Kell Hall is finally coming down. Take a romp through the bizarre history of Georgia State’s first home — the parking garage turned classroom and research science building that everybody loved to hate. Q1.’19 M A G A Z I N E.G S U.E D U
Congratulations to the
40 UNDER 40 Class of 2019
The Georgia State University Alumni Association is pleased to announce the 2019 class of 40 Under 40. Started in 2018, the program honors 40 influential and innovative alumni who embody Georgia State’s values and are under the age of 40.
Class of 2019
FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT: pantheralumni.com/40under40 Class of 2020 nominations open in fall 2019
Malory Atkinson (MBA ’15) Yterenickia Bell (B.S. ’11, M.S.W. ’14, M.P.A. ’16) Ashley Blackmon (B.S.N. ’06, M.S. ’12) Quintin Bostic (B.S.E. ’12, M.Ed. ’15) Ted Bradford (M.S. ’10) Lydia Sue-Ellen Chitunya (A.A./A.S. ’05, B.A. ’10) John Clayton (J.D. ’07) Susannah Darrow (M.A. ’12) Donnie Davis (B.A.’02, M.Ed.’06) Tamieka Davis (B.B.A. ’00) Patricia Dunac Morgan (M.Ed. ’08, Ph.D. ’15) Nitcelle Emanuels (B.S.’03, MBA ’11) Shalya Forte (B.A. ’04) Sonyja George (B.A. ’02) Andre Greenwood (MBA ’11) John Gunter Jr. (M.S.I.S. ’16) Mwoddah Habib (A.A. ’12) Chris Hardman (B.B.A.’13, M.G.H.M. ’14) Christian Hill (B.S. ’15) Dustin Hillis (B.S.N. ’12) Dustin Holland (MBA ’04) Michael J. Ivie (MBA ’10/M.S. ’11) Almeera Jiwa Pratt (B.A. ’13) Erinn King (B.A. ’12) Tracie Klinke (J.D. ’08) Jatisha Marsh (M.P.P. ’12) Omarwalid Noorzada (M.P.H. ’16) Bhavi Patel (B.A. ’08) Alaina Percival (B.I.S.’02, MBA ’08) Elizabeth Randall (B.B.A. ’07) Thomas Ryan-Lawrence (B.B.A. ’03) Josh Sanders (B.A./B.B.A. ’13, M.P.A. ’14) Chantel Soverall (B.A. ’04) Ben Spears (M.P.A. ’14) Dayna Thomas (B.B.A. ’11) Joanie Twersky (MBA ’11) Christopher Upperman (B.A. ’09) Juanita Velez (M.I.B. ’13) Elizabeth Weaver II (B.S.’05, M.S.’09) Mackenzie Zorrilla (B.B.A. ’15)
CONTENTS
6 WONDER WALL Artist Shanequa Gay (M.F.A. ’19) painted a mural in the Vine City MARTA station as part of a citywide public art initiative led by the Super Bowl LIII Host Committee.
8 HIGHER GEAR Former Georgia State cross-country runner Matt Wilpers (B.B.A. ’06, M.P.A. ’07) is a star cycling coach and fitness instructor for Peloton.
11 CHILDREN’S CHAMPION As a behavorial scientist for the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, Rebecca Wilson (Ph.D. ’18) advocates for society’s most vulnerable.
FEATURES
16 RAZIN’ KELL With Kell Hall finally coming down, we’ve put together a proper send-off for the old garage. Enjoy this romp through the bizarre history of Georgia State’s first home.
30 VIRAL DECEPTION Richard Plemper, a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences, has developed a new way to conquer the flu – by tricking it.
24 SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE Alaina Percival (B.I.S. ’02, MBA ’08), CEO at Women Who Code, is on a mission to help women break the glass ceiling in the technology industry.
COVER ILLUSTRATION BY STEVE WACKSMAN PHOTO BY GREGORY MILLER
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FROM THE PRESIDENT
MAKING COLLEGE COUNT We are initiating an innovative program to better prepare students for successful careers.
“‘College to Career’ will help students become aware of their career competencies, connect those competencies to the work they do and demonstrate their proficiency in transferable skills.” THE UNIVERSITY RECENTLY hosted a reaccreditation team from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Every 10 years, the university must undergo a review by the regional accrediting body to demonstrate it is employing best practices in higher education, achieving its mission and pursuing new ways to improve the student experience. Accreditation confirms we are doing these things and enables us to receive state and federal funds, including financial aid for students. It also affirms the high quality and value of the education we offer. A degree from an accredited institution, for example, is essential for admission in most graduate programs. As part of this review, we are required to introduce a major new initiative, the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), intended to further advance our educational mission. Georgia State’s QEP for this latest accreditation review is called “College to Career.” Our commitment to student success goes beyond graduation. Our QEP focuses on helping students make the transition from the classroom to the world of work and a career. Considerable media attention has been given to whether or not investing in a college education pays off. While the evidence is clear that a college education does pay off, national
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surveys suggest higher education has not done enough to prepare graduates as they embark on their careers. They show that almost three-quarters of college students cannot translate their coursework into a career path. Our QEP is targeted at bridging that gap. Georgia State faculty have engaged in a university-wide effort to demonstrate more fully the connection between classroom learning and career preparation. To the best of our knowledge, we are one of a very few colleges and universities across the country who have made this level of commitment an institutional priority. Angela Christie, a lecturer in the English Department and the associate director for Lower Division Studies, is the faculty director of “College to Career.” She will oversee the development, refinement and implementation of “College to Career” and work with units and personnel across the university. She has led her own department in developing college-to-career assignments, curricula and pedagogical practices in core courses and the English major. In her teaching, Christie realized English students honed a host of skills they could use in careers beyond teaching. Those skills include digital writing, communicating with mass audiences, advocacy communica-
G E O R G I A STATE U N I V E R S I T Y M A G A Z I N E Q 1.’19
tion, website building and podcasting. Her students were interested in how to use what they were learning in their future careers, so she began creating assignments to highlight the skills they were learning and focusing on how her teaching material could be applied to different jobs in the workforce. Relying on advanced analytics and technology like some of Georgia State’s other hallmark programs, “College to Career” will help students become aware of their career competencies, connect those competencies to the work they do and demonstrate their proficiency in transferable skills. By implementing a coordinated set of innovative programs to foster student success, Georgia State has become nationally recognized as a leader in demonstrating that students from all backgrounds can earn their degrees at rates well above national norms. With “College to Career,” we are taking another step ahead in serving our students, and we intend to lead once again. Sincerely,
Mark P. Becker President
ILLUSTRATION BY ANDY FRIEDMAN
CLASS NOTES
BEHIND THE CAMERA
Your classmates are a successful bunch. From mayors and authors to business owners and Georgians of the Year, there are Panthers out there doing fantastic things. Got a promotion? A new addition to the family? Go ahead, brag a little. Post your good news and read about your fellow alumni at news.gsu.edu/class-notes. You can share Class Notes through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
HOLDING COURT Senior forward Malik Benlevi (center) gets his game face on before filming a segment of “Inside Georgia State Basketball” with Associate Athletics Director Mike Holmes (B.A. ’02, M.S. ’04). Read more about Benlevi — one of the top three-point shooters in Panthers history — on p. 12. Lee Thomas M.A. ’91 Lee Thomas, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office, has been named Georgia Trend’s 2019 “Georgian of the Year” for her role in guiding, strengthening and enhancing Georgia’s film industry.
DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE MAGAZINE TO YOUR PHONE OR TABLET BY VISITING MAGAZINE.GSU.EDU OR ISSUU.COM/GSUMAG.
Read her conversation with editor William Inman on p. 14.
STAY UPDATED If you need to update your address — or if this issue is addressed to someone else — just send a note to update@gsu.edu. If you’d like to stop receiving the print issue and read the magazine online only, send an email to magazine@gsu.edu, and we’ll take it from there.
