Dear Students, Faculty and Staff,
We want to congratulate in advance the approximately 2,100 students who are graduating from UAB this spring semester. Roughly 1,400 undergraduates and 739 graduate students will receive their degrees, including 63 Ph.D. candidates representing 12 states, nine countries and 25 disciplines. We look forward to celebrating these achievements at our master’s/doctoral hooding ceremony this evening and our undergraduate commencement ceremonies tomorrow.
These commencement ceremonies and those that follow in 2019 are especially meaningful as we celebrate UAB’s 50th anniversary year. The accomplishments of our students and graduates—on campus, in our community and beyond—reflect the spirit of innovation, collaboration and excellence that has propelled UAB over five decades and made us the Top Young University in the U.S. and 10th in the world.
Our students have again distinguished themselves on the national and global stage this academic year, earning an impressive number of prestigious fellowships and other awards from a range of sources—the Department of State, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense, among others. These highly competitive awards take our students all around the U.S. and the globe, recognize excellence in a range of disciplines, and speak to our students’ insatiable drive—in classrooms, labs, studios and our community—to set ambitious goals and passionately pursue them.
We continue offering the caliber of academic programs that provide our students the opportunity to excel and push the envelope across all disciplines. In the recent U.S. News & World Report “Best Graduate Schools,” 14 UAB programs ranked in the nation’s top 25 (up from 13 last year). Our Master’s in Health Administration in the School of Health Professions, which has for several years been ranked No. 2 nationally, has now achieved the No. 1 ranking as best in the nation. Among all of our schools, the School of Nursing leads the way with a remarkable eight programs in the top 20. We commend our faculty and staff campuswide for making our academic programs so highly respected, and for continually developing new programs and a Signature Core Curriculum that equip students for leadership in new and emerging fields.
Our students also continue to engage in an increasingly competitive research and clinical enterprise. Our School of Medicine is among an elite group of only eight academic medical centers to increase their funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by more than $100 million over the past five years, and now has six departments in the top 10 nationally in NIH funding (up from one department in FY13).
These and other successes will lead to even greater ones as we celebrate our 50th anniversary year and continue forging an even bolder future for our university, community and state—including our Grand Challenge that we will announce next Tuesday, April 30, and begin this summer.
Our congratulations again to our graduating students, your parents, and the faculty and staff who mentored and inspired you.
With our best regards,
Ray L. Watts
President
Pam Benoit
Senior Vice President and Provost