Future Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students will have the opportunity to “make a dent in the universe” thanks to a $50,000 gift from the Dan Fredinburg Foundation.
Members of Fredinburg’s family announced the gift during the ASMSA Community of Learning Luncheon held April 1 at the Arlington Resort Hotel and Spa. The gift will support the Creativity and Innovation Complex, a new educational facility to be built on campus with an August 2018 target date for completion.
The new facility will provide spaces that allow ASMSA to embrace its fine and digital arts mission, facilitate advanced opportunities in computer science, cultivate entrepreneurial and “maker” skills among students, and provide community and common spaces for students that will promote academic success.
Fredinburg, a 1999 alumnus of ASMSA, grew up on a small farm in Norfork in Baxter County. At that time, the town in north central Arkansas had a population of just more than 500 residents. Upon graduating from ASMSA, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine, a master’s degree in intelligent robotics from the University of Southern California and participated in graduate programs at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley.
As an adult, he would become a world traveler — climbing Mount Everest as well as several other of the world’s highest peaks — and seeking ways to improve living conditions and climate issues around the world. He also became an executive at one of the world’s largest technology companies — Google.
While on a climb of Everest, Fredinburg died during an avalanche triggered by a magnitude-7.8 earthquake in Nepal on April 25, 2015.
He was the head of privacy at Google X at the time of his death. Google X is a research and development facility created by the well-known technology corporation Google. Among the projects developed by Google X are a self-driving car and Google Glass. Fredinburg invented and patented more than 15 software technologies and still has eight more patents currently pending approval.
Fredinburg also founded the Google Adventure Team to capture images for Google Street View from his climbs of the world’s highest summits and other trips around the world. He topped four of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the seven continents — Everest, Mount Elbrus in Europe, Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and Aconcagua in South America.
Tricia Curreri and Megan Ezell, Fredinburg’s sisters, announced the foundation’s gift during the luncheon. Curreri said the gift will support the Creativity and Innovation Complex, including a lab to be named in her brother’s honor — the Dan Fredinburg Innovation Lab.
“We believe this donation offers a far-reaching investment in the future of the state of Arkansas with the potential for global impact,” Curreri said.
She said that ASMSA played a large role in Fredinburg’s future success.
“We attribute his many achievements to the challenging curriculum he had here at ASMSA. It is without a doubt the springboard and foundation of his career,” she said.
Curreri encouraged those in attendance to support ASMSA.
“Your support today will ensure the current generation of ASMAS students enjoy even greater opportunities to make a noticeable change in the world,” she said. “I hope that you are inspired by both Dan’s story and those of the ASMSA students you have met today. Let that inspiration carry forward with your own show of support and ensure ASMSA remains a global leader in innovation.
“Our hope for you is that you chase your wildest dreams and as Dan says, ‘Make a dent in the universe.’”
ASMSA Director Corey Alderdice expressed the school’s appreciation for the gift.
“Families place a tremendous level of trust and support in ASMSA when students choose to attend the school,” he said. “To recognize that transformational nature of this experience nearly two decades later and to want to ensure hundreds of other Arkansas students have that same opportunity is truly remarkable.”
Nirdhar Khazanie, one of Fredinburg’s coworkers at Google and a close friend, served as the keynote speaker for the luncheon. Khazanie is a product manager at Google.
Khazanie approached his presentation thinking about the topics that Fredinburg would have found interesting and important to speak about, including transportation, education and more female engineers.
He encouraged those in attendance to be proactive in their education. “Go to different places online. Try to learn one new thing a week. Just watch a video. Take time while sitting on your couch and learn,” he said.
Khazanie said more women need to be in positions of power in Silicon Valley. He said it is a traditional problem in sciences, particularly computer science. “We need to encourage more females to learn how to code,” he said, adding that the encouragement needs to begin early in a child’s education, such as elementary school.
He said Fredinburg always strived to make sure individuals had the ability to move forward. “Strive for moonshot ideas,” Khazanie said. “If you’re going to do anything, do it and do it big. Put a dent in the universe if you’re going to do it.”
The luncheon also featured remarks by Dr. Johnnie Roebuck of Arkadelphia, a longtime educator, former state representative and member of the founding Board of Trustees of the school.
Roebuck spoke about the time and effort of those early Board of Trustees members that helped make ASMSA a success. Without their work, the school we know today wouldn’t exist, she said.
She encouraged those in attendance to support ASMSA, the Creativity and Innovation Complex project and the school’s students and faculty.
“Use the momentum of the Fredinburg Foundation’s gift and the excitement for this project to ensure ASMSA students have access to spaces, equipment and technologies that promote a standard of learning second to none,” she said.
To view a photo album from the luncheon, visit http://asmsa.me/2016collphotos.