Emory Magazine / July 2018

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MAGAZINE

VO L . 9 3 N O. 4

Sharp Thinking How Michael Dubin’s Dollar Shave Club became such a big (not-so-hairy) deal

Boosting Start-Ups FRANKENSTEIN TURNS 200 Opioid Crisis Management

So long as you Go Beyond.

GOIZUETABEYOND.COM

P H O T O G R A P H Y D U B I N : C O U R T E S Y O F D O L L A R S H AV E C L U B ; AT L A N TA T E C H V I L L A G E : A L L I S O N S H I R R E F F S ; B O O K : S T E P H E N N O W L A N D

Goizueta Beyond is for the excellence of tens of thousands of dynamic, talented people. The ones who innovate today’s businesses. The ones who educate tomorrow’s leaders. The ones who elevate humanity for the benefit of more than themselves. Go be empowered. Go be creative. Go be empathetic.

C O N T E N TS

Emory Magazine Vol. 93 No. 4

COVER

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Welcome to the Club Michael Dubin 01C, founder and CEO of the uber-hip, subscription-based Dollar Shave Club, gives Emory’s 2018 graduates his secret to success: Follow your gut, don’t worry about where it will lead, and there’s not much that a little shave butter can’t fix.

By Paige P. Parvin 96G

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P H O T O G R A P H Y D U B I N : C O U R T E S Y O F D O L L A R S H AV E C L U B ; AT L A N TA T E C H V I L L A G E : A L L I S O N S H I R R E F F S ; B O O K : S T E P H E N N O W L A N D

So You Want to Start a Business Entrepreneurship in Atlanta is exploding, and Emory is a major player. Goizueta Business School has created a strategic set of programs to help students, alumni, and faculty launch new ventures.

By Scott Henry

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Happy Birthday, Monster From labs to libraries, theater to theology, the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein animates a yearlong Emory celebration of all things monstrous, including an anthology on the story’s enduring allure.

By Carol Clark

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Moving the Needle With a national spotlight on the deadly opioid epidemic, Emory experts are redoubling existing response efforts and creating new ones—all to help individuals today and find solutions for tomorrow.

By Paige P. Parvin 96G

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C O N T E N TS

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Editor Paige P. Parvin 96G

POSITIVE NUMBERS

Associate Editor Maria M. Lameiras

6 HISTORY MADE MANIFEST

Executive Director of Communication Susan Carini 04G

FACULTY BOOKS

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CARRION, AND LIGHTER FARE

14

PADDING THE EAGLES’ NEST

STUDENTS

EMORY EVERYWHERE

OFFICE HOURS

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WILD IDEAS WORTH LIVING

DOOLEY NOTED

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ALUMNI PROFILE

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ALUMNI INK

59

TRIBUTE

60

CODA

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SENSATION SEEKERS

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ROLE(S) PLAY: ROSEMARY MAGEE

20 IN CLASS

SCIENCE OR FAKE NEWS? RESEARCH

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BABY TEETH

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COMMENCEMENT 2018

JASON MCCARTHY 01C

Contributors Ken Carter Carol Clark Laura Douglas-Brown 95C 95G Quinn Eastman Gary Goettling Scott Henry April Hunt Elaine Justice Kimber Williams Copy Editor Jane Howell

Director of Creative Services Alex Bundrick Design Gordon Boice Elizabeth Karp Stanis Kodman Photography Kay Hinton Stephen Nowland Ann Watson Production Manager Stuart Turner Senior Vice President, Communications and Public Affairs David Sandor University President Claire E. Sterk

BILLY E. FRYE 54G 56PHD

A SON, STOLEN

MORE ONLINE AT EMORY.EDU/MAGAZINE V I D EO : I N S I D E H A R P E R L E E’S WO R L D

Historian Joe Crespino discusses how Harper Lee’s letters shed light on the dichotomy in the writer’s iconic main character.

P O D CAST: 20 0 Y E A RS O F F R A N K E N ST E I N

GPB’s Two Way Street covers Emory’s yearlong celebration.

E X PA N D E D F E AT U R E : M O R E O N JAS O N M C CA RT H Y 0 1 C

How an Emory grad and army veteran sparked a fitness trend.

EMORY MAGAZINE (ISSN 00136727) is published quarterly by Emory’s Division of Communications and Public Affairs. Nonprofit postage paid at 3900 Crown Rd. SE, Atlanta, Georgia, 30304; and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to OFFICE OF ALUMNI AND DEVELOPMENT RECORDS, 1762 Clifton Road, Suite 1400, Atlanta, Georgia 30322.

Emory Magazine is distributed free to alumni and friends of the university. Address changes may be emailed to eurec@ emory.edu or sent to the Office of Alumni and Development Records, 1762 Clifton Road, Suite 1400, Atlanta, Georgia 30322. If you are an individual with a disability and wish to acquire this publication in an alternative format, please contact Paige Parvin (address above) or call 404.727.7873.

No. 18-EU-EMAG-0042 ©2018, a publication of the Division of Communications and Public Affairs.

The comments and opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily represent those of Emory University or the staff of Emory Magazine.

ON THE COVER Emory Commencement speaker Michael Dubin 01C in a vintage barber chair on the Quad. Photo by Kay Hinton.

P H O T O G R A P H Y L A M B , B R E N N A N : K AY H I N TO N ; M C C A R T H Y: C O U R T E S Y O F G O R U C K . C O M

POINTS OF INTEREST

L E T T E RS

WINTER 2018

MAGAZINE

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MINDS AT WORK

Special Research Issue

P H O T O G R A P H Y L A M B , B R E N N A N : K AY H I N TO N ; M C C A R T H Y: C O U R T E S Y O F G O R U C K . C O M

G A I N I NG ON C A NCE R H A LT I NG H A BI TAT DE ST RUCT ION T R AV E L I NG I N T I M E E XT E N DI NG BRA I N H E A LT H SUSTA I N I NG GR E AT SCHOLA R SH I P

I’M ALWAYS PLEASED TO RECEIVE my Emory Magazine (winter 2018). It not only keeps me informed about goings-on but reminds me what a treasure a diverse, caring, courageous liberal arts institution like Emory is in our local community, in our nation, and in our troubled world. Emory is a beacon for scholarship, a balm to unnecessary suffering, and a champion in the quest for truth. I particularly enjoyed the winter 2018 special research issue. My goodness!

The exciting challenges that are being undertaken and conquered by our faculty and students make me proud. Finally, I offer a suggestion: you thoughtfully provide information about an individual’s association to Emory with a code after his or her name, such as 04MBA or 07PhD, which are easy enough to figure out. However, others like 48MR, 77T, 85C, 10PH are less obvious.

Wouldn’t it be good to have a legend on the back cover or on the table of contents page explaining all the codes? Perhaps it’s there and I’ve missed it. If so, can you make it more conspicuous? If not, can you add it? A related note: as an alum, I’m not only interested in classmates but also faculty and staff who might have touched my life. A faculty and staff section at the end of the class notes section would be a welcome addition for readers and a nod of recognition to those important contributors to the Emory experience. Keep up the good work.

Don Caskey 71G

AS AN EMORY COLLEGE ALUM, I applaud your coverage of the cutting-edge work of Dr. “O” and Dr. “Ram” (Outpacing Cancer, winter 2018). My wife, Penny, was one of their patients, and these two and others at Winship and Emory are unsung heroes.

Articles like yours give more detail of the complexities of their work, and I hope might stir more investment—from government budgets especially, and charitable donations as well. Penny died less than two years after her diagnosis, but we were profoundly impacted by the dedication, brilliance, and empathy of these two giants in the cancer world. I don’t think the Atlanta area gives Emory enough credit for the jewel in our midst. Thank you for shining the light.

I REALLY ENJOYED TWO ARTICLES from the 2018 winter magazine, Hanging by a Thread and Tracing the Footsteps of Emory’s Indiana Jones. For the first, the story really put me in the mood. It set the right tone. And in that same spirit, I continued to read the second story, what a treat! I only wish the story had included a link to the web app; I almost don’t believe it exists. I can sure imagine the responsibility of turning those old pages must have weighed heavily on the young Hoover.

Cody Scoles 11C Roswell Editor’s Note: Thank you for your letter. At your suggestion, we have added the link to Andrew

Richard Hill 84C Atlanta

Hoover’s interactive map to the web version of the story. The link can be found at emory.edu/ EMORY_MAGAZINE/issues/2018/winter/features/Shelton.html.

DR. KEN WALKER HAS BEEN A FRIEND since 1955 when I started at Oxford (The Courage to Care, spring 2018; Tribute: Kenneth Walker, emory.edu/EMORY_MAGAZINE/ issues/2018/winter). Even then he was a mentor to this young freshman. At “Big Emory” we roomed in adjacent rooms, and he continued to be a great influence on my going to medical school. Although he was in medicine and I in surgery, our paths crossed over the years. I wish it had been more. He will be missed by all he has guided in medicine and patient care. Ken Walker was a true physician who knew the practice of medicine was an art and a science. He did both in an outstanding manner. As is said in the navy, Bravo Zulu, friend. (Job well done.)

What do you think? The editors of Emory Magazine welcome letters from our readers.

Write to us at paige.parvin@emory.edu, or 1762 Clifton Rd., Suite 1000, Atlanta, Georgia, 30322. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and to correct style as needed. The views expressed by the writers do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the administration of Emory University.

Rear Admiral (Ret.) James R. Fowler 57Ox 64M 73MR Former Surgeon General, US Navy Reserve Salt Lake City, Utah

THANK YOU FOR WRITING THAT beautiful article (The Courage to Care, spring 2018). He was everything you said and more.

He was my special friend for forty-five years.

Lula Doris T. Robinson Editor’s Note: Thank you for your kind words

Atlanta

and excellent suggestion. We have reinstituted the practice of including an updated legend of Emory degree designations, which you will find at the beginning of the class notes section.

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As national rankings continue to rise, applications to Emory soar

They Keep on Coming

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mory received a record 27,982 applications to be part of the Class of 2022, a 16 percent jump from the previous year.

The university received applications from— and offered admission to—students in all �ifty states. Admitted students represent seventy-�ive countries by citizenship, speaking more than seventy-nine languages either as their �irst language or at home. About 29 percent of the admitted domestic students to Emory College of Arts and Sciences are from underrepresented minority groups, including thirty-six students from Puerto Rico.

This marks the third year of increased applications for both Emory College and Oxford College.

Emory College offered admission to 5,103 students, an 18.5 percent admission rate. Oxford College has admitted 4,144 students. About 58 percent of students applied to both campuses.

“The depth and diversity of this year’s record-setting applicant pool showcases Emory’s reputation as a home for students and faculty dedicated to both academic excellence and making transformative contributions to the world,” says President Claire E. Sterk. “We look forward to welcoming these students to Emory’s community of committed, engaged scholars and future leaders in a world that faces drastic changes.”

Beyond the growth in the number of students vying for spots in undergraduate programs, admission o�icers saw students with higher academic achievements and who also embody Emory’s commitment to discovery, engagement, and leadership both in the classroom and in the community.

“We are moving beyond focusing on students who have the ability to do something wonderful to those who will,” says John Latting, associate vice provost for enrollment and dean of admission. “Emory is attractive not just for its liberal arts and research excellence but for students who are thinking of how to have a positive in�luence on the world.”

27,982

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TOTAL APPLICATIONS FOR THE CLASS OF 2022— A 16 PERCENT INCREASE FROM LAST YEAR

P H O T O G R A P H Y E M O R Y P H OTO/ V I D E O

Positive Numbers

A NEW VOICE FOR COMMUNICATIONS Nationally Ranked Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing is ranked third among the nation’s graduate nursing schools, according to US News & World Report’s 2019 “America’s Best Graduate Schools” guide. The school was ranked fourth last year. Emory’s schools of nursing, business, law, medicine, and public health are the top-ranked schools in Georgia in their respective categories.

In other national rankings:

3

rd

20 22 23 2

th

nd

rd

P H O T O G R A P H Y E M O R Y P H OTO/ V I D E O

nd

NELL HODGSON WOODRUFF SCHOOL OF NURSING MASTER'S PROGRAM: 3RD Doctor of Nursing Practice: 5th Family Nurse Practitioner: 7th Nurse Practitioner: Adult/Gerontology, Acute Care: 9th Nurse Practitioner: Adult/Gerontology, Primary Care: 14th Nursing Administration: 11th

GOIZUETA BUSINESS SCHOOL FULL-TIME MBA PROGRAM: 20TH Part-time MBA program: 15th Executive MBA program: 23rd

LAW SCHOOL: 22ND Health Law: 25th International Law: 27th Executive MBA: 23rd

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: 23RD AMONG RESEARCH- ORIENTED MEDICAL SCHOOLS 37th nationally among primary care schools

WALLACE H. COULTER DEPARTMENT OF BIO MEDICAL ENGINEERING PHD PROGRAM: 2ND A joint effort between the Laney Graduate School, the School of Medicine, and Georgia Tech

Among programs not surveyed this year, Rollins School of Public Health remains No. 7 in the nation; the School of Medicine’s master’s degree physician assistant program remains No. 3 and its doctoral program in physical therapy No. 5; and Laney Graduate School’s PhD program in clinical psychology remains No. 11.

David Sandor joined Emory as senior vice president of communications and public affairs in March.

“I am very pleased to David Sandor announce Mr. Sandor’s appointment,” says President Claire E. Sterk. “David brings extensive experience in communications and government relations to our talented team here at Emory. He is a proven, thoughtful leader who values teamwork in a collegial, productive, and strategically driven environment.”

Sandor most recently served as vice president for corporate communications and public affairs for Health Care Service Corporation, an independent licensee of Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) Association in Chicago. His responsibilities included media relations, crisis management, employee and executive communication, integrated marketing communications, and social media positioning.

Sandor brings extensive experience aligning business practices with social responsibility initiatives to effect positive change in communities. During his tenure, the company was recognized by the Civic 50 and the World’s Most Ethical Companies for its leading community relations strategies and programs.

Emory’s Communications and Public Affairs division works strategically through print, digital, and media platforms to create awareness, understanding, and support of the university and its mission. The division is made up of integrated teams in media relations, government and community affairs, marketing, digital strategy and design, photographic and video production, and editorial and graphic design services.

“It is my privilege to help communicate Emory’s outstanding record of academic excellence, health innovation, and deep engagement in the Atlanta community,” says Sandor. “I look forward to working collaboratively across the university to ensure we build a strong Emory identity and reach out through innovative platforms to our many constituents around the world.”

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History Made Manifest

W

ho were they? How did they get here? Who brought them, and who bought them?

Those are the questions David Eltis, professor of history emeritus, has been asking about the Atlantic slave trade for more than a quarter century. His restless search became the web-based resource Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, hosted at Emory and used by hundreds of scholars and knowledge-seekers each year.

“For more than a quarter century, David Eltis’s Transatlantic Slave Trade Database has been the gold standard in the field,” says Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. “It has transformed what we know and how we think and write about the forced removal of 12.5 million Africans to the New World and the 10.7 million who survived the horrors of the middle

passage. No scholar can undertake a serious study of that process without consulting it.”

And the project continues to expand, thanks to support such as a recent grant of $300,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for use by the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) to fund a new initiative allowing researchers at Emory, across the United States, and abroad to update and add to the renowned Voyages website. The latest effort, called People of the Atlantic Slave Trade (PAST), will provide information on any historical figure who can be linked to a slave voyage—enslaved and enslavers alike.

“We are proud to house this project at Emory and grateful for support from the Mellon Foundation, which advances our efforts to make this extensive research publicly available, broadening its reach and impact,” says Dwight McBride, Emory provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “The People of the Atlantic Slave Trade project builds on the scholarly resources of the Slave Voyages website and promises to offer new insights into the stories of thousands of individual people—both the enslaved and the enslavers—from this ignominious part of our history. By adding searchable access to their names, the site will link these individuals to time and place, which in turn can help us better

ARTERIES OF OPPRESSION Available for download, this map summarizes the paths that brought captives to the Americas.

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M A P E M O R Y C E N T E R F O R D I G I TA L S C H O L A R S H I P

Mellon grant will expand Emory’s Voyages Slave Trade Database, shifting the focus from ships to people

understand ourselves and our shared history.”

PAST brings together the work of twenty-one scholars whose expertise matches the geographical range of the transatlantic slave trade. “PAST will create a biographical database of all those who have a documented link to any of the voyages in the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, whether as an enslaved person, an African seller, a buyer in the Americas, a ship owner, or a captain,” Eltis says.

PAST will be incorporated into the Voyages website— which already contains the names of thirty thousand slave ship captains and ship owners, as well as ninety-one thousand enslaved Africans—and will be accessible to researchers and the public via its own interface.

M A P E M O R Y C E N T E R F O R D I G I TA L S C H O L A R S H I P

The project promises to offer new insights into the stories of thousands of individual people— both the enslaved and the enslavers.

