A UA student helps children with a physics experiment as part of the BRIGHT initiative (page 66).
ON THE COVER, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: FocusFirst (page 22); UA EcoCAR team (page 42); Outdoor Action (page 8); Engage Tuscaloosa (page 66)
At The University of Alabama, we resolve to better our world and the people in it through a progressive academic environment that advances invention, innovation and research and improves societal engagement and outcomes. Service learning plays a vital role in achieving this mission.
Service learning combines organized service activities with academic study and thoughtful reflection to enhance students’ understanding of course content while providing them with realworld experiences. Service learning also encourages students to move beyond acts of charity and temporary solutions to a deeper analysis of systemic challenges in the world around them.
During the 2017-18 academic year, 173 UA service-learning courses partnered with 241 community agencies. A total of 5,916 students worked on 458 service-learning projects and 1,048 volunteer projects. Students logged a total of 195,334 hours of ser-
vice between Summer 2017 and Spring 2018. Widespread service learning in higher education could prompt a dramatic cultural shift. Community-service activities, carried out in conjunction with course work, encourage students to develop a sense of civic responsibility. They gain the desire and ability to continue making positive contributions long after college. We believe institutions of higher learning should play this critical role in preparing the next generation to serve as effective, engaged and ethical citizens.
This publication highlights just some of the many outstanding initiatives arising from service learning at The University of Alabama. From using 3D printers to create prosthetic hands for children (page 26) to meeting with Congress members to advocate for the voiceless (page 72), our students – led by top-tier faculty – are building The University of Alabama’s vision, assessing and anticipating community and societal needs and creating lasting impact.
more than 8,000 UA students worked on service projects
1,048
Montana MacDonald says a course she took at The University of Alabama in Spring 2017 made her realize almost all her previous beliefs about poverty were misperceptions. Before enrolling in UH 331/MGT491 Poverty, Faith and Justice in America, MacDonald thought irresponsible financial decisions and other personal choices were primary causes of poverty and that all Americans had the same opportunities she did.
“Poverty in America is very different than most of the middle class, including myself, would like to think,” says MacDonald, a junior from Dublin, Ohio, majoring in finance. “Life for those in poverty has been set up for failure, from birth throughout their education. It is by no means their fault, and there is a great deal that people living in poverty cannot do to change it without programs to ease the burden of poverty and better educate on ways to break the cycle of poverty.”
Students enrolled in the UH 331/ MGT491 Poverty, Faith and Justice in America course discuss issues the working poor face, perceptions about those living in poverty and policies affecting low-income families and individuals. At the same time, they complete eight hours of income-tax-preparation training, take an IRS certification test and serve as volunteer tax preparers for low-income clients at communitybased sites across Alabama.
Students provide free incometax-preparation services in partnership with SaveFirst, an initiative of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility. SaveFirst seeks to ensure low-income Alabamians receive the full Earned Income Tax Credit – the federal government’s largest anti-poverty program supporting low- to moderate-income families –
Students explore attitudes and policies affecting the working poor while providing free tax-preparation services to low-income families.
and other credits they have earned. It also counteracts predatory lending practices by allowing families to avoid costly commercial tax preparers whose exorbitant fees counteract the benefits of federal tax credits.
Students who participate in SaveFirst often interact with individuals and families with backgrounds very different from their own, an experience that offers them new perspectives on those living at or near the poverty line. Many say the experience challenges commonly held assumptions that those living in poverty have done something wrong or are lazy. They often prepare returns for parents who work long hours at multiple jobs.
MacDonald says she was surprised most of the clients at the tax site where she worked were white. She says she learned in class that an overrepresentation of AfricanAmericans in media stories about poverty contributed to her perception. “Through the readings, we discovered that most recipients of federal benefits for low-income families are in fact white, and this was backed
up by the fact many people at the tax sites were white as well.”
Phuong Nguyen, a junior majoring in electrical engineering and physics, says the class changed his view not only of poverty, but
of the United States. Nguyen, who grew up in Vietnam, says he believed America was the land of opportunity and poverty did not exist outside of developing countries. “There could not be poor people in America,” Nguyen says he thought before enrolling in UH 331. “This is the richest country on Earth; the extent of poverty here could never be compared to the constant hunger, disease outbreaks and torturous physical labor seen in my home country of Vietnam and other developing countries in the world.
“Through my volunteer work in the community and social-justice discussions among peers, I realized that poverty in America is more real than ever. It might take a different form of struggle compared to elsewhere, but the problem exists and is becoming increasingly relevant in the daily American life.”
In class, students also explore ways faith traditions can affect
responses to poverty and inform understandings of justice. They engage in interfaith discussions comparing and contrasting various faith traditions’ stances on service, obligation and justice and are encouraged to share their own experiences and opinions.
In 2018, 76 UA students assisted in preparing taxes at 14 sites across the state, helping nearly 7,000 families claim more than $10 million in refunds. The students’ service helped these families save $2.8 million in commercial-tax preparation fees. In its 12th year, SaveFirst is the largest campus-based, free tax-preparation initiative in the nation. UA students participating in SaveFirst in 2018 collaborated with more than 430 volunteers from 19 other campuses statewide and several communitybased organizations, preparing returns for more than 10,000 families and helping them claim more than
$15 million in refunds and save more than $4 million in fees.
Annually, more than 520,000 working families in Alabama claim the Earned Income Tax Credit, representing a $1.4 billion investment for the state. However, an estimated $133 million in EITC dollars are unclaimed by families who are eligible for the credit but do not know to claim it.
Moreover, 65 percent of Alabama’s EITC recipients pay an average of $400 to commercial tax preparers just to access this benefit. That extra money could help low-income families secure health insurance, pay down debts or put food on the table.
“We used to get our taxes done through a paid service, and it was so much – like, three, four hundred dollars just to get our income taxes done,” says Rebecca Charles, a SaveFirst client.
Stephen Black, instructor of the Poverty, Faith and Justice in America course and director of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, says SaveFirst cultivates a desire in students to take responsibility for the wellbeing of the larger community. “This empowers them to critically think about the structural causes of the need for their service and to take leadership roles in developing innovative solutions to them,” he says.
MacDonald fully absorbed the message. “It is the responsibility of everyone to go out and try to change the way that poverty is both seen and treated today,” she says.
To learn more about SaveFirst or the Poverty, Faith and Justice in America course, see cesr.ua.edu or contact the Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility at cesr@ua.edu or 205-348-6492.
How many students have the chance to not only explore the environment around their college town before their freshman year begins, but also do something to improve it? This is the opportunity University of Alabama Honors College students have through the Outdoor Action initiative.
Outdoor Action is one of four Honors Action programs that take place the week before fall-semester classes begin. Students earn academic credit through UH 103 Honors Action.
The Outdoor Action course focuses on biodiversity and introduces students to the West Alabama environment and issues it faces as well as related global environmental issues. Students complete reading assignments, attend lectures on subjects such as the region’s ecology and participate in class discussions. They also write extensive journal entries each day.
Randy Mecredy, co-instructor of the Outdoor Action course and former director of the UA Museum of Natural History, says the class brings together students who have similar passions for the outdoors and service work.
“Tuscaloosa is so ecologically diverse,” Mecredy says. “With the Black Warrior River and all its streams and tributaries, it forms a kind of biological river delta full of different forms of life. This project allows new students to explore, learn about and help all those different environments.”
In Fall 2017, 76 freshmen and 18 student leaders partnered with local, state and federal agencies, dedicating more than 1,500 hours to service projects at six locations: Lake Lurleen State Park, Rocky Branch Park, Van de Graaf Park and Arboretum, Hurricane Creek Park, Foscue Park and Talladega National Forest. Projects ranged from removing invasive plants and restoring trails to clearing trash from rivers and improving swimming access at lakes.
Hurricane Creek Park has been drawing Alabama nature enthusiasts for decades. But along with hikers and photographers came trash and invasive plants, marring the natural beauty of the park, some of which is still recovering from damage caused by the April 27, 2011, tornado that struck Tuscaloosa County.
This is where Outdoor Action steps in to assist the Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority. “Some days we would clear the waterways and get rid of trash, others we would cut away some of the invasive species of plants that were harming the environment,” says Paige Sheridan, a freshman from Marietta, Ga., majoring in exercise science. “It was cool because we got to get a lot of work done for them that they wouldn’t be able to accomplish on their own.”
Many parks in the Tuscaloosa County area are understaffed, says Dr. Justin Hart, an associate professor of geography and co-instructor of the Outdoor Action course.
Zachary Heard, special projects manager for the Tuscaloosa County Park and Recreation Authority, says his experience working with Outdoor Action has been overwhelmingly positive. “The students come prepared and enthusiastic, and their work benefits TCPARA and the Tuscaloosa community,” Heard says.
Many students feel like small fish in a big pond when they come to a college the size of UA, Mecredy says. “A big part of what this program does is it takes these in-
coming freshmen and puts them together on a team, in an experience-building environment, so that by the time classes start they’ve gone from not knowing anybody to having 80 new friends on campus.”
That was the case for Alex Tedford, a student who says one of his favorite projects involved clearing a trail for public bike use.
“I really believe in environmental preservation, so when I found out I could do that while earning credit, that was the perfect thing for me,” says Tedford, a freshman from Knoxville, Tenn., majoring in management information systems. “It’s really hard to be a part of the Tuscaloosa community if you’ve literally never been here before, and by coming here and doing this I was able to meet a ton of people who shared my enthusiasm for the environment. It was really cool coming to class already knowing people I had met the week before.”
To find out more about UH 103 and Outdoor Action, visit the Honors Action page at honors.ua.edu or contact Dr. Justin Hart at hart013@ua.edu or Randy MeCredy at rmecredy@aalan.ua.edu.
Most of Dr. Mark Elliott’s PhD and post-doctoral work focused on drinking-water and sanitation challenges in developing countries. When colleagues told him he would see situations similar to those he encountered in Cambodia playing out in the American South, where he moved in 2013 to take a position at The University of Alabama, he was skeptical.
Elliott’s first research project in the state took him to the Black Belt, a string of 17 rural and economically depressed counties named after their topsoil, to gather data on water quality in private wells.
“At the first trailer we pulled up to, I literally had déjà vu when I opened the van door,” says Elliott, an assistant professor in the department of civil, construction and environmental engineering. “It was 95 degrees and humid, and it smelled like sewage everywhere. I looked around to the side, and you could see this white pipe coming out of the trailer into a pool of raw sewage behind a fence. I started to come around to the fact that people were telling me the truth.”
Others have taken note of the problem and its humanhealth consequences recently as well.
“I haven’t seen this” in the First World, Philip Alston, a United Nations official sent to investigate poverty and human-rights abuses in America, told an AL.com reporter in December of 2017, while touring communities in Butler and Lowndes counties where disposing of household wastewater in open pits is common.
Residents of the Black Belt, located about an hour’s drive from the UA campus, become sick with E. coli infections and tropical diseases and parasites such as hook-
worm that were once thought to have been eradicated in the United States.
