Box 870322 Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0322, Vol. 4 Fall 2007
Box 870322 Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0322, Vol. 4 Fall 2007told their stories in "Where are They Now?"In conclusion, I would like to thank all of you foryour kind wishes and whole-hearted support of thedepartment over the past year. I hope you continueto "watch" the department by browsing our new website (http://geography.ua.edu). I also hope you sup port our graduate program by contributing to DavidC. Weaver Endowed Support Fund, which is nowofficially established.Chair's GreetingI was honored to be appointed as the DepartmentChair of Geography at the University of Alabamawith unanimous support from my colleagues. Thisappointment followed the departure of ProfessorJerry Webster, who spent last seven years in thatposition. I would like to thank him for his strongleadership and tireless services to the department.The department is definitely moving in a positivedirection under his leadership. I would also like toexpress my gratitude to Dr. Bobbi Webster for heroutstanding services to our undergraduate programand teaching over past 11 years.We are delighted to be able to hire Dr. Jason Senk beil as a full time instructor and the director of under graduate programs. Dr. Senkbeil received his Ph.D.from Kent State University in 2007. He is in chargeof advising our geography majors and interdiscipli nary environmental science program students whileteaching sections of GY 101 (Principles of PhysicalGeography I: Atmospheric Processes and Patterns).We are also very glad to have Dr. MichaelSteinberg be a part of faculty team, who is holding ajoint appointment between geography and New Col lege. Dr. Steinberg's specialty is human dimensionsof environmental change and conservation.This fall, we are happy to hire Mrs. Mary Pitts as apart time instructor. Mrs. Pitts received her graduateeducation from UK and is specialized in natural haz ards and environmental site assessment.Congratulations to Dr. Joe Weber, who was ten ured and promoted to associate professor this pastyear. With Dr. Weber's promotion, now we havefour professors (Drs. Bryan, Han, Shankman, andWilson), two associate professors (Drs. Richetto andWeber), four assistant professors (Drs. Appiah Opoku, Brommer, Davis, and Steinberg, a joint ap pointment with New College), and two full time in structors (Drs. Espy-Brown and Senkbeil).We have 34 graduate students by this fall. Half ofthem are being funded. We now have 11 graduateteaching assistantships, which is a record for thisdepartment. Our graduate students have been con tinuously successful in their post graduation jobs andlife. In this newsletter, two former graduate studentsLuoheng Han, ChairDepartment of GeographyJan S. Weaver's donation establishes the ProfessorDavid C. Weaver Endowed Support FundThe University of Alabama Board of Trustees passed aresolution on September 14, 2007, reading in part as fol lows:WHEREAS, Jan S. Weaver of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, hascontributed 10,000 to The Board of Trustees of The Uni versity of Alabama to honor the memory of her late hus band, David C. Weaver, and to promote the education ofstudents studying geography in the College of Arts andSciences at The University of Alabama; andWHEREAS, Mrs. Weaver desires that this gift be acceptedand maintained by The University of Alabama as a per manent fund to be named The David C. Weaver EndowedSupport Fund in the College of Arts and Sciences . Endowment earnings shall be used to supportstudents, preferably graduate students, in the Departmentof Geography who are deemed by the faculty and Chair ofthe Department to be academically superior and deserv ing of such support.The goal of the Department of Geography is to raisefunds above the 20,000 level, which will enable theawarding of graduate student scholarships in Dr.Weaver's name. Please make donations directly to theDepartment or through the University's Capital Campaignprogram ( designating the gift for the Department of Ge ography David C. Weaver Endowed Support Fund).Make checks payable to: The University of AlabamaDepartment of GeographyUniversity of AlabamaP.O. Box 870322Tuscaloosa, AL 354871
