Honors College Recognizes Exceptional Faculty

Since 2012 Bret and Stephanie Schulte have chaperoned incoming freshman Bodenhamer fellows on a summer trip developed to build bonds among the new fellows. Photo: Whit Pruitt.

Walton College Dean Matt Waller has led a series of Honors College forums, beginning with Arkansas Business in 2017. Photo: David Speer.

Rachel Glade with honors student Amy Meek, who presented her research at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association Convention in Boston in 2018.

Stephanie Hubert helps students prepare for the Enclothe Electric Fashion Show in 2017. Photo: Whit Pruitt.

Peter Ungar (center) with his 2019 “Ungargrads” (from left) honors students Kaitlyn Puyear, Duru Erkan, Dylan Elkington-Stauss, Cara Coffman, James Needy, Lindsay Saylor, Grace Roberts, and Anna Moriarty.

Russell Cothren

Each faculty award winner will receive the Honors College medallion, carved by honors alumnus Hank Kaminsky.

The Honors College will recognize six faculty members at the annual Honors College Faculty Reception from 5:30-7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, in the Fowler House Conservatory. The awards are offered in two categories, the Distinguished Leadership Award and the Distinguished Faculty Award. 

"Our honors faculty support our students in all of their eclectic endeavors," said Honors College Dean Lynda Coon. "These six have put in many extra hours to develop original Honors College courses, mentor honors thesis research, and even shepherd new fellows around New York City. We are deeply grateful to them, and we look forward to celebrating their contributions next week."

Dean Coon will present a bronze medallion to this year's Distinguished Leadership Award and Distinguished Faculty Award recipients, who will be introduced by the deans of their respective colleges. Each winner also will receive $1,000 in academic funding and will be listed on the Faculty Awards page of the Honors College web site. 

DISTINGUISHED LEADERSHIP AWARDS 

Bret Schulte, associate professor of journalism in the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Schulte has worked with honors students since 2010, when he resurrected the honors colloquium Literature of Journalism. The course, a seminar on reportorial narrative nonfiction from the mid-20th century to today, has drawn students from biology to computer science to finance, including Bodenhamer and Truman fellows.

Later that year, he worked with an honors journalism student and the Office of Student Media to create the Hill Magazine, which has since won numerous regional and national awards. He has served on several honors theses committees and as an interviewer for Honors College fellowships. In 2016, he coordinated a Skype discussion on politics and the media between Honors College students and Slate editor Chad Lorenz. In part because of his work with honors students, Schulte was awarded 2010 Teacher of the Year by Associated Student Government and was nominated again in 2014.

In 2012, Schulte and his wife, Stephanie, took over as chaperones for incoming Bodenhamer Fellows on their annual summer trip to Washington, D.C., and later, New York City. Organized through the Honors College, the week-long trip is an opportunity for the winners of the prestigious fellowship to explore a major city, while forming bonds of friendship that will serve them through their academic careers and beyond. Schulte used his media contacts to get students into the newsrooms of The Washington Post, CNN, and National Geographic to talk with prominent editors and reporters.

Stephanie Ricker Schulte, associate professor and associate chair of the Department of Communication, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Over the years, Schulte has worked closely with honors students at departmental, college, national and international levels. She served as the departmental honors advisor and has taught four honors courses, including the Honors College Signature Seminar "Internet."

She also directed seven honors students on research topics ranging from an analysis of race in Instagram images posted by white missionaries in Africa to how disability operates historically in Disney films to an assessment of power dynamics embedded in internet infrastructures. Most of her students received high honors and research funding. Schulte has served on more than two dozen honors committees, and at the college level, she served on the Honors Council. 

For seven years, Schulte interviewed finalists for Bodenhamer and Honors College fellowships and, along with her husband Bret, chaperoned incoming freshman Bodenhamer Fellows on the annual summer trip. On the national and international levels, she regularly serves as an interview panelist for fellowships such as Fulbright, Truman and Boren.

She served as the president of Phi Beta Kappa for two years and advised Lambda Pi Eta, the alpha chapter of the National Communication Association honors society. In large part for her work with honors students, Schulte received a Faculty Gold Medal (2015) and Outstanding Mentor Award (2015) from the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards, a Fulbright College Master Teacher Award (2019), and was a finalist for the Imhoff Award for Outstanding Teaching and Mentorship (2017).

Matt Waller, dean, the Sam M. Walton Leadership Chair, and professor of supply chain management, Sam. M. Walton College of Business. Waller regularly teaches a course as part of the Honors College Forum series, and he is known for bringing in high-profile and highly successful business leaders who add unique, practical perspectives to the business theory Waller teaches.