Elliott has diverted his research focus to rural Alabama, and he and his students are attempting to uncover the extent of the problem – how much raw wastewater is flowing into the region’s water system, where this is occurring and how human health is affected – and figure out solutions. Since 2014, they have been conducting research projects funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, The University of Alabama’s Center for Freshwater Studies and Center for Community-Based Partnerships and the U.S. Geological Survey (through the Alabama Water Resources Research Institute).
In rural Alabama, UA engineering students are tackling a wastewater-treatment crisis health experts are shocked to find in a developed nation.
In most parts of the United States, homes are connected either to sewer systems that take wastewater to treatment plants or to septic systems that filter out contaminants before they reach groundwater. In much of the Black Belt, however, sewer systems do not exist because the area is too rural, and traditional septic tanks usually fail.
The clay soil of the Black Belt holds in water rather than letting it drain through – something that must happen for a standard septic system to work as intended. Researchers estimate more than half of Alabama’s Black Belt contains soil that prevents septic systems from functioning properly. When wastewater can’t filter down, it goes up, Elliott says, surfacing in yards or inside homes.
Elliott expected to find many residences with failing septic systems – and he did encounter that – but he discovered even more homes with no wastewater systems at all. Due to the area’s poverty, many residents have difficulty paying $3,000 for a regular septic system, and the $12,000 to $15,000 required for a system that will work with the area’s soil is out of the question. “A lot of people decided that instead of investing in a system that was going to fail, they just wouldn’t have the system,” Elliott says.
In these instances, a “straight pipe” – exposed plastic piping – takes wastewater from the home to another part of the
property. If there is a wooded area behind the house, the pipe typically leads there. If the residence is surrounded by other homes, the pipe usually goes to a low point on the property or a dug-out trench or pit. Eventually, the untreated wastewater drains into streams, rivers and lakes.
According to a survey Elliott conducted of Wilcox County, approximately 60 percent of homes use straight pipes. He estimates more than 500,000 gallons of raw sewage could be entering the county’s rivers and streams each day.
After a drought ended in 2016, Elliott’s team found a 1,000-fold increase in E. coli bacteria in a creek near the small town of Newbern in Hale County. The findings indicate rainwater runoff transported sewage into the stream.
The scope of health consequences related to poor sanitation in the Black Belt is largely unknown, but Elliott says preliminary evidence is disturbing.
A study conducted by Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, in conjunction with the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise and published in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in November of 2017 found 34 percent of people living in Lowndes County tested positive for genetic traces of hookworm, which is spread through human feces.
The parasite’s larvae enter the body through the skin –
most often the soles of a person’s feet – then travel to the small intestine, where the worms attach and draw blood, leading to anemia, weight loss, lethargy and mental impairment, particularly in children.
Waterborne illnesses resulting from bacterial, viral and protozoan pathogens and health problems caused by chemical agents, including pharmaceuticals, in wastewater are likely common as well, Elliott says. The lack of health-care facilities and resources in the Black Belt – Wilcox County, for instance, has only one family physician – means root causes of many ailments are never pinpointed. “A lot of these things, like hookworm, were thought to be eliminated 100 years ago, so it’s not like people are looking for them,” Elliott says. And if a waterborne illness has no known agent, health-care providers are not required to report it to the state and federal organizations that monitor such illnesses. “There could be all manner of diseases, but unless they know what the agent is, it’s unlikely to be reported,” Elliott says.
People in the Black Belt can be exposed to untreated wastewater in numerous ways, including: walking barefoot in yards where wastewater is present; coming in contact with flies that have been exposed to wastewater; handling objects such as toys that have contacted wastewater; touching indoor-outdoor pets and items they have contacted, such as flooring (Dogs often sit in pooled wastewater to cool down in summer.); drinking tap water that passed through cracked utility pipes infiltrated by sewage; drinking well water (Modern wells are sealed so they can’t be contaminated with surface water, but that’s not the case with older wells that aren’t maintained.); and participating in recreational water activities at places such as William Dannelly Lake in Wilcox County and Perry Lake in Perry County.
“We saw a child’s toy ball floating in a puddle at the end of a straight pipe in a yard,” says Parnab Das, a doctoral student from Kolkata, India, who is studying civil and environmental engineering and conducting research in the Black Belt. “That’s one indication humans are coming in contact with this water.”
Das sees research into wastewater-treatment issues in the Black Belt unfolding in three phases: 1) assessing the problem;
2) determining health impacts and relating them to phaseone data; and 3) developing and implementing solutions.
“At this moment, we are trying to assess how bad the problem is,” Das says.
At least 20 UA students have been involved in researching sanitation problems in the Black Belt or writing researchfunding proposals. Students have collected and analyzed approximately 400 water samples. [See the sidebar for a summary of past and current research projects.]
Students have earned academic credit through CE 521 Environmental Engineering Microbiology and CE 591, an independent study. Elliott also plans to integrate Black Belt research into CE 420 Environmental Measurements and CE 498 Undergraduate Research Experience.
In Fall 2017, Jamison Humburg, a senior from Rock Hill, S.C., majoring in environment engineering, helped write a research proposal as part of his CE 521 course, in which students learn about water microbes that are dangerous for human health and how to apply that knowledge to civil and environmental engineering. He also carried out research a previous class proposed that was funded by the EPA.
“It was really cool because I got to see both sides of it: writing a proposal and carrying out the work,” Humburg says. “As an undergraduate student, usually you do one or the other. It was neat to see the fruit of that labor being realized.”
Students develop a deep understanding of the research process, Elliott says, from formulating the idea to reviewing the literature, finding knowledge gaps and writing a proposal that’s well suited for the specific call. “Then they find out that once you get funding, you actually have to do what you said you were going to do,” he says.
Humburg travelled to Hale County five times during or after rain, spending eight to nine hours each trip collecting water samples from parts of creeks up- and down-stream from homes with straight pipes. In Spring 2018, Das, who was enrolled in CE 591, took dry-weather samples as part of the same study. By comparing the two data sets, researchers will be able to determine if, where and how much human waste is seeping into the watershed.
Das presented findings from a similar study at an EPA conference in Washington, D.C., in April of 2017. The number of E. coli bacteria increased from 1 per milliliter before a drought to more than 1,000 per milliliter afterward.
Members of the Fall 2017 CE 521 class entered two research proposals in EPA’s P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) competition. The one Humburg worked on proposes building a heat-map model to determine which areas have higher potential for human-waste contamination. “We hope it could be used throughout the Black Belt and in areas of Mississippi and Louisiana,” Humburg says.
Elliott says many students tell him they want to work
on water and sanitation problems in developing countries. “Giving them the opportunity to work on projects like this right in our backyard will hopefully change their perspective about the challenges of water and sanitation among some of the poorest populations in the United States,” he says.
Humburg says he was surprised human-waste runoff is a problem in the United States. “We take clean water for granted,” he says. “Even as a younger student in environmental engineering, I didn’t know what all went into creating the infrastructure that provides clean water and proper disposal of wastewater.”
Finding this challenge in one of the world’s wealthiest nations was perhaps more unexpected for Das. “This experience has helped me as a researcher and as a social thinker as well,” he says. “As a global citizen, if I do cleanwater-related research, I have to include all countries because a problem might be in developed countries as well.”
Elliott says the work his team has begun is a long-term initiative he suspects will last at least 20 years.
“We’re hoping our research projects produce results that draw attention to this problem and the scope of the problem so we can get some money to implement solutions,” he says.
He plans to approach federal and state agencies, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, rural-development organizations and foundations for funding to implement solutions, the top three of which are:
1. Extending networked sewer systems – A few Black Belt towns have sewer systems, but some concentrations of homes just outside city limits are not included. They could be added to existing systems.
2. Creating smaller sewer systems in rural areas away from towns – These are called clustered or decentralized systems, and they can consist of 20 to a few hundred homes.
3. Using better independent systems in areas where the other two solutions are not possible – Because systems that work in the Black Belt are expensive, a grant program would be necessary to help residents afford them, or low-cost systems would need to be invented.
The second EPA P3 proposal from the Fall 2017 CE 521 class attempts to achieve the latter goal. The system engineering students are designing in collaboration with geology and biology students would enhance degradation of organic matter, reduce clogging and prevent wastewater from backing up inside homes.
“People have been talking about this issue,” Elliott says. “There’s a lot of momentum going right now, and we’re hoping we can take advantage of that and start addressing this problem instead of just talking about it.”
For more information about UA-led efforts to improve wastewater treatment in the Black Belt, contact Dr. Mark Elliott at melliott@eng.ua.edu or 205-348-5469.
The University of Alabama is leading research into the wastewater-treatment crisis in Alabama’s Black Belt region. Efforts have centered around a primary, U.S. EPA-funded project that began in 2014 and provides funding through early 2019. A former UA student, Phillip Grammar, co-wrote the research proposal. Other, smaller projects supplement work on the main project, says Dr. Mark Elliott, who heads the research team and is an assistant professor in UA’s civil, construction and environmental engineering department. Past and current projects include:
• The original research project, funded by the U.S. EPA Gulf of Mexico Program – This project involves water-quality testing, community outreach and training and funding to inspect 300-400 septic systems.
• Water-quality sampling in Hale County, supported by the UA Center for Freshwater Studies and the EPA – Researchers tested water quality in streams in areas where many homes use straight pipes.
• A door-to-door survey of residents in Hale and Wilcox counties, funded by the U.S. Geological Survey – The surveyor asked residents where their wastewater goes and did site inspections that involved documenting straight pipes and where they carry waste, and looking for signs of failing septic systems.
• Water-quality sampling in Hale and Perry counties, backed by the EPA and generated through a student-written proposal – This project looks at the impact of straight pipes on streams. Elliott’s Fall 2015 CE 521 Environmental Engineering Microbiology class wrote the project proposal as part of the EPA’s P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) competition for college students.
• Building a model to predict how common straight pipes are in a given area, funded by the UA Center for CommunityBased Partnerships – Researchers are combining site-inspection data, the knowledge of health-department inspectors and septic-system installers and information about soil types and property values to create a model that will forecast where straight pipes are likely to exist. Scientists could use the model in other parts of the rural South.
BY CAMILLE STUDEBAKER | PHOTOS BY CALI WILLIAMS AND OLIVIA BOSWELL
The Sassafras Center for Arts and Environment has ambitious goals, and University of Alabama public-relations students are helping the organization achieve them.
Sassafras Center is building a sustainably designed park and working with government, schools, businesses, nonprofits and individuals to improve the city of Tuscaloosa in numerous ways.
Through a service-learning component of APR 332 Public Relations Writing, UA students develop messaging strategies, tools and campaigns for nonprofits. The course partnered with the Sassafras Center for Arts and Environment in 2016 and 2017.
Tracy Sims, who teaches the course and is an instructor in UA’s department of advertising and public relations, began integrating service learning in 2008. “The main thing I want to do is ensure I am putting together partnerships that are mutually beneficial for both the students and for the organization,” Sims says. “One of the things I hope students will learn is that successfully writing for a client really is highly dependent on actually understanding that client’s needs.”
