UA displays contents of time capsule
Tuscaloosa News – April 10
…John C. Hall handled the saw carefully, cutting into a time capsule placed inside the wall of Smith Hall on the University of Alabama campus in 1907…The time capsule unveiling was part of a homecoming event celebrating Smith Hall’s 100th anniversary hosted by the Alabama Museum of Natural History…Contents of the capsule included:
Two copies of the Montgomery Advertiser and a copy of the Birmingham Age-Herald
A schedule of classes for the 1906-07 school year
A bulletin concerning the university’s 75th anniversary in 1906
Photographs of former UA professor and state geologist Eugene Allen Smith and then-alumni society president Hill Ferguson
A cartoon depicting Alabama’s win over Auburn in football in 1906 and in baseball in 1907
A letter addressed “to the president of the university some centuries hence”, and another letter from Ferguson addressed to the current alumni association president…
Crimson White – April 12
Delicate work on the deep seas
Huntsville Times – April 12
Robin Cobb is out in the Atlantic Ocean today, part of an elite research team studying the effects of deep-sea coral. Part of the work of the research team will include working with a remote-controlled submarine to be the eyes and hands of the crew. It’s such delicate work for Cobb, a 2005 graduate of Sparkman High School and now a graduate student at the University of Alabama, that her adviser and research mentor observed that “Robin is going to have to be thinking on her feet a great deal.”…
Military finds use for local chemist’s invention
Tuscaloosa News – April 10
Bomb-sniffing dogs used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan have become more effective thanks to research developed on the University of Alabama campus. Inventor and chemist Rusty Sutterlin created a thermal-energy product that can be used in textiles to help keep body temperatures at a desired level. The material has been used in vests that the military puts on its bomb- sniffing dogs. Sutterlin developed his product and other inventions at the University of Alabama’s AIME Building, which houses a technology incubator that helps entrepreneurs develop new technologies and then bring those technologies to market. AIME, which stands for Alabama Innovation and Mentoring of Entrepreneurs, held a Friday open house at which investors and businesspeople interested in the developing technologies got to hear and see some of the work being done at the technology incubator…Sutterlin, whose start-up research companies operate as Sutterlin Research, rents two laboratories in the AIME building, where he conducts his research. Being on campus also allows him to get advice and help from faculty members and researchers, plus hire students whose career interests complement the research. Dan Daly, director of AIME, said the goal of the technology incubator is to help the start-up companies whose discoveries will be in the products of the future…
University of Alabama astronomer to get a chance at solving cosmic mystery with Hubble’s help
Birmingham News – April 10
A University of Alabama astronomer next week will use the Hubble Space Telescope to try and solve a cosmic mystery. Three years after a Dutch grade school teacher discovered a mysterious object floating in space 600 million light years away, UA’s Bill Keel on Monday will point the Hubble at it to try to learn more. The photos that will result are expected to be stunning images of a giant green cloud of gas, and may rewrite scientists’ understanding of quasars, star-like objects that emit immense amounts of light and radio waves. “This has been the most interesting science I’ve been involved in in a decade,” Keel said Friday…While there are no guarantees, Keel said he suspects the photos will look something like images of the “pillars of creation,” the most famous images taken yet by the Hubble. “This is the set of images we’ve been waiting for the most,” he said…
Scientist’s work will long be recalled
Montgomery Advertiser – April 11
His surname, profession and passion for history match one of Hollywood’s greatest action heroes, but Doug Jones was cut from a different mold than Indiana Jones. The late University of Alabama professor preferred a much more sedate lifestyle…Jones, who died at the age of 79 last week after a brief illness, had been retired for many years, but his loss has been felt throughout the state, especially at the University of Alabama where, during his long academic career, he had been a classroom teacher, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and director of its Museum of Natural History. Retired from the university since 1996, Jones kept busy as he pushed into his 70s by reorganizing and cataloging the museum’s invertebrate collection of more than 10,000 specimens…
Tuscaloosa News – April 11
MSNBC host praises UA’s efforts to break stereotypes
Tuscaloosa News – April 10
…“In the political world we live in now, politicians could say we only have two choices: We either raise taxes or cut spending,” Scarborough said Friday from inside Reese Phifer Hall on the University of Alabama campus. “But where we’re heading, we’re going to have to raise taxes and cut spending. “And I’m saying that as a small government conservative.” Scarborough and his co-host, Mika Brzezinski, spent Friday at the Capstone for several reasons. Among them was to celebrate MSNBC’s arrival to the local Comcast channel lineup…While speaking to the breakfast crowd, Scarborough praised the university for its strides in breaking free of the traditional, unflattering stereotypes that many north of the Mason- Dixon Line have attributed to the South for so long. “The transformation of the reputation of this university has been amazing over the past five to 10 years,” he said, later adding: “It’s not the school that people are going to when they can’t get into the first choice.” He referenced not only his son, Joe Scarborough Jr., who chose UA after a brief, unhappy stint at New York University in New York City, but also the sons and daughters of his friends and colleagues in both New York and Washington, D.C…on this visit, on his 47th birthday, Scarborough was here to watch his son receive an academic award from the university’s College of Communication and Information Sciences. And he said he plans to return in the fall to attend a Crimson Tide football game with Brzezinski, a New York native who never has experienced a Saturday game day in the South. “Not everything,” Scarborough said, “is about politics.”
