Tags: Society


Reading by Philip Lee Williams

A former Franklin colleague near and dear to many of us returns to campus this week to read from his new memoir, It Is Written. Welcome back, Phil: Award-winning author Philip Lee Williams will read from his latest autobiography, "It Is Written: My Life in Letters." The book covers Williams' 30-year career and tells the story of his creative life in an open, jaunty and often hilarious autobiography. Presented by UGA Libraries. Over a 30-year…


Teaching Ferguson's lessons

Hot-off-the-presses is not usually a part of lesson plans in university classrooms - unless it is. History, political science, economics... social sciences and humanities classtime can easily and sometimes should be convulsed in topical isses. Faculty at institutions in the immediate area don't have the luxury of remove and often need to incorporate the events for multiple reasons. The Chronicle of Higher Education shares some lessons plans from…


Welcome to the Class of 2018

The 5,285 freshmen who entered UGA this week, assembled into a Super G on Sunday in Sanford Stadium as part of the Freshman Welcome to the Class of 2018 sponsored by the Student Government Association and the Student Alumni Council.  That's a lot of people - normally, you would have to be crossing 42nd Street and 7th Ave to see that many people in one place. Welcome to everyone and do not worry: you will get lost, and then lost again…


The Humanities: towards greater empathy

News and current events today challenge us to be able to see the world from the persepctive of others. The more insulated we become - socially, economically, politically - the more difficult it can be to understand the broader issues and events swirling around us. Of course, an education steeped in the humanities can go a long way towards making us better people, better citizens who can relate to our fellow citizens constructively, who want to…


Educator/alum addresses school reformers

Some great plain talk on school reform from Franklin College alumnus and Clarke Central High School literature teacher Ian Altman in the Washington Post: 7. Don’t tell us to leave politics out of the classroom.  Don’t be naïve.  Learning always has some kind of political efficacy. Some opinions are more sensible than others, some arguments stronger than others, some interpretations and theories better supported than others. It is okay…


Renovations around campus

It's that time of year (in which I start out several posts with 'It's that time of year...') when the town begins to be once again flooded with people and cars, returning students, parents, futons, and hopes (we hope). Instead of showing a picture of a very congested Milledge Avenue during sorority rush, we'll preview some renovations to campus buildings that will soon re-open. The University Architects office does a great job keeping our…


Faculty in the media, Summer 2014

The summer slows on campus but our faculty have been very busy in the national and international media. A sampling of the active engagement of faculty scholarship and expertise across a braod range of subjects: When predators vanish, so does the ecosystem – The New York Times reports on a study that shows recreational fishing and crabbing may be responsible for dying salt marshes off the coast of New England.  But “it’s still a leap to…


Campus smart streets

It's the lull just before fall semester, but around campus, progress marches on. Though they have been a political hot potato locally, smart streets are a safety innovation the university can and has embraced. Note the new pedestrian islands on Carlton Street in front of Stegeman Coliseum. The university has added painted bike lanes around campus as well, all in the service of safer transit in what is a very densely populated area. Look for more…


Pavlic on Palestine

Creative writing professor and poet Ed Pavlić just returned from the West Bank, where he toured the region with other writers as well as government and NGO officials. He offers some poignant observations about the current conflict in this piece for Africa Is A Country: I know. It’s the oldest of old hats to note the distended shapes American journalism creates to preserve the Israel-first, false impression of some symmetry or parity between…


This week in UGA history

213 years ago, by just a few days (July 25, 1801), there appeared a classified ad in the Augusta Chronicle (alas, no link from that year) announcing that: The Senaticus Academicus had chosen a site for the university, "an institution deeply interesting to the present age, and still more to an encreasing posterity." [Re-]discovered in Nash Boney's excellent A Pictorial History of the University of Georgia. May we be today and always deeply…


Summer Commencement

The summer semester is winding down on campus and that can only mean one thing--summer commencement is quickly approaching.  This summer, commencement is being held on Friday, August 1 at 9:30 a.m. at Stegeman Coliseum.  The 2014 summer commencement is a combined Graduate and Undergraduate event. Doors open at 8 a.m.  For those unable to attend,the ceremony will be broadcast live on Channel 15 of the University Cable System and…


Workshop for Researchers: Displaying your data

The UGA Statistical Consulting Center (SCC) announces its inaugural short course, “Exploratory Data Analysis in Excel”. This two hour mini-workshop will be open to faculty, staff and students from Franklin College. The recommended audience is researchers who are new to quantitative research, and who want to learn some simple methods for understanding and displaying data in Excel. A background in statistics is not required. This hands-on short…


