In-person campus tours start Aug. 4
FAYETTEVILLE -- In-person tours of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville campus are to resume Aug. 4.
"Our plan for now is to resume outdoor tours in small numbers for prospective students, allowing one family member per student. Those on the tour will not enter any buildings on campus, which also means they will not do a housing tour," Suzanne McCray, UA's vice provost for enrollment, said in an email Wednesday.
The UA campus stopped offering in-person campus tours because of the covid-19 pandemic. Prospective students can register at UA's website for guided virtual tours of campus that allow for live questions.
"The virtual tours have just started so we do not yet have data" on the number of virtual visitors, McCray said.
She said about 300 prospective students have met remotely one-on-one with a recruiter. UA admission counselors have also held virtual events with high schools, with more than 600 students attending those events, McCray said.
When in-person tours resume, "everyone will be wearing masks, and the student and family member will complete a form, indicating that they do not have a fever and that they understand they must wear a mask and be socially distant from others," McCray said.
Staff recruiters, rather than students, will conduct the in-person tours "at least until school starts," McCray said. Fall, full-session classes are scheduled to begin Aug. 24.
Press to publish Idahoan's poetry
FAYETTEVILLE -- Michael McGriff, an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Idaho, has won the 2021 Miller Williams Poetry Prize.
McGriff will receive a $5,000 prize and have his collection, Eternal Sentences, be published by the University of Arkansas Press.
The book "largely deals with my years living and working in rural Oregon," McGriff said in an email. Themes "are largely working class and place specific: manual labor, poverty, industry, and place all haunt the collection," McGriff said.
The 2021 prize marks the last with former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins as editor. The series will now be edited by Patricia Smith, a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in poetry.
McGriff said he was delighted and shocked to receive a phone call from Collins telling him he had won the award.
"I've admired Billy Collins for years for his dedication to public-facing art and his belief that art should be challenging in its telling of the human story but not imperceptibly vague or unnecessarily complicated in its delivery," McGriff said.
McGriff said he's also long been a fan of Arkansas poets Jo McDougall and Frank Stanford. The University of Arkansas Press has published work by both poets.
"It's an absolute honor -- a gift -- to think of my name alongside theirs," McGriff said.