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Friday, October 6, 2006

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: 11

	Date	Outlet
Auburn Gears Up For 27th Annual Fall Roundup & Taste Of Alabama	10/06/2006	Alfa Farmers
Among friends	10/06/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
State college tuition plans should be tax exempt, Ivey says	10/06/2006	Decatur Daily
Fix for space footage fanatics	10/06/2006	Baltimore Sun
Launch Pad seeks student and faculty entrepreneurs	10/06/2006	Huntsville Times
AU veterinarians receive grant for cancer treatment research	10/06/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
Scholarships on rise for AU's next academic year	10/06/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
PETA says AU vet lab mistreated pets	10/05/2006	Birmingham News
Alabama growers told of upcoming pesticide restrictions	10/05/2006	Southeast Farm Press
Brew Tech pins hope on 'Weezy'	10/05/2006	Montgomery Advertiser
Ogden Enrollment steadily increasing	10/05/2006	Demopolis Times


Auburn Gears Up For 27th Annual Fall Roundup & Taste Of Alabama 10/06/2006 Alfa Farmers		Return to Top
Auburn Gears Up For 27th Annual Fall Roundup & Taste Of Alabama Guy Hall of the Alabama Farmers Federation, left, serves Taste of Alabama guests. Planning is under way for Auburn University's largest tailgate party - the 27th annual Fall Roundup and Taste of Alabama Agriculture - to be held homecoming Saturday, Oct. 21, at AU's Ag Heritage Park.The event is both a reunion opportunity for alumni and friends of the AU College of Agriculture and a chance for the public to learn more about the importance of agriculture to Alabama and AU. During the roundup, visitors can sample many of Alabama's finest agricultural products - from catfish and burgers to peanuts and collards. They can also view exhibits and displays by student organizations and departments within the College of Agriculture, listen to live music presented by ag-related faculty and friends and enjoy children's activities and visits from Aubie, the AU Pep Band and AU cheerleaders.Ag Roundup gives Auburn alumni and friends an opportunity to renew old friendships and make new ones, said AU Ag Alumni Association President , who serves as communications director for the Alabama Farmers Federation. It's also a chance for the agriculture community to see Ag Heritage Park, which is taking shape with the addition this year of the Alabama Farmers Pavilion, the reconstructed Red Barn and a spectacular new pond.Auctions, both live and silent, will be a major highlight of the morning's activities. Monies raised from these auctions provide much-needed scholarship support for deserving students in the College of Agriculture. Last year's Ag Roundup Auction raised more than $9,000 for scholarships.This year's roundup, co-sponsored by the College of Agriculture and the AU Agricultural Alumni Association, will be held from 9 a.m. until noon at Ag Heritage Park. Admission to the Roundup is $5 per person with children 10 and younger admitted free. Ag-related businesses and organizations are invited to set up exhibits at the event free of charge. Each exhibitor will be provided a table and chairs. For more information on the roundup or a booth or to donate auction items, call (334) 844-3204 or (334) 844-3596. Alabama Farmers Federation, P.O. Box 11000, Montgomery, Alabama 36191 334-288-3900
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Among friends 10/06/2006 Opelika-Auburn News Amy Weaver		Return to Top
Editor's note: This article is the third in a series to take place throughout this school year on the life of a freshman at Auburn University. Time has really flown by for Auburn University freshman Lane Mobley. Between classes, the Chi Omega sorority, friends and trips home to Columbus, Ga., she can't believe it's been only two months since she arrived on campus to start her collegiate career. But Auburn is home now. No question about it. "I have two homes, and I love it," Mobley said. From the beginning, Mobley promised to go home every weekend, and so far, she hasn't faltered. It may not be typical of an AU freshman, but living so close, it seems only right to make the short trek. Besides, Mobley loves it because it gives her the chance to watch high-school football, be with her boyfriend, Dick Norman, and spend some quality time with her parents, Ray and Leesa. In Alabama, Mobley isn't far from family with her older brother, Wes, living in Auburn. She also has a cousin attending AU. Going home as a college freshman is different, though. In high school, she said she learned to fend for herself, but now, her mom is practically a maid for her baby girl, doing her laundry and making her meals. Perhaps eating mom's home cooking every weekend has kept Mobley from gaining the dreaded "freshman 15." Mobley believes she has lost weight from all the walking around campus. Without a meal plan, she said her diet is mainly peanut butter and jelly and Diet Coke. Mobley said she has always had a close relationship with her parents, but it has grown into more of a friendship. The change is something she is grateful for. "It's like I haven't