FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – This year’s Big Ideas issue in the Arkansas Time features four of the University of Arkansas’ own — Marlon Blackwell, Trish Flanagan, Carol Reeves and Elizabeth Young. They join 21 other “Visionary Arkansans” recognized for their innovative ideas to make Arkansas a better place to live.

Blackwell, Young and Reeves, who is featured on the cover of the issue, are all faculty members at the university. Flanagan is a recent graduate who joined the university staff in July. All four will participate in the Arkansas Times Festival of Ideas on Saturday, Sept. 21.

Marlon Blackwell

Marlon Blackwell

Marlon Blackwell is a Distinguished Professor and head of the architecture department in the Fay Jones School of Architecture. His firm, Marlon Blackwell Architect, is based in Fayetteville.

Blackwell received the 2012 Arts and Letters Awards in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. The honor is bestowed to a pre-eminent architect from any country who has made a significant contribution to architecture as an art form.

“The Creative Corridor: A Main Street Revitalization of Little Rock,” a collaboration between Blackwell’s firm and the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, received a 2013 Charter Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism and was a finalist for the 2012 WAN Award for Urban Regeneration from World Architecture News.The Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion by Blackwell has won several awards, including a 2012 American Architecture Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design.

Trish Flanagan

Trish Flanagan

Trish Flanagan, became the director of social entrepreneurship initiatives at the university in July after graduating in May from the concurrent master’s program in business administration and public service offered by the Sam M. Walton College of Business and the Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.

Flanagan is president of the Fayetteville-based start-up solar energy firm Picasolar, which won $313,500 this spring in graduate business plan competitions and is developing and marketing a more efficient solar cell. In July she co-founded Noble Impact, a nonprofit organization in Little Rock that aims to teach high school students concepts about observing social issues, solving problems and selling ideas that they might otherwise not learn until college.

Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves, associate vice provost for entrepreneurship at the university since January 2011, lends her expertise to students as professor of management in the Walton College.

Under the guidance of Reeves, who holds the Cecil and Gwen Cupp Applied Professorship in Entrepreneurship, the university has fielded competitive graduate student teams at state, regional, national, and international business plan competitions since 2002. During the past decade, students have won nearly $2 million in cash at these competitions.

In her role as associate vice provost, Reeves promotes entrepreneurship and economic development in the region and across the state.

Elizabeth Young

Elizabeth Young

Elizabeth Young, an associate professor of law, directs the University of Arkansas Immigration Clinic, which she founded in 2008.

The clinic provides opportunities for students preparing for a career in immigration law or general practice to develop skills that are critical the successful practice of law through experiential learning. It also serves the community by providing pro bono representation to area individuals who are in need of legal assistance in immigration matters.

Young oversees the third year “student attorneys” in the clinic. Her students handled the widely publicized case of Jonathan Chavez, a U of A honors student who was brought as a child to Arkansas from Peru and was arrested in an immigration sting while visiting his mother in Florida. The clinic’s student lawyers got Chavez a temporary reprieve from the Department of Homeland Security so he could finish his degree and continue his effort to stay in the states.

The second annual Arkansas Times Festival of Ideas will be held from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 21 at the Clinton School for Public Service, the Historic Arkansas Museum, Heifer International and the Old State House. Sessions will run concurrently at each venue and will consist of demonstrations, presentations and panel discussions. Sessions are free and open to the public, but reservations are requested.