Faculty and Staffates and graduate students alike. I have introducedtwo new learning technologies (course capture and"clickers") in my courses, in hopes that students willcontinue to be engaged in class and be active partici pants in their education. These new tools allow meto not only evaluate student progress and outcomes,but also help me become a better instructor. Amongthe many unique opportunities I have had since ar riving at the University of Alabama, a trip in Maywas the highlight of my year. In May, I representedthe Department of Geography on a trip to Cuba withvarious other faculty and staff from the University.Our goal was to interact with research and teachingfaculty from the University of Havana in an effort to ultivate potential research and education exchangesm the future. What a great experience!Seth Appiah-OpokuThe past year my research con tinued to focus on ecotourism andindigenous belief systems. Amanuscript titled "Indigenous Be liefs and Environmental Steward ship: A Case Study of Ghana" waspublished in the Journal of Cul tural Geography. I presented theinitial findings of my ecotourismresearch at both the AAG AnnualMeeting in San Francisco and the SEDAAG AnnualMeeting in Morgantown, WV.I continued to serve on the Diversity Committee,as alternate on Faculty Senate, and a committeemember on the AAST program committee. I alsoserved as the Geography Department's coordinatorfor the Adopt-a-Mile Program. I continued to enjoyteaching planning courses, geography of Africa, anda study abroad course in Ghana titled "Field Studiesin Africa." In addition, I served on several compre hensive examination committees.Outside the UA campus, I continued to serve onthe editorial board of the Journal of EnvironmentalImpact Assessment; as a consultant to McGraw-HillPublishing Company (Glencoe World Geographytextbook); and as a resource person to the Tusca loosa Housing Authority. Finally, I served as advi sor to the Tuscaloosa Sister Cities Commission.Hobson BryanThe Department has anair of excitement thesedays with new facultyand record graduate stu dent enrollment. My office, sharing space on the -.third floor with the MapLibrary, labs, and graduate student offices, is a.particularly nice place toshare the vibrancy of the enterprise. This past yearmarked completion of projects concerning such di verse topic as tourism promotion and social eco nomic and environmental justice impacts. Th; latterr nged from proposed fishing net bans to disposal ofhigh-level nuclear waste. I am particularly proud ofco-authoring two book chapters with our formerstudent, Susanne Rose in Water Allocation in Ala bama, Florida, and Georgia: New Issues, NewMethods, New Models. Susanne is a Ph.D. studentat the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.One of the editors is Aaron Wolf, who was a mem ber of our faculty before going to Oregon State Uni v rsity a few years ago. During the coming year Iwill be offering "Social Impact Assessment" for thefirst time in several years. We have made what wasformerly exclusively a graduate level course into acombined upper level undergraduate- graduate of fering. I will also be teaching "Environment andSociety" in the fall.David BrommerMy first year at the Universityof Alabama provided manygreat opportunities and experi ences that have me looking for ward to another productive andrewarding school year. I havecontinued my research interestsin quantifying the spatial andtemporal variations in precipitation durationthroughout both the southeast and the conterminous1:Inited States. While I continue to work on ques tions pertaining to precipitation duration, I have alsoexpanded my area of interest into precipitation vari ability and stream flow in the southeast UnitedStates and land/sea breeze interactions along theGulf Coast. When not engaged in research, I havethoroughly enjoyed my interaction with undergradu-.2
Amanda Espy-Brownstudents in the Soil Science class conducted groupresearch projects that consisted of laboratory analy sis of soil samples the students collected from soilslocated in Tuscaloosa County. The student researchculminated with student's developing and presentingprofessional quality research posters based on theresults of their laboratory analyses and field obser vations. The students' effort was impressive, andthis showed in the quality of their research posterpresentations. As for research news, I recently hadan article accepted for publication in the journalPhysical Geography, and I have two more articlescurrently in review with other journals. All threearticles examine different aspects of geomorphicchange in river systems in response to processes ofurbanization, with particular emphasis on spatialpatterns of change. I continue to collaborate on eco geomorphologic research with biologists AlexHuryn and Jon Benstead of the Biology Departmentat UA. Our research, still in its early stages, focuseson identifying geomorphic