Auburn University

Monday, March 19, 2007

NOTE ON FORMATTING: When stories are transferred from the Web, certain punctuation marks and other marks in this report don't carry over and result in symbols and other formatting errors. To see or print the story in full without these translation errors, simply click on "full story" at the end of each item."
Total Clips: 9
Headline Date Outlet
   Who will lead Auburn? 03/19/2007 Birmingham News - Online
   Extreme makeover: Shipping containers: Office building will be built out of steel boxes 03/19/2007 Star-Ledger
   Alabama ranks 10th in mortgage delinquency: State escapes worst of subprime lending crises 03/19/2007 Birmingham News
   Forums to be planned for president search 03/18/2007 Opelika-Auburn News
   Public forums set for AU president search 03/18/2007 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
   Auburn students reconstruct St. Luke's Episcopal Church 03/18/2007 Selma Times-Journal
   Students prefer 'blitz' over blotto: Forget the St. Paddy's beer. Teams get wild in search for critt 03/18/2007 Atlanta Journal-Constitution
700 Boy Scouts visit AU to earn variety of merit badges 03/18/2007 Opelika-Auburn News
   Lanier nominated for trustee seat 03/16/2007 Opelika-Auburn News

Who will lead Auburn?
03/19/2007
Birmingham News - Online
CHARLES J. DEAN

 Return to Top
Auburn University's 18th president - its third in 39 months - is expected to be named on Thursday.

Contenders for the job will not be known until today, when trustees and faculty members on the presidential search committee meet to name finalists.

A pool of experienced candidates has been interviewed in secret by the committee. The new president will take over a very different Auburn than that which existed three years ago. The Auburn board of trustees, under fire and under pressure at the time, forced out President William Walker and hired state school superintendent and longtime Auburn man Ed Richardson to take over what was then widely regarded as a lousy job.

Why? The answer involves a now infamous litany of problems, including:

Allegations that trustees meddled in day-to-day operations, especially in athletics, rendering the position of president as little more than a marionette.

A perception of widespread malaise among faculty.

A secret trip some board members and the school's then-athletics director made to Kentucky just two days before the 2003 Alabama-Auburn football game to interview then-Louisville football coach Bobby Petrino for the head job at Auburn, which Tommy Tuberville still held.

When the trip was reported, it was like a bomb going off, eventually leading to Walker's ouster and Richardson's hiring.

The biggest bomb of all - Auburn being put on probation in late 2003 by its accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

SACS essentially found the school's board of trustees guilty of overstepping its role as policymaker by interfering in day-to-day operations. Being placed on probation moved the school one step closer to losing accreditation, which would have stripped millions of federal student-aid dollars from the university in addition to federal research dollars.

It was in that polluted atmosphere that Auburn went looking for a president.

"I think you can say at a minimum it was not an attractive position," said Auburn trustee Charles McCrary, who is chairman of the presidential search committee and president and CEO of Alabama Power.

"There was just so much going on then, most of it not positive, it would have been a challenge to attract the kind of candidates we see seeking this job now, really outstanding people," McCrary said.

Leadership praised:

McCrary credits Richardson, along with the board, for turning the perception of Auburn's top job around from one that quality candidates would have fled to one they are seeking.

"Ed has been great," McCrary said. "He proved to be the kind of strong leader we needed in that office. Ed does not shy away from doing hard things and the things that needed doing at Auburn over the last three years needed just that kind of leader and needed a board who also recognized changes had to be made."

No change was more imperative than convincing SACS that at Auburn the office of president had real authority, and trustees understood that their role was to set policy, not run programs.

Once hired, Richardson moved quickly to assert presidential authority.

He fired a vice president, along with a longtime director of governmental affairs and the school's media relations director. He replaced the school's longtime athletics director and fired the head basketball and baseball coaches. He ordered all other coaches not to go over his head to trustees. He even disbanded the university's police force.

He convinced trustees to adopt measures aimed at assuring SACS that the office of president was running the school, not the trustees. The board's long-standing and powerful athletics committee was disbanded, and an audit committee was set up to oversee a new trustee conflict-of-interest policy.

It paid off. SACS removed Auburn from probation in late 2004.

"I think what Dr. Richardson did was take charge from his first day on the job, and three years later I think the result has been he re-established institutional control at Auburn," said Robert Penaskovic, a professor of religious studies and, until last Tuesday when his term expired, chairman of the Auburn Faculty Senate.

