Photo courtesy of BJCC
BJCC stadium
A rendering of a proposed open-air stadium at the BJCC where UAB would play home football games.
Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs.
In this weekly online feature, we keep track of interesting people and events on campus.
Know people, places and programs on the UAB campus that deserve a mention? Email jchambers@starnespublishing.com.
NEW STADIUM
The UAB Blazer football team is now a step closer to playing its home games in a new outdoor stadium to be built downtown by the BJCC.
The Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama System, at its meeting on June 8, approved a memorandum of understanding that lays out the basic terms of a 20-year lease between the parties, as reported by numerous media outlets.
The lease, which must still be negotiated, would begin in August 2021, and UAB would play $50,000 per regular season game to rent the facility.
The school would pay $15,000 for post-season games and $10,000 for its spring game. The rent is to be renegotiated after 10 years.
The proposed stadium, which will accommodate as many 55,000 people depending on seating configuration, is part of a package of upgrades at the BJCC that will cost about $300 million. The stadium itself is expected to cost about $175 million.
“This will be a transformational facility,” UAB President Ray Watts said of the stadium, according to The Tuscaloosa News.
The city of Birmingham is to help pay for the stadium and other upgrades at the BJCC.
The city’s funding partners include the BJCC, Jefferson County and UAB.
The Board of Trustees will later take up the issue of marketing opportunities at the stadium during football games, according to several outlets.
BOOSTING ENTREPRENEURSHIP
UAB has hired a professor from Chicago to be the first person to serve as the new Goodrich Endowed Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Collat School of Business.
Patrick J. Murphy, professor of management and entrepreneurship in the Driehaus College of Business at DePaul University, will take the job, according to a UAB news release on June 11.
The new endowed chair -- established in 2017 by Mike and Gillian Goodrich -- is a way to show UAB’s committee to fuel the local startup community, according to Eric Jack, dean of the Collat School.
The chair “will bring credibility, cross-disciplinary collaborations and the horsepower to significantly enhance our academic and experiential programs, to help innovate Birmingham,” Jack said in the release.
Murphy said his team at the Collat School “is going to build and launch high-impact initiatives, serve aspiring student entrepreneurs and work with faculty members across the university, and support Birmingham's amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
While at DePaul, Murphy envisioned and launched numerous entrepreneurship programs, according to the news release.
BOOSTING STEM TEACHING
The UAB Center for Community OutReach Development has been awarded $1.45 million in funding from the National Science Foundation to increase the number of science, technology, engineering and math teachers in high-need areas of the state, according to a UAB news release on June 12.
The project will investigate the usefulness and success of three different models for preparing teachers in STEM fields.
“The K-12 STEM teaching needs in the state of Alabama are well-documented,” said Robert Palazzo, Ph.D., dean of the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. “CORD is part of UAB’s answer to solving these problems.”
The project will include UABTeach, a program that facilitates undergraduate students with STEM majors to simultaneously receive both a degree in their declared major and a full teaching certification to teach at the middle and high school levels in just four years, and a partnership with Lawson State Community College.
