CAS Inaugural Alumni Awards Reception

The UAB College of Arts and Sciences inaugural alumni awards reception honored Charles Samuels, Jr., UAB ’87, director, Federal Bureau of Prisons and Joey Kennedy, Jr., UAB ’88, ’03, community engagement specialist, Alabama Media Group. Samuels and Kennedy are the first to receive the College’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.  The reception took place on November 29 at the UAB Alumni House.

Samuels, a native of Birmingham, received his degree in social and behavioral sciences in 1987 from UAB. He began his career with the Bureau as a correctional officer in March 1988.He was selected for positions of increasing responsibility serving in Alabama, Georgia, Arizona, California, New York, West Virginia, Kentucky and New Jersey. Attorney General Eric Holder named Samuels director of the BOP in December 2011.

Kennedy, who has been with the Birmingham News and now Alabama Media Group for the past 31 years, received his degree in communications studies in 1988 and a master’s in English in 2003 from UAB. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner who has been named Alabama’s top opinion columnist five times, most recently in 2012.

The UAB College of Arts and Sciences is home to academic disciplines that include the arts, humanities, and sciences.  The college’s unique structure advances research and learning in higher education, and its courses are taught by a world-class faculty. Committed to the UAB spirit of independence and innovation, the college enables students to design their own majors, participate in undergraduate and graduate research or complete graduate degrees on a five-year fast track. Through productive partnerships, flexible curricula and a bold, interdisciplinary approach to learning and teaching, the college is preparing students for success in the ever-changing global marketplace of commerce and ideas.