The three honorees at the awards luncheon May 15 that the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Alumni Association put on surely represent the recent, near-past and way-back achievements of the city's only public four-year university.
Saad Azam ('15) has accumulated his recent work experience at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. In his first stint, he worked on solid-state electrochemistry and chemical physics. When he returned, he put that experience to play developing rechargeable aqueous metal hydride-air batteries. He goes back for a third internship this summer.
Azam is this year's Edward L. Whitbeck Memorial Award winner.
Martha Stephenson graduated with dual degrees in 1972, and then, with two children on her hips, managed a juris doctorate in 1978 from what is today the W.H. Bowen School of Law. Stephenson recently led a fundraising effort to mark the Chi Omega sorority's 50th anniversary on campus; the $28,000 helped carve a courtyard with benches and green space out of the campus footprint near the library.
A dedication is scheduled for May 31.
Stephenson is this year's Presidents Award winner.
Pamela Culpepper is the Distinguished Alumna. She is chief people officer for Golin in Chicago. She graduated in 1988 with a degree in psychology. She worked full time while going to school, "and that shaped my work ethic and my drive. I've taken some risky assignments in my career, where the probability of failing was equal to the probability of success. That shaped my resilience and my relationship to fear."
-- Photos and story by Bobby Ampezzan
High Profile on 05/24/2015