Maggie Schneider, a senior from Fort Worth, Texas, majoring in public relations and marketing, says working with a client taught her not
only the technical aspects of putting together communications projects, but also the value and skill of tailoring messages to various audiences.
For example, the Spring 2017 class created a mini communications plan to educate Tuscaloosa residents about the nonprofit-incubator program Sassafras Center offers. Part of the students’ plan was creating two radio PSAs that could be broadcast on local radio channels. Because radio stations tend to target certain demographics, they tailored their messages to appeal to those different audiences.
“This increases the chances that people will notice your message, pay
attention to it and then act on it,” Schneider says. “All this helps the client by increasing its target audiences’ awareness, positive attitudes and actions with the client, meaning, in Sassafras’ case, more people engaging with their services.”
Sassafras is building a public park in east Tuscaloosa that aims to set the bar for sustainable design, biodiversity and integration of the arts and gardening. The organization also is leading a campaign to add more bicycle lanes in Tuscaloosa and created a comprehensive bicycle-assessment planning map for greater Tuscaloosa, with the help of the UA
civil engineering department.
“The support Tracy Sims’ class provided has helped us reach a wider audience and communicate more effectively than we could have on our own,” says Eric Courchesne, former chief executive of Sassafras Center for Arts and Environment. “The communications classes have, over several semesters, helped us with program, event and organizational communications during a critical period of growth.”
While working with Sassafras Center for Arts and Environment, students in APR 332 Public Relations Writing have: written public-service announcements, media pitches and news releases; redesigned and written content for the organization’s website home page; and created a PR kit that garnered front-page news coverage of Sassafras Park by The Tuscaloosa News, an article in Druid City Living magazine and a PSA placement on iHeartMedia radio stations and the WVUA 7 television station. Students’ efforts helped generate $250,000 in monetary and in-kind donations for the park.
Each student completes 10 writing assignments for a nonprofit as part of the course, dedicating approximately 20 service hours. The class is composed of 20 students and is held in fall, spring and sometimes summer. Since 2008, students have worked with 10 nonprofit organizations.
In the primary phase of the class, a client representative meets with students and presents the basics of the organization and its current communications needs. Then students do an analysis and conduct secondary research to better understand the orga-
nization and the challenges they need to address.
“It’s probably been the most influential class in my PR career because in PR, the majority of what we do is writing,” says Elizabeth Driver, a senior from Atlanta majoring in public relations. “So I learned how to write press releases, learned how to write media pitches and public service announcements and just the different forms of media that PR professionals pitch, and it was cool to have a client to do that for because we actually got to apply it.”
In addition to APR 332, Sims also teaches MC 495 Writing for PSA/ Cause-Related Campaigns, which worked with the nonprofit organization SPROUT in Fall 2017.
MC 495 developed a multimedia PSA campaign to promote SPROUT, which cultivates science, technology, reading/writing, engineering, arts and mathematics (STREAM) educa-
tional programming for people of all ages in Tuscaloosa.
Sarah Vercauteren, a senior from Nashville, Tenn., majoring in public relations and marketing from Nashville, says MC 495 improved her client skills and working with a worthy nonprofit like SPROUT was especially rewarding.
“I like giving back and being able to impact the community in a meaningful way,” she says.
Schneider echoed those thoughts.
“It made me feel really good knowing the work we were doing wasn’t just trying to sell something or promote a random event,” she says. “Knowing it was to do good in the community made the experience go above and beyond any expectations.”
To learn more about APR 332, MC 495 or the organizations they work with, contact Tracy Sims at sims@ apr.ua.edu.
Emily Elia says three years of tutoring children who speak English as a second language made her aware of the challenges members of the ESL community cope with in the Tuscaloosa area. Through a two-semester University of Alabama course, Elia discovered an opportunity to tell this story.
“I’m trying to create a look into this community and the struggles that they’re facing, how people are trying to help, and just kind of give people a sense of what it’s like to come here and not be able to speak English,” says Elia, a senior from Attleboro, Mass., majoring in Spanish and political science.
Elia was one of six 2017-18 students enrolled in JCM 475 and 476 In Fact, a program in which students
ARTICLE AND PHOTOS BY EMILY STRICKLANDresearch stories, conduct interviews and then edit information into longform journalism pieces. Since the beginning of the class in 2013, students have told stories about an Alabama death-penalty case, the murder of a white minister during a 1965 civil rights protest, an uprising by Cuban detainees in 1991 and a group of Uniontown, Ala., residents’ fight against a corporation that dumped hazardous coal ash in their community. Students have shared their work through a variety of media, including written pieces, short films and interactive websites. The 2017-18 class created podcasts.
In addition to Elia’s story, topics ranged from one student’s quest to understand his grandfather’s classi-
fied military career to an examination of Alabama’s Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in the aftermath of sexual-assault incidents brought to light in 2012. Students work in collaboration with each other and their two instructors, Chip Brantley and Andy Grace of UA’s journalism and creative media department, to compile and edit their stories. The first semester is focused on research and topic development, while the second is geared toward production. At the end of the second semester, students present their work to the public.
“In the first semester, we focus on the elements of good storytelling and work with students to develop their narrative instincts,” Brantley says. “The big shift into the second semester is
Through a two-semester course, students conduct in-depth research to report often-overlooked stories.
when students put this into action by going out into the world to interview people and then drafting and revising until they’ve pulled it all together into something coherent and engaging –something an audience would want to listen to.”
Elia says the class tested her in unique ways as she interacted with community members to learn more about and create a snapshot of the ESL community in Tuscaloosa. “I came into the class with no journalism experience, and I wouldn’t call myself the most extroverted person, so to have to go out and talk to strangers and try to get a story out of them has been really difficult, but it’s been rewarding,” Elia says.
One of the most surprising conversations, Elia says, was during an adult ESL class at a community college. “The woman I was speaking with totally opened up and talked to me about how challenging it is to not know English and how isolated you can feel and how limiting it can be,” Elia says. “I could tell just by the way she was speaking to me that I was probably one of the few people from outside the Spanishspeaking community that she had gotten to say this to.”
Alex Richey, a junior from Russellville, Ala., majoring in radio story telling through UA’s New College, used the project to learn more about his grandfather, who served in the U.S. Army as a Green Beret and passed away before Richey was born.
“My mom would always tell me these stories about him and about how we were so similar,” Richey says. “She built him up to be this incredible man who left such a profound influence on the lives of everyone he interacted with. If I am so similar to him, then how do I live a life like his?”
Richey contacted an Army friend of his grandfather’s who was able to shed light on previously unknown details of his classified military career. Richey says he thinks he will search for more
information his whole life. “I see this as just the first draft of the story,” he says.
Leah Efferson, a graduate student from Atwater, Ohio, studying developmental psychology, also continues to pursue her story. Efferson covered the aftermath of a 2012 investigation at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women that revealed numerous sexualassault allegations. She says traditional news media have not revisited the prison since the original stories broke in 2012 and 2013, so her project focused primarily on changes implemented in years since.
Efferson asked women released from the prison after serving sevento 25-year sentences about changes they experienced during their time there. She also spoke with Wendy Williams, deputy commissioner of women’s services for the Alabama Department of Corrections, and toured the prison. “I got to walk around and actually see the things that have been changed,” Efferson says.
Ultimately, Efferson says, she sees her work as a chance to make the public think differently about prisoners.
“It’s not like they are a separate society,” Efferson says. “They have to be reinte-
grated, and I don’t think people really think about that.”
Students taking the In Fact course tell stories that, if not for their interest, might not be shared. Leah Purdue, an ESL specialist with the Tuscaloosa County School System, says Elia’s work is important for that reason.
“It’s helping others become more aware of the global nature of the world and how Tuscaloosa is growing and becoming more diverse,” Purdue says. “Definitely, that will have a positive impact on Tuscaloosa County and its residents, helping them to be more aware that there are very diverse people in their community.”
The three other students in the 2017-18 class and their topics were:
• Rick Lewis – the evolution of the catfish industry in Alabama
• Madeline Mitchell – the culture of Christian comedy
• Mary Clay Kline – the fallout after a murder in Bayou La Batre, Ala.’s, immigrant community
For more information about the In Fact course, contact Chip Brantley at 205-348-4692 or chip.brantley@ ua.edu or Andy Grace at 205-3488245 or agrace@ua.edu.
Jeb Brackner, a University of Alabama junior double majoring in psychology and creative media, says the Documenting Justice program introduced him to a new side of filmmaking.
“It’s a very powerful course, and not just for filmmakers,” says Brackner, who is from Montgomery, Ala. “It allows you to dive into very complex ideas about ethics and social justice that people normally don’t think about. It is such a positive experience for someone’s worldview because it allows you to see a lot of injustice that is skipped over if you don’t think critically or view it as a storyteller or filmmaker.”
Documenting Justice is a yearlong, multidisciplinary course that teaches students, most of whom are not film majors, to create short documentaries analyzing the many dimensions of culture and social experience involved in stories of justice or injustice.
In addition to giving audiences and the public a different look at society, “it offers students an opportunity to engage with the community and engage with people who have different lives and different struggles than they do,” says Andy Grace, an award-winning filmmaker who co-
instructs the course with Rachel Morgan, lead programmer for Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival.
Documenting Justice film topics have examined the impact of Alabama’s immigration laws on Hispanic residents, the transformation of a low-performing, highpoverty school into one of the state’s most outstanding in just three years and the internal struggle of recovering from sexual assault, among many others.
During the first semester of the course, students learn documentary theory and history as well as the ethics of cinematic non-fiction. The second semester of the course is dedicated to the production of 7- to 10-minute documentaries. Students work in pairs to shoot and edit their films.
Brackner and his partner, Rebecca Rakowitz, created “On the Backs of the People,” a 10-minute film about private probation companies and how they can hurt those the law is supposed to protect.
“These films are meant to inform,” Brackner says about the nature of documentary filmmaking. “I learned a lot about telling a story and the amount of work it takes. It was very fun, but a very tedious process. It really took
both me and my film partner interviewing, researching, then putting it all together.”
The film includes interviews with attorneys, court officials and victims of private probation companies. Operating mostly in the South, these companies were established to provide economic relief to those who do not have the capital to pay fines or court costs up front. However, many became profit machines that trap the poor in a cycle of debt.
For example, someone who cannot afford to pay a traffic ticket might enter “private probation” and be set up with a payment plan that includes sign-up fees, monthly probation fees and interest. The person will end up paying far more than the original fine. Brackner says some people pay 25 percent of their paychecks to private probation companies for several years. That money is much needed in their already-tight budgets, he adds.
When private probation isn’t in place, defendants deal directly with the court system and judges have the discretion to waive fines or let people perform community service or serve jail time instead.
Mary Figuers Stallings, a senior from Richmond, Va., majoring in journalism and creative media, says the opportunity to learn the technical aspects of filmmaking drew her to the Documenting Justice class.
“We learned a lot of skills really quickly,” Stallings says. “I learned later on that a lot of what we learned in Documenting Justice, film students were learning in the first year of their master’s programs.”
