Professor, Former Agent, Adjuster to Head New Alabama Insurance Center
Insurance Journal – Nov. 9
Dr. Lars Powell has been named the inaugural director of the newly-created Alabama Center for Insurance Information and Research at The University of Alabama. Powell is a professor of finance and holds the Whitbeck-Beyer Chair of Insurance and Financial Services at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in insurance and finance from the University of South Carolina and a doctorate in risk management and insurance from the University of Georgia. Before pursuing an academic career, he worked as an insurance agent and as a medical malpractice claims adjuster. Powell has been a consultant to private and public entities in matters related to insurance operations, regulation and empirical analysis. “I am impressed with the experience and credentials that Dr. Powell brings to the newly created center and director position,” said Dr. J. Michael Hardin, dean of the Culverhouse College of Commerce at The University of Alabama, when announcing the appointment.
NBC 13 (Birmingham) – Nov. 9
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 9
UA researcher creates the Automatic Ingestion Monitor
KEX-AM Radio (Portland, Ore.) – Nov. 8
New technology is also coming from the University of Alabama. They have put together an ear-worn sensor that can estimate your food intake by how much you chew. Now this is a high technology at its finest. It’s called the automatic ingestion monitor, and like all things in technology we shorten this out this letter acronym that’s called AIM … It combines an image of your meal along with reading your jaw vibrations in order calculate the energy levels of whatever you are eating.
New parking deck coming to east side of campus
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Nov. 7
A major parking deck will be coming to the University of Alabama. The UA Board of Trustees approved a measure this morning on the Capstone parking deck and pedestrian bridge project. The project will consist of a parking deck with approximately 1,000 parking spaces and a 12-foot wide pedestrian bridge at a cost of over $21 million. The deck will provide additional parking spaces to increase the availability and capacity for students and guests of various events around campus.
COLLEGE NEWS: November 9
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 9
Meredith C. Cummings, a journalism instructor and director of the Alabama Scholastic Press Association at the University of Alabama, has achieved certified journalism educator status from the Journalism Education Association. Cummings was honored Nov. 8 during a luncheon in Washington, D.C. Journalism certification recognizes teachers who meet national standards of preparation to teach high school journalism classes and advise student media.
SGA raises money for Honor Flight
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Nov. 7
The University of Alabama Student Government Association is partnering with the school’s VA to help fund honor flights for veterans. Each year, honor flights send local veterans to the nation’s capitol to visit the memorials they fought for. The Tuscaloosa honor flight is the last operating branch in Alabama. A group of local vets went on an honor flight last month. The SGA will be set up on the Quad Monday taking donations.
Auto industry builds new-look economy
Montgomery Advertiser – Nov. 7
Long reliant on state jobs and military money, Montgomery shifted gears in 2002 when Hyundai announced it would open its first America production plant here. Since then, the River Region has built its present and future on the sturdy back of an ever-growing manufacturing network. … Airbus is building a $600 million production and assembly plant in Mobile, and it’s expected to bring in a network of more than 4,000 aviation supplier jobs. While the plant is under construction, state and local leaders are traveling to industry conventions around the world to sell aerospace companies on the area. That could be a wise investment, said Sam Addy, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama. “What we shouldn’t forget is that Boeing has been here for a long time, and they’re looking to expand, too,” Addy said. “Aerospace is a big opportunity for us. It’s going to affect the whole state, there’s no question.”
