Culverhouse business school ranks No. 29 nationally
Crimson White – April 8
The UA Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration has risen again on the annual Bloomberg Businessweek rankings. The Capstone’s business school is up four spots to No. 29 among public universities and climbed seven spots to No. 73 overall for all undergraduate programs. This year, 145 total undergraduate business programs from all over the United States participated in the rankings. Twenty-one were eliminated due to insufficient response rates. The dean of the college, Michael Hardin, said having a nationally ranked business school will prove to be a great asset to students and alumni who are looking for jobs in the future because companies look at these rankings when looking for potential employees. “I want any student who comes to Culverhouse to have the attitude that they can play for the big leagues,” Hardin said. “Just like when Coach Saban recruits players and says ‘if you come here and do our process, you can play for the NFL,’ I want our students to feel the same way about their goals.”
Former Alabama star Barrett Jones named SEC McWhorter Scholar-Athlete of the Year
Al.com – April 5
Though his Alabama career has been over for nearly three months, Barrett Jones continues to collect the hardware. Jones, who starred at three different positions on the offensive line during his five years with the Crimson Tide, was named Friday as the SEC’s male H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete of the Year. “This is a tremendous honor and I want to thank the Southeastern Conference for recognizing me with the H. Boyd McWhorter Scholar-Athlete Award,” Jones said in a university statement. “There are so many people that helped me with my athletic and academic career who deserve to be thanked, starting with my parents, Coach Saban, the late Mal Moore, our academic staff, all of my teammates and coaches, my professors and most importantly my Lord and savior Jesus Christ, because without all of them this honor would not be possible.”
WTVM 9 (Columbus, Ga.) – April 5
Florence Times Daily – April 5
UA recognizes campus scholars
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – April 5
The University of Alabama recognized its best and brightest. Today was honors day for all the colleges across campus. Outstanding students across the university were honored for their achievements.
UA awarded research grant to study chronic pain management
Crimson White – April 8
The University of Alabama is set to receive a $1.27 million research award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to study different psychosocial treatments for chronic pain management. Beverly E. Thorn, chair of the UA psychology department, will lead the research project and said the research contract will support a study comparing two psychosocial treatments for chronic pain: cognitive-behavioral therapy compared to pain education groups in individuals with low income and possibly low literacy. “These two treatment groups will be compared to medical treatment, as usual, to see if the addition of either or both psychosocial treatments can facilitate a better outcome in these patients,” Thorn said. According to the Institute of Medicine, 116 million people have some chronic pain condition in the United States. Joshua C. Eyer, a research psychologist for the project, said the problem is individuals with few financial resources and low health literacy have little access to cognitive-behavioral treatments for their chronic pain.
Senior teaches Zumba to local elementary students
Crimson White – April 8
Students at four Tuscaloosa elementary and middle schools are getting a little shake, shimmy and slide added to their after-school program, thanks to University of Alabama student Lisa Brady. Brady, a senior majoring in psychology, has brought the hit dance-workout program Zumba to Maxwell, Matthews and Cottondale Elementary schools as well as Davis-Emerson Middle School. After Tuscaloosa’s One Place, a family resource center, approached her about coming to teach, Brady dedicated four afternoons a week to instructing Zumba for the students. “I teach Monday through Thursday,” Brady said. “It’s a lot of fun – it keeps me going.” Brady said at Davis-Emerson the groups she instructs could be up to 30 students, while at the elementary schools group size varies at around 10-15 students. Brady works with the groups of students for 35 minutes.
Pulitzer Prize winner speaks at UA
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – April 5
Civil rights author Diane McWhorter spoke today at the University of Alabama, in front of the building where George Wallace made his infamous “stand in the schoolhouse door.” McWhorter was welcomed in front of Foster auditorium by George Wallace’s daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy. It’s almost 50-years since then-Governor Wallace tried to block black students from enrolling at Alabama.
Two Alabama students win competition with water tower apartment design
Crimson White – April 8
Lauren Wallace, a senior majoring in interior design, has spent all semester turning a water tower into a residential dwelling. Wallace and senior interior design major Melita Hudson won first place in their divisions at the Interior Design Association’s Student Day Design competition last month. There were entries from every interior design program in the state, with a total of 35 entries, and $1,000 was awarded to the winners. The three categories at the event were retail, restaurant and corporate, health care and mixed use. Wallace won the mixed use category with her project titled “Water Tower Living.” She said the goal of the project was to design an extraordinary type of residence. She turned a cylindrical water tower into a five-story, single-family residence. “My design stands out because of the unique shape and design of the water tower. A water tower residence is not something you see everyday, especially not one that is as unique as this,” she said.
UA remembers longtime athletics director
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – April 5
Former University of Alabama athletic director, Mal Moore, will be laid to rest. The funeral held after a touching memorial in his honor yesterday. Administrators, coaches, players, and fans attended. Mal Moore died last Saturday, after battling pulmonary problems.