Stallings says she connected deeply with her film topic. She and her film partner, Alex Bauer, directed “Bullet Hands,” a biopic-style documentary about up-and-coming boxer Kenneth McNeil (aka Bullet Hands) and his Fight for Life Ministries boxing gym in the Pratt City neighborhood of Birmingham, Ala.
Stallings says Pratt City is known for crime, with gang- and gun-related violence prevalent among African-American men. With his gym, McNeil hopes to provide an outlet for young men through boxing rather than street violence.
“Their whole mantra is ‘drop the gun, pick up the gloves,” Stallings says. “We started out making a list of people to interview, but as we went along we realized that Kenneth has such a strong voice, such a strong aesthetic, that we made the decision to only feature his voice.”
While Documenting Justice focuses on issues of justice and injustice within Alabama, International Documenting Justice, for those who plan to study abroad, gives students the opportunity to tell social-justice-themed stories from all corners of the globe.
Students enrolled in Documenting Justice International have explored topics including: the relationship between history and culture in post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa; the work of Uruguay’s clasificadores, who make a liv-
ing by digging through garbage to find recyclable materials; and the power of friendship for two Kenyan girls who live in a home for children orphaned by AIDS.
Since the 2006 inception of Documenting Justice, a signature initiative of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility, 151 students have created 77 documentaries about life in Alabama. Fourteen students have filmed 12 documentaries in countries around the world since the launch of Documenting Justice International in 2009.
Many Documenting Justice students have been invited to screen their documentaries at film festivals, and the films have won numerous awards, including the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival’s Best Alabama Film and Best Student Film. All films premier at public screenings in Birmingham or Tuscaloosa. Students develop a lifelong interest in and appreciation for filmmaking and take their new skills into their careers.
“I think a lot of students who are coming out of the program are learning skills that will help better tell Alabama’s story in the future,” Morgan says. “Our students have made films that have been recognized on a national level, that have changed policies, changed laws.”
Beyond filmmaking, students learn to step outside of their spheres and interact with people who do not look or think like they do, Morgan says. “The class is a unique opportunity for students to go out into the community and actually meet people and talk with them and engage with them,” she says.
Morgan says an important aspect of the Documenting Justice program is that it is open to students pursuing any major. “This course allows for our young attorneys and young politicians and creative writers and journalists and
international studies majors and doctors to learn skills they wouldn’t normally learn and use them to conquer issues in their own fields,” she says.
Grace says individuals should think about the world outside of themselves during college. “Traditional coursework doesn’t always allow you to do that, so Documenting Justice provides a way for students to get outside their own experience and see the world and see someone else’s life and their struggle and become a better and more engaged citizen because of that,” he says.
Stallings says she doesn’t have an agenda in mind for those who view her film. “I don’t know if any filmmaker should have a specific goal that they want their viewers to see,” she says, “but I would love if my audience came out having even a slightly different idea or a slightly different perspective into someone else’s life. That’s all I can ask for.”
Watch Documenting Justice films at vimeo.com/ documentingjustice. For more information, contact Andy Grace at 205-348-8245 or agrace@ua.edu.
Young children are more likely to have trouble seeing than most people realize.
Each year, poor eyesight adversely affects millions of children under age 6 across the United States, due largely to lack of public awareness about the importance of eye care in young children and the inability of children to recognize their own vision impairment. These problems are heightened in families suffering from financial hardship and lack of access to medical care.
While vision screenings are most effective during the preschool years, when early treatment of many conditions can prevent irreversible vision
damage or loss, only 21 percent of preschool children nationwide receive comprehensive vision screenings.
In Alabama, college students conduct vision screenings for children in pre-kindergarten programs and daycares as part of a state-wide, campusbased effort led by The University of Alabama and Impact America, a nonprofit housed at the University. FocusFirst partner Sight Savers America provides free follow-up care. Thanks to these initiatives, Alabama leads the nation in addressing vision problems in young children.
FocusFirst diagnosed Kaylynn, age 4, with amblyopia, a degenerative eye problem, after a screening at her
daycare. Kaylynn’s mother, Cacy, who wears glasses herself, was unaware of the severity of the problem until their visit to an eye doctor soon after.
“We took her to the doctor the very next week, and I was holding her, and she couldn’t see the big ‘E’ on the chart,” Cacy says. “She can see perfectly out of one eye, but cannot see hardly anything out of the other eye. If it’s not fixed, she can go permanently blind in that eye.”
After Kaylynn was diagnosed, her family began a treatment plan designed to stop the deterioration of her sight. It includes glasses, vision therapy and periodic use of an eye patch.
“We’re just extremely grateful for
UA students play a key role in making Alabama the top state in the nation for finding and correcting vision problems in young children.
BY EMILY STRICKLAND
FocusFirst because nobody wants their child to go blind,” Cacy says. “If FocusFirst had not screened Kaylynn, I really don’t know when I would’ve taken her. I don’t think I would’ve realized that there was an issue.”
Maddy Erwin, a sophomore from New Orleans majoring in biology, worked with FocusFirst through Health Action, one of four UA Honors Action programs that take place the week before fall-semester classes begin. Students earn academic credit through UH 103 Honors Action.
Erwin says she enjoyed the Health Action program so much as a freshman that she participated as a student
leader her sophomore year. “I wanted to get to do this again,” Erwin says. “Going into the health-care field, I’m definitely looking more into the preventative aspects of medicine, which is what this focuses on,” Erwin says.
In 2017, 42 students worked with FocusFirst through Health Action, which informs students about health disparities and provides opportunities for them to address these inequalities. Students learned that poor vision, when left untreated, can have negative consequences on children’s educational performance, self-esteem and behavior.
Since the launch of FocusFirst in November 2004, 3,578 student volunteers have screened more than 409,000 children in all 67 counties across Alabama. FocusFirst regularly works with 10 colleges, and UA leads and coordinates the statewide screening efforts. Since 2004, more than 1,060 UA students have participated with FocusFirst, screening over 26,800 children in 14 counties. Sixty UA students participated in screenings across twelve counties during the 2017-18 academic year, reaching 2,890 children.
“There are two sides to FocusFirst,” says Stephen Black, director of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility and founder of FocusFirst. “We wanted to figure out a way to make a positive impact on the community and also get college students involved. Many students take for granted the ability to see a doctor regularly.”
Erwin and the Health Action students traveled to schools and daycares in rural West Alabama to screen for early-onset eye issues, conditions she says are “so simple, so easy to fix, if they just have that initial detection.”
“With pre-med in mind, it’s definitely given me a much broader perspective on the differences in access to health care across different socioeconomic backgrounds, which is some-
thing I think is so important,” Erwin continues.
FocusFirst is a signature initiative of the UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility and Impact America, a nonprofit housed at The University of Alabama that collaborates with 30 colleges and universities in four states to implement service-learning projects that engage students in addressing human and community needs while enhancing their sense of social and civic responsibility.
Students in UH 331 Poverty, Faith and Justice in America [see article on page 4] also volunteer with FocusFirst as part of their coursework. Clay Martinson, a sophomore from Huntsville, Ala., majoring in history, says the work he did through the class has put the challenges of poverty in perspective for him.
“It makes you want to get out and help as much as you possibly can and really look at ways you can push initiatives that will actually help people,” Martinson says.
To learn more about FocusFirst, visit cesr.ua.edu.
Conversation flowed easily for Hayden Gilley, a University of Alabama nursing student, and her patient during Gilley’s first visit to Heritage Health Care and Rehabilitation, a nursing home in Tuscaloosa. Gilley brought paperwork with her and practiced a skill she recently learned in class: recording patient histories.
“She was the most warm, welcoming woman,” Gilley says of the patient. “She grabbed chairs for us, and she just wanted to talk to us.
And I think that was what was so exciting – how much we were wanted there.”
The patient told Gilley, a senior from Dothan, Ala., majoring in nursing, the students helped her have a better day and week. “She said, ‘You don’t know how special a simple visit from a stranger is,’” Gilley recalls.
In Fall 2017, Gilley and more than 100 other nursing students worked with residents of Heritage Health Care or Forest Manor Nurs-
ing Home in Northport, Ala., as part of NUR 324 Fundamentals of Professional Nursing Practice. Because it is the first clinical course for UA nursing students, NUR 324 offers initial opportunities for them to practice their profession’s basics, including communication with patients and other health-care providers.
Dr. Amy Beasley, a course instructor and an assistant professor of nursing, says communication is key for the care and education of patients. New nurses often struggle
with asking personal questions, so learning to establish rapport is essential.
“I would go so far as to say that communication is a cornerstone of the nursing profession, along with assessments skills and a compassionate heart,” Beasley says.
Pairs of students visit individual patients at the two nursing homes, gathering information about health and family history, medical conditions, quality of life and any current problems or pain. The latter information is shared with nursing-home staff. Each semester, about 110 students dedicate approximately 440 hours to working at Heritage Health Care and Rehabilitation and Forest Manor Nursing Home. In the 2017-18 academic year, they recorded medical histories with 104 patients.
Students write journal entries about their experiences and use these reflections to improve their therapeutic-communication skills.
Teresa Kirk, director of nursing at Heritage Health Care and Rehabilitation, says the interactions also are beneficial to patients. “It gives the residents a social stimulation
that improves their self-worth, that makes them feel they can still offer wisdom or advice or share their experiences in life,” she says.
Zach Kuykendall, a junior from Tuscaloosa majoring in nursing, says his experience at the nursing home broadened his view of what nursing is and all it encompasses. Most people think of hospitals or doctors’ offices when they think about nursing, he says.
“It was a great reminder of why I went into to nursing,” he says. “I was originally a chemical engineering major, and what really helped me to make that drastic jump was the patient interaction. I love how nursing holistically looks at the patient; they’re not just a medical condition. Even though it is a mentally, physically and spiritually rough profession, I could not see myself doing anything else.”
Gilley says spending time at Heritage Health Care and Rehabilitation was life changing. She now volunteers in nursing homes and adult daycare facilities and says that first interaction helped fuel her passion for geriatric care.
Some nursing-home residents students work with don’t have family members who visit very often, so talking with college students really brightens their day, Beasley says.
“A person deserves to be loved, to be cared for because they’re human,” Gilley says. “That level of respect is what they need.”
To learn more about NUR Fundamentals of Professional Nursing Practice, contact Dr. Amy Beasley at amy.m.beasley@ua.edu.
BY OLIVIA MCMURREY | PHOTOS BY BRYAN HESTER COURTESY ALABAMA PROSTHETIC PROJECT
When Amanda Flamerich saw 8-year-old Elise wearing the artificial hand University of Alabama students had made for her the previous year, she was reminded why she joined the Alabama Prosthetic Project.
“She walked into the room with a giant smile on her face,” Flamerich, a junior majoring in public relations
and marketing, says of Elise, who was meeting with UA students a second time so they could fit her with a new device, to keep up with her growth. “I wanted to make a real difference in these children’s lives, and it felt great knowing that the children were still using the prosthetics we had made them last year.”