process zones in order toexplain the spatial distribution and association ofbivalves in Bogue Chitto Creek, AL. This researchcould have important implications for understandingaquatic habitat structure, ecosystem dynamics, andthe various links that exist between biologic andphysical systems. The work has grown to include agraduate student's master's thesis research. I amnow supervising master's student Alexis McGraw,and her research will involve exploring the link be tween the spatial variability of ecological processesand geomorphological process zones in BogueChitto Creek. I presented preliminary results of theBogue Chitto ecogeomorphology research at the2007 Annual Meeting of the Association of Ameri can Geographers held in San Francisco, CA In ad dition, I gave another research presentation aboutthe identification and spatial distribution of bankfailure types in channelized streams and their role inaltering sediment dynamics at the annual meeting ofSoutheastern Division of the Association of Ameri can Geographers held in Morgantown, WV. I havegreat plans for the upcoming academic year thatinclude submitting more articles for publication,presenting research at the annual meetings of SE DAAG and AAG, and developing a new graduate level seminar on Fluvial Geomorphology to be of fered in Spring 2008.This year marks my secondyear as a full-time instructor inthe Geography Department andI'm looking forward to anotherbusy year in which I'll continueteaching World Regional Geog raphy, Introductory PhysicalGeography, Cultural Geographyand Medical Geography. Overthe past year I was able to serveon committees for graduate students Lauren Hocuttand Thad Dixon and to be active in teaching geogra phy and geology sessions to elementary school chil dren. I completed a chapter on security issues inEthiopia for a book entitled International Securityand Society to be published later this year. My re search interests continue to be in the cultural andhealth arenas and I am currently working on re search on healthy communities with an emphasis onwalking trends around neighborhood elementaryschools. A first for me this fall is participation inthe Freshman Leaming Communities in which myGY 105 course is included in the InterdisciplinaryGlobal Studies community. This is a wonderful wayfor freshmen to get to know each other and theirteachers while focusing on ways to be active worldcitizens. As always, I look forward to getting toknow my students and the graduate students withinthe department and am especially excited about therevamped Geography club, SAGA, spearheaded bygraduate student Charles Long.M.A. Lisa DavisThis year will be my thirdyear in the Department ofGeography at the Universityof Alabama where I am anAssistant Professor specializ ing in Geomorphology. Dur ing the 2006-2007 academic year, I taught GY 102: Earth.,,. -.:;;/, ,. :r;.,'t·:;:l " Surface Processes (Fall 2006/Spring 2007), Geomorphol ogy (Fall 2006), and Soil Science (Spring 2007).The past year was my first time teaching Soil Sci ence. It has not been offered at UA in many years.The class proved to be challenging but rewarding.Challenging in the way that all new classes are requiring more work! Rewarding in the impressiveeffort given by students in the class. UndergraduateLuoheng Hanl have been working on remote sensing of waterquality this past year. I published one co-authored3
article in International JournalofRemote Sensing, and pre sented my research at theUSDA-CSREES National Wa, ter Conference in January. Inthe 2007 AAG Annual Meet ing, I served as co-organizerfor three sessions and chairedone session on remote sensingand GIS for coastal and water shed studies and gave one presentation during themeeting. In teaching, I taught three techniquecourses and one summer study abroad course. Thisspring and summer, I was busy in transition to as thenew chair of the Department of Geography at theUniversity of Alabama.Jason C. SenkbeilI finished my Ph.D. at KentState this past summer and I amvery happy to be back in myhome state. I never want to seesnow in late April ever again. Iam teaching 3 sections of GY101 and also directing the un dergraduate advising for bothGeography and EnvironmentalScience. My research interestsinclude synoptic, applied, andbioclimatology and hurricanehazards. Currently I am condensing 2 sections of mydissertation into publishable manuscripts. My disserta tion assessed the impact of irrigation, with respect toflow type and air mass type, on precipitation in severalheavily irrigated regions of the Great Plains. In myspare time (haha) I am