ASMSA names new foundation director
The Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts has named Marta Collier-Youngblood as its new executive director of the ASMSA Foundation.
She succeeded Vicki Hinz, the former director of institutional advancement who retired at the end of June, ending her tenure with the largest year of fundraising in the school’s history with more than $630,000 in gifts.
According to a news release, Collier-Youngblood joins ASMSA after serving as a corporate and foundation relations officer for the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, Texas. She also served as education director of the National Science Foundation EPSCorProject at the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority from 2011-15, while she served as the Authority’s liaison to ASMSA’s board of visitors.
During that time, Collier-Youngblood
became familiar with ASMSA’s mission and said she wanted to work for the school from the first time she attended a board of visitor’s meeting.
As executive director, she will be responsible for operating the school’s foundation, fundraising for the school and developing a robust relationship with alumni.
“I have learned that the perspective of ASMSA with Garland County residents has improved significantly from past years,” she said in the release. “They light up when talking about the campus. I sense this real sense of pride that I hadn’t experienced in this volume before,”
ASMSA’s Creativity and Innovation Complex, the first new academic building to be constructed on campus, is nearing completion. Collier-Youngblood said part of her fundraising efforts will allow the school to continue to expand and develop.
“I want to help direct resources to campus,” she said. “It’s very exciting to see the CIC nearing completion. It’s evidence of a lot of hard work. But we certainly have the opportunity to enhance the physical presence of the campus. We need to think about what this campus looks like as people turn from Bathhouse Row to see our school.”
Collier-Youngblood is planning four regional alumni meetings over the next six months to provide an opportunity for alumni to reconnect with the school.
“We are unique in the state that our alumni are very young when you think about it,” she said. “Many of them are just tipping over 40. Some may now be sending kids to college or they are still paying back college loans. We can’t be like everyone else.”