Changing the Humanities

It is difficult to defend the humanities and simultaneously champion the idea that they must change with the times. An article in the CHE shows the Mellon Foundation grappling with this contradiction: Other private donors and foundations—the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, for instance—foot the bill for occasional humanities projects. But the Mellon foundation and the National Endowment for…


Chemistry doctoral graduate Gilliard awarded Merck Fellowship

2014 doctoral graduate in the department of chemistry Robert J. Gilliard, Jr., has been awarded a UNCF/Merck Foundation Postdoctoral Science Research Fellowship. The award provides $92,000 and includes a stipend, research grant and travel funds for up to two years of fellowship tenure: Gilliard will pursue research projects focused on synthetic chemistry and will collaborate with John Protasiewicz of Case Western Reserve University in…


The Impact of Giving

Scholarship and research support from private giving to the Franklin College avails our students and faculty of broad opportunities across every aspect of society. This short video, featuring a student and one of our donors, elaborates on the impact of giving:      


1876

Eighteen hundred seventy-six was a tumultous year in American history, and on today's date in that year was the infamous Battle of Little Bighorn: The sun was just cracking over the horizon that Sunday, June 25, 1876, as men and boys began taking the horses out to graze. First light was also the time for the women to poke up last night’s cooking fire. The Hunkpapa woman known as Good White Buffalo Woman said later she had often been in camps…


The Years of Writing Dangerously

Is literature better when produced under pressure? Cultural or political censorship can be a crucible, a subject quite dear to the blog's heart. Without endorsing it, here's a recent CHE commentary on the subject that raises some interesting points: In 1857, by contrast, Charles Baudelaire was put on trial and forced to pay a fine of 300 francs for the "insult to public decency" that his volume of poetry Les Fleurs du mal was judged to…


New master's degree collaboration with State Farm Insurance

Our department of statistics serves as an important nexus - instructing majors and graduate students, master's students from other disciplines and providing modeling and analysis for research projects around campus. It's terrific reputation is well-earned and now that renown has dveloped into a promising corporate partnership: [The department of] statistics and State Farm Insurance Companies will cooperate on a new program beginning this fall…

US map
Uncommon History

The new book by Russell Professor of History and department head Claudio Saunt in gaining great interest right out of the gate, and for good reason: This interactive map, produced by University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt to accompany his new book West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, offers a time-lapse vision of the transfer of Indian land between 1776 and 1887. As blue “Indian homelands” disappear, small red…


Athfest 2014

One of the many great things about UGA is its symbiotic relationship with its hometown of Athens, Ga. The great intermingling between town and gown creates a constant fecund season for creative collaboration in arts, entertainment, education and all the related enterprises that group up around these activities. One of those is Athfest, and our students, staff and faculty will be well-represented this weekend as spectators, organizers, volunteers…


Women's Media Center Live to feature IWS Director

The UGA Institute for Women’s Studies director, Dr. Juanita Johnson-Bailey, will make a guest appearance this weekend on Women’s Media Center Live, a weekly talk radio hour on CBS radio hosted by political activist and author Robin Morgan.   Johnson-Bailey’s appearance will air June 7 at 11 a.m. You can listen here as it happens or any time after the air date.   Johnson-Bailey holds the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching…


Creative Curricula

The future of higher education is always a hot topic - though it can be difficult to predict from this side of the arch, front-loaded as we are with the present, if not the past. That being said, there are important elements of what we do and teach that, if arranged differently, could re-inforce traditional disiciplines and provide next-generation skills in the context in which they will be needed. For example, this Baltimore Magazine article…


NSF Graduate Research Fellowships

Graduate research fellowships are some of the most important investments of extramural funding. This is 'seed money' for tomorrow's best scientists, many of whom are right here on the UGA campus. Evidence of that is 11 new National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships announced today: The program fellowships, which recognize and support outstanding graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, are among the…

Obama with group
Presidential Early Career Award

Our highly accomplished faculty members are awarded a number of grants and individual honors on a regular basis, which of course keeps the Chronicles blog humming right along. This acknowledge of chemistry professor Gary Douberly by President Obama is yet again a very significant distinction we are quite pleased to share: [Douberly] was among a group of over 100 leading researchers nationwide who were honored recently at the White House as…


May Day

May 1 is a world holiday, commemorating the execution of four anarchists executed in 1887 for struggling for an 8-hour workday: Originally a pagan holiday, the roots of the modern May Day bank holiday are in the fight for the eight-hour working day in Chicago in 1886, and the subsequent execution of innocent anarchist workers. In 1887, four Chicago anarchists were executed; a fifth cheated the hangman by killing himself in prison. Three more…
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