By Cynthia Ryan

Nowadays, it seems like everybody’s going global. Here in the College of Arts and Sciences, we’re doing our part to cross the continents, too, with faculty and students making their mark in more places than we can mention in a single article: Greece, Nigeria, Japan, Belgium, England, Spain, India, the Netherlands, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, The Republic of Korea—the list goes on.

Whether we travel virtually or touch down on runways thousands of miles away we know that going global requires passion and purpose. In the pages that follow, we’ll introduce you to a smorgasbord of efforts in the College of Arts and Sciences to contribute to the kind of knowledge that’s shaping our world and changing it for the better.

Hitting the Road

Andrew Demshuk Perhaps the most conventional sense of going global involves, well, going global in the literal sense. Every year, representatives from The College set their sights on other shores. For many faculty members and graduate students, the goal is to conduct research elsewhere and then deliver their findings to stakeholders situated around the globe.

Historian Andrew Demshuk is a good example. Demshuk was thrilled to be named a recipient of the coveted Humboldt Foundation Junior Faculty Research Fellowship for 2014-15. The fellowship supports a full year of research on the history of architecture and city planning after World War II in Frankfurt am Main, Leipzig, and Wroclaw—“three war-ravaged cities which were part of united Germany before 1945 and then reconstructed under three differing regime ideologies during the decades thereafter,” according to Demshuk.

The project will take Demshuk to several research sites, including the national library in Leipzig and the archive of the former East German secret police. It’s an experience that’s a dream come true for this young scholar who published a book called The Lost German East with Cambridge University Press in 2012. But for Demshuk, living and working in Germany is about more than contributing to a scholarly conversation.

“My most memorable experiences in Germany have involved a plethora of close friends and colleagues who live in beautiful places across the country,” he says. He counts among his dearest friends those who hail from “Berlin in the East, to the Ruhr region in the West, to the countryside around Schwabish Hall in the South, to Oldenburg near the Dutch border,” and says that the conversations and experiences he’s shared with friends have enabled him to “enter diverse world views that continue to enrich [his] own.”

Demshuk advocates for more overseas interchange and scholarship in the 21st century: “Americans need to learn more languages, meet people from other cultures, exchange ideas, take in alternative methods and outlooks, immerse in the great wealth of foreign research materials, and then carry that new richness back home to share.”

Coming Together

Complex global issues require the meeting of many minds. Unsurprisingly, folks in the College of Arts and Sciences are part of numerous conversations about real-world problems, from global warming to human rights to health concerns that affect people just about everywhere.

Lisa SharlachAs a case in point, Department of Government’s Lisa Sharlach considers the impact of war on women in conflict zones around the globe. Currently, she’s investigating the link between sexual violence in conflict (what’s considered the macro-level) with sexual violence in times of so-called “peace” (the micro-level). “The question I’m asking,” Sharlach says, “is whether the war ends for women when peace comes.”

Her present project is cross-cultural, focusing on trends across a number of global contexts, while other projects have centered on happenings in particular places. Sharlach says that much of her work addresses women’s victimization in war, but she also looks at “women’s roles as ‘villains,’ or perpetrators of war crimes.” One example is her research on the involvement of ordinary Hutu women in the Rwandan genocide. She’s also engaged in an ongoing analysis of the depiction of women as strong, feminist warriors in propaganda from North Korea and Eritrea—while scratching beneath the surface to uncover a very different message that elevates male dictators.

Sharlach strives to avoid what she calls “U.S. exceptionalism” in both her teaching and research, the notion that somehow the way we do things in the U.S. is different than anywhere else around the globe. “What happened in our Civil War is really little different than what’s currently going on in the Ukraine, for instance,” she offers as an example.

Fortunately, Sharlach finds UAB students to be well positioned to learn about international conflict. “We have a very diverse and international population, many of whom come from or have family members living in war-torn parts of the world,” she says. And the number of students who have served or plan to serve in the military makes them innately curious to learn as much as they can about where the U.S. military might be headed next.

Opening Our Doors

Throughout the year, CAS hosts a number of experts, artists and notable world leaders. By bringing these global thinkers and doers to us, we connect with people from around the globe without leaving home.

For example, the Department of Music hosted several lectures and performances by leaders in the music industry, including legendary Beatles recording engineer Ken Scott, blues guitarist Bill Sims, Jr., and world-renowned percussionist Michael Burritt.

And the Computer Science (CIS) has had their share of visiting scholars, too. “Dr. Marjan Mernik, Professor, University of Maribor is one of many scholars whom we have hosted over the last few years,” says associate professor Dr. Purushotham Bangalore. “Dr. Mernik has taught classes and served as a member of the dissertation committees for several CIS Ph.D. students. He has also co-authored several papers with faculty and students from CIS and served as a co-project investigator on some NSF-funded grants.”