left,” she said. After two months, Mobley said she feels more comfortable on campus but has yet to experience most of campus. She knows three buildings: Haley Center, where all her classes are, her residence hall and Jordan-Hare Stadium. She hasn't been north of the Haley concourse. The season-opener against Washington State was Mobley's first football game as a student. She said it was quite an experience. Since Mobley is not much of a sports fan - nothing against the Tigers - she probably won't be attending many more games this season, except Florida and Georgia. "Who doesn't go to that (game)?" she asked of the latter. Friends who attend college in Virginia, Georgia and South Carolina are visiting Mobley for the matchup. A majority of her time is spent studying. Although she dropped a class, 14 credit hours are keeping her busier than she ever thought. "I have to read all the time," she said with a sigh. Between reading assignments in core subjects, "I feel like I read a textbook a week." Pledging a sorority, she said, was probably the best decision she has made since arriving on campus. She said she joined to meet people and that she always has a place to go or something to do because of her sorority sisters. Mobley would have found Young Life without Chi-O because she was involved in the Christian youth group in high school, but she probably wouldn't be involved in community service and philanthropy if it wasn’t for the sorority. Between classes and Chi-O, Mobley is getting into a rhythm, a schedule if you will, but it's difficult when she learns about more opportunities on campus. As interested as she might be in being a leader with Young Life, for instance, it is a time commitment she’s not sure she can make. "I think freshman year is a big planning year," she said.
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State college tuition plans should be tax exempt, Ivey says 10/06/2006 Decatur Daily Bayne Hughes		Return to Top
AU is mentioned in this story on pre-paid college tuition plans. If she wins re-election, State Treasurer Kay Ivey wants parents to get a state and federal income tax deduction for their investments in the state's pre-paid college tuition plans. During her first term, Ivey helped get PACT (Pre-Paid Affordable College Tuition) and the Alabama Higher Education 529 exempt from state income taxes when it's time to use the money. The Republican is facing Democrat Steve Segrest, a businessman and real estate agent from Montgomery, in the Nov. 7 election. Now she wants investors to get a reduction in their taxes for the money they put in the funds annually. The idea behind the funds is to allow parents or guardians to start paying on today's tuition costs, which Ivey estimates is about $21,000 to attend The University of Alabama or Auburn University, for tomorrow's college. She estimates that in 18 years, tuition could reach up to $90,000. "That's a huge savings for an Alabama citizen," Ivey told THE DAILY editorial board. Ivey said one of her jobs as treasurer is to promote the two tuition funds. There are two major differences between the funds. In the 529, you control the investment options and how you spend the money on college expenses at the time of use. In PACT, professional managers invest the money and it’s earmarked for tuition. Dismisses foe's claim She dismissed her opponent's claim that PACT is $70 million in debt and not one of the nation's top pre-paid tuition funds. "He's confused," Ivey said. "We're in great shape. Alabama is a model for the rest of the nation." Ivey said she also wants to make PACT more versatile. She would like to allow someone to buy tuition a year at a time. She said this would allow grandparents and other relatives to participate in sending a child to college. "A parent could spend $5,500 for a year, each set of grandparents could buy a year and an aunt or uncle could buy a year, and that would give the child four years," she said. In charge of investing The state treasurer's office is in charge of investing and dispersing state revenues. Ivey said she "brought modern banking practices" to state government, including direct deposit. State legislators put Ivey on the controversial "pork" commission formed to disperse education funds. The issue is in the Alabama Supreme Court because the legislators left the governor off the commission. Gov. Bob Riley's attorney is arguing that this violates state law because the executive branch is not involved in the decision making. Ivey said some legislators aren't going to like how she operates on the board because she is requiring a need justification for the money. She said some legislators wanted to dole out the money a little at time to capitalize on the political points they would score with their voters. She likes the idea of letting principals decide how to use the money because they know their schools' needs. Ivey said she doesn't think the money should go college foundations' scholarship funds because that limits the number of people who would benefit. "That money is taxpayers' money devoted to education," Ivey said. "I'm going to make sure this money goes truly to an education learning endeavor."
