The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts held its 30th annual Commencement celebrating the graduation of the Class of 2024 at the Oaklawn Event Center on Saturday, May 18.
The ceremony honored 111 graduates from 33 counties. The graduates earned $24.5 million in scholarship offers, pushing the overall total to more than $328.5 million over the school’s 30-year history. The event also included a special recognition of the school’s 3,000th graduate — Tim Palmer of Mena.
Matt Bell — who is co-founder, president and chief executive officer for Origami Sake in Hot Springs — served as Commencement speaker. Daniel Nkunga of Sherwood, Kaira Harper of Jonesboro and Gwen Oliver, formerly of Jonesboro — all members of the Class of 2024 — were student speakers.
Bell told the graduates that the day marked the culmination of years of hard work, dedication and perseverance. He said perseverance is “one of the most essential virtues you can cultivate in your lives.” As an example, Bell shared the story of Origami Sake, which officially opened for business in 2023, and its other co-founder, Ben Bell, an ASMSA alumnus. The two men are not related.
“As the co-founder of Origami Sake, I can attest to the power of perseverance firsthand. My co-founder Ben Bell graduated from ASMSA in the year 2000, and our story of starting Origami Sake right here in Hot Springs is one of dedication, passion and, most importantly, perseverance,” Bell said.
Ben Bell’s passion for creating a sake brewery seriously started in 2014 when, with the help of the Hot Springs Sister City Program with Hanamaki, Japan, he began a two-year training program at Nanbu Bijin Sake Brewery in Japan’s Iwate Prefecture. He learned the craft of sake production and returned to Hot Springs in 2016 to pursue his dream despite facing industry skepticism, financial hurdles and other setbacks.
It was that year when Matt Bell first heard Ben Bell’s story and “vision for creating a world class beverage made from the pristine waters of Hot Springs and Arkansas’ number one agricultural export, rice.” While the idea was intriguing, Matt Bell said he was running another company at the time and didn’t have the time or resources to commit to a project of that scope.
By 2021, Ben Bell had not been able to make his dream come true, but he had not given up on it, Matt Bell said. Ben Bell was working in New York at the time when Matt Bell had an opportunity to sell his business. The first call he made after the sale was to Ben Bell.
“But through it all, Ben refused to give up on his dream. He persevered, learning from failures, adapting to new circumstances and staying true to his vision,” Bell said. “And eventually his perseverance paid off. After many conversations and months of due diligence, Ben packed his bags and moved back to our home state of Arkansas, and eventually, his perseverance paid off — Origami Sake became a reality, not just a dream.”
Bell emphasized that perseverance “is not a solitary endeavor. It requires the support of those around you — mentors who offer guidance, friends who lend a listening ear and family who stand by you through thick and thin.”
He encouraged the graduates to remember to lean on each other for support as they embark on the next chapter of their lives because they would be stronger together than they could be alone.
Click here to watch the Class of 2024 Commencement
Harper spoke about the cyclical nature of life, which for the Class of 2024 was focused on their education over the previous 13 years. “Naturally, graduations are a very important step in that cycle, as they allow us to look back on our progress every couple of years, express hopes for the future and reflect on the past,” she said.
“Each of us has participated in a ceremony similar to this one before; having conquered kindergarten or elementary school, we were sent off in caps and gowns, striding purposefully towards new chapters in our lives to the tune of ‘Pomp and Circumstance.’ And now we’re here again, stopping to take a quick breath before the cycle begins anew. I don’t doubt that some of us will repeat this ceremony once, twice, maybe even three times more as we achieve higher levels of education.”
Harper encouraged her classmates to take with them the lessons they have learned during their time at ASMSA. Harper, who came to ASMSA as a sophomore, said the school provided an environment where she saw her own initiative mirrored in her classmates and teachers day in and day out over her three years at the school.
“As a result, sixteen-year-old me can proudly say that I have matured in a way that I’m not sure would have been possible if I had stayed content with where I was,” she said.
Part of that growth in maturity was learning the ability to adapt. Harper said the graduates will take with them the ability to acclimate themselves to any situation through lessons learned at ASMSA such as how to know when and how to ask for help. She shared a personal experience as an example.
“For example, when the algebra at my sending school turned into college calculus junior year, I was a tree that stood tall and unyielding in a violent storm — until I became in danger of earning my first ever C (the horror!) and promptly snapped in two,” she said.