“Overall, this newest phase will allow scholars to examine the organization of the traffic, locate the social background of those involved, make new assessments on the trade’s impact and relative importance, and eventually develop new explanations of why a race-based Atlantic slave trade evolved, why it endured for 340 years, and why it ended,” Eltis says. “Our aim is to extend the primary function of the website from a ship-based to a people-based record of the movement of people from Africa to the Americas.”

Since its online launch in 2008, the Voyages website has become a widely used reference tool for the study of slavery in the Atlantic world, says Allen Tullos, professor of history, project codirector, and codirector of ECDS. By mid-2018, www.slavevoyages.org will offer a new database comprising ten thousand intra-American slave voyages that occurred within the Americas, usually carrying recent survivors of the middle passage.

“Half of all disembarking captives faced a lengthy second journey after the middle passage,” says Eltis.

Since Voyages’ inception in 1992, the project has received funding of more than $3 million. In addition to Mellon, the project has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board of the United Kingdom, administered through the University of Hull in the UK. In 2010, maps generated by the project were published in print form as the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, coedited by Eltis at Emory and David Richardson of the University of Hull. —Elaine Justice

SLUSH FUN Even icebergs can’t escape the laws of physics The laws for how granular materials flow apply even at the giant, geophysical scale of icebergs piling up in the ocean at the outlet of a glacier, scientists have shown.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the findings, describing the dynamics of the clog of icebergs—known as an ice mélange—in front of Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier. The fast-moving glacier is considered a bellwether for the effects of climate change.

“We’ve connected microscopic theories for the mechanics of granular flowing with the world’s largest granular material—a glacial ice mélange,” says Justin Burton, assistant professor of physics and lead author of the paper.

“Our results could help researchers who are trying to understand the future evolution of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets. We’ve showed that an ice mélange could potentially have a large and measurable effect on the production of large icebergs by a glacier.”

The National Science Foundation funded the research, which brought together physicists who study the fundamental mechanics of granular materials in laboratories and glaciologists who spend their summers exploring polar ice sheets.

“Glaciologists generally deal with slow, steady deformation of glacial ice, which behaves like thick molasses—a viscous material creeping towards the sea,” says coauthor Jason Amundson, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau. “Ice mélange, on the other hand, is fundamentally a granular material—essentially a giant slushy—that is governed by different physics. We wanted to understand the behavior of ice mélange and its effects on glaciers.”—Carol Clark

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SHORT LIST

First Fulbright Distinguished Chair Emory is one of only a few US institutions to have formed a partnership with Fulbright Brasil to host a senior Brazilian scholar for one semester each academic year.

The inaugural Fulbright Emory Distinguished Chair in Brazilian Studies is historian Benito Schmidt, a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in residence for fall 2018.

Safety First Emory has earned reaccreditation as a Safe Community by the National Safety Council and Safe Communities America, affirming the university’s commitment as a leader in championing safety and preventing injury. The designation recognizes Emory and its coalition, the Emory Safety Alliance, for implementing effective strategies to promote safety and address injuries.

$15m

Stroke of Fortune The Marcus Foundation has donated $15 million to establish the Marcus Stroke Network, a coordinated and collaborative effort among Grady Health System, Emory’s School of Medicine, Boca Raton Regional Hospital, and the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

Powered by the comprehensive stroke centers at Grady and Emory and guided by the American Stroke Association, the network aims to help reduce stroke disability and death rates in the Southeastern US.

Winship Endowed Chairs Three members of Winship Cancer Institute’s Department of Radiation Oncology have been honored with endowed chair appointments in recognition and support of their outstanding contributions to Winship’s cancer research. Xingming Deng is the inaugural holder of the Chair in Cancer Biology; David Yu is the inaugural holder of the Jerome Landry, MD Chair of Cancer Research; and Hyunsuk Shim is the inaugural holder of the Crocker Family Chair in Cancer Innovation.

New Goldwater Scholar Emory College sophomore and chemistry major Ashley Diaz 20C is one of 211 students selected for a 2018 Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier undergraduate award in mathematics, natural sciences, and engineering. Diaz, a Woodruff Scholar, plans to study how the compounds in surface-level disinfectants and antimicrobial sprays cause bacterial resistance.

P H O T O G R A P H Y L E T T E R S : C O U R E S Y O F R O S E L I B R A R Y; K L I B A N O F F: C O U R T E S Y O F WA B E

Latham Elected to Board of Trustees John Latham 79L of Atlanta, a partner with Alston and Bird, has been elected to Emory’s Board of Trustees. Latham is an experienced trial lawyer whose primary expertise is in securities class action litigation, derivative suits, and regulatory investigations. He has been appointed special assistant attorney general for the State of Georgia Teachers and Employees Retirement Fund and Office of Treasury and Fiscal Services and is chair of the Georgia Corporate Code Revision Subcommittee on Officer and Director Liability and Indemnification.

Still Sustainable Emory has once again received a Gold rating from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education for its leadership and innovation in university sustainability. Emory also is ranked in the top ten for sustainability among institutions in the American Association of Universities.

P H O T O G R A P H Y E M O R Y P H OTO/ V I D E O

Guggenheim Fellows Two Emory professors— historian Carol Anderson (left) and art historian C. Jean Campbell—are among 175 academics from the US and Canada awarded 2018 Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and chair of African American studies, won a fellowship in constitutional studies, and Campbell, a professor of late medieval and Renaissance art history, won a fellowship in fine arts research.

P O I N TS O F I N T E R E ST

Who Was Atticus Finch?

ANSWERS MAY LIE IN THE LETTERS OF HARPER LEE

A

collection of personal correspondence and memorabilia of renowned novelist Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, has been acquired by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

The letters, written between 1956 and 1961, are from Lee to New York architect and close personal friend Harold Caufield and his circle of friends, which included Michael and Joy Brown, the couple who financially supported Lee for a year while she drafted Go Set a Watchman and began work on what would become To Kill a Mockingbird.

“This correspondence of Harper Lee offers meaningful revelations into her life and her love of words,” says Rosemary Magee, former director of the Rose Library. “We find her candid and

MEANINGFUL REVELATIONS Harper Lee’s letters shed new light on her literary characters.

insightful, modest yet full of life, thankful for the love and support of friends.”

Emory acquired the letters from retired attorney Paul Kennerson of La Jolla, California, who said he approached the university after having met and talked with Emory historian Joseph Crespino. Crespino contacted Kennerson while researching his book, Atticus Finch: The Biography.

Lee’s letters “provide a window into her life and her views during a period of tumultuous change in Southern political life. Read with other historical sources,

SPEAKING UP FOR THE SILENT

P H O T O G R A P H Y L E T T E R S : C O U R E S Y O F R O S E L I B R A R Y; K L I B A N O F F: C O U R T E S Y O F WA B E

P H O T O G R A P H Y E M O R Y P H OTO/ V I D E O

Podcast cracks murder cases of the Jim Crow South

they offer clues as to why the character of Atticus seems to diverge so sharply between the two novels,” says Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History.

The archive is available to the public.

A recent Emory College graduate was working as freelance producer at WABE Radio when she told a colleague about a course she had taken at Emory that was still on her mind: Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project, taught by Pulitzer Prize–winning author and journalist Hank Klibanoff. An idea sparked by that conversation grew into Buried Truths, a new podcast series featuring Klibanoff and the project’s work.

The class, which began in 2011, asks students to take an indepth look at racially motivated murders that went unpunished in the Jim Crow South. In fall 2015, students studied the case of Isaiah Nixon, a twenty-eight-year-old farmer and father of six who dared to vote in Georgia’s Democratic Party primary in 1948. Afterward, Nixon was killed in front of his wife and children by two white brothers.

With Buried Truths, Klibanoff set out to explore the death of Nixon and also the South at a pivotal time in history. He says the intention was simply to tell an important story, “but people are absolutely linking it to present times. Those stories that deal with police action and police overreaction, people immediately connect to current times.”

The six-episode podcast series, produced by WABE Radio, is available at www.npr.org/podcasts/577471834/buried-truths.

THE WHOLE STORY Hank Klibanoff turned a class into an NPR podcast.

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mory Healthcare and the Atlanta Falcons have entered into a new medical partnership that designates Emory Healthcare as the official team health care provider of Atlanta’s pro football team.

Emory Healthcare physicians in sports medicine, cardiology, and ophthalmology have a longstanding relationship with the coaches and players of the Atlanta Falcons. The new partnership is an opportunity for the organizations to have a broader relationship and builds on the medical support and care currently provided to the team.

The connection also gives Emory Healthcare new opportunities to engage in community outreach and educate Falcons fans on the importance of maintaining or achieving a healthy lifestyle through preventative care, good nutrition, exercise, regular checkups, and screenings.

Along with the Atlanta Falcons, physicians at Emory Healthcare also serve as the official team health care providers for the Atlanta Hawks, the Atlanta Braves, and the Atlanta Dream, as well as Georgia Tech and several other college and high school athletic associations.

“We are excited to have Emory Healthcare as our official team health care provider for the Atlanta Falcons,” says Tim Zulawski, chief revenue officer, AMB Sports and Entertainment. “Over the past few years, we have enjoyed a great partnership between our players and coaching staff and their team of physicians. We are proud to bring them on in this official capacity.”

“We are very excited about this new partnership and honored that another Atlanta-area team has chosen us to care for their athletes to help them perform at the highest level,” says Jonathan Lewin, president, CEO, and board chair of Emory Healthcare.

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N A L I S E K AY LO R

For patients diagnosed with glioma, a deadly form of brain tumor, the future can be very uncertain.

While gliomas are often fatal within two years of diagnosis, some patients can survive for ten years or more. Predicting the course of a patient’s disease at diagnosis is critical in selecting the right therapy.

Researchers at Emory and Northwestern Universities have developed artificial intelligence software that can predict the survival of patients diagnosed with glioma by examining data from tissue biopsies. The approach, described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is more accurate than the predictions of doctors.

Doctors currently use a combination of genomic tests and microscopic examination of tissues to predict how a patient’s disease will behave clinically or respond to therapy. While reliable, genomic testing does not completely explain patient outcomes. Microscopic examination is used to further refine prognosis; however, it is very subjective and interpretations can impact critical treatment decisions.

Researchers used an approach called deep learning to train software to learn visual patterns associated with patient survival using microscopic images of brain tumor tissue samples. The breakthrough resulted from combining this advanced technology with more conventional methods that statisticians use to analyze patient outcomes.

When the software was trained using both images and genomic data, its predictions of how long patients survive beyond diagnosis were more accurate than those of human pathologists. The study used public data produced by the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Atlas project to develop and evaluate the algorithm.

“The eventual goal is to use this software to provide doctors with more accurate and consistent information. We want to identify patients where treatment can extend life,” says Lee Cooper, lead author and a professor of biomedical informatics at Emory School of Medicine and Winship Cancer Institute. Lead neuropathologist Daniel Brat, who began developing the software while at Emory, is now chair of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

EMORY, FALCONS A WIN-WIN

P H O T O G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F T H E AT L A N TA FA L C O N S

PROFOUND PREDICTIONS

EMORY IN THE NEWS BIG GIFT IS BIG NEWS

A $400 million gift to Emory from the Woodruff Foundation—the university’s largest ever—received nationwide attention in outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, ABC News, and CNBC. Part of the funds will go toward a new health sciences research building planned on Emory’s main Druid Hills campus that will house faculty and staff who aim to develop cures, interventions, and prevention methods that improve the health of patients.

SUBSCRIBING TO SUCCESS

It’s a brave new world for

retail these days, and Goizueta marking professor Daniel McCarthy’s expertise in online and subscription-based businesses has made him a go-to expert. His research and expertise on companies like Wayfair, Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, and Stitch Fix has been frequently cited recently in the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, the Economist, the Financial Times, the Harvard Business Review, and the Boston Globe.

LOCAL NEWS, NATIONAL INTEREST

What happens when a national broadcast group, such as Sinclair Broadcast Group,

buys more and more local television news stations?

Local political news becomes more focused on national politics and reflects the political and ideological leanings of the group, according to research by Emory political science professor Greg Martin and PhD student Josh McCrain. Their research about local news coverage and Sinclair Broadcast Group was covered by the Washington Post, CNN, USA Today, New York Magazine, Poynter, Vox, and Newsweek.

SOTOMAYOR CALLS FOR ACTIVISM

During a visit to Emory in

MEETING A NEED (From left) Faris Mohammed, Nicole Schladt, Danielle Bruce-Steele, and faculty adviser Mary Dudziak plan for the ELLS launch.

Legal help for the LGBTQ community P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N A L I S E K AY LO R

P H O T O G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y O F T H E AT L A N TA FA L C O N S

NEED A GOOD LAW YER? Emory’s School of Law, with support from the Emory Office of LGBT Life, has launched Emory LGBTQ Legal Services (ELLS), an organization created to

provide pro bono legal assistance to members of the LGBTQ community in the Atlanta area.

ELLS will connect pro bono attorneys and volunteer law students with low-income clients who need help with legal issues involving filing insurance denial appeals for trans persons and completing advance directives.

The group also will compile a database of community resources for LGBTQ people in need of legal assistance.

In a time of uncertainty about legal protections for the LGBTQ community, Nicole Schladt 18L, cofounder of ELLS, and Faris Mohammed 18L asked themselves how they could help Atlantans who are worried about the status of measures that ensure equity in civil rights.

February, US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke at an event hosted by Emory University School of Law and stressed the importance of citizens staying engaged in the law-making process. “I believe with all my heart that unless we become engaged in our country and become active participants in making a difference in the world we’re in, that we will be nothing but bystanders otherwise, and nobody should live their life being a bystander,” she said.

Her Emory visit was covered by the Associated Press and picked up by media outlets nationwide.

Organizations such as Lambda Legal and the Transgender Law Center were already working on impact litigation, but there was a dearth of organizations working in direct services for the community.

“Getting involved with the Office of LGBT Life at Emory made me realize that we all have these specialized skills,” says Schladt. “It just seems wrong to not use them to help the community we all love.”

START-UP SUPPORT The new Emory LGBTQ Legal Services has two initial primary needs: volunteer attorneys and financial donations. For more information, visit engage.emory.edu/LGBTQLegal

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FAC U LT Y BO O KS

Carrion, and Lighter Fare The 2018 Feast of Words celebrates 109 faculty authors with wide-ranging tastes

T

o salute those who triumph over the blank page or screen, Emory has an annual, and convivial, answer: the Feast of Words—a celebration of our published authors and editors.

This year’s output includes 115 books authored by 109 faculty members. There were sixty-nine single-author books, twenty-two multiauthor books, and sixteen edited volumes.

“Everyone in this room who has written a book knows what an incredible endeavor it is,” said President Claire E. Sterk at the February event. She drew laughs by quoting from the British writer Somerset Maugham: “There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

We’ve gathered a few noteworthy titles that offer a taste of the larger feast.

African American, and black again, over the course of the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, reveal much about how different nations and ethnicities were coalesced into race.”

She identifies the 1970s through 1990s as the “watershed moment when black novels received national and international accolades.” As figures such as William Bennett and Lynne Cheney protested the turn away from classic literature toward the literature of identity politics, African American scholars challenged the way literary histories were formed.

In the last of nearly five hundred pages, Babb returns to the theme of

“novels of necessity”—the nineteenth-century novels “charged with proving black humanity and intellect.”

“Perhaps they [African American novels] should once again become a literature of necessity because their arguments for the humanity of black Americans are needed to advocate for the respect of all human life; their arguments for equal measure under the law are needed as reminders of the social justice work that still must be done.”

Disturbing Attachments: Genet, Modern Pederasty, and Queer History

By Kadji Amin Kadji Amin—assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies—reveals that after investigating the French writer and political activist Jean Genet in his dissertation, he was ready to quit him. He credits a colleague with convincing him that, “rather than moving on in search of a better object, I might write a good book by thinking through Genet’s disappointment of my scholarly ideals.”

And so he has written a good book, using Genet to interrogate his discipline.

Calling it “cogent, timely, and pathbreaking,” scholar Sharon Patricia Holland

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Valerie Babb begins with refreshing directness in an introduction subtitled “The Problem with the Title of This Volume.” Revealing that the publisher chose the term African American, Babb, Andrew Mellon Professor of Humanities with a joint appointment in African American studies and English, notes that each novelist she includes had a different sense of the term. As she says, “The many events, considerations, and reconsiderations that went into creating an identity variously called black, colored, negro, Negro, African American, Afro-American,

P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

A History of the African American Novel

By Valerie Babb

that democracy is eroded not in a single election or other action but by attrition, courts, legislatures, and people looking the other way. “Democracy is fragile, as is peace,” Zwier concludes.

The Art of Visual Exegesis: Rhetoric, Text, Images Edited by Vernon Robbins, Walter Melion, and Roy Jeal

NO TABOO SUBJECTS Emory faculty members authored 115 books in 2017.

writes, “Queer studies desperately needs this book.”

Eating Ethically: Religion and Science for a Better Diet

By Jonathan Crane The Vulture eats between his meals And that’s the reason why He very, very, rarely feels As well as you and I. His eye is dull, his head is bald, His neck is growing thinner.

Oh! What a lesson for us all To only eat at dinner.

