University of North Alabama Senior Jada Winston, of Pelham, has been crowned Miss UNA 2026 at the Miss UNA program Saturday evening in Norton Auditorium on the UNA campus. Winston will now move on to compete for the title of Miss Alabama at an event that will take place later this year. She is a Sports Management major, and she performed an acro dance to “Boogie Wonderland” for the talent portion of the program.
Lights & Shadows, the student literary magazine at the University of North Alabama, has been recognized as “Superior” by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) as part of the Recognizing Excellence in Art and Literary Magazines (REALM) Contest.
The Department of Foreign Languages at the University of North Alabama has received a competitive mini grant from the Alabama Humanities Alliance to assist in funding an International Film Festival that will feature films in French, German, and Spanish.
Dr. Martin Hebel, a Lecturer in the Department of Music at the University of North Alabama has been awarded two American Prizes for his recent composition, Defiance.
Dr. Cheryl Price, Associate Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences within the College of Arts, Sciences, and Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious Mellon Fellowship in order to attend the HERS Leadership Institute. The fellowship includes a full stipend to attend the institute on behalf of the University of North Alabama.
Scholarship support from endowed scholarships awarded through the University of North Alabama Foundation are on the rise after an outstanding year of fundraising for FY 2024-2025. The total spent from the UNA Foundation endowment for the year that ended Sept. 30, 2025, was $2.245 million.
On Jan. 11, the University of North Alabama commemorated 196 years of service to Alabama, leading the way as the state’s first publicly chartered four-year higher education institution. As part of the events on Founders’ Day, officials at UNA launched UNA’s multi-year celebration leading up to UNA’s official bicentennial date of January 2030.
The University of North Alabama Police Department is the proud owner of two electronic bikes, or e-bikes, thanks to the generosity of several donors. The Spinning Spoke in downtown Florence and the Parke Cochran Insurance Agency provided the majority of the funding, along with a few anonymous donors, to make the e-bikes possible.
