UA ROTC instructor at Fort Hood during shooting
Birmingham News – Nov. 7
Alabama National Guard Maj. Kendrick Traylor was sitting in a Fort Hood cubicle last Thursday with a physician’s assistant, watching his medical records being entered into a computer file, when he heard a couple of shots…”It was crazy pandemonium,” Traylor said. “Individuals were crawling on the floor and one individual soldier was hit in the leg but he was okay. We pulled him inside our cubicle … and closed the sliding plastic door.” …Traylor, an ROTC instructor at the University of Alabama, is with the Alabama Army National Guard’s 135th Expeditionary Sustainment Command. About 270 soldiers with the 135th arrived at Fort Hood, Texas this week to undergo some final medical testing and training before deploying to Afghanistan…
Montgomery Advertiser – Nov. 8
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – Nov. 7
UA professor thinks fear, not religion, drove gunman
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 7
The Army psychiatrist who allegedly opened fire inside a Texas military base, killing 13 soldiers and wounding 29 others, most likely was acting out of a sense of fear, rather than a religious mission, a University of Alabama professor said Friday. Jerome Rosenberg, a UA professor of New College and psychology, said he bases that impression on news accounts of the massacre at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas, on Thursday, and the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim. “I don’t get the sense from this that he was acting for anybody,” said Rosenberg, who has studied the field of psychology for more than four decades. “He may have been greatly influenced by others … but I don’t think he’s one of these (terrorist) sleepers.”…
University Boulevard to get a facelift
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 9
University Boulevard between campus and DCH Regional Medical Center, a gateway entrance to the University of Alabama, will undergo a facelift that will include landscaped medians. Besides the seven traffic medians placed in the middle of the road, the nearly $1.6 million project by the university will place decorative lighting, benches and bike racks along sidewalks as well as shade trees on both sides of the street. The project will also widen the current 6-foot sidewalk to 10 feet to handle bike and foot traffic. The project was given initial approval by trustees Friday, but since University Boulevard is a state highway, there are still more hurdles to clear. “It’s a long-term goal to make this a much softer appearance entrance of the campus,” said Tim Leopard, UA assistant vice president for planning and construction. University Boulevard is Tuscaloosa’s portion of Alabama Highway 215, and UA staff have worked with the Alabama Department of Transportation on the project. A nearly $1.1 million grant from ALDOT will pay for the bulk of the work…The widened sidewalk, meant to encourage bicycles, will ultimately extend further to Sixth Avenue. The sidewalk is part of a larger effort at UA to install bike lanes, said Dan Wolfe, university planner. Five years ago, there were no bike lanes on campus…“We’ve made great strides in the last five years where we had next to none, and we’ve made biking much safer,” Wolfe said….
Details on SEC Championship tickets released
Crimson White – Nov. 9
UA students who want to buy Southeastern Conference Championship game tickets must be placed on a ticket request list beginning today. Students must go to actcard.ua.edu and add themselves to the waiting list between 8 a.m. today and 5 p.m. Tuesday…
Panel members offer personal perspectives of Berlin Wall’s fall
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 7
…Lazda was one of three speakers on a panel Friday night discussing the events that led to the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. The “Twenty Years After the Fall” panel discussion was held on the University of Alabama campus in the Ferguson Center Theater. Barbara Fischer, a UA German professor, opened the evening by stressing the dire situation facing citizens on both sides of the wall after the partitioning of Germany and its capital, Berlin, after World War II…UA history professor Margaret Peacock then gave a brief overview on the history of the wall…Lazda, a member of UA’s German studies faculty, and Steffen Guenzel, part of the UA English faculty, then spoke about their personal perspectives of the wall’s collapse…
A lesson on an arboretum
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 9
…Here in Tuscaloosa, we are fortunate that a small group of professors and administrators had the vision in 1956 to set aside 60 acres in east Tuscaloosa as a living laboratory. Over the ensuing 50-plus years, the arboretum’s directors have focused and refined the founders’ original idea. Today, the museum that is the University of Alabama arboretum specializes in the study and display of native woody and herbaceous plants of Alabama. This collection includes specimens representing many of Alabama’s ecological zones including a number of rare, threatened and endangered plants. The arboretum also has a role in promoting and teaching sustainable gardening practices. In addition to offering botanical and horticultural education and preservation in their communities, arboreta are oases. They are places for exercise and a tranquil break from the hectic pace of daily life. The University of Alabama Arboretum is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to sunset. There is no admission charge.
Theatre Department performs Steve Martin comedy
Crimson White – Nov. 9
What if Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso met? That’s the question the Alabama Theatre department will set out to answer when they begin performing “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Gallaway Theatre…The play will run from Tuesday to Saturday at 7:30 p.m, and on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.
College News
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 9
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA: The College of Community Health Sciences honored Outstanding Affiliate Faculty for 2009 for supporting the training of the college’s medical students and residents. The recognition came at the new faculty reception at the University Club on Oct. 29… — A reception marking the gift of 15 lithographs of drawings by Pablo Picasso to the art and art history department and the College of Arts and Sciences at UA will be from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Tuesday in Gorgas Library. The reception is in honor of the donors of the lithographs, Dr. Virginia Rembert Liles, professor emeritus of art and art history, and Raeford Liles. The lithographs are hanging in the lobby of the second floor of Gorgas Library. The collection is called Mes Dessins d’Antibes Au Pont des Arts, Paris, 1958… — Dr. Nathan Katz, professor and chair in the department of religious studies at Florida International University, where he also directs the Program in the Study of Spirituality, will give UA department of religious studies’ 2009-2010 Aaron Aronov Lecture. His lecture, “Religious Practices and Communal Identity of Cochin Jews: Models, Metaphors, and Methods of Diasporic Religious Acculturation,” will take place at 7 p.m. Nov. 17, in Gorgas Library, room 205… — The taped round of the 2010 UA School of Music Organ Scholarship Competition deadline is Nov. 16. The final competition will be held on Jan. 28, 2010… –Milton Tarrell Nettles, a senior majoring in chemical and biological engineering from Monroeville, was recently awarded the AIChE Minority Scholarship Award by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, sponsored by the Minority Affairs Committee…