Student travels from Belgium to Alabama for executive MBA program
Tuscaloosa News – April 11
…Twice a month, Castagnetta boards a jet in Brussels, Belgium, and flies to the United States to attend weekend executive MBA sessions at the University of Alabama. Her one-way trip — 4,561 miles as the crow flies — is believed to be the record distance any UA student has regularly traveled to get to class. Susan West, assistant dean at UA’s Manderson Graduate School of Business, said in the nine years that she has directed the executive master of business administration program, she has had a few students who traveled from as far as Texas to attend class but has never had a student fly in from another continent…UA’s executive MBA program differs from the traditional MBA program, in which students earn their degrees by attending classes during the week. Instead, executive MBA students come to campus two weekends per month for intensive training in which they work as teams in a boardroom-like setting…Her employer, Capgemini — an international company based in Paris — assigned her to a project in Belgium after she started her MBA studies in October 2009…Castagnetta said she never considered refusing the Brussels assignment nor dropping out of the executive MBA program. Her classmates, the MBA faculty and her employer have helped her juggle her career and educational assignments…
Opinion: UA right to commemorate ‘Stand’
Montgomery Advertiser – April 11
The University of Alabama’s decision to create a plaza to commemorate the infamous “Stand in the Schoolhouse Door” by former Alabama Gov. George Wallace won’t be without controversy. But it is the correct course of action…
More Birmingham-area congregations going casual on Sundays
Birmingham News – April 11
…The “come as you are” message is a recurring theme in American religious history. One example of a time when that message was well received was during the mid-1800s, said Theodore Trost, chairman of the religious studies department at the University of Alabama. He said data from the Pew Research Center has shown that church membership in the last 15 to 20 years is on the decline. Whenever confronted with the problem of decline, groups try new techniques to encourage membership, he said. One of the ways that churches equalize relationships among members is by being less formal, he said. But it’s being done in more than dress. It spills over into the music, the musical instruments being used and even changing from traditional pews to theater or auditorium-type seating…
Bryant Museum to honor Gryska
Tuscaloosa News – April 10
Clem Gryska will officially retire from the University of Alabama on April 17, just a few months short of 50 years of consecutive service to his alma mater. Gryska spent the first 32 years as football coach, recruiter and administrator under four head coaches and the last 18 years as an administrator and unofficial “legend in residence” with the Paul W. Bryant Museum. Gryska will be honored for his long-time service to the university at a reception at the museum Friday from 5-7 p.m…
Annual plant sale offers exotic finds
Tuscaloosa News – April 12
Beautiful spring weather and quests for unusual plants and herbs brought hundreds of people to the University of Alabama Arboretum’s annual plant sale on Sunday.
College News
Tuscaloosa News – April 12
Daniel Gerber, a junior in mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama, was named the second UA student to win the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation International Student Conference paper award…Michael Sealy, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the university, received an International Research and Education in Engineering program fellowship through the National Science Foundation to study in China on an international research project this summer. Sealy, from Florence, was one of 30 graduate students chosen nationwide and is the first student chosen from the university…