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Spring 2019 • Vol. 10 • No. 1 Publishers Don Hale, Andrea Jones Executive Editor William Inman (M.H.P. ’16) Assistant Editor Benjamin Hodges (B.A. ’08) Contributors Austin Birchell (B.A. ’20), Abby Carney (B.A. ’08), LaTina Emerson, Charles McNair, Torie Robinette Creative Director Renata Irving Art Director Matt McCullin Contributing Illustrators Reid Schulz (B.F.A. ’18), Steve Wacksman Contributing Photographers Meg Buscema, Gregory Miller, Daniel Paik, Steven Thackston Send address changes to: Georgia State University Gifts and Records P.O. Box 3963 Atlanta, GA 30302-3963 Fax: 404-413-3441 email: update@gsu.edu Send story ideas and letters to the editor to: William Inman, editor, Georgia State University Magazine P.O. Box 3999 Atlanta, GA 30302-3999 email: winman@gsu.edu Georgia State University Magazine is published four times each year by Georgia State University. The magazine is dedicated to communicating and promoting the high level of academic achievement, research, scholarship, teaching and service at Georgia State University, as well as the outstanding accomplishments of its alumni and the intellectual, cultural, social and athletic endeavors of its vibrant and diverse student body. © 2019 Georgia State University
GEORGIA TREND ILLUSTRATION BY FLOYD COUNTY PRODUCTIONS
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ON CAMPUS / CREATIVITY
THESE
WALLS Artist Shanequa Gay (M.F.A. ’19) created three permanent murals as part of a citywide initiative led by the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee and the arts nonprofit WonderRoot. Her mural in the Vine City MARTA station, “Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky,” is a tribute to homeless teens she met from Covenant House. BY WILLIAM INMAN (M.H.P. ’16) | PHOTO BY STEVEN THACKSTON
Shortly after Shanequa Gay was selected to paint three murals for “Off the Wall,” a public art initiative planned around Super Bowl LIII to showcase Atlanta’s place in the Civil Rights Movement, she met with several homeless teenagers from the Covenant House. The meeting was part of her creative process as well as part of the message. The project, the work of the arts organization WonderRoot and the Super Bowl LIII Host Committee, brought together a handful of emerging artists to create public art installations in homage to the Super Bowl host city’s movements for justice. “In Atlanta, we have a chronic homelessness problem — there are people sleeping under bridges, under houses, under trees,” Gay said. “I was really moved by these young people and their struggles, and I wanted to bring those struggles to light.” Gay’s mural titled “Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky” at the Vine City MARTA station, one of three she created for the project, silhouettes nine of the youths she met at the Covenant House amid flora and flowers native to Georgia. The mural spans the walls and concrete supports in the station. “I took pictures of the kids and had them make ‘kissy faces’ to create some vulnerability. They were all trying to be super cool,” she said.
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BRICK BY BRICK On the south-facing side of a warehouse building at the corner of Irwin Street and Boulevard, just north of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Park, is another one of Gay’s murals. Called “Remembering How Sweet Auburn Is,” it’s a patchwork of icons woven together from businesses and organizations on Auburn Avenue during the Civil Rights Movement. Her third mural, “(Re)Framing Herstory” on Edgewood Avenue, depicts four unsung African-American women educators and activists in vintage Victorian frames. Gay, who will earn her master of fine arts degree this spring, has exhibited her art in the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, the Chattanooga African-American Museum, the Hudgens Center for the Arts and more, and her work is in the private collections of actor Samuel L. Jackson and former first lady Michelle Obama. Gay says a focus of her art is “hybridity” — much of it explores social concerns through hybrid forms, such as her well-known “deer people,” mythological forms with the body of a human and the head of a deer. “Atlanta culture as a whole is a hybrid, and as Americans, we’re all a mesh of things,” she said. “So, these murals all speak to that.”
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ON CAMPUS / ALUMNI
HIGHER GEAR Matt Wilpers (B.B.A. ’06, M.P.A. ’07) moved to New York City to pursue a career in accounting. Instead, he’s become a star cycling coach and fitness instructor for Peloton, the revolutionary tech company with more than a million subscribers. BY ABBY CARNEY (B.A. ’08) | PHOTO BY DANIEL PAIK
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fter spending a few years in Manhattan high-rises working for KPMG and Goldman Sachs, Matt Wilpers was fed up with his life behind a desk. “I wanted to be in a career where I was helping people and not just making money,” Wilpers said. It’s hard to picture him in this predicament now. Since he became a coach for Peloton — a fitness-oriented tech company with a dedicated cult following — he’s become a celebrity in the fitness world. At the studios where he coaches in New York City, athletes often stop Wilpers with greetings and thanks. He remembers names, doesn’t curse and knows enough science to explain why you’re speeding up a hill or catching your breath — and how you’re going to improve if you follow his lead. Peloton’s branding has made a star out of Wilpers along with other instructors, all encouraging and dynamic personalities who can get people pumped and engaged — not just those in the studio but
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thousands more who stream Wilpers’ live and on-demand classes on their Peloton bikes, treadmills or digital apps. Wilpers’ 44,000 Instagram followers consistently leave uplifting comments on his posts. Many of them describe how he’s changed their lives, too. Wilpers says he just feels lucky to be here. He’s also fond of the saying “things happen for a reason.” For example, while sports and fitness were long part of Wilpers’ life — he was on the soccer, cross-country and track teams in high school — he thought he would take a break during college to focus on academics. After all, he never imagined he’d make a career out of sports. They were hobbies. That started to change when former Georgia State men’s crosscountry coach John Rowland spotted Wilpers running along the Chattahoochee River trails and invited him to join the university team. He did and ran Division I cross-country and track for Georgia State for four years.
After graduation, Wilpers started competing in marathons until he severely injured his Achilles tendon while training for the Boston Marathon in 2007. This kept him from running for about six months. So, he traded his running shoes for spin classes — and subsequently, a road bike — and weekend races. He also started coaching others, all while working full time in accounting.
When (Lena) Dunham posted about Wilpers on Instagram and gave him a shoutout on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” it was a breakthrough moment for him. Bike racing then led to triathlons once Wilpers could run again, and his coaching business led him away from accounting. He even introduced his own fitness app, coaching athletes virtually through workouts they could stream on their phones or tablets. While working at a treadmill fitness studio in Manhattan, he landed a gig as a running coach for Lena Dunham, the actress and producer best known as the creator of the HBO television series “Girls.” When Dunham posted about Wilpers on Instagram and gave him a shoutout on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” it was a breakthrough moment for him. Although Wilpers was still unsure about a career in fitness, Dunham’s influence cemented his shift from crunching numbers to cheering riders up steep inclines. “A bunch of people came my way after that,” he said. “It was the turning point for my attitude toward fitness. I’d never before considered it as a career option. But once she did that, I thought, ‘Maybe I can do this.’” It didn’t take long before Peloton approached him about auditioning as a cycling coach. He’s been in the saddle and climbing ever since.
ON CAMPUS / NEWS
ACADEMIC ROOTS Provost Risa Palm prepares to step down and return to the faculty.
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Georgia State’s rank out of more than 8,800 schools surveyed by Military Friendly for commitment to the military community
Risa Palm, the university’s senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, will step down at the end of the academic year and rejoin the faculty in the Department of Geosciences. The university’s chief academic officer since 2009, Palm helped Georgia State build a national reputation for innovation in student success and execute the university’s strategic plan. Her faculty hiring initiatives, such as the Second Century Initiative and the Next Generation Program, introduced leading scholars to departments throughout the university. An urban geologist, Palm has devoted much of her scholarly work to climate change. Her research on political attitudes toward climate change has garnered national and international attention. Before joining Georgia State, Palm worked at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of Oregon and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The university is conducting a national search for Palm’s successor. Tim Renick, senior vice president for student success, and Wendy Hensel, dean of the College of Law, co-chair the search committee.