also continuing to evaluate clas sification and perception of hurricane intensity as wellas changes in atmospheric flow patterns over thesoutheastern U.S.Jeff RichettoThis academic year marksmy twenty-eighth at theCapstone. I continue to fo cus my teaching and re search interests in the areasof urban and economic ge ography. A manuscript onrecreation planning in urbanenvironments is forthcomingin Papers of Applied Geog raphy, co-authored with Thad Dixon, and will bepresented at the Applied Geography Conference inIndianapolis. Other ongoing research projects in clude-"Incorporating Sustainability into UrbanPlanning: an Examination of Recycling Opportuni ties" with Brendan Moore and "Connecting Com munity Facility Planning with Economic Develop ment: A Case Study of Lake Martin, Alabama"with Lauren Hocutt. In addition to teaching in theUniversity's Freshman Seminar program I am alsoparticipating in the College of Arts and SciencesFreshman Leaming Communities program. Bothprograms introduce new students, on a more per sonal basis, to the University and are designed tohelp them acclimate to a post-high school educa tional environment. I continue to travel to the Uni versity of Nebraska during the summer, along withmany other college and high school instructors, toserve as an AP reader and test developer for highschool Human Geography courses. Finally, I willserve a last term on the University's Master CampusPlan which has had significant input in shaping the'new' U of A campus.David ShankmanMost of my re search focuses onforest vegetation in Nl-iiioa-. 'ill?.1-.it the southeastern U.S.I currently have pro jects dealing withriparian forests in theAppalachian Plateauand bottomland hard wood ecosystems in the Coastal Plain. I am pleasedto have as collaborators on these projects Drs. JustinHart, who received his MS degree from Alabamaand is now at the University of North Alabama,Charles Lafon at Texas A&M, and Barry Keim atLSU. I also have a project addressing flood predic tion and floodplain management in the Poyang Lakeregion in southern China. Earlier this year I pre sented this work at the Beijing Normal Universityand I was also invited to participate in the Interna tional Crane Foundation conference on Poyang Lakeenvironmental studies to be held this fall inNanchang, China. I continue to serve as the Envi ronmental Science Program Director and hold anappointment as Adjunct Professor at the Key Labo ratory for Poyang Lake Studies at the Jiangxi Nor mal University in China.4
Michael Steinberghelped set up the David Weaver memorial fund,which I think is a wonderful addition to the depart ment. And I'm still serving on the university Park ing and Traffic Committee, where I get a first handlooks at transportation issues on campus, includingour new Crimson Ride transit system (which I hadnothing to do with!). I really enjoyed traveling toSan Francisco last spring to the Annual Associationof American Geographers meeting. This year I'll getto see Boston, which will be my first visit to NewEngland.I am a new geography pro fessor in the department, hav ing moved from the University· of Hawaii in July 2007. I havea joint appointment at UA be - .:,'.,-.tween Geography and the New· College. My research andteaching interests focus on the. human dimensions of environ mental change and conserva tion. My fieldwork takes place in the US South andCentral America. In highland Guatemala and Be lize, my research examines the impact of globaliza tion on crop diversity and traditional farming prac tices among the Maya. I am also participating in aresearch project that measures deforestation rates inhighland Guatemala and Mexico. I have also stud ied endangered species conservation in the USSouth. For example, I finished a book this past yearon the ivory-billed woodpecker in Louisiana. It willbe published in 2008 by LSU Press. I am also work ing on two new books, one on the endangered Lou isiana black bear, and the other on the conservationand management of the brook trout in the southernAppalachian Mountains.