Fall 14 - UGAGS Magazine by UGA Grad Studies

The University of Georgia

Graduate School M A G A Z I N E

FA L L 2 0 1 4

FALL 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS

2. JOEY TRIPP

8. ALYSSA GEHMAN

STEPHANIE PEARL 14. FENWICK BROYARD 20. AND SCIENCE CAFE

MOORE AND 26. JIM 36. ELISABETH SLATEN 40. HARDY EDWARDS SCOTT BROWN

41. FOND FAREWELLS

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.”—DORIS LESSING, AUTHOR

mes s a g e f rom

Julie Coffield, Interim Dean As I write this message for the fall issue of The Graduate School Magazine, I am reminded that fall is a season of transition, a period of laying the groundwork for a new and exciting future. Similarly, graduate education, both nationally and at UGA, is experiencing transformation in so many ways. In this issue, we meet UGA students and faculty who are on the forefront of this transformation, forging connections across disciplines and into the community with unimagined zeal and creativity. Their stories reflect the vision and leadership that is graduate education today. I want to thank you for your continued support of graduate education at UGA. Your investments provide the foundation that allows graduate students the freedom to dream, to create and to emerge as innovative leaders ready to meet the rapidly changing challenges of tomorrow. The Graduate School is also entering a time of transition. Dean Maureen Grasso retired on June 30, 2014 and the search for a new dean has begun. As Interim Dean, I am honored to lead this institution during this important transition and look forward to working with many of you as we continue to innovate and transform graduate education at UGA.

JULIE COFFIELD INTERIM DEAN

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SURVIVOR: THE MAGICAL

DETERMINATION, NEAR INVINCIBILITY AND INDOMITABLE WILL OF

JOEY TRIPP

JOEY TRIPP CANCER SURVIVOR

ER SU RV IVO R JO EY TR IPP CA NC

JOEY TRIPP CANCER SURVIVOR

www.grad.uga.edu

JOEY TRIPP CANCER SURVIVOR

PHOTOS BY NANCY EVELYN

JOEY TRIPP CANCER SURVIVOR

BY CYNTHIA ADAMS

U SA

USA

USA USA USA USA

JOEY TRIPP

has met Wynonna Judd and Jeff Foxworthy, most of the Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta

Braves, but none of them made the impact of an ordinary volunteer at the Egleston pediatric hospital in Atlanta. The kindly volunteer kept a young patient (and future UGA scholar) named Joey Tripp company while playing video games. Tripp, who completed UGA’s graduate program in nonprofit management from the University of Georgia’s Institute of Nonprofit Organizations, has worked through childhood conditions that might have daunted a lesser spirit. Tripp overcame formidable odds, becoming the first in his family to obtain a graduate degree. This is the remarkable story of Tripp’s internal navigational system, which never failed him, while facing the incredible set of obstacles to reach his goals.

hen Joey Tripp attended the UGA Graduate School’s Emerging Leader’s Program in Dillard, Ga., what some of his colleagues noticed was his uncanny resemblance to actor Daniel Radcliffe, who portrayed Harry Potter. “I also share the same birthday with Daniel Radcliffe (July 23rd)”. Like the fictional Potter, Tripp has a calm demeanor and twinkling magnetism. Also like Potter, he dealt with loss and overcame it to become an accomplished UGA graduate student chosen in 2013 for the prestigious Emerging Leaders program and a UGA “Amazing Student”. Unlike Potter, Tripp lacked the benefit of a wand or magic cloak, but nonetheless achieved feats that most would almost describe as pure magic.

