Franklin College students, faculty and staff began the new academic year with many awards, grants, new books and other distinguished accomplishments.

The Georgia Debate Union finished in second place at the season-opening college debate tournament held at Georgia State this past weekend.  The Georgia State tournament featured 140 teams from around the country, including teams from Harvard, Georgetown, Northwestern, Cornell, Vanderbilt, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, among many others. Seniors Advait Ramanan and Swapnil Agrawal lost a 2-1 decision to a team from Harvard University in the final round.  On their way to the finals, Advait and Swapnil defeated teams from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, Emory University, and Wake Forest University.  

 

Microbiology doctoral candidate Jordan Russell was awarded a fellowship by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research(SCGSR) program. Russell is one of 47 new SCGSR awardees, announced September 14, from 36 different universities across the nation. A graduate student of genetics professor Janet Westpheling, Russell will conduct research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in the SCGSR Priority Research Area of Biological and Environmental Research - Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

 

The University of Georgia once again hit double digits in the number of international travel-study grants offered to its students and recent alumnithrough the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. With 18 students selected, this marks the fifth straight year—and ninth time in the past 10 years—that UGA has received 10 or more offers. Of the 15 students and alumni who will be able to participate, four of the six academic and arts grants went to Franklin College students and alumni, and as well as five of the nine who received teaching assistantship awards.

 

Lamar Dodd School of Art Professor Joseph Norman and students Ben Thrash, Lia Davis, Madison Gibson, Elizabeth Qardan, and student project manager, Katie Eidson completed restoration of an historical signage mural, “ghost sign," in Madison Georgia.   The students earned $3,000 in scholarship money and will be honored by the city of Madison in late October. This the second mural project this semester for the “COLOR THE WORLD BRIGHT” group.

 

Senior theatre major Ellen Everitt was awarded one of four “Sallie Bingham” grants by History Matters/Back to the Future, a national nonprofit organization that “promotes the study and production of women's plays of the past. Everett will use the support to direct “The Emperor of the Moon” by Aphra Behn, originally published in 1687. The production is planned to be performed in spring 2019.

 

A new book by Distinguished Research Professor in the department of Communication Studies Celeste Condit,  Angry Public Rhetorics explores emotions as motivators and organizers of collective action—a theory that treats humans as “symbol-using animals” to understand the patterns of leadership in global affairs—to account for the way in which anger produced similar rhetorics in three ideologically diverse voices surrounding 9/11: Osama bin Laden, President George W. Bush, and Susan Sontag. Published by the University of Michigan Press in its Configurations: Critical Studies of World Politics series.

 

Condit’s long record of outstanding interdisciplinary scholarship in a number of fields will be honored at the 2018 Public Address Conference, a biennial tradition of recognizing scholars who have influenced the field in profound and far-reaching ways. 

 

Thomas Mote, the associate dean for the physical and mathematical sciences in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and a Distinguished Research Professor of Geography, was one of four UGA faculty members selected as the university’s 2018-2019 SEC Academic Leadership Development Program Fellows.

 

Todd Harrop, associate professor of chemistry, and Regents Professor of Chemistry Michael Johnson were awarded a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program to purchase an electron paramagnetic resonance spectrometer (EPR) that will benefit researchers across campus.

 

A proof that proved a conjecture partially formulated by David C. Barrow Professor of Mathematics Valery Alexeevwas at the center of achievements leading to presentation of the 2018 Fields medal, widely considered to be an equivalent of a Nobel prize for mathematicians.

 

Clays in the Critical Zone, by Professor of geology Paul Schroederwas published in August by Cambridge University Press.

 

The University of Georgia jumped three spots to No. 13 in the U.S. News & World Report 2019 ranking of best public national universities, the highest ranking in UGA’s history.

 

UGA is one of six partner organizations that will receive a total of $10 million over five years from the National Science Foundation to develop bold, new educational models that broaden participation in STEM programs and fields. Awarded under the NSF INCLUDES program, the new initiative will be called the National Alliance for Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty, or NAIDSF.

 

And congratulations to our Franklin College colleagues Laura Ackerley, Jessica Couch, Subrina Dake, Julie Grainy, Jean Martin-Williams, Bryan McLucas, and Kyle Poe, who were among the 2018 Diversity and Inclusion certificate recipients recognized at the Embracing Diversity event held Sept. 6 at the Chapel.

 

 

Image: Recipients of the Diversity and Inclusion Certificate were recognized at the Sept. 6 Embracing Diversity event. (Photo by Dorothy Kozlowski)