September 2022

Chess players from Pocahontas Junior High and Pocahontas High School competed on Saturday, August 27 in the Scarlet Chess Club Summer Tournament at Arkansas State University. Five games were played, and all of the Pocahontas players got some wins.

Pocahontas Seniors Hailey Hogan and Evelyn Phelps are two of 62,000 students from across the country to earn academic honors from the College Board’s National Recognition Programs. These National Recognition Programs grant underrepresented students with academic honors that can be included on college and scholarship applications and connect students with universities across the country, helping them stand out during the admissions process.

In June, BRTC Machine Tool instructor Rick Barker attended the Mid-America Aerospace +Defense Summit in Rogers, Arkansas. This conference focused on the aerospace industry in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and other surrounding states and featured a variety of aerospace industry leaders across the United States as well as Arkansas government officials.

BRTC’s Serendipity program opened its 18th year with a guest speaker Ashley Ziegler, award-winning Library Media Specialist of Riverside Public Schools. The Mobile Library project to widen access to books which launched earlier this summer dovetails with Serendipity’s opening book, The Giver of Stars, a work of historical fiction centering on the Depression era “Packhorse Librarians” of Kentucky. In the book, five women brave hardships to heed the call of Eleanor Roosevelt to “bring books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.”