Ian Taylor

04/19/2024

UAFS Men's Basketball head coach Zane Gibson rang in the start of his second recruiting class with Garrett Scott, a 6'3" point guard and multi-sport athlete out of Pocola Schools - Pocola, OK

You can read more about Gibson's solid start to year two and how Garrett chose to be a Lion:

Zane Gibson, the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith men's head basketball coach, kicked off his second season and recruitment with a local player. Garrett Scott, a point guard from Pocola High School, recently signed his National Letter of Intent to play for UAFS and Gibson.

08/23/2023

Welcome Week continues with a Staff vs Student kick ball game! After a quick first inning, the students have taken a 2-0 lead heading into the third.

08/12/2023

Excited to share another way the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith is reducing barriers for students! A Lactation Pod is available at the UAFS Little Lions Child Development Center - becoming the first of its kind not only in Fort Smith but the first at any educational institution in Arkansas! The free service will help breastfeeding moms at UAFS, students, faculty, and staff, have a clean, well-lit, and secure space for them and their child.

Check it out! 🔗 https://uafs.edu/news/2023-lactation-pod.php

08/02/2023

Mark your calendars for these games to check out the new look Lions! 🏀🦁

FORT SMITH, Ark. - University of Arkansas - Fort Smith Men's Basketball has announced its 2023-24 schedule, the first for head coach Zane Gibson and the final year in the Lone Star Conference for the Lions.

07/20/2023

New students to UAFS, make sure you are there tomorrow! If you can’t make it, the last Mane Event is Friday, July 28

Our next Mane Event new student orientation is tomorrow, July 21, and we couldn’t be more excited!

We’ll see you new students bright and early at the Stubblefield Center to learn all about UAFS.

Nervous about the day? Read perspectives from three students who attended our June Mane Event here: https://uafs.edu/news/2023-mane-event-qanda.php

We promise you’ll have a blast!

07/14/2023

📢 Calling all UAFS alumni! Tell us what you’ve been up to since graduating whether it was from UAFS, Westark, or Fort Smith Junior College and maybe be featured in the next Bell Tower Magazine!

Let us know what you've been doing since your time at UAFS, Westark, or Fort Smith Junior College by sending a class note for publication in The Bell Tower magazine and our electronic newsletter, Lion Lines. Tell us about your...

job, new degree, family, adventures, new business or new business venture,
or whatever you want to share! We love to get photos too, and we'll happily share them in the magazine and newsletter.

Be sure to include your name, when you attended, and your graduation year or the dates you attended.

Click the link to send us a note-https://uafs.edu/giving/advancement/alumni/class-notes.php

07/13/2023

From 🦁 to 🐯, University of Arkansas - Fort Smith alum Bryce Neal was recently named as an assistant coach for the program - a move he says never would have happened if it wasn’t for the support of UAFS.

Read Coach Neal's story 🔗: https://uafs.edu/news/2023-bryce-neal.php

07/12/2023

Let’s go!

RICHARDSON, Texas – The Lone Star Conference announced its Scholar-Athlete Award winners Tuesday, with 32 student-athletes recognized by league officials.

06/30/2023

The Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center is a great place to learn about local history and culture! Plus a UAFS alum is now in charge and eager to leave her mark! Support UAFS alumni and learn something new!

Staying in town this Fourth of July? Or looking for fun weekend activities? Support UAFS alumni and learn more about our region's history at the same time! Visit UAFS alum Anna Vincent, historical facility manager at the Spiro Mounds Archaeological Center 📍

Check out how UAFS helped her land her dream job!
🔗: https://uafs.edu/news/2023-spiro-mounds.php

06/30/2023

Meet Jordan Ruud! At the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith Boreham Library students, faculty, and staff have access to many collections he has personally helped bring to campus. Outside of work, he is the president of the River Valley Equality Center

Hey Lions! We wrap up June with our spotlight on Jordan Ruud, a collection development librarian at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith Boreham Library. Thanks to his work, students, faculty and staff can all benefit from the wide variety of books, magazines, journals, electronic content, movies, and games. Plus, he is the president of the River Valley Equality Center!

As Ruud began to sort out his future as a librarian, he earned his first master’s degree in English from the University of Tulsa in 2009 before moving to Illinois. He earned his second master’s degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Library and Information Science in 2012. Having familiarity with the area from his time in Tulsa, Ruud applied at UAFS, clicking with the “vibes of this being a place that truly wants to help students succeed.”