Children who are born with un-
conventional hands, but have wrists and perhaps a digit or two, are difficult to fit with traditional prosthetic devices. “They almost have too much to fit into a prosthesis,” says Dr. Colleen Coulter, team leader of the limb deficiency program at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. “3D printing has opened up a whole new avenue of prosthetic options for them.”
An added hurdle for any child who needs a prosthesis is that he or she can quickly outgrow devices that cost tens of thousands of dollars. The prostheses UA students create using 3D printing cost less than $50 to make and are easier to assemble and repair than traditional prosthet-
ics. Students give them to recipients for free, so children who might not have a prosthetic option otherwise can enjoy the benefits.
The first prosthetic fitting – for four children – was held in 2017, just seven months after Valerie Levine, who majored in chemical engineering and graduated in 2018, began tinkering with a 3D printer with an eye toward fashioning prosthetics.
Levine, who is from O’Fallon, Ill., used a desktop 3D printer in the lab of Dr. Jason Bara, associate professor of chemical and biological engineering at UA, as part of the Randall Research Scholars Program. She founded the Alabama Prosthetics Project with funding and assistance from the UA Honors College.
“The possibility for improvement of prosthetic devices is ever-growing, and I found that to be exciting,” Levine says. “I also had started to
learn how to use 3D printers during my research experience for undergraduates in summer of 2016, and the idea for the project was born.”
Levine recruited other students to the project, including Flamerich, Adam Benabbou, Kaitlin Burnash and Sam Sheriff.
Through the Alabama Prosthetics Project, UA students have fitted four children, ages 5 to 12, with prosthetic hands. Because students refit all the children with new devices, to accommodate their growth, after one year, they have designed and assembled a total of eight prostheses.
Flamerich, from Chelsea, Ala., joined the project after receiving an email Levine sent to other Randall Research Scholars, asking for help finding physicians who could
“Seeing these children with our prosthetics has only made our drive stronger, and because of that, I think the most exciting part of this project is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what we can do in the future.”
– AMANDA FLAMERICH, JUNIOR MAJORING IN PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MARKETINGUA students Valerie Levine (center) and Amanda Flamerich with [l-r] Christopher, Elise and Danielle, children they fitted with prosthetic hands through the Alabama Prosthetic Project.
provide guidance and children who could take advantage of the device she was designing.
The Randall Research Scholars Program is an undergraduate research program that pairs exceptional students with leading research professors and cutting-edge computing technology to complete scholarly research projects in any field of study.
“At the time, I did not have any connections in the medical field nor did I know of any potential recipients,” Flamerich says. “However, I figured I could employ the skills I learned from public relations and marketing to find and establish those relationships for her.”
During Fall 2016, Flamerich formed partnerships with top orthopedic specialists in both Alabama
and Georgia, at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham. Those specialists helped students improve their designs and put the team in contact with children who were perfect candidates for the prosthetic hands, Flamerich says.
As the group’s marketing manager, Flamerich continues establishing relationships with prosthetic specialists and identifying new clients, measures organizational impact, publicizes students’ efforts and fields press requests.
“What excited me the most was the energy Amanda and Valerie brought and their passion for what they were doing and their willingness to work with us and the families,” Coulter says.
Using a computer-based design or scan of a solid object, 3D printers construct three-dimensional items at a fraction of the cost and production time required in traditional manufacturing.
The prosthetic hands UA students design are powered by the motion of a child’s wrist and don’t include motorized or electrical components. Fishing lines and elastic threaded through the fingers open and close the hands, and standard screws control the grip tension. Printing a hand takes 12 to 14 hours, and assembly time ranges from 4 to 6 hours. If a child breaks a finger piece, students can easily print a new one, Levine says.
Students have used input from hospital staff and kids to refine designs. “Children are great at giving feedback because they are very honest,” Levine says. “If a certain part of the prosthetic hand was less comfortable to wear, for example, they would tell us and we could then modify this for a better fit.”
Levine says the kids’ learning curves in operating the devices im-
pressed her, too. “They quickly learned the best way to pick up various objects, and one recipient even went over and held her mother’s hand with the prosthetic device,” she says.
She also hopes the prosthetics will give kids a confidence boost. “By giving them this cool-looking prosthetic that allows them functionality of a hand, they now have something they can show their friends at school and be proud of,” Levine says. “It shows them that being different is often a very cool thing.”
During her daughter Danielle’s fitting, Dale Fairchild said exploring new capabilities would be fun. “I think it will help her to do more things – being able to catch a ball using either hand and being able to grip with both hands,” she said.
Flamerich says seeing kids’ reactions when they receive the devices is incredible. “It brought tears to my eyes to watch them carry out tasks that were previously impossible,” she says. “It
feels wonderful knowing I had a part in making their lives a little bit easier.”
Lessons learned and future plans Levine says the Alabama Prosthetic Project taught her what it takes to turn an idea into a reality. “This project started out with me learning to use a 3D printer, wondering whether a viable prosthetic hand could be printed,” she says. It then took on various prototypes before becoming a device that could assist a recipient in daily life. “This turnaround takes a lot of time and effort, but is ultimately very rewarding,” Levine says.
Flamerich, who knew little about prosthetic devices when she joined the project, says it taught her not to be afraid to reach out to people with more or different experience than herself. “This was a really important lesson to learn, especially for my major,” she says. “Building connections and maintaining relationships are vital steps in accomplishing goals.
“I also realized there is always something to learn and improve on. You’re not going to produce something great with your first draft.
But if you work hard and seek out enough advice and guidance, you can create something great.”
During her senior year, Levine trained Cole Wagenhals, a Randall Research Scholar majoring in mechanical engineering, to lead the technical side of the team.
Flamerich says the Alabama Prosthetic Project plans to provide more devices to recipients across the Southeast and is working to increase funding so students can have more freedom in testing prototypes and attend conferences to develop additional partnerships.
“Seeing these children with our prosthetics has only made our drive stronger,” Flamerich says. “And because of that, I think the most exciting part of this project is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what we can do in the future.”
To learn more about the Alabama Prosthetic Project or the Randall Research Scholars Program, watch the video at https://alabama.box.com/s/ yxnulckonbb38xjc4rjqkovhvbmc9yih, visit honors.ua.edu/programs/ randall-research-scholars-program or send an email to rrsp@ua.edu.
Physicians and administrators at University Medical Center, which offers wide ranging services to Tuscaloosa-area residents through nine clinics, are working to provide more patient-centered, wholeperson health care, and anthropology students are helping them reach their goal.
Through the course ANT 450 Mental Health in CrossCultural Perspective, University of Alabama students observe through one-way windows as doctors and other medical staff interact with patients. They also sit in on informal meetings among doctors, faculty physicians, nurses, resident physicians and medical students. Anthropology students take rigorous notes, discuss their observations in class, then present their findings to UMC physicians, administrators
and medical students at the end of each spring semester.
“Feedback from the medical anthropology students has helped our faculty members to see ways in which we think and talk about our patients – both the positive and the negative aspects,” says Bob McKinney, director of the UMC Office of Case Management and Social Services. “This broader perspective will, in turn, result in a more holistic approach toward patient care.”
The University of Alabama College of Community Health Sciences, which functions as a regional campus of the University of Alabama School of Medicine, operates UMC. The medical center offers services to the community and trains medical students and resident physicians under the supervision of faculty physicians. UMC provides primary care, internal medicine, pediatrics, geriatrics, psychiatry and behavioral medicine, women’s health care and sports medicine.
Since Spring 2017, ANT 450 students have been observing in UMC’s psychiatry, family medicine and geriatrics clinics, where mental-health concerns range from dementia to childhood learning challenges. The class consists of approximately 10 students every spring semester, and each student observes for at least two hours per week. Students spent 106 hours observing in Spring 2017. Approximately 60 UMC staff members and physicians attended the anthropology students’ final presentation. In Spring 2018, students observed for more than 150 hours, and approximately 55 UMC physicians and staff members attended their presentation.
“I’m not just asking students to observe, but I’m asking them to process and reflect as well with each other,” says Dr. Lesley Jo Weaver, who teaches ANT 450 and is an assistant professor of anthropology.
Weaver says mental-health care in the United States is of-
ten based on a “Westernized view” of biomedical psychiatry. “We tend to think of biomedical psychiatry as a scientific, and therefore culture-free, system,” she says. “But, in fact, biomedical psychiatry is based on a very particular cultural understanding of the relationship between mind and body, of what happiness should look like and of how people process and ultimately overcome suffering. This looks different in other parts of the world, where the mind and body may not be understood as separate entities.”
Hannah Tytus, who is from Cincinnati, Ohio, and earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 2017, says as she learned in class how a healthy mental state is defined around the globe, in cultures past and present in all geographical regions, she began to see that in the clinic there was a Western interpretation of mental health.
Tytus says her experience in the class changed her academic and career path. Instead of working toward a PhD in cultural anthropology, she now plans to earn a master’s degree in public health and a doctorate in alternative medicine.
Weaver says she wants her students to get a firsthand look at biomedical psychiatry from both the patient and medical provider perspectives and to understand its implicit biases.
“Another benefit of working at UMC is that many of their clinics take care of low-income populations, groups of people who might be struggling with life circumstances that might not be familiar to my students because many of them come from more privileged backgrounds than some of the people who are attending these clinics,” Weaver says. “So, I felt like it was a great example of something that is both familiar because it’s close by and also potentially very unfamiliar because we’re talking about people who come from walks of life potentially very different from my students.’”
Kelly Likos, who is from Birmingham, Ala., and earned
a bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 2017, says classroom learning about different cultures informed her impressions of what she witnessed at UMC.
“In anthropology, we study cultures, so by being able to study a culture in class, we were then able to take what we learned and apply it to these other situations that may be foreign to us,” she says.
Dr. John Burkhardt, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral medicine and clinical health psychologist at UMC, says the ANT 450 presentation helped him understand how anthropology and medicine connect. Most of the time, medical practitioners tend to see different disciplines in silos that might occasionally meet, he says. Through students’ work, he says, he became aware that medicine and anthropology intersect regularly.
“I think we also learned how much we can still learn about the service of medicine from naturalistic observation opportunities that anthropology has provided,” Burkhardt says.
He adds that the anthropology students were able to gain insights into the challenges physicians face.
“I think they thought all they would see was mental health, but I think what they started to learn was all the different factors that doctors have to go through to take care of somebody, even if they don’t have a mental-health problem,” Burkhardt says.
Weaver wrote a blog post about the development and implementation of her service-learning course. Read it here: https://teachinghub.as.ua.edu/faculty-blog/service-learning/service-learning-in-medical-anthropology/
To learn more about ANT 450 Problems in Anthropology: Mental Health in Cross-Cultural Perspective, contact Dr. Lesley Jo Weaver at 205-348-2855 or ljweaver@ua.edu.
Andrea Bright’s passions are working with food and people. Bright, who is studying nutrition and sustainable food systems through The University of Alabama’s New College, saw the course NEW 226 Organic Farming as a way to combine her interests through classroom learning and volunteering with Schoolyard Roots, a nonprofit that operates school gardens and partnered with the course.
