A celebration dinner and dance is planned for Saturday evening to recognize the achievements of the past 50 years at the Highland Road campus. It will also observe the 10^th anniversary of the college’s name change. Arkansas College, founded in 1872, became Lyon College in 1994. The Townsmen, a 15-piece band, will perform swing music from the ’40s and ’50s. A DJ will play music from the past five decades and an entertainer will perform a tribute to Elvis.

For the first time in several years, the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra will not perform on Sunday of LyonFest weekend. Instead, they will be in concert the following Sunday, October 31, at 2 p.m. in Brown Chapel Auditorium.

Faculty and staff members will receive discounts to all meals. Information on these discounts has been distributed by campus mail. Students may use their meal plans for events, including the dinner and dance Saturday night. However, they must RSVP if they plan to attend. Ticket information to LyonFest events is available online at the college’s Web site, www.lyon.edu, or you may call Deanna Devall at (870) 698-4211 (e-mail: ddevall@lyon.edu).
 

Visiting writers Fennelly and Franklin to present reading tonight

Beth Ann Fennelly, poet, and Tom Franklin, fictionist, will give a public reading tonight at 7:30 p.m., in the Bevens Music Room.

Beth Ann Fennelly, a Chicago-area native, is the award-winning author of two poetry collections, “Open House,” which won the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize and “Tender Hooks.” She is the recipient of a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the GLCA New Writers Award. Fennelly teaches at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, where she lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, author of “Poachers: Stories and Hell at the Breech: A Novel,” and their daughter, Claire. 

A writer from Dickinson, Alabama, Tom Franklin’s “Poachers” was named a Best First Book of Fiction by Esquire in 1999 and was also the winner of a 1999 Edgar Award for its title story. Tom was a Tennessee Williams Fellow in Creative Writing at Sewanee Writers Conference and the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University. He has been published by The Black Warrior Review, The Southern Review, and The Oxford American, among others. Recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship, Franklin has held the John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residency at Ole Miss and the Tennessee Williams Fellowship at Sewanee.
 

Make plans to attend ‘Lyon Night at the Races’ Oct. 8

Do you have a need for speed? Then join us for Lyon Night at the Races at 7 p.m. Friday, October 8, at the Batesville Speedway.

Lyon students, alumni, faculty and staff, and their immediate families, are invited to this special night at the speedway, located at Locust Grove, approximately seven miles west of Batesville on Highway 25.

Tickets are free for the Lyon community and may be reserved by calling Kay Rush at (870) 698-4242 or by e-mailing krush@lyon.edu. Tickets should be ordered by September 30 and they may be picked up at the gate or at the Lyon College office of alumni and parent services.

The Batesville Speedway is a 3/8-mile red clay oval stock car racing track. The track opened in the early 1970s and was rebuilt in 1991.

Computer parallel processing now in operation at Lyon

Lyon College now has a parallel computer cluster for classroom instruction and research in parallel programming.

The Lyon College Parallel Cluster, located in the Derby Science Center, has been in operation since July 2004, when David L. Sonnier, assistant professor of computer science, finished assembling and configuring it.

Parallel processing is one of the recent trends in the computing industry. Many large-scale science, engineering and commercial applications require computing power that is beyond the capabilities of a single off-the-shelf processor, Sonnier explained.

“Supercomputers with a highly specialized architecture exist, but they are often far too expensive to justify,” he said. “So to meet some of the more intensive computing requirements, many in science and industry are turning to parallel computing.”

Lyon’s parallel cluster consists of eight computers networked together, running Red Hat LINUX 9.0 as an operating system and Oscar 3.0, a software package designed to manage a parallel cluster.

Sonnier and his students write programs in the C programming language and use MPI (Message Passing Interface), a special library of function calls that invoke the simultaneous computing power of all eight machines.
 

	'Rock the Vote' campaign held on campus Syrus, (left) who appeared on MTV’s “Real World Boston,” spoke Monday night in Brown Chapel to encourage students and members of the community to register to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Lyon excels in piping, drumming and dancing competitions in Oklahoma

Last weekend at the Oklahoma Scottish Games held in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the pipers, drummers, and dancers of the Lyon College Scottish Heritage Program excelled in their competition results.

Haley Skinner was awarded the “Dancer of the Day” trophy for her fantastic performance in her highland dancing grade.

The mid-drum section of the combined bands of Lyon College faired very well in competition; Allyn Dodd (tenor drummer) and Darrick Williams (bass drummer) received second place in their respective events. Luke Frauenthal placed in the top four for the Novice piping competition; he did extremely well for his very first competiton. Patrick McLaurin championed the hornpipe/jig and march/strathspey/reel competitions for Grade II piping and Kenton Adler took the piobaireachd for Grade II as well.

Freshman Neil McCarthy took the 2/4 march competition as well as placing in the top four for the 6/8 march in Grade IV. Veteran Lance Dorris took seconds in three events for Grade I piping. By far the best performance was had by the Grade V band; they took third out of eight bands playing that day. They have only been playing together for about three weeks and the majority of them have been playing for less than a year. The Grade III band took second in its division.

This was the first time since the World Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2001 that a Lyon Pipe Band performed for a panel of judges. Suffice to say Lyon’s presence was definitely felt in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Stay tuned for more competition reports, because the best is yet to come.