UP THE RANKS Rising research expenditures prompt higher ranking. Georgia State’s total research expenditures in fiscal year 2017 exceeded $200 million for the first time, according to the National Science Foundation’s latest Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey. The university now ranks 108th out of 902 universities in the U.S. for research expenditures. It rose 15 spots from last year. From fiscal year 2010 to fiscal year 2017, expenditures increased by 148 percent, making Georgia State one of the nation’s fastest-growing research universities. For the past two years, Georgia State has been the highest-ranked institution without an engineering or medical school. “We are very proud that we continue to rise in the HERD rankings, a nationally recognized barometer of university research activity,” said James Weyhenmeyer, vice president for research and economic development. “It demonstrates our commitment to cutting-edge research that addresses complex problems.”
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ON CAMPUS / NEWS FOR THE KIDS
HERE TO HELP
State grant enables creation of Child & Family Policy Lab in the Andrew Young School.
New Center for Community Engagement will address needs of immigrants and refugees.
The Georgia Governor’s Office of Planning & Budget has awarded a $625,000 grant to the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies to create the Child & Family Policy Lab. The school will work with state agency partners to improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families in Georgia. They’ll evaluate the state’s existing programs, develop evidence-based improvements, create early warning systems to dedicate resources where they are most needed and increase the state’s research capacity by training government research analysts and program leaders. The Child & Family Policy Lab joins the Metro Atlanta Policy Lab for Education and the Career & Technical Education Policy Exchange in the school’s Georgia Policy Labs.
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Percentage point increase in completion rates at Perimeter College since consolidating with Georgia State in 2015
Georgia State has opened a new Center for Community Engagement on the Clarkston Campus. A collaboration among Perimeter College, the School of Public Health and the College of Education & Human Development, the center will focus on addressing the needs of refugees, immigrants and communities affected by migration. “The city of Clarkston was identified as a refugee resettlement area by refugee-serving agencies in the 1980s,” said Mary Helen O’Connor, professor of English at Perimeter College and director of the center. “With its Clarkston Campus in the heart of this community, Georgia State is in an ideal position to lead collaboration among NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], community partners, businesses, schools, local government and universities.”
LIGHT IT BLUE BLUE BANNERS AND LIGHTS now enhance the plaza in front of 25 Park Place (left) and the Creative Media Industries Institute (CMII) (left center). Georgia State purchased 25 Park Place in 2011 and made it the linchpin in the university’s ambitious plan to create an academic corridor on the eastern side of Woodruff Park between Edgewood and John Wesley Dobbs avenues. Tenants of the corridor already include the College of Arts & Sciences, College of Law and CMII. The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and J. Mack Robinson College of Business will soon join the College of the Arts in 55 Park Place.
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PHOTO BY MEG BUSCEMA
ON CAMPUS / ALUMNI
CHILDREN’S CHAMPION Rebecca Wilson’s (Ph.D. ’18) rise from poverty helps her fight its worst effects. BY CHARLES MCNAIR
PHOTO BY STEVEN THACKSTON
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ne in four U.S. children experience some form of abuse in their lifetimes, and one in seven has experienced abuse or neglect in the past year. Along with its damaging lifelong trauma, the issue of child maltreatment bears other, expensive, consequences. The lifetime economic cost of child abuse and neglect is estimated at $124 billion annually. So what can be done? Who steps up to help the most vulnerable among us? Rebecca Wilson (Ph.D. ’18) has taken up the flag. As a behavorial scientist for the Department of Health & Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), she has made it her life’s mission to reverse the grim statistics of childhood violence and abuse. For Wilson, it’s a true calling. She’s familiar with situations that can turn kids into statistics. She was born and raised in Tifton, a rural community of just more than 15,000 people in southwest Georgia. She grew up in a family of 17. “My family and I lived 200 percent below the federal poverty level,” she said. “Not only was our house uninhabitable, but we also lacked indoor plumbing until 1994.” Determined not to allow family experiences to define her or determine the trajectory of her life, Wilson focused on education. As an undergrad at Georgia Southern University, she worked at a convenience store, then at a Sonic and a Captain D’s — “anything to pay the rent,” she said. She put in 10 hours of work-study a week in an entomology lab. In her last year as an undergraduate student, Wilson began working in an area nearer to her heart. “I was a child advocate at a domestic violence shelter,” she said. “It gave me a different kind of education. I found that most of the children I worked with had experienced some form of abuse or neglect.” Her own story allowed her to empathize deeply with those in her care. “My personal experiences really sensitized me, humbled me and allowed me to see beyond the eyes of a child and withhold judgment,” she said. The combination of life and work experiences solidified her professional interest in public health and laid the groundwork for her doctoral study and her responsibilities at the CDC. “I see all of my experiences as ‘bread crumbs’ that have guided me down a clear path toward my goal,” she said. “I actually think this path chose me, not the other way around.” At the CDC, she helps states implement a national surveillance system that captures data related to violent deaths. She finds the data reveal important — if unpleasant — information about child maltreatment. She’s been able to help draw a clearer picture of how and why children are killed based on multiple factors: the relationships between the victims and the perpetrators, household challenges and other circumstances that place children at risk. Work of such psychological intensity requires occasional downtime, so she likes to travel. On her most recent international trip, five weeks in Africa, Wilson raised a Georgia State flag on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain on the continent. As Wilson continues her work in the area of child maltreatment, she’s always aware of a very special bond. “My lived experiences give me an advantage,” she said. “When I look at them, I see myself.”
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ON CAMPUS / ATHLETICS
FLOOR GENERAL Senior and team captain Malik Benlevi (B.A. ’19) caps a stellar career as one of the top three-point shooters in program history. BY AUSTIN BIRCHELL (B.A. ’20) | PHOTO BY STEVEN THACKSTON
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fter trailing by 21 points, the Panthers rallied against Alabama last December on the Crimson Tide’s home court. The teams were tied at 80 with just 1.4 seconds left on the clock when Malik Benlevi met the ball along the three-point line and immediately let the shot go. The buzzer blared through the arena as the ball arced through the air and swished through the net. The entire Georgia State team exploded from the bench and rushed Benlevi in celebration. The next morning, Benlevi’s game-winning shot was the top highlight on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” “I’ve wanted to be on ESPN my whole life,” Benlevi said. “It’s one of my biggest accomplishments. I made sure to record it and send it to my mom.” His mother and family have been behind him all the way, but Benlevi also has received an outpouring of support from his hometown of Savannah, Ga. Benlevi’s following in Savannah makes it seem as though the whole city is behind him.
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“As much as they support him here, it is even more impressive how his friends and family show up in Statesboro when we play Georgia Southern,” head coach Ron Hunter said. “It almost gives us a homecourt advantage.” Benlevi has held the team captain position for two years and will go down in Panther history as one of the program’s top winners and three-point shooters. “Malik is a leader on and off the court for this team in so many ways,” Hunter said. “He has improved every day since he got here nearly four years ago, and he also works with his teammates to help them improve. “Malik is basically an extension of the coaching staff on the court because he knows our system so well, and that is invaluable for a coach.” If he maintains this level of play, his future is full of possibilities. “We’ve just got to see how this season goes,’” Benlevi said. “Maybe it’ll be the NBA or overseas. It honestly doesn’t matter to me as long as I’m still playing basketball.”
G E O R G I A STATE U N I V E R S I T Y M A G A Z I N E Q 1.’19
ALL-AMERICAN PANTHER Starting pitcher Hunter Gaddis (B.A. ’20) was named to the preseason All-America second team by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association. Gaddis is the Panthers’ first preseason All-American since 2015. His list of preseason accolades also includes a spot on the All–Sun Belt Conference team and the conference Preseason Pitcher of the Year. The 6-foot-6-inch right-hander has established himself among the top starting pitchers in the conference and the nation in his first two seasons. In 2018, Gaddis ranked second in the league in strikeouts (98) and third in earned run average (2.95). He is tied for 10th in Georgia State baseball history for career wins. BEACH SEASON The beach volleyball team is back in the sand, and the team’s digs recently got a fresh makeover. The Beach Volleyball Complex behind the Sports Arena now boasts a new mural sporting a beachy sunset, the Atlanta skyline and the letters “ATL.” Georgia State entered the season ranked No. 13 in the nation.