On the first day of Emerging Leaders, Joey Tripp stood among the 25 chosen for the program in a large meeting room. Each of the graduate students was asked to write key attributes, listing self-descriptions on a large piece of poster paper underneath their photograph. This was part of the icebreaking exercises preceding a weekend of leadership training the students were to undergo. Tripp, a genial man with a youthful face, bright green eyes, and quick smile, considered before jotting down a laundry list of interests and characteristics. At the bottom of a list of attributes, he scrawled with a red marker, “childhood cancer

survivor.” In a room filled with exceptional students with amazing experiences, his statement stood apart. Tellingly, Tripp had written the comment last, like an afterthought. At the age of 10, Tripp received a terminal diagnosis for stage four osteosarcoma, or bone cancer. He was given six months to live. The cancer had grown at such a rate his medical advisors believed he had other tumors elsewhere in his body. It had spread from his femur to his lungs (twice), then his spine. Tripp quickly underwent the first of 30 surgeries he has undergone in the past 20 years. He relapsed with cancer four times during a seven-year fight. However, in no way did cancer define him, nor does it now. By the time you read this story, Tripp will be 30 years old.

The year Joey Tripp’s life changed was 1995. It was a Sunday morning when Tripp complained of sudden, specific and severe leg pain. His mother, who had decided to enter college as an adult, thought her son had a bad case of growing pains. She gave him a Tylenol before the family headed to church. Tripp tried to make it through the Sunday service, and began to weep as the pain grew unbearable. The family left church and drove one hour to the local emergency room in Macon, Ga., north of the farming community of Yonker.

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Tripp’s parents were relieved to find a neighbor working in the hospital’s radiology department that afternoon. The X-ray revealed a problem so severe that the nurse’s demeanor changed completely. The ER physician warned Tripp to put no weight on his left leg, and he was eventually referred to Dr. Monson, an Atlanta surgeon. About three months later, Tripp was in Atlanta awaiting surgery for a femur transplant. “Dr. Monson said, 'My first priority is to save your life and my second is to save your leg.' He told me, ‘Joey you have cancer.’ I didn’t know what that meant. They did a tissue biopsy; I still didn’t understand what cancer meant until I went to my first appointment with the oncologist. It was there the reality of the situation was setting in.” Tripp and his family had entered a foreign world, frightening and hard to fathom. He recalls his mother looking as if she had been crying and his dad “looked like he had hit a deer.” A very frightened young boy who had heretofore been healthy recalls seeing the other children going through chemotherapy. “All of them looked alien. Pale, no hair—bald, with sunken faces.” What followed was life changing. “I’ve had 30 surgeries,” he says, qualifying surgeries versus regular procedures or treatments. “I consider a surgery when you are given sedation. My left femur had to be transplanted; I had to have a spinal fusion—that was a 21-hour operation. I’ve had surgery on my right femur and they removed the growth plate.” He has had additional surgery on his tibia for limb lengthening, necessary because of scoliosis forming in his lower back. The Tripp family then had to navigate a netherworld of capped insurance, then financial challenges when his father’s union job at an Atlanta aluminum can manufacturing plant was eliminated. His mother left her college studies.

“The first year I had cancer, I started giving up hope. I became really depressed and resorted to anger a lot. I wanted to be normal and for people to stop pitying me. I felt like my life was being controlled by everybody else.” His treatment meant Tripp was periodically rushed to Atlanta for blood transfusions. He found friendship primarily with hospital volunteers who sat with him and read or played games. He had one refuge, which he fiercely protected. “The only thing I had control over was my bedroom. So, if I noticed something had been moved, I went berserk and even kicked a hole in my bedroom wall. I saw what I was doing to my parents. I became existential; my parents seemed hopeless. And then, I realized what I was doing was not helping anyone.” For a young boy with great curiosity, he was now separated from his old life and friendships in Yonker. Tripp couldn’t attend the fifth grade, and there was no home schooling program in the summer. “A teacher dropped work by twice weekly,” he recalls, but he had little interaction with other kids. “I was the first kid in my county to have a publicized battle with cancer,” which meant other children feared the illness, thinking they could catch it like a common cold. “Unbeknownst to us, someone contacted the Macon Telegraph about my diagnosis and my dad’s job loss. A front page feature article was written featuring my family.” Now Tripp was not only dealing with illness, but with greater isolation. “I’m the first kid in my community to have cancer, and (other) children did not want to hang out with me because they didn’t want to catch cancer.” He was alone, apart from his family. Then, like his look-alike Harry Potter, Tripp began practicing some personal magic involving his focused green eyes and his generous mouth. He smiled.

