City Finance Committee approves $2 million for renovation of Bryant Conference Center
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 25
The Bryant Conference Center is on its way to an $8 million expansion. In today’s finance committee meeting, the Tuscaloosa City Council approved a funding agreement with The University of Alabama for an additional $2 million for the project. In the agreement, the expansion which will nearly double the conference space must begin by 2017. Finance committee chairperson Cynthia Almond says she sees the expansion as a good investment.
Summit gives support to group of student-parents
Crimson White – Feb. 25
According to The University of Alabama’s Graduate Parent Support Program, over 24 percent of college students across the country have or are expecting a child. Throughout the last 10 years, this population of student-parents has been on the rise.The University currently has 3,000 student-parents enrolled this semester. Jade Watters, a graduate student and part of the Graduate Parent Support Program, is also a mother of two children.In 2014 Watters did a survey for the GPS program to find out how the graduate program was fitting students’ needs.“One of the things that came back was graduate students who were pregnant or had a child felt under supported,” she said. “I felt like we needed to increase the tangible resources the student-parents had as well as the education about how they can move forward. So I sat down with my supervisor, Dr. Cori Perdue, and we came up with the idea for the Baby Shower Empowerment Summit event.”Watters said the event has two parts. One will serve as the traditional baby shower and the second will be an empowerment summit to help students who may need encouragement in their educational goals.
Enterprise woman wins Miss University of Alabama
Dothan Eagle – Feb. 25
A 2013 Enterprise High School graduate won Miss University of Alabama on Saturday and will go on to compete for the Miss Alabama title in June. Payton Edberg, a 20-year-old sophomore at the university, won the title during a competition at the Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa. She won full tuition and books for two years in the scholarship pageant. “I’m so excited to represent my university,” Edberg said during a phone interview Tuesday. Edberg, a former Coffee County Distinguished Young Woman, is the daughter of Brian Edberg, of Coffee Springs, and Wanda and James Cotter, of Enterprise. She performed a jazz dance for talent. Edberg said her platform, focusing on lung health, came about because of her and her sister’s asthma. She will compete in the Miss Alabama pageant June 3-6 in Birmingham. The winner will compete in the Miss America pageant.
Southeast Sun (Troy) – Feb. 25
Broadway show to play at UA
Crimson White – Feb. 26
A 59-year-old actress comes home from the big city to visit her brother and sister. She brings along her much younger boyfriend and the neighbor’s pretty niece wants to learn from the actress. The housemaid spits out prophecy which everyone ignores, all cloaked in references to Anton Chekhov’s plays and Sigourney Weaver’s acting career. “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” opened on Broadway in 2013 and won the Tony award for best play. In 2015, it will be the most produced play in the U.S. at regional theaters, including the Marian Gallaway theater as part of The University of Alabama Theatre and Dance season. Director Jeffrey Tangeman, assistant professor and head of the Master of Fine Arts directing program, first proposed the play when the UATD faculty was planning the season. Tangeman said he thinks it’s one of the best-written plays in the last 15 or 20 years of American theater. “I love the play very much, and so that was a major motivator for me, but it was also really nice to be able to look at the play and say, ‘There are great opportunities for our students as actors and as designers to work on this play,’” he said.
Writers@Work Welcomes Bragg and Weaver
Grundy County Herald (Tenn.) – Feb. 25
Listening to oral storytelling during his childhood while growing up in the Appalachian foothills of Alabama helped Rick Bragg hone his writing abilities. As a Pulitzer Prize winner for feature writing, a best-selling author, newspaper writer, and current journalism professor at the University of Alabama, Rick Bragg comes to Chattanooga State Community College as its featured author during the award-winning Writers@Work series April 13-17. “My grandfather on my daddy’s side and my grandma on my momma’s side used to try and cuss their miseries away. They could out-cuss any damn body I have ever seen. I am only an amateur cusser at best, but I inherited other things from these people who grew up on the ridges and deep in the hollows of northeastern Alabama, the foothills of the Appalachians. They taught me, on a thousand front porch nights, as a million jugs passed from hand to hand, how to tell a story,” shares Bragg.
Star Wars Characters at UA Supe Store (gallery)
Tuscaloosa News – Feb. 24
Shelbi Gregory, a junior majoring in social work, stands beside Darth Vader and other characters from the motion-picture Star Wars during a free photo session at the University of Alabama’s Ferguson Student Center in the Apple department of the Supply Store in Tuscaloosa, Ala. on Tuesday Feb. 24, 2015. The characters will also be at Coleman Coliseum for the Alabama men’s basketball game against South Carolina.
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 24
UA sees snow
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 25
Tuscaloosa patiently waited for the snow, and it finally hit a little before 7 p.m. After the snow started falling, tons of people rushed to areas all over campus, especially the Walk of Champions. People were throwing snowballs, making snowmen and enjoying the rare occurrence of snow in Alabama. One student from Brazil said that he had never seen snow before.
Tuscaloosa News (gallery) – Feb. 26