Unsung Hero Award

Michael Hayes

Unsung Hero 2021

Presented by Dr. Jason Trumble at ACOT '21

Michael Hayes joined the team at Pea Ridge for the 2021-2022 school year, prior to that Michael worked in the IT department for Springdale schools for 17 years.


Michael shares his wide range of eschool and the data structures, MS-SQL freely. He has been vital to helping push forward projects in the AR-K12code Github, helping to propel the contributors' knowledge of data practices. Michael's willingness to share information and contribute new tools to the greater community around Arkansas is why for 2021 he is the ARKSTE Unsung Hero.



Craig Millsap

Unsung Hero 2020

Presented by Dr. Jason Trumble at ACOT '21

Craig has worked for Gentry Schools since 2004. During his time there the district has grown both with students and in technology adoption.


One area that Craig has excelled in has been in writing code, PowerShell, php, python, bash, and JavaScript are a few of the projects. He has been instrumental in helping grow the AR-K12code Github repo with contributions to the clever automation, Cognosdownloader, and the eschoolUpload project.


He has not only helped his district with automation; he has helped districts around the state with his contributions to the code. For these and many more reasons that are not mentioned Craig Millsap is the ARKSTE 2020 Unsung Hero.



In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than their well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the hard worker at lonely, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs. The job of helping educate kids, making technology work for teachers, keeping the wheels of learning grinding. This is award is for those who work away day after day, making the world better, one printer at a time.

2018 Unsung Hero Award Winner:

Nathan Duncan, Network Administrator - Conway Schools

Nathan Duncan, winner

Nathan Duncan (left), inaugural Unsung Hero award winner. Charlie Weber presenting.