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – April 5
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – April 5
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – April 5
WALA-FOX (Mobile) – April 5
WAAY-ABC (Huntsville) – April 5
WLTZ-NBC (Columbus, Ga.) – April 5
Universities benefit from their faculties’ unionization, study finds
Chronicle of Higher Education – April 5
An unusual new study of the effects of faculty unionization on public universities—rather than on just faculty members themselves—reaches the controversial conclusion that such institutions generally become more efficient and effective when their professors form collective-bargaining units…Stephen G. Katsinas, a professor of higher education and director of the Education Policy Center at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, said he suspects that having faculty unions might affect the composition of colleges’ academic work forces, leaving them with larger shares of full-time, not part-time, faculty members than colleges without faculty unions. Such differences in work-force composition, he said, might help account for differences in student performance, considering that other research has found that being full time leaves faculty members better able to advise students.
New York crackdown shines spotlight on festering corruption problem at state level
Foxnews.com – April 5
For the second time in three days, prosecutors in New York announced the arrest of a sitting state politician accused of breaking the law for his own benefit. This week’s rapid-fire round of arrests caps the latest push by federal prosecutors to crack down on illegal activity by elected officials across the country — and New York is not alone among states whose public officials are compiling a jarringly long rap sheet…Susan Hamill, a professor of law at the University of Alabama, says it’s the culture of corruption that’s numbing people to reports of political wrongdoing. “When somebody enjoys a level of power, it’s easy to feel a sense of entitlement because of it,” she told FoxNews.com.
Holt students crusade for new school
Tuscaloosa News – April 6
Holt High School students are asking people to lend their faces to a campaign to build a new school. From 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. today, students will have booths in the parking lot of the Five Points shopping center in Cottondale, 4205 University Blvd. E. The students will display pictures showing the condition of their school, the oldest building in the Tuscaloosa County School System. The students will then ask people to show their support for a new Holt High by allowing them to photograph their faces. “The students came up with this idea to make a public display of support because they understand that the realities of getting a new school are complicated, but they don’t want this issue put on the back burner again,” said Jeffrey Parker, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama and Holt community organizer. “They came up with the concept to photograph the faces of people to show that these are real people who back this, not just numbers.”
CBS 12 (Montgomery) – April 6
Newnan Times Herald (Ga.) – April 6
Hearts against wounds: Event serves as therapy for survivors of violence
Crimson White – April 8
For the victims of domestic violence featured as the artists in the Women’s Resource Center’s Wounded Hearts exhibit, their hearts were more than canvases. They were therapy. For Sexual Assault Awareness Month, the WRC will be hosting the Wounded Heart exhibit, which showcases wooden hearts decorated by survivors of domestic violence. Along with the hearts, there is a description written about each that explains why the person decorated the heart how they did. Additionally, friends, families of victims, advocates and concerned students can decorate the hearts. Wanda Burton, peer education coordinator for the WRC, said she believes the exhibit has been very successful in aiding the victims and their friends in the healing process. “We know that it has helped because they speak about the exhibit in their description about how healing expression is,” Burton said. “People are really moved by the fact that they are not alone in the situation and they are moved by the response from the community.”
EDITORIAL: UA theater graduates making a mark
Tuscaloosa News – April 7
Tuscaloosa’s own Stephen Tyrone Williams is doing his city and alma mater — the University of Alabama — proud, playing on Broadway opposite superstar Tom Hanks in the hit “Lucky Guy,” written by Nora Ephron. Though as the abused Haitian Abner Louima he’s in just one scene, it’s pivotal, as pointed out in early reviews. The Village Voice, Variety and The Associated Press all wrote about his moving performance. The Hollywood Reporter used the adjective “superb.” Playbill noted that harrowing moment, a two-person scene between Hanks and Williams, is the emotional highlight of the show, and that “… Stephen Tyrone Williams plays it beautifully to a hushed house.” He didn’t arrive overnight, building from the lead in his first play, “Once On This Island” at Central High School, through UA shows such as “Ragtime,” where he was a towering Coalhouse Walker, to when he landed a starring role in a national tour, his first week in New York City. He’s grown from work in off-Broadway theater, independent films and television, including the lead in Showtime movie “Children of God,” as lovingly reviewed in The New York Times, among others.
Religion Notes: April 6
BlueRidgenow.com (Hendersonville, N.C.) – April 6
Agudas Israel Congregation is hosting at Holocaust Remembrance Day service at 2:30 p.m. Sunday. Doors will open at 1 p.m. so guests may view three exhibits at the synagogue at 505 Glasgow Lane, Hendersonville. The service…will feature Dr. Jerome Rosenberg, a noted Holocaust scholar and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Alabama. Rosenberg will speak about his work with Holocaust survivors and his research visits to the death camps.
Tuscaloosa looking at incentives for planned downtown hotel, preparing CityFest lot after historical survey
Al.com – April 5
Tuscaloosa City Hall and a developer are in the process of ironing out details of economic development incentives for a planned downtown hotel and preparing the site for construction. The city met with the contractor and engineer working with the Memphis, Tenn.-based Kemmons Wilson Cos. Wednesday to coordinate the city’s restoration of the two-acre site at the CityFest Lot ahead of construction of a planned $27 million, eight-story Embassy Suites hotel. The University of Alabama Office of Archaeological Research recently completed field work at the lot for a survey required by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.