2005

                   In April 2005 five members and thee sponsors of Lyon's Arkansas Iota chapter attended the National Convention in St. Louis.  All five students made presentations.  They included senior Braye Cloud presenting on Paulo Freire, junior Chris Estes presenting on an experiment extracting mRNA from chicken embryos, senior Amy Schmidt presenting on the Victorian novel Dracula, junior Elaine Slayton presenting an art exhibit, and senior Rebecca Sharp presenting a short story.  In addition, Slayton read a paper by senior Justin Holt, who was on the program but had to miss the trip.

                    Three students won honors in scholarship competition.  Senior Cecilia Bogowith was an alternate fror the Benedict Fellowship, Holt was first runner up for the Pryor Fellowship, and Slayton was first runner up for the Gaston Scholarship.  In addition, Arkansas Iota won Star Chapter recognition for the 5th year in a row.

                    Sponsor Dr. Ron Boling was presented a ten-year service pin, and sponsor Dr. Terrell Tebbetts was re-elected to Alpha Chi's governing National Council.

                    The group visited St. Louis's science and art museums in it free time and found a great downtown blues club one evening.

2004

                   Lyon College senior Edlira Bashari has won the Joseph E. Pryor Fellowship from the Alpha Chi National College  Honor Scholarship Society.

                        The award was announced at Alpha Chi's Region II Convention held at the University of Texas at Arlington  April 2-3, 2004.  The Pryor Fellowship is awarded annually to one senior in a four-state region including Arkansas,  Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas.  It is for use in graduate study in the 2004-05 academic year.

                        Bashari, who is from Albania but whose parents now live in Mountain Home, AR, is a senior chemistry and biology major at Lyon.  She won the fellowship primarily on the basis of a paper she submitted following her summer of laboratory research at the University of Kansas in 2004.  Entitled "Inside a Molecule," the paper describes characteristics of the Pregnane Xenobiotic Receptor molecule (PXR) and its tendency to bind with drugs within the body, sometimes making the drugs ineffective and expelling them from the system.

                        Bashari, who is currently finalizing post-graduate plans, will use the fellowship either for medical school or for graduate study in biomedical sciences.