University of Alabama robotics team earns fourth place at IEEE SoutheastCon
AZORobotics.com – April 12
Kenneth Ricks, associate professor for electrical and computer engineering and faculty advisor for the team, said the competition was comprised of three preliminary rounds and a finals round. “The scores from each of the three preliminary rounds were totaled and the top eight schools advanced to the finals,” Ricks said. “UA had a total score of 1,700, which placed them in second place after the preliminary rounds. “In the finals, the teams were seeded and went head-to-head in an eight-team bracket. UA finished fourth in the finals.” For this year, the team had to design a robot that was completely autonomous, which means that once the start button was pressed, there was no operator control, Ricks said. Sarah Betzig, a member of the team, said she and team members broke the robot down into subsystems – detection, navigation, chassis, power, motors, coding, gripper and unloading – and delegated each subsystem to two team members, a primary, or leader, and a secondary, or supporter. Betzig was the primary for the color detection subsystem and secondary for the navigation subsystem. Ricks said team members had mixed feelings about their placement. “The UA team members are both happy and disappointed at the same time in their fourth-place finish,” he said. “They did an outstanding job at the competition and received many compliments on their robot design.”
University of Alabama presents Kern-Hammerstein musical “Show Boat”
Tuscaloosa News – April 12
Step aboard the Cotton Blossom in the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance’s production of the musical “Show Boat,” opening Monday in Tuscaloosa. The 1927 play, written by Jerome Kern with music by Oscar Hammerstein II, is based on the novel of the same title by Edna Ferber. It opens with the Cotton Blossom, a Mississippi River show boat, docking in Natchez, Miss., in 1887. The actors kick off the action with a fight scene before Magnolia Hawks, 18-year-old daughter of the boat’s owner, falls in love with a riverboat gambler, Gaylord Ravenal. The play fast-forwards, following the couple from affluence to the depths of depression. Ravenal leaves Magnolia, who goes on to become a popular musical star. Jessica May, the actor playing Magnolia, said performing in “Show Boat” was a change for her. It’s not just her first musical at UA, but her first chestnut musical; she’s acted in contemporary musicals in the past. The singing is one of the biggest differences she has encountered, she said. “A lot of times now it’s a lot of belting, but this is all legit singing,” May said. That’s a challenge for a lot of the cast, she said, who had not done a musical like “Show Boat” and were having to adjust to the old style.
White Plains comes out on top at robotics meet
Anniston Star – April 11
More than anything else, Dana Jenkins said, she just wanted her son, Jamie, to have a good time at his first robotics competition. Jenkins said she didn’t want to put unrealistic expectations on Jamie, a White Plains Elementary fifth-grader, as he and his classmates competed against other schools last weekend in the Alabama Robotics Competition in Tuscaloosa … Elementary schools of White Plains, Alexandria, Pleasant Valley and Weaver were all in the robotics competition for the first time ever last weekend. John Moore, a teacher with the Gifted Program at Calhoun County Schools, said he tried about a year ago to get together grants to make entering robotics competitions a reality for his students. Jeff Gray, a computer science professor at the University of Alabama brought the competition, now in its third year, to the campus in an attempt to get younger elementary students involved in the robotics competition. “It’s about computer science more than robotics,” Gray said. “Right now that’s the fastest-growing job in terms of job offers and salary. Alabama hasn’t done a great job of teaching that, so events like this promoting it are really important.”
UA students to host Black Warrior Film Festival
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – April 11
Tuscaloosa will have a taste of Hollywood this weekend during the first ever Black Warrior Film Festival. The University of Alabama Telecommunications students are hosting the event, which will showcase and award local films created by students. The young filmmakers say this festival comes at a great time. The festival is all day Saturday, April 13 and is free to the public.