PHOTOGRAPHY STEPHEN NOWL AND

PHOTOGRAPHY STEPHEN NOWL AND

—Hilaire Belloc, More Beasts for Worse Children (1897)

That’s how Jonathan Crane, the Raymond F. Schinazi Scholar in Bioethics and Jewish Thought at Emory’s Center for Ethics, chose to begin.

While poking around in the field of bioethics for discussions about eating-related ailments, Crane found that religious and philosophical traditions, and even contemporary physiology and the scientific study of eating, diverged significantly

from contemporary eating strategies.

Crane’s advice? Focus “on what it means for each individual to be sated.”

As he says, “How and why we eat are two of the most urgent and pressing ethical questions of our very existence, and their answers lie daily in our own hands and mouths.” By heeding those words, no one need suffer the fate of Belloc’s vulture.

Peacemaking, Religious Belief, and the Rule of Law: The Struggle between Dictatorship and Democracy in Syria and Beyond

By Paul Zwier Paul Zwier’s latest book uses Syria to explore ideas of leadership and nationhood. He examines the role of religion in the actions of Bashar al-Assad, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and conservative US Christians. And the professor of law hones in on “the role of the mediator in teaching parties the interrelationship between sustainable peace, forgiveness, and international justice.”

Ultimately, he circles back to the US and hopes his book will be “a warning”

This volume arose out of the Sawyer Seminars held at Emory during 2013–2014. Robbins is professor of New Testament and comparative sacred texts in the Department and Graduate Division of Religion at Emory; Melion is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Art History at Emory; and Jeal is a professor of religion at Booth University College.

A critical study of the intersection of art and biblical interpretation, the book consists of twelve essays from biblical scholars and art historians that merge rhetorical interpretation and cognitive studies with art historical visual exegesis to interpret rhetography in biblical materials.

The Half Wives

By Stacia Pelletier Stacia Pelletier 07PhD, chief writer in the Office of the President, is an accomplished fiction author: Her first novel, Accidents of Providence, was short-listed for the Townsend Prize in Fiction.

With this work, she presents Lucy and Marilyn, both of whom have a relationship with Henry, though they have never met and Marilyn doesn’t know of Lucy’s existence. Set in 1897, the characters—along with Henry and Lucy’s daughter, Blue—eventually converge at the city cemetery on the outskirts of San Francisco, where Marilyn and Henry’s son was buried sixteen years ago. Pelletier manages the novel’s events in a single twenty-four-hour period.

According to Kirkus Reviews, “Well-crafted characters struggling alone with a shared grief furnishes a coursing river on which this intriguing story effortlessly flows.”—Susan Carini 04G

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NEW PROGRAM OFFERS HOLISTIC SUPPORT FOR STUDENT-ATHLETES

ALL-AROUND SUPPORT Eagle Edge director Audrey Hester (center) reviews the program with student-athletes Bennett Shaw 19C (left) and Anna Fuhr 18C.

I

n the world of intercollegiate sports, Emory Athletics is a powerhouse, with twenty-four National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division III national championships, 109 NCAA Postgraduate Scholars, 191 UAA conference titles, and 940 CoSIDA All-Americans, among other honors.

Now the program is expanding its portfolio of victories on the field and in the classroom with Eagle Edge, a program that addresses the unique challenges of the university’s four hundred student-athletes.

Eagle Edge will provide one-stop assistance to aid student-athletes in their academic, athletic, and personal development by holistically focusing on four core areas: academic support, health and well-being, life skills, and leadership and service.

While Emory student-athletes are consistent winners in sports and scholarship with the excellent support that the

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P H O T O G R A P H Y E L L I OT T: E M O R Y P H OTO/ V I D E O ; J O N E S : N I N A S U B I N

COMPETITIVE EDGE

university already provides, Athletics Director Michael Vienna believes such support can be even better.

Eagle Edge embodies that philosophy, offering comprehensive student-athlete support and development unusual for the NCAA Division III level.

“As Emory Athletics continues to strive to be the national model for intercollegiate athletics,” Vienna says, “our intent is to take the Eagle Edge program to the next level so our student-athletes fly higher in all aspects of their growth and development.”

The initiative is the brainchild of Vienna’s predecessor, former Clyde Partin Sr. Director of Athletics Tim Downes. Vienna continued to build on the concept when he joined Emory in 2015, challenging staff to give increased focus to the program’s planning and development and by successfully securing an NCAA Strategic Alliance Matching Grant to hire staff to run it.

Audrey Hester, assistant athletics director for Student-Athlete Success and Compliance, oversees Eagle Edge.

She has spent this academic year working to grow the initiative from a source of informal assistance to a one-stop resource for more structured support that speaks to athletes’ unique needs. So far she has examined what’s already going on, conducted a needs assessment with student-athletes and coaches, and forged partnerships with other campus offices.

“With all the data I have been able to put together, I think next year we will be able to hit the ground running,” says Hester, a former four-year lacrosse student-athlete for Randolph-Macon College and an NCAA postgraduate intern.

Meanwhile, Hester acts as an advocate for student-athletes, helping them navigate campus resources. Both she and senior director of athletics Joyce Jaleel consider Eagle Edge as much a benefit to coaches as it is to student-athletes.

The program also has endorsement from members of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, like Bennett Shaw 19C, who competes in cross-country and track and field. “I really like the idea,” says Shaw, a junior biology major. “It’s a good way to incorporate all the needs of athletes outside of competition.”

And what will a win look like for Eagle Edge?

“Of course, there are the formal assessments that we can do,” Hester says. “But getting an email from a student-athlete or a coach saying thanks for helping them, those are the little moments when I would count this as a successful program.”

In addition to the NCAA’s Division III, Emory’s BE A GOOD SPORT eighteen intercolThe Champions Club is a philanlegiate teams— thropic recognition component of divided evenly Emory’s Department of Athletics. between women A gift to one of our many proand men—also grams has an immediate impact compete in the on students. To learn more, visit emoryathletics.com/sports/ the eight-member championsclub/Donate_Today.

University Athletic Association.

—S. A. Reid

P H O T O G R A P H Y E M O R Y AT H L E T I C S

P O I N TS O F I N T E R E ST / ST U D E N TS

Leading with Intention Emory College charts a course for the path ahead New research initiatives in the natural sciences, social justice, and the creative arts will help undergraduates prepare to address the most pressing issues of the future while also raising the profile of Emory College of Arts and Sciences. The college has launched an ambitious set of strategic priorities set to advance the school as a leader for the liberal arts and sciences, both within the university and beyond.

“Anytime there is a conversation in our society about the impact and value of the liberal arts, Emory should be in the heart of it, to be a model institution people will follow,” says Michael A. Elliott, dean of Michael A. Elliott Emory College.

AN ATLANTA WRITER RETURNS

P H O T O G R A P H Y E L L I OT T: E M O R Y P H OTO/ V I D E O ; J O N E S : N I N A S U B I N

P H O T O G R A P H Y E M O R Y AT H L E T I C S

NOTED AUTHOR JOINS EMORY’S CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM New York Times best-selling author and critically acclaimed writer Tayari Jones will join Emory’s renowned Creative Writing Program this fall as a member of the English faculty in Emory College.

A native of Atlanta whose hometown features prominently in her Tayari Jones writing, Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage (Algonquin Books, 2018), an Oprah’s Book Club Selection this year.

“It is a deep pleasure to welcome to our faculty an artist with the talent and

To that end, the college’s plan, “Leading the Liberal Arts and Sciences,” places renewed focus on the discovery of knowledge, the creation of new works, and the pursuit of paradigm-shifting research with broad impact. Another area of importance is increased investment in building faculty excellence and providing an exceptional student experience—and amplifying the impact of both. The college’s work will tie in closely with the university’s strategic plan, which is expected to launch in fall 2018.

“The intersection of education and research is what makes Emory such an essential institution for our world,” says Elliott.

“This plan strongly ties the success of Emory College and the university to each other, and I have no doubt we can set the standard for what a liberal arts research university can achieve.”

reach of Tayari Jones. Her appointment extends Emory’s remarkable record as a home to important voices in contemporary literature,” says Michael A. Elliott, dean of Emory College.

Her other books include Leaving Atlanta, based on her experiences growing up during the Atlanta child murders; The Untelling, also set in Atlanta and the recipient of the Lillian Smith Book Award; and Silver Sparrow, selected by the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read Library of Contemporary Classics.

“This appointment at Emory is truly a homecoming for me as a Southern writer.

I’m thrilled to return home and teach creative writing at one of the best universities in the nation and the flagship for higher education in the South,” Jones says.

Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, where a class with Atlanta playwright and author Pearl Cleage her

sophomore year fostered a passion for creative writing that set the course for her career.

“A major draw for coming to Emory was the opportunity to teach and mentor undergraduates, and to foster the next generation by helping young writers find their voice and their path,” Jones says.

Jones also is a graduate of the University of Iowa and Arizona State University. She joins Emory from Rutgers University–Newark where she was a founding member of the university’s MFA program in creative writing.

A member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, Jones is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship.

She has spent the 2017–2018 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada– Las Vegas.

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O F F I C E H O U RS

Oxford College Professor Kenneth Carter on

Seeking Sensation Sensation seekers crave new and complex experiences, even when they’re dangerous—but they can also teach us a few lessons about positive emotions.

They cliff-dive, run with the bulls, drive ambulances, chase tornadoes. They are thrill-seekers and adrenaline junkies, people looking for a buzz.

What sets high sensation-seeking personalities apart? It’s that they crave these exotic and intense experiences, despite physical or social risk. These individuals may experience less stress and may be more resilient, fearless, and calm in the face of danger. It’s this personality that fuels �irst responders, Olympic athletes, and adventure travelers. There might be something to learn from the thrill-seeking personality.

A longer version of this article originally appeared in Greater Good magazine in April 2018.

THREE SIGNS YOU’RE A SENSATION SEEKER

THREE TIPS FROM ADRENALINE JUNKIES

Experience seeking. Even if you’re not an extreme thrill and adventure seeker, there may be a component of sensation seeking that applies to you. So, while you may not like to skydive, you may still exhibit a sensation-seeking trait associated with people who enjoy new, complex, and intense sensations and experiences.

Go with the flow. Sensation seekers are often trying to achieve a “flow state.” In this state, a person is hyper focused and connected to what they are doing. Their emotions are channeled, and the person feels joy in the moment. It turns out that being in that flow state is pretty good for us. There are plenty of average and even low-sensation-seeking experiences that will help you to be enveloped in a state of flow.

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It’s okay to not like something. Learning about sensation seekers may inspire you to expand your experiences a little more. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests, “The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive relaxing times . . . the best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”—Ken Carter

P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

Boredom susceptibility. This boils down to one’s ability to tolerate the absence of external stimuli. Those with high scores in boredom susceptibility dislike repetition—the same food too many times in a row or routine tasks at work. They tire easily of predictable people and get restless when things are the same. They prefer variety and experience extreme restlessness when escape from tedium is impossible.

Feel the awe. The daily activities sensation seekers engage in provide a sense of awe, that goosebump-laden feeling that we all know. I have started to think of them as awe seekers.

Whether it’s racing around town at a hundred miles an hour, running obstacle courses, BASE jumping, or even eating a new food, that experience of awe is part of the reward.

I L L U S T R AT I O N D O N M O R R I S

Disinhibition. Disinhibition involves our ability to be spontaneous. It includes searching for opportunities to lose inhibitions. People with strong disinhibition tendencies act without consideration of potential consequences, while people with low disinhibition tendencies control their behavior more carefully and think through more of the consequences, looking before they leap. People high in disinhibition just jump.

It is better to use space in the most e�icient way possible than to throw a lot of money at a project to force it to do what we want it to do.

SPACE ODYSSEY Emory’s director of planning and interior design asks: ‘What does that building want to be?’

P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

I L L U S T R AT I O N D O N M O R R I S

W

hen Jo Lamb makes a plan, you can be sure of at least a couple of things.

One, she and her team in the Office of Planning, Design, and Construction will not only listen to what you want, they’re going to help figure out what you need and how to make it happen.

And more important, no one is going to come along in twenty years and wonder what they were thinking.

A civil engineer by training, Lamb interned at a structural design firm in New York before becoming a project manager at Columbia University, her alma mater, where she discovered she enjoyed the challenge of creating the best spaces for learning, teaching, and operating a university at peak efficiency.

At Emory, Lamb and her team are key collaborators in the university’s effort to create a master planning framework that will map out a strategy for new spaces and renovations into the future.

“This sets up our ability to design spaces based on a strategic plan that can evolve with changes over time,” says Lamb.

“It really is about setting Emory up for success in the future.”

THINKING AHEAD Jo Lamb’s team designs spaces that work for those who use them today, while preparing them for the needs of the future.

Lamb’s team includes four campus planners who are registered architects, four interior designers, two graphic designers, and a landscape architect. The master planning framework will be dependent on the university’s new strategic plan, which will be unveiled later this year.

“Once we know where Emory is headed, how many people we have, and where the gap is in needed space, that will lay out how we get from where we are to where we need to be, but not compromising what comes in the future,” Lamb says.

Most projects come to the team’s office in Campus Services when departments find themselves either out of space or in a space that isn’t meeting their needs.

“Historically people have fought for their space. They say, ‘This is the space I have, and I want to put this many people in it,’” Lamb says. “What we are trying to do now is to say, ‘What does that building want to be?’ and then use it related to how the space can best be utilized. It is better to use that space in the most efficient way possible than throw a lot of money at a project to force it to do what we want it to do.”

Working with Emory clients has benefits. “Everyone sees the big picture and wants to know how they can use their resources better,” Lamb says.—Maria M. Lameiras J U LY 2 0 1 8

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For years, Emory had debated how to create a cohesive, centralized home for the arts befitting a top liberal arts university. By the mid–1990s, the project had stalled.

With quiet diplomacy and unwavering resolve, Magee gathered a “dream team” to spearhead a new design and the fundraising needed to breathe life into a project that resulted D O O L E Y N OT E D in Emory’s Donna and Marvin Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, a multidisciplinary teaching, practice, and performance facility that opened in 2003.

This spring, Magee stepped away from the Rose Library after forty years spent in an astonishing range of positions— student, alumna, and scholar; professor and researcher; senior associate dean responsible for resources and planning at Emory College; member of the president’s cabinet and vice president and secretary of the university; and library special EMORY APPLAUDS THE ROLES OF collections director.

ROSEMARY MAGEE 82PHD She arrived at Emory in 1977 to pursue a PhD in literature and religion at the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts.

“In Emory, I saw a place where individuals can grow On a shelf in Rosemary Magee’s office sits a curious photoand flourish, where there is an institutional commitment to graph of a shabby white building covered in peeling paint. talking about matter and meaning and purpose and aesthetA sign above the doorway reads “Annex B.” ics,” she says.

From the windows of the director’s office in the Stuart Magee taught in the Department of English before joining A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Magee Emory College as assistant dean and director of summer can point to where Annex B once stood, within a cluster of programs. Later, she was appointed associate dean for resources temporary barracks constructed shortly after World War II. and planning, then senior associate dean, in charge of a $100 Forty years later, those barracks had become part of a scatmillion operating budget and $150 million in capital projects. tered network of spaces that housed Emory’s arts programs.

In 2005, Magee was asked to consider a new post—vice president and secretary of the university, working with the both the Board of Trustees and the president’s cabinet, where she initially was the only woman at the table.

“The thing about Rosemary is that it was never about Rosemary,” says former Board of Trustees chair Ben F. Johnson III 65C. “Nothing she did was motivated by anything other than what was best for Emory, its faculty and students, and her love of education.

When you are able to present yourself without guile, as she has, it gives you a power most people don’t understand.”

In 2012, Magee became director of Rose Library, leading its extensive renovation and renaming in recognition of benefactor Stuart A. Rose 76BBA. University Librarian Yolanda Cooper praises Magee’s gift for building enduring relationships.

“When she takes the reins,” Cooper says, “beautiful things LIGHT TOUCH, LASTING MARK Rosemary Magee has sculpted many parts of Emory during a forty-year happen.”—Kimber Williams career. She will continue as a fellow at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry.

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P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

Making Beautiful Things Happen

WE’RE ONLY HUMAN EXPLORING THE PROMISE OF HUMANISTIC STUDY

T

“The promise of humanistic study is challenging students to think about the values we hold as human beings—ethical, cultural, moral values—and looking at how these values sustain the status quo, challenge the status quo, and transform the status quo.”

o mark the �inal year of the Humanistic Inquiry Program— which was supported by a �ive-year grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—and to continue its work of supporting interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching at Emory, the university hosted a daylong Interdisciplinary Humanities Conference in March. The Humanistic Inquiry Program helped Emory recruit Mellon Faculty Fellows (MFF), promising young scholars who are pursuing innovative humanistic research and teaching beyond the traditional purview of humanists.

—Daniel LaChance, MFF

"To think critically often means that you will not share the opinions of your classmates or your colleagues, and that can be an existentially lonely place. We have to create spaces that allow students to stand when it seems as if nobody is there with them." —Falguni Sheth, MFF

“The Emory community wants to be— and will be—more than the sum of its parts. We agree on the ‘what,’ but not necessarily on the ‘how.’ ” —Provost Dwight A. McBride

"You question boundaries and borders and divisions, not by pretending they don't exist, but by figuring out how you can think across them."