Cathleen Cummings and Tushar Gandhi Sometimes, faculty meet people on their own professional travels, and those connections lead to a return visit to UAB by the international figure. When Art History’s Cathleen Cummings met Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, during a 2013 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute in New Delhi, India, she quickly realized how valuable his perspective might be to folks in Birmingham—especially during the city’s celebration of the 50-year anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. Tushar spent several days with Cummings’ group, taking them to Birla House, where his great-grandfather was assassinated, and to Raj Ghat, where Gandhiji was cremated and where his ashes are interred.

“Over lunch one day we talked about what was going on in Birmingham and about Gandhian influences on the Civil Rights Movement,” Cummings says. “Tushar shared a couple of interesting anecdotes about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visit to India that I had never heard and I began thinking how interesting it would be if he could share them with the community.”

With the collaboration of many in the College, Tushar’s visit was arranged in early May 2014. During his weeklong visit, Tushar participated in a symposium focusing on Gandhian paths to global progress and gave a public lecture at UAB. He also made presentations at the Rotary Club in Birmingham, visited several local grade schools to engage with area youth, spoke to an audience at Miles College, and recorded an extensive audio piece for the audio archive at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

In addition to bringing an important figure to our community, Cummings’ invitation resulted in something far more lasting. “His visit helped to keep the momentum going in terms of the commemoration and recognition of Birmingham’s Civil Rights history,” Cummings offered. “Tushar’s perspective helped to renew our focus on important issues into 2014 and served as a kind of bridge between the 2013 events and the Dalai Lama’s upcoming visit in October.”

Providing a Voice

Globalization is often about offering perspectives other than the one on the ground. For many faculty, perspective-sharing happens in a unique ways.

Kieran Quinlin There are those instances when our faculty and students share a global perspective on their particular field of study with folks in Birmingham or other parts of Alabama. Some examples from history include John Van Sant’s presentation on “Protocol in Practice Seminar: Japan” at the Birmingham International Center and Walter Ward’s talks about the Middle East at Avondale Library, several events on UAB’s campus, and for a story about the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza for NBC 13.

Many times, faculty offer perspectives on the ideas being presented by colleagues around the world. They serve as reviewers for international journals, for example, mathematics’ Mubenga Nkashama’s appointment as an editorial board member for the International Journal of Evolution Equations and African Diaspora Journal of Mathematics, and Marshall Abrams’ position as associate editor of Frontiers in Evolutionary and Populations Genetics. Others occupy important roles in international organizations, like William Cockerham’s appointment to president of the research committee on health sociology for the International Sociological Association, and Akhlaque Haque’s service on the boards of the Bangladesh Development Initiative as well as the Section on Effective Administration of the Middle East for the American Society for Public Administration.

Then there are individuals like Glenn Feldman, who brings a sense of Birmingham’s history to scholars and media representatives across the globe. Writing about history in the American South, especially during the era of Civil Rights, Feldman has been interviewed about his work for outlets in Canada, England, Scotland, and The Netherlands.

And English professor Kieran Quinlan’s essay, “Kirwan Street, In Memory,” published in New Hibernia Review, a multidisciplinary journal of Irish studies from the University of St. Thomas, was named one of the Best American Essays in 2013 alongside prose by international literary figures including Jhumpa Lahiri. The essay depicts Quinlan’s experiences growing up on a street situated between a convent and an asylum in Dublin, and his decision to join (and then leave) the Trappist monastery of Mount Melleray. His work offers a commentary on the significance of place and identity that has proven to be relatable to people everywhere.

Minabere Ibelema When readers of Nigeria’s popular newspaper The Punch open the Sunday edition, they are likely to discover commentary by UAB communications professor Minabere Ibelema. A native of Nigeria, Ibelema had steadily contributed essays to both U.S. and Nigerian papers and magazines when a friend suggested that he try landing a regular column in The Punch, which he did in 2008.

Over the years, Ibelema has tackled a number of general topics: serendipity and success, the value of the scientific method (in contrast with superstition) in everyday life, risk-taking in child-rearing, and “even the worn topic of adversity and character building,” he says. While issues related to life and society were the focus of many of his early columns, Ibelema admits that he found himself writing about politics more than he initially intended given Nigeria’s “perennial political tension” and a host of world crises affecting the country. The two thrusts of his political columns tend to be “bridging the partisan divide in Nigeria and interpreting Nigerian affairs so that readers see the global dimension” to what they are experiencing.

