UA’s MINT Soup program helps students challenge the status quo
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 19
…UA’s MINT Soup program, a scientific outreach program that targets elementary-age children in Tuscaloosa. Horton and a group of professors and graduate and undergraduate students are teaching the children about basic physics, such as Newton’s law, friction, trust, force, motion, center of mass and molecular motion. “The purpose is to give kids who aren’t normally exposed to science hands-on learning activities. We want to create a program that brings them the fun in science,” Horton said…Martin Bakker, a UA chemistry professor responsible for coordinating the MINT Center’s educational programs, said the purpose of MINT Soup is to create future scientists. He said scientists today should take the initiative to spread an interest in science. “From the National Science Foundation’s perspective, part of the purpose is to train a new generation of scientists. In Renee’s case, we also want our scientists and engineers to take ownership of training the next generation of scientists,” Bakker said. As the first black student to get her Ph.D in materials science with a focus in physics at UA, Horton is also working to promote greater diversity in the professional realm of science. While she said she’s happy to be the first black person to get a doctorate in her area of study, she says she’s disappointed it’s taken this long to change the status quo. “I think it’s a good thing to be the first African-American graduate student but also a bad thing that we’re in the 21st century and I’m just now the first,” Horton said…
Inauguration Doesn’t End Racism
CBS42 (Birmingham) – Jan. 19
University of Alabama political scientist Dr. David Lanoue says while the inauguration of Barack Obama is a major step, it doesn’t solve all problems just yet. “There’s still enormous trouble with racism, a lot of other issues we have to deal with, but this is a milestone I think people can get really excited about…”
Barack Obama T-shirts big sellers in Birmingham
Birmingham News – Jan. 17
…Obama is a symbol of accomplishment with whom many young black men and women in particular can identify, said Jerry Rosenberg, professor of psychology and New College at the University of Alabama. So the popularity of the shirts comes as no surprise, he said. “Wearing the T-shirts … is an unbelievable sense of shared accomplishment,” he said. “Even if they know very little about the civil rights movement, there has emerged a hero they can relate to. Obama is the essence of the victory of the civil rights movement.” While the shirts are largely popular with younger black customers, Rosenberg dismissed any notion that the shirts or their messages were divisive or militant. He said criticism saying otherwise is itself divisive, attempting to diminish the significance of Obama’s election as the first president who is black. “There are always going to be those living in this world who will undercut this moment with pure foolishness,” Rosenberg said. “There are people who will never accept and buy into this momentous time in American history.” Obama’s popularity and the public desire to connect with him are reminiscent of President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy, Rosenberg said. “There are people all over this country and all over the world who want some identification with him,” Rosenberg said. “Everyone can’t go (to the inauguration), but everyone can be a part of it.”…
Obama makes inroads in South, but work remains
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 20
…David Lanoue, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama, said last week that those wins — even though Florida, with its many retirees from the North and large Hispanic population, might not be a typical Southern state — could be an indication of things to come. ‘The expectation is that Democrats are going to become stronger moving down into the Southern border states,’ Lanoue said. ‘You saw that in Virginia, you saw that in North Carolina, and while Florida is obviously a different type of place, the Democrats won there, too.’ But as far as the ‘Deep South’ — defined as South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas — Lanoue said Democrats still have work to do, at least on the national level. ‘At the moment, it certainly appears the Deep South remains solidly Republican,’ he said. ‘But below that, there were some cracks, even in Alabama, where Democrats won both of the open congressional seats, one of which had been held by a Republican.’
Low-income families can get free tax help
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 18
Impact Alabama, a student-service program at the University of Alabama, will help low-income families prepare their tax returns for free starting this week in 10 cities, including Tuscaloosa. College students who have been IRS-certified will provide the service for working families with children making less than $42,000 a year and families with no children making less than $20,000…
Opinion: More reliable sources
Huntsville Times – Jan. 18
Stephen Foster Black is a Southern do-gooder, and how could he not be with a name that hearkens to the region’s premiere songwriter and lineage that includes grandfather Hugo Black, one of the most famous and important U.S. Supreme Court justices? Black leads the University of Alabama’s Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, whose mission statement is evident in its title…He thinks it makes little sense for the state to license, say, hairdressers but not tax preparers, particularly in light of the findings of a U.S. Government Accountability Office study in 2006. That study showed that 86 percent of tax returns filed in Oregon by commercial tax preparers were in error. That led Oregon to pass a law that set up a state board to oversee paid tax preparers, who had to pass a proficiency test and attend continuing education classes to be licensed. Black and his colleagues are working with legislators to sponsor a similar bill for Alabama.
Shakespeare play deepens ties between UA, Cuba
Tuscaloosa News – Jan. 18
…But over the past four years, Seth Panitch, assistant professor of acting at the University of Alabama Department of Theatre and Dance, has traveled there several times researching Cuban theater, which tends toward visceral, rapid, physical productions, over in 90 minutes or less without intermission, in part because they have no concessions to sell. On his latest trip, at the end of 2008, Panitch directed a Spanish-language production of “The Merchant of Venice,” the first Shakespeare work to be performed there in 11 years, at the Sala Teatro Adolfo Llauradò in Havana. Remarkably, it was also the first play directed by an American in Cuba since the revolution, according to the ministry of culture’s theater division, Consejo Nacional Artes Escènicas…
As atheists roll out London ads, believers unruffled
Alaska Dispatch – Jan. 20
…As Theodore Trost, of the religion department at the University of Alabama puts it, “In Luther’s moment, he sees that Paul, in talking about grace, is saying that Christianity is a different religion than what medieval Europe was experiencing.”…
Mercedes’ Alabama plant kicks off new year amid industry turmoil
Birmingham News – Jan. 20
…”The nature of the auto business is, was and will always be cyclical,” said Jim Cashman, a University of Alabama management professor. “In some ways, this is just part of what the business is all about.” Cashman added that this industry downturn is exacerbated by the global financial crisis, but he remains confident in the ability of Alabama’s auto sector to recover. The state industry is built on foreign automakers that are all struggling but still generally healthier than their U.S. peers based in Detroit.
“We have stronger brands and more flexibility to deal with the ups and downs the economy is going to go through,” Cashman said…
Student travels to D.C. for inauguration
Opelika-Auburn News – Jan. 18
Cornelius Martin will be among the crowd in Washington D.C. taking part in history on Tuesday. The 20-year-old Opelika resident is among a group that will attend the Inauguration of president-elect Barack Obama. The University of Alabama student will be in Washington for five days as part of the University Presidential Conference, which provides students with an understanding of the history behind the electoral process and the traditions of the presidential inauguration…