About Us

Rhiannon Corley

As a new member of the Lions’ Chronicle I am excited to get started working with the staff and members of the University. I have always loved to write and am interested in following the arts and entertainment. I am a mother of three gorgeous children. My daughter Krystabella (Bella) just turned ten and she is beautiful and bright. My oldest son Jolseff (Joey) is four and he is the light of my life; that is a child that radiates goodness! My youngest is called Joshuel (Joshy) and he is a wild child. Joshy is seventeen months old and has a heart of gold and the ferociousness of a lion. My husband Joseph and I have been married nine and a half years, mostly of them good! I recently returned to school as a full-time student and have jumped in with both feet. I am a Girl Scout leader, active in my church, involved in a playgroup, and a book club. I look forward to hearing from you and getting my views out there. Feel free to drop me a line at redwar00@uafortsmith.edu.

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Roy Fisher

As a founding member of the Lions’ Chronicle, I am very proud of being part of its publication. It is a challenge to meet deadlines, but that is part of the excitement. We have some great people on the staff. Being a senior and almost finished with my studies, I will miss being involved with its publication

I am 69 years old and have enjoyed my college experience. Yes, some may think it odd that I have done this; but I would not trade my experience for anything.

I was fortunate to be able to have a successful career in sales and management without the benefit of a college degree. But it is a different world today, and the competition is a lot stronger. To those of you that don’t know what you want to do, I would suggest that you do your very best in your studies. When something comes along you will have the tools to compete.

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Leslie Hassel

I am a senior English major pursuing a minor in media communication. The Lions’ Chronicle is an important outlet for students to discuss campus and community issues, and I am glad to be a part of the student voice.

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Pamela Pauline Ortega

The first thing I should say is that I am called by my middle name, Pauline. As a girl back in the 70s I desired to someday "go to college" and now as a non-traditional student I am excited to finally live the dream. I have a wonderful spouse who shared in raising our four children, two of who are currently pursuing their college degrees, one a District Attorney in Texas, and the other a partner with his father in business. Always a lover of words, stories and the art of writing, I am pleased to have the opportunity to write for the Lions’ Chronicle here at UA Fort Smith.

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Melanie Stout

Ok, so being a full time college student with 3 full time kids is crazy. Add into that my ambition to do all pursuits excellently and my bad habit of taking on way too much. Life then becomes an entertaining demonstration of plate spinning. I seriously cannot imagine what, if anything, in my humble little life would be of any interest to anyone besides those who know me and love all my little personality quirks. But here goes...

A few things I need to clear up right off the bat:

I love to use ellipsis (...) and it is something I cannot control so you must get used to it.

I am a little bit of a smart aleck.... but you will get used to that soon enough too.

I talk to myself ALOT, and sometimes I answer back. It is a constant running dialogue, keeping me on track throughout the day.

My passion is photography and scrapbooking; ok, that is two passions, but I love them both equally so neither one can get jealous of the other.

I am a majorly-addicted scrapbooker, I own every sheet of pattern paper known to woman, and I am apparently a hoarder of supplies... since being a full-time mom and full-time student does not allow much time for hobbies these days.

I love to bake, cookies, cakes, bread... and I love to share!

I like the smell of playdough and I don't care if you think it is weird.

I have a serious container fetish; I love baskets, boxes, purses, those things you put Stuff into.

I am married to the most wonderful, supportive DH that a girl could wish for. He is, however, still a man, and I am sure you will hear all about that sometime or other; especially given the fact that my being named the Sports writer for the Chronicle was apparently the funniest thing in the world to him.

I love birthday cake, especially the icing!

I am at any given time reading 3-5 books at a time (not including school books).

I cannot sleep with socks on.

I have a photographic memory, I can read something, see something or whatever and remember it forever.... really, I can. What was your name again?

I am a Child of the KING! I mean it really doesn't get any better than this does it?

Chocolate is my sister, really, we are related.

I love pink… yeah I know it is cliché… but I do.

I love music. I love all kinds of music. I like oldies like Stevie Wonder and Jackson 5, I like Aerosmith, and 80’s music, I like praise and worship music. Pretty much if it sings, I like it, with the exception of really heavy metal and obscene rap.

I love the beach, the ocean and the Majesty and vastness of this glorious creation of God.

Comfort food makes me a very happy girl… mac and cheese, chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, warm fresh bread… mmmm!

