UA Professor’s new movie wins ‘Best Film’ at American Black Film Festival
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – June 22
A University of Alabama professor is making his name known on the big screen. His new movie is voted ‘best film’ at a national film festival. You’re looking at UA Theatre Professor Seth Panitch. He’s in the middle there, standing with an actor and the co-director of his film “Service to Men”. The movie shows black and white medical students working together during a time of great racial turmoil in the U.S. The film won the top honor out of 25 movies at the American Black Film Festival on Sunday. we’re told it took Panitch five years to research and write the script. Three other UA professors were also involved behind the scenes.
Primary Care Pipeline: Medical schools recruit rural students to become rural doctors
Progressive Farmer – June (Download required)
John Brandon, a family medicine physician in Gordo, Alabama, agrees. “They’ve [new physicians] got to have the nurse, the nurse practitioner, maybe the physician’s assistant,” Brandon says. He works with another family medicinedoctor and several nurses in a rural clinic he started in 1981, when he began practicing medicine. A RURAL CALLING. As an attending physician, or in-clinic instructor for medical students, at the University of Alabama School of Medicine, Brandon sees this need in the medical students he helps train as part of that school’s Rural Medical Scholars Program. The program takes at least eight years to complete. Students complete a one-year master’s degree program, followed by four years of medical school (with specific clinical training in rural settings) and finish with three or four years in a primary care residency program. Primary care fields include pediatrics, internal or adult medicine, and family medicine. Brandon explains these fields are well suited to rural physicians because of the wide array of needs doctors must meet in rural communities. Convincing doctors to practice in rural areas takes time and needs to start early in their education, according to the Rural Medical Scholars Program. Outreach programs for high school students in rural areas target those who express a desire to stay in or return to their community, often before they even consider medical school. The program helps create a pipeline that funnels students from a rural area into medical school and then back to a rural practice. “We have to find them talking rural and keep them talking rural,” Brandon says.
Hill Hospital receives excellence award from UA’s Project SOAR
WTOK-ABC (Meridian) – June 22
Some West Alabama residents are being recognized for their efforts to attract more funding for rural health care in Alabama. Earlier today, Hill Hospital in Tork, was presented an Excellence Award from Project SOAR. The hospital is part of an advisory council in Sumter County that helps researchers from The University of Alabama improve their research methods. Organizers say since being established last year, the group in Sumter County has helped ten researchers.
Law allows people, businesses to keep epi pens on hand, Kids Count study for Alabama
Alabama Public Radio – June 22
A play written here in Alabama is going to the city that never sleeps. Preview performances are underway in New York City for the show titled “Here I sit, Brokenhearted.” The playwright is University of Alabama theatre professor Seth Panitch and the cast is from Tuscaloosa. The plot is based on graffiti on a men’s room wall. Panitch says this show was originally going to be a book. But, he says it ended up turning into a play that requires lots of patience by the actors. “Once you start working on it you forget how shocking and profane some of this stuff can be. I think that’s what it’s been; we’ve had to drop a lot of walls between us even though we’re friends to work on this type of material together.” The play will run for three weeks at the Samuel Beckett Theatre off 42nd street.
2 Talladega County students receive Alfa Foundation scholarships
The Daily Home (Talladega) – Jun 23
The tuition bill for two local college students will be a little lower in August thanks to scholarships awarded through the Alfa Foundation. The Talladega County recipients are: • Emily Robertson, of Oxford, is an Oxford High School graduate and a freshman at Jacksonville State University studying elementary education; and • Kayla Sherbert, of Sylacauga, is a Fayetteville High School graduate and a sophomore at the University of Alabama studying communicative disorders. Each student will receive a $1,000 scholarship to use toward tuition, fees, books and supplies required for coursework in the 2016-17 academic year.
Six UCS students earn college-based National Merit Scholarships
The Source (Macomb County, Michigan) – June 23
Scholarship awards were: Gaines from Michigan Technological University to study computer science; Parke from Michigan State University to study computer science; Seenivasan from Michigan State University to study neuroscience; Sanderson from Michigan State University to study environmental biology; Roman from Michigan State University to study music composition; and Sieracki will pursue an undecided major from Blount Honors at University of Alabama.
Murphree Chosen for Plank Center Fellowship
WTVM-ABC (Columbus, Georgia) – June 22
A faculty member in The University of Southern Mississippi’s School of Mass Communication and Journalism has been selected for a fellowship in public relations with the Plank Center for Leadership. Dr. Vanessa Murphree, associate professor and graduate coordinator for the school, was one of nine educators from across the country chosen for the prestigious fellowship that provides opportunities for skill enhancement through the organizations sponsoring each fellowship. This is the seventh class of fellows selected by the Center. . . . The Plank Center was founded by the University of Alabama Board of Trustees in 2005. Its namesake, the late Betsy Plank, was an advocate of lifelong learning for public relations practitioners.
Romancing the Academic: Catherine M. Roach describes the joy of falling in love with a whole new field of inquiry and style of research.
Inside Higher Education – June 22
Goddamn, I love my job. I’m sitting in the 38th-floor bar of a swanky Dallas hotel, quaffing champagne and listening to lounge music. The hotel is hosting the annual national conference of the Romance Writers of America. This organization of 10,000 members — almost all of them women — is the professional association devoted to the best-selling genre of popular romance fiction. After a long day of interviews, workshops and keynote addresses, I’m eating a late solo supper. The waiter sets before me a perfect plate of calamari and a Texas merlot so dark purple it’s almost black, served in the biggest glass I’ve ever held. I’m a happy woman, although I alternate between self-satisfied pleasure and self-conscious doubt. Coincidentally, the International Women’s Peace Conference is meeting in the same hotel as Romance Writers of America. When I checked in for the romance conference, I caught sight of one of my former professors from Harvard in the lobby. She wore the name tag of the peace conference, and I found myself ducking. Catherine M. Roach is professor of New College and affiliated faculty in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. She is the author, most recently, of Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture. She writes romance fiction as Catherine LaRoche.