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

-—Daniel Reynolds, MFF

"How much risk are we willing to take on as individuals and as an institution to move beyond our silos as we wish to?"-—Emory College Dean Michael Elliott

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I N C L ASS

Science, Story, or Fake News?

FACULTY CV Sandra Blakely, an associate professor of classics at Emory College, has written four

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TODAY’S LECTURE A lively discussion breaks out over the day’s reading. The issue at hand—the repeatedly debunked, yet oddly enduring, idea that Vikings paddled their way inland to settle in Minnesota centuries before Columbus set sail from Spain— seems ridiculous at first. Historical context, such as the contempt that greeted nineteenth-century Scandinavian immigrants, helps explain why such a hero narrative took hold. The big reveal is how that story became the rallying point for a particularly violent strain of white nationalism active today.

QUOTES TO NOTE “Science reveals stories that are invisible to the naked eye . . . but does not exhaust the appetite for wonder and the mythopoeic impulse. The history of

STORY TIME Sandra Blakely helps students see how myths are shaped by cultural forces.

archaeological investigation confirms that the rational and the irrational go into the field together, both physically and metaphorically. The stories that emerge, informed by the preoccupations of their time, have enormously long life. We are often addressing pseudoarchaeologies that have nineteenth-century roots, but which respond to contemporary currents of racism, nationalism, hostility to academic specialists, and even a profit motive. These stories have an enormous impact on who owns the past—and hold particular significance to us today, as a nation of ideas.” —Sandra Blakely STUDENTS SAY “As a chemistry major with a Mediterranean archaeology minor, this class drives me absolutely bonkers. I’m reading about people who see ventilation shafts in the Great Pyramid and decide that makes them giant microwaves, built by some advanced race. That’s not how science works. That’s storytelling.”

—Max Faass 19C —April Hunt

PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUM: STEPHEN NOWL AND

COURSE DESCRIPTION Why does archaeology inspire endless theories about aliens, lost civilizations, apocalyptic predictions, and mysterious technologies? While archaeological investigation is in many ways about solving ancient mysteries, archaeology is grounded in rigorous methodologies, careful accumulation and analysis of data, and scientific method. This course explores where pseudoarchaeology comes from and the cultural work it does, and it introduces the foundations of archaeological methods and scientific inquiry. Students develop critical thinking skills and analytical tools to evaluate evidence, and they engage with larger questions about uses of history and the evolution of political and religious ideologies that are built on historical and archaeological ideas. Along the way, they learn about who really did build the pyramids, what happened to Atlantis, and what the Fascists found in the Roman forum.

books, is completing a fifth, and has worked extensively on the most fragmentary sources from ancient Greek and Roman historians. Anthropology, history, and digital approaches to the ancient world are central to her work, as are the analytical tools needed to tell the stories of artifacts—and also make sense of pseudoarcheology and present-day “fake news” narratives alike.

PHOTOGRAPHY STEPHEN NOWL AND

COURSE TITLE

Classics 103, Archaeology: Modern Myths, Pseudo-Science, and the Study of the Past

No Kitten: Cats Rule at the Carlos DIVINE FELINES EXHIBIT ON VIEW UNTIL NOVEMBER

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eacting to their current celebrity at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, the cats of ancient Egypt might be moved to yawn.

For us humans, Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt, which runs through November 11, is cause for excitement.

Drawn from the collections of the Carlos and Brooklyn Museums, the show

MEOWSEUM Ancient Egyptians’ fancy for felines is showcased in a current exhibit at Emory’s Michael C. Carlos Museum.

features more than ninety objects and ties together the modern and ancient worlds through love of the animals.

For thousands of years, felines held a place of honor in Egyptian life, both as pets and mythic symbols of deities. Cats were first domesticated in the Egyptian Predynastic or Early Dynastic periods (circa 4400–2675 BCE). One way they came to prominence was their value as hunters, especially given the preponderance of grainaries in Egyptian culture and the need to keep mice, snakes, and other vermin from the food supply.

Beyond their usefulness, they were welcomed as pets. A number of pieces in the exhibition show cats wearing earrings, the equivalent of today’s collar—a sign of care for the animal. Devoted and well-to-do owners occasionally mummified and buried their cats in their own sarcophagi. Some of those were simple rectangular boxes while others reflect singular artistry—for instance, cat-

NO SMALL THREAT

PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUM: STEPHEN NOWL AND

PHOTOGRAPHY STEPHEN NOWL AND

Tiny bacteria populations can cause big problems Small populations of pathogenic bacteria may be harder to kill off than larger populations because they respond differently to antibiotics, a new Emory study �inds.

Published in the journal eLife, the research shows that a population of bacteria containing one hundred cells or less responds to antibiotics randomly—not homogeneously like a larger population.

“We’ve shown that there may be nothing special about bacterial cells that aren’t killed by drug therapy—they survive by random chance,” says lead author Minsu Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and a member of Emory’s Antibiotic Resistance Center.

“This randomness is a double-edged sword,” Kim adds.

“On the surface, it makes it more di�icult to predict a treatment outcome. But we found a way to manipulate this inherent

shaped containers decorated with gold and glass eye inlays.

One piece is the coffin of Princess Mayet, the wife of King Nebhepetre Mentuhotep. Her name literally means “kitty,” and the cat hieroglyph is clearly visible on her coffin.

Among the large articles is a statue of Sakhmet, daughter of Ra, the sun god. A leonine goddess, her name means “power or might,” and 365 statues of her were created either sitting or standing.

Dogs nosed their way into the exhibition too, as the Egyptians saw them as protective, utilizing them on hunts and as guards, shepherds, and police assistants.

The collection “gives us a window into ancient Egyptian culture, to what they loved and valued,” says Melinda Hartwig, curator of Egyptian, Nubian, and Ancient Near Eastern Art. “They loved their animals as much as we did, but in a more complicated way. We don’t see ours as gods.”—Susan Carini 04G

randomness in a way that clears a small population of bacteria with 100 percent probability. By tuning the growth and death rate of bacterial cells, you can clear small populations of even antibiotic-resistant bacteria using low antibiotic concentrations.”

The researchers developed a treatment model using a cocktail of two different classes of antibiotic drugs. They �irst demonstrated the effectiveness of the model in laboratory experiments on a small population of E. coli bacteria without antibiotic-drug resistance. In later experiments, they found that the model also worked on a small population of clinically isolated antibiotic-resistant E. coli.

“We hope that our model can help in the development of more sophisticated antibiotic drug protocols—making them more effective at lower doses for some infections,” Kim says.

“It’s important because if you treat a bacterial infection and fail to kill it entirely, that can contribute to antibiotic resistance.”

Antibiotic resistance is projected to lead to 300 million premature deaths annually and a global health care burden of $100 trillion by 2050, according to the 2014 Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. The epidemic is partly driven by the inability to reliably eradicate infections of antibiotic-susceptible bacteria.

P O I N TS O F I N T E R E ST / R E S E A RC H

From the Mouths of Babes BABY TEETH MAY REVEAL THE IMPACT OF MATERNAL STRESS ON A DEVELOPING FETUS

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ver wonder what happens to all the teeth the tooth fairy collects? If they come from the children of participants in Professor of Psychology Patricia Brennan’s research, they may wind up in her Emory research lab.

Brennan has been awarded $100,000—one of three Emory recipients of grants from the Brain and Behavior Research Institute (see sidebar)—to pursue a study titled “Out of the Mouths of Babes.”

The idea, according to Brennan, is to determine how mothers’ depression and stress during pregnancy may influence the brain and cognitive development of their fetuses, and the likelihood of these children developing related problems themselves.

What sets her investigation apart from previous studies on the subject is that Brennan is gathering insight by examining baby teeth.

The key technology is a tooth microassay developed by Manish Arora, a professor of environmental medicine and public health and professor of dentistry at the Icahn School of Medicine of Mt. Sinai, New York.

“Teeth begin to develop at the end of the first trimester,” Brennan explains, “and grow in successive layers, like the rings on a tree.”

The microassay facilitates analysis of the composition of these individual growth layers on a week-by-week basis, enabling Arora to determine fetal exposure to environmental toxicants such as lead over time. Brennan believes the technique could also reveal markers associated with exposure to certain psychological events.

Since mothers take different medications during pregnancy, the tooth assay may also allow scientists to “look at the exposures of the medications and see the impact of those exposures on the fetus,” she adds.

Given the close proximity of teeth to the brain, it stands to reason that factors affecting teeth would also affect brain development, she says.

“We’re looking for the presence of stress and immune markers—cortisol, c-reactive protein, and interleukin-6, and heat-shock protein, which is a general stress marker.”

The study builds on ongoing research that began in 2009 with mothers-to-be who were experiencing depression and stress during pregnancy and sought treatment through Emory’s Women’s Mental Health program. The women 22

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CHECK THIS OUT Patricia Brennan (from left) discusses her study with research project manager Julie Carroll and Brooke Gavin McKenna 23PhD.

self-reported their stress levels at several points in time during pregnancy.

After participants’ children were born, Brennan continues, “we followed up on these kids as they were aging into preschool and elementary school to take measures of their stress reactivity and emotional reactivity to see if their psychological exposures in utero could be related to behavior problems later on.”

While initial results suggest a possible connection between maternal mental health and the brain development of some offspring, the tooth microassay establishes a definitive timeline for exposure and can provide more clear-cut answers.

Brennan is contacting those who either already have their kids’ baby teeth or expect to get them in the coming year and asking them to donate the teeth for analysis, which will be performed at Arora’s lab.

Fortunately, teeth don’t need to have been stored in any special way to be useful, she notes, but they do have to have fallen out naturally.

In the coming months, Brennan will examine the microassay data to establish the levels of fetal exposure to depression and stress, and also learn how closely the data aligns with the mothers’ psychological self-reporting.

She points out that even the microassay data itself is subject to some interpretation—and additional study.

“Fetuses have all kinds of protective mechanisms while they’re developing. Some placentas, perhaps because of their particular genetic makeup, may not let certain toxicants or exposures pass through. Or women who have had a stressful life in general may not have an extreme biological response to a particular event compared to someone who has not.”

Brennan’s hope is that the information and insights she gathers from “Out of the Mouths of Babes” will lead to improvements, as well as attention, on the mental health aspect of prenatal care.

“If, for example, we find that children’s outcomes are worse if they are exposed to stress or depression at some point during the second trimester, we could say that’s a particularly vulnerable period and design interventions targeting that time to help women deal better with stress,” she says, adding, “We have been fortunate to have an extremely dedicated group of moms and children who have been willing to share their time and personal experiences with depression and related symptoms.”—Gary Goettling

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GIVE THEM SOMETHING TO SINK THEIR TEETH INTO Gifts to Emory College support the critical early research projects that allow faculty to compete for external grant funding as their careers advance. To learn more, contact Molly Gri�ith at 404.727.5930 or molly.gri�ith@emory.edu.

GRANTED: PERMISSION TO DISCOVER Grants support groundbreaking research Three Emory faculty members—the most of any university—received 2017 Distinguished Investigator Awards from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.

In addition to Professor of Psychology Patricia Brennan, one-year $100,000 grants were presented to J. Douglas Bremner and Andrew H. Miller, both of Emory’s School of Medicine.

The annual awards support creative, pioneering research toward the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of psychiatric disorders.

“One of the advantages of these foundation grants is that they are more willing to take risks by supporting new technology,” says Bremner, a professor of psychiatry and radiology and director of the Emory Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit.

Bremner’s research focuses on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and its relationship with the vagus nerve, the body’s longest, which runs from the brain stem to the abdomen and is responsible for many functions of the involuntary nervous system.

“Vagus is also involved in the regulation of inflammatory markers,” Bremner explains. “Elevated inflammatory markers can affect your health, mood, motivation. We see this in depression and PTSD as well.”

Direct electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve is sometimes used to treat depression, but the process is costly and delivers only modest benefits. Bremner is working on a noninvasive vagal nerve stimulation device that delivers electrical stimulation to the vagus through a patch applied to the neck.

There’s a revolution going on in immunology, according to Miller, the William P. Timmie Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, that has profoundly improved the treatment of many diseases including cancer, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s, rheumatoid arthritis, and other autoimmune and inflammatory diseases.

Miller’s research project, “Cellular Immune Mechanisms of Inflammation in Depression,” employs high-resolution, single-cell analysis of specific immune cells to determine the key molecules in the immune system that affect the brain.

By identifying immunologic biomarkers, ”we can then develop targeted immunotherapeutic strategies for depression and other psychiatric diseases,” he says.

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P O I N TS O F I N T E R E ST

2018

Commencement

GOOD MORNING “You will flourish,” President Sterk (clockwise from above) told new graduates at Emory’s 173rd Commencement on May 14. Speaker Michael Dubin 01C, founder and CEO of Dollar Shave Club, urged, “Do not become a one-dimensional creature.” Gurbani Singh 18B, graduate and bedel of the university, carried the Emory mace as leaders and honored guests made their way to the platform, led in—of course—by the Atlanta Pipe Band. The university bestowed 4,857 graduates with 4,949 degrees, including 2,460 undergraduate degrees, 1,633 master’s degrees, and 828 doctoral degrees. For complete Commencement coverage, visit emory.edu/magazine.

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P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N , K AY H I N T O N

“You embrace our values: Compassion, collaboration, integrity, inclusion, optimism, and boldness.”—President Claire E. Sterk

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PHOTOGRAPHY MICHAEL LEWIS

A LU M N I I N B US I N E SS

sharp thinking How Michael Dubin turned a buck into a billion

PHOTOGRAPHY MICHAEL LEWIS

B Y PA I G E PA R V I N 9 6 G

What do you do with a warehouse full of razor blades?

You improvise.

Michael Dubin 01C was chatting with a friend’s father-in-law at a cocktail party when he learned about 250,000 razor blades that needed to get sold.

After eight years of studying sketch comedy and improv with the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York, Dubin knew how to think fast, he knew an opening when he saw one, and he knew the value of running with an idea.

His company, Dollar Shave Club, launched in 2011 with a marketing video that went viral, setting the tone for the subscription-based venture and giving Dubin rock star status among business entrepreneurs. Fast-paced, funny, unexpected, and completely irreverent, the video found the target—men who shave—by making them feel like part of a club.

Dubin’s club. The one with the “f---ing great” razors.

“Do you think your razor needs a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back-scratcher, and ten blades?” he deadpans in the video. “Your handsome-ass grandfather had one blade and polio. Looking good, Pop-Pop!” On his recent visit to Emory as the university’s 2018 Commencement speaker, Dubin spent time with Michael A. Elliott, dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences, in a roaming conversation about his path to commercial success—which was publicly

confirmed by the 2016 sale of Dollar Shave Club to Unilever for $1 billion. He credits his improv training for the unapologetically Dubin-branded marketing that became the company’s launching pad.

“It was only because of those classes that I was able to write the first Dollar Shave Club commercial, or really any of the commercials that we do, or perform in them,” he said.

Dubin’s fledgling California-based start-up logged twelve thousand orders the day that first video was released and crashed the company’s servers.

He began to hire employees, bring on new product lines, and dig into the on-the-ground market research about grooming habits that would continue to give Dollar Shave Club an edge.

In addition to conducting the usual focus groups, Dubin’s team traveled the country hitting quirky festivals and community events so they could talk to real-life consumers. Who knew men wanted their own butt wipes? But then—why wouldn’t they?

Dollar Shave Club’s One Wipe Charlies are one of its most popular products, and the marketing campaign—memorably kicked off by a 2013 video titled “Let’s Talk about Number Two”—is pure Dubin.

Perhaps most notable, even in those early days, Dubin wasn’t afraid to own the brand; his employees consistently report that it’s an extension J U LY 2 0 1 8

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“Culture is incredibly important for any organization, of his own personality and values. His confidence is already whether it’s a university or a business. People choose to build evident in the “Number Two” video, which Dubin opens by their careers with you,” Dubin says. “They choose to spend saying “Hi. Me again,” from a toilet seat. Dubin is Dollar Shave more time with you every day than with their families, and so Club the way Steve Jobs was Apple, and customers responded you better put some thought into what kind of place and what to his straight-up style.

“He’s always the funniest person in every situation,” said kind of an environment you want for these people as they come into your building and try to achieve the mission.”

Ben Jacobson, a talent agent at United Talent Agency and a Dubin grew up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and attended personal friend, in an interview for CNBC’s series on American high school at the Haverford School, a private school outside entrepreneurs, The Brave Ones. “He just fires nonstop.”

Looking back, Dubin says, he didn’t mean to start a business, Philadelphia. The transition from public school to the more rigorous prep school made a big exactly; he just wanted to hatch impression. Dubin was Haversomething novel and watch it take ford’s Commencement speaker in flight. He had tried to start a social 2017, and began his speech with network for travelers in 2006, a shout-out to his parents, whom but it didn’t make it. A few years he consistently acknowledges as later, a passel of razors became a source of support, encouragethe improv setup that inspired his ment, and motivation. best material.

