Ozarks at Large

Every Saturday in October the Community Creative Center will have music, food, beverages and a pottery wheel ready for you.

On today’s show, The new Arkansas Cyber Advisory Council is hard at work, but don’t expect findings and recommendations to be made public. Plus, helping students think about traveling abroad, and much more.

At the top of today's show: fewer Arkansas school districts are in the highest level for COVID-19 infections, nearly a hundred Afghan refugees will be settled in Arkansas in the near future, and a shortage of drivers available for Razorback Transit buses means a change in some routes.

The mission of the new council, appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in early summer, is to identify cybersecurity risks in Arkansas and to manage such threats. The council, which has met once so far, reports findings and recommendations to the governor, but such details are not released to the public for security purposes. Jonathan Askins, Chief Technology Officer within the Arkansas Department of Transformation and Shared Services' Division of Information Systems provides insight.

The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is supporting a Community of Practice to explore methods to ease food insecurity in northwest Arkansas. Dr. Emily English, an assistant professor in the Office of Community Health and Research at UAMS Northwest, says the approach allows for consideration of multiple experiences and ideas.

David Starr is returning to his hometown Sunday to perform at the Fayetteville Public Library at 2:00.

The University of Arkansas Office of Study Abroad is launching a new program to pay for application cost and fees for up to 150 passports. The Arkansas GO! Passport Project is open to qualifying freshmen and sophomores and is funded by a grant from the Institute of International Education, as well as the University's Engineering's ECAP program, the Office of Nationally Competitive Awards, the Honors College and Walton College.

Becca Martin Brown, the features editor for the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, loves autumn and is ready to see off summer this wekeend with ideas about music, art and more.

On today's show, state foresters say this year’s extreme weather is taking an unusual toll on certain Ozark trees, “scorching” healthy summer leaves. Plus, our weekly round up of live music, and much more.

At the top of our show today: slowly the number of people hospitalized in Arkansas with COVID-19 is declining, Arkansas' prison population is high, and the Name, Image and Likeness movement in college athletics is of interest in Bentonville.