\ Bobby WilsonThis past year saw thecompleted first draft of abook-length manuscript on"Black America, Consumption, and American Capital ism." I am now in the proc ess of seeking a publisherwho may want to review themanuscript for publication."Social Justice and Neolib eral Discourse" was published in the SoutheasternGeographer (May 2007). A revised version of"Critically Understanding Race-Connected Prac tices: A Reading of W. E. B. Du Bois and RichardWright," first published in The Professional Geogra pher (February 2002), is being considered for a re print in "A Reader in Critical Geographies" to bepublished through Praxis (e) Press. Joe WeberI am settling into my new titleof Associate Professor, and mynew office (FA228- Dr. Han'sold office). I have lots of roomand a nice view of a rooftop andparking lot. It's hard to believeI've been here six years already!I'm working on developing somenew research topics in accessi bility and network analysis(though I think I said the same thing last year). Inthe past year I've started switching my GIS andTransport Geography lectures to PowerPoint (andeven putting them online). I've become quite aGoogleEarth addict, and used it to discover oldroads and trails back home in Death Valley NationalPark that I never knew about. This fall I'll start inte grating it into GIS. I've learned some very usefulnew techniques for manipulating network topologyin GIS, which I can't wait to put into GIS-T. Lastyear I was on 18 dissertation, thesis, and non-thesispaper committees, which kept me very busy. Every body likes GIS! I also served on the committee thatPlacenames Research CenterLinda Watson and Tom KallsenThis year hasbeen even busierthan last year atthe PlacenamesResearch Center.While we con tinued to workon our two on going US Geo logical SurveyGIS related placenames grants, one for the state ofNew York and the other for the top forty-six urbanareas in the United States deemed highest homelandsecurity risks, we also recently submitted grant pro posals for three additional USGS geographic names5
Map Libraryprojects. These proposed projects which would up date the USGS Geographic Names Information Sys tem (GNIS) Database would be similar in methodol ogy to our ongoing projects
structors (Drs. Espy-Brown and Senkbeil). We have 34 graduate students by this fall. Half of them are being funded. We now have 11 graduate teaching assistantships, which is a record for this department. Our graduate students have been con . on commit
Alabama Alabama, University of mail: Box 870172, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0172.street: Reese Phifer Hall, 901 University Blvd., Tuscaloosa, AL 35487; Tel: (205) 348 .
Box 1 1865-1896 Box 14 1931-1932 Box 27 1949 Box 40 1957-1958 Box 53 1965-1966 Box 2 1892-1903 Box 14 1932-1934 Box 28 1950 Box 41 1959 Box 54 1966-1967 Box 3 1903-1907 Box 16 1934-1936 Box 29 1950-1951 Box 42 1958-1959 Box 55 1967 Box 3 1907-1911 Box 17 1936-1938 Box 30 1951-1952 Box 43 1959 Box 56 1967-1968 Box 5 1911-
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 11. Contract or Grant No. DTRS98-G-0028 13. Type of Report and Period Covered Final Report/ January 1, 2000 – March 31, 2001 12. Sponsoring Agency Name and Address University Transportation Center for Alabama Box 870205, 275 H.M. Comer Mineral Industries Building Tuscaloosa,
Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration . for The Retirement Systems of Alabama November 2007 Authors: Samuel Addy, Ph.D. and Ahmad Ijaz . Center for Business and Economic Research Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration The University of Alabama Box 870221, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0221 Tel: (205) 348-6191 .
David Rountree, Alabama Public Service Commission david.rountree@psc.alabama.gov (334) 242-5194 Mac Sadler, Alabama Department of Revenue mac.sadler@revenue.alabama.gov (334) 242-1498 DeLois Thigpen, Alabama Executive Budget Office delois.thigpen@budget.alabama.gov (334) 242-7245 Tammy Wallace, Alabama State Board
Monday, December 3, 2007 Serving the University of Alabama since 1894 Vol. 114, Issue 62 Tuesday 62º/37º Wednesday 62º/37º Sunny. 56º/29º The Crimson White Box 870170 Tuscaloosa, AL 35487 Newsroom — 348-6144 Fax — 348-4116 Advertising — 348-7845 Classifieds — 348-7355 Letters, op-eds — letters@cw.ua.edu Press releases, announcements — news@cw.ua.edu
Catholic University of America Florida State University . education to support 416 fellowships for advanced degrees in library science as follows: 300 master's fellowships were funded for S3,282,000; 12 post- . University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies Box 870104 Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0104.
ASME Materials Division 2019 Fall News 5 2019 Awards Nadai Medalist: The Nadai Medal is awarded in recognition of significant contributions and outstanding achievements which broaden the field of materials engineering. The 2019 Nadai Medalist is Ellen M. Arruda, Tim Manganello/ Borg Warner Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering, and the Maria Comninou Collegiate Professor of Mechanical .
