Author: Donnie Sewell

Preston Lowe of Mayflower has been selected for recognition in the Spring 2025 CelebratingArt Contest sponsored by CelebratingArt and Blick Art Materials.

Students who are recognized in the contest are featured in the CelebratingArt hardcover book edition. Lowe’s piece called “A Moment in Painting” was selected for the spring edition. Lowe is a member of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts’ Class of 2025

Lowe previously had a piece selected for the Fall 2024 book, which was announced earlier this year. At the time, he said that such recognition “reassures me that I’m on the right path with my art, motivating me to keep making what feels right.”

More information about the contest may be found at celebratingart.com.

Seven Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts students have earned the Global Seal of Biliteracy, an international language certificate that recognizes and celebrates their level of proficiency in two or more languages.

This is the first time that ASMSA students have earned the recognition after the school has become an approved partner for certifying students for the honor. The Global Seal of Biliteracy offers three levels of certification: Functional Fluency, Working Fluency and Professional Fluency.

ASMSA students who earned the seal and the level of fluency in their tested language include:
• Yonjun Park, a junior from Maumelle, Working Fluency in Korean;
• Meera Patel, a senior from Hot Springs, Functional Fluency in French;
• Jaime Hernandez Perez, a senior from Decatur, Functional Fluency in French;
• Kelvin Orduna, a senior from Huntsville, Functional Fluency in French;
• Maya Allen, a senior from Harrison, Functional Fluency in Spanish;
• Emily Lin, a junior from Little Rock, Functional Fluency in Mandarin; and
• Katherine Quintanilla, a senior from Nashville, Ark.

To earn the Working Fluency designation, students must earn at least a 7 in each of the four skill areas on the test. Students must score at least a 5 in each skill area to earn the Functional Fluency designation.

To learn more about the Global Seal of Biliteracy, visit theglobalseal.com.

Sindia Michael, a senior at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, has been selected to attend the National Youth Science Camp.

The National Youth Science Camp is one of the nation’s premier programs in secondary science education and is sponsored by the National Youth Science Academy. The summer program offers educational forums and recreational activities that encourage the development of thoughtful scientific leadership. Two students from each state are chosen as delegates to the camp each year. Delegates have demonstrated exceptional academic achievement, leadership in school and community activities, and a genuine interest in the sciences, according to the program’s website.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts held its 31^st annual Commencement celebrating the graduation of the Class of 2025 at the Oaklawn Event Center on Saturday, May 17.

The ceremony honored 95 graduates from 36 counties. The graduates earned $25.2 million in scholarship offers, pushing the overall total to $353.7 million over the school’s history. Giuseppe “Seppy” Basili, the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, served as Commencement speaker. Karilynn Arellano of Mineral Springs and Hailey Judkins of Benton, both members of the Class of 2025, were student speakers.

Fifteen students from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts earned recognition at the 2025 FBLA State Conference and qualified for the FBLA National Conference.

The state conference was held on April 7-8 at the Little Rock Convention Center. Students competed in categories that included an objective subject test, performance or presentation, or a combination of an objective test and a performance component. The top four competitors in each category qualified to compete at the national competition, which will be held June 26-July 3 in Anaheim, Calif.

Students who qualified for the national competition include:

• Phoenix Dunkley, first place, Client Service;
• the team of Michelle Li and Jeremiah Chen, second place, Computer Game and Simulation Programming;
• April Adams, first place, Cyber Security;
• Nathan Grady, first place, Nathan Grady;
• Tristan Henson, second place, Future Business Leader;
• the team of Aarush Goyal, Kaitleen Toh and Luis Vidal, third place, Hospitality and Event Management;
• Miranda Lee, first place, Sales Presentation;
• the team of Cassie Davis and Lakayla Hall, first place, Sports and Entertainment Management;
• Benjamin Dong, first place, Spreadsheet Applications; and
• the team of Hailey Judkins and Sophie Milton, third place, Website Design.

One other student earned state recognition as Katherine Sedgwick placed seventh in Advertising. ASMSA had 24 total students compete in the state competition.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts held its annual Honors Convocation on Monday, May 12. The annual Honors Convocation is an opportunity to recognize the students’ academic achievements for the school year as well as special awards and fellowships.

Maddox Jessup, a senior from Stuttgart, was featured as a student speaker during the event. Students who were recognized included:

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts will hold its 31^st annual Commencement celebrating the Class of 2025 at 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 17, at the Oaklawn Event Center.

Giuseppe “Seppy” Basili, the executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, will serve as the event’s keynote speaker. Basili is a leading K-12, college readiness and higher education expert with 30 years of industry experience. The foundation is dedicated to advancing the education of exceptionally promising students by providing scholarships to students and grants to organizations that serve them.

Senior Hailey Judkins of Benton will serve as the student commencement speaker.

The event is not open to the public. A ticket is required for admission to the ceremony. Tickets were only available to students and their family members.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts recognized students for their achievements in the 2025 Arts and Humanities Capstone Symposium during an awards ceremony on May 2.

The symposium is an opportunity for ASMSA students to showcase their talents within the arts and humanities. The event features lectures and performances by students in the fields of arts and literature, creative writing, fine arts, history and music. The lectures and performances are the result of capstone research projects conducted by the students as a required part of ASMSA’s academic program.

Students competed in either Arts, History, and Literature or the Visual and Performing Arts categories. Individual category awards as well as overall winners for each major category were announced during the ceremony.

Damian Biggs, a senior at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, has been selected as a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

By being one of 70 high school seniors nationwide selected as a scholar, Biggs will receive the Cooke College Scholarship. The scholarship provides last-dollar funding up to $55,000 per year after all institutional aid to pursue a bachelor’s degree at any accredited undergraduate institution. The goal of the scholarship is to help students who have demonstrated exceptional academic ability, leadership and persistence avoid student debt, according to the foundation’s website.

Biggs said earning the scholarship will help him attend the University of Tulsa where plans to study electrical engineering with a minor in innovation and entrepreneurship.

“If someone asked me what outcome I hoped for the most at the beginning of my senior year, this is what it would have been,” Biggs said. “It’s still hard to believe that is real life, and I’m so excited to attend college now. I will always be deeply grateful for receiving this scholarship, and I plan on making full use of it to set myself for an amazing future.”

On the day Biggs found out that he had been selected as a Cooke Scholar, he said he was feeling a bit down. During his lunch break he decided to play video games in his room to relax before his calculus class scheduled for after lunch.

“I was about to start a new quest in my game when I heard my phone buzz and looked down at the email from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation,” Biggs said. “I opened it and immediately felt a surge of excitement as soon as I read the word ‘Congratulations.’ I couldn’t believe it. It felt like every single weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders in that instant. I had never cried tears of joy until reading that email.”

Biggs said he wants his story to inspire other people starting their college journey. He said he was determined to send out as many applications to selective scholarship programs as he could as well as many universities across the country.

“Being selected really showed me that all the hard work and persistence did pay off, and not only am I getting what I wanted from the start, but I hit the home run of scholarships,” Biggs said. “I want to be an example of something working out at the end of the day as long as you keep your head in the game.”

To learn more about the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and the College Scholarship program, visit https://www.jkcf.org/our-scholarships/.