University of Alabama all-girls rocket team aims to launch more women into engineering fields (updated)
Al.com – April 22
Kathy Steele has been turning boys’ heads for years . . . with her brains. Long before she became a member of the University of Alabama all-girls rocket team, she was launching model rockets with her father from their Prattville home. By sixth grade, she was showing her rocket knowledge at the school science fair. “All the boys were like, ‘You know how to shoot rockets. Wow!,” Steele said at Sunday’s 12th Annual Student Launch Initiative, the culmination of an eight-month rocket competition managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. See the photo gallery. Nowadays, it’s even girls on competing college rocket teams that are just as impressed with an all-girls team, she said, as they regularly approach Steele or teammates and tell them the guys on their team often don’t let them touch the rockets … Dr. John Baker, an Alabama engineering professor, started the Rocket Girls team three years ago with the intent that it be an all-girls team. It was a bold move, said Steele, because the male engineering students at the Tuscaloosa campus far outnumber the women. According to the university, females make up 20 percent of the college of engineering’s 3,911 students and just 31 out of the 190 aerospace students.
Crimson White – April 23
UA starts fund to promote sustainability; environmental group sets sights on more campuses
Al.com – April 22
A new fund at the University of Alabama will provide $1 million over five years to develop environmentally friendly projects. The $200,000 per year for the Sustainable Investment Fund will fund projects approved by a panel of mostly students, though the makeup of the panel hasn’t been decided yet, said Aaron Traywick, the spokesman for the statewide Coalition of Alabama Students for the Environment. CASE and the UA Environmental Council worked with the UA Student Government Association to make the fund a reality. “The Sustainable Investment Fund will keep UA at the forefront of national and academic innovation well into the future,” UA SGA President Jimmy Taylor said in a news release. CASE is working on similar programs at Auburn University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham and the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The organization had set its total funding goal for the four campuses at $1 million and managed to accomplish that in Tuscaloosa alone. “It’s almost like we underestimated ourselves going into it,” Traywick said.
Simon speaks the truth for Last Lecture
Crimson White – April 23
With many obstacles thrown at her throughout her life, some might say it’s amazing that Cassandra Simon grew up to receive a doctorate degree and present the 2013 Last Lecture at The University of Alabama. For a while, things only seemed to get worse. When she was 9, Simon said her father was wrongfully incarcerated for murder, a case she described as one “full of intrigue … it’s about sex, drugs and power.” Around age 11, Simon and her family moved into a public housing development when, after integrating a white neighborhood, their house was bombed. To complicate matters, Simon didn’t seem to have a place with the black kids who lived in her neighborhood either. Because remnants of white ancestry dominate her appearance, Simon said her peers made it clear she wasn’t one of them. “Growing up, sometimes I had to fight,” she said. “Some of the reasons I had to fight is because of my light complexion. The kids teased me and called me white girl, and it wasn’t meant as a compliment.” Although she was surrounded by drug addiction, prison and prostitution, Simon credited her successes to Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization, defined as the achievement of one’s full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity and a grasp of the real world. The first black valedictorian at her all-white high school said others in her circumstances with less favorable outcomes are not necessarily to blame for their condition. “Some people will just tell you to pull up your boot straps,” Simon said. “But everybody isn’t given the same quality of boots or the same quality of straps.”
Construction underway at UA
Crimson White – April 23
The North Engineering Research Center, ten Hoor renovation and a new digital media center at the north end zone of Bryant-Denny Stadium are among the construction projects currently slated to be complete in August, Tim Leopard, assistant vice president for construction, said. “When students return in August, they will see some major changes that will be exciting,” Leopard said. “Especially with the completion of the science and engineering complex. I think that will help students; it will make travel better. It will make their daily lives better.” At any given time, Leopard said UA construction tracks about 100 different projects, but there are several major projects in progress. “In construction is the Presidential Phase II and the student center at Presidential Village,” he said. “Both of those are just in progress and will not open until August 2014. The Presidential Phase II is an 860-bed residential facility. The student center will feature a recreation center, office for housing and residential communities, and a dedicated storm shelter.”
Terrorists and mass shooters: More similar than we thought
Time – April 23
The horrific bombing of the Boston Marathon adds to the litany of tragic violence rocking the United States and the world. Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December, we’ve seen mass shootings in places from Switzerland to Serbia … But Adam Lankford, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Alabama, recently conducted a comprehensive comparison of 81 suicide terrorists and suicide mass shooters who struck in the United States from 1990 through 2010 and concludes that the role of politically-motivated martyrdom in terrorists may not be as relevant as previously thought. “For years, the conventional wisdom has been that suicide terrorists are no more suicidal than the average soldier or terrorist who is committed to the cause and willing to risk his or her life to fight for it,” Lankford writes. .”These explanations largely reject the relevance of personal problems to the behavior of suicide terrorists, preferring to almost exclusively attribute these attacks to group psychology, organizational dynamics, and/or broader ideological movements.” In fact, Lankford argues, apart from the superficial differences in the crimes they perpetrate, suicide terrorists and mass homicide perpetrators in the United States tend to draw from the same pool of mostly male despondent, enraged, grievance-collecting individuals.
