File Photo/MICHAEL WOODS
A leaf covered in raindrops graces Senior Walk on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville.
Let us count the ways we love NWA
It’s a list that’s 6 miles long, almost a century and a half old and includes about 180,000 names. As far as anyone at the University of Arkansas knows, it is also the only one of its kind — and the inspiration for this year’s back-to-school edition of What’s Up!
The Senior Walk at the UA most likely started with the class of 1905, with earlier classes added later. After nearly 150 years — the UA was founded in 1871 and the first class graduated in 1876 — the addition of the class of 2016 stretched Senior Walk to more than 3.5 miles, and the names running both directions cover a distance of about 6.1 miles.
“Senior Walk is unique in the sense that it spans all the graduating classes of the university,” says Charlie Alison, executive editor at University Relations. “I’ve heard that there were other institutions that made similar efforts, primarily in the late 19th or early 20th century, but they didn’t sustain the tradition very long, let alone more than a century.
“We were lucky enough to find new options for adding the names of graduating seniors to sidewalks as the classes grew, shifting from handwritten names when the classes were small to using raised brass letters to imprint many names at once, and then later inventing the Senior Sand Hog to engrave the growing list of names in dried concrete using a sand-blasting technology,” he explains. “We also loaned the Sand Hog out to the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale so it could engrave its inductees’ names into concrete, but no other university provides a similar remembrance of its graduates.”
File Photo/ANDY SHUPE
The oldest sections of Senior Walk are located in front of Old Main, but the total length of Senior Walk now is about 6.1 miles.
According to Alison, “we don’t anticipate running out of room for Senior Walk any time soon. We’re still converting sidewalk in the historic core of campus to Senior Walk and expect that to cover classes through at least the sesquicentennial of the university in 2021. Beyond the core, though, the campus has lots of room for extension of Senior Walk, from the student residential areas on the northwest side to the athletic valley between Stadium Drive and Razorback Road.”
With that unique list in mind, this year we at What’s Up! welcome UA students back with our own lists — some of our favorite things about living in Northwest Arkansas. We hope our regular readers will find new things to love, too, and stay with us throughout the year for coverage of all the arts and entertainment offerings in the region.
— Becca Martin-Brown
What’s Up! Editor
FAQ
The UA
In Numbers
The University of Arkansas won’t release its student statistics until the 11th day of classes, so these numbers are from the fall of 2016.
First-time entering freshmen — 22,548
Continuing undergrads — 15,361
First-time entering grad students — 1,192
Continuing grad students — 2,663
First-time entering law students — 129
Continuing law students — 230
Female — 52 percent
Male — 48 percent
Resident students — 15,282
Non-resident — 10,446
Foreign — 1,466
