ASU names interim
enrollment officer
Thilla Sivakumaran will be Arkansas State University's interim vice chancellor for enrollment management, the university announced last week.
Sivakumaran is already the university's vice chancellor for global engagement and outreach, recruiting international students and online degree-seeking students.
Bryan Terry, who has been the vice chancellor for enrollment since January 2019, will resign at the end of 2020.
According to a university announcement earlier this month, Terry will begin "pursuing other consulting opportunities."
A search for his permanent replacement is to begin early next year.
Panel to seek dean
for Clinton School
A 10-member committee will search for the next dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service.
The committee will begin work in early 2021, UA System President Donald Bobbitt said in a news release announcing the selection of committee members.
In September, Dean Skip Rutherford announced his plan to retire at the end of the fiscal year. Rutherford has been dean since 2006. His base salary this year is $189,000.
The Clinton School, founded in 2004, offers a two-year master's degree program in public service. Students can attend on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock or online. More than 100 students are enrolled.
The search team, announced last week, consists of two Clinton School faculty members (Chul Hyun Park and Al Bavon) and one student (Connor Thompson); Clinton School alumnus and staff member Kent Broughton; Clinton Foundation President Ann Kamps and Clinton Foundation board member Bruce Lindsey; faculty members from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (Angie Maxwell) and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (Johanna Miller Lewis); University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Provost Stephanie Gardner; and UA System trustee Morril Harriman.
ASU experiment
chosen by NASA
NASA has selected a project from a team of Arkansas State University students to be carried out on the International Space Station in 2022, the university announced last week.
The project is one of five university-student team projects selected by NASA for use on the station. It's part of the Student Payload Opportunity with Citizen Science program. The selection comes with a $20,000 grant.
The team proposed "Microgravity Environment Impact on Plastic Biodegradation by Galleria mellonella." It studies wax worms' ability to degrade plastic in space. The study's results could "provide the answers for a more sustainable environment on earth and future, long-term space travel," the university news release states. The worms can degrade plastics on Earth, but whether they can do so in space is unclear.
The team, called the A-State Science Support System, will build a container for the experiment on the space station and will help a team of Nettleton STEAM School students, in third through sixth grades, conduct a comparative study on Earth.