An in-depth exploration of education in the 21st century South.
Students in Alabama and throughout the South are back in school this month. However, long before the first day of school, hundreds of kids spent part of their summer in labs at UAB. The goal? Getting ahead of the curve in science class.
Can you imagine a world with no gender divisions in sports? University of Alabama at Birmingham sociologist Adrienne Milner can. Not only that — she wants to help make it happen. Along with University of Miami professor Dr. Jomills Henry Braddock II, she’s written a new book called “Sex Segregation in Sports: Why Separate Is Not Equal.” Our Alabama reporter caught up with her to ask what else she hopes to accomplish, and why.
Birmingham City Schools have experienced segregation, desegregation, white flight and dwindling enrollment over the past 50 years. But can the system use lessons from the past to build a stronger future for its students? Dr. Tondra Loder-Jackson, a UAB professor in the School of Education, has researched the topic and discusses her findings.
When it comes to college football programs, the big money-makers like LSU, Florida, and Georgia often get the limelight. But what about smaller colleges? How are they able to generate revenue? In this report, the athletic director of Nicholls State University, located in the heart of Cajun country talks about how they are able to keep playing and paying the price to stay in the game.
Across the South, college football is in full swing. But football is just one of dozens of NCAA sports. In any season, student-athletes are pushing themselves on the field, in the gym, and in the classroom. They get scholarships and generate billions of dollars. But they also get hurt and struggle with their studies on top of what’s basically a demanding full-time job. In Part One of our series, “Pressure and Performance on the Field of Play,” our Alabama reporter looks at tensions between sports and academics, through the eyes of the athletes themselves.
You don’t have to be a scholar to know that African-Americans are heavily represented in contact sports like football and basketball, but underrepresented in “lifetime sports” like tennis or golf. Some casual observers have come up with simple explanations for that. But a University of Alabama at Birmingham sociologist and author who studies race and gender in sports says the reality is anything but simple, or fair. Adrienne Milner, who played college basketball until an injury ended her athletic career, tells the Southern Education Desk’s Dan Carsen that she’s intrigued by inequity in all fields, but sports are special for her area of focus, for a reason you might not guess.
Medical education is always evolving. One way it’s changed in recent years is that residents are not allowed to work the long, judgment-impairing shifts they used to. Most agree that’s good. But how do you make up for all that lost teaching time? Some University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers think they have an answer: video games. They created a competitive educational game called “Kaizen-Internal Medicine,” or just “Kaizen-IM,” and a small but promising study showed that busy young doctors learned from it in their off hours. UAB’s James Willig sat down with our Alabama reporter Dan Carsen to explain. Willig starts with the downside of limiting residents’ work hours.
In the second installment of our series “Segregation Shifts,” the SED’s Alabama reporter Dan Carsen goes back in time to examine a strategy whites once used to sidestep public school integration, one that still shapes communities today — so-called “segregation academies”:
Join the Public Insight Network at the Southern Education Desk. Help us cover the education stories that matter most to you and add your voice to our reporting.
More NPR Education Headlines
Comments