Several of Ibelema’s columns have struck a chord with readers. One example was a piece in which he was critical of Nigeria’s now-late literary icon, Chinua Achebe. “His retrospective on the Nigerian civil war, There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, set off considerable controversy because of some very divisive and misleading claims,” Ibelema explains. “Though I cut my teeth on literature reading his novels, I weighed in decidedly against Achebe, pointing out historical evidence against his claims.” Ibelema received a good amount of feedback on the column, both supportive and critical, and ended up penning a follow-up to further elaborate on his position.

Ibelema says that “one of the downsides of living abroad is the feeling that one is not contributing to the civic and political discourse of one’s native country.” Fortunately, writing the column in The Punch has helped to fill this gap—as pointed out to Ibelema by some post-graduate Nigerian students who came to UAB already familiar with Ibelema’s work in their home country.

Thinking Big

At the end of the day, everything we do in the name of globalization has a larger purpose—to make a difference in as many places in the world as possible and to encourage the next generation of researchers, teachers, and students to keep their eyes on the world.

Peggy Biga with some of her students Peggy Biga in Biology is one such case. Working with two researchers from France, Biga is studying the genetic factors that allow for some animals to continually add new muscle fibers throughout their lives, while others (like humans) cannot. To find answers, this international team is looking to what might seem an unlikely source: fish.

In her lab at UAB, Biga juxtaposes two species of fish that exhibit opposing growth potential to help identify novel targets for growth regulation. During the past year and a half, Biga has collaborated with Jean-Charles Gabillard from the Institut de la Recherche Agronomique, INRA, Rennes, France; and Iban Seiliez from the Institut de la Recherche Agronomique, Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, France and their findings have resulted in a number of research articles. In addition to bringing expertise in particular aspects of muscle growth to their investigative work, both Gabillard and Seiliez are also experts in fish muscle biology.

“For the first time,” Biga says, “we have characterized an epigenetic profile of myogenesis (muscle growth) in vertebrates with no growth plateau growth potential.” Turning their attention to nutrition, the researchers are examining the role specific nutrients play on local muscle regulation through protein:DNA interactions. Their work has implications for a number of fields, including basic biology, agriculture and medicine, and Biga credits the international collaboration she shares with Gabillard and Seiliez for the progress her lab has made in addressing several complicated questions about organismal growth.

Graduate students working in Biga’s lab, as well as those in her collaborators’ institutions, are also benefiting from the research being conducted. Ph.D. student Jacob M. Froehlich had the opportunity to travel to France for two months to undergo one-on-one training in muscle biology research with Biga’s collaborators, and Biga says there are plans to send others to France in the future. Collaborators’ frequent visits to one another’s labs also expose UAB students to the expertise, and perspectives, of international scientists.

Biga and many others in the College of Arts and Sciences are at the forefront of globalization efforts, helping their students, their peers, and the larger community reap the benefits of their far-reaching relationships and partnerships with an eye to establishing many more in the future.

Study Away

As UAB and its students embrace a more globalized world, the number of College students pursuing study away opportunities is on the rise. In 2013, 509 UAB students studied away.

UAB students interested in Study Away programs have four options. The first is an exchange program. UAB partners with 10 programs in 10 countries to basically swap a UAB student for a student from one of the partner schools for a semester. This program allows UAB students to pay UAB tuition and fees while having an abroad learning experience. UAB also partners with programs in the United States, Canada and the U.S. Territories to do similar exchanges, although these are domestic in nature. A business major can pay his or her in-state UAB tuition while studying in Calgary, if he or she so desires. Students who can’t find a fit in one of the exchange programs can arrange to study abroad through a third party provider. While this third option is often more expensive, the choices for what and where to study abroad are limitless. Students choose from programs and schools all across the globe.

The fourth option for students interested in study away programs is the increasingly-popular faculty-led study away. Many UAB professors embrace the opportunity to combine classroom learning with hands-on experience in a foreign country. Often offered on a shorter-term basis, these faculty-led study away programs can be an ideal match for students with work or family commitments that prevent leaving town for an entire semester. For example, a sustainability class explored alternative energy sources in a classroom on campus before heading to the Netherlands and Belgium for a look at wind farms and bike factories in places where earth-friendly practices are world-renowned.

Dr. Brian Johnson, Director of the Office for Study Away, believes these programs are invaluable to students as they enter an ever-changing world and competitive job market. “Study Away prepares students to succeed in the globalized world,” he says.

“Students in all fields—from the humanities to the hard sciences—can benefit from spending time in a different culture. Study Away demonstrates cultural competency and that a student can survive independently,” Johnson says. “It shows you can thrive in an environment you’re not completely used to.”

Joy O’Neal turned a love of horses into a equine-therapy organization called The Red Barn.

Photos courtesy of The Red Barn

Sometimes, inspiration comes from the unlikeliest of places.