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Fix for space footage fanatics 10/06/2006 Baltimore Sun Michael Stroh		Return to Top
AU historian Jim Hansen is mentioned in this story. What does a space addict do next? For many, there's only one person they can count on for a fix: a former TV station manager turned full-time NASA film sleuth named Mark Gray. Gray spends his days doggedly tracking down rare and little-seen government film from the golden age of the U.S. space program - the first manned Mercury missions through the early days of the space shuttle. After some digital cleaning and light editing, he packages the images onto DVD and sells them through his two-man company, Spacecraft Films. Although Gray says you would never know it from Hollywood productions and cable documentaries - which tend to recycle the same tired clips - NASA and its contractors amassed a vast trove of celluloid over the years. "They had cameras everywhere," Gray says. Since he started the company in 2001, he estimates he's pored over a quarter-million feet of 16 mm film and video, some of it largely untouched and unwatched. "There'll be times when you open up a can and it looks like it's been taped up since 1965," he says. Some of Gray's finds are moments only an engineer could love: Neil Armstrong practicing his historic moonwalk at the bottom of a NASA swimming pool, or technicians re-creating the near-disastrous explosion aboard Apollo 13. One of Gray's favorite "gems," as he calls any obscure find, is film from a camera mounted inside the Saturn V rocket's fuel tank. Shot for engineering purposes, it shows sloshing liquid oxygen propellant being slurped down by the rocket's engines. Nerdy? You bet, says Dwayne Day, 38 of Vienna, Va., who counts the fuel-tank shot among his favorites. But Day says that's the reason he and others buy Gray's DVDs in the first place. "It takes you to places that nobody, not even NASA personnel, were allowed to go," he says. "I always wondered what liquid oxygen looks like." Other images that Gray has turned up over the years have more universal appeal. Almost everyone, for example, has seen the TV clip of a fuzzy Armstrong hopping onto the moon for the first time. But Gray's Apollo 11 DVD set includes a rarer gem: 16 mm color film of the event shot from the window of the Apollo 11 lunar module. The footage - which was only developed after the crew's return and thus not widely circulated - is sharp enough to make out Armstrong's face. "Mark has done a tremendous service to history," says Andrew Chaiken, whose book, A Man on the Moon, is one of the definitive chronicles of the Apollo years. "A lot of this stuff is not readily available." Still, Gray concedes that his products aren't for everyone. His Apollo 17 set, for example, spans six DVDs and runs 23 hours. The first several are devoted just to the oh-so-slow rollout of the Saturn V rocket onto the launch pad. "If you're not interested in it, you're going to find a lot of it boring," Gray says. Dwight Boniecki, a broadcast engineer in Cologne, Germany, who owns most of the sets, says he fast-forwards through the tedious bits, or puts his DVDs on while he's having dinner or surfing the Internet. "I shouldn't tell you all this because you'll say, 'No wonder this man has no girlfriend,'" says Boniecki, 37, who was so inspired by the 1960s-era footage that he's started writing a book about the history of Apollo television cameras. But the DVDs are more than a treasure chest of nostalgia for baby boomers and hardcore collectors. Gray says he recently received inquiries from young engineers working on Orion, NASA's next-generation moon-bound spacecraft. The engineers were designing a launch escape system, Gray says, and were interested in one of his most popular DVD sets: a collection of rocket explosions. Scholars have also turned to Gray for help. Auburn University historian James Hanson used the Apollo 11 set while writing his 2005 biography of Armstrong. "I watched it late at night in bed with all the lights out," Hanson says. "It really put me in the mood for what I had to do with that part of the book." Gray has even heard from several Apollo-era astronauts, who ordered sets for themselves or their grandchildren. One firm rule: Astronauts don't pay. "They shot a lot of this stuff, after