ASMSA grads carry out state’s vision
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 13th and last in a series of articles spotlighting alumni of local high schools, colleges and universities as they prepare for this month’s commencement ceremonies.
Alumni of the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences and the Arts have become leaders in their fields across the world and worked to fulfill the goals of the school to cultivate top students from throughout the state.
The school will hold its 2017 commencement ceremony today at 2 p.m. in Horner Hall at the Hot Springs Convention Center. The class of 2017 is comprised of 107 students from 38 counties.
Hayward Battle, the chair of the ASMSA Board of Visitors, will serve as the commencement speaker. Donald Bobbitt, president of the University of Arkansas System, will also address graduates during the ceremony. Seniors Lauren Capes, of Booneville, and Jason Ly, of Jonesboro, will address their classmates.
July 1 will mark the 25th anniversary of Hot Springs being named as the host city for ASMSA. The charter class, which included Kyle Cranmer from Little Rock, began classes at ASMSA on Aug. 23, 1993.
“It was the single most transformative event in my educational trajectory and is directly connected to what has led to a fulfilling professional career in science,” Cranmer said.
Cranmer is a physicist and an associate professor at New York University. He was a member of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, team at the Large Hadron Collider beneath the France–Switzerland border near Geneva to confirm the existence of the Higgs boson, known as the God particle, in 2012.
The confirmation of the Higgs boson’s existence in 2013 led to a shared Nobel Prize in Physics for Francois Englert, from Belgium, and Peter Higgs, from the United Kingdom, who originally theorized about the particle’s existence.
Cranmer was on-site this week continuing his research at CERN. He said he most enjoyed the sense of adventure of
his experience at ASMSA.
“The first year at ASMSA felt a bit like being stranded on a desert island with a bunch of motivated and highly talented passengers,” Cranmer said. “There was nothing there at first, and we had to build it.
“We had to organize, set goals, learn from each other and execute. The quality of our lives directly depended on it. We organized student government and clubs, we converted a parking lot into a soccer field, we rearranged the class schedule and we formed a larger, extended family.”
The charter class of ASMSA graduated in 1995. Cranmer went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Physics and Mathematics from Rice University in Houston in 1999. He completed his master’s in 2002 and a doctorate in 2005, both from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
ASMSA will continue to be affected by the life and death of 1999 alum Dan Fredinburg for decades to come. The first floor of the planned Creativity and Innovation Complex will be named the Dan Fredinburg Technology Center and will house the “Dan Lab,” an innovation lab with a MakerSpace and space for computer science.
Fredinburg died April 25, 2015, in an avalanche at base camp of Mount Everest. The avalanche was caused by a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that caused the deaths of almost 9,000 people in Nepal and injured another 22,000. It was the first known death at the Mount Everest base camp caused by an avalanche.
His sisters, Tricia Curreri and Megan Ezell, announced a $50,000 donation from the Dan Fredinburg Foundation at ASMSA’s annual Community of Learning Luncheon in 2016 at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa. His father, Paul Fredinburg, said he and his wife provided a donation of $25,000 during the online Arkansas Gives campaign on April 6 for the naming rights of the innovation lab.
Fredinburg earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine, in 2004 and was hired by Boeing. He later earned a Master of Science in Computer Science with Specialization in Intelligent Robotics from the University of Southern California while he continued to work for Boeing.
He joined Google in 2007 and founded the Google Adventure Team to capture images from his climbs of the world’s highest summits. Fredinburg later became head of privacy for Google X, the company’s research and development facility.
Daniel Lincoln, a member of the class of 1998, competed in the steeplechase event at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. He broke a 21-year-old American 3,000-meter steeplechase record two years later.
Lincoln was a 14-time All-American for the prestigious track and field program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he won seven Southeastern Conference titles. He continued to run professionally while he attended medical school. He is now an internist with Tuality Healthcare, a partner with the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
The Arkansas General Assembly approved plans for ASMSA in 1991 to facilitate success for the state’s high-achieving high school students with interest in advanced careers in science technology, engineering and mathematics. The school’s arts mission was not added until more than a decade later, but some early graduates forged their own paths in the arts.
A pair of 2002 graduates, Yehua Yang and Evelyn Frison, started their own fashion company, Pivotte, “a line of low maintenance clothing for high-performing women,” in 2015 in New York City. Yang serves as the lead designer for all of their pieces and oversees their production. Frison is the company’s brand director and still works as director of marketing for the New Republic magazine.
Yang attended Washington University in St. Louis to follow a pre-medicine track, but instead earned a degree in fine arts. She went on to work for G-III Apparel Group’s international division based in China.
Frison earned a degree in journalism from the University of Colorado in Boulder before she studied at the School of Visual Arts college in Manhattan. They started a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in February 2015 with a goal of $30,000 and received more than $45,000 two months later to launch their company.
Erin Enderlin, a 2000 graduate, is a songwriter in Nashville, Tenn., and has performed at the Grand Ole Opry. She graduated with honors from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro with a degree in recording industry and a minor in mass communication and entrepreneurship.
Alan Jackson’s hit, “Monday Morning Church,” reached No. 5 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles and Tracks list the same year. She co-wrote the song with Brent Baxter.
Enderlin also co-wrote “Last Call,” which put Lee Ann Womack in the Top 20 of the Billboard Country Chart in
2008, and toured with Willie Nelson in 2011. She released an album produced by country music star Jamey Johnson and first performed at the Opry in
2014. Other artists to perform Enderlin’s songs include Randy Travis, Terri Clark, Luke Bryan and Joey + Rory.
Rachel Hale, a member of the class of 2009, was a Top 20 female finalist on Season 12 of “American Idol.” She majored in Songwriting at Belmont University in Nashville and continues to tour and release new music.
“I miss having so many talented and interested people in my life,” said Ben Bell, a 2000 graduate. “I learned so much from the teachers, of course, but also the other students. And we just had a great time together.”
Bell gained experience in the sake industry during an apprenticeship with the Nanbu Bijin Brewery in Ninohe, Japan.
“For the sake business, I have to use just about every skill I’ve built up over the years — language skills, history and culture, writing, chemistry, biology, environmental studies, math,” Bell said. “All of it goes in to what I’m currently working on and I often have to think back to what I learned at ASMSA.”
Bell said he plans to open a sake brewery in Hot Springs.
“Currently, I am looking at sites in Hot Springs to build the sake brewery,” Bell said. “I’m working on the business plan and forming the crew. It’s a lot of work, but very exciting.”
Another pair of graduates have also found success with the same company. Douglas Hutchings, 2001, and Seth Shumate, 2002, formed Picasolar while they attended the University of Arkansas and won multiple business competitions with a plan to improve the efficiency of solar cells.
Hutchings is the company’s founder and chief executive officer. Its patent-pending hydrogen super emitter process could lead to new manufacturing jobs in Arkansas. Shumate invented the super emitter as a student at Arkansas.
Another charter class graduate, Gayri Patel, is now a trajectory engineer with the United Launch Alliance, as well as Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Patel said she misses the friendships and feeling of community at ASMSA.
“It helped me realize my dream of space flight through my graduate aerospace engineering degree and career-launching rockets,” Patel said.
Patel has worked on several missions for NASA, including the Curiosity rover on Mars. She has also worked on projects involving Pluto, Maven, Juno and other spaceflight initiatives.