"Dr. Richardson is a strong-willed person, not easily intimidated by anyone on the board, and that's what they and this university needed," Penaskovic said. "I think he won the respect and confidence of the board, and I think there has been a real change on the board in recognizing that they could not continue to operate as they had. I think all of it has paved the way for a new president who has a chance to succeed."

Sounding cautionary note:

While there is broad agreement that the climate at Auburn is greatly improved from that of three years ago, there are those who caution that lasting change will take more time and that there still are potential problems lurking, waiting for Richardson's time to end.

"I do think the climate is much better now, and part of the reason for that is we started seeing a changing of the guard on the board to newer members who are committed to a more open process in how they work, and the coming of a president in Ed Richardson who was not afraid to take control," said Andy Hornsby, a longtime critic of the board and past presidents who, until recently, a past president of the Auburn Alumni Association.

Hornsby, who is assistant state finance director in Gov. Bob Riley's administration, credited Riley with pushing to appoint a new breed of trustees who understand their roles and do not seek to control presidents or programs.

But Hornsby said the process of changing out trustees was stymied by an opinion Attorney General Troy King issued that in effect lengthened the terms of trustees John Blackwell, Paul Spina Jr. and Bobby Lowder. For years, Lowder has been criticized by people such as Hornsby as the leader in the board's micromanaging.

"While I think things are better, they could have been even more improved if the terms of Blackwell, Spina and Lowder had ended when they should have," Hornsby said. "Mr. Lowder has been the lightning rod for micromanaging and improper trustee behavior, and his removal would have been for the best. But, he's still there, and I believe he's still a player, and that's not a good thing."

Efforts to reach Lowder were unsuccessful.

Trustee Dwight Carlisle of Tallassee unsuccessfully sued to contest the attorney general's opinion, a move widely seen as an effort to oust Lowder.

"I know how some saw the suit, but it was not an anti-Bobby effort," said Carlisle. "I filed the suit because I think the attorney general is wrong and because I think that opinion means that, in 2011, the terms of nine of 13 trustees will end. That kind of potential massive turnover will not be good for the school."

Multiple factors:

Carlisle acknowledges that the lawsuit created some hard feelings among trustees but said, that aside, the board and the university are in a much better place than they were in 2004. He credits Richardson's leadership, a change in attitude on the board in large part because of the SACS probation, and the board agreeing to air its dirty laundry through something called the Fisher Report.

That report was spurred by a consultant who told trustees in late 2005 that it would be almost impossible for them to attract highly qualified candidates for the president's job until they addressed the long-standing problems related to university governance.

The report that followed, written by a group of independent higher-education experts, minced few words about how poorly Auburn had been led in recent decades and placed the blame not just on the board, but also on past presidents, the Faculty Senate and Auburn's alumni board.

"All the boards are too involved in trying to run the university; they bicker among themselves and with each other; there are more leaks than the White House; alumni are confused; principal donors are uncertain; the presidents have been selective in their attention or at times completely absent," the report asserted.

Trustees generally embraced the report and set about trying to correct wrongs the report cited.

"I think the Fisher Report has been an important part of the process that has allowed us to be where we are today," said McCrary. "It has acted as a catharsis for us and for the university community as a whole. It allowed us to take a look at ourselves through independent eyes, and I think that, while we liked some of what we saw, there was a lot we didn't like and have set about to change."
Full Story

Extreme makeover: Shipping containers: Office building will be built out of steel boxes
03/19/2007
Star-Ledger
Jeffery C. Mays

 Return to Top
**AU's D.K. Ruth, director of the design-build master's program, is quoted in this story. Reference is made to AU's recycling of shipping containers as housing (New Jersey Star-Ledger).**

The blue, red and rust-colored shipping containers stacked like giant Lego blocks have become part of the landscape along the New Jersey Turnpike and Routes 1&9 in Newark.

With twice as many containers coming into the Port of New York and New Jersey as going out, the unwanted metal boxes have been piling up for years, serving as an informal gauge of America's trade deficit.

Now one company has plans to construct the first large-scale structure in North America made completely of shipping containers. Metal Management, a recycling firm, plans to begin construction this month at its 16-acre facility off of Routes 1&9.