Joy O'Neal at the barn with Red Flight.That was certainly the case for Joy O’Neal, a 1989 graduate in History from the College of Arts and Sciences, who found herself touring a small horse farm in Leeds, Alabama, back in 1999. O’Neal, who had five children in her blended family with husband Emmet, was looking for something for the his-and-hers brood to do together, and asked her friend and longtime horsewoman Anita Cowart to offer her advice on the land.

O’Neal knew that Cowart had lost her daughter, Love, in a tragic accident back in the 1960s. She even knew the story of how Cowart had found a quiet spot by the Little Cahaba River to seek guidance on how to move forward after the death of her child. But it wasn’t until the two women walked the property that O’Neal realized that this farm was exactly where Cowart had sought solace so many years before. “When she got here, she said, ‘This is it!’ O’Neal recalls. “So I just turned to Emmet and said, ‘We’ve got to get it.’”

The O’Neals used the farm for many years until their children grew up and left for college. In 2009, O’Neal wondered what would come next for her—and for the land. “I thought, ‘What about me? What am I going to do with my life? I’m not a room mother anymore, so what can I do?’” she says.

A return to the College of Arts and Sciences for an M.P.A. in non-profit management helped establish the answer to those questions. O’Neal wanted to share her love for the property, for children, and for Mrs. Cowart with an equine-therapy organization dedicated to supporting children and adults with physical, cognitive and emotional disabilities, as well as those who were at-risk, disadvantaged, or with special circumstances. She founded The Red Barn in 2012, and today it has 14 horses and a staff of therapists, counselors, and stable hands who see roughly 100 children each week. O’Neal also has dozens of volunteers who help her run the programs and camps that support her vulnerable clients.

Volunteers with Red Barn clients.Through her four programs, Saddle Up (therapeutic riding lessons for children with disabilities or from special circumstances), Horse Play (inclusive educational activities for children with or without disabilities), Spirit of Hope (counseling and relationship support), and Take the Reins (serving active or inactive military personnel), O’Neal has found a way to integrate horses and people in ways that benefit every creature involved. “We see all kinds of kids. Kids who have cognitive challenges, kids who were abused, kids with eating disorders, kids whose parents are dying or suffering from addictions. These are things you can’t necessarily see from the outside. And we have horses who need to be desensitized or rehabilitated, too. It allows us to say to the kids, ‘We all have something wrong with us,’” she explains.

O’Neal says her UAB connections have served her well as she’s grown her organization. From the flexibility of the class schedule when she was an undergraduate with a full-time job to the chance to go back for a graduate degree after she raised her own children, UAB fit her needs at each stage of her life. And now she is benefitting from occupational therapy students from the School of Health Professions, who designed the sensory trails that the children ride throughout the property. “I love UAB,” she says. “We have so many connections with the university, which I think is wonderful, because this is really a practical application of a UAB education. For our students and interns, it lets them see how their skills can really be used.”

Filled with ideas on how to further expand The Red Barn, O’Neal just marvels at her journey. “Never in a million years did I think I would be doing this,” she laughs. “I never even touched a horse until I was 30. God has an amazing sense of humor.”

Communication Studies alumna Laura Britt is front and center on the 120 Sports network.

Photos courtesy of Laura Britt

Laura BrittIn the world of year-round sports and 24/7 social media commentary, Laura Britt, UAB alum and new member of the online network 120 Sports, sees opportunity.

120 Sports content partners include equity investor Time Inc. (owner of Sports Illustrated) as well as the NHL, NBA, MLB.com, NASCAR, the PGA TOUR and leading collegiate conferences via Campus Insiders. The concept for the network—delivering news and commentary in real time alongside legions of fans who are themselves sharing news and commentary—fits Britt’s personality and work style perfectly. “My title is ‘update reporter,’ and I’m on at the top and half-hour of every hour from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m.,” Britt says. “Most broadcast jobs are no more than two hours on the air, but this is eight hours of live video programming. It’s long hours, but it’s such an exciting place to be. I want people to feel like this network is really for them, and we are putting in the time to make that happen.”

Britt relies on the team in the network’s “social den” who monitor social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to see what people are talking about online. “The latest thing Johnny Manziel is doing, the Donald Sterling developments, anything,” she says. “And then we go on the air and discuss it with our analysts.” Each story is only covered for two minutes—or 120 seconds—hence the network’s name. Since the video programming is available as a free native application for mobile and tablet devices as well as a web experience at 120Sports.com, additional information on the subject Laura is covering can be linked, allowing viewers to access more information immediately, rather than have to listen to a longer segment on a traditional television network. The 120 Sports video user experience is complemented by a series of patented, interactive data cards that also allow real-time integration of sponsor messaging . “They appear at the bottom of the viewer’s device,“ Britt says. “We have a second team that is doing the research for that data and they post it the form of stats, videos, that kind of thing. So every two minutes, they have to have a new set of data cards ready to go with the story we’re talking about on the air. You can imagine how hectic it is if we have a breaking story come in.”

