Earning the award was the icing on the cake for Williams.

“It was on my birthday when I found out I won nationals,” said Williams. “It was great. It was fabulous. I felt like I was on fire, to be honest.”

Interning with Hewlett Packard Enterprise since Jan. 11, 2016, Williams accomplished multiple goals and delivered a high level of quality in all of her projects. Being accountable, communicative and achieving 100 percent on-time delivery on every project assigned afforded her the opportunity to be named UCA’s Intern of the Year, prompting her to apply for CEIA Intern of the Year.

Dr. Jim Downey, chair of the Department of Management Information Systems, nominated Williams for the UCA Intern of the Year designation.

“Eryka is a student in one of the most technical majors on campus and one of the most difficult ones. She has excelled. She is resolute in her pursuit of learning the material, and in my class, she was not satisfied with just learning,” he said.

After completing her internship, Williams now serves as the support cutover lead for the Americas region for 54 human resources and payroll applications and is now employed at HPE where she continues to model excellence and make an impact in the workplace making herself and UCA proud.

“Not only does Eryka deliver results, but she does it with a smile on her face. She comes in every day with a positive attitude and motivates others around her,” said Hannah Osborne, William’s supervisor at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Williams is a management information systems major from Cabot and graduates in May 2017.

UCA students competed against students from twenty-six different schools from Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Texas, and Florida.

While the team was unsuccessful in winning its fourth consecutive overall Arkansas Championship, it was still the fourth best overall team at the tournament.

UCA was the top Arkansas school in the individual events portion of the tournament.

Freshman Jacob Holland was the top Arkansas competitor in prose interpretation, poetry interpretation, and informative speaking. Holland was the 6th overall competitor in prose and 5th overall in informative.

Freshman Marco Ramirez was the top Arkansas competitor in persuasive speaking, communication analysis, and dramatic interpretation.

In the debate sweepstakes, UCA ranked second overall.

In Team IPDA debate, juniors Dalton Cook and J.B. Wells had a 3-1 preliminary round record and reached the quarterfinals before being eliminated.

Individual debaters were also successful in their respective divisions of IPDA. Junior Leia Smith was the top speaker in the Professional division and reached the semifinals, making her the top Arkansas competitor at the tournament.

With a 5-1 preliminary round record, Cook was the third seed in the varsity division elimination rounds. He was also the 6th best speaker in the division.

Wells, along with freshman Stormy Giddens and Tanner Meyer, all reached the elimination rounds in the junior varsity division. Meyer reached the semifinals of the tournament before being eliminated. Freshman Wayd Risner also competed in the junior varsity division and achieved a 3-3 preliminary round record.

Finally, senior Russell Holley and freshmen Jacob Holland, Cagney Kilgroe, and Marco Ramirez each reached the elimination rounds of the novice division with a 4-2 preliminary round record. Holley and Kilgroe both reached the octafinals before being eliminated. Kilgroe was also recognized at 3rd best speaker and top Arkansas speaker at the tournament.

UCA Debate and Forensics will continue competition in less than two weeks when it travels to the University of Oklahoma on February 10-12. Two weeks later, it will compete at Arkansas Tech University.

On March 10-12, UCA Debate and Forensics will host its annual intercollegiate tournament, and the team will conclude its competitive season at the IPDA National Championship on March 23-26.

Way to go, UCA Debate and Forensics! Keep up the good work!

PUSH, held in the UCA College of Business Auditorium, was the second event in the series that strives to aid millennials in succeeding in the work force.

Public relations, communication, journalism and students in related fields and practitioners were invited to spend the evening listening to three professionals speak about interpersonal communication, continued education and job searching.

“The PUSH is a panel discussion series that is near and dear to my heart,” said PUSH creator and panel moderator Mia Banks. “As a media professional, I value the ‘each one, teach one’ method because someone willingly took the time to share their professional knowledge with me to ensure that I had the necessary tools to succeed.”

“It is my hope that The PUSH will catapult others’ dreams into realities,” said Banks, a radio personality for KTZS Streetz 101.1 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

The panelists were Mary Hargraves, public relations specialist of Ghidotti Communications in Little Rock, Taylor Stokes, project manager at Eric Rob & Isaac in Little Rock, and Gerald Thomas, owner and senior account director of The GDT PR Agency in Little Rock.