all," Gray says. Gray grew up in Huntsville, Ala., a few miles from the facility where the Saturn V moon rocket was developed. His father was an engineer on the project, and Gray, now 44, says he could see the F-1 engine test stands from his house. "I remember them shaking the ground. You could see the smoke," he says. He spent most of his adult career in local television, eventually rising to station manager. But just shy of his 40th birthday, his position was eliminated. "I came to the conclusion that I wanted to do more than make sure there was a station for Jerry Springer to be on," he says. So he cashed in his retirement account and decided to turn his passion for space into a business. Despite its niche status, Gray has done surprisingly well. The company, he says, broke even its first year and has sold more than 170,000 DVD sets to date. The sets cost $20 to $80. Still, it's tough work. Although much of the early NASA film and videotape is collected at the National Archives facility in College Park, other reels are scattered in government vaults throughout the country. Gray spends much of his time scouring old aerospace company progress reports, yellowing NASA memos and other obscure documents for clues to the whereabouts of obscure footage. He also spends a lot of time waiting. At the National Archives, Apollo-era color film is stored in freezers and takes a day to thaw out before Gray can view it. Black-and-white footage is stored in an offsite, underground vault, he says. Gray says his customers tend to be as fanatical about space as he is and frequently call or send e-mail for updates on new video sets. "These people hound me," he says. Responding to that demand, Gray is working on new sets on Skylab (NASA's first space station) and the historic Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. That 1975 flight was the final Apollo mission and the first joint venture between U.S. and Soviet astronauts. But Gray's regular customers have also learned to be patient, knowing his desire to turn up unique footage often borders on obsessive. This month, for example, Gray was supposed to release a DVD set on the X-15, a sleek rocket plane developed in the late 1950s by NASA and the Air Force. But now he's not sure he'll make it. Last week, Gray decided to fly to College Park to follow up on a clue he spotted in a 40-year-old newsletter: the possibility of video documenting a series of little-known X-15 engineering tests. After spending the day trolling the archives, Gray found the tape. He hopes to have the X-15 set out by Thanksgiving. "My release dates tend to be estimates," he says.
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Launch Pad seeks student and faculty entrepreneurs 10/06/2006 Huntsville Times Staff reports		Return to Top
AU is participating in this initiative. A statewide competition designed to encourage and assist university-affiliated entrepreneurs is looking for a few people who might be interested in winning $150,000 to help get their businesses off the ground. The University of Alabama in Huntsville and Alabama A&M University are among five state universities participating in the Alabama Launch Pad Initiative with the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama. The University of Alabama, UAB and Auburn University are also participating. Unlike some business plan competitions, the Launch Pad Initiative is not limited to current students. It can include outsiders as long as at least one member of the team is a student, faculty or staff member, or an alumnus who has graduated within the past five years. "They are encouraging university intellectual property participation, but it isn't necessary," said Dr. David Berkowitz, director of UAH's Center for the Management of Science and Technology. "This is designed to give students who want to be entrepreneurs a chance to present their plans to experts who will provide them with guidance. And there is the possibility of some cash to help them start their businesses." The competition will begin accepting 1,200-word business outlines on Oct. 16, with a deadline for entry of Nov. 10. The entry fee is $50. Up to $260,000 in cash and services will be awarded in the spring to the top three winning teams. The group also seeks faculty members and successful entrepreneurs to serve as mentors.
