East Arkansas Community College has announced a new associate degree program in Agriculture, Food and Life Sciences.
This degree is for students who want to pursue careers in a wide variety of agriculture-related fields, including technology, animal sciences, apparel studies, crop management, dietetics, enviomental soil and water services, forestry, fisheries, hospital and restaurant and management, communication and a host of others.
The courses will be offered beginning this fall. Initial classes will include Careers in Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences; Aquaculture; Plant and Food Sciences; Turfgrass Management and Poultry Sciences.
The courses will be taught in the classroom and by compressed video. Future courses will also be offered via the Internet.
"Many of the community colleges in the state of Arkansas offer courses in the life sciences and agriculture," said Jan Haven, EACC vice president of academic affairs. "By partnering with Arkansas Consortium for Teaching Agriculture, we will be able to pool the resources and expertise at the community colleges with those of the participants in the University of Arkansas system. The use of compressed video to telecast classes around the state and Internet-based courses will enable students to utilize academic offerings that would otherwise be inaccessible to them."
The degree program will be administered under ACTA. EACC will be included in the partnership of nine community colleges and three University of Arkansas system institutions that offer degrees in agricultural, food and life sciences. The goal is to accommodate a seamless transfer of credits for students at two-year colleges who elect to pursue a degree at the four-year institutions.
Castrated rapist Wayne Dumond was arrested in Missouri on a parole violation after being linked to an alleged homicide, less than two years after his release from an Arkansas prison.
Dumond, 51, was being held Monday at the Clay County jail, just north of Kansas City.
Police said Dumond was arrested early Saturday after police questioned him about a Kansas City-area killing. Missouri parole officials approved his arrest on a parole violation after seeing evidence from the case, said Missouri prison spokesman Tim Kniest.
''They decided that the evidence was significant enough that they should issue a warrant for Dumond and have him taken into custody,'' Kniest said. Police served a search warrant on Dumond's Smithville, Mo., apartment and at his place of employment.
Dumond's attorney, Bruce Houdek, said his client is innocent and that he would request a preliminary parole hearing to determine whether the state had probable cause to issue its warrant.
Jim Roberts, a spokesman for the Clay County prosecutor's office, said the case involved a homicide in the Missouri county, and that the killing was within the last year.
Houdek said he had not seen copies of the search warrant or a list of what police took in the searches. Police would not comment on what they found.
The Arkansas parole board approved Dumond's release in 1997 on the condition that he leave the state; soon after, Texas and Florida rejected his parole plan. In 1999, the Arkansas board said Dumond could return to his hometown of DeWitt. Last year, Dumond moved to Smithville, Mo., after the Missouri parole system agreed to monitor him.
The Arkansas Department of Community Punishment, which supervises parolees in state, said it is not involved in the current Dumond case.
''We don't have a role at this point. Once an offender transfers out of state, that offender is supervised by probation and parole officials in that state,'' spokeswoman Rhonda Sharp said.
Dumond was convicted in the 1984 rape of Ashley Stevens, a 17-year-old Forrest City High School student.
Dumond was sentenced to life plus 20 years, but in 1992 Gov. Jim Guy Tucker commuted the sentence to 39 years and six months. Shortly after taking office in 1996, Gov. Mike Huckabee said he had ''serious questions'' about Dumond's guilt and began the process to let Dumond go free.
He reconsidered after protests by the victim's family and state legislators and withdrew the plan after the state parole board said in 1997 it would free Dumond if another state would take him.
Huckabee said at the time that he agreed with the parole board decision to release the rapist. A spokesman, Rex Nelson, said then: ''The governor believes that this does satisfy the request of people on both sides in this case and accomplishes his wish to ensure that Mr. Dumond gets out of prison.''
The parole board's decision spared Huckabee the heat of making a politically unpopular decision just months after taking office. Huckabee said Monday he was happy that Dumond's release didn't come on his order.
''It's no comfort to any victim, but I'm glad that my only action regarding him was to deny,'' Huckabee said from Hot Springs, where he was attending a regional economic conference.
Under terms of his release, Dumond would be on parole until Sept. 25, 2004.
While awaiting trial, Dumond was castrated at his home, he said by masked men. No one was ever arrested.
Dumond has arrests dating back to the 1970s.
In August 1972, Lawton, Okla., police arrested Dumond and two other men in the death of a man who was bludgeoned with a claw hammer. Dumond, stationed at nearby Fort Sill, had the charges dropped when he agreed to testify for the prosecution.
Just over a year later, after being transferred to Fort Lewis, Wash., Dumond pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in an attack on a woman in a shopping mall parking lot. A five-year sentence was deferred on condition he abstain from drugs and receive mental treatment.
Dumond moved to DeWitt after his discharge from the Army. In 1976 he was questioned in the rape of a woman who told police that a man broke into her home and assaulted her at knife point as she lay in bed with her 3-year-old child.
According to a state police report, Dumond confessed to the attack but the woman declined to testify and police let him go.
Dumond moved to Forrest City in 1982 with three sons from a previous marriage. He met and married a woman in 1983. They had been married barely a year when he was accused of kidnapping and assaulting Ms. Stevens.
''I expected this to happen again,'' Stevens said.