“I certainly wouldn’t have “I’ve always been a bit of a been able to go through Emory dreamer—a bit of an imaginatarif it hadn’t been for the support ian, if that’s a word—and I have and love of my parents both in always wanted to bring shape college and beyond, of course,” to things,” he says. “I love the he told Elliott. “It’s great that creation process, whether it’s a W E ’ R E R O L L I N G Find the video of the conversation between they’re here to experience it.” television commercial, or a new Michael Dubin and Dean Michael Elliott at emory.edu/magazine.

Dubin wasn’t always so gratepart of the website, or a new ful. In the Brave Ones interview, physical product that people use he recalls that his mom, Nancy Dubin, made him and his sister, in their bathrooms. . . . I love bringing things into the world Jessica, stay in and work math problems before they could go and then watching people find use in them.” out to play on snow days.

By 2016, business media reported that Dollar Shave Club was the number one online razor company on the market. The “They hated it,” Nancy confirms. “They still make fun of me.”

Nancy also has described Dubin as a pretty typical teenbuzz was less about products than the company culture, also age guy when it came to school, saying, “If things interested completely Dubin-driven. He describes it as one of inclusivity, him, he was a fabulous student. If it was a subject that didn’t humility (“nobody likes a glory hog,” he says), pride of ownership, individual responsibility (“you saw it, now it’s your prob- interest him at all, I think he was probably a terrible student.”

Still, that warehouse full of razor blades wasn’t the only time lem, you’ve got to deal with it”), and what his team calls radical acceptance—the idea that Dollar Shave Club, inside and out, is for Dubin was able to spot a chance opportunity and follow its lead.

During his junior year at Haverford, a friend who was applying people of all kinds. to colleges left an admission brochure from Emory on his hall “There wasn’t any other company out there like us, and he definitely took a leap to get us where we are today,” says Kadie table by accident. As Dubin tells it, he picked it up, read it, and thought, “Huh. That seems like a pretty cool place to go.”

Ann Bowden, vice president for program development.

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

It’s important to train yourself to feel comfortable being uncomfortable.

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I can’t think of many people in my graduating class [who] are doing exactly what they thought they’d be doing when they graduated.

Junior year, Dubin gave himself a reality check and started to get a little more traction. His grades improved and he began exploring the idea of a career in business. Through some friends in Goizueta Business School, he met Andrea Hershatter, now senior associate dean and director of the BBA program.

“I said, ‘I would love to take a couple of classes, and I would love to get a marketing internship. I’m not a business school student. Can you help me?’,” Dubin recalls. “She had no reason to say yes, [but] for whatever reason she said yes, because she’s a great person. I’m so grateful that she did that, because if she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten some critical exposure to ideas early on that sprung me onward into doing other things in media and marketing.”

Among other opportunities, Dubin took an early version of a course taught by Joey Reiman, who founded

the game-changing marketing firm Brighthouse, and interned at CNN. Hershatter has taught entrepreneurship at Goizueta since the late 1990s, and she was particularly excited that this year’s Commencement speaker would be Emory’s first “unicorn”—someone who founded a company that has realized a valuation of a billion dollars. Hershatter also recruited Dubin to be the keynote speaker at the inaugural Emory Entrepreneurship Summit in 2015, and says he’s one of the two coolest speakers she has brought back to Emory to help motivate future leaders.

“As a student, Michael was an enthusiastic and invaluable contributor to a small team of BBA students who were

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Emory’s location was a big attraction for Dubin, who enjoyed studying the Civil War in high school and wanted to get a feel for Atlanta and the South. At the time, that’s pretty much where his vision for the future ended. Dubin recently told the Emory Wheel that he built a great network of friends and contacts at Emory, getting to know a diverse set of people from all over the country and the world through his classes, social life, and membership in Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. One of his we-can-laugh-now memories is breaking his arm when he tried to jump off a chair and dunk a basketball.

But Dubin has made no secret of the fact that his Emory experience wasn’t a slam dunk. He struggled academically, never quite finding the inspiration that would point him in the right direction.

“I will admit to not being the most successful student my freshman and sophomore year,” he told Elliott. “I think I came to college not really sure what the purpose was. My signature academic failure was actually flunking the same class twice in back-to-back years. It seems pretty amazing that someone could flunk the same class twice, especially after having seen all the exam material the year before. But I think that wasn’t for lack of intelligence or motivation, it was just that I hadn’t found my passion [or] my path and I didn’t ask for help.”

In his Emory Commencement speech, Dubin rewrote that chapter with what’s become his trademarked humor, directly addressing political science professor Micheal Giles. “Professor Giles, I’ve been waiting twenty years to say this to you,” he said. “You are a great teacher, and I was not your failure. I know you’ve been beating yourself up for the last twenty years, but I want you to know I’m okay. We can both move on now.”

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examining the connection between innovation and corporate success,” Hershatter says. “He makes it look easy, but there is nothing accidental about Michael’s success. He is not only incredibly bright, insightful, and creative, but also extremely strategic and hard working.”

Although he wound up gravitating toward business, Dubin has a keen awareness of how every experience along the way helped shape him and guide his path forward—including his foundation in a liberal arts education. The writing and critical thinking skills that he gained as a history major have helped him tell the Dollar Shave Club story.

“Whenever I meet alumni, I’m curious to know how their education has

influenced their lives beyond Emory,” Elliott says. “Like Michael, they often say that the liberal arts prepares them to take advantage of unexpected opportunities, whether it’s an unplanned career change or a ton of razors sitting in a warehouse.”

Dubin remains CEO of Dollar Shave Club and lives in Venice, California, where he recently renovated his house.

“Right now I’m very focused and dedicated to building Dollar Shave Club both domestically and internationally— launching new products, launching new business models,” he told Elliott. “I get an opportunity to learn continually every day from the people around me, and that is the most amazing part of what I do. . . . I’m one of those people motivated

primarily by curiosity, and as long as I’m learning, I’m happy.”

In his Commencement speech, Dubin urged Emory graduates to keep an open mind, try new things, and worry less about what’s happening next.

“If you want to live a unique and exceptional life, choose unique and exceptional things, make your own choices, follow your interests, follow your passions, and the universe will deliver you on your path . . . be patient.”

Be patient—said the not-quite-fortyyear-old billionaire who took a history degree, some business experience, a talent for improvisation, a little luck, and a warehouse full of f---ing great razor blades and made something new.

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E N T R E P R E N E U RS H I P

SO YOU WANT TO START YOUR OWN

BUSINESS Emory is creating IN 2002, after eight years of running his own Atlanta-based tomorrow’s business-to-business software firm, Sid Mookerji 04MBA would’ve been considered a successful businessman by entrepreneurs by most reasonable standards. After all, his company, SPI, or Software Paradigms International, boasted 110 employees giving them and was used by a number of large clients to help with supply chain management and sales analytics. access to both Still, he decided to enroll in the executive MBA program at Goizueta Business School. brains and backing “I thought I didn’t need any more knowledge,”

BY SCOTT HENRY PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN NOWLAND

says Mookerji, who had spent five years as a software development consultant in his native India and the US before founding SPI in 1994. “I went back to school for the networking contacts—but the program really changed my mind.”

At Goizueta, Mookerji came to realize that he’d never really developed an effective growth strategy for his company. After graduating in 2004, he was able to use the skills he’d learned at Emory to expand his business, refocusing his products for the retail market. By the time Mookerji cashed out in 2016 after a successful merger, SPI had acquired fourteen other companies, established offices in eight countries, employed more than three thousand people, and had a client list that included some of the country’s largest department retailers, such as Macy’s.

Chris Dardaman 16MBA

(right, with Sid Mookerji) came to earn a degree from Goizueta and wound up becoming an entrepreneur in residence and a volunteer coach for business students. “It’s been great to watch people learn and go through the steps to tweak their ideas to become more responsive to the market,” he says. “I’ve loved being around students and sharing the experiences of my twenty-five years of building a national firm.”

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Last year, Mookerji leveraged his success by becoming an angel investor who provides early infusions of cash to fledgling companies—and by joining Goizueta’s Entrepreneurs in Residence program, in which he and other start-up veterans meet informally on campus with undergrads and MBA students to tell their business stories and answer questions.

“It’s important to establish a bridge between academia and the start-up ecosystem,” Mookerji says.

Of course, the challenge for business schools—arguably more so than for, say, history or chemistry programs—has always been to balance foundational education with preparing students for the ever-shifting demands of the business world. And that challenge has intensified in an era when more and more graduates want to acquire an entrepreneurial skill set that will enable them to build ventures, both inside and outside of traditional corporate structures.

To meet that challenge for its eight hundred undergrads and six hundred MBA students, Goizueta not only started the Entrepreneurs in Residence program, but a range of entrepreneurship initiatives, partnerships, and seminars that offer mentoring, business incubation, and, potentially, actual investment money for students, faculty, and the broader Emory community.

GOIZUETA LEADERS ANDREA HERSHATTER (LEFT) AND AMELIA SCHAFFNER

COORDINATED EFFORTS Andrea Hershatter has taught entrepreneurship at Goizueta since the late 1990s. She organizes the annual two-day Emory Entrepreneurship Summit, most recently held in April, where successful alumni speak, mingle with neophyte entrepreneurs, and critique student “elevator pitches.” This year’s keynote was Jim Lanzone 98JD/MBA, whose information-retrieval website was acquired by Ask. com in the early aughts. That success helped propel him to his current job as president and CEO of CBS Interactive.

“We’re looking to train the industry disruptors of tomorrow, and this event is a great way for students to see what’s possible,” says Hershatter, who also is senior associate dean of undergradate education at Goizueta.

Emory President Claire E. Sterk’s strong support is feuling the focus on entrepreneurship, says Hershatter. “This is a moment when entrepreneurship and innovation are being embraced at every level of the institution,” she says—from student clubs to a Goizueta–sponsored student-run micro-lending venture to the Office of Technology Transfer, a department that helps Emory faculty members market their inventions and intellectual property.

In an era when the next high-tech breakthrough seems as likely to come from a young person in a hoodie as from an old guy in a Bell Labs jacket, there’s no denying that startups have become very sexy. Hearing about recent grads who traded in their skateboards for seats in the board room is likely to start any business major dreaming about his first IPO. But Rob Kazanjian, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Organization and Management, says Goizueta hasn’t expanded its entrepreneurship offerings simply to meet demand from the next generation of would-be Elon Musks. Many of the skills that enable people to launch their own companies will also serve them well in other areas of business.

In fact, Kazanjian says, “The principles of entrepreneurship are being adopted by big companies who want to attract employees with a mindset for innovation.” There’s even a term for employees skilled at developing new business platforms within a corporation—intrapreneurs—and they’re much sought after by headhunters.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, FAIL Entrepreneurial drive, of course, isn’t all it takes to create a successful company. It’s helpful to have strong grounding in accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, operations, and other business school foundations. But

This is a moment when entrepreneurship and innovation are being embraced at every level of the institution.

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Last year, Mookerji leveraged his success by becoming an angel investor who provides early infusions of cash to fledgling companies—and by joining Goizueta’s Entrepreneurs in Residence program, in which he and other start-up veterans meet informally on campus with undergrads and MBA students to tell their business stories and answer questions.

“It’s important to establish a bridge between academia and the start-up ecosystem,” Mookerji says.

Of course, the challenge for business schools—arguably more so than for, say, history or chemistry programs—has always been to balance foundational education with preparing students for the ever-shifting demands of the business world. And that challenge has intensified in an era when more and more graduates want to acquire an entrepreneurial skill set that will enable them to build ventures, both inside and outside of traditional corporate structures.

To meet that challenge for its eight hundred undergrads and six hundred MBA students, Goizueta not only started the Entrepreneurs in Residence program, but a range of entrepreneurship initiatives, partnerships, and seminars that offer mentoring, business incubation, and, potentially, actual investment money for students, faculty, and the broader Emory community.

GOIZUETA LEADERS ANDREA HERSHATTER (LEFT) AND AMELIA SCHAFFNER

COORDINATED EFFORTS Andrea Hershatter has taught entrepreneurship at Goizueta since the late 1990s. She organizes the annual two-day Emory Entrepreneurship Summit, most recently held in April, where successful alumni speak, mingle with neophyte entrepreneurs, and critique student “elevator pitches.” This year’s keynote was Jim Lanzone 98JD/MBA, whose information-retrieval website was acquired by Ask. com in the early aughts. That success helped propel him to his current job as president and CEO of CBS Interactive.

“We’re looking to train the industry disruptors of tomorrow, and this event is a great way for students to see what’s possible,” says Hershatter, who also is senior associate dean of undergradate education at Goizueta.

Emory President Claire E. Sterk’s strong support is feuling the focus on entrepreneurship, says Hershatter. “This is a moment when entrepreneurship and innovation are being embraced at every level of the institution,” she says—from student clubs to a Goizueta–sponsored student-run micro-lending venture to the Office of Technology Transfer, a department that helps Emory faculty members market their inventions and intellectual property.

In an era when the next high-tech breakthrough seems as likely to come from a young person in a hoodie as from an old guy in a Bell Labs jacket, there’s no denying that startups have become very sexy. Hearing about recent grads who traded in their skateboards for seats in the board room is likely to start any business major dreaming about his first IPO. But Rob Kazanjian, the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Organization and Management, says Goizueta hasn’t expanded its entrepreneurship offerings simply to meet demand from the next generation of would-be Elon Musks. Many of the skills that enable people to launch their own companies will also serve them well in other areas of business.

In fact, Kazanjian says, “The principles of entrepreneurship are being adopted by big companies who want to attract employees with a mindset for innovation.” There’s even a term for employees skilled at developing new business platforms within a corporation—intrapreneurs—and they’re much sought after by headhunters.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED, FAIL Entrepreneurial drive, of course, isn’t all it takes to create a successful company. It’s helpful to have strong grounding in accounting, finance, marketing, strategy, operations, and other business school foundations. But

“This is a moment when entrepreneurship and innovation are being embraced at every level of the institution.”

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Charles Goetz

(left, with senior associate dean for strategic initiatives Rob Kazanjian) vets student pitches to decide who gets the soughtafter start-up spaces at Atlanta Tech Village. “The same skills they learn about how to build a business are the ones they’ll need to evaluate a business or launch a division.”

Goizueta builds upon these with several programs designed to give students experience with the real-world challenges of launching a start-up.

Amelia Schaffner, who spent fifteen years with IT consulting giant Accenture, joined Goizueta last fall as its first director of entrepreneurship, serving as a liaison for the business school, outside faculty, and the Atlanta business community as a whole.

Schaffner coordinates campus visits by local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists—some of whom are Emory graduates— to share their own start-up experiences and offer advice and mentorship. “It’s an incredible opportunity for the students,” she says. “They get exposure to a large number of brains.”

And it’s not only brains that are made available. Every six months, the university sponsors the RAISE (Retention and Advanced Investment for the Southeast at Emory) Forum, where the founders of young companies pitch potential investors for up to $5 million in funding. Any who receive more than $1 million in new capital are asked to commit to staying in Atlanta at least five years.

The entire model for bringing a product to market has changed just in the past decade with the emergence of the “lean start-up” paradigm, Schaffner says. Instead of spending months or even years trying to perfect a product they hope will sell, today’s entrepreneurs are encouraged to “fail fast”—that is, embrace a trial-and-error approach in which early versions of an idea are shown to consumers to confirm whether the company is targeting the correct market or even that there’s demand for the product at all.

One of Goizueta’s recent initiatives that replicates this back-to-the-drawing-board process is the Emory Start-Up Launch. The free, ten-week accelerator program sees teams of rookie entrepreneurs—anyone can take part, but at least one team member must have Emory affiliation—pitch ideas and collect real-world feedback to help hone their potential products and develop a business model. Out of fifty-five applications, eleven teams were selected.

Ed Rieker 04MBA, a self-described “serial entrepreneur” who graduated from founding his own companies to providing seed funding for start-ups, came aboard Goizueta in 2014 as an adjunct professor and now helps oversee Start-Up Launch. Among the ideas selected for the program is a smartphone app to tell you whether a skin splotch is melanoma, a service to help winemakers source the appropriate grapes, and software to help disabled employees more easily navigate their workplace. Some of the ideas are likely to change dramatically over the weeks, but that’s the point, says Rieker.

“This program helps them define who the buyers and users are, and then finds a solution for them,” he says.

Eboni Freeman 18BBA, whose five-member team developed software to help disabled workers navigate the sometimes complex process of requested workplace accommodations, says the launch seminar has been useful for showing them how to pitch investors and refine their product through interviews with potential customers.

“It’s shown us where we need to grow on our business model concept,” she says. “We’ll feel more comfortable launching our company with the data in our back pockets.”

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“Having hundreds of entrepreneurs under the same roof creates what I call ‘engineered serendipity.’ ”

DAVID CUMMINGS (STANDING, FAR RIGHT) WITH GBS STUDENTS MADUKA CHIDEBELU-EZE 18B, VIK OTRA 18B, ADLAI PAPPY 18M 19B, REKHA ANANTHANPILLAI 18B, AND IGNACIO AGUIRRE ARANA 18B (SEATED) AT ATLANTA TECH VILLAGE.

