A world-renowned research university and medical center — a first choice for education and healthcare
The UAB Vision
Bold. Ambitious. Audacious, maybe. This is how such a vision might have seemed in UAB’s formative years, when a fledgling university and medical center in Birmingham set its sights on international prominence…
In 1936, when the University of Alabama established a modest extension center in a two-story clapboard house, with an enrollment of 116 students... (more)
In 1945, when The Medical College of Alabama was established in Birmingham, and sought to recruit some of the brightest scientific and medical minds from around the globe... (more)
Or in 1969, when these and other programs merged into the autonomous campus of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, whose first president laid out a vision so lofty that it struck some of his own faculty as “crazy”... (more)
In the four decades since, this young, dynamic university has thrived on that same boldness and innovation to continue pushing the frontiers in science, medicine, the arts and the humanities – and has garnered national and international respect.
Ranked among the top 15 percent of U.S. colleges and universities by The Princeton Review
Attracts over $400 million annually in external research funding and ranks consistently in the top 25 nationally in funding from the National Institutes of Health.
Named among the Top 5 Best Places to Work in Academia by The Scientist in 2008
Among 96 public and private universities (and the only Alabama university) classified as an institution of “very high research activity” by the Carnegie Foundation
At the same time, UAB has reached out and partnered with its community and state, sharing a vision and phenomenal progress over a half century. UAB’s growth as a world-renowned research university and medical center has driven the social, cultural, and economic revival of Birmingham. Consequently, The Carnegie Foundation recognizes UAB not only in its highest tier for “research activity,” but also in its “Community Engagement” category, making this university one of a select few nationally to achieve both classifications.
From the beginning, UAB’s character and culture have been about breaking through and transcending...
Traditional boundaries among disciplines, to conduct intensely collaborative research and scholarship.
Long-accepted notions of the metropolitan versus the traditional, to form a university that is neither and both—the ideal convergence of the two.
Social and cultural barriers, to create a campus dubbed a “mecca of multiculturalism” in The Princeton Review.
And conventional strictures of the likely and unlikely in any given arena—the classroom, the lab, the studio or the stage—and in the lives and careers of students.