TRIPP HAS UNDERGONE 30 SURGERIES IN THE PAST 20 YEARS. HE RELAPSED WITH CANCER FOUR TIMES DURING A SEVEN-YEAR FIGHT. HOWEVER, IN NO WAY DID CANCER DEFINE HIM, NOR DOES IT NOW.

On the following page, Joey Tripp shown with his mother, Marie, and father, Joseph, at the family country store in Georgia.

www.grad.uga.edu

DAVID ALLEN PHOTOGRAPHY

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ABOUT EMERGING LEADERS SINCE ITS FOUNDING BY FORMER DEAN GRASSO IN 2004, outstanding graduate students such as Joey Tripp have been selected for intensive professional development training through the Emerging Leaders Program, or EL. This experience is fully sponsored and funded by the Graduate School. Many EL alumni are now notable leaders in their own fields. Presenters like Praveen Kolar and Fenwick Broyard are past EL participants who returned as trainers. Other UGA alum, such as Centers for Disease Control executive, Sarah Smith, not only return as presenters but view EL as a prime recruiting ground.

For more information on The Graduate School's Emerging Leaders, go to: http://www.grad. uga.edu.index.php/current-students/professional-development/emerging-leaders-program/

“I started to, even though hurting emotionally, I started to fake a smile.” Tripp discovered brandishing a smile was the only way his parents looked happier, too. It was a way to cloak the pain, and somehow made him feel better. A smile, Tripp discovered, was a sort of magic he could wield. Despite the optimism and the smiles, Tripp faced a series of teeth-gritting challenges as he moved into high school. With frustrating regularity cancer reappeared. “I only went four days of my ninth grade before relapsing; so for me, technically, my 12th grade was like my freshman year.” He spent approximately one year in actual classroom time. “I graduated with my class from high school, although I was only in a whole year of high school during my senior year.” When Tripp graduated from Dodge County High School, despite his rare classroom time, he “ranked 17th out of 192 students. I was also a Senior Superlative!” It was now not only possible, but realistic to envision a higher education. He set goals to earn an associate degree. In 2003, Tripp received the National Young Adult Volunteer of the Year from the American Healthcare Association during their conference in San Diego, California. Tripp attended Middle Georgia State College and earned his associate degree while still acclimating to extracurricular and college life. He received the college’s 2006 Service and Leadership Award. He then began working towards a biology degree at Georgia Southern University. In the fall of 2007 Tripp signed up for 16 hours of upper-level biology and biochemistry. “It took six years to graduate with a B.S. degree because I took so many different classes that did not fall under my area of study.” He also received Georgia Southern’s Volunteer of

www.grad.uga.edu

the Year Award, having netted more than 1,309 hours of volunteer time. He was frantically catching up with life. “I was editor of the GSC Core paper; I hadn’t had the luxury of doing any of that stuff. And, I took photography.” He had already decided to attend medical school and had spent one summer shadowing three of his favorite physicians. Medical school, and becoming a physician, had become part of his self-definition. But repeated bouts of chemotherapies had taken a toll on Tripp’s long-term health, adversely affecting his medical school admission scores. “Then,” Tripp says, “it was not my definition.” In what had become his signature move, Tripp re-evaluated. He swallowed the brutal reality that there was an alternate purpose for his life. He looked to the horizon. Tripp volunteered with a dizzying number of community groups, read self-help books, and re-imagined his future. Then, he decided to use his experience with nonprofits for a different vocation. Tripp started looking at graduate programs, but worried about testing well, faced with chronic medical concerns. He took the GRE admissions test three times. “I was disheartened and ended up having another surgery. But I went ahead and applied to graduate schools.” Tripp set his heart on getting into UGA—he would be the first in his family to attend Georgia. His admission was deferred. Then they found another tumor in his abdomen in the fall of 2012. The surgery left him with what he calls “a C-section scar, but the tumor was benign.” He waited. In December 2012, Tripp got a call on his cell phone from UGA. “I was in a store to buy safety gear for directing traffic for our family Christmas lights display.” He

