Bell named new UA president
Tuscaloosa News – June 18
Stuart R. Bell was named Thursday as president of the University of Alabama by the board of trustees of the UA System. Bell’s appointment will be effective July 15. The 58-year-old Bell comes to UA from Louisiana State University, where he was executive vice president and provost. “The University of Alabama is such a vibrant community,” said Bell in a news release. “I’m excited about UA and its positive impact on our community and the nation, and I look forward to the even greater achievements that we will seek in working together.” Bell replaces Judy Bonner, who decided to retire from the presidency to return to teaching.
Al.com – June 18
WLTZ (Columbus, Ga.) – June 18
STEM Students Leading Charge to Study Abroad
Diverse Issues in Higher Education – June 17
Julianna Kurpis, a Trinity University junior majoring in environmental studies and history, spent fall 2014 in Tanzania as part of the School for International Training Study Abroad program on conservation and political ecology. She stayed with a Tanzanian family, camped in national parks perilously close to lions and hyenas for more than 30 nights and lived with the Masai, an African people who inhabit Kenya and northern Tanzania, for four days. … Kurpis is part of a steady but relatively recent trend in study abroad programs. Students majoring in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines are driving the growth in Americans studying abroad. … Some STEM study abroad programs are designed to help students create solutions to challenges. At The University of Alabama, marketing professor Rob Morgan will be taking 14 students to India this summer. All of the students are undergraduate STEM majors enrolled in a graduate business degree program. In India, they will spend time in rural areas talking to villagers, identifying challenges the villagers face and formulating solutions. “Instead of taking products there, they will develop products that fit those needs after finding out what their needs are,” says Morgan, executive director of Innovation Initiatives in the Culverhouse College of Commerce. “They will find out whether the needs are nutrition or health or clean water or energy or hygiene. They want to develop products that might work for them. When they return, they will spend time developing the products.”
Adam Lankford: ‘we miscategorized suicide bombings as self-sacrifice’
AMSCI Interviews – June 10
Adam Lankford is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama. He studied at Haverford College and American University, where he earned an Ph.D in Justice, Law, and Society. His research focus is on social deviance, criminology, terrorism and counterterrorism, and mass shootings. His book The Myth of Martyrdom was listed by the New Yorker and Foreign Policy magazines as notable books for 2013. His previous book was Human Killing Machines. Lankford’s most recent publication in Comprehensive Psychology can be read here: http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/full/10.2466/07.CP.3.15. He recently talked to Ammons Scientific about his work. What would you say is the real practical benefit of knowing that we may be incorrectly attributing reasons for suicide bombing? First, it can improve our ability to predict who is most likely to become a suicide bomber. Instead of simply looking for people who believe in a radical ideology, we can narrow our sights and look for people who both believe in a radical ideology and may have suffered a recent crisis or mental health problem that compromised their desire to live.
Volunteer lawyers hold free legal clinic for low-income residents of Tuscaloosa County
ABC 33/40 (Birmingham) – June 17
The Alabama State Bar Volunteer Lawyers Program, working in cooperation with the Tuscaloosa County Bar Association, The University of Alabama School of Law and Legal Services Alabama, will host a free legal clinic for low-income residents of Tuscaloosa County. Thursday, the clinic will be open to the more than 40,000 low-income residents of Tuscaloosa County coping with civil legal challenges. The clinic lawyers are experienced in various areas of the law and will be available to answer questions in the areas of divorce/custody/visitation, landlord/tenant issues, wills and estates, debts/bankruptcy/foreclosure and domestic violence. Thursday’s clinic will be held from 3:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Tuscaloosa County Public Library Main Branch.
NBC 12 (Montgomery) – June 17