Twenty-four Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students earned recognition at the 2025 District IV Spring Conference competition, and a record number of 36 students will be eligible to compete at the state competition.

The District IV conference was held Feb. 5 at the University of Arkansas Community College at Hope/Texarkana in Hope. The students participated in competitive events that were either an objective subject test, performance or presentation, or a combination of an objective test and a performance component.

Students who placed in the top six in objective test competitions or top five in a performance or presentation event at the district qualified to compete in the state competition, which will be held April 7-8 in Little Rock. In addition to the 24 students who qualified at the district competition, 12 students also are set to compete in the state competition in categories that are only held at the state conference.

Students who earned recognition at the District IV competition and are eligible to compete at the state competition include:

Twenty-two Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts students earned recognition in the 2025 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards regional competitions.

Micaela Collver, Priya James, Lola Tate, Andy Kneebone and Preston Lowe each earned Gold Keys and advanced to the national competition for their writing and art awards. National key winners will be announced in March. Four students earned Silver Keys for their submissions.

The Scholastic Art and Writing Awards is sponsored by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. It is among the nation’s most prestigious program for creative teens. Previous award-winners during the competition’s history include Andy Warhol, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Tschabalala Self and others.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts recognized winners of the 2025 West Central Regional Science Fair during an awards ceremony on Feb. 28.

The team of senior Kolten Shook of North Little Rock and Lukas Bowler of Hot Springs won first place overall for their project in the Animal Science category. Senior Carmella Lewis of Alma won second place for her Cellular and Molecular Biology project. Senior Avagail Christine Dunning of Clarksville won third for her project in the Microbiology category.

The three overall winners were awarded a trip to participate in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, which will be held May 10-16 in Columbus, Ohio. The event is the world’s largest pre-college STEM competition. Students from around the world are expected to compete for awards, prizes and scholarships.

Individual awards were also announced in various categories. The top three projects and some high-placing honorable mentions in each category earned entry into the Arkansas State Science and Engineering Fair that will be held at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway on April 4-5.

The 97th Academy Awards will have an ASMSA connection at this year’s ceremony. A film produced by Class of 2009 alumna Tara Sheffer is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film.

Sheffer is the producer of “A Lien,” a short film about a family that finds itself in a dire situation that develops when a couple along with their daughter arrives at a federal immigration office for an American woman’s husband to begin the interview process to obtain a green card. The film is directed by brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz.

Sheffer has served as producer for 29 short films and written and directed four other films. Films she has been associated have been nominated for awards or selected to appear in the SXSW, Clermont Ferrand, New Orleans Film Festival, Rhode Island International Flickers Film Festival and NYU Tisch King festivals and competitions. Sheffer served as a line producer for the 2020 film “The Letter Room,” which was also nominated for an Academy Award.

She began seriously thinking about filmmaking in a documentary film class taught by James Katowich, a Humanities Instructor of Excellence at ASMSA. Her family was also in the filmmaking business. She later took classes at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., and then earned a master’s in fine arts from the New York University School of the Arts.

The Oscars will be shown live beginning at 6 p.m. Central time on Sunday, March 2, on ABC and streaming on Hulu.

Four students at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts have been named National Merit Scholarship Finalists.

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. recently announced the names of Finalists in the 70^th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The students, all members of the Class of 2025, will have an opportunity to continue in the competition for 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million.

The ASMSA seniors named Finalists are:

• Eva Cummings of Fayetteville;
• Evan Fowlkes of Mountain View;
• Madeline Liachenko of Benton; and
• Kalyn You of Everton.

To be considered for the National Merit Scholarship Program, students take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as a junior. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments and potential for success in rigorous college studies. The National Merit Scholarship Corp. is a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance. It was established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced in batches beginning in late Spring 2025 and early summer 2025.

Public viewing for the West Central Regional Science Fair at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts will be held from 9 to 11 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 28. The event will be held in the Creativity and Innovation on the ASMSA campus, which is located at 200 Whittington Ave. in Hot Springs. The event is free and open to the public. It will feature research conducted by ASMSA students. An awards ceremony will be held at 2 p.m. that afternoon in the CIC. The top overall winners will earn a trip to the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair that will be held May 10-16 in Columbus, Ohio.

The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts is accepting applications for 2025 Summer@ASMSA camps.

Summer@ASMSA is free, one-week summer camps for current eighth- and ninth-grade students in all Arkansas schools as well as seventh-graders participating in ASMSA-TIP.  All camp activities — including tuition, housing, meals and class supplies — are free. The camps will be held on ASMSA’s campus in Hot Springs on Sunday, June 8, through Friday, June 13.