Property taxes in Mobile remain low compared to other Alabama cities
Al.com – April 23
When residents get their property tax bills in the mail late this year, they will spot a consistent charge for city of Mobile services. Compared to other cities in the state, that charge is a considerable deal for property owners. Mobile’s property tax it charges per resident is one of the lowest in the state and, according to a 2012 analysis, is $63-per-capita less than Montgomery and 53-per-capita less than Tuscaloosa … Mobile’s heavy reliance on sales taxes to resolve budgetary issues puts the city in a “dangerous” place when attempting to control its public expenditures, one University of Alabama professor said. “Over reliance of the sales tax is dangerous in terms of maintaining appropriate levels of public service,” said Anne Williamson, assistant professor in the department of public sciences at the University of Alabama … “Property owners have incomes that are twice than that of most renters,” Williamson said. “With property taxes, as much as all of us hate them, when you keep them unnaturally low and rely more heavily on sales tax, what you are doing is setting up a potentially very inequitable system in the theory of public finance let alone the practice of how it affects individual people.”
LETTER TO THE EDITOR: ‘Sequester’ is hurting criminal justice
Christian Science Monitor – April 23
Your thoughtful March 18 Briefing, “After the ‘sequester,’ now what?,” like most news coverage, failed to mention the likely devastating impact of these sweeping federal spending cuts on the criminal-justice system. Courts, prosecutors, and public defenders are all being affected. To take one example, the federal defenders program in New York City will be forced to furlough every employee for more than five weeks before the end of September. However one feels about criminal defendants (and some are actually innocent), they are all constitutionally entitled to adequate legal representation. We’ll see if they get it. (Fredrick Vars, Associate professor, The University of Alabama School of Law).
Study: Source of organic matter affects Bay water quality
Science Codex – April 23
Each time it rains, runoff carries an earthy tea steeped from leaf litter, crop residue, soil, and other organic materials into the storm drains and streams that feed Chesapeake Bay. A new study led by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science reveals that land use in the watersheds from which this “dissolved organic matter” originates has important implications for Bay water quality, with the organic carbon in runoff from urbanized or heavily farmed landscapes more likely to persist as it is carried downstream, thus contributing energy to fuel low-oxygen “dead zones” in coastal waters. The study appears in this month’s issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, and was highlighted by the journal’s publisher, the American Geophysical Union, as an “AGU Research Spotlight” in their print and online channels. The study was authored by VIMS post-doctoral researcher Dr. Yuehan Lu (now at the University of Alabama), VIMS Professor Elizabeth Canuel, Professor Jim Bauer of Ohio State University, Associate Professor Youhei Yamashita of Hokkaido University in Japan, Professor Randy Chambers of the College of William & Mary, and Professor Rudolf Jaffé of Florida International University.
Disability services office strives to help students
Crimson White –April 23
Approximately 3.7 percent of students at The University of Alabama have registered with the Office of Disability Services, according to the University’s fall enrollment numbers…Judy Thorpe, director of ODS, said the University does its best to accommodate students who have special circumstances. She said accommodations are made on a case-by-case basis but commonly use services such as alternate testing formats or lengthened testing times, books in alternative formats, note takers, real-time transcriptions of material normally presented orally and captioned videos. Thorpe said while the University is willing to make accommodations for students who need it, an issue often arises because students ignore their own needs, in fear that registering with ODS will detract from their ability to interact normally in social circles. “Students with disabilities may be met with skepticism about whether or not their disabilities are real since the disabilities aren’t [always] completely obvious,” Thorpe said.
City schools receive national honor
Tuscaloosa News – April 22
The Tuscaloosa City Schools was selected by the National School Boards Association as a first-place Magna Award-winner. The award recognizes school systems for outstanding programs that advance student learning and encourage community involvement in schools, according to a news release. “The Magna Awards showcase the great work going on in local school districts across the country to increase student achievement and success,” said Thomas J. Gentzel, the association’s executive director. “This year’s Magna Award recipients are national models that school leaders can learn from.” The Tuscaloosa City Schools won the award because of the Parent Leadership Academy it started in 2007, the association said. The academy was formed in partnership with the University of Alabama. It is a yearlong leadership development program that teaches parents how to become more engaged with their children’s education and in the community.
Boys, Girls State reps announced
Atmore Advance – April 22
Students from local high schools chosen to represent the Atmore area at this year’s Boys and Girls State conferences in Tuscaloosa were introduced to the public Monday during the Atmore City Council’s regular meeting…This year’s group will attend a week-long conference at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa June 9-14, where they will learn about the inner workings of government from the local to national level.