It’s a fluid way of covering a fluid subject, and it takes a lot of preparation, Britt admits. “It’s a lot to know,” she says. “Every day you’re learning something—multiple things. I love my job, because I’m passionate about things that people are passionate about. Sports make people happy. They love it. It’s what they do in their off time. That’s a great job to have.”

The Newsroom

While Britt didn’t consider sports reporting as a career when she was in college, it became an option almost immediately after she graduated. She received her B.A. in Communication Studies with a concentration in Mass Communication-Broadcasting, and minored in Communication Management and Spanish. And as a student, she interned at ABC 33/40 in Birmingham and the Fox News Channel in New York City. When she finished school, Britt landed a job as a sports reporter at WDBD Fox 40, the Fox affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi. Although her role was somewhat unusual since not many women worked in sports journalism, Britt threw herself into the job, working in the field (shooting, producing, editing and writing her own spots), filling in as anchor, and hosting a 30-minute high school football show once a week.

In time, she found herself on the station’s morning show—again, launching herself into a challenging situation with confidence and passion. “When my boss announced that they were going to start the morning show, I just asked him if I could be a part of it,” she recalls. “Some days, I would be on in the morning, go home and sleep, then come back at night to cover sports. It was a lot of work, but I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything.”

At ABC 33/40 and Fox 40, Britt says she learned the fundamentals of how a local affiliate station works. “Local stations and national networks are similar in a lot of ways,” she says. “Until I worked there, I didn’t really know how they operated. The morning meetings, how the stories are identified, how the reporters work in the field, all the basics.”

But it was her internship at Fox News that really opened her eyes to the possibilities. “I went there the summer just before I graduated in December,” she says. “Fox News Channel really made me dream bigger. I realized how many different opportunities were out there. Producers noticed my hard work as an intern and gave me the chance to host an online show. That was a big moment for me. Being around people at that level made me want to go for it.”

Good Advice

Laura and Blaze at the 2008 homecoming game, at which Laura was recognized as a finalist for Ms. UAB.Yet Britt is quick to say that the foundation for all of her opportunities was laid at UAB, thanks in no small part to the guidance she got from one of the advisors. “I was a General Studies major for as long as you possibly could be,” she laughs. “I remember sitting in the advisor’s office holding a sheet of paper with all of the majors—I literally still have it to this day and I’m looking at it right now—we talked through all of the choices and eliminated what didn’t fit. There are Xs over what we rejected and a big circle around Communication Studies.”

Britt notes that her instructors and professors, namely Chris Pollone, Dr. Larry Powell and Dr. Jean Bodon, were also big influences. “Chris Pollone taught Newswriting for Broadcasting as an adjunct—he was working for NBC 13 in Birmingham—and I learned skills in his class that I still use to this day,” she says. “Dr. Bodon’s Fundamentals of Broadcasting class was also influential.”

Powell says, “Laura was a great student and is also a great person. She was a unique blend of intelligence and personality that comes across great on camera. Add to that her work ethic and ambition, and it’s no wonder she’s been as successful as she has. I’m very proud of her.” Pollone shares similar sentiments about his former student. “I’m not surprised by anything Laura does,” Pollone says. “Fox News had a campus affiliate program when Laura was at UAB, and they chose two students on college campuses across the country to go out with a microphone and camera and file their own stories that would appear on a national college website. They gave Laura a Fox News mike flag and a camera and off she went. I thought it was impressive for Laura to do something like that on her own. Truth be told, she has tremendous natural ability—some have to work at it. But she was producing things then, even before taking some basic courses, that were extremely good.”

Pollone says he suspects that it won’t be long before Britt makes another major career leap. “There are a million things that Laura can do,” he says. “From the moment she walked in the door [of my class] until this day, I thought, ‘This girl has star written all over her.’ I hope that she always gets to exercise what she wants to do. I really think she could be a [broadcast]personality, and not everyone has that.”

An opportunity to build, from scratch, the BlazerTV channel was also a big factor in Britt’s future career. “My graduating class created that,” she says. “Unlike a lot of universities that had stations that were only available to upperclassmen, UAB didn’t have a station, and that really benefitted us. It didn’t exist, so we just did it ourselves, under the direction of Dr. Jean Bodon in Television Production I and II. I learned skills on that project that I still use: I wrote stories, I worked behind the camera, I used the prompter, I was a reporter. Every job in the business—we did it.”

