I won’t lie, I set foot on UA’s campus as a young freshman anxious and intimidated. I was hundreds of miles from my hometown, not sure if I was studying the right thing and oblivious as to where I would even begin to make friends and leave a mark on campus before graduation in just a few years.
But that was before.
That was before I had the confidence to switch majors and follow my passion, that was before I met the faculty and staff of UA who encouraged me to jump into campus organizations and programs. That was before I realized how limitless campus was, as I watched friends fly off to study abroad in places like Bulgaria and Scotland.
That was before I found the necessary inspiration and support from fellow women on this campus who recognized the potential I didn’t realize I had yet.
I remember watching women boldly toss their red caps into the air as they celebrated their graduation. I remember sitting at the Ferguson Starbucks with a cup of coffee, as capstone women in crimson confidently guided hundreds of visitors through the campus they had made their own. They had voice, they had poise and they had strength.
They emanated all the characteristics I realized I too, even as a young woman on a very large campus, could obtain.
And this was when I understood this was 125 years in the making. This was 125 years of regained confidence, 125 years of risks, challenges, rising and falling as one campus. This was 125 years of endurance and fearlessness, 125 years of growth and development as one student body.
Therefore, this year’s magazine works to physically capture the diverse strengths of the UA campus. We celebrate 125 years of women at the capstone, but also 125 years of diversity, inclusion, adversity and overcoming.
We celebrate all professors, all students and all faculty regardless of race, gender and ethnicity who have contributed to campus while confidently carving a future for themselves.
In this issue, we celebrate roommates with sand in their suitcase as they travel the world, and friends who cheered and cried with us as we took home a 17th national title alongside the football team under a kaleidoscopic rainbow of confetti and streamers.
In this issue, we celebrate the community of Tuscaloosa, as student artists weld and bend new sculptures for nearby parks, and faculty orchestrate careful renovations and restorations. We celebrate the service of UA, as staff members provide inspiration and motivation to the students who now consider them family.
We celebrate passions for art, photography and rocketry. We celebrate our next door neighbor, as she confidently takes on fashion and runway from Tuscaloosa to New York City. We celebrate dreamers, doers and legacy-leavers, as they motivate their teams, friends and family through their words and actions.
Most of all, however, we celebrate the 125 years of confidence and change that has made me, and many other UA students, confident and bold enough to seize our futures both on and off campus.
It is through this endurance we understand most worthwhile aspects of life require patience, persistence and partnership with those around us.
Thus, we come together. We unite under one chime as a community of diverse thought and enduring passion. We come together and look forward. We look forward to a future of continued boldness and support, as we walk on as one collective effort to achieve our wildest aspirations, no matter where we go beyond our few years at UA.
I am so unbelievably proud and honored to stand by a staff who has made these concepts tangible within this year’s Mosaic magazine. Through the click of a camera, the tick of a keyboard, the timeliness of online content and the creativity of design, the
Mosaic team has come together under one common purpose—to inspire, strengthen and believe.
Therefore, it is with great privilege that we reveal the Come Together issue of Mosaic Magazine.
– Christina Ausley, Editor in Chief
Read the online version