"We are recyclers. The idea was to build something that reflects who we are and what we do," said Daniel Dienst, CEO, president and chairman of Metal Management, a publicly traded company with headquarters in Chicago. "It fits with the character of the area and symbolizes how this city is at the center of the earth in terms of shipping and trade."

When construction is complete, 52 once-used containers will be fused into a 13,000-square-foot building that will house the company's main offices in Newark. The building will sit on a giant platform, with containers of different lengths jutting from the back of the building. The containers will bear the blue and green company colors of Metal Management and feature its name in enormous block letters.

"It becomes like a billboard for the company," said Giuseppe Lignano, founding partner of New York City architecture firm LOT-EK (pronounced low tech) which designed the building. "A lot of cities like Newark are embarrassed that the containers are just sitting there."

The containers -- 8 feet high and wide and either 20 or 40 feet long -- will be connected via openings inside to create stairways, offices and conference rooms just like any other building. It should take eight months to build.

Lignano refers to the containers as "spatial bricks."

"It's like building with bricks but they are hollow inside," Lignano said. "The shell and the structure coincide. The skin outside is the structure."

LOT-EK's other founding partner, Ada Tolla, said the modularity of the containers is what helps to make the project unique.

"They are indestructible," Lignano says of the containers, which are made of sturdy Corten steel, an alloy that does not need to be painted and can withstand high winds and inclement weather.

The idea of using shipping containers as housing and commercial structures is not new. Container City in London's Trinity Buoy Wharf uses containers to create artists' studios.

"Low cost. Very green. Good fun," said Eric Reynolds of Urban Space Management, the man behind the Container City.

Built in 2000, Container City already conforms to tighter English environmental building regulations calling for less air conditioning, less use of concrete foundations and energy efficiency.

Homes have been built using or incorporating containers in England and Los Angeles. At Auburn University in Alabama, students designed a shipping container that was used to house victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Urban Space Management and Global Modules are teaming up to build a residential space on Lafayette Street in Manhattan using 70 containers.

The abundance of containers makes such uses feasible. While the Port of New York and New Jersey has a 2-to-1 ratio of imports to exports, other ports have even more of a surplus. The Port of Los Angeles had an almost 6-to-1 ratio of imports to exports with China from December 2005 to November 2006.

Newark has considered laws to tax the containers and to limit stacking height. There also are plans to establish a central area for container storage and to use land where they currently are stored for light-distribution centers.

"You've got containers sitting in all these port cities, and rather than reuse them, shippers can get a new one of better quality cheaper," said D.K. Ruth, director of the Design Build Masters program at Auburn University. "Now you have a problem because you don't have a way to get rid of the ones you have. That's the beauty of these projects."

Mickey Ramirez, a truck driver for 25 years, thinks reusing the containers is a good idea.

"They already use these for housing in my country, the Dominican Republic. They cut windows out. These things are already built, and they last forever," Ramirez said as he watched an employee inspect the empty container hitched to his truck at Ironbound Intermodal on Doremus Avenue.

Aside from recycling, LOT-EK is particularly interested in the aesthetics of container structures.

"How do you take a container and remove the stigma of an industrial box that's an eyesore on the urban landscape but not hide it under siding or roofing?" Tolla asked. "The idea is that the container is a presence in the landscape of the port."

Lignano and Tolla, both 43, are originally from Naples, Italy. They studied together at the University of Naples and said their fascination with shipping containers began when they were visiting scholars at Columbia University in 1990.

Visiting the shipping containers being loaded and unloaded at Port Elizabeth, the pair saw avenues and plazas, "beautiful colors" and "beautiful walls" instead of stacks of corrugated metal.

"In Europe, there is this burden of history, the buildings are untouchable. Then you come to a place like this and ... it's an active environment, not a dead environment or museum," Tolla said.

Metal Management CEO Dienst said he saw an article about LOT-EK's Mobile Dwelling Unit in one of his wife's art magazines and clipped it. He thought about the company when Metal Management decided it was time for a new building.

"They've been talking about this for 10 years. We said, 'Enough of the academic discussion. Let's put this into action,'" Dienst said.

At the company's site off of Routes 1&9, a steady stream of trucks loaded with metal drive onto a giant scale to be weighed. Large piles of stainless steel, aluminum and nickel are bundled and waiting to be shipped out. Beer kegs, children's bikes, sinks, fences and boilers are recycled for their second act.