“It definitely was eye opening to the rigorous nature of organic production,” says Bright, a senior from Kansas City, Mo.
In addition to reading technical material in class, organic-farming students perform weekly garden maintenance, which includes soil PH testing, work ing with compost systems, greenhouse duties, weeding, planting, harvesting and seed identification. Bright says the experience helped her realize the complexity of sustainable growing practices and gave her a greater appreciation of food and the work that goes into it.
Many children in the Tuscaloosa area live in food deserts – places where residents have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables – according to a study by University of Alabama anthropology professor Dr. David Meek in partnership with Schoolyard Roots. Since its founding by University of Alabama instructors in 2010, Schoolyard Roots has partnered with the University and with service-learning classes across disciplines to empower Tuscaloosa County communities using school gardens, farm stands and educa
tional programs. UA students are Schoolyard Roots’ primary source of manpower.
Nicole Dugat, a program director with Schoolyard Roots, says the organization’s collaboration with The University of Alabama is instrumental to its continued success. “We’re really happy to have a partnership with UA students,” Dugat says. “They contribute so much to all of our programs.”
Schoolyard Roots operates gardens at 11 schools in the Tuscaloosa City School District and the Tuscaloosa County School System. Approximately 4,500 children learn about healthy eating, community gardening and sustainability each year through weekly, garden-based lessons that connect classroom activities to the real world and meet Alabama’s Course of Study guidelines. During the 2017-18 academic year, 192 UA students dedicated 4,554 service hours to the organization.
Ten UA service-learning courses worked with Schoolyard Roots during the 2017-18 academic year. They include:
UH 120 Let’s Grow and UH 405 Let’s Grow Leaders; SP 356 Advanced Grammar and Composition with Dr. Xabier Granja; a sculpture independent-study course with Dr. Craig Wedderspoon in the Department of Art and Art History; NEW 211 Food for Thought with Dr. Catherine Roach; MUS 490 Fund Raising for Nonprofit Organizations; and NHM 485 Supervised Practice in Dietetics Management and Communications.
UA students help connect children and communities to their food sources through school gardens.
Sculpture students designed, built and delivered raised garden beds, a shed and 12 benches for Buhl Elementary School and four benches for Crestmont Elementary School. UA Student Engineers in Action have helped build greenhouses and raised garden beds.
The UA Center for Ethics & Social Responsibility has provided Schoolyard Roots with a full-time post-graduate fellowship and a part-time post-graduate to assist in expanding service-learning initiatives. The Center for Community Based Partnerships and College of Community Health Sciences have supported the creation of Schoolyard Roots’ annual evaluation system and presentations on research findings at national and international conferences.
In class at UA, Let’s Grow students learn about experiential education, food systems, child nutrition and the benefits and methods of garden education. They then use this knowledge while teaching fourth and fifth graders
for two hours each week in a garden-based afterschool business club called “Budding Entrepreneurs.” At the end of the semester, UA students help children use lessons from the club to operate farm stands where they sell produce they’ve grown.
Kathryn Drago, instructor of the Let’s Grow course, says seeing changes in both the UA students and the kids over the course of each semester is exciting. “For most of the UA students, it’s the first time they are in charge of
a class,” she says. “They develop mentoring relationships with the children and become skillful in asking just the right questions. They help the shy kids in the club bloom with creativity and independence.”
UH 405 Let’s Grow Leaders gives UA students an opportunity to continue partnering with Schoolyard Roots in a leadership role.
Taelor Wallace, a sophomore from Florence, Ala., enrolled in Let’s Grow because she was looking for an honors course that would give her an opportunity to mentor children. “I learned that encouraging people and boosting their confidence can completely open them up,” the civil engineering major says.
In addition to sharing information about organic and local food, Wallace and other students from the Let’s Grow course taught fifth-graders at Buhl Elementary School business skills so the children could sell their crops at a farm stand.
Research by UA faculty and students shows children involved with Schoolyard Roots’ school gardens are statistically more likely to eat vegetables in their school cafeteria or packed in a lunch box. The study also shows these kids make healthier food choices overall, have better plant knowledge, greater interest
in learning and are more excited to go to school.
“When we left the school, I felt like, ‘All right, we taught these kids something,’” Wallace says. “They completely loved being there. It was just nice to see smiles on their faces when they left.”
During the 2017-18 school year, 22 UA students dedicated 330 hours to working with children and leading farm stands through Let’s Grow.
NEW 226 Organic Farming covers the basics of organic farming while addressing questions about organic vs. industrial agriculture models in relation to current environmental problems and solutions.
“Students are always really excited about this course,” says Rashmi Grace, course instructor and education coordinator for Schoolyard Roots. “Most come with some previous interest in the subject matter, but some are totally new to the field. The course challenges them to think critically about our food system, but is also a venue for learning about and putting into practice the principles of organic farming.”
Bright says the course helped dispel romanticized notions of organic growing practices that she had previously held and opened her eyes to the complex issues that surround the industry. “There are a lot of scientific improvements with aquaculture and indoor greenhouse growing that could be really helpful for the sustainable food movement, and I think I’m more open to that now because it’s still accomplishing the heart behind the organic movement,” she says.
Bright says her experience with Schoolyard Roots has influenced her personal goals. “I think I would love to work in community gardens either in a school with a program like Schoolyard Roots or city-wide,” she says.
To learn more about NEW 226 Organic Farming, contact Rashmi Grace at rgrace@ua.edu. For information about Let’s Grow courses, contact Kathryn Drago at kdrago@ua.edu or 650-438-3650.
While learning the business side of the publishing world, students in a University of Alabama creative-writing class are bringing innovative arts and literary events to the Tuscaloosa community and coaching aspiring writers at area high schools.
“The skills you learn in Advanced American Literature don’t always translate into getting a job in the writing or publishing industry,” says Jacquie Andreano, who double majored in philosophy and English and graduated in 2017. “But the Slash Pine Internship filled that gap. It taught us the more practical ins and outs of the industry. Getting to relay that, showing what we’ve learned to those kids, really helped our own understanding.”
Each student in EN 310 Slash Pine Press Internship mentors high schoolers during at least two coaching sessions, which last up to several hours. Interns give high schoolers feedback about their writing and listen to them present their poetry, giving them advice and teaching performance techniques. They also create chapbooks of the high schoolers’ work and help them prepare for the Poetry Out Loud competition, a contest that operates on school, regional, state and national levels. In addition, UA students organize events that include readings by the high schoolers as well as professional writers and community members.
Brian Oliu, English instructor and Slash Pine Press Internship director, says these gatherings, which are held at diverse venues throughout the Tuscaloosa area, show the community that literary events can be entertaining.
“I’ve seen a really nice evolution in regards to people coming to poetry events,” Oliu says, “and also the community recognizing that these are for everybody not just writers and English majors. There’s a mentality of people hearing about a literary reading and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not for me.’ Our goal is to reach out and say there’s something in it for everyone.”
Slash Pine interns use various methods, including social media and flyers, to advertise events to the public. They also design, publish and promote chapbooks of poetry and mixed-genre work.
Through the Slash Pine Press internship, UA students hold public literary events and help high schoolers hone and publish their work.
During the past 10 years, more than 200 UA students have served as Slash Pine Press interns. Each semester, these interns work with approximately 30 kids at schools including Holy Spirit High School, Tuscaloosa County High School, Calera High School, Paul W. Bryant High School and Central High School. Slash
Pine Press, which interns operate, has created 38 chapbooks since 2009. The program has organized events at locations including: Tuscaloosa County Parks and Recreation Authority facilities, Kentuck Festival of the Arts, Homegrown Alabama Farmers Market, Glory Bound Gyro Co., Green Bar, Druid City Brew-
“There’s a mentality of people hearing about a literary reading and thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not for me.’ Our goal is to reach out and say there’s something in it for everyone.”
– BRIAN OLIU, ENGLISH INSTRUCTOR AND SLASH PINE PRESS INTERNSHIP DIRECTOR
ing Company, Egan’s Bar, The University of Alabama Arboretum, Carpe Vino and the Bama Theatre. Since its founding, Slash Pine Press has brought more than 200 published authors to Tuscaloosa to perform public readings of their work. UA students work about five hours per week to plan eight events each year. Each student is also part of at least two high school coaching sessions per semester.
“Interning with Slash Pine was an invaluable experience for me,” says Nick Patton, a recent graduate from Huntsville, Ala., who majored in English and minored in creative writing. “It really helped me not only de-
velop the publishing skills I went into my major looking for, but also helped foster an excitement for publication and involvement in the writing community that I kept alive throughout my undergrad career and into my future.”
Oliu says one of his aims is to broaden students’ perspectives in relation to written work. “My goal was to introduce the students to a literary world outside of just their personal writing,” he says. “That’s publishing, interacting with design elements, interacting with other writers, creating a sense of community.”
Patton says time UA students spend with high schoolers is mutually beneficial. “We get to listen to them open up about what they like to write and how they view books and publications,” he says. “Letting them connect to students like us showed them that the writing community always has room for people who are excited about writing and wants to let the world know what they have to say.”
Sophia Hoppock, who is from Brookhaven, Miss., and earned an English degree in 2017, says UA students learn every step in the publishing process through their work creating chapbooks. “This meant picking authors to publish, designing the cover, copy editing and eventually planning a festival for the authors we published,” she says.
Slash Pine Press interns hold a writers’ festival each spring. They choose venues for the weekend-long event and organize presentations, author readings, open-mic
poetry and other activities. High schoolers who partici pated in the Poetry Out Loud competition perform their work as part of the festival.
Andreano, from Alto, Mich., remembers the final night of the 2017 festival. “We had so many people that we couldn’t find enough chairs,” she says. “It was amazing to see the literary community so strong in Tuscaloosa. And everyone who read was incredible and talented. It was a really special thing to be a part of.”
Oliu says that while many arts and culture groups are active on the UA campus, few directly inject this form of entertainment into the lives of residents beyond the university’s grounds.
“There are already a ton of readings on campus,” Oliu says, “so it’s important to me that my students have an opportunity to get off campus. That’s where the students come in: to contact businesses and venues and explain to them what we’re about.”
Andreano says Slash Pine Press is a group that breeds creativity. “It is such an incredible way to connect to a huge community of writers and artists, and it fostered a
lot of my own motivation to write and produce work as well,” she says.
For more information about the Slash Pine Press internship or its events, contact Brian Oliu at beoliu@ ua.edu or visit www.SlashPinePress.com.
Anew youth film camp at The University of Alabama aims to change some startling statistics: Women accounted for only 1.9 percent of directors for the 100 top-grossing films in 2013 and 2014. The six major studios (excluding their art-house divisions) released only three movies with female directors in 2015. In 2014, 95 percent of cinematographers, 89 percent of screenwriters, 82 percent of editors, 81 percent of executive producers and 77 percent of producers were men.*
Glaring disproportions in the film industry and throughout the media landscape lead to inaccurate and skewed portrayals of women in the media, says Dr. Barbara Brickman, an assistant professor in UA’s New College and director of the Druid City Girls Media Camp, which was held for the first time in Summer 2017.