Bleeding Green and Gold

As for why she chose UAB, Britt notes that it was almost pre-determined. “UAB is in my blood,” she says. “My dad received a M.S. in Head and Neck Anatomy, finished Dental School and did a periodontal residency all at UAB. My mom has a M.S.N. and Ph.D. from the School of Nursing and is currently on their faculty. My brother has a Master’s degree in Computer Science and will soon complete a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, and my sister took two years of classes at UAB before going to Wyoming to work.”

Britt’s future seems bright, but she’s trying to savor each chapter. “I’m just enjoying the moment,” she says. “I’m learning a lot. Michael Kim worked for ESPN for almost 20 years. And Dave Ross, he was so influential in the DC market for 18 years. They are incredibly talented and knowledgeable. Getting to work with people like that, being able to have people like that as mentors—it’s such an amazing opportunity and I love learning from them.”

“I don’t want to be ‘the next’ someone else. I just want to be the best version of myself.” she says. “I want to keep every door open.”

The Center for Nanoscale Materials and Biointegration, located within the Department of Physics, has a new Class 7000 Cleanroom.

Cleanrooms, common in manufacturing and scientific research, are environments with a controlled level of contamination that is specified by the number of particles in one cubic foot of air. The cleanroom in the Center for Nanoscale Materials and Biointegration is classified at 7000, a high rating required for fabricating micro-sensors on diamonds, which is the nature of the work being done in the Department of Physics.

According to Dr. Yogesh Vohra, Professor of Physics and Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, the level can be upgraded at a future date as the Center expands its capabilities.

Vohra notes that in addition to the room itself, the Center will be using the first-ever electrical micro-circuit fabricated on top of diamond by mask-less lithography. “Our new technology is 3D micro-fabrication of electrical circuits on diamonds, without using any prefabricated masks,” Vohra explains. “This is referred to as ‘mask-less lithography,’ and uses micro-mirrors to direct light to expose the photoresist to draw circuits on top of diamonds. We also encapsulate the micro-circuit in chemical vapor deposited in a single crystal diamond layer to protect the circuit from any environmental degradation and exposure.“

Vohra adds that immediate application for the sensors is in high-pressure “diamond anvil cell devices,” although he notes that “we are also exploring applications in other extreme environments, like deep well drilling and monitoring in extreme high temperatures.”

The College of Arts and Sciences takes the lead on establishing UAB’s new Institute for Human Rights.

By Nick Patterson

Birmingham’s history in the establishment of American civil rights propelled a yearlong commemoration in 2013, and now, UAB wants to take that recognition to a more global level.

Announced in June, the Institute for Human Rights will feature an interdisciplinary approach to address human rights questions and will utilize one of UAB’s well-known strengths: a highly diverse faculty bringing to bear knowledge and experiences from across multiple geopolitical boundaries.

As conceived by Dr. Robert Palazzo, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the IHR will view human rights in a way broader than one department at UAB, and broader than people sometimes think of civil and human rights.

“It deals with the environment, it deals with justice. It deals with equality. It deals with a host of factors,” says Dr. John Sloan, Chair of the Department of Justice Sciences.

Sloan, along with Dr. Wendy Gunther-Canada, Chair of the Department of Government, developed the proposal for the IHR after being approached by Dean Palazzo in 2013. From there, the proposal had to gain the approval of the Provost, the Vice President for Research, and President Ray Watts. African American Studies Director Dr. Kathryn Morgan reviewed the proposal as did Dr. Douglas Fry, the new chair of the Department of Anthropology, an expert in conflict resolution and peace studies.

All of those involved in the proposal process agree that the Institute will be a game-changer for UAB and for Birmingham. “The Institute offers the university an opportunity to be become a local, national, and global leader in human rights,” says Dr. Kathryn Morgan. “Both UAB and the City of Birmingham will benefit from the research and teaching at the IHR.”

Birmingham is already developing a reputation in the field. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute (BRCI) attracts scholars from around the world who come to the city to participate in programs, pore over the BCRI archives, listen to and watch oral histories of movement members, and more.

Priscilla Hancock Cooper, the interim President and CEO of the BCRI, says she is genuinely excited about the possibilities posed by the IHR. “Not only are we a cultural heritage destination...but we’re also an educational institution,” Cooper says. “I think in training [K-12] teachers, for example, we greatly multiply the numbers of students that we reach. So we look forward to partnering with UAB. The College of Arts and Sciences has the ability to offer courses and a structured academic learning experience that is different than [what] we offer here and that we feel is complementary.”

The IHR also will involve students from UAB and elsewhere. UAB students will have internships and study away opportunities through the IHR, and students in other locations will have the chance to come to Birmingham to study.

Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the IHR will bring together instructors from Anthropology, Sociology, Justice Sciences, Psychology, Public Health, and many other fields. “Faculty across disciplines offer a curriculum focusing on the intersection of civil and human rights within the College of Arts and Sciences,” says Dr. Wendy Gunther-Canada. “The newly founded Institute will expand scholarly collaboration and student engagement through coursework, speakers and colloquia, and partnerships beyond campus.”

A search for the Institute director is underway. For more information on the Institute’s plans and programs, visit uab.edu/cas/humanrights.

Providing Leadership And Direction

By Dale Short

It’s often said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. But Dean Robert Palazzo’s 1,099-mile journey from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, to UAB’s College of Arts and Sciences actually started with a surf clam.

His journey to the surf clam began while studying cell biology, when he became intrigued by a cell component known as the centrosome. Not to be confused with its more famous neighbor the nucleus, the centrosome acts as sort of primary organizing center for cell division and had been described and named by German biologist Theodor Boveri in 1888. “Boveri pretty much formulated the chromosomal theory of inheritance,” Palazzo says. “He predicted that chromatic bodies observed by early cytologists were the carriers of genetic information and traits. Then a hundred years passed, which saw the discovery of DNA and a revolution in molecular biology. Yet, when it came to one of the most important organelles in a cell, scientists still had a basic lack of understanding.”

Palazzo, then a scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, set out to help fill that void in knowledge about centrosomes. As it turns out, the eggs of marine organisms are excellent specimens for observing cell division — and the clam maybe best of all. Clam eggs divide rapidly, and their contents show up well under a microscope. Fortunately, the shore near Palazzo’s lab was teeming with excellent clams, so picking up a few bushels of clams a day for scientific use was no problem.

Research Insights and Rewards

Fast-forward to the February 1992 issue of the journal Science, which featured Palazzo’s work as its cover story in, Palazzo R.E., E. Viasberg, R.W. Cole, and C.L. Rieder (1992) Centriole duplication in cell-free lysates of Spisula solidissima. Science. 256: 219-221. The scientific world took notice, and in the ensuing years, a series of international conferences brought together some of the leading minds in related fields to exchange ideas on progress in centrosome research.

One of the leading minds in the field was a cell biologist named William Brinkley, Ph.D., a president of the American Society for Cell Biology, the Federation of Societies for Experimental Biology, and a professor and former chair at UAB School of Medicine. Brinkley connected Palazzo to UAB early in Palazzo’s career.

A favorite part of Dean Robert Palazzo’s job as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences is interacting with students.Having been recruited as interim dean of the UAB College of Arts and Sciences in October 2012, Palazzo was named dean last June. Although his office, desk, and chair are the same, he says the mindset of dean-versus-interim is very different. “When you’re an interim, you want to do as much as you can,” he says, “but you have to be careful that your decisions don’t have long-term ramifications, because another person will follow you and develop a new relationship with the faculty and others they represent. When the commitment’s made to become dean, you can be more long-term in your thinking and helping to guide things.”

Birmingham by Way of Italy

Palazzo’s perspective on that process is shaped by a somewhat unusual upbringing, which he encapsulates as “born in Italy, grew up in the shadow of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford, and went on to bask in the light of Thomas Jefferson at the University of Virginia, and along the way somehow became a scientist.” His parents moved to the United States when he was in first grade. From there, he worked his way through Wayne State University in Detroit as the first person in his family to attend college.

His views were especially shaped by his years at Wayne State, he says, with its “strong liberal arts program, strong sciences, and a terrific art museum on campus. It was a big commuter school. In a lot of ways, it was like UAB, except that we’re more residential here — which is good, because it gives a greater sense of the college experience.

“At the beginning I thought I might want to teach,” Palazzo says. “I did well in the sciences, and my advisor said that with my good grades in chemistry, I should think about medical school. I started following a science curriculum and had the chance to study with a distinguished biologist and a famous chemist. They suggested I do lab research, and when the projects worked out well, I had the opportunity to stay and work for my Ph.D. with support from their grants.”

Branches of the Same Tree

Although his major was in the sciences, Palazzo says, the university’s arts offerings had a lasting impact on his life. “As a child I loved the books by Hendrik Willem van Loon, who wrote a series of histories for young people in the 1930s — everything from biographies to geography to the arts. And I developed a love for the great books, and for mythology, including Sir James George Frazer’s classic, The Golden Bough. Another big influence was historian Daniel J. Boorstin, who wrote the series of books titled The Americans, The Discoverers, The Creators, and The Seekers.”

Another formative college experience for Palazzo was the university’s filmmaker series, which screened works by major international directors in chronological order. And the museum’s visual arts galleries had significant Asian and Impressionist collections.

