Links to More Information and Resources
Blount Student Association
The History of the Blount Student Association is inextricably linked to the history of the Blount Undergraduate Initiative itself. To understand the one, you must understand the other. In the very earliest planning stages of what would come to be known as the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, known then as the generic Arts and Science Undergraduate Initiative, it was decided that an integral part of the living and learning experience among the students would be a shared living environment during at least the freshman year. A report from a meeting concerning planning the initiative dated August 24, 1992 reads, "From his formal statement... Dean (Yarbrough) wants an idea, a program, an environment, and a place. This implies faculty and students coming together in a more regular and patterned way than in classroom settings. The academic houses will supply this community of scholars the place, but combining a residential aspect may be a useful addition which will supply an intensive learning environment."
Further, it was also realized that the kind of student that should be admitted to the initiative would be the student who displayed a thirst for learning, not only from the textbooks which they would carry to class, but also from the persons and things with which they interacted.
As such, when the inaugural class was inducted into the Blount Undergraduate Initiative in the fall of 1999, as with each following class, they were immersed into a novel kind of intense community learning experience within the larger whole of the University. However, as the year came to a close, it became clear that the continuity of the community was being threatened by the logistics of no longer living together as a group. The students themselves, having made friends and having no desire to lose the sense of friendship and community that had been built over the first year, and instead having a desire to expand that community further, d decided to appoint a group of students and charge them with the task of forming an association of Blount Scholars whose main goal would be to attempt to transcend the gap between the experience of living in the living learning center and that of living in the larger community of Tuscaloosa.
Planning
The intended result of the planning stage of the student association was a governing constitution by which the association would operate. This constitution was necessary, of course, for the maintenance of order within the association, and in fact, in forming the association itself, but was also necessary in order for the University to recognize the association as an official student organization. The finished product of the planning committee can be found here. Or by clicking the "Constitution" link above.
Membership:
All Blount Scholars are automatically considered members of the Blount Student Association. However, only those members who have paid dues to the organization are considered active members and are eligible to run for office.
Offices:
Offices which can be held on the executive board include: President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and two Class Representatives from each class (Freshman, Sophmore, Junior, and Senior), and a Parliamentarian. Further, there are also positions for committee chair persons appointed to committees within B.S.A. Also included is a Freshman Hall Council liason as well as the Student Representatives to the Blount Advisory Committee. The roles of each of these offices are enumerated in the constitution.
Committees:
In the past, standing committees have included the philanthropy committee, the intramural committee, and the historical committee, but the existence of these committees depends on voluntary effort by students from the Blount Undergraduate Initiative and there has been alot of flexability as to how closesly the ties between these committees and the B.S.A. are held.
Traditional Activities:
Traditional events sponsored by the Blount Student Association have included, Homecoming Activities a Halloween and Valentine's Day party, a Christmas party, the Blount Beauties Pageant, and a spring formal. It should be noted, however, that not always is the executive board of the B.S.A. solely responsible for the planning of such activities. The B.S.A. executive board works openly with any committee of Blount students outside the B.S.A., any individual Blount Student, and especially with the Junior Fellows and Student R.A.s within the Blount Living Learning Center.
Blount Advisory Board
The Blount Program was from its inception in the minds of its creators, designed to be a great program that worked to change the culture inside and outside of academia. In the case of the Blount Program, at least, the old adage rang true. Take, for instance, that the planning that went into the Blount Program lasted for nearly a full decade before the first class even arrived to begin taking classes in the program. The Initiative has and does present large logistical problems with its full compliment of about 400 students (to be reached as the Freshman class enters the University in the fall of 2002). These students require between six and seven freshman foundations courses per semester, between six and seven seminar courses (each with a strict limit of sixteen students) each semester, as well as three or more senior seminar courses per semester. All of that equates to arranging thirty separate classes with no less than thirty professors agreeing to teach for the entire semester, as well as between six and eight teaching assistants/junior fellows to help teach the foundations courses.
Even with the difficulties of finding personnel to fill these positions aside, there are still the difficulties of maintaining and finding the courses themselves. The sections for the foundations courses and the senior courses, with 12 and 6 classes respectively, at a minimum, follow a course design and syllabus that was designed by persons within the Blount Initiative and that undergoes only minor changes from year to year. Even still, some changes are always being made concerning the content and the timing of the course syllabi. More over, the sophomore and junior seminar classes are not designed around a monolithic syllabus and are instead proposed by the faculty of the college at large and those proposals must be reviewed and decided upon.
All of these logistic difficulties, however, were foreseen by the creators of the Initiative, and they provided for them in some of the earliest plans by proposing the creation of an advisory board to, along with the director, handle the background work necessary in running the Initiative. This board was to be made up of Blount Senior Fellows and also accept input from the administration of the college at large, namely the Dean as well as others.
However, as the first year progressed the excitement of seeing the actualization of the program in the form of the first class of students, as well as the relative smoothness of the foundations course, a direct result of the emphasis on planning the first of the Blount courses, helped to assuage the need for an advisory committee. Yet, as the school year went on the students began to request a more active role in the maintenance of the Initiative and at the same time the requirements for the continued planning of the program became more and more acute. As it became apparent that the planning requirements for the operation of the Blount Program had to be handled it also became more and more clear what body was most well fitted to handle those requirements. However, one more change was to be made to the make up of the board itself.
Members of the Advisory Board:
As the planning stages of the Blount Initiative were ending and the program was becoming more than an idea on paper, it was an obvious step to include most of the founders of the program, those professors that had worked on the program from the earliest dates, on the advisory board. However, through the inactive period of the board some of these professors had moved on to other projects and endeavors so that when the advisory board was revived these positions had to be filled with senior fellows who were somewhat newer to the program, relatively speaking, but no less devoted to the ideals of the Initiative. Furthermore, the students, having asked for a larger role in the propagation of the program into other classes, received the chance to elect two students to the board. This arrangement of the advisory board still exists today. Each month the director of the program schedules a meeting of the board and at his disposal he has the assistance and advice from five to six senior fellows, the dean and other administrative staff as well as the perspective and assistance of two student members.
The Role of the Advisory Board:
The role of the advisory board is, in general, to support the director of the program in administrating the program within the college at large. Specifically, this includes, but is not limited to, reviewing and advising upon applications for admission to the Blount Undergraduate Initiative, and reviewal of all proposals for sophomore/junior seminars. Furthermore, the advisory board is also available to the director, on a monthly basis, for advice on any event, proposal, or other situation, academic, social, or otherwise in which the director should decide to seek the support of the board.