In addition to its new building, the company is constructing a shredder that can turn entire cars into fist-sized chunks of metal in 30 seconds. A $7 million crane will soon be the biggest in Port Newark. Overall, the company is investing $40 million to $50 million in its Newark plant.

"It's a business that has not always had the best reputation," said Alan D. Ratner, president of Metal Management's northeast region. "But soon, a scrap-metal facility in Newark will be on the cutting edge of design."

Jeffery C. Mays may be reached at jmays@starledger.com or (973) 392-4149.
Full Story

Alabama ranks 10th in mortgage delinquency: State escapes worst of subprime lending crises
03/19/2007
Birmingham News
Stan Diel

 Return to Top
**James Barth, a finance professor at AU, is quoted in this story.**


Alabama ranks 10th among states for the percentage of borrowers who are delinquent on their home loans, according to a quarterly analysis released last week. But, experts said, the state has escaped the worst of a crisis that has shaken the mortgage industry nationwide.

A report by the Mortgage Bankers Association found that 4.2 percent of Alabama homeowners with "prime" home loans are behind on their payments, compared with 2.6 percent nationally. Among those with "subprime" loans - those who have poor credit and pay higher interest - 18.2 percent in Alabama are delinquent, compared with 13.3 percent nationally.

The report also found that foreclosures are at their highest level nationally in nearly four decades. Stock market indexes plunged last week on the news.

Alabama's delinquency numbers typically are higher than the national average because it is a relatively poor state.

Bill May, a Birmingham mortgage broker and a former president of the Mortgage Brokers Association, said the picture in Alabama, and in Birmingham in particular, is brighter than in many other places because real estate here has held its value.

Thousands of borrowers nationwide have lost their homes in recent months because of a combination of higher interest rates and a bursting real estate bubble. As the real estate market surged and home values steadily rose over the past several years, record numbers of borrowers with poor credit bought homes using "Band-Aid" loans, May said.

In a Band-Aid loan, the borrower pays a low fixed rate of interest for the first two or three years, and an adjustable rate - tied to market interest rates - for the rest of the life of the loan. Most homeowners would refinance their Band-Aid loan after it switched from a low fixed rate to a higher adjustable one, taking advantage of the appreciation in the value of their home.

But in the past several months real estate prices leveled or began to fall in many markets, making it harder to profit from refinancing, and interest rates jumped, leaving many "subprime" borrowers with much higher house payments and no way out.

In addition to clobbering consumers, the perfect storm of credit woes has hit a segment of the banking industry hard. About 20 institutions specializing in subprime lending have been closed as a result of the crisis, said James Barth, a finance professor at Auburn University.

But, Barth said, the banking industry in general and Birmingham-based banks in particular haven't been hurt. Subprime lending is a much smaller part of most banks' business, and "a lot of lenders were wise enough to see it coming."

For consumers who haven't yet bought a house but are in the market, particularly those with poor credit, all of this means they'll be paying more for their loan, even if they pay less for a house.

May said his company, Accent Mortgage Inc., until recently could finance 100 percent of the cost of a home, not including closing costs, for a borrower with a credit score of at least 575. At the time, if the buyer could get the seller to cover some of the closing costs, "we could get you in a home for $500," he said.

Now, he said, the typical subprime borrower needs a credit score of at least 600 to finance the entire cost of a home.

May, who said 40 percent to 50 percent of his company's business is subprime lending, said he spends a lot of time counseling customers on how to improve their credit so they can both buy a house and afford to keep it.

Thousands haven't been able to hold on to their homes. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association and Realty Trac, a company that tracks foreclosures, 1.2 percent of all mortgages nationwide are in foreclosure, a 42 percent increase from a year ago.
Full Story

Forums to be planned for president search
03/18/2007
Opelika-Auburn News
Amy Weaver

 Return to Top
A series of public forums will be announced Monday as Auburn University officials narrow the field of candidates for president.

The Presidential Search Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet at 2 p.m. Monday at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center to select candidates for further consideration for the top post.

Faculty, staff, students, alumni and the general public will get a chance to meet those final candidates in a series of public forums. The number of forums, to be held between Tuesday and Thursday, will be based on the number of candidates invited to come to campus for interviews.

