Bryce land purchase approved by University of Alabama board of trustees
Tuscaloosa News – Sept. 14
University of Alabama System trustees on Friday authorized purchasing an additional 26 acres of the old Bryce Hospital grounds and approved the next steps for a host of construction projects at UA, including a freestanding Fresh Food Co. location and a new storm shelter.
Trustees approve more construction plans
Crimson White – Sept. 16
The University of Alabama System Board of Trustees approved the budget for the 2014 fiscal year and several purchasing and construction projects Friday, including a $30 million renovation and expansion of Sewell-Thomas Stadium, UA’s baseball stadium…The approved project for renovating the baseball stadium will be a comprehensive modernization effort that will include new locker rooms, a weight room and an indoor batting facility for the team, according to the project summary that was presented to the board. The project will result in new seating, a revamped concourse, skyboxes and club lounges.
Going to the Game, to Watch Them All on TV
New York Times – Sept. 15
In recent years, sports sites have increasingly been outfitted with high-definition video scoreboards, and high-definition televisions in the concourses, the better to essentially create a broadcast of the game that fans are also watching live. But lounges like the one the Jaguars have unveiled take that one step further. They attempt, in essence, to entice fans to watch not just the game that is being played a few hundred feet away from them but every other one going on around the league as well — and to spend money on food and drinks while doing so. … “The teams are asking whether the TV has gotten so good that the snake starts to eat its own tail,” said Andrew Billings, who teaches sports media at the University of Alabama and is a co-author of “The Fantasy Sport Industry: Games Within Games.” “You’ve offered such a good product at home that people don’t go. Yet the product is good in part because you have so many screaming fans.”
Payday, title loan businesses possibly hurting local economy
Anniston Star – Sept. 13
Last week, the Montgomery City Council approved a moratorium on the issuance of new business licenses for payday loan businesses, following in the footsteps of 11 other cities – including Anniston, for a time – in the state that have done the same. The concern is about how payday loan services might be hurting the local economy and residents. … “The appeal of these businesses is they have no credit check requirements, which makes financing more accessible to people without such regular access,” said Gary Hoover, professor economics at the University of Alabama and a member of the Institute for Research on Poverty in Wisconsin. “But ultimately they hurt people more … the rates charged are extremely out of line with traditional bank rates.”
Scottsboro Boys pardon: No chances being taken
Montgomery Advertiser – Sept. 16
The pardon process for the Scottsboro Boys could have started this summer. But in preparing a formal application to the State Board of Pardons and Paroles for eight of the nine black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in 1931, officials and scholars see a chance to correct other injustices in Alabama’s segregationist past. So they want the Scottsboro case — the first one under a law allowing posthumous pardons for Jim Crow-era convictions — to be airtight. “The hope is that going forward, a strong first example paves the way for posthumous pardons that do not necessarily require the intensive approach that this one has,” said John Miller, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama who is helping to put together affidavits from historians and legal experts on the case.
CEOs who misbehave more likely part of unethical corporate culture
PhysOrg.com – Sept. 13
Chief executive officers who engage in unethical conduct for their own personal benefit tend to be part of firms that participate in other forms of corporate misbehavior, according to a new study from UT…The study, conducted by Andy Puckett, UT associate professor of finance, along with Lee Biggerstaff, a UT doctoral candidate, and David Cicero from the University of Alabama, focuses on the tone at the top in companies, and indicates that a CEO’s ethics and character drive an organization’s culture.
University of Alabama student Hayley Williams wins Quality of Life Award at Miss America competition
Pascagoula Mississippi Press – Sept. 13
University of Alabama student and Miss Michigan Haley Williams won the Quality of Life Award for her work with children during the 2014 Miss America competition
Miss Alabama Chandler Champion and her Roll Tide dress to greet crowd, internet at Miss America’s ‘Show Us Your Shoes’ parade Saturday evening (gallery)
Al.com – Sept. 14
Miss Alabama Chandler Champion’s famous Roll Tide dress will be on full display during Miss America’s “Show Us Your Shoes” parade Saturday evening. The parade, which starts at 5 p.m., will be streaming live on www.PHL17.com for those unable to make to Atlantic City’s boardwalk.
Enrollment levels off
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal – Sept. 14
The reasons are varied, but the age of skyrocketing enrollment for the area’s universities and community colleges appears to have come to a close…According to a study of community colleges released by the University of Alabama’s Education Policy Center, nearly 17,000 students across Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas lost their Pell grant eligibility because of the changes.
The orchestra that wowed Judy Collins opens season
Tuscaloosa News – Sept. 16
Even though the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra’s season officially begins tonight, the community got a taste last week. Music director Adam Flatt conducted the orchestra as accompaniment to Judy Collins’ concert at the Bama Theatre…For tonight’s opener, the start of Flatt’s second season as the music director, the TSO continues to build toward another, related goal: Helping the community recognize its virtuoso players in residence. Flutist Diane Boyd-Schultz, like many of the TSO’s principal players a member of the University of Alabama School of Music faculty, has performed throughout the U.S., Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Romania and Austria, but tonight she’s in Tuscaloosa, playing the little-heard flute concerto by Malcolm Arnold, in a program titled “Alleluia.”
DeKalb County Grant
WJXS (Oxford) – Sept. 13
The state is reaching out to families with children who are in need of psychiatric help in DeKalb County. The Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs announces a grant for $50,000 for the DeKalb County Children’s Policy Council. The council will use the money to expand its telemedicine partnership with the University of Alabama.
Fort Payne Times-Journal – Sept. 13
Crimson Couch training to begin
Tuscaloosa News – Sept. 16
University of Alabama employees, students and families will begin training Tuesday for the the fourth annual Crimson Couch to 5K walk/run. The event, organized by the University of Alabama’s Office of Health Promotion and Wellness, is the product of a free optional nine-week program for UA employees and their spouses.