UA To Dedicate $8 Million Blount Initiative Living-Learning Center

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. ­ The University of Alabama will showcase a new type of student residence hall at a ribbon cutting ceremony for its new $8 million Blount Undergraduate Initiative Living-Learning Center, Saturday, Sept. 30 at 9 a.m.

The ceremony will be at the Center’s Second Street location, off of McCorvey Drive on the UA campus. The Living-Learning Center is the centerpiece of UA’s privately endowed Blount Undergraduate Initiative program, a special, four-year liberal arts program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Designed to integrate learning into residential activities, the 62,600 square-foot, four-story facility includes residential facilities for up to 180 Blount Initiative students, classrooms, a seminar room, a reading room and library, computer facilities, quarters for graduate Blount Initiative junior fellows, and an apartment for a resident faculty housemaster and his family. Housemaster Richard Richards, assistant professor of philosophy, and his wife, Rita Snyder, instructor of dance, are residing in the Living-Learning Center.

UA President Andrew Sorensen and Blount Undergraduate Initiative students Carrie Zander of Dothan and Daniel Ray of Decatur will cut the ribbon.

Montgomery businessman and philanthropist Winton M. “Red” Blount and his wife, Carolyn Blount, along with representatives of the Blount Foundation of Montgomery, are among the more than 700 local, University, and state dignitaries invited to the ceremony.

In 1996, the Blounts and the Blount Foundation established the Undergraduate Initiative with a $7 million endowment, joining more than 30 other Alabamians who contributed to the program’s $12 million total endowment.

Two time Pulitzer Prize winning writer and internationally recognized biologist Edward O. Wilson, Pelligrino University Research Professor at Harvard University, will present the inaugural Bloom Endowed Undergraduate Initiative Lectureship in conjunction with the Center’s opening.

Wilson, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology from The University of Alabama, will make a presentation on his work Sept. 27 at 4 p.m. in the auditorium of Morgan Hall on the UA campus, with a reception following. The lecture and the reception are free and open to the public.

Designed to provide the atmosphere of a small liberal arts college in the heart of the University’s larger, comprehensive campus, the Blount Undergraduate Initiative is a four-year program for highly motivated students. It emphasizes learning as a way of living, a broad-based liberal arts education that develops strong critical thinking skills, the ability to integrate knowledge, and the use of knowledge for public good.

Freshmen are required to live in the Living-Learning Center, where all study the same readings. Upperclass students participate in a series of Blount Initiative seminars and complete a senior project designed to reinforce intellectual values, encourage reflection on ethical issues and on the importance of a liberal education to the community. Upperclass students in the program may reside in the center as space permits.

“With the opening of the Living Learning Center, the University has put into place the second of three facilities for the Blount Undergraduate Initiative ­ which is perhaps one of the most significant undergraduate academic developments in our state in decades,” said UA President Andrew Sorensen.

“This is a freshman residency that emphasizes, from a student’s first day on campus, the importance of acquiring excellent thinking skills and of learning as a way of life,” he said. “In this building, freshmen and faculty will come together to exchange ideas and discuss issues and concepts important to their intellectual, ethical, and personal development. This program and this facility are examples of the type of teaching innovations the University is committed to providing our young men and women.”

After their freshman years, Blount Initiative students will maintain the sense of an academic home at the recently dedicated Oliver-Barnard Hall, which, along with Tuomey Hall, serves as an academic House in the Blount Undergraduate Initiative.

“This is a premier facility for a premier program, one that can have a transforming influence on the lives of the countless young Alabama men and women who have entered the Living Learning Center this year and those who will do so in the years to come,” said Dr. Robert Olin, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

“Our aim is that they take membership here in a learning community, the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, where they can share their enthusiasm for the liberal arts and where they are encouraged and strengthened to grow personally and intellectually,” Olin said.

“We want this beautiful facility, and all the lively thoughts and discussions that occur in it, to inspire students to realize their personal and intellectual potential. It is a center for liberal arts learning in the tradition of the classic university,” he said.

Designed by the Atlanta architectural firm of G. Niles Bolton, the building draws from the 19th century architecture of buildings around UA’s historic Woods Quad in the central campus. It includes a covered arcade and central atrium tower reminiscent of the Victorian Gothic style of Woods, Manly, and Garland halls as well as the twin Oliver-Barnard and Tuomey halls.

The Living-Learning Center is located behind Paty Hall, in close proximity to UA’s Ferguson Student Center and the new Student Services Building.

The College of Arts and Sciences is the University of Alabama’s largest division and the most comprehensive liberal arts college in Alabama with more than 5,000 undergraduate and 1,000 graduate students.