The AU Web site will have an interactive page for individuals to review candidate biographies and offer comments.

The search committee will convene again at 3 p.m. Thursday to consider the feedback generated at the public forums and potentially provide a recommendation to a special called meeting of the AU Board of Trustees at 4 p.m. The meetings are also held at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center.

The search for AU's next president started in 2005 with the hiring of the search firm, Korn/Ferry International. The consultant, Dr. John Kuhnle, called for a comprehensive review of the university before the search process began. Dr. Jim Fisher, on Kuhnle's recommendation, was hired to conduct the review and create what has been known as the Fisher Report.

With the search process in full swing, the search committee held a number of public forums on campus last summer to give students, alumni, faculty, staff and the general public a chance to provide insight on the qualities they would look for in the next leader. A forum was also held on the campus of Auburn University Montgomery.

The search committee, with the help of Kuhnle, used the input to help create a profile of the ideal candidate.

A nationwide search was conducted and nearly 70 people originally expressed interest in the top job. Kuhnle said the Fisher Report was an important tool in gaining such strong candidates. The list was narrowed over a period of months, until the committee had about 16 to deal with. It is that pool that the group will debate Monday.

There is no indication from committee members or Kuhnle on how many "finalists" will be named, but Kuhnle has put his top candidates "on notice" that they might be called to come to campus in a matter of days.

President Ed Richardson has repeatedly said he is not a candidate for the position - a job he has held since early 2004 - but he is willing to stay on until July 1 or a new president is hired, whichever comes first.
Full Story

Public forums set for AU president search
03/18/2007
Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
Associated Press

 Return to Top
**This AP story also appeared in the Montgomery Advertiser, Gadsden Times, Thibodeaux Daily Comet, and The Houma Courier and was broadcast on WBRC-TV, WAFF-TV, WTFM-TV, WJSU-TV, WALA-TV and WLOX-TV (Miss.)**

AUBURN, Ala. - With the list narrowed to about 16 candidates, the search for a new Auburn University president gets some public input this week.

The Presidential Search Advisory Committee meets at 2 p.m. Monday at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center to consider the candidates.

Faculty, staff, students, alumni and the general public will get a chance to meet those final candidates in a series of public forums.

The number of forums planned between Tuesday and Thursday will be based on the number of candidates invited to come to campus for interviews.

The search panel will convene again at 3 p.m. Thursday to consider the public comments. They could possibly submit a finalist's name to a special called meeting of the AU Board of Trustees at 4 p.m.

The search began in 2005.

President Ed Richardson has repeatedly said he is not a candidate for the job he has held since early 2004. He has said he's willing to stay on until July 1 or a new president is hired, whichever comes first.

Information from: Opelika-Auburn News
Full Story

Auburn students reconstruct St. Luke's Episcopal Church
03/18/2007
Selma Times-Journal
Tammy Leytham

 Return to Top
A more than 150-year-old church will soon be rebuilt on the grounds of Old Cahawba Historical Park.

The reconstruction of the St. Luke's Episcopal Church is a project of the Rural Studio of Auburn University.

"We're real excited about it," said Jason Coomes, an instructor of second year students in Auburn's Rural Studio program. "The church has been disassembled by the students."

The St. Luke's Episcopal Church, built in 1854, was based on a design by renowned architect Richard Upjohn. It had been moved in 1876 to Martin's Station, about 15 miles from Old Cahawba.

The process of taking apart the wood structure with its metal roof was a daunting task for the students, Coomes said.

"The first step was to decide 'how are we going to label all of these pieces to take it apart?" he told the Kiwanis Club of Selma this past week. "How do you being to disassemble something to put it back together?"

First, the flooring - mostly cypress - was taken out and students labeled all the floor boards, Coomes said.

The class also had to call in an expert to shore up the building, which was leaning.

At the end of the first semester, the student had removed the outer walls and the roof had been taken off. Just last week, a new group of students completed the task of disassembling the church.

The second semester students will begin their month of "heavy construction" at the beginning of April, Coomes said.

The church will be built directly across from the site of the old welcome center, which was destroyed by fire in 2005.

James Hammonds, chairman of the Cahawba Advisory Committee and a member of the Kiwanis Club, said that site is "not near the original location" of the church in Old Cahawba.

Cahawba was Alabama's state capital from 1820 to 1826. It was a thriving antebellum town on the banks of the Alabama River. But, it became a ghost town after the Civil War.

