The University of Alabama is considered the heartbeat of the Birmingham metropolitan area. It is the largest employer in the city, having displaced BellSouth, nee South Central Bell, sometime in the mid to late eighties. Currently it employs almost 53,000 people (about 6% of the Metropolitan Statistical Area), and recently it was proclaimed to have a 2.3 billion dollar annual impact. The University was founded in 1969, and has since established itself as one of the premier Medical Schools in the country. According to US News and World Report, it is the 28th best Medical School in the US for Research, and 30th in Primary Care Studies. These scores place it in the same tier as Dartmouth, Northwestern, Emory and NYU.
All this information was compiled from the UAB website, specifically http://main.uab.edu, except for the US News Rankings, those can be found at http://www.usnews.com.
- Robert Goddam