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AU veterinarians receive grant for cancer treatment research 10/06/2006 Opelika-Auburn News Staff Reports		Return to Top
Veterinary researchers at Auburn University will use a $1.4 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to test targeted gene therapy for lymphoma in canines, a project that could mean improved treatment for both dogs and humans. Lymphoma is a rapidly growing malignancy and the third most common cancer in dogs, who have an average life expectancy of about one year with chemotherapy. "We have worked with targeted gene therapy for five years and have been researching lymphoma for one year," said Bruce Smith of AU's College of Veterinary Medicine's Scott-Ritchey Research Center. "Our research will benefit pets directly and may possibly be applied to humans later, because lymphoma is very similar in dogs and humans." The NCI grant was awarded to AU for five years – two years of laboratory work developing gene vectors and testing them on cells and then three years of clinical trials with dogs with lymphoma. Smith with lead the interdisciplinary study in which researchers will administer a genetically altered, non-replicating virus to lymphoma-affected dogs, followed by a drug that seeks out and kills the virus-infected cancer cells. "Although gene therapy is becoming more common in medical research, Auburn's research is unique because we modify the virus to target, or specifically infect, the lymphoma tumor cell," said Smith. "Also, we have altered the virus to encode a protein that converts the cancer-seeking drug into a toxic substance that kills the lymphoma cells on contact." "Our clinics see 30 to 50 dogs a year with lymphoma," said Smith. "The only treatment is chemotherapy, so the owners who volunteer their dogs for the study have the added hope that this new gene therapy will help their pets." Two years from now, when the clinical trial starts, pet owners with lymphoma-affected dogs will be able to participate in the trial at no additional cost, other than the normal veterinary fees. "Even though dogs do not usually have serious adverse reactions to chemotherapy, we want to provide a better type of treatment and reduce their number of chemo visits," he said. "For humans, fewer chemotherapy treatments would mean fewer side-effects in addition to having longer lives." Dr. David Curiel of UAB is a co-investigator on AU's lymphoma research, as are Auburn veterinary faculty Drs. Curtis Bird, Mary Lynn Higginbotham, Annette Smith and Elizabeth Whitley. (No Web link for this story.)


Scholarships on rise for AU's next academic year 10/06/2006 Opelika-Auburn News Staff Report		Return to Top
Auburn University is offering a school record $15.5 million in scholarships for the 2007-08 academic year, including more than $2 million worth of new scholarship offers for Alabama's top high school students. "Thanks to commitments from alumni, the Board of Trustees and friends of the university, we have crossed a milestone in scholarship funding at Auburn," said AU President Ed Richardson. Noting that the number and amount of scholarships have been rising rapidly, Richardson said, "Students entering Auburn next fall will have more opportunities for financial assistance than ever before." The $15.5 million in scholarships for next fall surpasses the previous record of $13 million in the current year. A key part of the surge in scholarship aid for the coming year is due to the new merit-based Spirit of Auburn Scholarship Program. The Board of Trustees recently committed $2 million to establish the program as part of a comprehensive effort, including establishment of "learning communities" in new campus housing, to boost academic standards that are already in the top half of public institutions in the South. More than 500 students will receive Spirit of Auburn Scholarships next fall. Priority will be given to students who are accepted to Auburn by Dec. 1. Students with the best combination of grades and college entrance scores will be eligible for full four-year tuition, with other allowances and admission to the AU Honors College. Spirit of Auburn scholarship awards start at $1,500 per year. Students may also have the opportunity to include such individualized educational opportunities as studying abroad or participating in an undergraduate research project. Spirit of Auburn Scholarship recipients will be eligible for additional scholarships through academic departments, schools and colleges and the university’s general scholarship program. (No Web link is available.)