In Athens, Tripp flung himself into extracurricular activities, making up for an isolated youth. He worked with the Jackson county Habitat for Humanity, the Piedmont Rape Crisis Center, Pulaski Tomorrow, Athens Area Humane Society, Athens Farmers Market, Helping Hands Community Outreach, Camp Sunshine, and Camp Twin Lakes. And nobody was more amazed than Tripp that he had done so much so fast, after all the hiccups. When Tripp scribbled with a felt tip pen on poster paper in the fall of 2013, he had summarized himself in a few terse phrases for his fellow students at Emerging Leaders. He was only two months from earning his graduate degree. He had maintained a 3.96 GPA at what is arguably one of the finest graduate schools in the nation. In the run up to his graduation, he was selected as a speaker at UGA’s Social Work Fall Celebration and as a UGA Amazing Student, featured on the University website. Since graduating, Tripp began actively interviewing for his dream job to become an executive director of a nonprofit organization. He also set about ticking things off a long to-do list, hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls. (“I had to take a lot of Tylenol,” he says with a wince.) He got a passport, and plans to visit Europe. He set more goals. In his youth, a compassionate volunteer had unimagined impact. So, when Tripp has an open afternoon, he says he will find someone needing a friend, and listen. “I’ve experienced the power and impact that has on a person,” he once wrote, “and I hope to have the same impact as the volunteer who visited me.”

Tripp describes how a fellow cancer patient (one newly rediagnosed) reached out to him to ask, “How did you handle relapses?” He suggested she have a goal to focus on while in treatment. “I asked what was she passionate about. She takes great photography, so I suggested she start showing the world through her eyes.”

JOEY TRIPP CANCER SURVIVOR

had been accepted into the graduate program—with only two weeks to move from Yonker and register. He didn’t care—he felt pure joy shoot through him. “I started jumping up and down right in the store, I was so happy.” The signature Joey Tripp smile he flashed everyone in the Warner Robins hardware store was effortless and real.

The American

Healthcare Association

2003 NATIONAL

YOUNG ADULT

Volunteer of

USA

THE YEAR VOLUNTEER at Children's

Healthcare

of Atlanta

at Egleston

2006 SERVICE &

LEADERSHIP AWARD AND 2007 Georgia

Southern’s

Volunteer of the

Year Award

2013

2013 SPEAKER

LEADERS

SOCIAL WORK

EMERGING

PROGRAM

AT UGA’S FALL CELEBRATION

PA R T I C I PA N T

Joey Tripp is also an alumni of the UGA Graduate School's Emerging Leaders Program.

“Living is not just waking up and getting out of bed; living is getting up and having purpose.” He navigates the emotional terrain of vulnerability and loss like a rehearsed and graceful artist; Tripp says you must find the means to talk about it, and then to visualize something beyond pain or loss. And Tripp, with correction to slightly askew glasses, flashes his brilliant green eyes and focuses upon his own new horizon, which almost always lurks behind one believed lost. n

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HOW RESEARCHER ALYSSA GEHMAN SOLD BOTH THE SIZZLE and THE STEAK ! BY CYNTHIA ADAMS PHOTOS BY NANCY EVELYN

www.grad.uga.edu

USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO SPONSOR SCIENCE, DOCTORAL STUDENT ALYSSA GEHMAN MARVELED? Well, it just might even be fun.  In business parlance, they call the one who breaks out of the pack to make things happen a “rainmaker.”  As things developed, Gehman not only advanced her work as a doctoral student and UGA Wormsloe Fellow, but she became a rainmaker. GEHMAN DIDN’T JUST WAIT FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN WHEN SHE NEEDED FUNDING for her scientific studies in parasitology—admittedly not the sexiest, most compelling of subjects. Mind you, she didn’t do a rain dance down Broad Street, but something nearly as outré.  She tried crowdsourcing, also known as crowdfunding. And she spun a creative story making a mud crab parasite astonishing. And Gehman aced the SciFund Challenge. As a Savannah journalist quipped, “Alyssa Gehman knows what sells. Sex.”