Students may apply to participate in one of six different camps that will provide a fun and challenging atmosphere. The camps include:

• Arkansas Goes Global: World Languages & Cultures (Sponsored by AEGIS): Campers will explore the rich connections between global languages and Arkansas’ own cultural and economic landscape. Through a focus on Spanish, French, Japanese, and Marshallese, campers will discover how each language leaves its mark on the state’s history, community and industries.
• Chamber Music (Sponsored by AEGIS): Campers will expand their instrumental musical experience through ensemble performances, receive personalized instruction from experienced educators, and attend workshops on topics such as music theory and history.
• Computer Science: Campers will learn the basics of physical computing, participate in a variety of coding activities, and try their hand at both solo and cooperative game design.
• Environmental Science and Biotechnology (Sponsored by AEGIS): Campers will conduct fieldwork, find a crystal at a quartz mine in the Ouachita Mountains and learn how to evaluate the health of our ecosystems in Hot Springs National Park with immersive experiences. Preference will be given to ninth-graders.
• Engineering Camp (Sponsored by xCelle Americas): Campers will learn about all types of engineering, from nuclear to electrical, in this hands-on camp. In the lab, campers will have the chance to learn how to work with soldering and circuits, graphing calculators and other tools of the trade.
• Ignite Camp: Campers will explore the physical and life sciences, digital and studio arts, literature and more through engaging activities led by ASMSA faculty and community partners. Preference will be given to seventh-graders.

Housing and meals will be provided in ASMSA’s Student Center, where nightly fun activities will be planned by members of the school’s Residential Life staff.

To apply for Summer@ASMSA, visit https://asmsa.me/summer25. For more information, email outreach@asmsa.org, call (501) 622-5116 or visit www.asmsa.org/outreach/summer-at-asmsa.

Kelvin Orduna, a senior from Huntsville at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, has been selected as a Coca-Cola Scholars-Select.

The Coca-Cola Scholars Program is sponsored by the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, a joint effort by The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola bottlers across the country to create the largest corporate-sponsored, achievement-based scholarship program in the United States, according to a release announcing the 2025 recipients. This is the 37^th year of program.

This year’s program recognized 150 high school seniors nationwide who each will receive a $20,000 college scholarship. This year’s recipients were selected from a pool of more than 105,000 applications. Coca-Cola Scholars-Select will attend a Coca-Cola Scholars Weekend in Atlanta in early April where they will participate in the Coca-Cola Scholars Leadership Development Institute.

“Being selected as a Coca-Cola Scholar is an incredible recognition of the service I have done to create positive change in my community,” Orduna said. “I am excited to join a network or leaders and visionaries who are just as committed to transformative change in their communities.

“The Coke Scholars Program is much more than a scholarship — it’s a lifelong membership in a community of trailblazers. I’m eager to learn from diverse experiences and perspectives of my fellow scholars, who are spearheading advancements in research, policy, advocacy and entrepreneurship.”

Orduna said he felt a mix of excitement and nervousness when he received an email from the Coca-Cola Scholar Foundation with an update.

“It took a moment for the ‘You are a 2025 Coca-Cola Scholar!’ message to sink in, but all I said was, ‘I just won $20,000.’ Out of 105,000 applicants, only 0.14 percent were chosen, and to be chosen from Arkansas was a reminder of the incredible talent that exists within our state,” Orduna said.

Four Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts students were selected as winners in the 2024/2025 Thea Foundation Scholarship Competition.

Seniors Olivia Busby of Heber Springs, Hannah Dalencourt-King of Poplar Grove, AB Maness of Benton and Jaime Hernandez Perez of Decatur were awarded $3,000 scholarships for their entries in the competition.

Jaime Hernandez Perez

More than 300 students from across Arkansas entered the competition for a chance at part of $219,000 in scholarships, according to the foundation’s website. Thirty-six students in five different categories were awarded scholarships. ASMSA’s students were recognized in the Visual Arts category with Dalencourt-King placing seventh, Busby placing eighth, Maness taking ninth-place and Hernandez Perez placing 10^th. The students’ artwork as well as a full list of scholarship winners may be found on its website.

Other categories in which awards were announced included Performing Arts, Creative Writing, Film and Fashion. The annual competitions are for Arkansas graduating high school seniors. The organization’s first scholarship was awarded in 2002. The program is now endowed and has awarded more than $2.8 million in scholarships to Arkansas students, according to its website.