ON CAMPUS / RESEARCH
HISTORY UNEARTHED Georgia State geoscientists dig up a connection between climate change and evolution.
TRONA
BY LATINA EMERSON | ILLUSTRATION BY REID SCHULZ (B.F.A. ’18)
ONE MILLION YEARS AGO, an early species of humans — Homo erectus — roamed the lands of East Africa, gathering food, caring for their children and banding together in groups to fend off predators. As the centuries passed, their environment became increasingly dry, shifting frequently from wet to arid conditions and back again. Slowly, their home evolved from lush forests to low grasslands. These early humans learned to adapt to the fluctuating environment and even figured out how to use stone tools, which became more and more sophisticated. They began crafting handaxes and smaller, pointed tools that were ideal for darts, arrows and other projectile weapons used for hunting. It wasn’t just a coincidence that these advances in stone technology occurred at the same time as environmental changes, according to Daniel Deocampo, professor of geosciences at Georgia State. For two decades, Deocampo and his colleagues have studied how the evolution of the Earth may have influenced the evolution of hominins, a tribe of primates that includes modern humans and the extinct species of our lineage. The work is meant to indicate how humankind might survive massive climate change in the future. “We’re looking at geological sources of information about how the environment changed and interpreting what that meant for changing biological systems,” he said. Although contemporary climate change is linked to human activity, environmental shifts can also occur because of variations in the Earth’s orbit. As the Earth moves around the sun, the shape of its orbit changes from elliptical to circular, altering the amount of solar radiation the planet receives. The tilt of the Earth’s axis also changes over time, which can in turn affect the amount of incoming solar radiation. All of these changes influence how energy and water circulate around the Earth, leading to dry, arid spells at certain times and places. Since 2013, Deocampo and an international team of scientists have been engaged in the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project, dredging up ancient sediments at five sites across the East African Rift in order to determine what the Earth’s climate was like at various periods in history. At the Lake Magadi basin in Kenya, the researchers collected and analyzed sediments that date back a million years. “The sediments showed that Lake Magadi used to be freshwater and gradually has become more and more saline,” said Deocampo. “That tells us that arid conditions developed in East Africa about half a million years ago.” On top of the prolonged shift to a drier climate, there were also shorter fluctuations. “You might have some wet centuries and some dry centuries, so it’s getting wetter and drier and then wetter and drier in high-frequency cycles,” said Deocampo. “That’s when we see the Middle Stone Age tools being developed by early human ancestors.” According to Deocampo, these frequent climate fluctuations may have contributed to evolutionary advances by favoring a gene pool that is highly adaptable. During dry conditions, for example, early hominins probably had to travel much farther to get fresh drinking water or find animals to hunt. “Those changes may create selective pressure, as evolutionary biologists would call it,” said Deocampo. “Before the Middle Stone Age, most stone tools were fashioned from rocks that could be found nearby. But starting about 400,000 years ago, we begin to see stone tools that came from geological sources many, many kilometers away.” The sediments also revealed details about the natural pace of climate change. “We can see that, historically, cycles of wetter and drier episodes are happening over thousands of years,” Deocampo said. “That’s much slower than the climate change we’re witnessing today, which is happening over the span of a human lifetime.”
MUD
LAMINATED MUD
GRAVEL
TUFF
CHERT
SILT/SAND
TRACHYTE 200 METERS BELOW
At Lake Magadi in Kenya, Deocampo and his team drilled through 200 meters of sediment and rock to extract core samples dating back one million years.
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STARRING ROLE Lee Thomas (M.A. ’91), head of the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office since 2011, is a big reason why the state is a top spot for film and TV. Her work boosting the industry earned her Georgia Trend’s nod as the 2019 Georgian of the Year. INTERVIEW BY WILLIAM INMAN (M.H.P. ’16) | PHOTO BY MEG BUSCEMA
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IT’S A SAFE BET THE FAMOUSLY devout former President and Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter averted his eyes during a few scenes of “Deliverance,” the 1972 blockbuster filmed in his home state. But its economic impact was something he couldn’t ignore. A year after its release, Carter, then governor, created the state’s film office to lure Hollywood to the Peach State. It brought results. Some of the memorable flicks filmed here include “Deliverance” star Burt Reynolds’ “Smokey and the Bandit” as well as “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Kalifornia” and “My Cousin Vinny.” In 2008, when the state passed a tax incentive for the industry, showbusiness in Georgia ratcheted up even more. These days, more TV shows and movies are filmed on Georgia red clay than ever before. In 2017, the industry had a $9.5 billion impact in the state. Credit Lee Thomas, deputy commissioner for the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office, for some of that success. She’s been with the office since 1996 and at the helm since 2011. For her work growing the industry here, Georgia Trend named her the 2019 Georgian of the Year. We spoke with Thomas about her work and the rise of film and TV in Georgia. What’s the role of the Georgia Film, Music & Digital Entertainment Office? Job creation is at the heart of what we do. We work to get film and TV projects to Georgia to keep the industry strong here and create jobs for Georgians. We get scripts, break them down shot by shot and help find locations for shoots. We also oversee the tax incentive program, and we’re here for logistic support when films are being shot here. So, we’ll take people around to help find locations, stage spaces, office space and equipment suppliers. We’re full service from the time they get started to the time they wrap. What are some of your duties as deputy commissioner? Well, it’s pilot season right now, so we’re super busy, and we have a lot of scripts coming in. Our main thing is
we make sure that we keep the film tax credit — it’s the main way we’re able to attract projects. I give a lot of talks and speeches. We want to make sure that all the communities where these projects are being shot feel engaged, and we hope projects will continue to film throughout the state — that’s one of our big missions, too.
“Students, Georgia State students in particular, are studying film and working in the industry, and that’s really helped to broaden our base.” You’ve been with the office since 1996. What was life like back before Georgia was such a hotbed for film? Oh, it was a very different time! We drove all around the state and snapped location photos with 35-millimeter cameras, stuffed them in manila envelopes and FedExed them to the West Coast. The industry here was totally driven by location, so we spent tremendous amounts of time trying to find the perfect place for producers. In the late ’90s, we started losing business to Canada and other places that passed tax incentive programs for the movies. The icing on the cake was when we lost “Ray,” the Ray Charles story, to Louisiana at the last minute. Ray was a Georgia native, of course.
The producers already had offices set up here and everything. Louisiana had just passed a very aggressive tax incentive program, and that was a big wake-up call for Georgia. We passed a revised incentive program in 2008, and that made all of the difference. Besides the tax incentives, what keeps film projects coming here? Georgia has the complete package. We have diverse locations, and you can shoot pretty much anything you want here. We have the world’s busiest airport, so travel is easy. We have a lot of infrastructure such as stage space, equipment and lots of talented crew. Students, Georgia State students in particular, are studying film and working in the industry, and that’s really helped to broaden our base. And it shouldn’t be understated that we have a great quality of life here. People like the restaurants and the hotels. It’s all of that together. How do we keep the industry going here and attracting more talent? Organically, because of our success, we’re seeing more and more “abovethe-line” people moving here. The cost of living is cheaper than in L.A., and they end up working here constantly anyway. Now, more projects are being developed right here in Georgia that are telling Georgia stories. Unfortunately, people still have to go to the West Coast to pitch them, but they are selling them, so that’s great. It seems like there are so many stories of people running into big-time movies stars in Atlanta. We hear it all the time. Once I pulled up to a light, and John Malkovich was just standing there on the street corner. It’s funny — I remember it was a big deal years ago that Kevin Sorbo (best known for the ’90s television show “Hercules”) was going to be here. And it was a big deal! I remember having to look him up to see who he was, and it was like, “Oh, this is so exciting!” And now, Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence — all these megawatt people are here. You realize how far we’ve come, for sure.