In July, Ruud will celebrate 11 years with the university.

During Ruud’s time at UAFS, he has witnessed many changes to the Boreham Library – even being behind some of those changes. Most of which come by way of which collections he has brought to UAFS.

“This fiscal year, we picked up a huge JSTOR package; that’s a huge deal,” he said. “It’s a permanent acquisition, so that’s good. It’s one of the gems in our collection at this point.”

To put into context the significance of this, JSTOR is a digital library with access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images, and sources, all at the fingertips of UAFS researchers. The expansion brought 3,000 titles and 15 journal collections to UAFS.

Ruud was also behind starting a DVD and games collection. “We’re trying to keep up with what people want, and we try to make our collections relevant and get stuff that people will check out.”

He believes the educational and leisure value “hit all fronts with (the) collections” he’s helped curate at UAFS. Outside of work, Ruud lives his life the same way, with academic and leisure activities.

The self-proclaimed bookworm starts every day by reading a few pages from each book in his stack ranging from a Joyce Carol Oates novel, a book about art, to a philosophy book. But his favorite is a volume of seven books by Marcel Proust titled “In Search of Lost Time” – detailing the author’s life and society.

When he isn’t learning from the pages of his books, Ruud loves watching movies. In fact, he goes to the theater once a week. He is excited to talk to other movie buffs about the upcoming films “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” And his love of movies has transformed into a podcast with other UAFS faculty.

Ruud, along with Drs. Nicki Stancil and Bret Bowers work on "The Midnight Symposium," “where (they) critically analyze and sometimes screen horror movies.” No episodes are currently live, but he says the team has several recorded and is excited to share their podcast soon.

But his busy life doesn’t stop there.

Ruud is the president of the River Valley Equality Center, a nonprofit working toward LGBTQ equality. Plus, he is editing a book about censoring LGBTQ materials in programming and libraries.

“It’s really important work,” Ruud said. “If I can play my part in combating censorship, that will have been one of my proudest accomplishments.”

Whether it’s his passion for helping others, sharing his love of literature and film, or standing up for what he believes in, Ruud’s door to Boreham Library office 121 is open to making a difference in someone’s day.

Read more about Jordan here: https://uafs.edu/news/2023-fv-jordan-ruud.php

06/29/2023

Celebrating more than four decades at UAFS 🥳Pam Fout is such a joy to talk to and a pillar of the university!

We're halfway through the week Lions, and to celebrate let's meet today's - Pam Fout. She recently celebrated 43 years of service at UAFS, all with IT. Fout and her team are behind what keeps programs running!

“Once I started classes, I knew it was something that I was going to enjoy,” Fout beamed. “I always like to solve puzzles, and to me, that’s what programming is. You’ve got a problem that you’re trying to solve, so it’s just like a puzzle; you just figure out how the pieces fit together.”

From 1976 to 1978, she continued putting the pieces together for her educational puzzle. She graduated from Westark with an Associate of Applied Sciences degree – becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree. After a brief stint at Rheem, Fout returned to Westark in April of 1980 and has been here ever since.

“It just speaks to how good a place it is to work,” she said. “Pretty much anybody that knows me knows how long I’ve been here, and they know that I wouldn’t have stayed if I hadn’t liked it.”

During her four decades at UAFS, Fout has participated in two software conversions, now on the third with Workday. She remembers starting at UAFS using keypunch cards to program instructions on computers and witnessing the college become a four-year university – which she took advantage of by earning her bachelor’s degree in IT in 2004.

As she approaches retirement, Fout has turned to genealogy, a pastime she enjoys that helps her put the pieces of her family and past together. One of her most significant accomplishments was tracing her mom’s family back five generations despite the common maiden name of Smith.

She hopes to take some time to travel to the Midwest to visit where her family called home over the generations. But with a chuckle, she says it won’t be until the Workday conversion is complete.

Since 1976, UAFS has been a piece of Fout’s puzzle, and Fout a piece of the UAFS puzzle for nearly as long. She will continue to serve the workplace she loves, and when she retires, it will be with a “sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something that’s going to help somebody else on campus.”

Be sure to read her story here: https://uafs.edu/news/2023-sv-pam-fout.php

06/26/2023

Huge news for UAFS Lions Athletics! 🦁

🚨BREAKING🚨

UAFS has accepted an invitation to join the MIAA with full membership in 2024-25!

🔗: https://tinyurl.com/33p9ujby