The Tuscaloosa News

As we enter a new year and chase out the tens of thousands Chinese spies inhabiting the halls (and labs) of Ivy and Kudzu across the nation, it may be a good time to take stock of why even colleges and universities exist.

They were established in the Middle Ages places like Oxford, Cambridge, Paris, Salamanca, Bologna to foster Christianity, plain and simple. Universities evolved as did Western civilization over the next thousand years so today they reflect two basic areas: the best in the traditional liberal arts curriculum and the scientific and technological cutting edges of the times. The University of Alabama is no exception.

Television viewers will see the slogan Where Legends Are Made as they watch Tide football. This is marketing your product. It is selling and has nothing to do with research. More insightful are the three words printed in large letters as you approach the university near DCH Regional Medical Center. Teaching, Research, Service

Excellence as the mission of higher education. What does excellence look like?

Many of you remember more than football, girls (or boys), fraternities and sororities, the Strip, and the life of an undergraduate. I do, too. Like you, I remember faculty who woke me up to things I never thought much about, or how to think about them. I even discovered in a botany lab on Saturday mornings somewhere in the Duke University forest that there were worlds I knew absolutely nothing about. The world was bigger than my little microcosm.

Most universities have extensive graduate schools moving forward the research dimension. This research is largely reflected in master's and dissertations based on extensive studyin areas from nanoscience to Shakespeare.

You review these studies across hundreds of universities and can understand why thousands of Chinese have been sent here over the past half century to learn. Lets look at some research-based dissertations this year nominated for best dissertation of 2020.

The geographers nominated a dissertation devoted to identifying and curing water quality: I developed, wrote the author, innovative environmental remote sensing models using geospatial statistical analysis and machine learning techniques to monitor and assess inland water quality. He also suggested solutions.

The information, knowledge, and techniques derived from my dissertation research can help research scientists, water resource planners and managers, state and local officials, and local communities to detect and monitor water quality status in inland waters, and to design intelligent policies and best management practices to prevent, control, and mitigate the occurrence of nuisance algal blooms and other water quality problems.

A dissertation in education linked counseling and neuroscience in a new fashion. His research immerses both neuroscience and counseling. Since neuroscience is new to the counseling field, this work has been both challenging, innovative, and rewarding. His ability to fully engage in pioneering neuroscience work that connected with the counseling field is new and important.

A dissertation in mechanical engineering drew this rave summary from a proud dissertation director professor: I am recommending [him] for this award because of his unique contributions to the multidisciplinary research field of clean combustion that offer the potential for sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the near and mid-term. His research applies to high-efficiency diesel engines that will benefit from advanced physical concepts based on clean combustion, requiring new ways to diagnose, analyze, and control fuel sprays."

Furthermore, crossing both fields of research and service, his professor wrote that his records in the various departments in engineering are outstanding, showing a deep commitment to his field and advancing it.

One dissertation in commerce and business administrationstudied mergers and acquisitions and how productive and/or efficient, or profitable, they turn out to be. Good questions -and answers for the world of industry and business.

Her study addressed a persistent gap in the M&A(merger-and-acquisition) literature, using a typology of different theoretical applications, to theorize, model, measure, and empirically validate how M&A motives relate to different M&A outcomes.

Another one in the business school researched the passion for your work, pointing to the CEO of the highly successful Southwestern Airlines as an example of mans passion for his lifes work. This study probed the relationship between passion and success or failure, not simply interesting for the scholar, but also with immense applicability for the world of business and organizational behavior. Job satisfaction, engagement, and performance are addressed in a rigorous manner.

The history department nominated a fascinating study on the effects of the Spanish-American-Cuban War of 1898 on the American military. The author described her research as an intimate look into the experience of the common volunteer soldiers during the Spanish and Philippine American wars to illuminate the larger institutional changes in the American military at the start of the 20th century. My main purpose … was simple: to tell the stories of men frequently overlooked by previous historians, their voices drowned out by those more famous and well-known.

We all need to know how rich and profound is UAs commitment, as well as those of hundreds of other universities across the U. S., to studying, analyzing, and improving our world across an immensely varied spectrum, of which the short abstracts above represent only a small sampling.

Larry Clayton is a retired University of Alabama history professor. Readers can email him atlarryclayton7@gmail.com.

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THE PORT RAIL: The research dimension of higher education - Tuscaloosa News