WEDNESDAY JUNE 25, 2014 VOLUME 121 ISSUE 5 Serving The University of Alabama since 1894
SPORTS | TRACK AND FIELD
Run, Run, Remona After a record-breaking year with the Crimson Tide, Remona Burchell looks toward the future By Kayla Montgomery | Staff Reporter For Alabama track and field athlete Remona Burchell, 2014 was a recordbreaking year. The junior sprinter took home a championship title during both the indoor and outdoor seasons, shattered records with her times in the 100-meter sprints and has racked up numerous “Alabama’s first” titles. When asked about her success, the Montego Bay, Jamaica, native smiled and looked away before describing her year as “unexpected,” a mantra she has repeated since her top finish in the 100-meter at the June NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon. Before she was winning championships, Burchell was competing in her home country’s sport days around age seven or eight. She said she remembers participating in various creative activities and ultimately developing a love for track, but since then, she said, she hasn’t looked back. “We do different stuff [at sports day], we don’t just run the 100 and the 200,” Burchell said. “We have like a spoon with a lemon in it, and we walk with it. If it falls out, we have to pick it up and start over again. We have like oranges lined up, we had to pick up the furthest one and put it in our pan – I got involved in track and field when I was young and never stopped.” Burchell’s love for the sport continued to grow as she eventually competed for Herbert Morrison High School, where she transferred to increase her focus on track. “From there, I got to learn to love the sport more,” she said. “It has brought me to my junior college, and now here. I didn’t expect to be running this fast Remona Burchell caps off a successful first year at the University with a top finish at the NCAA Track and Field Outdoor Championships. UA Athletics
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NEWS | NOYCE SCHOLARS
Noyce Scholars Program readies future teachers New program seeks to qualify teachers in STEM education By Maria Beddingfield | Chief Copy Editor Students at The University of Alabama have been encouraged to pursue STEM majors and careers through undergraduate research, clubs, societies and programs. Now, the Noyce Scholars Program, in its first year at the University, is joining that push. Dennis Sunal, a UA professor in post-secondary science education and director of the program, said that he has wanted to bring the Noyce Scholars Program to the University for more than 10 years. The two primary goals of the program are increasing and diversifying the number of college students who graduate in the fields of chemistry, math or physics and encouraging those graduates to consider teaching in high-needs secondary schools across Alabama. “For students who are starting out in the
[STEM] programs, we would like them to continue on,” Sunal said. “Provide some support, provide them with some type of career orientation and exploration so they can see, ‘Well, where can I go with my chemistry major?’ or ‘Where can I go with my math major?’ And so, the second part is getting these majors to recognize that one major occupation area in these fields is teaching.” One of the UA participants, LizAnne Espy, a sophomore majoring in math, said even though she is not sure what career she wants to pursue, the internship opened her eyes to the array of possibilities available to her as a math major. “We took a lot of tours of the engineering buildings, and we saw all the technology they use, and we went to Matthews Elementary School and helped with their [Summer Enrichment Workshop] program,” she said. “It was cool to see how broad science is and what all you can do with it and [how you can] use it in different occupations and different ways.”
Marilyn Stephens, a former high school teacher who is pursuing a doctorate in postsecondary science education, is project coordinator for the UA Noyce internship and said the need for chemistry and physics teachers at the high school level is tremendous across the country. “Sixty-one percent of chemistry teachers, nationwide, are teaching without a concentration in chemistry. Sixty six percent of physics teachers are teaching without a concentration in physics,” Stephens said. “Of that 61 and 66 percent, some aren’t even certified to teach either subject.” Participating in the UA Noyce internship is one way to show students all that can be done with a major in chemistry, math or physics. UA participant, AnnaCarrol Jones, a sophomore majoring in chemistry, said the internship was a good introduction to various STEM jobs, but with a focus on teaching. “With [the involvement in S.E.W.], we were just observing teachers, seeing how they did lesson plans. We also had interviews with
Noyce interns work to improve education in the sciences. Photo Courtesy of Marilyn Stephens teachers,” she said. “We had a teacher panel and asked them how their day-by-day went and all that kind of stuff.” In addition to the panel of teachers at Matthews Elementary, they were able to talk to a panel of UA professors who are conducting research, so they were exposed to a SEE NOYCE PAGE 13
NEWS | DATA SCIENCE
TODAYON CAMPUS Park opening WHAT: Grand opening and dedication of Harrison Taylor Splash Park WHEN: 11 a.m WHERE: Palmore Park
Family event WHAT: Summer Family Makeover WHEN: 6:15-8 p.m WHERE: UREC Outdoor Pool
Concert screening WHAT: La Rondine: Met Summer Encore WHEN: 7 p.m WHERE: Cobb Hollywood 16 Cinemas
Student solves real world problems Data Science for Social Good solves social issues with stats By Samuel Yang | News Editor There are two kinds of people in two different worlds facing two different problems. On the one hand are students looking to make a social impact but can’t find the right kind of work. On the other hand are organizations trying to make change but can’t find the right talent. The Data Science for Social Good fellowship was established to bridge that gap. According to Rayid Ghani, research director at the Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago’s Computation Institute, students with certain skills often apply their skills to corporate work that lacks the social impact that could motivate and excite them. “They have the skills to [make a social impact],” Ghani said. “They just don’t know about the problems.”
Joseph Walsh, doctoral student in political science at The University of Alabama, was a fellow in the Data Science for Social Good program last year. This year, he was invited back as a mentor. As a fellow, he worked on a project as part of a four-member team. For the twelve-week program, of which they are currently in the fourth, he will oversee two teams working on two projects. One project is with the Chicago Public School system, which he said has struggled to accurately allocate its budget every year because of the difficulty in predicting enrollment. “Last year, there were two schools where they were off by more than a million dollars,” he said. For more than a dozen schools, the margin was over $500,000, an error that results in the firing of teachers. “And it’s all at the last second,” he said. “We’re trying to come up with a better
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Joe Walsh. Photo Courtesy of Joe Walsh
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