Rising high school seniors serve the community
Tuscaloosa News – June 3
Dawson Foust wants to become an electrical engineer when he graduates from Holly Pond High School next year. To better prepare him for the future, Foust is one of nearly 600 rising seniors across Alabama taking part in this year’s American Legion Alabama Boys State program, a program held at the University of Alabama for one week to teach the importance of leadership, citizenship and service. On Thursday, Foust and 60 other boys worked at Northington Elementary School to trim hedges and clean up the property. Although work like this has little to do with what he wants to do as an adult, Foust said the program teaches the importance of working together and being a leader.
Former Fort Wayne resident Michael Martone wins prestigious writing award
Ft. Wayne News Sentinel – June 3
A former Fort Wayne resident now living and teaching in Alabama has won a significant writing award. Michael Martone, a professor of English and creative writing at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, has won the 2016 Mark Twain Award for Distinguished Contributions to Midwestern Literature. The Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature will present the award Friday at Michigan State University. Born and raised in Fort Wayne, Martone attended Butler University and graduated from Indiana University. He holds a master’s degree from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Eufaula’s young students will learn computer coding
Eufala Tribune – June 2
Teachers at Eufaula Primary School and Eufaula Elementary School spent a day learning a new language recently. It wasn’t French, Spanish or even Chinese these educators tackled; it was the language of computer coding. ECS brought in Dr. Jeff Gray a computer science professor from the University of Alabama for a day of professional development. “In many ways it’s like a whole new foreign language,” said Superintendent Dr. Elisabeth Davis. “In fact, some school systems are looking at including it as credit to meet the foreign language requirement.”
Welfare Utopia
The Atlantic – May 31
In much of the country, poor people are finding that there are fewer and fewer government benefits available to help them stay afloat. But here in this progressive corner of the Northwest, the poor can access an extensive system of state-sponsored supports and services … What makes a state generous, like Oregon, or punitive, like Arkansas, which I visited earlier this year? Joe Soss, Richard C. Fording, and Sanford F. Schram, the authors of the book Disciplining the Poor, point to a number of things, including which party controls the state legislature and the benefit-to-wage ratio in the state (basically, the higher wages are relative to benefits, the less likely states are to make cuts).
Why you should encourage your students to study abroad
Al.com – June 2
(By Dr. B. Joyce Stallworth, who retired from the University of Alabama on April 1, 2016. Until then, she served as the Associate Provost for Special Projects and Professor of English Education.) Existing in contexts outside the United States can expand North Americans’ cultural cache and positively impact our perspectives on respecting geographical, cultural, racial and ethnic diversity. When we live and work within contexts that are different from our own comfortable “home” cultures, we can either happily learn how to negotiate living in new places or we can view them as very different. Often, that perspective translates into believing the locations are less than, and that is simply not the case.
University of Alabama Receives SVG/NACDA Technology Leadership Award
SVG News – June 2
On Day 1 of the College Sports Summit in Atlanta, SVG and NACDA honored the University of Alabama with the fourth-annual SVG/NACDA Technology Leadership Award. The award is presented each year to the university athletic department that meets the outlined criteria of commitment to the investment in and execution of broadcast- and video-infrastructure technologies. Crimson Tide Productions Director Justin Brant accepted the award on behalf of the university.