Miller finds Donaldson Correctional Facility inmates “hungry for information”
Susan Miller, RD, LDSusan Miller, R.D., L.D., assistant professor, in the University of Alabama at BirminghamDepartment of Nutrition Sciences, volunteered to lecture at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility on January 20, 2015. Her visit was part of the UAB Donaldson lecture series providing inmates bimonthly college-level lectures each year from September through May.“It was just like a regular classroom at UAB where you walk in, greet students, make them feel welcome and make sure they are comfortable interjecting and asking questions – which they did and I was pleased with that,” said Miller, director of the UAB Dietetic Internship Program in the UAB School of Health Professions.
The Donaldson lecture series was created in 1988 by Ada Long, Ph.D., former director of the UAB Honors Program, today known as the UAB Honors College. UAB has sent dozens of faculty members to lecture hundreds of prisoners since then. So far this year, the lecture series has featured Pulitzer Prize winner Joey Kennedy discussing “The Rise and Fall of Journalism” and former UAB Honors Program Director Michael Sloane talking about “Altruism: Genetics and Epigenetics.”
“They are hungry for information. Absolutely hungry for it,” said Miller. “Living in a correctional facility should not restrict anyone from continual learning. They should still have the ability, the capability and the right to learn.”
Yang earns Sangster Award for Outstanding International Student
Yongbin Yang has been awarded the UAB School of Health Professions Alfred W. Sangster Award for Outstanding International Student. Yang, a Ph.D. student in the UAB Department of Nutrition Sciences, has four first author peer-reviewed publications and two co-author peer-reviewed publications since becoming a UAB student in 2011. In that span he also has 10 co-authored abstracts at scientific meetings.Yang, who is active in the community and a member of the UAB Chinese Student/Scholar Association, investigates obesity, calorie restriction and weight cycles under the supervision of Timothy R. Nagy, Ph.D., and Daniel L. Smith, Jr., Ph.D. In 2013, he won the Obesity Society’s Basic Science Section Poster of Excellence Award and the National Institutes of Health Mary Frances Picciano Dietary Supplement Research Practicum Travel Award. In 2012, Yang received the Howerde E. Sauberlich Endowed Award for Excellence in Nutrition Science Research.
