Tag: Celebrating Excellence 2014


Biology and Classics Graduate Finds Home in Oil Industry

From the 2014 Celebrating Excellence | What do Colombia, Gabon and Brazil all have in common? For one thing, Lauren Wilder, a UA graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biology and classics, helped negotiate exploration rights for oil and gas in all three places. Wilder’s first trip abroad as a land negotiator with Hess Corporation was to Lima, Peru. She traveled with two other Hess employees, “experienced professionals” she calls them, who had been to Peru dozens of times. “I […]

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From UA to Antarctica to the White House

From the 2014 Celebrating Excellence | Dr. Samantha Hansen spent Thanksgiving 2013 – and several weeks on either side of it – shoveling snow in Antarctica, and she’s likely to spend the next two Thanksgivings doing the same. But shoveling snow in more than 30-degrees-below freezing temperatures is the beginning of her labors. She now has more than 200 gigabytes of data that she will painstakingly anaylze over the next year to try to map a massive subsurface mountain range […]

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Professors Share Their Philosophies and Practices

From the 2014 Celebrating Excellence | Between teaching classes, conducting researching, sharing their work off-campus and working with students outside the classroom, professors often don’t have time to consider the impact they’re making. For Sarah M. Barry, associate professor of dance, receiving the University’s highest honor for excellence in teaching did just that – it forced her to slow down and made her realize that she is, in fact, doing what she set out to do. “I was so honored […]

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Triple Major Finds His Passion in Microfinance

From the 2014 Celebrating Excellence | There’s nothing quite like being a student while also running your own business. As the chief financial officer for Forza, an entirely student-run nonprofit that gives small loans to small businesses, junior Zac Adams wears a lot of hats. He manages a team that maintains Forza’s accounting books, underwrites loans, works with lawyers, and raises the funds that make the loans possible. Tonight, like so many nights last summer, Adams will sequester himself in […]

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Cuba Initiative Enters Second Decade With Research in Medicine

From the 2014 Celebrating Excellence | Why do some third-world countries have lower infant mortality rates than developed countries? What can Cubans tell us about Ernest Hemingway? What are some similarities and differences between the emergence of urban agriculture in the U.S. South and Cuba? How do rivers transport bacteria? These are just some of the questions University of Alabama researchers have tackled – and are tackling – alongside Cuban researchers as the Alabama-Cuba Initiative enters its second decade. The […]

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New Book Recognized for Unconventional Approach

From the 2014 Celebrating Excellence | When Assistant Professor of Political Science Daniel Levine received his first copy of Recovering International Relations, a book he’d worked on for years, he couldn’t quite believe it. Merely having it in his hands – a book fueled by his former dream of working in Israeli politics and by his experiences living in Israel – satisfied him. And then the awards came. In June, Levine won the 2013 Sussex International Theory Prize, an award […]

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