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@StacyBrownMedia
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UAB student one of 30 chosen from hundreds for national voice contest
A Florence, Alabama, student is a national semifinalist in The American Pops Orchestra “NextGen National: Finding the Voices of Tomorrow” competition.
Jalen Kirkman is among 30 singers chosen for the competition from hundreds of auditioners. He is a University of Alabama at Birmingham junior, pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in musical theater from the College of Arts and Sciences Department of Theatre. He is on track to graduate in spring 2025.
NextGen gives collegiate vocalists the opportunity to learn from industry professionals while competing for a chance to win scholarship money and paid performance opportunities with the American Pops Orchestra in New York. The APO brings American popular music to audiences and builds community by preserving, promoting and reimagining it. The APO presents live and virtual performances, educational initiatives, and collaborations to make the highest-quality art accessible to the broadest audiences. The orchestra often performs with such artists as Kristin Chenoweth from “Wicked,” and each year they host this vocal competition for young adults.
Kirkman heard about the competition and entered in late November. Competitors participate in NextGen completely free of charge. Applicants must submit a self-taped performance of a song strictly from before the 1970s, and he sent in a performance of himself singing in class.
“That part is really cool to me because it is a next generation vocal competition using older music, whether it be Golden Age or jazz or classical,” Kirkman said.
For the competition, Kirkman has performed the jazz piece “Guess Who I Saw Today.” The timeless classic has been sung by Nancy Wilson and Samara Joy, whose version inspired Kirkman.
“One of the big things I set for myself and would love to do in this competition is singing jazz throughout because it is something that I have always loved to do,” he said. “I don’t really get to sing jazz often just being in musical theater. If I can get as far as I can doing that, it would be awesome.”
At 3 p.m. EST Sunday, Jan. 7, the semifinals will be broadcast virtually. The group of 30 will compete for their chance to advance to the final round. Four judges, along with the audience, will choose 10 finalists to receive an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City to compete in the finals at Lincoln Center. Tickets are $10 and allow viewers to watch online and vote for their favorites.
The final will be at 2 p.m. EST Sunday, Feb. 11, in person in New York. Finalists will attend master classes and events and work with professional artists, then perform at Lincoln Center.
At UAB, Kirkman studies voice with Head of Musical Theatre Valerie Accetta and Emily Jaworski-Koriath, DMA, in the college’s Department of Music. For acting and performance, he studies with Department of Theatre professors Accetta, Dennis McClernon, Jack Cannon and Roy Lightner, who is artistic director at Red Mountain Theatre and with whom Kirkman also trained in dance. Kirkman also performs with the Department of Theatre’s student tour group, a company of students who annually travel to schools and community venues to present theater shows.
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UAB engineering students develop walker to help patients at Children’s of Alabama
Photo Courtesy of Childrens of Alabama
Collaboration between the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Engineering and Children’s of Alabama is providing several young patients with the opportunity for a healthier future faster.
In 2020, a team of senior design students in the class of Alan Eberhardt, Ph.D., developed a halo traction walker as a part of the Biomedical Engineering Capstone Senior Design course.
The traction walker was designed to maintain traction of the spine, which is a corrective decompression process to help it stretch and straighten. Required before fusion surgery, the process of traction prevents mobility for patients and the use of a halo traction walker allows for patients to retain some mobility without disrupting the rehabilitative process.
The students were able to create a working prototype; however, due to the COVID shutdown, the project was temporarily abandoned. In recent years, Steve Thompson, manager of the Design and Fabrication Laboratory in the UAB Materials Processing and Applications Development Center, continued to work on and perfect the device. The Design and Fabrication lab partners with many different areas of the university to provide unique deliverables and skills, such as welding and prototype design.
The capstone course gives BME students the chance to put their engineering skills to the test with design and construction of a device that will help a real client who has presented a real biomedical engineering problem,” Eberhardt said.
Now in 2023, physicians at COA have been able to successfully supply multiple patients with mobility during the needed traction for spinal fusion surgery via the walkers prepared directly on the UAB campus.
“This was one of those projects where students were able to create a device that was needed but didn’t exist in the marketplace,” Thompson said. “There isn’t a big enough demand to make it profitable for a medical device company to manufacture these. Even if they did, each one would have to be customized for each patient. So, doctors and physical therapists end up improvising and cobbling something together for each patient.”
Eberhardt says Rhett Wheeler, DPT, at COA is a frequent partner in the UAB senior design classes.
“Dr. Eberhardt has been our champion for years now. He connected us with Dr. Sicking, who helped fund our research and fill in the gap to get the needed parts for the walker,” Thompson said.
“He has brought us several good projects in the past where he had a need that was not being met or a challenge that was not being addressed by existing products in the marketplace,” he said.
In May of 2023, Wheeler, director of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy at Children’s of Alabama, reached out in need of a traction walker for a patient.
Thompson elaborated and said, “We had already been working on the third-generation prototype. Dr. Wheeler sent us the specifications he needed, and we were able to have it over to the hospital later that afternoon.”
Due to a successful experience, Wheeler later requested the device for use with three other incoming patients in the fall.
“This project was different. I was hesitant at first because we really had no funding for it,” Thompson said. “But seeing the effort Children’s was going to, I knew they really needed this to progress further.”
Thompson and the DFL team used their own resources and budget to produce what was needed for the patients.
“It’s been very rewarding to witness our efforts go directly toward helping people, especially young people,” Thompson said. “Most of our work is research-based, and while we do see good things happen, it’s typically a much longer process. With this project, we were able to witness the fruition much faster, and it’s a great feeling knowing the work of our team has had such a positive impact.”
Thompson plans to develop a next-generation prototype in the fu
