bill Clinton.
“I’ve had a lot of memorable cases, and they all changed my life when I had them, but I can’t say that any has changed my life permanently,” she said.
Wright still serves as U.S. District Judge in the Eastern District of Arkansas, and she took senior status in 2013.
With a life full of many roles, Wright is motivated to follow the law and be fair.
“I’m influenced by judges who have been my mentors, and I’m influenced by the law and the constitution,” she said.
UALR gained the newest Colleges Against Cancer chapter in the nation at the beginning of spring semester.
The chapter is composed of a core group of students that has been touched by cancer, either in the form of having had cancer themselves, or knowing someone who has.
The organization, affiliated with the American Cancer Society, sponsors anti-cancer programming on campus and enables those who have been impacted by cancer to have a way to fight back, as well as celebrate those they love who have survived and remember those they have lost.
A major focus of the chapter’s efforts will be the UALR Relay for Life which will be hosted this year by Colleges Against Cancer Thursday, April 30, from 6 p.m. to midnight in the Donaghey Student Center Fitness Center.
Faculty, students, and staff are invited to form teams to help raise funds for the fight against cancer or attend the event.
There will be entertainment, food, and several ceremonies designed to allow participants to remember those they’ve lost to cancer and celebrate those who have survived it.
The event will open with a survivors’ lap to honor cancer survivors. Later in the evening, there will be a caregiver’s lap to honor those who have served someone going through a cancer journey, ending with a luminaria ceremony dedicated to those lost to cancer and those who have survived it.
More about Colleges Against Cancer and Relay for Life
The UALR Relay for Life is one of more than 500 Relay For Life events that will take place on college and university campuses around the nation this year.
Both Colleges Against Cancer and Relay For Life are part of the American Cancer Society, and funds raised go to support the work of the ACS.
“This event is important because it gives those of us who have been touched by cancer a way to fight back, a way to give back, and a way to take a stand that hopefully will make it so that our children and our children’s children will never have to hear the words ‘You have cancer,’” said Dr. Jamie Byrne-McCollum, mass communications professor and advisor to the new Colleges Against Cancer group.
Byrne-McCollum lost her husband to stage-four colorectal cancer at the age of 50 in 2010. She has also lost an aunt, father, and 23-year-old sister-in-law to various types of cancer.
The CAC advisor has been an American Cancer Society volunteer on local, regional, national, and international levels for years, long before she ever knew that cancer would affect her so directly. She also serves as the chair of the Hope Ambassadors, a local community leadership council for the Central Arkansas branch of the American Cancer Society.
“I am excited about the CAC chapter and the campus Relay For Life to give the campus community an opportunity to fight back, celebrate, and remember,” said Byrne-McCollum.
The CAC students are a major part of campus initiative, including chair and CAC president Markeyah Wilson, a cancer survivor who was diagnosed in 1999 with a Wilms tumor.
The cancer originated in her lungs and spread to her right kidney, which had to be removed. “I was very, very close to dying,” she said.
“I wanted to participate in Colleges Against Cancer because it allowed me to have more opportunities to get involved and get other students more involved with our community,” said Wilson.
“I believe that almost everyone is affected in some way by cancer, whether it was a relative, friend, or next door neighbor,” she added. “I look forward to a time where contracting cancer isn’t devastating news or causes grief for one’s family. That’s what I’m fighting for.”
CAC is a nationwide collaboration of college students, faculty, and staff dedicated to eliminating cancer by working to implement the programs and mission of the American Cancer Society.
With more that 450 chapters nationwide, CAC chapters focus their efforts on four strategic directions – advocacy, cancer education, Relay For Life, and survivorship.
For questions about joining CAC or participating in the event, contact Markeyah Wilson at 870.714.9154.