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BY BENJAMIN HODGES (B.A. ’08)
ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEVE WACKSMAN
Kell Hall has been at the center of campus for more than 75 years. Now, it’s coming down to make way for greenspace. In this oral history, a handful of Panthers tell the tale of Georgia State’s first permanent building, the old mother, “Hell Hall” — home of the “Rat Factory,” the cadaver lab and decades of weirdness.
ack in 1945, Georgia State — then called the Atlanta Extension Center of the University System of Georgia — was growing at a quick clip, and its lone classroom building on Luckie Street was struggling to keep up. While the college desperately needed more space, material shortages following World War II made new construction impossible. Over on Ivy Street (now Peachtree Center Avenue), a six-story parking garage caught the eye of George Sparks, the school’s director and future president. Sparks had big plans for the building’s 180,000 square feet of reinforced concrete and thought its rampways would make life easier on veterans with disabilities returning to school on the GI bill. It was called the Bolling Jones Building, named after the Atlanta Stove Works president who built it. Over the years, it housed not only the Ivy Street Garage parking company but also several offices and street-level businesses, including restaurants, tire shops and a women’s hat store. Built in 1925, the city’s first multistory garage featured staggered floors and two sets of shorter ramps — great for storing and moving cars but something else entirely for getting students to class. “It was one of the first examples of the modern garage erected in American cities in the mid-1920s,” says Tim Crimmins, professor of history and director of the Center for Neighborhood & Metropolitan Studies. “It was part of the larger transformation of
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downtowns caused by the rise of skyscrapers and automobile ownership and the need for municipalities to control parking on the street.” After acquiring Bolling Jones for $300,000, Sparks transformed it into classroom and office space within a year using war surplus materials he obtained from places like the Bell Bomber Plant in Marietta, Ga., and nuclear facilities in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The college’s new home became Georgia State’s first permanent building and held its first classes in 1946. Enrollment soon exploded, and campus had to expand. When many departments and classrooms moved to Sparks Hall after its construction in 1955, the sciences stayed behind in Bolling Jones. In honor of the school’s first dean, it was renamed the Wayne Kell Science Hall in 1964. For years, the college only occupied the first two floors of the building and rented out the other four — as well as the street-level storefronts — to defray the school’s operating costs. While students trundled up the ramps to class, the rest of the building was bustling with business and activity. Tenants included the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Southern Bell, the Board of Regents, the Veterans Administration, a cotton broker and a package delivery service called the Railway Express Agency. Always looking for ways to bring in money and keep the school in the black, Sparks even installed a sawmill on the fourth floor when lumber was in high demand. “Everything was in there,” says university archivist Laurel Bowen. “Rents from the building were a very lucrative source of money for operating the school. But as the student population kept growing, we kept moving people out as we needed space.” As the school took over the remaining floors, it installed bowling alleys, a recital hall for plays and concerts, and a student-run barber shop. Sparks even wanted to build a rooftop student recreation center, a “Campus in the Sky” featuring a dance floor, a mock beach for swimming and sunbathing, and courts for tennis and badminton. Engineers weren’t so sure, though, so the plans never went anywhere. Amid Kell’s endless reconfigurations, remodels and facelifts, one thing has stayed put from the beginning: the eatery on the first floor known as the Refectory. The word simply means “dining hall,” and Sparks personally chose it because he liked the way it sounded. The Refectory quickly became part of the school’s identity, a central gathering space for everything from quick snacks to course registration. For years, students crammed into the small basement café to choose their classes from a ring of towering blackboards that reached up to the ceiling and lined the interior of the room. Each one bore the latest information for every section of every class — line by line, column by column — amid an incessant stream of runners darting
in and out and up ladders to update the number of available seats. In some ways, Kell Hall has come a long way since then. The birthplace of science at Georgia State, it housed a biosafety level-4 lab and rooms full of bubbling chemical reactions, subatomic machinery, cadavers and lab animals — from crustaceans and rodents to birds and primates. It became an icon of Georgia State’s achievements and enterprising spirit — a place where the breakthroughs of scientists and students were only matched by their stories. But what a pain, though, right?
The Long Goodbye PATTON: From the day I arrived on campus, I thought Kell Hall was antiquated and really should be torn down.
AS TOLD BY H. ELLIOTT ALBERS, Regents’ Professor of Neuroscience and Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience WILLIAM ANDERSON (B.A., B.S. ’17) LAUREL BOWEN, University Archivist DAVID BOYKIN, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry TIM CRIMMINS, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Neighborhood & Metropolitan Studies W. CRAWFORD ELLIOTT, Associate Professor of Geosciences JEFFREY GLOVER, Associate Professor of Anthropology BARBARA JOHNSTON (B.A. ’69, M.Ed. ’71, S.Ed. ’74, Ph.D. ’87) EMMA MASON (B.A. ’13, M.A. ’16) SAM MASSELL (B.C.S. ’51), Mayor of Atlanta (1970–74) CARL PATTON, University President (1992–2008) SPENCER ROBERTS, Digital Librarian CLIFF STEAGALL (B.S. ’87) AMANDA WALK (B.A. ’12, M.P.P. ’14)
I have fond memories of that old garage. I was there during the days that bomb shelters were in vogue, and Kell Hall was like a concrete fortress academic experiment. SAM MASSELL (B.C.S. ’51), FORMER MAYOR OF ATLANTA
ROBERTS: Georgia State has been talking about destroying Kell Hall for 50 years, almost as long as it’s owned it. BOYKIN: When I interviewed here for a position in chemistry in 1965, the provost told me I could expect to move out of Kell Hall in three years. Approximately every 10 years thereafter, there was the story: “Oh, we’re going to be moving out of Kell Hall into here or there.” Come 2018, we finally moved out of Kell Hall. PATTON: The idea was we’d build the Petit Science Center, and there’d be enough space for everyone to move out of Kell Hall so we could get rid of it. But our research was ramping up so quickly that, once we opened up Petit, it was immediately full. There was no space. So, we had to keep Kell Hall. ALBERS: We didn’t have the infrastructure we really needed. It was always doing what we could with what we had. We were scrappy, though, and we were able to get things done. ELLIOTT: We persevered considerably. It was inefficient and unattractive to say the least, but there was incredible gut-level commitment and can-do. A lot of good science got done in fairly primitive conditions. We were pretty productive in spite of Kell Hall. It’s a measure of how dedicated faculty and students were that we walked into Kell Hall every day and did our work. We put up with all this.
Hell Hall MASSELL: I have fond memories of that old garage. I was there during the days that bomb shelters were in vogue, and Kell Hall was like a concrete fortress academic experiment. STEAGALL: It reminded me of Gotham City. Discolored, rusted metal. So much concrete. Antiquated
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ELLIOTT: The most convenient thing about Kell Hall was the Post Office.
equipment. Big steel pipes and exhaust fans. Structures coming out of the roof and windows. Dark. You’d always hear dripping sounds. The rampways were a crazy burnt red-orange color that added to the whole morbid ambiance of the place.
ALBERS: The infrastructure was always a problem. HVAC and plumbing and electrical — there was no grand diagram of all that. So, every time you did something, you didn’t know what was going to happen — if it was going to work or break or cause another problem somewhere else in the building.
WALK: I think that was the strangest thing about Kell. It felt lawless and semiparanormal at times. PATTON: Everybody who had a nonromantic view of the building hated the place.
BOYKIN: It was a haphazard array. We would have an electrical problem, and they wouldn’t even know where the breaker boxes were.
BOYKIN: Kell Hall is not ideal laboratory space. The round posts, the low ceilings, the plumbing — it was a gigantic patchwork.
ELLIOTT: If somebody used the kerosene saw in 320, the smell would stay in the air for maybe a day or so.
PATTON: The truth is it was a horrible building that was converted badly and remained horrible. Converting a parking garage into a classroom building — that’s a long stretch. Some things would just hit you right in the face, like columns blocking your view of someone trying to give a lecture.
BOYKIN: We had a lot of experiments that ran overnight and were cooled by circulating water. At night, the pressure would build up and pop the rubber hose. I can tell you I had many visits to Kell Hall at midnight or 2 a.m. when the plant people would call me and say, “You’ve got a flood in your lab!”
ELLIOTT: You had these big concrete pillars all over the place, which covered the reinforced steel girders. You couldn’t go 25 feet without running into one of those girders, and so you had to squeeze classrooms and offices around and between them.