		Stinson has Bach article published An article by Dr. Russell Stinson, “New Perspectives on Bach’s Great Eighteen Chorales,” has just been published in the book “Historical Musicology: Sources, Methods, Interpretations,” edited by Stephen A. Crist and Roberta Montemorra Marvin (University of Rochester Press, 2004), pp. 40-56. Dr. Stinson is the Josephine Emily Brown Professor of Music and College Organist at Lyon College.     Graduate school expo scheduled for Tuesday The Lyon career development center will host a graduate school expo Tuesday, September 28, from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Lower Union. Graduate school representatives from around the region will be present to answer students’ questions and to hand out applications.
Regional Advisory Board meets on campus Lyon’s Regional Advisory Board met on campus in the Kirk Kelley Baseball Complex for a lunch meeting Tuesday, September 21. The board meets three times a year. Their next meeting is in January.

‘An Evening with Andrew Lloyd Webber’ to be presented Oct. 2

Lyon College and Batesville Community Theatre will present “An Evening with Andrew Lloyd Webber” at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, October 2, in the Bevens Music Room. Admission is $10. Lyon faulty, staff and students admitted free with Lyon ID. Tickets are available at Schwegman’s Office City, Carlee’s Hallmark and at the door. Seating is limited. Call 613-3827 for more information. This event is a benefit for the John Saltzman Memorial Fund.

Sports

Harper named TSC Libero of the Week

Lyon College’s Susie Harper has been named this week’s TranSouth Conference Volleyball Libero of the Week for the week ending September 18, 2004. Harper, a 5'7" Junior from Pocahontas, Arkansas, led the Pipers to two victories this week. In a victory over the University of Texas at Tyler, Susie recorded 29 digs and 8 service aces. Harper also recorded 21 digs and 19 passes with one error against the University of Dallas. For the week, Harper averaged 7.20 digs per game and attempted 70 passes with only 9 errors. Lyon finished the week at 2-1 and now stands at 4-3 for the season.

Soccer

The Scots downed Harding 1-0 in overtime Tuesday. Steve Banks headed in a cross off a corner kick from Jacob Mattern to give Lyon the overtime victory at Huser Field. Brent Hugg made seven saves for the Scots, who are now 7-2 for the season.

Lyon College’s soccer teams posted one win in four matches in St. Louis over the weekend. At Busch Soccer Park on Saturday, McKendree defeated the Pipers 5-0 and Missouri Baptist blanked Lyon’s men 3-0. On the Harris-Stowe College campus Sunday, the Scots won 5-1 and Harris-Stowe’s women won 3-1.

On Sunday, the Scots struck back with four first-half goals. Nick Jones started the surge. Steve Banks assisted. Tim Akins followed with a 35-yard shot after an assist from Jacob Mattern. The Banks-to-Jones combination worked again, then Jeremy Bobo, with an assist from Chris Schmidt, finished up the first-half scoring. In the second half, Banks scored with an assist from Bobo. The Scots improved to 6-2. They will host Harding on Tuesday afternoon. Christina Anderson scored the Pipers’ one goal. Allison Morrison recorded the assist. The 2-6 Pipers are off this week. Their next match is in Clarksville (Ozarks) on September 28. The Scots and Pipers are scheduled to begin TranSouth Conference play on October 2 at Lebanon, Tennessee.

Cross Country

CONWAY - Daniel Haney led Lyon College with a 10th-place finish in the men’s 8-kilometer division of the Hendrix Orange Crush Invitational Saturday. Haney completed the course in 28 minutes, 23 seconds, guiding the Scots to a fourth-place finish among six teams. Southern Arkansas, led by individual winner Adrian Ramos (25:54), won the team title.

The top five individual results for each team are used in team standings. The four other scorers for the Scots included Glenn Ritter (20th, 29:35), Chad Engler (30th, 30:10), Tony Fortune (46th, 32:41) and Yagya Regmi (50th, 32.59). Also for Lyon, Seth Purcell finished 65th in 34:55, J.R. Paysinger took 67th in 35:06 and Justin Butler placed 78th in 38:14.

Five of six Pipers finished the women’s 5K course in less than 30 minutes. Ariel Maddox recorded the fastest time for the Pipers, 21:09, to place 20th. Also scoring for the Pipers were Rachel Miesner (38th, 22:17), Katie McLean (59th, 23:52), Jennifer Steele (77th, 25:20) and Amy Carter (81st, 25:51). Rachel Nicholson ran a 32:21 for 107th.

Volleyball

Ceca Brckalo led the Pipers with 13 kills in a 3-0 victory over Williams Baptist Tuesday night. Susie Harper had 26 digs and Yllen Rosales had 17 assists.

The Pipers defeated the University of Texas-Tyler in four games and the University of Dallas in three last weekend. Susie Harper led Lyon with 29 kills in the UT-Tyler match and had 21 kills against Dallas.

In the Dallas match, Alyson Boone added nine kills and Yllen Rosales collected 21 assists and seven kills.

The Pipers begin TranSouth Conference play tonight at 7 p.m. against Cumberland in Becknell Gym. They will host Trevecca Nazarene on Saturday.