UA’s Champion Spirit Isn’t Limited to Athletics

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – While the 2021 SEC Championship Crimson Tide men’s basketball, gymnastics and wheelchair basketball teams continue to dominate, The University of Alabama has firmly established its status as an institution of athletic champions. But UA is a #ChampionshipSchool beyond athletics, too.

College Factual ranks UA No. 1 on its list of 2021 Best Business/Managerial Economics Colleges for Veterans in the U.S.

UA’s Capstone Agency was awarded Best Student-Run Firm by the Public Relations Student Society of America for the third time.

University of Alabama criminology and criminal justice instructor Douglas Klutz has been named the No. 1 college professor in the United States once again. Both CEOWORLD Magazine and Best Value Schools ranked Klutz as No. 1 in 2020. In 2017, Klutz was rated the No. 1 professor in the country by Forbes.

For the fifth consecutive year, the student robotics team from UA won the grand prize in NASA’s Robotics Mining Competition. Alabama Astrobotics won the Joe Kosmo Award for Excellence in NASA’s 2019 robotic mining competition. There was no competition last year because of the pandemic, so UA still holds the title.

Elroy Johnson, a Bama by Distance student, won best student film for his documentary “Building the Bridge,” at the DC Black Film Festival in Washington D.C.

UA is leading a 4-year, $6 million project to conduct groundwater research. The data and modeling tools developed will provide new scientific insights and make useful groundwater predictions for the Southeast.

Tiara Pennington, a political science major and the first Black woman to be crowned Miss University of Alabama, is the reigning Miss Alabama.

A panel of industry experts including engineers, architects and precast concrete producers awarded the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute’s 2021 Design Award for Best Façade-Only Parking Deck to UA for the Tutwiler Parking Deck. The PCI Design Awards showcase and recognize the creative and innovative use of precast concrete.

UA senior Kathleen McManus was named PRWeek’s 2021 Outstanding Student. McManus is the third student from the College of Communication and Information Sciences in the past four years to win the award, which recognizes one undergraduate student for outstanding display of public relations skills.

 

Although not No. 1 in every area, the Capstone has other championship-caliber programs and people.

The Carnegie Foundation lists UA among the top doctoral research universities in the United States.

Fifty-seven students have been named Goldwater Scholars, including one in 2020.

The freshman class includes 221 National Merit Scholars. Currently, UA has 796 National Merit Scholars enrolled.

In 2021, UA was recognized as a Top Producing Institution for Fulbright U.S. Student Awards for the fifth time in six years.

UA’s Advertising and Public Relations Program was named a top-five finalist for Outstanding Education Program during the PRWeek Awards — the 10th time the program has been awarded this honor.

The Capstone College of Nursing’s online master’s in nursing program ranks No. 13 among public universities and No. 17 overall by U.S. News and World Report. The college also made The Princeton Review’s 2021 Top Online Nursing Programs list.

The Culverhouse College of Business ranks 28 among public business schools and No. 44 overall by U.S. News and World Report.

Krystal Williams, assistant professor of higher education, was chosen by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education magazine as one of the nation’s top 15 emerging scholars under the age of 40.

For the seventh consecutive year, UA earned record external funding for research and other sponsored activities. For the 2020 fiscal year, sponsored awards at UA reached more than $168.4 million, an increase of more than 27% over the previous year, which was also record-breaking.

UA was named a “Tree Campus USA” in 2020 for the fifth consecutive year by the Arbor Day Foundation.