ELLIOTT: I think every room got flooded at some point. The pipes got jammed up all the time, and the water would have to go somewhere else — escape through another pipe, come up a drain, overflow a sink. During or after rainstorms, water would come up through my sink, and I was on the third floor.
CRIMMINS: When the schedule of classes came out, the thing you feared most as a faculty member was discovering that you were going to be teaching in Kell Hall. And so, we had to figure out a way to avoid that. What I remember doing is always requesting audiovisual support because there was no such thing as audiovisual support in Kell Hall. ELLIOTT: Another faculty member was lecturing in high heels and punched a hole right through the linoleum with her heel. There used to be a pipe that went right there, and they didn’t plug it up right. They just put linoleum right over it. PATTON: It’s not a good sell if you’re trying to recruit a leading scientist to your university, and you take him or her to Kell Hall and say, “Hey, this is where you’re going to live.” GLOVER: From a functioning standpoint, really everything was just so difficult.
ALBERS: The person who ran the crawfish lab needed to clean the aquaria every so often. The water in there got really nasty. He had a floor drain, so he poured it all down the drain. It turned out the drain just dumped out above the ceiling tiles of the floor below and flooded the developmental psychology lab with the nastiest water you could ever imagine.
There was no ramp to the seventh floor, so they had to get a crane to lift the cadaver caskets from the ground to the roof of the building. SPENCER ROBERTS, DIGITAL LIBRARIAN
Rampways CRIMMINS: If you look at a lot of the parking garages we build today, they’re designed the same way. They come up a half-story at a time so the ramps aren’t that steep. BOYKIN: Part of my lab still had the parking space paint marks on the floor. PATTON: You know, you think the ramps were cute. But they sure weren’t handicapped accessible. And there was one elevator in the building, one tiny elevator. STEAGALL: It was like a little box — a rickety, old, creaky box. It was the kind with the buttons that clicked and were hard to push. They were made of plastic, and the numbers were worn off. I would usually take the ramps because everybody crammed in there like sardines.
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I was down in Kell 100, and there was a plastic bag in the corner by the sink, and inside was a plastic bin full of liquid. It was old enough that the lid was cracked. I opened the bag. It didn’t smell so good. It had a little label — “bear claw” — and it was sitting there decomposing in formaldehyde — flesh and sinew and bone, about six inches long. Who knows how long it had been there? JEFFREY GLOVER, PROFESSOR OF ANTHROPOLOGY ROBERTS: They did bring cadavers in on the elevator, but because they wouldn’t fit lying down, they had to stand them up on their feet. PATTON: It’s not the proper way to deal with a cadaver. ROBERTS: There was no ramp to the seventh floor, so they had to get a crane to lift the cadaver caskets from the ground to the roof of the building. ALBERS: When we were renovating, they would have to put all the big stuff on carts and push it up the ramps. Well, one time they got up to the top of the ramp, and it got to be too heavy. The cart got loose, went down the ramp and went right through a wall.
GLOVER: I always wanted to skateboard down the whole thing. WALK: I liked to pilfer those ancient chairs from whatever neglected room or lab happened to be unlocked and ride them down the ramps. GLOVER: The best room was Kell 333. The ceilings were low, and it was on the ramp — one of those weird room configurations tucked along the ramps. MASON: The dimensions were so weird. After opening the door, you immediately had to take three steps up to a false floor, like a half floor. We called it the “Wonka Room.”
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EXTRA CREDIT
Animal House
Shortly before he graduated from the physical therapy program in 1987, Cliff Steagall volunteered to help the professor who ran Kell Hall’s anatomy lab. Recently married and with his first child on the way, the 24-year-old jumped at any opportunity to find favor with his teachers and help his chances at finishing school and getting a good job as soon as possible. “I was trying to make things happen. I’d do anything and everything,” he says. He successfully helped the professor clean and prep the lab for several weeks, but one night, near the end of the term, things got sloppy. Here’s how he tells it.
ALBERS: They escaped multiple times — sometimes as individuals, sometimes as groups.
We had eight cadavers in the anatomy lab, which was unusual for such a small and underequipped department. That was more than a lot of the medical colleges had. They were stored in these huge stainless steel caskets. They were like tables. The cadavers were always submerged in formaldehyde because you had to keep the integrative tissues intact. We had to change out the fluids in the caskets for the next group of students coming in. It was one of the nastiest things you could imagine because, at the end of the quarter, all the parts and things that you’d cut off — the fat and the arteries and all that — had settled to the bottom of these tanks. We were both underneath this thing, and there was a huge drain at the bottom that was capped with this huge fire hydrant cap. While I was unscrewing it, the guy was trying to tell me, “Before you go too far, wait a minute. I’m going to put this valve on there.” Well, I didn’t hear him, and that big, heavy cap fell to the ground, and this stuff came flushing and gushing out — chunks of human flesh, fat, just foul flowing stuff spewing everywhere, all over us. The guy was screaming at the top of his lungs. I went to put my hands over the drain to try to stop it, but all I did was make a funnel that just funneled it all straight on top of him. He was dripping — covered in body parts — and he started screaming: “Get out! Just get out!” He and I smelled bad for probably three weeks. You just could not wash that stuff out. It went into your pores. It was so nasty. You’d try to eat — even like two weeks later — and when you’d bring a hamburger to your face, all you could smell was death and formaldehyde. There were probably at least 40 or 50 gallons of solution in there because it has to fully submerge a body. It’s like a massive tub. I don’t know how the man cleaned it all up. He was pretty pissed at me for the rest of the year. I didn’t get any extra credit.
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ANDERSON: A bunch of crawfish that belonged to [the Neuroscience Institute] got out of their holding tanks once and were taking over the ramps and hallways trying to find somewhere to hide.
ELLIOTT: If the housekeeping wasn’t done well in the biology or anatomy and physiology labs, you saw these pretty good horsefly-type bugs flying around. I remember we were interviewing a young man for a faculty position when this horsefly comes into the room, buzzes around and flies back out. ALBERS: One of the psychology professors would actually catch pigeons out of his window to use in experiments in his lab. That’s obviously a big no-no now. GLOVER: Throughout Kell, over the years, departments and people end up accumulating stuff that gets put in a closet, gets lost, gets outdated, never gets thrown away. So, you end up with some really random stuff. ANDERSON: I found a turtle skeleton in an air vent. GLOVER: I was down in Kell 100, and there was a plastic bag in the corner by the sink, and inside was a plastic bin full of liquid. It was old enough that the lid was cracked. I opened the bag. It didn’t smell so good. It had a little label — “bear claw” — and it was sitting there decomposing in formaldehyde — flesh and sinew and bone, about six inches long. Who knows how long it had been there? ELLIOTT: One year, the people at the Refectory left some food out over break, and rats got in. They multiplied like mad. By the time the students showed back up, there were rats all over the place. You’d see them scurrying around. JOHNSON: We called the Refectory the “Rat Factory.” That was our affectionate name for it. We didn’t even know what “refectory” meant. I mean, here we are in the basement of a freaking car park, and we’re eating there. How disgusting is that?
GLOVER: Another professor was going through Kell 316 once, and she called us up and was like, “I got some stuff that I think is y’all’s.” We opened up a box to find 30 raccoon skulls. Another one had like 30 possum skulls with baby possum skulls in little test tubes. And little notes about each one — their size, their weight, where they were collected, when they died. On another note, I opened a drawer in Kell 100 as we were moving out, and it was full of tapes. And so, I got a couple bootlegs of Widespread Panic concerts from the late ’90s that I may have actually been at. PATTON: Removing Kell Hall opens up the campus to the city and allows the city to look in. That building really blocks access between the campus and the city. It’s going to be a quadrangle that’s visible, that opens up to downtown. It goes back to a concept from my time at Georgia State: “We want to be a part of the city, not apart from it.”