She sought help from peer mentors and learned how to study. “While I won’t have to take calculus again, I’m sure that, like clockwork, there’ll be more storms on the horizon, but thanks to the faculty and to my fellow students, I’ll know how to bend, not break, and I’ll be stronger for it.”
Oliver spoke about how she and many of her peers grew up watching movies set in a high school, such as “Mean Girls,” “Clueless” and the “High School Musical” films. The movies often made them wonder what their own high school experience would be like. What they learned, she said, was that high school was nothing like those movies.
But she found one movie that perhaps was more relatable to the ASMSA experience — Disney’s “Inside Out.” The film focuses on Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear — characters who represent the emotions inside the character of Riley, who goes through life changes when her family moves from her hometown in Minnesota to San Francisco. She must adapt to living in a new city and making new friends.
“When we all decided to come to ASMSA two or three years ago, we took a huge leap of faith and made sacrifices. We left our loved ones, our home high school and our friends, making a choice that pushed us to grow. This decision led us to a lot of core memories,” Oliver said.
Oliver shared stories of experiences such as a weekend suite sleepover where she and her suitemates moved all of their mattresses to the floor of one room, played music, told stories and watched TikTok videos on each other’s phones. Another time, Oliver and her friends held a post-finals water fright where they chased each other across the courtyard and around buildings until they were so tired and out of breath that they had to call a truce.
Oliver took a moment to express how they had experienced each of the emotions featured in the movie through shared ASMSA experiences.
“Deep down, we are all like the character of Riley in ‘Inside Out.’ We have experienced all of these emotions and so much more at [ASMSA]. Today, Joy prevails as we graduate from ASMSA. And just like Bing Bong [Riley’s imaginary friend], when he says his final words to Joy, this is my message to all of my ASMSA friends: ‘Take her to the moon for me, OK?’”
Nkunga, who served as the president of ASMSA’s Student Government Association this year, spoke about finding his version of a utopia of sorts at ASMSA. His sister is an ASMSA alumna, and he would listen to the stories she would tell about the friends she made, the interesting classes that challenged her and the experience she could not have had anywhere else when she would visit home on the weekends.
Her stories reminded him of a character in Thomas More’s “Utopia,” which depicts a fictional island of the same name “where people live and are only guided by their own rational thought,” he said. Much as the fictional character shared stories of this island, his sister’s stories told of a place where the smart students took classes in which they were interested in taking and lived in a community where they could make friends who were interested in learning.
Nkunga said he soon was able to experience all of that himself. “I got to live in a community where the smartest people I’ve met weren’t just passionate in the classrooms but were ever-present in the clubs I took part in and the events the school put on. A place where I could be my own person no matter how nerdy that interest was,” he said.
But then the second semester happened. Nothing had changed about the school or the people, but Nkunga found himself at a place where the pace of classes and extracurriculars began to catch up with him.
“The perfect society I imagined and I lived in slowly faded away to reveal the insane amount of effort I need to give to maintain it,” he said.
He learned that the word utopia translates to “no place.” So, there is no place in society where people could just exist together in harmony to work and live, he said.
“And maybe that would’ve been the actual case if not for you,” he said to his fellow graduates. Nkunga said each of them had made ASMSA better, regardless of if it was in big or small ways. “Every single one of you has made my ASMSA experience better and better and has forced it to approach the edge of utopia.”
“The Arkansas School for Math, Sciences and the Arts might not be the utopia, but it is my utopia, and it’s only because you were all here to do it with me,” he said.
Director Corey Alderdice encouraged the graduates to beware of vampires in their lives — not the kind of blood-sucking vampires as depicted in literature and film, but rather the ones who “fill us with doubt, insecurity, fear or anxiety, leading us to falsely believe that we are incapable of achieving our goals.”
He asked the graduates to imagine their inner strength as a radiant light that vampires seek to dim. “But here’s the truth: you hold the power to banish them. To shout morte vampir morte! You are capable of doing and creating amazing things. You will face new obstacles and challenges, but none that you are incapable of overcoming,” Alderdice said.
“Slaying these vampires requires vigilance, recognizing their presence and the hold they have over you. Challenge the negative thoughts that creep in and question their validity. Replace them with affirmations of your worth and capabilities. Surround yourself with positivity, seek out those who uplift and support you, and engage in activities that invigorate your spirit.”
