River Road Park renamed for UA donor
Tuscaloosa News – June 20
University of Alabama trustees changed the name of River Road Park East on Friday. The park, on the banks of the Black Warrior River below UA’s campus, will now be The Park at Manderson Landing in honor of prominent UA donors Faye and Lewis Manderson. The Mandersons have donated more $12 million to the university since 1985. Lewis Manderson is the founder of Creative Displays, a successful billboard advertising company. The business graduate school is already named after him.
UA student sees ghost stories as way to boost state tourism
Mobile Press-Register – June 20
Meg McCrummen is hoping that Kathryn Tucker Windham’s stories will have ghost hunters spending time and money in the Black Belt. The 20-year-old University of Alabama student from Mobile was part of a group that spent two weeks filming Selma’s famous storyteller and other residents as they recounted tales of spirits inhabiting homes and businesses. The stories are being produced for podcasts, CDs and DVDs as a way to promote tourism in a part of Alabama where unemployment ranks high and the population keeps declining…McCrummen and two dozen other UA Honors College students spent the academic year researching issues that affect the Black Belt as part of the inaugural University Fellows Experience. They met with community leaders then designed service projects to help tackle the various issues…”We recognized that tourism is a fast and direct means of economic development; that was the purpose, and that was the attitude with which we pursued it,” said McCrummen…Jacqueline Morgan, director of the Fellow Experience, said the program readies students for leadership. “They could have easily just said, ‘We’re going to get this done and leave, but they genuinely took ownership, getting to know the wonderful people,” Morgan said. “The community saw the passion these students have for service.”…
UA violinist plays a mix of hip-hop, R&B and rock, and his popularity is rising
Tuscaloosa News – June 21
…Derryck Gleaton…the University of Alabama junior…Gleaton’s expression of himself, a musician experienced in both Beethoven and the Beastie Boys, is what put him on stage at the Apollo after a tryout in Birmingham, a gig playing backup for Smokey Robinson and eventually into the viola performance program at UA. In addition to time at school and performing his duties as a music ambassador for UA’s Creative Campus initiative, Gleaton estimates he practices at least four hours a day. One of his latest pieces was written to unveil a $4.8 million art collection donated by Paul Jones to UA. Gleaton was commissioned by Creative Campus to write the piece, which he wrote while walking through the collection. “I just took my violin in with me and played what I felt when I saw it,” he said…. This week, on his Web site dsharptheviolinist.com, Gleaton released a free mix of his recorded performances of some of today’s most popular hip-hop songs.
Doctors don’t agree on how to reform health-care system
Tuscaloosa News – June 22
…Dr. Will Coggins, a retired dean of the University of Alabama School of Medicine’s Tuscaloosa Program, said the nation needs a single-payer system to assure universal health care. Coggins said such a system works in Western Europe and would work in the U.S. He said President Barack Obama promised a single-payer plan during his presidential campaign last year but now has backed away from it because of congressional opposition. Under a universal, single-payer plan, doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers would be paid for the medical care they provide from a single fund controlled by the government. Coggins said the single-payer system won’t pass Congress this year but that he believes it will be enacted in four to five years because “it is the only system that will work.”…
Rental properties
Montgomery Advertiser
…Leonard Zumpano, a real estate professor at the University of Alabama, said those two forces can be expected to work on any rental market in the current economy. “If you have a property, you might keep renting it out as long as you are making a significant amount,” he said. “Prices have been coming down, so there is a segment that is more active.”…
State’s jobless rate hits 25-year high
Montgomery Advertiser – June 20
Alabama’s unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent for May, the highest in nearly 25 years and more than double the rate from a year ago…Sam Addy, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama, said the state has been hit hard by losses in manufacturing jobs, but he’s hopeful that 9.8 percent will be the state’s peak. “As the recovery takes hold, we will do better,” he predicted…
Tuscaloosa News – June 20
Birmingham News – June 20
Athens News-Courier – June 20
NOTE: The following stores were produced by high school students participating in the The University of Alabama’s Multicultural Journalism Program June 12-21, 2009.
Catfish Farming Takes Off
Dallas County Redefines Concept of Library
Stained Glass Artist Returns Home
From the Ashes: Galilee Baptist Charts New Path to the Future
Black Belt Residents Plug Into Sanders Technology Center