Figures Leadership Experience at UA and Stillman Teaches Life Lessons

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – Thirty incoming ninth-graders from across the state, including the Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa areas, will be on The University of Alabama and Stillman College campuses next week to learn about leadership.

UA and Stillman College are sponsoring the Michael A. Figures Leadership Experience, scheduled for July 18-21. Students will be housed in residence halls at UA and attend seminars at both institutions.

Both UA President Robert E. Witt and Stillman President Ernest McNealey will speak briefly at the closing luncheon, Wednesday, July 21, at the Sheraton Four Points Hotel. State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures (D-Mobile) will deliver the closing remarks.

The Michael A. Figures Leadership Experience is named in honor of the late State Sen. Michael A. Figures (D-Mobile) and is designed to develop leadership skills in young people who demonstrate the capacity for leadership, but have not yet held leadership roles. For the past five years Stillman and UA have coordinated the series.

The seminars focus on Alabama’s history as it relates to issues of social justice, career planning and communication skills. Sessions include topics such as personal and professional etiquette and dressing for success, negotiation and consensus building, public speaking, career planning and interpersonal relations. One of the highlights of the event is student participation in Moot Court with Judge John England on Monday, July 19, from 9:45-11:30 a.m. at the UA Law School.

On Sunday, July 18, from 3-4 p.m. in the Rast Room of the Bryant Conference Center, Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, the widow of Michael A. Figures, will share her late husband’s vision and his 3 B’s: Be prepared; Be there; and Be on time.

The late Figures was a five-term senator who died of a brain hemorrhage in Mobile on Sept. 13, 1996. The 49-year-old legislative leader was only the third African American to serve in the Alabama State Senate. Figures was a Mobile attorney and was widely recognized as a skilled debater whose passionate oratory helped him have an extremely successful political career.