College of Liberal Arts News

UWA student Caroline McKinley.

Though only a freshman, Caroline McKinley’s adoration of the arts is already blossoming at the University of West Alabama. Last fall, she worked behind the scenes with the UWA Theatre and performed as a member of the marching band’s color guard.

When Dr. Lesa Shaul reclines in her chair, within arm’s reach are shelves of classic literature, the poetry of Percy Shelley, William Faulkner’s streams of consciousness, the brilliance of Robert Penn Warren. For a professor of English, the cramped space seems an oasis of calm, a few square feet bloated with printed words worthy of memorization.
A mixture of serendipity and archeology, with a pinch of salt on the side, is behind Dr. Ashley Dumas’ recent Fulbright Specialist Award and her upcoming trip to the University of Rzeszow in Poland.
Dr. Stephen Slimp

Somewhere amid Shakespearean comedies and Samuel Johnson poetry is where Dr. Stephen Slimp’s literary utopia exists. It’s embedded among the Nobel Prize-winning works of Herta Muller and Mario Vargas Llosa and Orhan Pamuk, the tome-like writing of Leo Tolstoy and the storytelling of novelist Miguel de Cervantes.

When Dr. Amy Jones, chair of the University of West Alabama’s Department of Communications, made a presentation recently for a state-level awards program, she didn’t go empty-handed.
Dr. Amy Jones.

As silly as it seems, good-ol’ doughnuts -- not beignets from France, not baklava from Turkey, not cannoli from Sicily -- partially fueled Dr. Amy Jones’ path to the honorees’ table at the upcoming West Alabama Young Leaders Awards.

Shelby Gandy laughs while admitting she “was never the athletic one out of me and my sisters.” In her Sumter County family, she was the one who enrolled in art camp, who attended painting classes, whose personality always leaned to the creative side. Art rarely strayed far from the center.
With artwork loosely based on one of rock music’s iconic images and a track listing of studio and live recordings, the University of West Alabama Choral Union’s recently released album may exemplify one trait more than all others: perseverance.
students on theatre stage

Rhonda Wooley’s plans, had the Covid-19 pandemic not delayed them, were to take the University of West Alabama’s theatre students on a tour of high schools and community colleges -- a traveling showcase of musical and theatrical talent.

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