PETA says AU vet lab mistreated pets 10/05/2006 Birmingham News The Associated Press		Return to Top
AUBURN - An animal rights group claims its hidden-camera investigation at Auburn University's veterinary lab shows pets were mistreated during organ transplants. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, known as PETA, said it conducted the investigation at an Auburn research lab from February to October of last year. PETA spokeswoman Kate Turlington claims researchers were not giving animals proper care, including administering insufficient amounts of pain medicine after surgeries. Auburn spokesman Brian Keeter said the university is reviewing the allegations. He said it's "very important to remember these are unsubstantiated allegations and Auburn was providing a service to people whose pets were very sick." PETA also claims Auburn misrepresented the success rate of its dog kidney transplant procedure. Researchers said the procedure, which involves transplanting organs from one unrelated dog to another, allows dogs to possibly live out their lives without taking high doses of immunosuppressive drugs. Turlington said she believes the claim to be false and that every animal that underwent the $14,000 procedure died. PETA has filed claims with the USDA as well as the state attorney general's office, Turlington said. Karen Smith, an Ohio woman whose dog, Apache, died a few days after undergoing the procedure, said Auburn veterinarian Michael Tillson told her the procedure had a 70 percent success rate. "I would've been happier to let Apache die at home with his family instead of 800 miles away with strangers," Smith said.
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Alabama growers told of upcoming pesticide restrictions 10/05/2006 Southeast Farm Press Paul L. Hollis		Return to Top
Several AU experts are quoted in this story. During the east-central Alabama Cotton and Peanut Tour, Mike Patterson, Auburn University Extension weed scientist, and other Extension specialists talked about the impending loss of organic arsenical herbicides, and how it might impact cotton producers. "The EPA, after a 10-year review, has decided that it's going to drop the registration of all organic arsenical herbicides, including MSMA, DSMA and others. We've used these products for a long time in cotton, and I'm sure they'll allow us to continue using whatever is remaining in the pipeline," he says. Other crop specialists agree that the EPA's forthcoming restrictions on thousands of pesticides because of perceived adverse health affects will not pose severe hardships on Alabama's row crop producers. "I don't think we in the row crop business are going to see a very big impact because the chemicals have been under review for a number of years," says Ron Smith, an Auburn University professor emeritus of entomology and retired Alabama Cooperative Extension System entomologist who still serves Extension as a contract entomologist. "Speaking specifically to cotton and soybean producers, I just don’t anticipate any surprises," he says. Among cotton crop insecticides, the one notable exception is the family of chemicals, known as organic phosphates, which are used to kill plant bugs and stink bugs. "We have some new chemistry that has some activity with these bug pests, but not as much as phosphates," Smith says, adding that a tremendous void would occur if some exceptions to these restrictions were not permitted. Other experts offer similar predictions for the other major row crops. "We're not losing anything we can't afford to lose," says Kathy Flanders, an Extension entomologist and Auburn University associate professor of entomology and plant pathology, who works with the state's corn producers. The same goes for peanuts. Ron Weeks, an Extension entomologist specializing in peanut crop pesticides, says there already have been minor modifications in labeling for peanut crop pesticides. However, he says that nothing has produced undue strain on peanut producers. In addition, Weeks does not foresee any future restrictions posing hardships for producers. The impending restrictions are the culmination of the EPA's 10-year effort to comply with the provision of the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act. Hailed at the time as a "landmark bipartisan agreement," the legislation required the EPA to implement the most far-reaching changes in pesticide and food safety law in decades. The focal point of this legislation was a provision requiring EPA to complete within the following decade a massive review and reassessment of tolerances (maximum permitted residues) of all food-use pesticides. The EPA's decision to impose more restrictions is based on a review of more than 230 chemicals known as organophosphates and carbamates. The restrictions ultimately could lead to the elimination of 3,200 uses and the modification in use of 1,200 others, such as chlorpyrifos, diazinon and methyl parathion. All these chemicals have been under increased scrutiny within the last few decades because of their possible roles in causing illnesses. While these eliminations likely will be far-reaching, Smith says the 10-year period set aside to review these tolerances and make recommendations largely eliminated the element of surprise or any needless hardship for pesticide manufacturers and farmers. "It's been an ongoing process for a number of years in which EPA has worked closely with companies to review the specific chemicals in question," says Smith, who, along with other Extension entomologists around the country, has represented grower concerns to chemical companies in hopes of insuring the least amount of strain on growers.
