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CAMPUS
Faculty achievements
Robert E. Luckie Jr. Professor of
English
Dr. Sandra Sprayberry
received the Arts and Culture Award
at the Transatlantic Connections
Conference for her paper connecting
the poet W.B. Yeats and Birmingham.
The award was presented by the
Institute of Study Abroad Ireland.
Sprayberry and Erica Brown, BSC’s
director of multicultural affairs,
traveled to Bundoran, Ireland, with
students in January and participated
in the conference.
Dr. Greta Valenti
, assistant professor of psychology, published
a paper in the journal
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
this summer on “Considering Roads Taken and Not Taken: How
Psychological Distance In uences the Framing of Choice Events.”
Valenti and co-investigator Dr. Lisa Libby of Ohio State University
looked at how people look back at the choices they made, conducting
three experiments. They found that the farther the “psychological
distance”—that is, the more distant in time or the more socially
distant the decision was—the more people tended to frame their
decision in terms of what they chose (rather than what they passed
up), regardless of whether the decision turned out to be a good or bad
one.
Professor of History
Dr. Randall Law
was
invited to attend the
2017 Tweeps Forum in
Riadh, Saudi Arabia; he
participated on a panel
discussing the role
social media plays in
combating extremism
and terrorism. The
conference, held in conjunction with U.S. President Donald Trump’s
visit to Saudi Arabia, drew young people from across the region to
hear from political, business, academic, NGO, and other leaders,
including of cials from Facebook and Twitter and the foreign
ministers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Dr. Jason Heaton
, associate professor of biology, received the
Richebourg Gaillard McWilliams Faculty Scholarship Award during
Honors Day in May. Named for an English professor who served from
1929 until 1971, the award goes to an outstanding faculty member
who has excelled in scholarship. Heaton, who joined the BSC faculty
in 2010, works as part of the Swartkrans Paleoanthropological
Research Project, one of three fossil human sites in the Smithsonian
Institution’s human origins exhibit, and has published extensively on
nds uncovered there.
President’s house highlighted
—
Birmingham Home and Garden
is featuring BSC’s
President’s Home in its September/October 2017 edition.
The renovated house is highlighted in the publication’s
“Why They Matter” story, which examines the signi cance of
historic homes that are open to the public across Alabama,
their in uence on today’s architectural designs, and the
importance of preserving them for continued use.
“We especially like the Birmingham-Southern house
because it is preserved and represents a place in history,”
said Cathy McGowin, the magazine’s editor. “It’s not a relic
that is frozen in the past—it was carefully and meticulously
updated so that it could continue to serve as a gathering
place for the community.”
The President’s Home, which was built in 1925,
underwent renovation in 2015-16 by the Taylor Burton Co.
with a gift from the Stockham family. The home’s interior
was designed and contributed by Julie Stephens, wife of BSC
Trustee Jim Stephens.
Undergraduate researchers
present, publish
This spring, seven BSC
students presented at the
Southeast Regional Yeast
Meeting in Tuscaloosa,
which brought together
scientists and students
conducting yeast-based
research from across the
region. Dylan Franks, Austin
Rossi, Stephanie Waldrep,
Allie Young, Spencer
Nichols, and Helen Taunton
all shared posters detailing
their summer and senior research experiences
in the lab of BSC Associate Professor of Biology
Dr. Melanie Styers ’99; Addison Rains presented
a poster and gave a talk. In addition, the lab’s
manuscript, “Ypt4 and lvs1 regulate vacuolar size
and function in Schizosaccharomyces pombe,” was
accepted for publication in the journal
Cellular Logistics
,
giving the students involved a publication to add to
their resumes.