UA purchases vast collection of rare books
Tuscaloosa News – June 28
In the dawning of the era of digital books, the University of Alabama is acquiring an impressive assortment of rare books that gives it the largest special collection in the state. Earlier this month, UA trustees authorized spending $3.5 million to buy a collection of about 20,000 rare books and more than 12,000 historical photographs from Steve Williams, a Birmingham man who began collecting 45 years ago. The collection is conservatively estimated to be worth $8.2 million, but likely worth more than $10 million. “Bringing Mr. Williams’ collection here not only makes (UA’s collection) the largest collection in the state, but one of the richest on Southern history in the country,” said Louis Pitschmann, dean of UA libraries. “Google Books does not have what Mr. Williams has.” Williams, a 1958 UA graduate, will formally present his collection to university officials at a brief ceremony in Gorgas Library at 11 this morning… Williams’ collection meshes well with UA’s existing archives kept in the Hoole Special Collections Library, Pitschmann said…The Williams Collection will be housed in Gorgas Library and will be separate from the Hoole Collection…
Mobile Press-Register – June 28
University of Alabama gets $5 million grant to test underground storage of carbon dioxide
Birmingham News – June 26
The University of Alabama has won a $4.85 million grant to study the possibility of storing millions of tons of power plant carbon dioxide emissions deep underground in northwest Alabama. The university, in conjunction with Alabama Power parent company Southern Co., is using a 4,000-foot well in Walker County to test the possibility of pumping CO2 into geologic formations deep underground there, said Peter Clark, an associate professor of chemical engineering and lead investigator on the study. Researchers hope to identify vast underground formations of porous sandstone and limestone underneath layers of shale…Among the environmental concerns are leakage into aquifers that supply drinking water and leakage at the well heads, Clark said. Leakage into water supplies is extremely unlikely and has never been reported when the process has been used previously, and well head leakage can be dealt with fairly easily, he said. “There’s always the risk of leakage,” he said. But the CO2, in a compressed, semi-liquid state, would be sealed under impermeable shale…
Rising high school seniors learn to be entrepreneurs
Tuscaloosa News – June 27
…30 rising high school seniors, most of them from West Alabama and the Black Belt, who attended an entrepreneurship camp at UA. It was the third year UA has held the camp, which is hosted by its business college and its Center for Community-Based Partnerships. The camp’s goal is to give rising high school seniors the chance to experience college life for a week while teaching them a little about what it takes to be an entrepreneur…While sports-orientated camps have long been popular on campuses; camps geared toward business careers are a newer concept. This week, UA will host its first accounting camp — called Accounting Career Awareness Program. The camp, which is being sponsored by Alabama Power Co., the Alabama Society of Certified Accountants and the accounting firms of Deloitte and Ernst & Young, will host 25 minority high school students from across the state from today through Thursday. Mary Stone, director of UA’s Culverhouse School of Accountancy, said a goal of the camp is to get more minority students interested in accounting careers…
I-422 to infuse billions in Birmingham area
Birmingham News – June 28
The Northern Beltline will likely generate an economic impact of more than $7.1 billion during construction and $2 billion annually after it’s built, according to a report being unveiled this morning….The study, completed by Sam Addy of the University of Alabama Center for Business and Economic Research, shows that the Birmingham area should reap the vast majority of the benefits of the beltline’s expected economic impact.
Digging up history
Tuscaloosa News – June 26
Before Josiah Gorgas became a popular president at the University of Alabama, he failed miserably to revive an ironworks in Bibb County after the Civil War…More than 140 years later, an archeological dig sponsored by the universities of Alabama and Alabama at Birmingham has uncovered the foundation of the home that Gorgas and his family lived in for about four years…The past two weeks of the dig have been part of UA’s annual Museum Expedition that uses volunteer, amateur archaeologists who pay for the dig through tuition for a weeklong archeological camp…
State Census estimates show decade’s trends
Gadsden Times – June 25
The final population estimates of the decade released this week by the Census Bureau show the trend of the state’s “big small towns” doing well, according to Annette Watters, project manager for the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama. However, Watters said the numbers are estimates and nine years have passed since the 2000 Census was done. “It’s harder and harder to be sure that you have your estimates right the farther you get from the base count,” she said. “We’re really waiting to see what those 2010 Census numbers really look like.”… “Most of Alabama’s medium-sized (or) small cities, or ‘big small towns,’ however you want to think of it, are doing pretty well,” she said. “People are attracted to that setting and they’ve been growing.”…
Byrne says experience makes him the right candidate
Gadsden Times – June 26
… University of Alabama political science professor David Lanoue said turnout will be the key in the runoff because runoffs typically attract fewer voters than primaries. “One assumes that those most likely to vote are core supporters of a candidate and also the most ideologically charged, maybe the angriest people who choose to go out and vote in a low profile race,” Lanoue said. Lanoue figures both candidates will try to woo June 1 primary voters of Tim James and Roy Moore. “Barring that, another hope is to simply confuse the situation and cast enough negative doubt so maybe some of the Moore and James voters simply don’t show up,” said Lanoue…
Business leaders, officials to make creditors an offer to settle Jefferson County’s $3.2 billion sewer debt
Birmingham News – June 28
… “This has been such a contentious deal that my guess is that there is not a lot of trust in JPMorgan by these other entities,” said Robert Brooks, professor of financial management at the University of Alabama. “It turns out trust is the core asset of finance. JPMorgan has all the litigation and the stuff related to the swaps. They have been implicated in some pretty nasty stuff.”…
Author Harper Lee’s Alabama hometown is ground zero of this summer’s coast-to-coast festivities
SecondAct.com – June 26
… Interest in the book spiked in 2005 in the wake of the biopic Capote…Around that same time, Lee, who famously refuses to give interviews or even comment on her novel, began to make annual appearances to honor high school students in Tuscaloosa, Ala., site of the University of Alabama’s Honors College, which sponsors an annual essay contest for the state’s high schools…
UA Professor Testing Water in the Gulf
WCCO (Minneapolis, Minn.) – June 27
…The professor at the University of Alabama are testing the gulf. Oxygen levels are so low in some areas, feeder fish just flee. Causing complete under water chaos.
LHS students take part in 100 Lenses program
Demopolis Times – June 26
Linden High School students Jesseca Anderson, Nyeshia Daniels, Shanice Gracie, D’Anthony Jackson, Reuben Jones, Shadrika Martin and Cory Tinsley were among 29 participants of the first annual Black Belt 100 Lenses Summer Camp hosted by the Black Belt Community Foundation (BBCF) and the University of Alabama’s Center for Community-Based Partnerships. Students spent five days on the University campus after having taken nearly 50 photographs to represent the culture of Marengo County and the Black Belt region in general…
UA Staff Members Treated to Ice Cream
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – June 25
Just before the rain moved in this afternoon, members of the University of Alabama staff were treated to an ice cream social. It serves as a way for the university to say thank you for all of the hard work that the staff puts in year round.
College News
Tuscaloosa News – June 28
Sigma Alpha Lambda announced that Rebecca Jane Martin of Northport was recognized as a member of Sigma Alpha Lambda, National Leadership and Honors Organization at the University of Alabama.