Image of the Month (2023)

On September 13, 2013, the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama System approved the renaming of the UAB business school as the Collat School of Business in honor of university benefactors Charles and Patsy Weil Collat.  This was the first named academic school at the university.  The Collat name was added to the home of the school later that year, and at that ceremony were (left to right): Dr. Eric P. Jack, dean of the Collat School of Business, Charles Collat, and Dr. Ray L. Watts, president of UAB.  Dr. Jack was dean of the school from 2012 until 2023.  Dr. Watts became the seventh UAB president in 2013, the first person to serve as president with an undergraduate degree (Engineering) from the university.

Image ID: Campaign Newsletter

To welcome UAB students back to campus for the new school year,President Carol Z. Garrison (left foreground) hosted an ice cream social at the Commons on the Green on August 21, 2007.  Attendees received ice cream, beverages, and a UAB tee-shirt.  Dr. Garrison served as UAB president from 2002 until 2012.  She was the second UAB president to have graduated from the university, having earned a master's degree in nursing.

Image ID: A2018-13P

UAB's Dr. Steven J. Filler became a volunteer dentist for the Birmingham Zoo in 1983; his first patient was a polar bear with a bad tooth.  Over the years, Filler let UAB dental students accompany him on his zoo rounds on a regular basis.  Filler worked with the zoo while serving as a member of the dental school faculty and as one of the school's assistant deans.

Image ID: P7.3.13, #1155

In 1959 a baseball team was organized at University Hospital.  It was comprised of staff from the hospital and from across the Birmingham medical center.  The team competed in the Northern Division of the Birmingham Amateur Baseball Association and played home games in the city's Jordan Park, located just a few blocks west of the hospital at 8th Avenue South and 11th and 12th Streets South [the location of today's university soccer and baseball fields].  This first team photograph was taken on the roof of the hospital's Jefferson Tower.

Image ID: P16.1.12, #0239

UAB President Joseph F. Volker (second from right) speaking to members of the UAB community.  Dr. Volker and the group were enjoying the day in the plaza between the Sterne Library (left) and University College Building No. 1 [later the School of Education Building].  A new outdoor plaza has just opened between Sterne Library and the newest academic building on the UAB campus, Phase I of the Science and Engineering Complex.  The new building replaced the School of Education Building and will be occupied this summer by the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

Image ID: P7.3.2, #0054

Dr. Thomas Wdowiak, an astrophysicist at UAB, worked on several NASA research and exploration teams and helped design the Mars Rover vehicles.  Once the rovers were on the planet, Wdowiak “drove” them from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and from his home in Birmingham.  His NASA colleagues named a ridge on the western rim of the Endeavour crater on Mars as Wdowiak Ridge in his honor following his death in 2013.  Wdowiak was a member of the faculty of the Department of Physics from 1976 until his retirement in 2005.

Image ID: P23.1

The inaugural Miss UAB pageant was held in the Bell Theatre on March 26, 1983, with twenty-two students competing.  Phyllis Pope, a pre-dentistry major from Illinois, was chosen as the first Miss UAB.  Her talent competition was vocals.  The UAB pageant was established as an official preliminary for the Miss Alabama and Miss America organizations, and today's scholarship competition remains as a preliminary for the two organizations.

Image ID:Phoenix yearbook 

In February 1973 UAB opened a new bookstore after a move from the store's prior location in the basement of Tidwell Hall.  The "new" bookstore, a building which had formerly housed a dry-cleaning business, was located on 15th Street South at the corner of 8th Avenue South.  The bookstore remained in this location until it was moved into the original Hill University Center in 1983.  This building was again renovated and was renamed as the 15th Street Classroom Building, which provided the academic community with six classrooms and a conference-seminar space.  The building was demolished in 2006 as development proceeded on the Campus Green.

Image ID: P8.1.1, #0013

UAB first observed Martin Luther King, Jr., Day as a university holiday in January 1993.  But the university had held or participated in various commemorative events in prior years.  In 1991 UAB students participated in a wreath-laying ceremony in front of the statue of Rev. King located in the city's Kelly Ingram Park; the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church is in the right background.  This ceremony was one of several UAB events held that year to mark King Day.

Image ID:P7.4.1, #0027