UAB Briefs: Campus boom, Mr. and Ms. UAB, Theatre UAB
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?
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Busy, busy campus
The UAB campus is a busy place, with several large construction projects underway. This Includes at least three projects that should make a big impact, visually and otherwise, on campus.
The new $37.5 million Collat School of Business is being built on a prominent site at University Boulevard between 12th and 13th Streets South. The facility will also house the Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and should be complete in June 2018, according to UAB Facilities. Brasfield & Gorrie are the contractors.
The College of Arts and Sciences will have a long-needed new home when its new building – measuring about 160,000 square feet – is complete in March 2019. The contractor, MJ Harris, began construction in early October. The new facility is located at the corner of 10th Avenue and 14th Street South.
The School of Nursing’s $32 million renovation and expansion continues, also in a prominent spot along University Boulevard. The pouring of structural concrete is complete, and the building should be finished by July 2018.
Other projects
The new headquarters for the UAB Police Department is under construction next to the current facility in the 1100 block of 14th Street South. Wyatt General Contractor is overseeing construction of the $8.2 million, 28,000-square-foot facility, which should be complete in February 2018.
A new ROTC building is to be built at 828 Eighth Court S. Construction is scheduled to begin in late November, with a scheduled completion is July 2018. After a bid opening held on September 21, Argo Building Company was the successful low bidder as contractor. The old Center of Nuclear Imaging Research will be demolished to make way for the new building.
The are even new intramural fields on the way, with a recent groundbreaking and scheduled completion by April 2018.
Mr. and Ms. UAB
Ryan Wong of Huntsville and Yulianna Jimenez of Hattiesburg, Miss., were named Mr. and Ms. UAB during halftime of the Blazers’ homecoming game at Legion Field on Saturday, Oct. 7.
Wong, a junior majoring in biology, and Jimenez, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering, will each receive a $2,500 scholarship from the UAB National Alumni Society as part of their annual competition.
The two will also serve as ambassadors of UAB and on the Student Alumni Society Leadership Council in the coming year.
Baraa Hijaz of Montgomery, a sophomore majoring in neuroscience, and Erica Webb of McCalla, a junior majoring in English and political science, were named first alternates.
Started in 1981, the Mr. and Ms. UAB Scholarship Competition is one of UAB’s longest-standing Homecoming traditions.
Still crazy after all these years
Theatre UAB presents the classic Shakespeare comedy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in the Sirote Theatre at the Alys Stephens Center from Wednesday, Oct. 18, through Sunday, Oct. 22.
The play is a shade over 400 years old, but the jokes are still good.
“Shakespeare employs the entire panoply of classic comic convention and leads us hilariously through one starry summer night,” said Dennis McLernon, a professor and the head of performance in the Department of Theatre.
The playwright makes masterful use of comedic conventions that were used by the Greeks long before his time and continue to be used today – in the sketch comedy on TV’s Saturday Night Live, for example – according to McLernon.
“We see witty dialogue, slapstick humor, sexual innuendo, cross purposes and mistaken identity throughout this ingenious work,” he said.
Accessibility and identification for the audience have also been a key to the popularity of ‘the great comedies of Shakespeare.'
“He provokes us to see ourselves,” McLernon said. “In his wonderful characters and the crises in which they struggle, we have the opportunity to see many of the foibles of our own human nature and take some time to reflect on our own comedic shortcomings.”
Shows are at 7:30 p.m. nightly Oct. 18-21 and at 2 p.m., on Sunday, Oct. 22.
Tickets are $12 and $15, $6 for students, and $10 for UAB employees and senior citizens.
Call 205-975-2787 or go to alysstephens.org.
Learn more about Theatre UAB at uab.edu/cas/theatre.