University of Alabama graduates hope holiday line scores big with fashion fans
Birmingham News – Nov. 29
When April Moore, Melissa Grimes and Courtni Tyre graduated from the University of Alabama in 2007, they dreamed of starting their own fashion line. Four years later, they run three07, their fashion line that features dresses designed for fit and comfort. They started the company last fall. In spring 2011, they rolled out a line of dresses that women could wear to college football games, particularly those in the SEC…Tonight, they will host their first holiday trunk show… It was during their freshman year at Alabama when they noticed each other during a fashion design class. They were in the school’s apparel and textiles design program. After graduation, Grimes participated in the Peace Corps for two years. She worked in West Africa. When Grimes returned to Alabama, she was uncertain of her future. Moore and Tyre, both 26, called Grimes, 27, and reminded her about their college dream. She was in. They named the company three07 to represent the three of them and the year they graduated…
Alabama beats Auburn in annual food drive
Crimson White – Nov. 29
The University of Alabama won the 18th annual Beat Auburn Beat Hunger food drive this year, collecting 237,079 pounds of food for the West Alabama Food Bank as compared to the 134,102 pounds raised by Auburn University for the East Alabama Food Bank. Alabama’s total was the third-highest amount of food collected in the history of the drive and the win was UA’s eighth.
UA HES professor and students help man by making large Alabama t-shirt
Fox 6 Birmingham – Nov. 28
He cannot find an Alabama shirt in his size. He does not want to do an interview or be identified, but I really would like for him to have a shirt with his favorite team on it. The Fox 6 Call for Action team shared the letter with the University of Alabama and in no time, instructor Paula Robinson got to work. . . . Paula, along with the help of students in the clothing, textile and interior design department, found a company that made not one but two shirts. . . . “Jack” was inspired to personally express his feelings by writing his own letter saying, “it really means a lot to me that the University of Alabama would take the time to make a fan happy…”
TV ratings frame stadium debate
Minneapolis Star-Tribune – Nov. 29
If the National Football League were to let the Minnesota Vikings leave the state over the team’s inability to get public financing for a new stadium, it would be tampering with what has been a golden goose. Television ratings for the Vikings in recent years have been among the best in the league, according to the NFL and Scarborough Sports Marketing, a New York-based subsidiary of the Nielsen Company and Arbitron Inc., the media and advertising ratings giants. . . . Andrew Billings, a sports media expert who holds the Ronald Reagan endowed chair of broadcasting at the University of Alabama, said the Vikings’ high television ratings may in the end not play a deciding role in whether the team leaves Minnesota. Even if the team moves to Los Angeles and does not have television ratings as high as those in Minnesota, Billings said, the Vikings would still probably have more viewers and provide the NFL with a bigger advertising impact because Los Angeles’ market is so large.
Professors talk foreign economies
Crimson White – Nov. 29
In a global economy, David and Goliath are no longer enemies, but sail wearily in the same boat facing the uncertainty of their future, said Tatiana Tsakiropoulou-Summers, associate professor of Classics and UA Ombudsperson. Originally from Greece, Tsakiropoulou-Summers said Greece has had a socialist or capitalist economy with a larger percent of her GDP dedicated to social expenditures than the U.S. though she prefers a capitalist economy with a socialist bend, even if it may be considered an oxymoron by some. To her, the U.S. and Greece have many similarities.
Class brings attention to Black Belt problems
Crimson White – Nov. 29
The Honors College is bringing light to issues in Alabama’s Black Belt Region. Professor Thomas Herwig’s Heroes in Faith and Justice in the 20th Century class is presenting an information session on Perry County on Dec. 1 from 6 to 8 p.m. The event, “Soaring to new heights: Perry County a source of hope and inspiration” will be held in Lloyd Hall Room 133 with free admission and refreshments.
Award-winning author Rick Bragg to talk at Princess Theatre
Athens (Ala.) News-Courier – Nov. 29
The Princess Theatre Center for the Performing Arts will present “An Evening with Rick Bragg” at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 8, as part of the 2011-2012 Professional Series. Following his talk, Bragg will have a book signing. Books-A-Million will sell the author’s books in the Theatre lobby before and after his talk. . . . He now works as a writing professor at the University of Alabama’s journalism program in its College of Communications and Information Sciences.
West Alabama AIDS Outreach service slated for Thursday
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 29
West Alabama AIDS Outreach will host a service Thursday night marking the 30-year anniversary of the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus. The service will be held at Kentuck’s Georgine Clarke Building in downtown Northport, coinciding with Art Night. The service will start at 6 p.m. with a retrospective video, followed by a presentation from Susan Gaskins, a University of Alabama nursing professor who has just completed a major study on HIV in rural Alabama…
Alabama Choir School’s new artistic director plans a rebirth
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 29
Internationally recognized singer and musician Doff Procter has taken over as artistic director of the Alabama Choir School. The community organization was founded in 1985 as the Tuscaloosa Boychoir and now comprises six choirs for young singers in grades 1-12. . . . The baritone grew up in Tuscaloosa, graduating from Tuscaloosa County High School in 1972, and earned his undergraduate degree in vocal performance at UA in 1977. Much of his professional singing career was as a lyric baritone in Austria and Germany in opera, concerts and recitals. His immediate family are all musicians: lyric soprano wife Laurel, and their three daughters, Leslie, Christina and Jessica, also sing. From 2006 to this spring, Procter maintained a voice studio at UA’s School of Music, in addition to working with the Alabama Choir School.
Thanksgiving brings together UA newcomers
Crimson White – Nov. 29
Drenched in the warm aroma of a home-cooked meal, the dining room offered up a plethora of turkey-day delicacies split between a seating of adults carefully filling their plates and a kids’ table featuring an aggressively disproportionate amount of turkey to anything else. This, paired of course with a healthy amount of football on TV and in the backyard, delivered a picturesque family Thanksgiving. This family, however, was not of blood, but comprised of those who’ve called Kansas, South Carolina, Texas, Maine and even California home. For a day, they were all newfound kin in the spirit of the holiday and settling into their new home – Tuscaloosa, Ala. UA communications professor Angela Billings hosted the dinner. New to Tuscaloosa and the University, she and her husband, TCF Professor Andrew Billings, came to the University from Clemson University in South Carolina where they had their own Thanksgiving tradition.
Quad bricks last remains of forgotten antebellum dorm
Crimson White – Nov 29
Nobody passing the little brick structure on their way to Lloyd Hall Monday morning knew it marked what used to be one of the most important historical sites on campus. Why would they? It doesn’t look like much; a stubby brick thing sticking out of the Quad like an overgrown anthill just east of Gorgas. Some of the bricks have flaked off, exposing a cinderblock skeleton, a home to cigarette butts and hornet nests. . . . It took Robert Mellown, an art history professor and expert on UA architecture, to finally identify it as the marker for the site of Madison Hall, an antebellum dormitory burned by Union troops in 1865. The site is not the Historic Mound. The Mound is the ruin of Franklin Hall; it is above ground, labeled, and protected from tailgaters, while the only thing left of Madison Hall is the crumbling brick edifice constructed by Jerry Oldshue and his team in 1975, when they excavated the site for the first time. “It’s almost like unwrapping a Christmas present,” Oldshue said, describing the process of opening the Quad layer-by-layer to unearth historical trinkets.