Worth Noting

Birmingham-Southern College is recognized nationally for its quality academics, its value, its safety preparedness, and the success of the graduates it produces.

Colleges That Change Lives has again included Birmingham-Southern as one of 40 colleges that are “outdoing the Ivy League schools and the major universities in producing winners.” Read more at www.ctcl.org.

Forbes magazine ranks Birmingham-Southern as the best college or university in Alabama—public or private—in its annual “America’s Top Colleges” listing based on the 2012 Fiske Guide to Colleges quality of the education, the experiences of the students, and how much they achieve.

Birmingham-Southern is one of only 310 colleges in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain highlighted in the 2012 Fiske Guide to Colleges as one of the “best and most interesting” schools.

BSC is one of only 200 colleges and universities named a 2011-12 College of Distinction by the college research service Student Horizons for “providing students with the highest level of undergraduate education and continuing to demonstrate its commitment to the four distinctions: engagement, teaching, community, and outcomes.” Read more at www.collegesofdistinction.com.

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine, which ranks “the top schools that provide a high-quality education at an affordable price", includes Birmingham-Southern on its 2011-12 list of the “Best Values in Private Colleges.” Read more at www.kiplinger.com/links/college.

Birmingham-Southern was the highest ranked liberal arts college in the nation for “safety preparedness” in a recent Reader’s Digest survey.

Birmingham-Southern College is one of the nation's “Best 376 Colleges” for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review.

The Princeton Review also ranks Birmingham-Southern as one of America’s “286 Greenest Colleges” for its eco-friendly campus.

For the fifth straight year, Birmingham-Southern is on the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest federal recognition a college or university can receive for its commitment to service-learning and civic engagement.

Each year, more than 50 percent of the college’s graduates go on to graduate school at some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. The college annually ranks No. 1 in Alabama and among the nation’s best in percentage of all graduates accepted to medical, dental, or health career programs. The college also ranks high nationally in graduates accepted to law school. And for those who choose to move directly into their professional careers, BSC graduates have a distinguished record of job placement.

Other Points of Pride

Birmingham-Southern and seven other Division III southeastern colleges have joined together to form a new athletic conference beginning with the 2012-13 season. The new conference will be named the Southern Athletic Association (SAA). Spanning six states, the SAA also includes Centre College in Kentucky, Hendrix College in Arkansas, Millsaps College in Mississippi, Oglethorpe University and Berry College in in Georgia, and Rhodes College and Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee.

A paper written by Birmingham-Southern senior Clair McLafferty of Homewood was accepted for presentation at the 11th annual International F. Scott Fitzgerald Society Conference in Lyon, France, this summer. McLafferty was one of only 20 scholars invited to present papers at the annual gathering that focuses on the 20th century author best known for his novel The Great Gatsby. Titled "Making Art, Cents, and Sense: Slurred Speech in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Fiction," her paper addresses the effects of Fitzgerald's struggle with alcoholism on his artistic career, including the tension between his alcoholism and his artistic voice. A double English/physics major, McLafferty hopes to be a high school physics teacher after completion of her BSC degree requirements in December. She will continue her love of English through freelance writing.

Birmingham-Southern senior Steven Carter won a competitive Conference Experience for Undergraduates Award and participated in the 2011 fall meeting of the Divisions of Nuclear Physics of the American Physical Society Oct. 26-29 in East Lansing, Mich. The award funds travel, lodging, and registration for the conference. A physics and mathematics double major and Turnipseed-Ikenberry Scholar from Enterprise, Carter will present his poster “First Measurement of Statistical Gamma-ray Transitions in 88Sr at TUNL via Inelastic Neutron Scattering” at the meeting. He spent the summer conducting nuclear physics research at Duke University, which he is continuing this fall under the supervision of Dr. Mark Rupright, BSC assistant professor of physics. These are just two examples of BSC students’ work being recognized.