The panelists stressed how important networking is when it comes to career building. Thomas said practitioners in public relations need to possess interpersonal skills that encourage communication.

“You have to cultivate relationships with people who are interested in your field,” Thomas said. “These relationships that will help when searching for a job. Students are told that finding a job can be challenging after graduation. Believe it or not, professionals are willing to help by sharing your resume.”

Hargraves stressed how important it is to gain experience through internships. Internships expose and allow students to practice roles and responsibilities that professionals must fulfill. She said that even after receiving a degree, graduates should look to gain experience wherever they can.

Along with gaining experience, Hargraves said students should save valuable work they produce in class for their portfolio. “Portfolios are really important because it shows what you’ve accomplished in college and what you can do,” Hargraves said.

Stokes, a UCA alumna, said she wish she had known as an undergraduate that being busy as a college student versus a professional is different.

“The biggest adjustment you have to make is with your time management,” Stokes said.
“You may be working from 8 to 5 and all of your busyness of life has to either happen before or after that, or at lunch or during the day, because you have a job and people rely and clients rely on you for you to get stuff done,” she said.

The PUSH was held Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016.

ABOUT UCA CHAPTER OF PRSSA:
The UCA chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America provides students with the opportunity to learn more about public relations, to apply that knowledge in practical situations, and to support one another in a professional and social environment. The club’s activities include providing public relations work for various organizations, sponsoring speakers, supporting students in the major, and creating community connections that enhance employment opportunities.

Officer Norman is highly acclaimed due to his work with the community. He has won tremendous praise for his dedication to connecting with inner city youth in an effort to bridge the gap through trust and respect. His motto is: “the more time you spend outside of your police car, the bigger the difference you’ll make!”

ACRE is committed to personal and economic freedom-principles proven to lead to improvements in human well-being. ACRE’s dual endeavors are to use its research to find solutions for the issues Arkansans face in their daily lives, and to train the next generation of researchers, teachers, voters, and business leaders.

Two members of the ACRE team recently testified before two important committees of the Arkansas State Legislature.

Dr. Jeremy Horpedahl, assistant professor of economics, and Jacob Bundrick, a 2013 UCA alum and current ACRE policy analyst testified before the Arkansas State Senate and House “Revenue and Taxation” Committees on September 20th, 2016.

The purpose of their testimony was to help inform members of the legislature about the current academic research on tax policy and may relate to fundamental tax reform in Arkansas.

Dr. Horpedahl presented the committees with a list of Four Principles of Ideal Tax Theory. These principles included keeping tax rates low, keeping tax bases broad (for example, by making sure both goods and services are included in the sales tax base), having a correctly defined tax base, and relying more on the least harmful taxes (for example, by relying less on income taxes since they discourage work and productive activities). Dr. Horpedahl then discussed to what extent Arkansas is living up to these principles. Arkansas generally has high tax rates (with the exception of property taxes), exempts some goods and most services from the sales tax, and relies much more on income taxes than neighboring and regional states.

Mr. Bundrick presented after Dr. Horpedahl and took a closer look at one of the principles of sound tax policy: having a broad and correct tax base. Specifically, Mr. Bundrick discussed the concept of “tax expenditures,” a term used by experts on tax policy to describe special favors in the tax code that function much like government spending. But unlike government spending, tax expenditures are hidden from public view and lead to a less transparent government overall. An example of a tax expenditure would be a tax credit for child care (which is hidden in the tax code) versus a direct subsidy (in other words, just writing a check to parents or daycares). Even if we agree that the government should support working parents with young children, doing it through tax expenditures is inferior from the general public’s perspective because it is less visible. Mr. Bundrick further discussed how tax expenditures present an obstacle to piecemeal tax reform, because special interests will fight hard against any isolated change. Comprehensive tax reform is needed to clean out bad tax expenditures and make any good ones more transparent.

ACRE is honored to have been asked to contribute to this important debate and looks forward to being a part of the conversation as Arkansas begins to discuss options for tax reform.

Dr. Horpedahl and Mr. Bundrick’s PowerPoint presentations from their testimony on the ACRE blog.