From the 2016 Celebrating Excellence | When Cynthia Simpson was 10 years old, she had no intention of becoming a professional musician—and certainly not a professional French horn player. She was in fifth grade at the time, and her father was the band director at her school. He needed horn players, so she played horn. […]
Category: Celebrating Excellence
Communicating Over Coffee: Coffee Shop Restores Confidence after Brain Injury
From the 2016 Celebrating Excellence | Prior to her stroke, Nancy Taylor, a client at the Speech and Hearing Center at The University of Alabama, loved learning. She was social and vibrant, and then one day—the day she had her stroke—she lost her ability to talk. “I feel like I’ve had to do life over,” […]
A Leader’s Legacy: Bringing Life to Renaissance Literature
From the 2016 Celebrating Excellence |Four hundred years ago, at the age of 52, William Shakespeare died. He left behind a legacy of nearly 200 plays and sonnets, which students, scholars, actors, and directors have been reading, studying, and adapting ever since. In anticipation of the anniversary of his death on April 23, Dr. Sharon […]
Protecting the Coosa: New College graduate leads environmental nonprofit
From the 2016 Celebrating Excellence | Growing up, Justinn Overton, a native of Birmingham, spent many of her Saturdays barely awake and fishing on Logan Martin Lake in the Coosa River system with her parents. “I have a distinct memory of feeling the wind on my face in this little john boat we had at […]
Beer in Your Bones: Geologist Reconstructs Past Civilizations Using Chemistry
From the 2016 Celebrating Excellence | Dr. Fred Andrus says he would never do this to you, but if he pulled one of your teeth, took it to his lab, and dissolved it, he could tell you about where you lived as a child. How? By analyzing isotopes, or variations of chemical elements. “Isotopes are […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]