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/.

A team from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts is one of 25 teams who have qualified for the ninth Annual All-State Coding Competition that will be held on Monday, April 21.

The team of juniors April Adams of Clinton, Hunter Cox of Vilonia and Mason Vaden of Dardanelle qualified for the 2025 state competition by competing in the All-Region Coding Competition on Feb. 28. A total of 146 teams from across the state participated in regional events earlier this spring to determine 24 participants for the state competition. A team from Conway High School automatically qualified for the state competition after the school produced the first-place team in the 2024 state competition.

The competition features student teams solving coding challenges. Each member of the first-place team in the state competition will receive a $2,000 award that will be deposited in a 529 College Savings Plan. Each member of the second-place team will receive a $1,000 award with third-place earning a $500 award for each member. In addition, the schools that sponsor the first-, second- and third-place teams will receive $10,000, $6,000 and $4,000 respectively to support their computer science programs.

The competition is sponsored by the Arkansas Department of Education.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts Quiz Bowl team will play for the Class 7A state title in the Arkansas Governor’s Quiz Bowl Championships.

ASMSA will face Bryant High School in the championship round of the state tournament on Saturday, April 26. The title match will be held at 9 a.m. at Arkansas PBS in Conway. Arkansas PBS will air the match live on its stations across the state as well as streaming online at myarpbs.org/watch.

ASMSA qualified for the title game by going undefeated in the early rounds of the Class 7A state tournament that were held at Little Rock Central High School on April 12. The team had qualified for the state tournament by winning the Class 7A West Regional Tournament in March. That finish allowed ASMSA to enter the tournament as the No. 3 seed, giving it a first-round bye. The team won its two afternoon matches to qualify for the final.

Juniors Ridgely Bond and Jacob Lewis were named to the All-State Tournament Team. They also qualified for the All-Star Tournament to be held on May 3 based on their performance in the regional tournament.

The team is coached by Caleb Grisham, a mathematics Instructor of Excellence at the school. The tournament is sponsored by the Arkansas Governor's Quiz Bowl Association.

Sometime the week after finals, the title match will be posted to youtube.com/arkansaspbs. Photos will available at myarpbs.org/photos.

Maya Allen, a senior at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, has been selected to participate in the prestigious The Jackson Laboratory Summer Student Program.

Each year, about 40 undergraduate and high school students from across the United States are chosen to participate in the 10-week summer program where they conduct genetics and genomics research. Studying with an experienced scientific mentor, participants will develop an independent project, implement their plan, analyze data, and report results. They will present their findings to researchers, other students and parents at the end of the summer.

Allen will participate in the program at the laboratory’s site in Bar Harbor, Maine. The program will run from May 31 through August 8. She is excited about the opportunity to participate in the program.

Arkansas students and parents seeking choices for high-quality educational opportunities will have an exciting new option this fall through the ASMSA Online Academy.

The ASMSA Online Academy is a full-time online program offered by the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts (ASMSA). It will provide a robust curriculum focused around Advanced Placement (AP) courses that emphasizes the humanities, critical thinking and STEM topics while meeting state graduation requirements.

Students enrolled in the ASMSA Online Academy will complete a thoughtfully curated sequence of AP courses over two years, generally as high school juniors and seniors although younger students who demonstrate academic readiness may apply. Students who complete the program are positioned to earn the AP Capstone Diploma and be positioned for AP Scholar designation

The annual tuition for the ASMSA Online Academy is $5,000, pending final authorization by the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees in May. Families may use the state’s Educational Freedom Accounts (EFA), which were established through the Arkansas LEARNS Act, to cover tuition, ensuring there are no net costs for enrollment in the program. This approach ensures families have access to top-tier coursework while still preserving additional EFA funds to cover technology, enrichment programs or other approved needs.

Applications for the program are now open, and the priority application deadline is June 1. The program is open to all students in Arkansas, but they must have completed foundational math courses — including Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry — before enrolling in the ASMSA Online Academy. Students will also need access to a reliable computer or laptop with a stable internet connection.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts won the school trophy and two students were recognized among the best projects in the state at the Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair.

Junior Miranda Lee of Conway won second place in the Best in State Individual Awards, and junior Anna Le of Fort Smith placed third in the Best in State Individual Awards. Their placement in the state competition qualified them to compete at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, which will be held May 10-16 in Columbus, Ohio.

They will join four other ASMSA students — seniors Kolten Shook of North Little Rock, senior Lukas Bowler of Hot Springs, senior Carmella Lewis of Alma, and senior Christine Dunning of Clarksville — who earned the opportunity to compete at ISEF at the West Central Regional Science Fair held at ASMSA in February. ISEF is the world’s largest pre-college STEM competition. Students from around the world are expected to compete for awards, prizes and scholarships.

The school trophy winner is determined by the number of points each school accumulates based on their place award winners divided by the total number of projects entered in the state science fair. The Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair was held April 4-5 at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway.

Eight Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts students earned recognition in the Arts Across Arkansas 2025 competition, including students sweeping all three places in one category.

ASMSA students took first-, second-, and third-places in the Music Composition category. Students also placed in the Literary Arts, Film and Visual Arts categories. The event included exhibitions and performances by the more than 40 students selected as finalists, including 23 ASMSA students. Awards were announced on March 29 during a ceremony at Westwood School for Performing Arts in North Little Rock.

Students who earned recognition were:

Music Composition

• Faith Wesley, a junior from Hot Springs, first place, “Paraclete”
• Bryce Jackson, a junior from Salem, second place, “Paris 1944”
• Matthew Carter, a junior from Hot Springs, third place, “Goku”

Literary Arts

• Halie Cook, a junior from Pine Bluff, first place, “Dollar Store Collar”
• Saylor Ross, a senior from Crossett, third place, “Homecoming Queen”

Film

• Makenna Kutzschebauch, a junior from Benton, second place, “Dead Women Walking”
• Jamie Hernandez, a senior from Decatur, third place, “Spring”

Visual Arts

• Coley Rogers, a junior from Cherokee Village, second place, “Self Portrait”

Arts Across Arkansas is a program that aims to encourage, enhance and expand students’ original thoughts, processes, personal experiences and artistic abilities, according to the program’s website. It is sponsored by the Arkansas Arts Council, an agency of the Division of Arkansas Heritage.

The competition features competition in six categories: Visual Arts, Dance Choreography, Film, Music Composition, Literary Arts and Photography. ASMSA students were selected as finalists in the Visual Arts, Film, Music Composition, Literary Arts and Photography.