There are few remains of the once bustling river port. Columns from the Crocheron mansion and the Barker slave quarters are the few standing structures.

Hammonds said the new project will give visitors a sense of history. "To actually see a building every now and then gives an idea of what life was like," he said.

The St. Luke's Episcopal Church is one of many churches designed in the Gothic Revival style used by Upjohn. He also designed churches in New Jersey, New York City, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

"It was really, very carefully constructed," Coomes said.

While some changes in the structure were made when it was moved to Martin's Station, Coomes said, "We're trying to build it as close as we can as it was originally."
Full Story

Students prefer 'blitz' over blotto: Forget the St. Paddy's beer. Teams get wild in search for critt
03/18/2007
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeffry Scott

 Return to Top
**AU is mentioned as participating in this science competition.**

It's a chilly morning and Daniel van Dijk is in an icy creek up to his ankles.

He is wearing sandals.

And he is whooping.

"Salamander! Salamander!"

It's not a scene usually associated wtih St. Patrick's Day, the parades and frothy toasts. But it's the way van Dijk and about 40 other college students spent their Saturday, getting a little wild and festive in their own way.

They went into the woods of Paulding County and searched for salamanders and turtles and snakes and kept score in a competition known as a "bioblitz" —- a rapid accounting of wildlife species in a given area.

"How much is he worth?" asked van Dijk, a 23-year-old graduate student from the University of Georgia, as he walked up from the creek bed, gently holding the salamander in the palm of his left hand. "It's a desmognathus monticola."

Nobody seemed to know how many points van Dijk's UGA group would get for the slender, shiny 2-inch-long brown amphibian, also known as a seal salamander. Instead of returning the creature to the creek, they recorded the find (the location and time) and deposited the salamander and a few ounces of water in a plastic sandwich bag.

"We'll examine him more closely tonight at the camp and release him later," said van Dijk.

The two-day-long competition between UGA, Georgia State University, Auburn University and the Ichuaway Herpetology Lab was organized by the Atlanta Herpetology Club, said Bridget Wynn, a 20-year-old GSU biology major and the president of the group, which formed last year and has about 30 members.

Herpetology is the study of reptiles, which are cold-blooded creatures, and amphibians, which are cold-blooded and live on land and in water. The group picked Paulding Forest Wildlife Management Area —- a track of about 7,000 acres, near Dallas —- because the wildlife population there has never been assessed, said Wynn.

"Nobody knows what species are here," she said. "We're hoping we find something surprising."

As the group walked up a rutted old logging road, van Dijk and Kerry Holcomb, a 24-year-old graduate student from UGA, scoured the sides of the road, flipping over rocks and logs, favorite habitats for salamanders.

Wynn and Andrew Grosse, 23, a UGA graduate student, carried basket traps to capture salamanders and long hoop nets they would unfurl, bait with sardines and put under water to catch turtles.

"Turtles like the smell," said Sean Sterrett, 23, a member of the Ichuaway team. "But it doesn't have to be sardines. Any old dead body would do."

While others worked the creek looking for salamanders, Sterrett took a net and scooped through puddles of standing water farther up in the woods. After a few minutes he came excitedly down the hill holding a blob in his hand that resembled a jellyfish.

"You've got to get a picture of this!" he said. "It's a salamander egg mass."

Inside the gelatinous, palm-sized blob were dozens of tiny unhatched salamanders. Big find, but what was it worth in points?

He'd find out later.

When the scores are talled today, the winning group will win bragging rights in a world that's peculiar to outsiders who might not know a Southern zigzag from a Blue Ridge Two-Lined salamander.

The group also gets a trophy, which has no name, but the way it looks seems a perfectly odd fit, said Wynn. "I just know it has a frog — and it looks like it was made out of auto parts."
Full Story

700 Boy Scouts visit AU to earn variety of merit badges
03/18/2007
Opelika-Auburn News
William White

 Return to Top
More than 700 Boy Scouts from six states are visiting the Auburn University campus Saturday and Sunday working on assignments to earn numerous merit badges.

"This gives the boys a different opportunity to mix will boys they don't normally see," said assistant Scoutmaster Mike Wise from Newnan, Ga. He brought two Scouts from his troop for a class in composite materials in David Clark's lab in polymer and fiber engineering in the Textile Engineering building on campus.

