The Collegian 2014 – College of Arts & Sciences

Blount Undergraduate Initiative Celebrates 15 Years

October 30, 2014

It’s a weighty question. What was the most important thing you did while you were in college? For a small group of students in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the answer is often instantaneous and simple: The Blount Undergraduate Initiative. Although the four-year liberal arts program comprises a mere 20 percent of each participating student’s course of study, giving each student a minor in the liberal arts, Director Joe Hornsby said he hears the same message from graduating seniors […]

Student explores Louisiana salt trade with archeological dig

October 30, 2014

You’d think that spending the summer at the site of Louisiana’s oldest French settlement would be nothing short of grand. But Paul Eubanks, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, tells a different story. Eubanks’s six-week stay in Natchitoches involved daily ventures into the swamps of northwestern Louisiana and ample amounts of digging as he conducted research for his dissertation, which will focus on the history of salt production in the area. Though he describes Natchitoches as a town […]

Professor-Surgeon team headed to third phase clinical trials

October 30, 2014

Carol Duffy is proof that changing your mind is not only acceptable, but that doing so can often lead to something momentous. Duffy, an associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, is headed somewhere that very few faculty members have the chance to go – to a third phase clinical trial for a drug combination that has shown promising results to treat not only one, but several painful and debilitating illnesses. How have researchers not found this far-reaching treatment […]

Steppenwolf keyboardist brings recording studio to UA

October 30, 2014

Michael Wilk’s fondest memory as the keyboardist with John Kay and Steppenwolf is not selling 25 million records, nor is it touring with such equally legendary performers as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Willie Nelson, or Deep Purple, all of which he has done. Rather, his fondest memory involves a large crowd and about 100,000 Styrofoam cups. It was September 19, 1987, at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. Some 125,000 people filled the stands and covered the field as musical acts such as […]

Researchers Collaborate with Head Start

October 30, 2014

Can what you teach preschool students have lasting effects on them and on their family’s health and well-being? That’s what a group of University of Alabama researchers, in collaboration with Community Service Programs of West Alabama, hopes to determine. With a $2.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families, the researchers have the potential to impact national policy on early childhood education. Their study will involve implementing a new curriculum and […]

Expanding the Reaches of Medicine

October 30, 2014

While hordes of pre-health students scramble to prepare for medical school interviews and perfect their already polished applications, a University of Alabama senior has taken a different approach to pursuing his passion for medicine. Brian McWilliams, though beginning his third year of college, will graduate this spring with a bachelor’s degree in biology. By the end of his fourth year he will receive his master’s in business administration. He also leads a student organization that ships medical supplies overseas and […]