Brickman says because female minorities are even more underrepresented behind the camera than white women, fe-
males of color are often depicted in damaging ways, reflecting the worst stereotypes. “Our camp reaches out to underrepresented girls in the community, which includes a focus on young women of color and less affluent girls,” Brickman says. “We are hoping to encourage these girls to see media production as a future career.
“Recent revelations about harassment, mistreatment and assault of women in the media industry make the need to challenge these inequities and to get more girls and young women making media so much more pressing.”
UA students enrolled in the course NEW 490/WS 442 Girls Film School developed the camp, and students also help lead it.
Jamiyiah Smith, a senior from Forkland, Ala., majoring in psychology and African American studies, says she was surprised by how perceptive girls just 10 to 13 years old can be about media portrayals of women. During the camp, she interviewed a 13-year-old participant, asking her what she notices about women in the media. The girl reported an over-representation of tall, slender, Caucasian women and an under-representation of minorities, women with disabilities and women from the LGTBQ community.
“They are aware and they want to make changes addressing problems they see,” Smith says.
One camp attendee told Smith television, print and social media and the music industry should focus more on inclusion and diversity by featuring a variety
UA students help combat underrepresentation of women in the media by developing and implementing a summer camp for middle schoolers.
of women with different looks and backgrounds.
In 2017, during the weeklong Druid City Girls Media Camp, UA students taught 11 middle schoolers how to screen write, use film cameras and edit and produce films, while also leading discussions about media portrayals of women. Each UA student dedicated 50 hours to working with camp participants. They helped groups of campers produce four short films and assisted all 11 participants in writing an individual screenplay, filming an interview with a fellow camper and editing the footage and b-roll into a 30-second video clip. Fifteen UA students spent at least 10 hours each planning and creating curriculum for the camp.
Students in the 2016 Girls Film School course worked in groups, brainstorming and then organizing every aspect of the camp. “Their job was to ask why we would have a girls film camp, and then, ‘How do you build it?’” Brickman says. “We had logistics, curriculum, marketing and promotion teams.”
The UA class took place again in Spring 2018. Students promoted the Summer 2018 camp and recruited participants in numerous ways, including giving presentations in Tuscaloosa-area schools. They also tweaked camp curriculum and raised funds needed to host the camp.
During the first part of the Girls Film School course, UA students explore the aims of community-engagement programs focused on artistic expression, individual voice and identity politics. The second part of the class centers on the structure, partnerships, staffing, equipment and marketing required to implement the upcoming Druid City Girls Media Camp at UA.
Ann Hill, a junior from Tuscaloosa majoring in telecommunication and film, says she taught girls in the 2017 camp many skills she had learned in her UA classes. “Teaching is the best way to better learn something yourself,” she says. “It’s also practice with using the camera and editing for not only the girls, but also for myself.”
Hill says the UA class taught her how girls and women are typically treated and how they usually behave in film classes compared to their male peers. “In film camps and film schools, guys will usually take over using the camera and sort of manage everything, and the girls will step over to the side,” she says. “So we’re trying to combat that, and
it opened my eyes to how I should act in my own classes.”
Brickman says UA students’ leadership during the camp is crucial because attendees have few examples in the current media industry to look to for inspiration. UA students illustrate a path forward and help the girls see a university degree as a possibility for themselves.
“These students have the power, especially as mentors and role models, to give girls confidence,” Brickman says.
Jazzmin Crews, a senior from Atlanta majoring in communication studies, says a camp participant who dreams of being a filmmaker said many things that have stuck with her.
“I was really pushing for her to learn everything we wanted her to learn, and she picked up on all of it,” Crews says. “She said she would love to make a difference in the film industry and wants to know how to represent girls of every color, every shape, every size and every ability.”
Mar’Rica Trone, a fifth-grade camper, says the experience was fun as well as informative. “I got better at shooting and recording video,” she says. “And I learned how to edit.”
Hill says seeing the project come together, from the concept phase through implementation, was a joy. “I was so proud to see what these girls accomplished,” she says.
“Their films were great.”
To learn more about the Druid City Girls Media Camp and the courses associated with it, contact Dr. Barbara Brickman at bjbrickman@ua.edu.
Through The University of Alabama’s EcoCAR 3 team, students involved in disciplines ranging from engineering to education are contributing to fuelefficient vehicle technology and are encouraging children to pursue work in math and science fields.
The majority of an automobile’s environmental impact –about 80 to 90 percent – is due to fuel consumption and emissions of air pollution and greenhouse gases. To combat this, the automotive industry is looking for new ways to reduce vehicles’ dependence on fossil fuels and decrease harmful emissions. With the EcoCAR project, UA students are working on the ground floor of these automotive advancements.
In Spring 2014, The University of Alabama was selected as one of 16 universities to compete in EcoCAR 3: An Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition. The fouryear, national competition is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors and managed by Ar-
gonne National Laboratory. EcoCAR 3 challenges students to transform a Chevrolet Camaro into a vehicle that uses significantly less energy and emits less pollution without sacrificing performance, safety or consumer appeal.
The UA team consists of five advisors and more than 60 students from eight disciplines.
“This is one of the most interdisciplinary projects on campus,” says Dr. Paul Puzinauskas, associate professor of mechanical engineering. “We’ve got so many students from different backgrounds working together on this project. We try to make the program as much as possible like it would be at GM or any other vehicle manufacturer. So when these students apply for jobs, they’ll have actual automotive production experience, working in teams, managing projects that most people don’t do until they’ve had at least 10 years’ experience in their field.”
Many students earn academic credit for their work on the EcoCAR project through service-learning courses in-
Students across disciplines work to transform a classic American car into an environmentally friendly vehicle while opening doors to STEM fields for middle and high schoolers.
cluding: Engineering Leadership 491/591, ME 491 Modeling and Simulation of Automotive Systems, ME 591 Advanced IC Engines, APR 433 Public Relations Campaigns, MC 495 Experiential Learning, GBA 171 Organizational Behavior, GBA 172 Marketing, GBA 271 Accounting, GBA 272 Finance and many more. The team also collaborates with the Capstone Agency, a student-run, integrated communications firm, and marketing students taking a sales course, MKT 439 Key Account Management, raise funds for the team by reaching out to potential donors. More than a third of EcoCAR’s project-management team members are part of UA’s STEM Path to the MBA program, in which students who major in science, technology, engineering or mathematics earn an undergraduate STEM degree as well as a Master of Business Administration in five years.
Kimberly DeClark, who works at Argonne National Laboratory and is communications and logistics manager for the EcoCAR competition, says the nonprofit research laboratory and the U.S. Energy Department are extremely interested in students’ ideas and applications. “Their innovation and creative thinking on new, sustainable, alternative-fueled vehicles can be implemented into the future of automobile manufacturing,” she says.
Each team’s efforts are evaluated annually during a weeklong series of presentations and events. In the 2018 Year 4 Competition, UA’s team won first place in the ridequality event, first place for its communications presentation, second place for its communications program and the award for most creative outreach event. It was runner up for best final technical report and placed third overall. In the 2017 Year 3 Competition, the UA team won second place for its communications program and third place
for innovation. During the 2016 Year 2 Competition, the team won first place for its final technical report, the firstplace National Science Foundation Innovation Award and the first-place National Science Foundation Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Award. In the 2015 Year 1 Competition, UA was named the “Team to Watch.” It placed first for its media-relations report, Clean Cities Coalition Outreach Initiative (which involves collaborating with the Alabama Clean Fuels Coalition), and an outreach presentation and event related to its EcoScholars youth program. The team’s mechanical-engineering presentation placed third.
Project manager Haley Loftis, a fifth-year student in the STEM/MBA program, won the GM Women in Engineering Award in 2017 and the Spirit of Project Management Award in 2018. Control systems subteam leader Josh Stoddard, a senior from Memphis, Tenn., majoring in mechanical engineering, won the Excellence in Leadership Award in 2018.
After spending nearly 18 months working on plans, students received a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro in Spring 2016 and began implementing their designs.
The team is turning the gasoline-powered Camaro into a blended plug-in hybrid with a smaller internal combustion engine supplemented by two electric motors. With these changes, the Camaro should be able to travel 48 miles on one gallon of gasoline compared to its standard 28 mpg.
Students are replacing the 3.6-liter, six-cylinder internal combustion engine that came with the Camaro with a 2.4-liter, four-cylinder unit, but the two electric motors should make up for the smaller engine with their capability of pro-
viding 32 and 106 additional kilowatts, respectively.
As a blended plug-in hybrid, the Camaro will be able to optimally select among four power sources depending on the needs of the car. When the driver wants the full force of a muscle car, both electric motors will work in parallel with the engine. The vehicle also can drive by electric power alone or run off one electric motor while the other works in series with the engine to charge the battery.
An algorithm programmed into a supervisory controller the students designed will determine how the engine and motors work in concert to power the car and charge the battery.
To fully charge the redesigned Camaro’s battery, drivers would need to plug the hybrid vehicle into an electrical outlet before departing on a trip. However, they could always drive the vehicle so long as fuel was in the gas tank.
Ryan McNealy, head of the safety systems team, says he and the other project leaders typically work at least 30 hours a week on the EcoCAR project.
“Just about everything inside the car was done by students,” says McNealy, a senior from Maryville, Tenn., majoring in mechanical engineering and on the STEM/MBA path. “We all learn from each other while working on the car. We make a lot of mistakes, but we learn from those mistakes. You might get it wrong once, but after you go back and figure it out, you’ll never get it wrong again.”
In the competition’s fourth year, a major assignment was developing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Utilizing cameras and sensors, ADAS allow the car to perform such safety functions as alerting the driver to possible obstacles and applying brakes before a collision. ADAS is a major component of the year-four competition.
Dr. Hwan-Sik Yoon, an EcoCAR faculty advisor and as-
sistant professor of mechanical engineering who teaches ME 491 Modeling and Simulation of Automotive Systems, says the EcoCAR lab offers some of the best facilities and equipment of any university in the nation. The team works in partnership with the Center for Advanced Vehicle Technologies, which is located on The University of Alabama campus.
The EcoCAR competition’s sponsors say it engages the next generation of automotive professionals, and at UA, students are using it as a platform to reach out to an even younger demographic.
Through an initiative called EcoScholars, UA students lead sessions once per month for sixth-grade students in Tuscaloosa, teaching them about STEM topics, leadership and career options. Nearly 100 students have taken part in the program. In addition, team members from both the communications and engineering subteams travel to middle and high schools across Alabama to host, on average, one youth outreach event per month. Through its broad range of outreach programs, EcoCAR 3 has worked with more than 5,000 kids throughout the state.
When the EcoCAR team visits a classroom, students present lessons around themes including climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions, alternative-fuel vehicles, diversity and teamwork in engineering, says Bethany Corne, the team’s communications and outreach manager. They then help kids perform a hands-on activity related to the theme.
“The goal is to get students excited about engineering,” says Corne, a senior from Newport, Mich., majoring in marketing and public relations. We’ve done everything from building challenges to electric-vehicle races to outdoor dodgeball-style games that teach the students about
air pollution. It’s fun and educational at the same time.