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Chris Dardaman 16MBA, who cofounded the wealth management company Brightworth in 1997, is, like Mookerji, a business veteran who came back to earn a degree from Goizueta and wound up becoming an entrepreneur in residence and a volunteer coach for the Start-Up Launch teams.

“It’s been great to watch people learn and go through the steps to tweak their ideas to become more responsive to the market,” he says.

“I’ve loved being around students and sharing the experiences of my twenty-five years of building a national firm.”

ATLANTA CONNECTIONS Another major Goizueta initiative is its partnership with the three-year-old Atlanta Tech Village (ATV), the country’s fourth-largest tech incubator, whose founder, David Cummings, is also an entrepreneur in residence. Through a program cheekily dubbed Pitch the Professor, students compete each semester for eight spaces that Emory maintains at ATV in order to develop their ideas.

A light-filled building with the open feel of a campus student center, ATV plays host to panel discussions, peer roundtables, on-site mentoring, and weekly networking lunches to provide members with ample opportunities to share ideas, get advice, and form partnerships.

“Having hundreds of entrepreneurs under the same roof creates what I call ‘engineered serendipity,’ ” says Cummings—in other words, the perfect environment in which to shape a concept into an actual product.

Business major Ignacio Arana 18BBA spent this past semester at ATV nurturing his idea for an interactive online course to teach teenagers how to manage their personal finances as they prepare for college. He doesn’t yet have his business model worked out, but Arana says being at ATV has been a great experience, providing both inspiration and shared wisdom.

“You’re exposed to people here who can help you figure things out,” he says. Cummings, in particular, has been helpful in making introductions with other possible mentors, says Arana, and suggesting that he discuss his idea with one hundred potential customers.

Goizueta professor Charles Goetz helps vet student pitches to decide who gets the sought-after spaces at ATV. Out of around forty winning ideas in the past few years, he estimates that about 30 percent have led to new product launches. But even those who don’t immediately start a company will be well-served by their experiences. “The same skills they learn about how to build a business are the ones they’ll need to evaluate a business or launch a division,” Goetz explains.

One reason Goizueta’s focus on entrepreneurship is so welcome, says Dardaman, is that the skills one learns to launch a company can be applied in a number of professions. Instead of immediately creating a start-up, most recent business graduates will work in the corporate world for a while before striking out on their own.

“Statistically, the more successful entrepreneurs are older, with some business experience,” he says. “What students gain from an entrepreneurial education is an integrated view of business that can help them down the road.”

The cross-pollination now occurring between Emory, local entrepreneurs, and incubators like Atlanta Tech Village is exciting, Dardaman says. “There’s a lot of positive energy and momentum right now,” he says. “Emory is becoming a big part of the business ecosystem of Atlanta.”

Entrepreneurs in the driver’s seat

Josh Luber 99BBA 06JD/MBA, whose two-year-old start-up, StockX, an online marketplace for high-end sneakers, already has attracted millions from such celebrity investors as Eminem and Mark Wahlberg

Angie Bastian 91N, who sold her popcorn brand, Angie’s Boomchickapop, to food conglomerate Conagra last fall for $250 million

Barry Silbert 98BBA, whose Digital Currency Group is a major player in the bitcoin industry and who had previously been named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young

And two Goizueta go-getters,

Michael Cohn 05MBA and Eran Gil 05MBA, who sold Cloud Sherpas, their Atlanta-based tech-services firm, in 2015 for a reported $400 million

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P H OTO G R A P H Y ST E P H E N N OW L A N D

MONSTROSITY An original depiction of Frankenstein’s creation reposes on the pages of Shelley’s novel.

E T H I C S A N D T H E A RTS

P H OTO G R A P H Y ST E P H E N N OW L A N D

BY C AROL CL ARK

Initially dismissed by critics as a gothic trifle, Mary ShelleyĘźs Frankenstein: Or, the Modern Prometheus is now a beloved classic and a cultural icon. The book, which turns two hundred this year, has never been out of print and remains one of the most read novels on US college campuses.

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While Frankenstein is an early, groundbreaking example of science fiction, it cuts across genres. Major questions raised in its pages about science, society, and philosophy are still hotly debated.

Emory faculty explore many of them in a newly published anthology, Frankenstein: How a Monster Became an Icon, the Science and Enduring Allure of Mary Shelley’s Creation. The anthology is coedited by Sidney Perkowitz, Emory emeritus professor of physics, and Eddy Von Mueller, a former Emory lecturer in film studies who is now an independent filmmaker. They gathered chapters from seventeen experts across the country, including five from Emory, on different spheres of Frankenstein’s influence.

“Frankenstein is one of the richest novels ever written,” Perkowitz says. “It’s full of important messages, such as there ought to be a way to make sure that science and technology work for the good of humanity, not the bad.”

Perkowitz contributed a chapter in the anthology on how Frankenstein relates to the current quest for synthetic life.

“When you see a contemporary film about androids, like Blade Runner 2049, you’re seeing the Frankenstein story in a twenty-first-century guise,” he says. “The androids are sleek and modern instead of the shambling, stitched-together creature in Frankenstein, but they have the same questions swirling around them. Even as we’re on the verge of artificially generating life, we’re no closer to knowing whether we should.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley came of age during the Romantic era, when relatively new discoveries such as electricity ignited curiosity and the line between the humanities and the sciences had not been drawn, notes Courtney Chartier, head of research services for Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, which has an original edition of Frankenstein. Shelley’s husband, the poet Percy Shelley, ran experiments in their home with an array of odd devices, such as what his friend and biographer Thomas Jefferson Hogg described as “an electrical apparatus.” The poet would stand on the device and tell Hogg to crank up the machine “until he was filled with the fluid, so that his long, wild locks bristled and stood on end.”

The couple was staying with friends in a villa in Italy when one member of the group—the poet Lord Byron—suggested that they have a competition to see who could write the best horror story.

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Byron probably never suspected that the young Mary Shelley would win.

“She was just eighteen when she began writing Frankenstein,” Perkowitz says. “As an Emory professor emeritus who has taught many exceptionally smart and creative students, I’m stunned that someone of college-freshman age produced this powerful work that has endured for two hundred years and still speaks to us today. That’s almost more remarkable than the book itself.”

The vigor and timeliness of the book is reflected in its myriad themes, from the first famous “deadbeat dad,” in the form of the monster’s creator Victor Frankenstein, to the religious and feminist overtones of a man trying to usurp the power of God and of women to create life on his own. Some see the book as a commentary on mistreatment of “the other,” such as those with disabilities or anyone who differs from the mainstream.

“What was kind of delightful as we were talking to people from all these different disciplines to create the anthology is how Frankenstein becomes a meeting ground,” Von Mueller told WABE in a recent interview. “It’s really a nexus at which all of these distinctions dissolve, and we can come together to talk about this one story.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley came of age during the Romantic era, when relatively new discoveries such as electricity ignited curiosity and the line between the humanities and the sciences had not been drawn.

THE CONTRIBUTORS (clockwise from top left) English professor Laura Otis reviews how Shelley’s novel depicts the emotions of an unwanted being in a way that few writers have matched; Steven Kraftchick, a professor at Candler School of Theology, tackles the question, “What is a monster?”; chemistry professor David Lynn writes about how his own work, to uncover the molecular basis of life, echoes ideas expressed in Frankenstein; Sidney Perkowitz stitched together the book’s parts (Photos by Ann Watson). From the center of this page, meet the haunting gaze of the creature as imagined for the 200th anniversary of his literary birth by artist Ross Rossin.

THAT FACE If you fancy the face in the center of this spread, you could look at it every day. A $50,000 gift from Turner Classic Movies is supporting Emory’s Year of Frankenstein events and the Ethics and the Arts program, as well as the production of 200 fine art prints of artist Ross Rossin’s depiction on cotton rag paper. The signed and numbered prints are $500, with all proceeds benefiting the Emory Center for Ethics.

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THE ODDS

1 in 4

PEOPLE RECEIVING PRESCRIPTION OPIOIDS IN A PRIMARY CARE SET TING ALREADY STRUGGLE WITH ADDICTION

18/100 Americans who have used illicit drugs or misused prescription drugs

THE LANDSCAPE

Overdose deaths in 2016

More than 40% of US overdose deaths involve a prescription opioid

5x

higher than in 1999

66% OF ALL

OVERDOSE D E AT H S I N V O LV E OPIOIDS

42,249 total overdose deaths in 2016

THE TOLL

91 46+

AMERICANS DIE FROM OPIOID OVERDOSE , INCLUDING PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND HEROIN

EVERY 24 HOURS

DEATHS INVOLVE PRESCRIPTION OPIOIDS

1,000+

PEOPLE ARE TREATED IN EMERGENCY ROOMS FOR NOT USING OPIOIDS AS PRESCRIBED

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; most recent national data, 2016

P U B L I C H E A LT H

Moving the Needle A national opioid epidemic is driving people from pills to heroin, filling emergency rooms with overdose cases, and killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. What are we doing about it?

When “Stacy” (whose real name is withheld for patient privacy) and her husband moved to Atlanta so that she could begin a PhD program at Emory’s Laney Graduate School, they weren’t familiar with the city, and they needed an affordable place to live.

They wound up renting a house “for really cheap” in what turned out to be a neighborhood hub for heroin distribution. That was bad luck, since Stacy’s husband was already recovering from heroin addiction. When dealers started knocking on the door, it wasn’t long before he caved. And then Stacy began injecting heroin, too.

“It was hurting our relationship,” Stacy says, “so I started using just to be on the same page.”

And then, well, there was the high.

“You get a rush immediately, within five seconds,” she says. “After that, for the next twelve to twenty-four hours, you

just feel really calm and peaceful. There are still moments of euphoria, but the reason I liked it so much is that it’s really numbing. Anything that you’re anxious about just doesn’t matter anymore, which is useful in graduate school. It gave me a lot of energy and motivation. I had no problem coming to school and doing what I needed to do.”

At least for a while.

Unlike an estimated 80 percent of heroin users, Stacy had never taken prescription opioids. But she’s part of a sweeping epidemic of opioid use that has grabbed national attention, partly because people are dying in increasing numbers.

Emory President Claire E. Sterk is leading a strong and definitive response by the university. In January, she kicked off a public discussion about the epidemic—the second of Emory’s “Conversations with America” series, an effort to

By Paige Parvin 96G

advance and promote dialogue around national issues conducted in collaboration with nationally renowned NBC/Wall Street Journal pollster Peter Hart.

As a social scientist and public health expert, Sterk has spent decades working on major public health issues that have included addiction and HIV/AIDS. The current crisis, she says, calls for both action and compassion.

“I come from a culture that strongly believes in the philosophy that if somebody has a problem with opioids, the last thing we should do is blame them and turn him or her into a criminal,” said Sterk, who is also Charles Howard Candler Professor of Public Health.

“Because at the end of the day, addiction is a societal problem—it’s a problem for all of us. We collectively are responsible for not stigmatizing people, for thinking about solutions, and for having these kinds of conversations.”

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We Need to Talk

In January, Emory hosted a “Conversation with America” about the opioid crisis, led by President Sterk, NBC’s Peter Hart, and a panel of experts and advocates. “Do we look at it as an illness or a weakness?”

Hart asked. “How do we handle it? Prosecute? Provide treatment?”

“We collectively are responsible for not stigmatizing people [and] for

WA KE-U P CA L L Why do people keep using a drug that they know could kill them?

In a word—dopamine.

When an opiate travels through the bloodstream and reaches the brain, it latches on to receptors that normally release an acid called GABA. Part of GABA’s job is to regulate the presence of

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dopamine, so when it’s suppressed, dopamine becomes much more available. The drug also grabs onto opioid receptors in a different region of the brain that increases dopamine release. Opioids are enough like the chemicals produced naturally in the brain that they are able to fool these receptors into opening their microscopic doors, kind of like the big, bad wolf dressed up in grandmother’s nightie— and just as ready to eat you up.

Dopamine is the ultimate feel-good neurotransmitter, a biochemical wellspring of pleasure and reward; there’s a reason why our brains are wired to regulate it in the first place. When it’s given too much freedom, we can’t respond to pain appropriately, feel normal levels of anxiety, or accurately anticipate the outcome of decisions.

If used habitually over time, opioids can essentially overwrite and reboot the reward system in the brain, similar to installing a new operating system in a computer. And if the opiate of choice is, say, heroin—that also happens to be

laced with the popular, super-potent additive fentanyl—pretty soon the user is no longer chasing that early, soaring, euphoric high, but the new normal, a bar that’s constantly being raised by the chemical change taking place upstairs.

“Opioids are tied in with the dopamine system, and they augment that system tremendously,” says Brent Morgan, professor and vice chair of Emory’s Department of Emergency Medicine. “People get rewired in a way that causes extreme cravings. They need more and more of the drug to manage the cravings and the withdrawal symptoms.”

The first time Stacy experienced withdrawal, late in fall semester of her second year at Emory, “It caught me completely off guard. People describe it like the flu, but it’s more the mental part, the worst combination of depression and anxiety,” she says. “I had suicidal thoughts, which I never have, and I had to walk to our dealer’s house in withdrawal. It was the worst thing ever.”

PHOTOGR APHY JANE T CHRISTENBURY

One of the featured speakers was Debra Houry, director of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and a former associate professor in Emory’s Department of Emergency Medicine. About three years ago, Houry took on a CDC project to outline a set of guidelines that advocate prescribing non-opioid medications for chronic pain first.

“My concern is that we primed the pump, so a lot of people became addicted to prescription pills and have then gone on to misuse heroin and now fentanyl, which we know is killing people due to its potency,” she said.

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

thinking about solutions.”

New Treatment Option at Grady Frustrated with reviving overdose patients and

Emory/CDC Combine Forces

simply releasing them,

Matthew Keadey (left) and Anne Schuchat met in

physicians and nurses

March with reporters at Emory University Hospital to

at Grady Memorial

talk about ways to combat the opioid crisis, which

Hospital created an

has been declared a public health emergency.

outpatient treatment

PHOTOGR APHY JANE T CHRISTENBURY

P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N

program.

Opioid withdrawal isn’t the most dangerous kind of substance withdrawal, says Morgan; it just feels the worst.

“Because of the receptor changes and brain pathway changes, withdrawal can cause incredible dysphoria, with feelings of dread and impending doom,” he says. “People feel like they are going to die.”

It is one of the many ironies of opioid addiction that when users think they’re going to die, they’re probably not; it’s when they feel near-immortal that they’re in real trouble. According to the CDC, overdose has been climbing at an alarming rate since around 2013, when a surge of illegally produced fentanyl started showing up in street heroin and sending people to emergency rooms in droves.

The crippling drain on emergency care was the topic of a press conference at Emory University Hospital in March, where Matthew Keadey, associate professor and chief of emergency medicine, appeared with CDC acting director Anne Schuchat to share grim news: The latest national data show that ER visits from opioid overdoses rose 30 percent from July 2016 to September 2017.

“We see it on a daily basis,” Keadey said.

But as the problem escalates, so does the response. In 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan, asking the National

Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to review the science on pain research, medical care, and education, and to identify actions the FDA and others can take.

Anne Marie McKenzie-Brown, associate professor of anesthesiology and director of the Emory Pain Center, was selected to serve on the committee, which released a report last summer outlining some strategies for physicians.

30% Opioid overdoses rose

J u ly 2 016 – S e pt 2 017

“The FDA asked us to balance the need for pain relief while contrasting the growing problems related to opioid overuse and abuse,” says McKenzie-Brown.

“Focusing on the individual benefits versus the risks of prescription opioid use is going to take a culture change.”

The opioid crisis is now a federal public health emergency, and concern in Congress is crossing the aisle with

legislation pending in both the House and the Senate. Proposals include expanded access to clinical treatment as well as defined best practices for prescribing health professionals.

And last year, Georgia lawmakers approved a new Prescription Drug Monitoring Program to help physicians track patient prescriptions. The Georgia Department of Health now oversees the database, with the involvement of stakeholders in Emory Healthcare. The next step, says Keadey, is tightening communication across state lines.

Morgan, assistant medical director of the Georgia Poison Center, shares the concern that opioids legally prescribed for pain are part of the problem, because they quickly recalibrate the brain chemistry just enough to leave patients needing more. Some 80 percent of heroin users report taking prescription opioids before they no longer have access and turn to the cheaper, riskier option. “Heroin can be a lot more potent, especially when it’s cut with fentanyl, which we’re seeing much more frequently,” Morgan says.

Another irony of opioid use is how fast the ultimate high can turn to the ultimate low. The receptors in the brain that the drug binds to are the same ones that control breathing, so when users miscalculate and overdose, they can literally forget how to breathe.

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Front Lines

Emory faculty (clockwise from top left) Justine Welsh, Mark Wilson, and Brent Morgan are addressing addiction in multiple ways, through intensive therapy, innovative research, and dynamic treatment protocols.

