Author: Donnie Sewell

Three students from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts earned recognition at the 2023 FBLA National Leadership Conference that was held June 26-30 in Atlanta.

The team of Meera Patel of Hot Springs and Kelvin Orduna of Huntsville won eighth place in the Website Design category. Sarah Pham of Hot Springs won 10^th place in the Introduction to Financial Math competition. Patel, Orduna and Pham qualified for the national competition by winning first place in their respective categories at Arkansas’ FBLA State Conference in April.

Karilynn Arellan of Mineral Springs represented Arkansas as a state officer at the national conference. She will serve as Arkansas District IV Vice President during the upcoming school year. She also competed in the Introduction to FBLA event at the conference. Kiley Barton of Sims competed in the Economics category at the national conference.

The competitions are either an objective subject test, a performance/product event or a combination of both a test and performance/product event. The national conference was attended by more than 13,000 members, advisers and guests.

Corey Alderdice, director of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts, became president of the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools Board of Directors on July 1.

Alderdice will serve as president of the organization’s board through the 2023-24 academic year, with his term set to expire in November 2024. He was installed as the board’s president-elect in November 2022 and was set to become president in November 2023. Alderdice stepped into the role early as the previous president retired from their school at the end of June. Alderdice has served on the NCSSS Board of Directors since November 2019.

Teams from Conway High School took two of the top three places at the HighSchoolHack competition held at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts.

HighSchoolHack is an all-day computer science competition for Arkansas high school students. The event features a series of challenges and puzzles focusing on reverse engineering, cryptography, programming, pen testing, web vulnerabilities, forensics and more. The competition’s “Jeopardy”-style, capture-the-flag format helps participants develop knowledge in computer science and cybersecurity through fun and games.

Shreyam Tripathi, a member of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts Class of 2023, recently had a paper on his research published in RSC Chemical Biology, a scholarly journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Tripathi’s paper focused on the replication of the G-quadraplex (G4), a secondary structure that genomic DNA adopts and plays a vital part in cellular regulation. He focused on the importance of Rev1 in G4 DNA replication as well as the importance of the placement of the G4 motif within a certain gene.

The Royal Society of Chemistry is an association that works to advance the chemical sciences through a professional association, scientific journal, conferences and other means.

Two members of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts Class of 2023 will be spending the summer before going off to college learning Russian in Latvia.

Madison Arenaz and Rose Brown will spend six weeks living and learning in Riga, Latvia, as part of the National Security Language Initiative for Youth (NSLI-Y) program for Russian. The program seeks to improve participants’ Russian in reading, writing, speaking and listening. Participants develop their skills through language instruction, cultural presentations and activities, and host family stays. Students will spend approximately 20 hours per week in language classes studying Russian. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

Teams from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts swept the divisions of the Spring 2023 Stock Market Game sponsored by Economics Arkansas. One team also won the yearlong division.

The team of Christian Lu and Walker Daniels won the Region 2 spring high school competition while the team of Jaden Williams and Aarohi Sonputri took the After School division. Lu and Daniels also won the state yearlong division with a portfolio of $214,415.67.

Eight Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students received awards at the Arkansas Foreign Language Teacher Association State Competition.

The AFLTA State Competition features several categories that allow students to demonstrate their language competence. The competition categories include poetry recitation, extemporaneous speaking, extemporaneous reading, vocabulary, and several others.

Hometown/Sending School

North Little Rock/ North Little Rock High School

 

College and Area(s) of Study

Bachelor’s degree from the University of Arkansas and a master’s  degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, both in mathematics

 

Current profession and company. Tell us what you do. 

I currently teach mathematics at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics at Morganton, a residential STEM school similar to ASMSA. My time at ASMSA has helped me relate to the unique experience of these residential programs.

 

What made you choose ASMSA?

The opportunity to enter an academically rigorous community with like-minded peers made ASMSA extremely appealing. While I met many phenomenal people at my homeschool, ASMSA offered a comprehensive community that I had craved throughout my high school experience.

 

What are your fondest memories of the school?

While I loved the academic rigor, my favorite experience at ASMSA was playing Ultimate Frisbee. I take immense pride in the fact that our team came in 1st in Ultimate both my junior and senior years. Ultimate symbolizes the best part of the ASMSA experience, which were the dorm hangouts outside of the classroom. Looking back, those evening visits were some of my favorite memories from high school.

 

What do you feel was the most important thing that you learned?

The role of community in education. As a student, I was fixated on “being the best,” where academics was a way to demonstrate ego over my colleagues. However, at ASMSA, I met a whole swathe of people who knew things I didn’t! I think learning how to learn from my peers, as well as communicating with my instructors, taught me how to view education as a collaborative process.  These lessons proved invaluable in my undergraduate/graduate career as well as in my teaching.

 

Share a favorite quote and/or your favorite book. 

“Standing on the fringes of life... offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.” — from Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

 

What do you feel are the most important tools for an educator to have in today’s classroom?

Communication is essential in today’s classroom. Of course, educators must be strong in their communication of content, but with modern students it is ever more important to communicate clear expectations and feedback.

I also feel building interactive lessons is essential for the modern classroom. External factors such as COVID and technology use have shortened the modern student’s ability to withstand traditional lectures. I feel that part of our responsibility as instructors is to build active classrooms where students can spend more time engaging with material instead of passively receiving information.

A team from the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts placed second in the 2023 All-State Coding Competition.

Seventeen teams from high schools across the state participated in the competition held April 29 at the University of Arkansas — Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock. The contest features teams solving problems that test contestants’ computer science knowledge. A team from Conway High School won first place while a team from Rogers High School took third.