Hilltop Photo of the Week

Welcome to Birmingham-Southern’s “Hilltop Photo of the Week” web page and archives. Each week at this site, we’ll feature a photo that depicts some aspect of life on the Hilltop campus, along with brief information about what is taking place in the Photo of the Week.

The college welcomes submissions to be considered for the Hilltop Photo of the Week. Scanned or digital photos can be e-mailed to the Office of Communications at bwagnon@bsc.edu, or photographic prints may be sent through campus mail to Box 549004. Please limit photo submissions to those that depict some aspect of the BSC experience, and be sure to identify what is taking place in the photo, along with location and people involved.

View the Photo of the Week archive here.

Reinventing freshman orientation—A new orientation course at Birmingham-Southern is designed to give incoming students the best start possible on their college academic careers. Twenty freshman students recently participated in BSC’s first summer interim class “Ecological Disasters and Human Health,” taught by BSC Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Pamela Hanson. As part of the intensive two-week pilot study, students studied ecological disasters and explored the biological, political, and economic impacts. They also used lab experiments and field observations to study the effects of environmental contaminants on cells, organisms, and populations. “For the last two years, Dr. Shane Pitts [associate professor of psychology] had been encouraging BSC faculty to consider having an interim-like term during August, so that incoming students could get accustomed to college life and begin building an intellectual community before having to juggle three or four courses,” says Hanson. “I liked Shane’s idea so much that I pitched this course to the college’s administration, and we went for it!” Pictured above are the students on a water sampling excursion at Five Mile Creek. In the photo below, students complete an ecotoxicology test on the effects of various chemicals on red worms.