“Addiction can be difficult to treat, and there is commonly a stigma attached.”

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Andy Gish 06N knows firsthand just how much. As an emergency room nurse at Northside Hospital, Gish began to note an uptick in opioid overdose cases as far back as ten years ago.

“A lot of them were in bad shape,” Gish told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a video interview for the 2018 “Celebrating Nurses” series. “A lot of them weren’t waking up.”

Gish began to get involved with the issue, spending more and more personal time educating people about opioid use.

As a volunteer with Georgia Overdose Prevention and the Atlanta Harm Reduction Coalition, Gish works with opioid users to show them how and when to use naloxone, the overdose-reversal drug sold under the brand name Narcan.

In 2014, Gish testified before Georgia lawmakers in support of legislation that put the state ahead of most others with passage of a medical amnesty law. She is now able to tell people with opioid use disorder that the “Don’t Run, Call 911” law provides limited immunity from arrest and prosecution for individuals seeking medical help—for themselves or others— in cases of overdose. The law also expands access to Narcan, allowing any Georgia resident to purchase it at a pharmacy.

The former president of her class at Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Gish now teaches classes on addiction to Emory nursing students. She lives in a high drug use neighborhood similar to the one Stacy and her husband landed in, where she teaches people on the street how to use Narcan and hands it out.

Recently, she gave a supply of the drug to a restaurant manager, and within two weeks, the manager used it to save a life in the restaurant bathroom.

“You don’t have to die of an overdose,” Gish says. “If naloxone can be given quickly, literally nobody has to die.”

BUIL DIN G K N OW LE D GE TH ROUG H S CIEN C E To understand addiction, experts across Emory have explored the ways the brain responds similarly to different substances that can lead to unhealthy habits and dependence. For instance, food.

Mark Wilson is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and a researcher at Yerkes National Primate Research Center. His lab studies nonhuman primates to learn about behavioral endocrinology, specifically how social factors and endocrine signals combine to drive behavior.

P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

“Overdosing patients can go into a coma so deep that it shuts down the brain’s ability to tell the lungs to move,” Morgan says. “The lack of oxygen and the buildup of carbon dioxide are what cause most overdose deaths.”

As those deaths increased in recent years, so did the level of frustration for Morgan and his colleagues at Grady Memorial Hospital, where he says roughly 25 percent of emergency overdose cases are due to opioids.

“People were coming in with an overdose, and we could revive them, but then we didn’t really have much to offer them,” Morgan says. “So we decided to open up our own treatment program.”

With the help of a grant from the state, last August they launched Grady’s Medically Assisted Opioid Program.

The comprehensive outpatient program includes treatment with buprenorphine, a drug similar to methadone, as well as individual and group therapy.

Now, when the emergency department releases a patient after opioid overdose, they have somewhere to send them. With thirty patients, the program has fulfilled the initial grant, and Morgan expects the funding to continue. “It will benefit the system overall,” he says.

P H O T O G R A P H Y K AY H I N TO N

In one widely publicized study, Wilson and his colleagues used food to examine the effects of social stress on rhesus monkeys, and whether it’s likely to lead to addictive behaviors. The monkeys live in strictly hierarchical groups, organized from the most dominant—the bullies who rule the playground—down to the most subordinate. The A-list monkeys engage in a range of highly social activities, such as grooming one another, while those with lower status are more isolated and likely to be picked on.

Being a subordinate monkey, the researchers found, is stressful. That daily drag results in higher baseline levels of the hormone cortisol—strongly associated with anxiety and fear—and a less active dopamine system.

Wilson and his team decided to see how the monkeys would respond to increased choices of food. While one group continued to receive only the healthy monkey chow they’re typically fed, another group got an added menu item— sweeter, fattier banana pellets. Over time, the researchers found that the dominant monkeys didn’t change their eating habits much, but the subordinate monkeys began gobbling far more of the banana treats.

To the researchers, it started to look a lot like they were addicted.

Wilson and his team theorize that for the low-status monkeys, the increased fat and calories in the banana pellets helped restore some balance to their brain chemistry by tamping down cortisol levels and firing up the neglected dopamine system.

“Our hypothesis is that stress shifts the balance to the reward pathway,” Wilson says. “The subordinate monkeys are basically self-medicating with what you might call comfort food. It really underscores the importance of the social environment and the biological response.”

Social environment is changeable— genetic code, not so much.

Rohan Palmer, an assistant professor of psychology in Emory College, is tapping into huge sets of available data to study how genetic differences may make some people more vulnerable to substance addiction than others. By identifying and analyzing patterns in the human genome,

and cross-analyzing those with environmental factors, Palmer hopes to develop a predictive algorithm for addiction.

It’s an arduous and exacting process.

There are approximately twenty thousand genes in the human genome, and previous research indicates that a few thousand could play a role in addiction. Palmer’s task is to predict self-reported drug use and disorder diagnosis among hundreds of thousands of people using evidence from neuroimaging, neurocognitive, and behavioral studies in humans and animals.

The goal is to obtain a reliable subset of genes involved in addiction.

“The purpose of the NIH grant is to build a big reference platform that will become a resource for researchers to come and do mega-analyses of substance abuse in general,” Palmer says.

Another research project co-led by Rollins School of Public Health received $1.16 million in funding for the next two years, through a cooperative agreement with the National Institute on Drug Abuse and others, to pursue research on the opioid epidemic.

Hannah Cooper, an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, leads the project with April Young 13PhD. Kentucky Communities and Researchers Engaging to Halt the Opioid Epidemic, or Care2Hope, is a collaboration between Rollins and the University of Kentucky that will take place in twelve rural counties that have been hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic. The goal is to develop approaches to prevent and treat the consequences of opioid injection.

“This is the first study I am aware of where there has been a concerted effort to build a university-community partnership around substance abuse in this part of Kentucky,” says Cooper.

EXPANDING TREATMENT EFFORTS If environment and genetics both play key roles in our vulnerability to addiction, the deck was stacked against Stacy, the Emory PhD student who became addicted to heroin.

Stacy’s mother has struggled with heroin addiction; her grandfather died of liver cancer due to heavy alcohol use, her grandmother of lung cancer after years of smoking. Surrounded by people who used drugs, including her husband, Stacy was at the top of a long, slippery slope.

When she sought help, she was eventually connected with Justine Welsh, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of Emory Addiction Services.

“I don’t think I would be clean right now if I hadn’t started seeing Dr. Welsh,” Stacy says. “Some weeks she is the only person holding me accountable, and she is someone I don’t want to disappoint.

That helps more than anything else.”

Welsh was hired two years ago to expand Emory’s addiction services because, she says, her colleagues recognized a growing need. The office now treats about fifty to sixty patients at any given time. About 30 percent of the patients meet the criteria for opioid use disorder. The majority are students under twenty-five, but the office treats adults as well. Welsh hopes to grow the office as quickly as possible—no easy task.

“Addiction can be difficult to treat, and there is commonly a stigma attached,” Welsh says. “It’s compounded by the fact that there is a shortage of addiction providers in Georgia, creating more barriers to much-needed care. But there are effective treatments that we are striving to make readily available. We hope that people recognize how deeply this crisis is affecting the Emory community.”

GETTING THE HELP THEY NEED Created only two years ago, the Emory Addiction Services program gives university students, faculty, and staff direct access to clinical treatment for substance use disorders. Gifts to the School of Medicine can be specified to help this important program grow to meet the needs of the community.

To learn more, email prosen@emory.edu.

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Give from the

Heart.

When you take the lead, Emory succeeds.

W I SE H EA RT s ociety

Leadership-level gifts transform lives and inspire others.

Your partnership with Emory through the Wise Heart Society fuels innovation in science, medicine, academics, and service.

l e a d e r s h i p

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PHOTOGR APHY CO U RTESY O F GO RU C K

t he

E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E

ALUMNI NEWS AND CLASS NOTES

GET A LOAD OF THIS

PHOTOGR APHY CO U RTESY O F GO RU C K

Special forces veteran Jason McCarthy 01C would like you to buy one of his GORUCK backpacks, fill it with heavy stuff, and walk a really long way. Because rucking is a thing.

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E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E

INTO A PODCAST THAT'S NOW SPONSORED BY REI Some of the wildest ideas can lead to the most rewarding adventures.

That’s what Shelby Stanger 02C says at the end of every episode of her podcast, Wild Ideas Worth Living, sponsored by REI and designed for born adventurers and those who wish they’d been born that way.

The San Diego native travels all over to meet with athletes, outliers, and adventurers who have taken an urge, formulated an idea, and undertaken adventures that have changed their lives and inspired others.

Stanger is an ideal host for the podcast, considering the path she’s followed in life so far. An Olympic-development soccer player in high school, Stanger chose Emory because it offered more than just soccer.

“All of the girls on the team seemed interesting and a lot of them volunteered, and I thought that was really cool, that value system,” she says. At Emory, Stanger majored in journalism and political science and wrote stories for a local weekly newspaper. In the summer after her first year, she “knocked on the door” of the local San Diego newspaper until they gave her a weekly column on surfing and adventure sports that went to five different communities.

The summer after her sophomore year, she was part of a cadre of students led by faculty member Nathan McCall to intern for a South African newspaper. She ended up covering major surf competitions and writing about adventure, including a piece on how many exploits she could complete in one day in Cape Town. In her junior and senior years, Stanger joined Outdoor Emory, going on her first hiking and camping trips, exploring the Appalachian Trail, and leading a kayaking trip for first-year students. During one of her final semesters at Emory, she interned for CNN. “Every experience I had at Emory had a rich impact on my life,” Stanger says.

After graduating, Stanger and a friend who had graduated from Emory two years prior took a six-week camping trip through Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia. When she returned, she quickly landed her first job after college, covering the Vans Warped Tour, a cross-country punk and rock music festival, sponsored by the iconic shoe company.

“They’d never had a female do it. The guy who was hiring was headed to Canada that afternoon, so I told them I’d be there at noon,” says Stanger, who drove an hour and a half to Vans headquarters in Orange County for an impromptu interview. “I got the job, and I was on a tour bus for sixty days to sixty cities writing a daily diary.” Armed with a Canon Elf digital camera and a naturally ebullient spirit, Stanger interviewed roadies, crew, bands, and fans.

After the tour, Stanger decided she didn’t want to pursue a hard news career. She moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, where

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TAKING CHANCES Shelby Stanger, who embraced adventure from an early age, now hosts an adventure podcast that has gained national attention.

Taking inspiration from other, mostly male-hosted podcasts, Stanger launched Wild Ideas in December 2016 as a vehicle for the stories she wanted to tell. After nearly a year of independently producing and marketing the show, REI negotiated to sponsor the show for 2018.

She hopes her podcasts will inspire others to pursue their own wild ideas.

“It feels really good to get fan mail, even though it’s a little nerve-wracking when people tell me they’ve quit their jobs and they’re moving to Alaska,” she laughs, “but everything in life leads to the next thing. When you know what you want to do in life, it makes every step along the way a lot easier.” —Maria M. Lameiras

P H O T O G R A P H Y H A G L U N D : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F K I R S T E N H A G L U N D ; U H : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F S T E P H E N I U H

SHELBY STANGER CHANNELS HER RESTLESS SPIRIT

she hosted the entertainment portion of a local cable access action sports show, did public relations work, and wrote an adventure column for the local newspaper. Following that, she went back to Vans to lead all of their women’s marketing, then worked in international sales and marketing—all the while doing freelance writing for health and surf magazines—until she “resigned at the height of the recession to be a writer full time.”

“I always loved stories of people going for it, especially if it was something a little wild and crazy and people told them they couldn’t do it, but they did it anyway,” Stanger says.

P H O T O G R A P H Y P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F S H E L B Y S TA N G E R

A Walk on the Wild Side

MISS AMERICA GOES GLOBAL BROADCASTING THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL HEALTH CARE Former Miss America Kirsten Haglund 13C is taking her message to an international audience.

While wearing the crown in 2008, Haglund advocated for increased awareness of eating disorders as a public health priority, having overcome a battle with anorexia as a young ballet dancer. She has continued to work with the Eating Disorders Coalition for Mental Health Parity and is an ambassador for the National Eating Disorders Association.

Now Haglund is working in global business development for the online mental health organization Eating Disorder Hope in Zürich, Switzerland.

“I am using my connections at broader international organizations, such as the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, to help get mental health into political and economic conversations,” says Haglund.

Haglund decided to expand her scope beyond the US because of inequities in resources available in other countries.

“Most people now have access to the internet, even in the remotest places in the world," she says. "My goal is making information, resources, and education about eating disorders and mental health available to people wherever they may be."

P H O T O G R A P H Y H A G L U N D : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F K I R S T E N H A G L U N D ; U H : P H OTO C O U R T E S Y O F S T E P H E N I U H

P H O T O G R A P H Y P H OTO S C O U R T E S Y O F S H E L B Y S TA N G E R

NOT 'JUST ONE THING' GATES SCHOLAR IS CROSSING FIELDS Stepheni Uh 14C is one of thirty-five recipients nationwide of the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which funds graduate study at the University of Cambridge in England.

Uh plans to pursue a PhD through Cambridge’s MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, focusing on the neurophysiological foundations of resilience in children growing up in poverty, in hopes of developing methods that promote mental and emotional stamina in children of all backgrounds.

Currently Uh works with clients at the Center for Autism Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and she is helping to develop a centralized database for the various markers of autism, which could lead to earlier diagnosis and treatment.

A native of Boise, Idaho, Uh planned to study political science and go to law school, but an entry-level biology class changed all that. Uh began studying with Sherab Tenzin, one of the first Tibetan Buddhist monks to study with the EmoryTibet Science Initiative.

During the past ten years, Haglund has been a political analyst and host on cable news networks including Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, and CNN. She shared her perspective on politics, faith, and culture as a millennial, with opinion pieces on politics, culture, and nonprofit advocacy published in the New York Daily News, on Forbes.com, in the Huffington Post, and in industry journals.

The increasingly contentious political climate of the past few years turned her away from the political arena.

“What precipitated a change from politics was the 2016 election. It just got so vitriolic and so divisive. I have been someone, especially over the past ten years, who has seen more and more the value in bringing people together and being a voice for moderation,” Haglund says. “The most important thing to me is helping people and I didn’t see how being a part of the cable news media industrial complex was furthering that goal.”

Haglund hopes to leverage the MISS MEDIA Kirsten Haglund work she has done in the US to benefit people struggling with eating disorders around the world.

“I see this problem as bigger and more important than an American context,” she says. “When we all talk to each other and realize we have the same goals, we can be on the same track to solving problems.” —Maria M. Lameiras

It was Tenzin’s questions about what scientific knowledge means for humanity that shifted her focus from law school to a PhD in science.

She went on to complete graduate-level neuroethics courses and conduct research in three neuroscience labs, two at Emory and one at New York University, on topics ranging from the neurobiological influence on paternal nurturance to the cognitive effects of cardiovascular exercise.

“There is so much pressure to study just one thing, and I can’t stress enough the impact Emory had on me realizing it doesn’t have to be that way,” Uh says. “I found it so incredibly clarifying to learn how so many fields come together, and need to, for there to be progress.”

—April Hunt

GATES SCHOLAR Stepheni Uh

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Packing It All In

PHOTOGR APHY CO U RTESY O F GO RU C K

BUILDING ON HIS MILITARY TRAINING, A VETERAN SPARKS A GRAB-AND-GO TREND Not long after Jason McCarthy 01C graduated from Emory with a degree in economics, the September 11, 2001, attacks changed his future.

“After 9/11, the country was in a different spot, so I joined the army,” says McCarthy. “It just felt like the right thing to do.”

Those years serving in the United States Army Special Forces—and true love—were the genesis of GORUCK, a gear and event company poised to make profits in excess of $20 million this year.

WHAT THE . . . RUCK? Jason McCarthy hopes to make rucking the next big fitness movement in the US While McCarthy was serving in through his military-inspired GORUCK Challenges.

Iraq, his wife, Emily McCarthy, was “If you have carried books in a backpack across campus, serving as a diplomat with the Foreign Service in West Africa. or an airport, you’ve rucked,” says McCarthy.

“It was a dangerous place, and I wanted her to be ready In fitness terms, to "ruck" is to load weight into a backpack in case something happened,” says McCarthy, who used his and walk or march through a series of drills and distances. During special forces training to prepare a “go bag” for her to keep with her at all times. “It was filled with survival stuff—batter- a GORUCK Challenge, an ex-Green Beret or ex-SEAL will lead a group on a ruck that lasts anywhere from four to twenty-four ies, a solar powered radio, water, a multitool, running shoes. hours, depending on the group’s skill level. There is no published People always forget running shoes.”

In 2008, as McCarthy was transitioning out of the army, Emily route, just a starting point.