The Old Mother CRIMMINS: When the university system bought the building in 1945, it was an incredible bargain to get that amount of space when there were neither materials nor funds for new construction. That $300,000 really laid the foundation for the growth of the modern university. It gave Sparks the opportunity to create everything the school needed — classrooms, a library, a cafeteria, offices. They could even rent it out to bring in income.
ROBERTS: How many universities try to knock a building down for 50 years and fail? And not just fail but continually need it because it’s so necessary? I think that’s the weird legacy of Kell Hall — not just that it’s been used for so many things and is so odd but that it has always filled a vital role. So that now, after so long — finally, maybe — we can actually knock it down.
MASSELL: Sparks had a lot of politician in him. BOWEN: Sparks was shameless in promoting the school. He acquired the funding, he purchased the building, he transformed it and he filled it with a growing institution. Frankly, I don’t think we would have had a chance if he had not been such an eloquent and decisive advocate. Kell Hall is part of that legacy. ROBERTS: Kell Hall has survived all these changes. It has been this rock at the center of campus for so long despite growth and expansion and other buildings going up and coming down. ELLIOTT: When I was interviewing for the job, I had two other offers, and I chose this place. The other offers had better buildings and better facilities, but I could get more work done here. I was very struck with the commitment, the attitude, the esprit de corps. People were making it work despite Kell Hall, and that’s an attractive characteristic. STEAGALL: There was some serious science in Kell Hall. ALBERS: Kell Hall cradled science at Georgia State. Without Kell and the people who got those labs going, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are now. ROBERTS: It’s kind of incredible that this building would resist plans to demolish it for decades. Because it has been on the chopping block from almost day one.
For more on the old garage, visit magazine.gsu.edu to check out “Kell Hall: Capturing the Legacy,” a digital exhibit featuring 3D models, historic photos, exclusive stories and more.
As the technology industry continues to grow — and with it, a vast demand for more professionals — increasing the diversity of workers in this male-dominated space is essential.
ALAINA PERCIVAL (B.I.S. ’02, MBA ’08), CEO at Women Who Code, is on a mission to help women break the glass ceiling.
BY TORIE ROBINETTE
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PHOTOS BY GREGORY MILLER
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rowing up, Alaina Percival (B.I.S. ’02, MBA ’08) dreamt of becoming an astronaut. Impressed by her knack for math, her father encouraged her to also consider a career as an airline pilot. When it was time to explore colleges, Percival decided to stay in her home state of Georgia and take advantage of the HOPE Scholarship. She was partial to a campus in or near Atlanta, where she’d been raised, and toured the usual prospects — the University of Georgia, Georgia State and Georgia Southern. And while Georgia Tech (where her father had gone) might have seemed like the obvious choice for a self-proclaimed left brain looking for an urban location, it was never part of the conversation. In fact, no one in the family even suggested a visit. “Given the role I’m in now, the whole Georgia Tech thing seems really crazy,” Percival laughs. That role is the chief executive officer of Women Who Code, an international nonprofit promoting women’s success in the technology space, which recently opened a new headquarters in Atlanta. As a high school senior, Percival was blind to the prejudices that are now so clear to her. The notion that colleges and careers geared toward science, technology, engineering and mathematics are meant for men, she says, is part of a string of implicit biases women face every day — like lower salaries for the same skills, limited promotional opportunities, all-male leadership and a lack of female mentors. Those biases might explain why women hold only 30 percent of technology-based jobs despite outnumbering men in the U.S. labor force (at 59 percent). They might also explain why, by 2020, as the tech industry demands more and more
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jobs, the nation will be one million workers shy of filling them. Women aren’t just applying for and accepting technology positions in smaller numbers. Once hired, women are more likely than their male counterparts to leave jobs in tech. Still, a shortage of workers for an industry that touches almost every facet of our daily lives is only part of the problem. Women are grossly underrepresented at all levels of the tech food chain (especially in executive roles), and that lack of diversity is kryptonite for a field that runs on innovative thinking. Percival and her team have been working for more than seven years to reconstruct the system. “The thing is, women enter their careers just as excited as men and just as driven to succeed,” Percival says. She’s proof that women dream of their careers with abandon, too.
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE A traditional degree in computer engineering (perhaps from Georgia Tech) may have given Percival a direct path to coding, but she’s not traditional. She cut her teeth in Georgia State’s bachelor of interdisciplinary studies program, which gave her the creative freedom to dabble in more than one major. It’s where she realized and embraced the enterprising spirit that would prove so invaluable down the line, and it’s
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where she learned you can chart your own course as long as you’re willing to brave it. After graduating in 2002, Percival landed a fellowship with the CongressBundestag Youth Exchange for Young Professionals (a year-long language immersion and internship program for recent graduates interested in international work), which took her to Germany to study in Nürnberg. Soon after, she accepted a product management role with one of the world’s best-known athletic brands — Puma. She’d beat out every competitor in the European Union for a job that would normally favor a native applicant. Percival isn’t the type to sit around and wait for opportunities. It comes as no surprise that in the midst of a successful career abroad, she continued to look for ways to make herself more marketable. An MBA, she thought, was just the ticket. This time, Percival looked at Georgia Tech, but she decided her alma mater was the ideal fit. She wasn’t ready to make a permanent move back to the U.S., and through Georgia State’s former Global Partners MBA program, she’d have the chance to study across four continents. “Given the experience I stood to gain, it just didn’t make sense to go anywhere else,” she says. When she wrapped up the program, Percival was already champing at the bit for her next challenge. She wanted to
move to San Francisco and get a taste of Silicon Valley. But with every job interview she landed came a rude awakening: Her employers wanted someone seasoned in technology. So, she did what she says anyone can do — she taught herself to code. “I knew I had to be able to speak the language,” she says. Percival immersed herself in California’s entrepreneurial culture, taking on side tech projects that required coding expertise. She spent her nights and weekends growing a small community group of likeminded women with tech aspirations. They called it Women Who Code. Eventually, Percival took on a role with a small startup. The job earned her the career credibility she needed to be taken seriously. When she went back into the marketplace, she had competing offers. She chose the company that allowed her the flexibility to keep advancing Women Who Code. “We saw organizations supporting girls and women in college in early stages of learning to code, but the female tech professional was leaving the space at a rate of 56 percent,” Percival says. “There was no one focusing on keeping her in her career or helping her get to a more senior position. That’s where we decided to focus Women Who Code’s efforts.” Percival’s time abroad had given her
an invaluable glimpse into other countries’ work cultures. She found the barriers women face in tech aren’t limited to the U.S. and that her mission had to be global. In the seven years since its inception, Women Who Code has evolved into a powerful operation with local networks in 60-plus cities across more than 20 countries. Members have access to the organization’s leadership programs, coding resources, job listings in leadership capacities, opportunities for global networking, scholarships, free tickets to conferences, and the chance to be nominated and recognized by other members. Women Who Code produces more than 1,700 free or inexpensive technical events each year, which shakes out to about four events around the globe every day.
LEADING LADY Women like Percival have fought their way into the tech industry, but there’s a huge bottleneck. The industry’s future, she explains, depends not just on our ability to fill jobs but also to remain competitive by generating new ideas — something that requires diversity of thought. It isn’t enough to simply hire more women. To level the playing field and create gender parity in tech, the industry has to undergo a complete culture change.
Women Who Code CEO Alaina Percival (left) and Chief Leadership Officer Joey Rosenberg (MBA ’09) at work in their new Atlanta headquarters.
