Growing up in Francistown, Botswana, Mandumbwa often yanked away the sheets she felt lacked the artistry she saw from her father, an art educator. Today, the University of Central Arkansas senior flourishes in her craft — so much so that she’s been featured in several exhibitions and is a Windgate Foundation Scholar.

Mandumbwa landed in the U.S. in 2015 to attend college and joined the BT����campus two years later after earning an associate degree in graphic design from the University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College in Little Rock.

The senior painting major focuses on portraiture in her work and experiments with it on materials like plywood, gesso board and Plexiglas.

“I’ve always been interested in human stories and human connection,” she said. “There’s a specific word that we have called ubuntu, and it roughly translates to, ‘I am because you are.’ It’s a humanist principle that suggests that what makes us most human is our ability to empathize and connect with other people.”

In her first semester as a Bear, Mandumbwa was nominated for, and received, a scholarship from the Windgate Foundation, which funds educational programs and scholarships relating to craft and visual arts.

“Having something like the Windgate scholarship to lean back on means that I can make my education my No. 1 priority and really make performing well in all of my classes my No. 1 priority as well,” said Mandumbwa, whose work has been seen in exhibitions at the Hearne Fine Art Gallery in Little Rock and East Arkansas Community College in Forrest City.

With the establishment of UCA’s Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts on the horizon — thanks to a $20 million gift from the Windgate Foundation — artists on campus will be able to have better cross-disciplinary collaboration, she said.

“I’ve been on this campus for a little while, and there’s some incredibly talented students who work incredibly hard,” she said. “It’s so wonderful and heartwarming to see that the university is making concerted efforts to show that not only do they see the efforts being made by students, but it is worth an investment. I think it’ll be really exciting.”

After graduation, and ideally after earning a Master of Fine Arts in painting, Mandumbwa hopes to pursue an art practice or graphic design.

As for how her sketchbooks pages are holding up today? “They’re all there,” she said.

Lloyd graduated with a bachelor’s in business and minor in finance, giving the Hot Springs native a skill set so well rounded that he was able to serve Acxiom in a number of roles for 30 years prior to joining BT����as interim chief information officer — and eventually being named vice president and CIO.

As CIO, Lloyd oversees the university’s IT services, which include networking, directory and information security services, among others. His first order of business on the job, though, was transforming the department’s culture into a more proactive, engaging force on campus, he said.

“A good part of my time as CIO is spent out on campus working with our stakeholders, really trying to understand their needs, priorities, so that I can come back and try to help direct the key projects and initiatives my team works on,” Lloyd said.

Those projects include the new housing portal, StarRez, that opened to all students this February. The department is leading a learning management system review to evaluate UCA’s use of Blackboard against other online systems that serve as a resource for storing and tracking course material and assignments. It is also collaborating with the accessibility team to upgrade closed captioning software.

Also on the list is the Information Technology Refresh, an estimated $7,700,000 project that will replace and update the fiber that connects the network across campus. This refresh will allow for faster wireless speeds; plus, out-of-date fiber prevents the university from utilizing more modern technology, Lloyd said.

Whether it’s through working with campus departments on new software or learning about the needs of other divisions, Lloyd said his time on campus has proven the BT����community is full of passionate people committed to one common goal: student success.

“Everything we do drives back to making students successful. Even into IT, we’re big enablers of that,” he said.

“It was such a great experience. After that summer, I think I wanted to change and become a scientist because it was such a great experience,” Marshall said.

Marshall worked primarily with Patrick Desrochers, chair of the Department of Chemistry. The research focused on inorganic chemistry, specifically synthesizing nickel-containing compounds. Marshall said the compounds had several potential applications.

“When you think of fuel cells and these new technologies that will replace fossil fuels, these sort of compounds can, maybe, play a role in the larger discussion,” she said.

Marshall began considering the public benefits of the research and the technical knowledge that would be involved in policymaking. Being a part of these larger discussions was the impetus for her career change.
“Those are really questions that a policymaker is in charge of answering,” she said.

Rather than pursue her plan of becoming a pharmacist after graduation, Marshall enrolled in graduate school to further her research interests. She was accepted to the Georgia Institute of Technology where she earned a doctorate in chemistry in 2014. While there, she also earned a certificate in public policy in 2013.

From Georgia Tech, she received an Arthur H. Guenther Congressional Fellowship in Washington, D.C., which led to her current position as senior domestic policy adviser in the office of U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. In this role, she oversees energy, environment and science issues.

She believes her prior research at BT����helps her in understanding not only scientific policy but also the need for funding.

“Had it not been for my undergraduate research experience, I wouldn’t be as familiar with some of the programs with the National Science Foundation, for example, that are critical to funding undergraduate research programs,” Marshall said.

A professor of interdisciplinary studies in the Norbert O. Schedler Honors College and scholar of religion — she’s got her bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. in the field — Bowman has picked up a curiosity in various subjects over the years.

For one, she’s a critic of television and film, a gig that began when she was an undergraduate staff member of Wake Forest University’s campus newspaper. Today, she pens critiques for digital magazine Think Christian and has also analyzed AMC hit shows “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad” for entertainment site The A.V. Club.

“They’ve been kind of enough to give me a lot of television, film and book criticism work over the years,” said Bowman, who joined the University of Central Arkansas in 1999 as the first faculty member hired solely for the Honors College.

She also picked up knitting and crocheting in 2007, which has impacted her research. In 2015, she released her book “Prayer Shawl Ministries and Women’s Theological Imagination,” which analyzes the impact prayer-shawl making has on the women who create them.

Bowman found her current research path after crafting a few of the pink cat-eared pussy hats worn during the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. While she knew stories would be told about the marchers, she found it important to also tell the stories of the crafters just like she did for prayer shawl creators.

“I realized very shortly before that march happened that I was in a good position—being a knitter and having written this book about talking to people about the meaning they find in their craftwork—to talk to the people who made the pussy hats, about the meaning they found and why they did it, and what they thought of the outcome and their experiences with that,” said Bowman, who encourages students to craft, color, draw or be “materially productive” in some way during class discussions.

While Bowman has enjoyed instructing at UCA, she’s also enjoyed what she’s learned along the way.

“I would be a perpetual student if I could,” she said.