UAB Briefs: Poets read at BMA, NIH funding totals, diversity award

Welcome to another installment of UAB Briefs.

In this weekly online feature, we keep track of interesting people and events on campus.

This week, two poets with UAB ties read together at the Birmingham Museum of Art.

And UAB cracked the top 25 nationally in NIH funding in 2018.

Know people, places and programs on the UAB campus that deserve a mention? Email jchambers@starnespublishing.com.

FRIENDS AND POETS

Tina Mozelle Braziel and Ashley M. Jones, UAB alumnae and prize-winning poets, will continue their joint book tour for Alabama’s bicentennial at the Birmingham Museum of Art on Thursday, Feb. 28, at 7 p.m., according to a UAB news release.

Both women will read excerpts from their books. The event is open to the public.

In her book,  “Known by Salt,” Braziel explores her working-class roots and also celebrates her native Alabama’s natural beauty. The book won the $2,000 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry in 2018.

"Known by Salt" was published by Anhinga Press in January.

In “Dark//Thing,” Jones examines racism and the way black people are often seen and treated as objects. The book, Jones’ second, won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Prize for Poetry.

“Together Ashley and I give voice to what it means to be female in the South, both black and white, urban and rural,” said Braziel, director of the Ada Long Creative Workshop at UAB, in the news release.

Braziel and Jones first met when Jones was a UAB University Honors Program student and interned for the Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop.

Jones named them “brain-sisters.”

“We’re friends; we have fun and work well together,” Braziel said.

The women will make five more appearance in March, May and September in Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Attendees at the event Feb. 28 will be able to buy books and T-shirt, and there will be a book signing after the reading.

BIG DOLLARS

UAB attracted nearly $300 million in funding from the federal National Institutes of Health in 2018, according to figures published by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.

The school ranked 23rd nationally on the list of universities receiving NIH funding.

The School of Medicine has the bulk of the funding, with nearly $233 million, and ranked 21st on the list of medical schools.

Two UAB schools — the School of Dentistry and the School of Optometry — ranked fourth nationally among their peer institutions.

“Research funding is a barometer that helps measure all the variables that reflect the success of an academic research institution,” said Chris Brown, Ph.D., vice president for research at UAB. “The top schools in research are also among the top facilities in health care.”

AWARD-WINNING DIVERSITY

In November, UAB was named one of the winners of the Higher Education Excellence in Diversity award from INSIGHT Into Diversity Magazine.

The magazine’s co-publisher, Lenore Pearlstein, presented the HEED award to UAB President Ray L. Watts last Thursday, Feb. 21, according to a UAB news release.

This award recognizes the school for showing a commitment to diversity and inclusion throughout the campus, across academic programs and at the highest administrative levels, according to the release.