Alabama students give back in the Black Belt
Tuscaloosa News – May 15
It might seem silly to hear a college student who recently finished his freshman year talk about getting too involved with the “rat race” at 18 years old. But in this economic climate, where jobs and college acceptance letters are more difficult to acquire, it’s easy for many ambitious high school students to get caught up in the competition. That’s what University of Alabama student Jason Arterburn said happened to him. Arterburn and 29 other freshmen in UA’s University Fellows Experience are spending the majority of this month in the small Black Belt community of Marion, performing more than a dozen thoroughly researched service projects that the students say improve the community and their lives. “Just out of high school, I was a rat-racer with hollow ambitions,” Arterburn said. “I joined this fellows program because it is an intensive service-leadership training program based more on experience learning rather than just textbook learning. “But it’s also about me becoming more grounded. Being in a program that is so much more others-centered gives you a much better perspective on life.” The University Fellows Experience began in 2009 and is a highly selective program at UA that encourages students “to pursue knowledge and action in the classroom, on the campus, in the community, and in the world.” Jacqueline Morgan, associate dean of UA’s Honors College and director of the University Fellows Experience, said the program started with an influx of bright students at UA who also had a desire to give back to the community. “We felt like one of the best ways to learn what it means to be servant leaders was to serve a community,” Morgan said. “We looked throughout the Black Belt, which has a lot of needs and is at the back door of our university, and we chose Marion because we saw a lot of wonderful citizens committed to their community as well as a lot of grass-roots projects in the community.
International scientists will meet at the University of Alabama next week for conference on atomic scale microscopy
Birmingham News – May 15
Beginning Sunday, The University of Alabama will host more than 180 scientists for an international conference focused on research into field emission and atom probe microscopy. Before coming to Tuscaloosa this year, the International Field Emission Symposium met in Sydney, Australia, in 2010 and in Rouen, France, in 2008. “This conference brings together leading scientists around the world to our campus for in-depth scientific discussions,” said Gregory Thompson, an associate professor in the department of metallurgical and materials engineering. “It speaks volumes on the direction The University of Alabama research is heading.” Thompson helped organize the week-long conference, that will feature scientists from Poland, England, Belgium, France, Germany, Taiwan, Australia, Japan and other nations. The University of Alabama in 2007 was just the fourth U.S. university to install a powerful microscope called the Local Electron Atom Probe, or LEAP, and it still is the only university in the Southeast with this technology. The LEAP lets Thompson and others study the chemical structure of materials like semiconductors and high-strength, low-weight steels, as part of a focus on nanoscience and nanotechnology. Most of the scientists coming for the symposium will stay in vacant university dorms, and on May 24 they will have the opportunity of a field trip to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.
‘Sports RD’ survey: Nutrition specialists laying claim to where food meets the field
Newswise – May 15
The first survey of sports registered dietitians (Sports RDs) and students of dietetics from the Collegiate & Professional Sports Dietitians Association (CPSDA) confirms that while the “science of nutrition” is trending steadily upward, it’s still perceived to take a back seat to strength training and injury prevention, the other two major factors that enable athletes to perform at their best. Sixteen percent of the Sports RDs surveyed have been feeding and counseling athletes for more than 15 years, while 25 percent have been on the job fewer than three years, reflecting the youth of a specialized profession that demands up to 80 hours per week in peak season. Fifty-nine percent said they worked a “minimum” 40-hour work week, but the true grit required of Sports RDs was best reflected in the CPSDA’s recently released documentary “Sports RDs Rising,” where CPSDA Vice President Amy Bragg, RD, CSSD from the University of Alabama, was among nearly all major college Sports RDs who portrayed the challenges of feeding so many with so few. A trailer of the 16-minute documentary is on the CPSDA web site at www.SportsRD.org. Dr. (Melinda) Valliant, (Dave) Ellis and Bragg will be available to members of the media during the CPSDA’s 4th Annual Conference and Symposium May 16-19….
Bill would give panel the power to alter sentences
Birmingham News – May 15
A 21-member commission could set punishment standards for nonviolent crimes that judges generally would have to follow, under a plan that will become law unless Gov. Robert Bentley objects. The plan’s sponsor, Sen. Cam Ward, R-Alabaster, predicted the Alabama Sentencing Commission would lessen prison time for many nonviolent crimes if the plan becomes law. He said reducing the number of nonviolent offenders who go to prison might help keep a federal judge from one day ordering a mass release of inmates to ease prison overcrowding … Instead of imposing prison time on someone convicted of a nonviolent crime, Ward said revised guidelines might impose supervised probation, or require time in a community facility that would let convicts out to work during the day. But the chairman of the sentencing commission said he didn’t know what the group would do if the plan were to become law, in part because the law would add five new members. “There’s no way to know,” said chairman Joseph Colquitt, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and a retired circuit judge.
(Guest Column) The coming of global Christianity
Tuscaloosa News – May 15
It may come as a surprise to some, but Islam is not the fastest growing faith in the world today. While teaching the second half of my survey course on the history of the Christian church, I came across a book by Philip Jenkins, “The Next Christendom, the Coming of Global Christianity,” published first in 2002 and just last year revised and updated in a new edition. It is a book filled with startling and revealing data and analysis. For example, Christendom as a “western” phenomenon, whose characteristics were historically determined in Europe and North America, is on the decline, dramatically in some nations like Great Britain. The “new” Christendom, the rapidly growing one, is charismatic, Pentecostal, spirit-filled, and most decidedly conservative. It is in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The “old” Christendom, the one most of us are familiar with, is shrinking and, as Jenkins argues, no longer represents the dynamic, cutting edge of Christianity. (Larry Clayton is a professor of history at the University of Alabama.)