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Women Who Code’s chief leadership officer Joey Rosenberg (MBA ’09) says it’s all about recognizing the problem and establishing new industry standards. In the tech world, visible female leaders are few and far between. Women Who Code’s data show that 70 percent of U.S.-based startups feature entirely male boards of directors, and more than half have no women in executive roles. “Companies need to be intentional and acknowledge that individuals have bias — period,” says Rosenberg. “The more you can do to remove bias in your hiring and promotional practices, project allocation and leadership opportunities, the more you’ll see people from underrepresented groups in top tiers of leadership.” With fair and balanced work environments, more women won’t just enter the industry. They’ll want to remain in it and progress. They’ll become role models for other women, who may not have even considered careers in tech. That’s when the real change can begin, Rosenberg says. And everyone wins. Women Who Code’s data indicate that companies who staff more women in leadership roles see a 34 percent higher return on investment. And when women earn higher salaries, they reinvest 90 percent of their income back into their families and communities. For Percival, it’s not a lack of confidence that’s keeping women from climbing the leadership ranks. “Everybody points to confidence, but I have a beef with that,” she says. “Most of the time, women don’t doubt they can perform leadership functions. The problem is their mindset. We have to almost trick women into stepping into leadership positions, forcing the mental shift.” Percival’s got the perfect example for how easily that mental shift can occur, even subconsciously. A Women Who Code member was attending an event in San Francisco, and the leader hadn’t arrived yet. Because this member had attended several previous events and knew the drill, she walked to the front of the room and kicked things off. Without even realizing it, Percival says, that woman had instantly become a leader. She’d seamlessly taken command of the event, and the other attendees didn’t question her credibility. “It took moving to the front of the room and having the platform to be able to make that step,” Percival says. That message is at the core of Women Who Code’s leadership programs, which offer members professional development
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LEADING BY EXAMPLE
The WomenLead program at Georgia State — an undergraduate initiative to drive leadership among female students, particularly in the field of tech — is arming women with the executive savvy and workplace insight to give them an edge in translating their degrees into careers. What began as a single course offering in business leadership has evolved into a fourcourse series that also includes science, policy and politics. WomenLead members benefit from opportunities to connect with key players in the community and build personal relationship with mentors. Students are given a series of assessments that identify their personal strengths and help them understand which are most valued by employers. Through the Signature Experience project, students apply course knowledge and incorporate experiential learning, which culminates in a final project evaluated by a faculty member. That project is something computer science major Natsaid Ndebele (B.S. ’19) found especially impactful. “I still have my Personal Leadership Strategy poster hanging in my room,” says the BlackRock Founders scholar and recipient of Google’s Women Techmakers Scholarship. “That assignment was like a reckoning for me of my values, strengths and vision for myself. It was a real moment of reflection.”
training. The programs illuminate the five qualities Women Who Code insists aspiring leaders (regardless of gender) should adopt in order to succeed: Learn the highest technical skills, inspire others to achieve their career goals, share knowledge, encourage peers to take on leadership roles, and commit to continuously learn and take chances. “In our leadership programs, you typically achieve within one year what you would likely achieve over the next three to five years of your career,” Percival says. Soon, Women Who Code will introduce its leadership programs to companies, allowing them to develop and train employees internally.
THE END GAME
Everybody points to confidence, but I have a beef with that. Most of the time, women don’t doubt they can perform leadership functions. The problem is their mindset. We have to almost trick women into stepping into leadership positions, forcing the mental shift.
With an eight-member board and 22 advisers — and an almost 20-person team cranking away in a shiny, new office in Atlanta’s Virginia-Highland neighborhood — Women Who Code is a far cry from its early community group days in Silicon Valley. Among Women Who Code’s 167,000 members worldwide, 50 percent are engineers, and 8 percent are executives. Five percent work in data science, 7 percent in management and 4 percent in design. And 26 percent fill other roles as solution architects, consultants, students and more. Eighty percent report that participating in Women Who Code has helped them advance in their careers. The numbers speak volumes, but the individual success stories mean the most to Percival and her team. “There’s the director in Mexico City whose salary increased 200 percent in one year after working with Women Who Code and the leader in Toronto who climbed two steps on the career ladder in less than one year of being a leader,” Percival says. Percival’s own success and the impact she’s had on others has earned her a spot on Georgia State’s latest 40 Under 40 list. It honors distinguished alumni who have made significant contributions to their industries. When Percival talks about Women Who Code’s ultimate goal, her answer is surprising. Then it makes perfect sense. “We want to put ourselves out of business,” she says. That’ll happen when there’s a balanced system that equally supports men and women in technology — when we don’t need an organization to fight for what’s fair.
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The past two flu seasons have resulted in record numbers of hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S., particularly among the elderly and very young. Influenza is a clever foe — vaccines are the most effective way to prevent the flu’s spread, but they’re often unreliable. According to the CDC, last year’s seasonal flu vaccine was only 40 percent effective. Also, many drugs used to treat the flu no longer work because the virus is resistant.
So how do we fight this ever-evolving, omnipresent threat? Richard Plemper, a professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences, has developed a new way an antiviral drug can conquer the flu — by tricking it.
BY LATINA EMERSON
ILLUSTRATIONS BY REID SCHULZ (B.F.A. ’18)
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ne hundred eighty-five children died from the flu in the U.S. last year. This flu season, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) estimates there have already been nearly 15.2 million flu illnesses and up to 186,000 flu hospitalizations in just five months. Despite advances in contemporary medicine, the influenza virus continues to cause widespread illness, suffering and death. Seasonal flu vaccines only target specific strains of the flu, which are estimated by scientists six months in advance so manufacturers have time to produce vaccines for the public. Sometimes they’re wrong. And even when they match a vaccine to the season’s prevailing virus, the CDC estimates the risk of flu illness is reduced only between 40 to 60 percent. Doctors rely on antiviral drugs to prevent serious complications and lessen the symptoms and length of illness. But these drugs have shortcomings also. Antiviral drugs approved to treat the flu, such as Tamiflu (oseltamivir phosphate) and Xofluza (baloxavir marboxil), have an Achilles’ heel. The influenza virus has figured out how to overcome them, says Richard Plemper, professor in the Institute for Biomedical Sciences. “In recent years, because of the extensive use of Tamiflu, we see increasingly that the circulating viruses that cause seasonal influenza outbreaks are already resistant to this drug,” he says. Armed with a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, Plemper is leading a team of scientists from Georgia State, the University of Georgia, the Emory Institute for Drug Development and the Drug Innovation Ventures at Emory in a pioneering project to develop a new type of antiviral drug. Plemper’s drug tricks the flu into making mistakes when replicating. It’s already showing promising results and a low frequency of resistance from the virus.
RECREATING THE LUNGS The influenza virus primarily attacks the cells lining the respiratory tract, so Plemper’s team is using a specially engineered membrane to grow different types of human respiratory cells in culture and recreate the lining of the lungs, known as the airway epithelium. Then, they test the drug on these cell layers. To make the human tissue culture similar to that of human lungs, they’ve designed the environment respiratory cells live in. On one side, the cells are submerged in liquid to mimic the blood outside of the lungs while, on the other side, they’re exposed to air to imitate the environment inside the lungs. This system enables his team to verify the drug’s antiviral activity in human tissues before the drug advances to clinical testing.
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STEP 1 The influenza virus sickens its host by breaching epithelial cell walls in the lungs and injecting its genetic information into the cells, starting a replication cycle.
STEP 2 Plemper’s drug targets the virus’ genomic ribonucleic acid (RNA) polymerase complex, the enzyme responsible for replicating the flu’s RNA. Human cells, on the other hand, do not amplify RNA molecules but store genetic information in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA).
STEP 4 STEP 3
The mutated RNA copy is incapable of infecting other cells. Only a few mutations need to occur for the genome to become nonviable. Now, the flu can no longer spread and infect other cells.
The drug tricks the virus’ RNA polymerase into making inexact, error-prone copies of its genome, or all of its genetic material. The result is genetic error catastrophe — excessive, errant mutations that lead to the virus’ death.
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FROM THE ARCHIVE
BLACKBOARD BRIGADE Students swarm Kell Hall’s basement Refectory in 1953 to review course offerings from blackboards that line the walls. The size and number of the blackboards continued to expand over the years as the student population grew. “You’d write down what you could take and run to the registrar as quickly as possible before things changed,” says Barbara Johnston (B.A. ’69, M.Ed. ’71, S.Ed. ’74, Ph.D. ’87). “Sometimes, by the time you got to the registrar’s office, the class would already be full, so you’d have to run all the way back to see what else you could take. They didn’t stop the blackboard brigade until the early ’70s.”
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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVE. AJCN140-016b, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
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