Wise said this is a step in the direction of earning Eagle Scout honors.

"They normally do things like this at summer camp and winter camp, but they are trying their best to earn Eagle Scout honors before they go to high school."

The Scouts will be participating in Merit Badge University, a two-day event hosted by AU's Delta Chapter of Alpha Phi Omega national service fraternity at the newly developed Ag Heritage Park on Donahue Drive.

"It's a clinic that allows scouts to visit the Auburn campus and earn merit badges in a collegiate, academic environment," said Bill Mitchell, program director, in a news release before the event. "They can use resources here that normally would not be available on the local troop level."

Auburn University faculty, staff and local professionals are participating in this program by teaching 33 courses such as composite materials, photography, emergency preparedness, energy, architecture, crime prevention, public speaking and various sciences.

Members of three Troops learned about photography from Cameragraphics owner John Oliver.

Visiting his business in downtown Auburn, members of Troop 532 from Helena, Troop 106 from Mentone and Troop 356 from Beauregard learned how to process the roll of film they had just taken pictures on earlier in the day.

Oliver said, "I think it is important to help these kids get off on the right track and learn a lot of concepts, whether it is photography or anything else. Hopefully they will get interested in photography."

He said Scouting was important for him growing up.

"I was a Scout when I was young. I think it helped me fundamentally to be a more responsible person.

"Being outside and learning things - Scouting is better than any video game," Oliver said.

Mitchell said there are participants from across the Southeast and as far away as New York.

Chewacla State Park serves as the campsite for more than 400 of the Scouts and leaders, and served as the location for the fraternity's evening entertainment programs, including troop skits, campfire and games.

The Merit Badge University has been a part of Alpha Phi Omega's service program since the early 1990s.

The fraternity was founded on the principles of the Boy Scouts of America, and it has a rich Scouting membership which usually includes several Eagle Scouts, even though a Scouting background is no longer required for membership.

Lanier nominated for trustee seat
03/16/2007
Opelika-Auburn News
Amy Weaver

 Return to Top
Gaines Lanier, a longtime businessman and Auburn University alumnus, has been nominated to be the next member of the AU Board of Trustees.

The Trustee Selection Committee unanimously made the pick Friday in the Capitol in Montgomery. The decision now goes to the Senate for confirmation. If confirmed, Lanier would serve on the board for seven years.

The board is scheduled to meet in a special meeting next Thursday to potentially name the next university president, but it is more likely Lanier would serve his first meeting April 26, if not by June 28.

Gov. Bob Riley proclaimed he and the other four committee members had a hard choice ahead of them. More than 22 people, including a couple of mayors, a few educators and several business people, applied for the post. All but four were AU graduates.

"This is as impressive a group as I've ever seen," Riley said.

Although committee members had other people in mind to fill the seat, Lanier was the top choice among all five. The vote took a matter of minutes. Riley said that says a lot about the candidate.

Lanier would fill the District 5 seat that has been vacant for more than a year. Charles Ball of Gadsden left the board in February 2006 after Attorney General Troy King found he was only meant to serve the remainder of an unexpired term. According to King, trustee terms are for seven years from the date the individual is confirmed by the state Senate, not by the date they were appointed by the governor or when the term of a predecessor ends.

The board has 14 seats - 10 for the nine districts in the state, three at-large and one for Riley, board president. Two of the current board members are women - Virginia Thompson and Sarah Newton - and Byron Franklin is the sole African-American.

Earlon McWhorter, president pro tempore of the board, said he picked Lanier over a large group of qualified candidates because of the success he has had at J. Smith Lanier & Co., an insurance brokerage operation in West Point, Ga. Lanier, 54, of Lanett, is chairman and CEO. It didn’t hurt either that he has strong Auburn ties - many family members are also alumni - and he played football for the Tigers in the early 1970s.

McWhorter, who has been a part of a number of trustee selections, said he wanted someone like Ball to serve on the board. He said Lanier has no agenda and would serve in the best interest of the university.

"That's what we had in him (Ball)," he said.

Ball was ineligible to run for his seat because he has moved out of District 5, which includes Chambers, Cherokee, Cleburne, DeKalb, Etowah, Marshall, Randolph and Tallapoosa counties.

aweaver@oanow.com | 737-2534
Full Story