In 2017, he taught Arkansas Business, which explored how and why the state has produced so many profitable companies. In 2018, he led Entrepreneurs, a class that gave students exposure to a wide array of successful entrepreneurs. And this fall he is teaching "EPIC," which explores how the Walton College's values of excellence, professionalism, innovation and collegiality are evident in the most successful leaders and businesses across Arkansas.

Waller also was a speaker in 2018 when the Walton College hosted a Business Honors Conference that brought in representatives from more than 30 universities. And he is a co-founder of the Leadership WWEB podcast, a joint project between the Walton College of Business and the College of Engineering. The twice-monthly podcast is targeted to undergraduate students and was co-hosted in July by an honors college student. Waller is the first dean other than Honors College Dean Emeritus Bob McMath to receive this award.

DISTINGUISHED FACULTY AWARDS

Rachel Glade, clinical assistant professor and program director for the communication sciences and disorders program, College of Education and Health Professions. Glade has served on the COEHP Honors Council for the past two years and co-led the Health Teams Abroad Sweden course that included honors students this past year. In the past three years, Glade has chaired 11 honors theses for COEHP, served on an additional eight honors thesis committees and also mentored eight undergraduate research projects.

Her students have conducted research on topics such as how adolescents with hearing loss experience bullying and the impact of hearing loss on executive function skills and working memory in young adults. All of her honors thesis mentees received funding for their research and presentations of their work, and one received a SURF grant. Glade's honors students have consistently presented at local, state and national conferences.

Glade has won numerous awards at the U of A, including the Outstanding Service Award for Rehabilitation, Human Resources, and Communication Disorders (2017), Outstanding Faculty Mentor for COEHP's Honors Program (2019), the Innovative Teaching Award for COEHP (2019), and the University of Arkansas Faculty Gold Medal (2019). In addition to her role as program director for the communication sciences and disorders program, Glade is also currently serving as the program's interim clinical education coordinator and was elected by her colleagues and peers across Arkansas to serve as the president-elect for the Arkansas Speech-Language-Hearing Association, a three-year term that started in January of 2019.

Stephanie Hubert, instructor in the Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Program in School of Human Environmental Sciences of the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences. Hubert is an active honors mentor and teaches an honors apparel production class. In addition, she has led honors students on study tours to London, Paris, New York and Las Vegas.

Students under Hubert's direction have received the Blanche Payne Award and a Paper of Distinction Award at the International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference. Their research spans a wide range of topics, from the technical challenges of using a 3D printer to produce a crop top made from thermoplastic urethane, which has a fluidity similar to leather or fabric, to costume design for Tolkien characters. Both of these honors theses were featured in A+, the Honors College magazine, and the Tolkien-inspired costumes are currently on display in the Honors College wing of Gearhart Hall.

Hubert was awarded the Bumpers College Outstanding Honors Faculty Mentor Award in 2017 and received Honors Faculty Equipment and Technology Grants in 2016 and 2017.

Peter Ungar, distinguished professor of anthropology, J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Ungar has been working with honors students for more than 20 years. At any given time, he mentors up to a dozen in his lab. Most major in anthropology and biological sciences in Fulbright College, but he has also advised honors student in the Colleges of Engineering and Agriculture. These students, whom he calls "Ungargrads," have won national-level awards, including the Gates Cambridge Fellowship, and have continued on to the best dental schools, medical schools, law schools and graduate schools in the United States and beyond. 

Honors students have always been a cornerstone of the Ungar laboratory group. These students have conducted primary research ranging from studies relating tooth form to function in living and fossil mammals to developing new methods for assessing erosive tooth wear in clinical dental patients. Ungar has coauthored papers with his honors students in international-caliber journals including Folia Primatologica, The American Journal of Primatology, Mammalia, The Journal of Human Evolution, and Biosurface and Biotribology. 

Ungar has served on the committee to select honors fellows, and as an "Adopt-a-Prof" for Hotz Honors Hall. He has taught departmental honors courses and the Honors College Signature Seminar called Teeth, and co-taught with Provost Jim Coleman the Honors College Forum on Climate Change. He was an inaugural Dean's Honors College Fellow in 2017.

About the Honors College: The University of Arkansas Honors College was established in 2002 and unites the university’s top undergraduate students and professors in a learning environment characterized by discovery, creativity and service. Each year the Honors College awards up to 90 freshman fellowships that provide $72,000 over four years, and more than $1 million in undergraduate research and study abroad grants. The Honors College is nationally recognized for the high caliber of students it admits and graduates. Honors students enjoy small, in-depth classes, and programs are offered in all disciplines, tailored to students’ academic interests, with interdisciplinary collaborations encouraged. Fifty percent of Honors College graduates have studied abroad – three times the national average – and 100 percent of them have engaged in mentored research.

About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among fewer than 3% of colleges and universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.