Joe Rogers: The allure, and mystery, of Dixie
Gulf Live – Nov. 7
As place nicknames go, it’s hard to beat “Dixie.” It’s instantly recognizable as a synonym for the South. I don’t know of anything remotely similar that so captures and evokes the essence of a region. In the middle of the last century, when the Alabama Chamber of Commerce was casting about for a moniker to replace the lackluster “Cotton State” for boasting purposes, it settled on “Heart of Dixie”: “Alabama is geographically the Heart of Dixie, Alabama is industrially the Heart of Dixie, Alabama is, in fact, the Heart of Dixie.” … That is indeed one of the tales told to explain Dixie, specifically, that it is a “derivative of the ten-dollar currency issued by some banks in French New Orleans, thus ‘dix’ for ‘ten,'” said Joshua Rothman, a history professor and director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama. He adds that “the idea that Dixie was the territory where those banknotes circulated – first in and around New Orleans, and then gradually expanded so it referred colloquially to the South – seems at least plausible. Plus, as a historian interested in the evolution of capitalism, it has a kind of personal appeal.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Rick Bragg to speak at Tuesday library event
Tuscaloosa News – Nov. 10
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Rick Bragg will discuss and sign his books from 6-8 p.m. Tuesday at the Tuscaloosa Public Library, 1801 Jack Warner Parkway. Admission is free, but donations of canned goods for the Beat Auburn Beat Hunger food drive will be collected. Copies of Bragg’s books will be available for sale. Bragg was a reporter and national correspondent for The New York Times, where he won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. He has written a half-dozen books, including best-sellers “All Over But the Shoutin’ ” and “Ava’s Man,” and has won more than 50 writing awards, including the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Distinguished Writing Award twice. His latest book is “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story.” He now teaches writing at the University of Alabama. Bragg’s visit is sponsored by the Kate Webb Ragsdale Author Series Fund.
Medal of Honor Exhibit of Valor
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Nov. 7
The UA Office of Veteran and Military Affairs is honoring the country’s heroes with both education and inspiration. The “Saluting America Foundation” has chosen the university to host the Medal of Honor Exhibit of Valor, located in the Ferguson Center’s Grand Hall. The exhibit features over 100 “portraits of valor” of Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipients.
Coach Saban pinned for diabetes campaign
Crimson White – Nov. 10
UA football coach Nick Saban participated in the “Pin a Personality” campaign to raise awareness for diabetes before World Diabetes Day on Friday. UA President Judy Bonner and Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox will be pinned at 4 p.m. Monday, Nov. 10, to continue the campaign. The campaign, which is sponsored by the Tuscaloosa Diabetes Coalition and the Diabetes Education Team, “pins” notable Tuscaloosa and UA community members with a blue circle, the international sign for diabetes. Other community members who were pinned include Stephen Cannon, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA; Shane Sharpe, dean of the Honors College; Rick Streiffer, dean of the College of Community Health Sciences; and Steven Hood, interim vice president of student affairs. Alex Morris, a senior majoring in music performance and biology and the president of DiET, helped pin Saban. “The pinning of Nick Saban was a tremendous way for DiET to kick off National Diabetes Month and our awareness campaign for World Diabetes Day,” he said.
For women, muscles are gaining strength over thinness
Minneapolis Star Tribune – Nov. 9
When Kristin Rance joined a gym about a year ago, she had one vision: muscle. The 30-year-old mother of two wanted to look in the mirror and see someone “who looks like she works out — without flexing,” Rance said. How she didn’t want to look? Skinny. Over the past few years, women such as Rance have been embracing the message that “strong is the new skinny” — that a body of muscle is better than a body of bones. Gyms have built marketing campaigns around the philosophy, with ads featuring rock-solid women pumping iron and classes promoted as muscle-building rather than weight-losing. The phrase itself has a following: Texas personal trainer and blogger Marsha Christensen’s “strong is the new skinny” Facebook page has 117,000 “likes.” Forget craving runway models’ stick-thin figures. Women now want Michelle Obama’s arms, Jillian Michaels’ abs and Lolo Jones’ legs … At the 2012 Summer Olympics, for example, not only did U.S. female athletes outnumber their male counterparts for the first time, but media coverage of them also reflected that: For the first time, women landed more screen time and on-air mentions than men, according to a study in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly led by Andrew Billings of the University of Alabama. Coverage of the 2014 Winter Games reflected a similar change.
Poole earns doctorate degree
Cleveland Banner (Tenn.) – Nov. 9
Dr. Bryan Poole, lecturer in psychology at Lee University, has successfully defended his dissertation in experimental psychology at the University of Alabama. Poole joined the faculty at Lee in August 2013 and teaches courses such as writing for psychology, learning and cognition, introductory and advanced research methods and statistics, and advanced independent research. … Poole’s dissertation titled “Exploring the Neural Substrates of Approach Motivation and Time Perception” sought to investigate how having a perception of “time flying” during approach-motivated positive states reflected changes in the human brain. He began his studies at the University of Alabama in fall of 2010 and focused his research in the area of social psychology, including social-cognitive topics such as emotion, motivation, attention,and time perception.