Educator to speak on racial segregation at Tuscaloosa schools
Tuscaloosa News – April 12
Jerry Rosiek, a University of Oregon associate professor of education, will speak today on racial segregation in the Tuscaloosa City School System at the University of Alabama Department of Educational Studies in Psychology’s Fifth Annual Symposium. His case study, entitled “Why Are They Doing This to Us? Resegregation as Curriculum,” will be discussed at Graves Hall at 1 p.m. Rosiek, a former education professor at UA, said he’s researched the Tuscaloosa City School System for more than five years and has found that the system’s actions reflect a national trend in public education of purposeful resegregation. He said his research delves into the system’s history of segregation, how it was forced to desegregate under court order and how it found a way to resegregate.
Creating ‘The Glorious 54th’
New York Times – April 11
“Does it not behoove every colored man,” James Henry Gooding, a 26-year-old free black man from New Bedford, Mass., asked the readers of his hometown newspaper in March 1863, “to consider … whether he cannot be one of the glorious 54th?” New Bedford was a wealthy whaling town with a large abolitionist community, but one where many black citizens toiled in poverty. With such conditions likely in mind, Gooding believed that military service provided the key to African-American advancement. “There is more dignity in carrying a musket in defense of liberty and right,” he maintained, “than there is in shaving a man’s face, or waiting on somebody’s table.” A month earlier, Gooding had enlisted in a new regiment designated the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, and hoped to inspire other recruits. “Our people must know that if they are ever to attain … any position in the civilized world,” he argued, “they must forgo comfort … and fight for it; make up their minds to become something more than the hewers of wood and drawers of water.” Military service was a new opportunity for African-American men in early 1863. At the start of the war many blacks eagerly offered their services to the Union, but were rebuffed because of the prevailing racist assumption that they could not be good soldiers, and because most whites believed that blacks were not citizens and thus the nation was not theirs to defend. (Glenn David Brasher is an instructor of history at the University of Alabama.)
Notable rhymester
Illinois Times – April 11
Mary Jo Bang, poet and English professor at Washington University in St. Louis, will speak in Brookens Auditorium at the University of Illinois Springfield. Bang has authored six books of poems, including Elegy (2007) that received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Also speaking at the UIS Student Arts and Research Symposium is Dr. Ryan Ewing, who is exploring the surface of Mars with the NASA Curiosity rover team. The assistant professor of geological sciences at the University of Alabama speaks Friday, April 12, 1:30 p.m. The two-day symposium runs Thursday, April 11, from 5-10 p.m. and Friday, April 12, from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. showcasing two keynote speakers and student research and creative activities including short talks, poster presentations, art exhibitions and music performances in Sangamon Auditorium lobby and Public Affairs Center. The public is invited.
Southeastern Conference 2013 faculty achievement winners named
Gudelnews.com – April 11
The Southeastern Conference on Wednesday announced winners of the 2013 SEC Faculty Achievement Awards. These annual awards recognize professors from the 14 SEC member universities who have meritorious records in teaching and scholarship and who serve as role models for other faculty and students. To be eligible to receive the SEC Faculty Achievement Award, a professor must be a teacher or scholar at an SEC university; have achieved the rank of full professor at an SEC university; have a record of extraordinary teaching; and a record of scholarship that is recognized nationally and/or internationally. “The SEC Faculty Achievement Awards provide an opportunity for each SEC university to showcase the strengths of its faculty, who excel in many disciplines with varying areas of expertise,” said Dr. Jay Gogue, President of Auburn University and President of the Southeastern Conference. “In the SEC, we are fortunate to have professors who understand the value of classroom instruction, research guidance and scholarly contributions to the overall success of student education.” SEC Faculty Achievement Award winners, one from each university, will receive a $5,000 honorarium from the Southeastern Conference and become his or her university’s nominee for the SEC Professor of the Year Award. The SEC Professor of the Year receives an additional $15,000 honorarium and will be presented at the annual SEC Awards Dinner in Destin, Florida … The 2013 SEC Faculty Achievement Award Winners are: University of Alabama, Dr. John Lochman, Professor and Doddridge Saxon Chairholder in Clinical Psychology; University of Arkansas, Dr. Gregory Salamo, Joe N. Basore Professor in Nanotechnology and Innovation …