“Our outreach programs give students the opportunity to learn about concepts that they wouldn’t have heard of in a typical school curriculum. It allows them to broaden their horizons and learn about engineering concepts that are most crucial to the automotive industry today, such as alternative fuels and sustainable engineering.”
Corne says the team visits many schools that do not have the resources to foster interests in science and engineering fields. “I would love to see students who we reached out to in middle school go to college and pursue a STEM field because the EcoCAR 3 program showed them they can,” she says.
Puzinauskas says a project like EcoCAR, with so many moving parts and aspects, requires many different minds. Students learn to collaborate in a multidisciplinary team –a skill they will need in their future jobs.
Teri Henley, who teaches Capstone Agency students who work on the EcoCAR 3 project in APR 433 Public Relations Campaigns and MC 495 Experiential Learning, says her students play a critical role in the program.
“On a project of this magnitude, it is important not only to build the best car possible, but also communicate with many groups of people who could be positively impacted by greener technologies,” Henley says. “Our students learn first-hand that it isn’t just about building a greener car, but also about educating the community about why that is important.”
Loftis, who is from Kansas City, Mo., and serves as the EcoCAR team’s program manager, says EcoCAR is the most hands-on opportunity she’s found. “Labs in our curriculum are great, but you don’t always have the
freedom to try out your own ideas and be in charge of making sure something works,” she says.
Fifteen former UA team members have secured jobs with General Motors through the EcoCAR competition.
Loftis says working with the EcoCAR program prompted her to re-evaluate her career options. “Before I joined this project, I thought I had my career path laid out, but this really threw a wrench in that plan,” Loftis says. “I hadn’t considered the automotive industry before, but I’ve really enjoyed working on this project, and it’s a great time to be involved. There’s so much going on development-wise.”
The culminating Year 4 Competition took place in three cities May 10-22, 2018. Events kicked off at GM’s Desert Proving Grounds in Yuma, Ariz., where the Camaros underwent rigorous safety inspections. Vehicles then began a series of tests related to emissions, drive quality and handling.
From there, teams moved to Fontana, Calif., where they tested their Camaros at the Auto Club Speedway racetrack. Autocross, acceleration and braking and a consumer appeal event were held. Teams then made presentations to industry and government judges and covered a 150-mile course through Los Angeles County public roads, where the cars were scored in everyday driving applications including city and highway.
To find out more about the EcoCAR 3 project, contact Dr. Paul Puzinauskas at ppuzinauskas@eng.ua.edu or 205-348-4794. The team’s other advisors are: Dr. Hwan-Sik Yoon; Dr. Tim Haskew, head of the department of electrical and computer engineering; Dr. Rob Morgan, executive director for Innovation Initiatives in the Culverhouse College of Commerce; and Michael Pope, instructor of marketing in the STEM Path to the MBA program.
After Hurricane Irma struck Florida in September of 2017, a team of University of Alabama engineering students and faculty members deployed to impacted areas to assess how homes, including those built by Habitat for Humanity, withstood the storm. The group also tested new and innovative data-collection methods that could speed recovery after disasters.
Students compared structures with the FORTIFIED Home designation – a set of engineering and building standards to help protect homes from hurricanes, high winds, hail and severe
thunderstorms – to those without it. Alabama has, by far, the most FORTIFIED homes of any state, so the team’s work sheds light on how the 4,000 FORTIFIED structures in Alabama’s coastal counties could weather a similar storm.
“UA students did excellent work on this project,” says Lawrence S. Powell, director of the Alabama Center for Insurance Information and Research, which is housed in the UA Culverhouse College of Business and partnered with the College of Engineering for the Hurricane Irma research. “The data they collected will benefit the scientific community that is developing new
methods of resilient construction. UA faculty and even some of our graduate students are quickly becoming thought leaders in this space. This is a great example of the service-learning environment benefiting everyone involved.”
Deployments after extreme events give students a chance to use skills learned in the classroom to determine how structures failed, says Dr. Andrew Graettinger, director of graduate programs for civil, construction and environmental engineering.
“When a student takes a course in structural wood design, the designs are all based on expected loads that
Engineering students use cutting-edge methods to document and analyze damage after Hurricane Irma, helping determine the value of tougher building standards.
the structure will handle, which are set by design guidelines,” says Shane Crawford, a PhD candidate studying civil engineering and a member of the Hurricane Irma damage-assessment team. “Traveling to a disaster area and witnessing buildings that failed due to loads that surpassed what was designed for helps engineers understand how failure occurs, where vulnerabilities in the design lie and how to account for that in their designs.”
Six students and seven faculty members collected data in four Florida cities including Marco Island, where Hurricane Irma made landfall. Using 360-degree cameras, drones, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) and many other sophisticated technologies, the team gathered information from 31 of Florida’s 45 FORTIFIED homes, thousands of non-FORTIFIED houses and 250 Habitat for Humanity homes. Students worked 14 to 16 hours per day during two days in Florida and spent three weeks processing data before creating a final report.
Following Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Florida enacted stricter building codes. The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety created the FORTIFIED Home program to set even higher construction standards, and insurance companies offer discounts on homes built to these guidelines. Students documented differences in performance for buildings classified into three groups: pre-Andrew Florida building code, post-Andrew Florida building code and FORTIFIED code.
“We wanted to see if we could find a difference in damage within those three categories,” Crawford says. “We hope to gain a sense of how effective design codes are in hurricane loss mitigation and prove the lifecycle cost benefit of building to higher standards.”
Homes that were 30 to 40 years old had more roof, shingle and wall damage, he says, suggesting stricter building codes made a difference.
The team took photos and videos and interviewed homeowners. To document a large zone of damage, they attached multiple 360-degree cameras to
the tops of vehicles, used a Segway and employed LIDAR, which maps a surface using pulses of light from a laser.
“We compiled the data, the pictures and video to create a complete map,” says Rachel Vandermus, a junior from West Bend, Wis., majoring in civil engineering. “We paired location with data to map damage areas.”
In addition to photographs from ground level, Dr. Charles O’Neill, assistant professor of aerospace engineering and mechanics, and Jamie Moon, a graduate student studying aerospace engineering with a focus on unmanned aerial vehicles, used three drones to examine homes from the air.
“Two drones took photos in visible light, and this was used to inspect roofs for damage,” says Moon, who earned academic credit for his work through a research independent study focused on aircraft sensor integration. “Then we have a third, larger drone equipped with an infrared camera.” Infrared cameras can indicate damage that might not be visible by detecting energy loss from roofs or pooling water resulting from a small hole in a shingle.
Without drones, the team would not have seen much of the homes’ roofing. “With one 5-minute flight, we can image three blocks of a neighborhood it would take an hour to walk around,”
Moon says. “We can see things not at eye level. You might know an area is flooded, but you can easily see exactly where water is standing with a drone. It’s a matter of time and getting a better perspective.
“I was glad to actually do something that would help a lot of people – working in a new field of technology that can be developed for future events,” he says.
In-field data collection technology is changing rapidly, Graettinger says. Typically, researchers go into areas on foot, and insurance company representatives can go inside homes to take photos. Collecting the data takes a long time, and it usually isn’t shared.
Quick evaluation is needed after a disaster because data that could tell how damage occurred and allow researchers to study the failure mechanism is perishable, Graettinger says. For example, a leaking roof might be covered with a tarp or a badly damaged home could be demolished.
After the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Mo., UA sent a team of 15 to 20 researchers who took photos over several days. Travel and lodging costs for a large team are expensive, Graettinger says, and the Hurricane Irma research team was able to cover a larger area in a
smaller time frame with fewer people.
“Our approach is more of an updated approach for researching and presenting a large data set than what was available in the past,” Graettinger says.
The Hurricane Irma research team also tested data-collection protocols for a website UA faculty and students have set up to store and visualize perishable disaster data. Team members used a smartphone app to upload survey data about affected homes in near-real time. They uploaded digital photography and infrared imagery at the end of each day in the field and uploaded videos taken from vehicle-mounted cameras and drones within days after returning from the field. View the site at http://gisresearch.ua.edu/research.html.
“We hope this website can be used to more effectively share information and plan deployment efforts in the future,” Crawford says.
The website is multi-disciplinary, so researchers in various areas can contribute and benefit. “Usually, engineers, economists and social scientists do separate research and it’s not brought together,” Crawford says. “We’ll be able to see how infrastructure loss relates to social impacts and economic impacts.”
Because a lot of grant-funded re-
search is not accessible to the academic community or public, the UA College of Engineering plans to approach funding organizations and suggest they require grant recipients to log data on the website.
Crawford says a couple houses on Marco Island, where the storm came ashore, were destroyed, but structural damage elsewhere was limited. He attributes this to upgraded building design and construction. Roof and fence damage and flooding were the primary problems students documented.
The excellent performance of FORTIFIED homes in Florida is a good indication of how FORTIFIED homes in Alabama will perform, Graettinger says.
In a neighborhood of Habitat for Humanity homes, the team saw the same damage on every house: the top strip of siding was missing in the same place. This was probably because too few nails were used, Crawford says. The group shared this information with Habitat for Humanity so the organization could address the issue in future construction.
Minor damage such as stripped siding and light fixtures or chimneys being torn from structures can have big economic impacts, Crawford
says, because it can result in extensive water damage.
The Hurricane Irma project was the first in which Crawford took a lead role in a disaster-research deployment. “It was valuable for me because I had to do all of the initial data gathering, putting together a team, defining research objectives, planning logistics, etc.,” he says. “The small time frame between disaster and deployment adds pressure to all tasks, so getting that experience will be helpful in future deployments.”
Crawford was inspired to take his civil engineering major in a naturaldisaster direction after he witnessed the April 2011 tornado in Tuscaloosa. “It was a pretty sad sight to see people packing up everything they had left and leaving,” he says. Measuring and modeling community resistance is the topic of Crawford’s PhD dissertation.
Moon says the team’s work provided proof the innovative damageassessment methods they used could be successfully employed after other events. “The eventual goal is to be able to immediately deploy a fleet of drones to quickly take images that would be used to assess a situation,” he says.
That way, the insurance process can move forward faster and repairs can
happen sooner. Giving feedback to architects and building code writers also can prevent some damage, he says.
Moon is interested in using the type of drone technology employed after disasters in other applications as well – to improve safety and efficiency. Inspecting roofs, agricultural fields and industrial equipment and facilities are some examples. “It would be interesting to work for a company that not only flies drones in these applications, but creates custom systems,” he says.
To learn more about natural-disaster research at UA, contact Dr. Andrew Graettinger at andrewg@eng. ua.edu or 205) 348-1707.
UA students and/or faculty members have been involved in numerous disaster-research deployments in recent years. They include:
• Hurricane Katrina, Gulf Coast in 2005
• Tuscaloosa, Ala., tornado in 2011
• Joplin, Mo., tornado in 2011
• Moore, Okla., tornado in 2013
• Hurricane Matthew river flooding in Lumberton, N.C., in 2016
• Puebla, Mexico, earthquake in 2017