I hate scary movies. I refuse to watch them EVER.

So there’s the rundown, twenty of the most random things about me that you never wanted to know. If you are still hanging in there and reading this, I have one more confession…

I know zip diddly about sports. So please be patient with me as I learn the lingo and report the goings on around campus about all things sports related. I am really looking forward to working with the Chronicle and getting to know the readership. Feel free to email me with suggestions or news I may need to know about at mstout00@uafortsmith.edu.

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Chris Strange

"Do any of us, except in our dreams, truly expect to be reunited with our hearts' deepest loves, even when they leave us only for minutes, and on the most mundane of errands? No, not at all. Each time they go from our sight we in our secret hearts count them as dead. Having been given so much, we reason, how could we expect not to be brought as low as Lucifer for the staggering presumption of our love?" — Stephen King.

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Jean Powell Vosper, Managing Editor

My family and childhood friends call me Jeannie. Most of my friends and professors at the University call me Jean. I’m a non-traditional student with an intellectual and loving husband, Rick. “And cute, don’t forget cute,” he says.

We have an assortment of awesome children – we consider his two and my two to be our children, and we picked up a couple additions along the way. We had five teenagers in a three-bedroom duplex one summer. The noise didn’t bother me but thank God we had two bathrooms.

My passion is writing. I’ve been known to sit at my computer and write for hours on end because I need to – it isn’t possible for me to not write. In high school, I enrolled in journalism classes and had the great fortune to work on the yearbook, newspaper, and literary magazine with an extremely talented and energetic advisor, John Cutsinger.

During my senior year (go ahead and guess what year that was), our yearbook – which we titled Yourbook – was one of only ten Gold medalists in a national competition sponsored by Columbia University. The staff went to New York City and attended a journalism workshop at Columbia as our reward. We were inspired.

And I meant to go to a university with a prestigious journalism department, but got married instead. So, I had a family, worked at a couple of small town newspapers, and took a few classes off and on – mostly off – through the years. When I finally had the opportunity, I came back to school. In addition to the obvious benefit of earning a degree, the experience has been a true blessing in a number of ways:

My major is Rhetoric and Writing with a minor in Creative Writing. I don’t kid myself about writing best-selling fiction, but I write nonfiction that’s not too shabby. That wasn’t the case initially. I found that my writing skills were still there, but were a bit rusty to say the least. With the help of some fantastic and exceedingly patient professors, I gradually found my style, my voice again. I think it has matured since I began classes in January 2009.

Dr. Monica Luebke is my faculty advisor and has been unswerving in her support and guidance of my personal goals. She also took on the role as advisor for The Lions’ Chronicle in spite of her already significant responsibilities. She stresses her function is strictly to provide advice – she’s not there to tell us what to write or how to run things. Her strongest caution is always “Are you sure you want to do that?” Sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m not. She never criticizes either way.

All my professors have been exceptional, not only in their teaching abilities but also in their concern for their students – even those who aren’t necessarily invested or engaged in their education. And after you finish the professors’ classes, they are glad to see you stop by and happy to help with your other projects. The professors and staff are the University’s foundation. The buildings, the grounds, and all the other trappings are secondary. That’s not flattery; it’s fact.

The students whom I’ve come to know – from my young friend who hugs me whenever she sees me to my older friend who jokingly gives me a hard time at every opportunity – will always be a part of my life. Even if I don’t see them after I graduate in May. I love them for their unique personalities and their beautiful humanity. Okay, maybe that’s an odd thing to say, but I’ve never been very conventional. Being bipolar makes it impossible.

There’s more, but those four items are my major blessings.

You probably thought I was going to talk about the Chronicle and what it means to me. But even though the Chronicle plays a large part in my life, I consider this “About Us” page to be an excellent place to share my thoughts about the people and things most important to me.

I hope you’ll think of this essay as a quid pro quo offering and feel free to share your thoughts with me in return. If you do, please send your email to me at jpowel03@uafortsmith.edu.

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Derek Wright

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Dr. Monica Luebke, Faculty Adviser

One of my main goals as a writing specialist is to help my students identify their own compelling reasons to write so that they can use their literate skills to participate in our democratic society. A free press is one of the basic tenets of a democratic society, and a student newspaper is both a source of and a forum for compelling reasons to write. I am excited to be a part of such a challenging endeavor and to be working with such an outstanding group of students.