Forums

The remaining portion of the course will be conducted on campus, featuring professionals from the University of Arkansas and beyond who work across diverse areas of college athletics. Any honors student with an interest in college sports is strongly encouraged to enroll.

Noah Pittman is associate dean of enrollment for the University of Arkansas Honors College. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, summa cum laude, from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was active in campus organizations and received several honors, including the Yerger Hunt Clifton Scholarship for British Studies at Oxford, the Seidman Award for most outstanding senior poli

tical science major, and the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award.

As an undergraduate, Pittman interned in the offices of U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen and worked on Harold Ford Jr.’s 2006 U.S. Senate campaign. At the University of Arkansas, he earned a master’s degree in higher education leadership and a doctorate in public policy. His dissertation, which examined the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery and its effects on college participation, received the William Miller Dissertation Award.

Pittman serves as president of the Alpha of Arkansas chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and recently completed a term on the College Board’s Southwestern Regional Council. He has taught honors courses on campaigns and elections, the American presidency, political partisanship, and higher education policy.

All honors students, regardless of political perspective, are encouraged to apply. The course is built around weekly, discussion-based sessions held around a table in the Honors College wing of Gearhart Hall. The semester begins with a foundational study of Congress, with particular attention to the current state of the two major political parties. Students will also examine the recent history of midterm elections, including major “change” elections in 1994, 2006, 2010 and 2018.

Each student will be assigned a congressional race to follow throughout the semester and will provide periodic updates to the class. At the conclusion of the course, students will analyze the election results and consider their implications for the new session of Congress beginning in January 2027.

Noah Pittman is associate dean of enrollment for the University of Arkansas Honors College. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science, summa cum laude, from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was active in campus organizations and received several honors, including the Yerger Hunt Clifton Scholarship for British Studies at Oxford, the Seidman Award for most outstanding senior political science major, and the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award.

As an undergraduate, Pittman interned in the offices of U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen and worked on Harold Ford Jr.’s 2006 U.S. Senate campaign. At the University of Arkansas, he earned a master’s degree in higher education leadership and a doctorate in public policy. His dissertation, which examined the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery and its effects on college participation, received the William Miller Dissertation Award.

Pittman serves as president of the Alpha of Arkansas chapter of Phi Beta Kappa and recently completed a term on the College Board’s Southwestern Regional Council. He has taught honors courses on campaigns and elections, the American presidency, political partisanship, and higher education policy.

The course ultimately demonstrates that humanity has endured the burden of skin disease for millennia. After thousands of years of speculation and debate, followed by two centuries of scientific specialization, modern dermatology now allows many of these once-primordial afflictions to be treated quickly and effectively, often transforming a visit to the dermatologist into a decisive turning point rather than a prolonged struggle.

Scott M. Jackson, MD, is a board-certified dermatologist based in Bentonville, Arkansas, and the author of Skin Disease and the History of Dermatology (2022) and Differential Diagnosis for the Dermatologist (2012). He has practiced dermatology since 2007 and has maintained a longstanding interest in history.

Jackson earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Tulane University in 1998 before pursuing a career in medicine. His academic and professional work reflects a sustained effort to unite his dual interests in history and dermatology.

This forum examines the broad implications of the growing use of AI in health and health care. Through structured discussion, open exploration and hands-on engagement with AI tools, students will investigate the forces driving AI adoption and assess its impact on the wide range of stakeholders within the health ecosystem.

Using an integrative approach, the course explores emerging strategies to support healthier, more productive lives and to improve disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Students will also consider how diverse stakeholders shape the future of AI and integrative health, including consumers of health products, patients and their families, clinicians and their livelihoods, health care institutions and their financial sustainability, and the government programs and policies that influence health and health care systems.

Alejandro Martin Gomez, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and a member of the I³R. His research focuses on enhancing how people perform tasks and learn new skills, particularly through the development and application of augmented and virtual reality technologies. His work aims to improve the capabilities of surgeons and other clinicians during patient interactions and to create training and educational systems that are engaging, intuitive and efficient.

Martin Gomez currently leads computer vision and imaging efforts for a major industrial partnership and oversees the integration of augmented reality into surgical workflows. He recently served as workshops chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality.

 

 

James Abbas, Ph.D., is a professor of biomedical engineering and a member of the I³R. His research centers on developing technologies that promote healthy living and improve functional capabilities for people with disabilities. He leads the institute’s work in neural-enabled prosthetics, contributes to a range of medical technology projects, and helps oversee I³R’s clinical trial partnerships.

Abbas’ research has been funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. He is a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors and IEEE, serves on the steering committee for the Data Resource Center of the NIH SPARC Initiative, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation, Frontiers in Neuroengineering, and IEEE EMBS and Neural Engineering conferences. Previously, he was director of the Center for Adaptive Neural Systems at Arizona State University and served in the U.S. Peace Corps.