Dear UAB Community and Friends,
Campus is in bloom and abuzz with activity in this first full week of spring. At this time of year we especially enjoy the dramatic transformation of our campus, per our Campus Master Plan, into one of the most vibrant, welcoming and sustainable campuses in the nation. With more than 4,000 trees over 100 city blocks (more than 600 planted over the past two years), UAB has been named for the fourth straight year a “Tree Campus USA” by the Arbor Day Foundation.
Our students are reengaged in their studies after spring break week, during which many of them were doing service projects throughout our community, state and nation, including 22 undergraduates who volunteered for service projects in New Orleans and Memphis as part of “Blazers on Break.” I want to congratulate our women’s basketball team, who advanced to the second round of the women's NIT after clinching the first Conference USA regular-season title in program history.
About the same time, several faculty and graduate students from our College of Arts and Sciences were venturing into colder climes not often associated with spring break. Our research team has returned to Palmer Station, Antarctica to continue investigating the chemical ecology of Antarctic marine life, advancing not only marine biology but also climatology, medicine and other fields. You can follow the team’s discoveries over this 16-week expedition at www.uab.edu/antarctica.
Other Arts and Sciences faculty are also advancing their respective fields with groundbreaking research and scholarship, publishing a total of 17 books in 2017. These books span a range of topics that speaks to the breadth of our expertise — from art history, literature and communication studies to biology and anthropology to mathematics and computer sciences. Additionally, Dr. John Moore (associate professor of Spanish) was recently awarded a highly competitive fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities — among less than 8 percent of the applications funded in that cycle — for his outstanding scholarship that only a year ago earned him a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.
Faculty, students and staff celebrated the 17 books published by College of Arts and Sciences faculty in 2017 during a reception at the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts.
Imagination and innovation across all disciplines continues to attract increased research funding to our campus. As I noted in our recent Institutional Presentation to the UA System Board of Trustees, UAB had over $538 million in research expenditures in 2017, ranking 15th nationally among public universities and 31st overall in federally funded research. I thank our faculty campus-wide whose talent and dedication enables us to secure such competitive grant dollars and further UAB’s global leadership in research, scholarship and education.
We continue translating much of our research into world-class patient care that impacts our entire community and state, and well beyond. As home to Alabama’s only level-1 adult trauma center — which treats the most catastrophic injuries suffered across our state — UAB proudly partners with our military as host to three U.S. Air Force Special Operations Surgical Teams (SOST). When not deployed abroad in forward positions, the teams are stationed at medical facilities stateside where they can best hone their medical and teamwork skills. In a recent ceremony at UAB Hospital, the six members of the SOST Gold Team were awarded bronze star medals by the Air Force for their heroic work during a 2016 deployment. UAB is deeply honored to play a role in helping these teams maintain peak proficiency in delivering vital care to our soldiers on the battlefield.
Members of a U.S. Air Force Special Operations Surgical Team stationed at UAB were recently awarded bronze stars for their heroic work overseas. Watch the medal ceremony at UAB Hospital above.
My thanks to our faculty, staff and students who continue making this such an outstanding academic year, to the more than 99,400 donors and partners who have taken the Campaign for UAB over $870 million, and to my fellow UAB alumni who represent our alma mater so well around the nation and the globe.