AnnuAl RepoRt - University of Alabama at Birmingham

UAB UTC’s First
Minority Enrichment Transportation Intern – One Year Later
“The UAB UTC Internship
really helped me
focus my career interests
and better prepared me
for the choices I’d have
to make during freshman
year as well as
long thereafter. What a
wonderful experience
my time in the UAB UTC
turned out to be.”
Nichele Cantrell
Just over a year ago, Ms. Nichele Cantrell became the
UAB UTC’s first Minority Enrichment Transportation
Intern. She had just graduated from Ramsay High School
in Birmingham and planned to enter Indiana University
– Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the Fall.
Instead of taking the summer off to relax and spend time
with her friends, Nichele wanted to get a head start on her
college plans.
Showing much more forethought than many people years
her senior, Nichele decided she didn’t want to select an
academic major based solely on a description in a college
catalog. She wanted to find out what people with various
degrees actually did all day. That’s where the UAB UTC
came in.
Based on the recommendation of Mr. Ordrell Smith,
Executive Director of the Jefferson County Youth
Transportation Program (JCYTP), the UAB UTC invited
Nichele to become its first Minority Enrichment Transportation
Intern and help her explore the transportationrelated
opportunities in various career fields, particularly
engineering/biomedical engineering. (See 2008-2009
UAB UTC Annual Report for more details.)
Nichele made the most of the experiences the UAB UTC
Internship afforded her. This past summer (2010) she
participated in a research internship at Indiana
University and is working towards admission to IU-PUI’s
prestigious MD/PhD program. Nichele was first exposed
to the existence of MD/PhD programs through her internship
with the UAB UTC. She met at length with UAB
faculty who held those degrees and met the leadership of
UAB’s MD/PhD program. Those introductions and meetings
proved to be time well spent. The encouragement she
received through those mentorship meetings and through
the UAB UTC Internship Program further encouraged
Nichele to set her goals high and work hard to achieve
those goals.
The UAB UTC is enormously proud of Nichele’s accomplishments
and we hope you will join us in wishing her
well in her future endeavors. Nichele may be contacted at
nichelecan@gmail.com.
Dr. Sisiopiku Awarded Excellence in Mentorship Award
Dr. Virginia Sisiopiku was one of 22 UAB professors recently honored with the 2010
Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentorship during a ceremony on April 12,
2010. Dr. Sisiopiku is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil, Construction,
and Environmental Engineering at UAB.
This award recognizes faculty who have been outstanding mentors, advisors, and role
models to the students and trainees with whom they have worked. These faculty honorees
have demonstrated effective leadership, enthusiasm, an ability to make difficult
information and concepts understandable, the willingness to serve as a role model, and
a belief in the importance of mentoring.
Dr. Sisiopiku was also one of 13 faculty members honored with the President’s Award
for Excellence in Teaching in 2007. Dr. Sisiopiku is Principal Investigator of 3 projects
for the UAB UTC and the faculty advisor of the Institute of Transportation Engineers
(ITE) Student Chapter at UAB.
Dr. Bryan Noe,
Dean of the UAB
Graduate School, and
Dr. Virginia Sisiopiku
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