“I feel blessed to have been exposed to such a wealth of material,” he says. “And the most important aspect is that when you look at that vast panorama of intellectual and artistic talent — at the whole ‘long waterfront,’ as I call it — of the arts and sciences, you see that it’s not segmented at all, but simply describes various ways of viewing the world, various approaches in search of fundamental truths about ourselves and our universe. Frankly, my interaction with the faculty at UAB in those different fields has been the most refreshing part of my time here.”

After earning his Ph.D. at Wayne State in biological sciences, Palazzo served at the University of Kansas as chair of the Department of Physiology and Cell Biology and professor in the Department of Molecular Biosciences. He also completed a three-year postdoctorate with the biology department at the University of Virginia.

He was recruited to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2002 to chair its biology department and help create a new center for biotechnology and interdisciplinary studies. Palazzo says he accepted the position in part because of the institute’s reputation. “Rensselaer is actually the oldest science and technology university in the English-speaking world,” Palazzo says. “It was founded in 1824, which preceded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by some 60 years. Its impact in terms of entrepreneurship and innovation is enormous.”

Palazzo says he doesn’t buy the conventional idea that the arts and the sciences are by nature competing factions in education. “I think the tension developed in the post-war world, in part a result of heavy funding that was pouring into the sciences, with little investment in the humanities and the arts. This imbalance led to C.P. Snow’s famous book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, in which he criticized that rift, which to his mind was artificial. “I was taught that the Ph.D. is a philosophy degree,” Palazzo continues, “which means you’re a philosopher in biology, in the sciences, in mathematics. So I’ve always felt well aligned and enjoyed the setting of a college of arts and sciences.”

As for the narrative of the clam and the centrosome, Palazzo has gradually relinquished his research duties in recent years as his administrative responsibilities have increased. But he believes there’s still much work to be done in the area he began pursuing at Woods Hole decades ago.

“Even today, you can’t open a scientific journal without seeing a paper or write-up on centrosomes,” Palazzo says. “On the applied side, the question is, is the centrosome involved in root causes of diseases? And it is. I’ve always thought that if tubulin is a target for therapeutics like Taxol and some other treatments, then it’s possible that the centrosome, which serves to organize tubulin, could be an alternative target. I have no doubt that compounds selective for centrosome function would be useful.”

One Goal, Two Paths

UAB’s College of Arts and Sciences was created on January 1, 2010, with the merging of the Schools of Arts and Humanities, Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Natural Sciences and Mathematics — areas of learning representing more than half of UAB’s academic resources, including 22 schools and departments, 300 faculty members, more than 6,500 undergraduates and 500 graduate students from as many as 50 countries, and some 40 different degree options, ranging from baccalaureate to doctoral. An outline of the college’s strategic plan describes it as “a kaleidoscope of intellectual opportunities for learning and the advancement of knowledge.”

The strategic plan also describes the college as “an immersive educational experience.” The beauty of a university, according to Palazzo, is that it represents “a platform for the collision of ideas.

“When you arrive at the essence of ‘what is creativity?’ and consider the origins of ideas, new ideas originate at the interface between disciplines,” Palazzo explains. “People are brought together with different perspectives, different experiences, and different views, all honed in their own disciplines, and then those ideas collide. And it’s at those collision points where you fine inspiration and novel perspectives. That’s how we advance knowledge. We can’t do it alone, especially now in the 21st century, with the explosion of information all around us. We’re part of what I call ‘a community of wise and trusted scholars’ who are all active in this pursuit of knowledge—a pursuit that’s as old as mankind, and modern universities are a perpetuation of that quest.”

When it comes to educating UAB’s students, regardless of their field of study, Palazzo says a top priority should be multiculturalism: “We used to call it ‘cultural tolerance,’ but I much prefer ‘cultural competence.’ As we recognize in our current strategic plan, new students will have to become competent culturally in order to succeed in the academic setting and in the marketplace. That’s true more than ever in the Information Age, and I believe it’s one more reason why a solid grounding in the liberal arts and sciences is critical in the character development and intellectual formation of the next generation of leaders who will be responsible for managing the problems of the world, which certainly aren’t decreasing.”

Moving forward as dean, Palazzo says he has three main personal goals: “First, I want to see the college—as well as UAB as a whole and the city of Birmingham—take a step forward in showing that it can compete in the international arena. Given the slope of its ascension, this fact hasn’t yet been sufficiently recognized, and I hope I can contribute to achieving that. Second, there are many students here who are, like myself, the first in their families to attend college. I’d like to help solidify that path for them and instill within those students the confidence that they can go out into the world and become national and international thought leaders.

“Finally, if I can assure an appropriate structure of policies, best practices, and financial management that will sustain the organization long into the future to achieve goals one and two, then my time here will have been worthwhile.”