“We leverage the cadre’s experience and push past the suggested he take his talent for “go bags” and turn it into a comlimits,” says McCarthy. “It’s about movement, training, and pany. He took $75,000 of their deployment savings to design one performance, but it’s also a way of life.” backpack, the GR1, a backpack advertised as “tough enough for About 150,000 people have signed up, with more than nine Baghdad and cool enough for the streets of New York City.” hundred of the events—in the US and around the world—on the It wasn’t until 2010, after an infusion of cash when he sold calendar for 2018. a portion of his company to his stepfather, that GORUCK “It’s not just a fad,” says McCarthy. “Rucking is the very made a profit. This year, he’s on track to sell about fifteen definition of smart Homo sapiens. The back is just better for thousand of those $300 bags and GORUCK is projecting that stuff. We’re all rolling forward to look at our phones all profits of more than $20 million. What began as a business day long. Rucking forces us to straighten our backs, creating to sell one backpack has divested into a selection of gear with better posture. The caloric burn is roughly equal to CrossFit, an entire division devoted to GORUCK Challenges, “rucking” without the runner’s knee.” workout adventures based on Special Forces training.

McCarthy is creating video tutorials and working on a book “I had a sharp focus at Emory,” says the two-time Allfocused on the benefits of GORUCK Challenges.

American tennis champion who graduated Phi Beta Kappa.

“It’s going to be a kind of bible of rucking, describing its role “My only goals were to do well in school and in tennis.” in the special forces community and the health benefits. Rucking After leaving the army, McCarthy earned an MBA from Georgetown as a Connelly Scholar, where he worked through is going to happen,” he says. “Just remember, in the seventies, only the weirdos jogged.”—Elizabeth Durel the GORUCK business plan. When McCarthy says that rucking is the next big fitness trend, it’s easy to believe him.

To learn more, visit alumni.emory.edu/accidentalentrepreneurs.

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E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E / C L ASS N OT E S

class notes WO R K I N G I T: B US I N E SS Vijay Viswanathan 10PhD is associate professor and department chair for Integrated Marketing Communications at the Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. He is an empirical researcher interested in understanding consumer decision making across a broad spectrum of markets such as consumer goods, financial services, media and technology, and e-commerce to name a few. Recently tenured and recognized as one of the Top 100 Faculty at Northwestern University, Viswanathan enjoys teaching undergraduates, graduates, and working professionals courses on marketing analytics, marketing management, and integrated marketing communications.

WO R K I N G I T: C O L L EG E Lisa Cooper 84C is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor and the James F. Fries Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health. She directs the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, working to implement rigorous clinical trials and identifying innovative interventions that alleviate racial and income disparities in social determinants and health outcomes. A leader in documenting physician relationships in patients from socially at-risk groups, Cooper is a 2007 MacArthur Fellow and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

WO R K I N G I T: OX FO R D Following his Emory degree in physics, Mark Gouker 81Ox 83C earned a PhD in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech. Following graduation, he joined the Masschusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, where he first worked on projects to develop new technology for satellite communications. Gouker presented the highlights of this work as a distinguished lecturer for the IEEE. Later, he led the Quantum Information and Integrated Nanosystems Group, whose work includes quantum computing, quantum sensing, CMOS and superconducting electronics, and integrated photonics. He is now an assistant head of the Advanced Technology Division.

YOUR KEY TO CLASS NOTES AH:

Allied Health

BBA: Goizueta Business School (undergraduate) C:

Emory College of Arts and Sciences

D:

School of Dentistry

DNP: Doctor of Nursing Practice FM: Fellowship in Medicine G:

James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies

H:

Honorary degree

JM: Juris Master L:

School of Law

M:

School of Medicine

MBA: Goizueta Business School (graduate) MSN: School of Nursing (graduate) MR: Medical resident N:

Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

OX: Oxford College MPH: Rollins School of Public Health (graduate) PhD: All doctor of philosophy degrees T:

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Candler School of Theology

E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E / C L ASS N OT E S

WO R K I N G I T: G R A D UAT E

WO R K I N G I T: N U RS I N G

Susanne Hollinger 02PhD is the head of patents at The Coca-Cola Company where she advises senior leaders on all aspects of patent strategy, manages the patent prosecution team, and advises on IP issues in commercial relationships. Previously, Hollinger was the chief intellectual property officer in Emory University’s Office of Technology Transfer. She earned a PhD in neuroscience from the Laney Graduate School and a juris doctor from Georgia State University College of Law in 2008.

Hollinger, her husband, Patrick McNulty 04MBA, and their three children live in Atlanta.

Dennis Flores 12MSN wants to change the mindset about “sex talks” at home to prevent HIV/ STIs among adolescent boys with same-sex attractions and behaviors. For his dissertation at Duke, Flores found that parents talk to these youth about heterosexual sex, but not same-sex issues. Now a postdoctoral fellow at Penn, Flores is focusing on parent perspectives and helping them discuss safe sex and HIV risk with male youths hungry for trustworthy information. “Adolescence is fraught with insecurity. We need to help parents normalize discussions around all types of sex so that they can feel comfortable having that conversation—and ensuring their sons’ health and well-being,” Flores says.

WO R K I N G I T: L AW Justin Barton 12L 12MBA works at Amazon in Seattle where he is corporate counsel for the Alexa legal team, with a focus on smart home. He addresses a broad range of business and legal issues, including product development, customer privacy, marketing and advertising, and business development efforts.

Barton joined Amazon from Greenberg Traurig’s LA office. After earning a BA in business economics from UCLA, he earned a joint MBA and JD at Emory Law where he was president of the Student Bar Association and the Sports and Entertainment Law Society. He serves on the Emory Law Alumni Board and the Emory Law Ask an Alum program.

WO R K I N G I T: M E D I C I N E

EMORY MAGAZINE

Raymond Kotwicki 03M 04MPH is chief medical officer at Skyland Trail, a private, nonprofit residential and day treatment organization for adults with mental illnesses in Atlanta, where he oversees clinical, educational, and research activities.

His holistic, public health approach to caring for patients with psychiatric conditions has transformed patient care at Skyland Trail. The Skyland Trail Integrative Model, which incorporates active living and nutrition education into treatment, earned a special presidential commendation from the American Psychiatric Association in 2015.

WO R K I N G I T: T H EO LO GY

Gulshan Harjee 82M 85MR is CEO and president of First Medical Care in Lawrenceville.

Harjee is a native of Tanzania who escaped her war-torn country as a teenager and lived in Pakistan and Iran before emigrating to the US. She is cofounder of the Clarkston Community Health Center, a comprehensive free clinic that provides medical, dental, and mental health care to indigent, uninsured, and underinsured patients. Harjee is a board member for the US Fund for UNICEF Southeast Region and has helped raise more than $700,000 to support UNICEF’s work.

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Ron Tolliver 16T, Community Involvement Coordinator for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), assists communities in their interaction with the EPA, and ensures that technical staff are aware of issues that concern the public regarding the EPA’s work. As a liaison between technical project managers and the community, Tolliver provides opportunities for twoway communication throughout the life of a project.

“Many people in our communities are familiar with issues of contamination and blight, but they do not understand the proper channels for removal.”

E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E / C L ASS N OT E S

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E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E / A LU M N I I N K

GET FIT QUICK: According to official recom-

away in 2016. In the spring and summer of 2014,

placed forty graduates and counting in American

mendations from health experts, we’re supposed

the two spoke for an hour or more on the phone

universities, from Harvard to MIT. It Takes a School

to get at least thirty minutes of moderate aerobic

every day. No subject was off-limits, including

tackles the question: “If such a success can

activity five days a week, plus two to three days

aspects of his tumultuous life he had never

happen in an unrecognized breakaway region of

a week of strength training, plus at least two

before revealed. In this biography, Clark shares

Somalia, can it not happen anywhere?”

to three days of stretching. In Fitter Faster: The

Conroy’s story about surviving and overcoming

Smart Way to Get in Shape in Just Minutes a Day,

the childhood abuse and trauma that marked his

MADE FOR ALL: “All too often,” wrote disabled

health journalist Robert Davis 90MPH teamed up

life—a journey full of struggles and suffering that

architect Ronald Mace, “designers don’t take

with celebrity personal trainer Brad Kolowich Jr.

culminated ultimately in redemption and triumph.

the needs of disabled and elderly people into

to create a system that helps turn this daunting

Clark is also author of the biography Motherwit:

account.” Building Access: Universal Design and

prospect into an enjoyable everyday activity that

An Alabama Midwife’s Story, and novels The

the Politics of Disability by Aimi Hamraie 07C

takes as little as fifteen minutes per day. Davis

Headmaster’s Darlings, All the Governor’s Men,

13PhD investigates twentieth-century strategies

outlines methods to incorporate high-intensity

The Harvard Bride, and The Ex-suicide.

for designing the world with disability in mind.

Commonly understood in terms of curb cuts,

interval training in short bursts with gentler exercises to produce easy, customizable workouts

SICK THOUGHTS: The experience of illness—

automatic doors, Braille signs, and flexible

that promise results. Davis is president of the

both mental and physical—figures prominently

kitchens, universal design purported to create

health media firm Everwell.

in the critical thought and activism of the 1960s

a built environment for everyone, not only the

and 1970s, though it is largely overshadowed

average citizen. Blending technoscience studies

UNPACKING GRIEF: Marketing executive,

by practices of sexuality. In Indirect Action:

and design history with critical disability, race,

mother, and grieving widow-turned-philanthro-

Schizophrenia, Epilepsy, AIDS, and the Course

and feminist theories, Hamraie interrogates

pist Sally Mundell 00C wrote Packaging Good:

of Health Activism, Lisa Diedrich 01PhD explores

historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts in

The Healing Therapy of Giving to share her jour-

how and why illness was so significant to the

Building Access, offering a groundbreaking criti-

ney of loss, discovery, and triumph as she chan-

social, political, and institutional transformation

cal history of universal design.

neled the pain of losing her husband into the

beginning in the 1960s through the emergence

creation of the Packaged Good, a nonprofit on a

of AIDS in the United States. Indirect Action

COMMON SENSE: A grand tour of the edges

mission to empower kids to give back. Mundell

places illness in the leading role in the produc-

of our lives, where glory and significance riot

relays the lessons she learned along the way that

tion of thought during the emergence of AIDS,

against the logic of living and the pall of tragedy,

helped her create something beautiful out of

ultimately showing the critical interconnected-

The Making Sense of Things is a collection of

tragedy and forge a path of healing for herself

ness of illness and political and critical thought.

twelve stories that pulse with memory, magic, and myth. Author George Choundas 92C 95L

and her daughters by giving to others. Complete with a step-by-step guide to create your own

HEDGING BETS: Jonathan Starr 98C, once a cut-

treats readers to vivid and unforgettable char-

nonprofit and a list of easy ways to start giving

throat hedge fund manager, is not your traditional

acters: A fiercely independent woman puts the

back today, this book provides practical advice

do-gooder, and in 2009, when he decided to

man who loves her to unconscionable tests,

for achieving fulfillment and healing through giv-

found Abaarso, a secondary school in Somaliland,

never guessing that arson, suicide, and canine

ing in today’s busy, success-driven society.

the choice seemed crazy to even his closest

obesity will yield a magical kind of happiness.

friends. In It Takes a School: The Extraordinary

A honeymooner in Venice, addled by fever and

LIFE OF TIDES: Pat Conroy’s memoirs and auto-

Story of an American School in the World’s #1

second thoughts, commits by dumb error a

biographical novels contain a great deal about

Failed State Starr tells the story of how an abstract

double murder. A brisk lawyer founders when

his life, but My Exaggerated Life is the product of

vision became a transformative reality, as he set

a car wreck claims his son and ex-wife, then

a special collaboration between the American

out to build a school in a place forgotten by the

discovers that the desperation of grief is a kind

author and oral biographer Katherine Clark 87G

world. It is the story of a skeptical and clan-based

of hope. Choundas, a former FBI agent, has

92PhD, who recorded two hundred hours of

society learning to give way to trust, and it’s the

published work in more than fifty publications

conversations with Conroy before he passed

story of the students themselves. Abaarso has

and is the author of The Pirate Primer.

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TRIBUTE

Billy E. Frye Billy E. Frye 54G 56PhD, who served as Emory’s first provost and later as interim president and then chancellor, died at eighty on November 14, 2017, near Clarkesville, Georgia.

During his fifteen-year tenure at Emory, Frye was recognized as a steady, influential leader who showed integrity, intelligence, and deep moral stamina, with a gift of bringing humor to the most challenging deliberations. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Piedmont College before coming to Emory, where he received one of the graduate school’s first doctoral degrees.

Frye returned to Emory in 1986 as dean of the graduate school and vice president for research, and in 1988 was named Emory’s first provost and vice president for academic affairs.

His arrival at Emory coincided with Emory’s unprecedented growth and expansion due to the then-record gift of $105 million from Coca-Cola executive Robert W. Woodruff and his brother, George Woodruff. During that time, Frye was credited with imparting a stabilizing sense of order and consensus. He was also influential in leading a campuswide self-examination that led to the 1996 publication of Choices & Responsibility: Shaping Emory’s Future, a seminal document that outlined guiding principles for the university’s future.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Frye was a national spokesperson and leader in preparing research libraries for the future by bringing attention to issues such as book preservation and digitization and the need for collaboration among research libraries.

Frye received Emory’s Thomas Jefferson Award in 1997 for service to Emory through activities, influence, and leadership. He was awarded the Emory Medal, the highest alumni honor, and recognized as one of 175 Makers of History in 2011.

Frye is survived by his wife, Elisa Ann Frye; two daughters, Alice Frye 01PhD and Elisa Talitha Frye; son-in-law Joshua Peck; granddaughter Chana Perlman; and his brother, Jack Frye.

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E M O RY E V E RY W H E R E / C O DA

A

By Steven Waronker 79C

fter five years of hoping, and ultimately in vitro fertilization, our Brian joined the family. Five years younger than his brother, Jeffrey, he was our “easy” son.

He was mellow at age two. He grew quickly and was off the charts in height, weight, and smile size. He was truly a gentle giant at six-foot-five and 250 pounds. He was focused only on becoming a future Georgia Bulldog when college time came around. He loved to eat at newly found multiethnic food restaurants in every nook and cranny of Buford Highway.

He was our Bri Bri until his senior year of high school, when things changed. The smiles became fewer and he hung around with a wilder crowd. We didn’t learn until freshman year at his beloved UGA that he had become hooked on opiates after surgery in his junior year of high school. He got help and did great for more than five years. He graduated from Kennesaw State, had a great job, and was loving life.

On December 29, 2017, he was all packed to go to L.A. to see the Dawgs play in the Rose Bowl when he took multiple OxyContins and never woke up.

As we prepared for the funeral, the rabbi asked me what he could share with the friends and family. I said, everything. He was astonished and happy he could talk about the opiate epidemic and acknowledge openly that it’s what took our beloved Brian at such a young age.

I am a physician of thirty years, and I did a lot of pain management in my early career. I’ve also personally experienced excruciating physical pain for long stretches, often at a level of ten on a ten-point scale due to two major lumbar spine surgeries and a host of related procedures.

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At any time, I could easily have prescribed long-acting opiates for my patients’ pain, and asked my treating physicians to do the same for me. But for 99 percent of patients, myself included, there is zero need for any of these long-acting, sustained-release addictive narcotics.

Zero. So why do we have a 99 percent abuse problem?

There is no single cause for the opioid epidemic, but the abuse—and the addiction that almost inevitably follows—starts with prescription medications. High school and college kids usually get their first samples from a prescribing doctor, their mom and dad’s medicine chest, or from some opportunistic dealer who preys on poor people that he convinces to fill their own scripts for profit, not pain. Certainly, heroin and fentanyl are components of this crisis, but they often come after access to pills has been reduced and street costs have gotten too expensive. What’s being done now to stop this, and what more can we do?

Lately, media outlets have been shining a revealing light on the harrowing realities of this crisis. At the same time, more and more brave men and women are standing up for ethics and morals, at the risk of their own livelihoods, by becoming whistleblowers and exposing dubious, unethical, and perhaps illegal practices in the pharmaceutical industry.

Thanks to them, we are now more seriously questioning why opioids are so widely available to those suffering from addiction.

There are many who desperately want to stop, but simply cannot in a world of such plenty. We ask how “big pharma” distributors can, in good conscience, ship huge quantities of pain pills to small towns, knowing the ultimate destinations will be big city streets.

Where is the justice as pharmaceutical profits soar into the billions, at the expense of over fifty thousand innocent lives lost every year to addiction and abuse?

I could not be more grateful that questions like these are finally being asked so publicly. It will take the best-in-class of the departments and agencies of the FDA, HHS, and DEA to turn off the spigot of this poison. Our elected officials will have to commit to putting the right laws and regulations in place. This will require tremendous willpower—standing tall and not acquiescing to the huge and diverse pharma lobbyists. Talented class-action trial attorneys need to continue plowing forward relentlessly. And it will take you and me to support them all.

Our society deserves better. We deserve better. My beautiful Brian certainly deserved better.

Steven Waronker 79C is chief of anesthesiology for Emory Speciality Associates.

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A Son, Stolen

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BLOWING IN THE WIND Traditional Tibetan prayer flags flutter over the Quad to signal Tibet Week 2018, a series of events and activities sponsored by the Emory-Tibet Partnership that explored compassion, healing, and transformation.