UA Announces 2016 Premier Award Winners

UA Announces 2016 Premier Award Winners

Front row: Shuwen Yue, Mackenzie Ross, Katie Plott and Mary Lieb Back row: UA President Stuart R. Bell, Derek Carter, Dr. Marilyn Whitman, Dr. Lonnie Strickland
Front row: Shuwen Yue, Mackenzie Ross, Katie Plott and Mary Lieb
Back row: UA President Stuart R. Bell, Derek Carter, Dr. Marilyn Whitman, Dr. Lonnie Strickland

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Recipients of the 2016 Premier Awards – the top individual honors for scholarship, leadership and service at The University of Alabama – were announced at a recent presentation dinner.

The 2016 UA Premier Award recipients will also be recognized at UA during Honors Week.

They are:

2016 William P. Bloom Award Recipient — Mackenzie Ross (Meridian, Mississippi)

Preventing violence against women is a cause Mackenzie Ross, a public relations and political science major, has adopted as her own. She is president of Team One Love, a group that gives 90-minute workshops to sororities, sports teams and other groups on campus to highlight the signs and dangers of relationship violence. She also has spoken on behalf of sexual-assault awareness campaigns through SGA and other campus groups. Ross also served as outreach director for “Shatter the Silence,” an event that brought a variety of speakers to campus to share perspectives on preventing domestic violence. Her parents are Jim and Cindy Ross.

2016 Morris Lehman Mayer Student Award Recipient — Mary Lieb (Fairfax, Virginia)

Mary Lieb has assumed many different roles at UA, most of which involve communication. Lieb, a communications studies and advertising major, has worked as a communications intern for UA’s Honors College and as communications director for UA’s Student Government Association as well as the Blackburn Institute. She served as a press intern in the U.S. House of Representatives. Lieb also helped start, and served as program director for, The Serbia Fellowship Experience, an initiative that sent to her to Belgrade to learn about that country. Her parents are Mark and Kathleen Lieb.

2016 Morris Lehman Mayer Faculty Award Recipient — Dr. Marilyn Whitman, associate professor of management, Culverhouse College of Commerce

At least one Culverhouse College of Commerce colleague has described Dr. Marilyn Whitman as a superstar. “She personifies all of the main characteristics associated with exceptional teachers,” said Dr. William E. Jackson III, chair of the management department. Her students have praised her for her demanding teaching style and her knowledge of the health-care industry. She is especially helpful in guiding her students within the health-care specialty into internships. She has served as the Health Care Management program coordinator and the faculty co-adviser to Women’s Initiative/Culverhouse Connections. Her research interests, on which she has produced many publications and conference articles, include social and ethical issues in organizational behavior with an emphasis on destructive and unethical behavior. She examines drivers and outcomes of effective and ineffective leader-follower interactions, particularly in dysfunctional relationships that involve workplace deviance, aggression and other maladaptive traits.  She joined the UA faculty in 2005.

2016 John Fraser Ramsey Award Recipient — Rachel Ramey (Dayton, Ohio)

Borders do not confound Rachel Ramey, who is majoring in civil engineering and minoring in Spanish and environmental engineering. Ramey’s commitment to augmenting her knowledge of engineering with languages extends to her studying Portuguese in Florianopolis, Brazil, for a year as a Boren Critical Language Scholar. She also pursued fluency in Spanish through living in Iquitos, Peru, and taking engineering courses in Barranquilla, Colombia. Her interests also led her to India, where as a STEM student she led a senior project team to develop a point-of-source water filter for impoverished residents. In addition to her international efforts, she served the UA community in the Al’s Pals student mentoring program, the Adult ESL program as a medical translator and the 57 Miles-Perry County Initiative in UA’s Honors College. Her parents are Kyle and Phyllis Ramey.

2016 Catherine J. Randall Award Recipient — Shuwen Yue (Tuscaloosa)

Shuwen Yue’s wide-ranging interests encompass helping found a startup company at UA, producing research in chemistry for journals and conferences, participating in UA’s Blackburn Institute and University Fellows and playing the piano at the Regency Retirement Village. Yue is a chemical engineering and chemistry major from Tuscaloosa with minors in mathematics and the Computer-Based Honors Program. She has made the most of undergraduate research at UA – she is working in the research group of Dr. David Dixon, Ramsay Professor of Chemistry, where she pursued four research projects that resulted in two publications in preparation and 10 conference presentations. She also has served as president of the UA chapter of the American Chemical Society. Yue’s contributions to UA reach beyond the lab. As a fellow in the Blackburn Institute, Yue is working in the Daniels Project to start a citywide recycling project. Her parents are Ziming Yue and Lihua Guo.

2016 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Male Award Recipient — Derek Carter (Joplin, Missouri)

The Blue Porch in Marion offers coffee, ice cream and a tremendous challenge for Derek Carter, who has dedicated much of his undergraduate career to bringing change to the Black Belt community. Carter, who is earning bachelor’s degrees in economics and mathematics, used the shop as a job-training site for community members and reapplied revenue to charitable projects. He lived and worked in Marion during his junior year while commuting to UA for his classes. His efforts were part of the UA Honors College’s 57 Miles initiative and the University Fellows Experience, and he served as the group’s director of economic development. He developed an economic profile of the entire Black Belt region. In addition to his work in Marion, Carter served as an executive intern at 21st Century Fox and the U.S. Senate. His mother is DeDe Carter.

2016 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Female Award Recipient — Katie Plott (Northport)

Thinking – and doing – characterize the service projects Katie Plott, of Northport, has implemented. Plott, a senior finance and economics major with a minor in French, started the Think Community, a program that lends a hand to high-school students who want to give back to their communities. The program, which Plott thought up during her freshman year, challenges high-school students during a semester to identify and tackle problems in their community through service projects. She’s now working on incorporating the program into the curriculum of UA’s Honors College. Plott has served as the executive director and co-founder of the Think Community. She also participates in the International Honors Program. Her parents are Geoff and Carol Plott.

2016 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Faculty Award Recipient — Dr. A.J. (Lonnie) Strickland, professor of management, Culverhouse College of Commerce

Dr. A.J. Strickland founded the Culverhouse College of Commerce’s EMBA program; he routinely earns the highest ratings in student assessment, according to his colleagues; and he has been an adviser to many students starting small businesses or advance their careers. “In the classroom, Lonnie is legendary,” said Dr. Ron Dulek, John R. Miller Professor of Management. “He is rigorous, demanding, insightful, pushy, caring, compassionate and passionate about getting the best out of each student. He cares about each and every one of his students. To Lonnie, teaching is a vocation, not a job.” As for his scholarship, Strickland is author, with Art Thompson, of five books, all of which are in multiple editions. The latest book is the 20th edition of “Strategic Management” published by McGraw-Hill. This book is the best-selling strategic management textbook in the world and is used at approximately 900 universities worldwide. Strickland, recipient of the UA National Alumni Association Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award, is a popular speaker on competitive analysis and implementing strategic management. He has served as national president of Pi Kappa Phi, and he has sat on several regional and national boards of directors, including two Fortune 1000 size companies: the Statesman Group and American Equity. He came to UA in 1969.

Contact

Richard LeComte, media relations, rllecomte@ur.ua.edu, 205/348-3782