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Brew Tech pins hope on 'Weezy' 10/05/2006 Montgomery Advertiser Antoinette Konz		Return to Top
This story is about AU's BEST competition. Oct. 5--Andrea Tucker hasn't had much spare time the past few weeks. That's because each day after school and for a few hours each Saturday, the 16-year-old junior at Brewbaker Technology Magnet High School has been trying to build a robot with a team of about two dozen other students. It's a robot they hope will be able to put up and take off clothes on a clothesline. It's also a robot they hope will win them an award. Later this month, the team of students will participate in a variety of events organized by Alabama Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST), a volunteer group that encourages students to pursue careers in engineering, science and technology through a science- and engineering-based robotics competition. I really like participating in this competition each year because it gives you a chance to take a real-world situation and create a solution for it, said Tucker. It also allows me to work together closely with other students. Brew Tech is one of seven tri-county schools that will have student teams participating in this year's competition, which will be Oct. 28 at Auburn University. This year's mission is called Laundry Quandry. Students have to build and design a robot from scratch that will be able to take dry clothes off a clothesline and put wet clothes back up on the clothesline. There will be several clotheslines at different heights and teams will accumulate points based on how well their robot performs. Aside from robot-building, the Brew Tech team also is working on designing a T-shirt and Web site, building a booth for their exhibit and doing interviews with businesses to get financial support. It's a wonderful learning experience, said Steve Ballard, a teacher at Brew Tech who serves as the team's adviser. They are using math and English skills and learning how to problem-solve. It's really fun to watch them work. Ballard said the top three robot-building teams and the top three overall teams at the state competition will advance to the regional competition, called the South's Best, which will be held at Auburn University later this year. Tucker said although preparing for the competition can be frustrating, it's also a lot of fun. In the end it's all worth it, she said. Other tri-county schools participating in this year's competition include Montgomery's Booker T. Washington Magnet High School, Eastwood Christian School, Wetumpka High School, Stanhope Elmore High School, Southside Middle School in Tallassee and Billingsley High School.
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Ogden Enrollment steadily increasing 10/05/2006 Demopolis Times SAM R. HALL		Return to Top
AU is part of this joint project. DEMOPOLIS — Dr. Arthur Ogden says he is happy with the progress of Alabama Southern's Demopolis Campus. "It's starting to look more and more like a freshman class coming in," he told the Demopolis Rotary Club on Wednesday. Ogden, the campus director, said enrollment broke the 150-student mark and filled 35 instructional sections. When the campus opened three years ago, Alabama Southern guaranteed that "every class would be delivered regardless of enrollment," Ogden said. At the start of the third year, expectations were exceeded. "For the first time, we had to close three sections because they were full," Ogden said. The lowest enrollment of any section was 12 students, which is actually three less than what the college likes to see. But Ogden said they made the decision to leave it open. Going forward, the former football coach said he will not rest until enrollment is double its current level. "I'm not going to be satisfied until we are at 300 (students for) enrollment," he said. Part of the plan to recruit more students is to diversify the activities and offerings of the school, which is a joint project between Alabama Southern, the University of West Alabama, the University of Alabama and Auburn University. The first is a series of special events that will tie in with Christmas on the River. A "Demopolis Writers Hall" will be set up to feature famous literary artists who have come from the area. In addition, a Smithsonian Institute traveling exhibit will open on Dec. 1 at the college. The exhibit, entitled "Between Fences," looks at the role of fences in American culture throughout history. "We are one of only six locations statewide to get the exhibit," Ogden said. "We were selected from a field of 15." Long-term plans also include offering degrees from Auburn through the Demopolis Campus. Ogden said students would take their first two years of course-work from Alabama Southern and then transfer to an Auburn curriculum track. However, the classes would either be taught via video-conference or the Internet, or by Auburn professors who visited the campus as part of independent study-like courses. Ogden says today's technology has made it easier for colleges to reach more people, offering some the chance to get a college degree who might not have otherwise had the opportunity.
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