The individual graduates by county include:
Benton: Pragya Chauhan of Bentonville
Boone: Zech Cleaver of Harrison, Kayla Long of Harrison
Carroll: Stella Bentley of Eureka Springs
Clark: Michael Schranz of Longmeadow, Mass. (formerly of Arkadelphia)
Cleburne: Eli Miller of Drasco
Cleveland: Ze Hoskins of Rison
Craighead: Soren Breeden of Jonesboro, Maggie Goodwin of Brookland, Chloe Grabert of Jonesboro, Kaira Harper of Jonesboro, Christian Lu of Jonesboro, Linden Mixon of Jonesboro, Gwen Oliver of Oxford, Miss. (formerly of Jonesboro), Dakota Roshto of Jonesboro, Hannah Taylor of Jonesboro
Crittenden: Yared Belete of Marion
Cross: Ciara Stephens of Cherry Valley
Desha: Kaiden Daniels of Duma
Faulkner: Tyler Aiello of Conway, Nasya Choy of Conway, Eli Goodrich of Conway, Marko Hales of Greenbrier, Parker Hance of Conway, Alex Hernandez-Oaxaca of Conway, Syklar Johnson of Conway, Arnav Karekar of Conway, Jezi Lowry of Conway, Quade Martin of Vilonia, Ivy Monroe of Conway, Jayce Morse of Mayflower
Franklin: Quinn Corp of Charleston
Garland: Dang Do of Hot Springs, Jimi Frazier of Hot Springs, Lilly Hardin of Hot Springs, Lyla Hill of Hot Springs, Maddox Porter of Pearcy, Rene Ramirez of Pearcy, Hannah Reagler of Hot Springs, Pixie Rodgers of Hot Springs, Michaela Stevens of Hot Springs, Sasha Thomas of Hot Springs, Helen Van Wagner of Hot Springs
Hot Spring: Ella Campbell of Bismarck, Elizabeth Show of Bismarck
Izard: Evan Saephanh-Carrisalez of Wiseman, Destiny Tate of Melbourne
Jefferson: Anara Johnson of Pine Bluff, Landon Samples of White Hall, Emily Xiong of White Hall
Johnson: Grace Adams of Lamar, Avery Binuya of Lamar, Xander Napier of Lamar
Lawrence: Bryce Snider of Hoxie
Lincoln: Iris Morris of Star City
Little River: Zoie Cleghorn of Winthrop, Mae Whisenhunt of Foreman
Logan: Braccen Flores of Booneville, Annalis Stanford of Paris
Mississippi: Charlotte Lammers of Blytheville, Jameil Modica of Blytheville, Jayden Patel of Blytheville
Ouachita: Anna Jones of Camden
Perry: May Barnett of Perryville, Tre Quaid of Bigelow, Abby Staples of Bigelow
Phillips: Shane Driver of Helena-West Helena, Kate Rose of West Helena
Polk: Tim Palmer of Mena
Pope: Lily Blalock of Pottsville, Melanie Holmes of Atkins, Daniel Lee of Russellville, James Mathis of Russellville, Devin Qualls of Russellville, Anna Grace Wright of Pottsville
Pulaski: Gisselle Ellington of North Little Rock, Kiria Flowers of Little Rock, Ivy Hong of North Little Rock, Carter Horton of North Little Rock, Gabe Johnson of Little Rock, Nhi Le of Little Rock, Kuhno Lee of Little Rock, Michelle Lin of Little Rock, Grace Moody of Little Rock, Andrew Nguyen of Sherwood, Daniel Nkunga of Sherwood, Kaidence Nunley of Jacksonville, Brent Orlina of Little Rock, Savannah Peters of North Little Rock, Samantha Pruitt of North Little Rock, Alex Pyburn of Sherwood, Jack Smith of Jacksonville, Aarohi Sonputri of Little Rock, Cyrus Sorsby of Little Rock, Tori Strawn of North Little Rock, Trent Sutton of Lakeland, Fla. (formerly of Little Rock), Hanna Vantseyeva of Little Rock, Geoff Williams of Jacksonville
Saline: Alex Back of Benton, Gavin Chen of Benton, Remington Frisbee of Benton, Grayson Jackson of Benton, Natyleigh Jenkins of Benton
Sebastian: Andrew Le of Fort Smith
Union: Alex Caldwell of Junction City
Washington: Will Liu of Fayetteville, Melike Senlikci of Fayetteville, Chiking Vang of Lincoln
White: Aubrey McGarrah of Searcy, Shea Stabila of Pangburn, Cody Treat of Rose Bud