ay someone is working on a scientific hunch. An innovation, an original idea. To advance this idea, they are prepared to sacrifice hours, days, years, even, to refine their working premise. The outcome may advance human knowledge—perhaps making the world safer, better, or wiser. But to do so—the work of moving hunches toward actual outcomes—doesn’t just rely upon hard work. It hinges on cold, hard coins. For a graduate student undertaking research, one such as Alyssa Gehman, funding is everything. Sourcing and finding funding are changed beyond the age-old grind of grant writing and application. In recent years, grant and funding sources came to a near halt as the gears of the economy clogged and governmental budgets dwindled. Yet money remains fundamental to research—greasing the gears, providing impetus, in providing for supplies, travel, and essentials. But where to find the dollars? Gehman’s major professor, James Byers, who was the reason she came to UGA in the first place, had begun encouraging his students to seek funding, employing a different approach— crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing, also called crowdfunding, uses social media for a new purpose—marketing scholarly

work and ideas to the general public and soliciting grassroots support. The Scifund Challenge was one such place, but one sponsored by academics and scientists. Byers was a big proponent. Thanks to Gehman’s drama professor mother, who had always coached her on presentation skills, Gehman had a built in go-to person when it came to performance. And with new innovations in fund raising, performance has become a key aspect of communicating ideas to an audience. For example, the UGA Graduate School had become a sponsor of a popular program known as the 3MT, held in the spring. The 3MT program requires students to compete, presenting their graduate research in three minutes to a general audience and judges, who then vote and determine cash prizes. Now, Gehman needed to raise money to study a type of marine parasite and Byers was strongly advocating SciFund to his graduate students. Encouraged by Byers, Gehman went full out, throwing herself into crowdsourcing as she had always done with any challenge. And everybody— grandmas, friends, and outright strangers, donated. Creative funding initiatives, as Meredith Welch-Devine, who is the associate director of the university’s



FUNDED RESEARCH



 

$  

      CROWDFUNDING is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.

THE SCIFUND CHALLENGE is an organization that seeks to help scientists connect with society by helping them build and launch crowdfunding projects.

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STACY GEHMAN

Center for Integrative Conservation Research program says, are touching more and more UGA students. At least two other graduate students, Sean Sterrett and Kristina Summers, also joined the crowdsourcing channel to fund their research.

GEHMAN WHO? A. RICHARD PALMER

BRIAN BINGHAM

A younger Gehman (at top) on a hike with family in the Pacific Northwest. An older Gehman below, holding a six-rayed seastar, Leptasterias hexactis, the animal studied for her MS degree. Each year, the Wormsloe Insititute for Environmental History and the UGA Graduate School jointly support three graduate students as Wormsloe Fellows. Fellows are hand-picked students from a variety of disciplines.

www.grad.uga.edu

The Scifund Challenge resonated for Gehman from the get-go. A doctoral student in the Odum School, focused upon parasitology, she always preferred dancing to a very different beat. The idea of selling her ideas to a public that knew little to nothing about her chosen work didn’t defeat her at all. “The other cool thing about Scifund is, they posted videos and a forum. They taught an online course and stressed communicating.” This was familiar ground for Gehman. And, there was another chestnut. “Being critiqued by scientists we don’t know, who don’t do the research we do, was very valuable.” Presenting, making a case for her research and videotaping it, competing for funding through Scifund, all seemed like a wrinkle that just might prove interesting. To understand why, you would need to know Gehman’s past. Gehman is a blue-eyed, black-haired human fire cracker, with a zest for performing arts, imagination, creativity, and science, in almost equal measure. The Waldorf-schooled student from Seattle says she didn’t fixate on the arts-versus-science career conundrum until much later. And why should she? Gehman had found she liked nearly everything. After all, the more she knows, as Gehman explains it, “the more interesting the world is.” The Pacific Northwest was where Gehman came of age, with a research

engineer father and a mother who teaches drama at the University of Washington. “Science and arts were both strong in my family.” Her father develops algorithms for heart defibrillators. Gehman’s professor mother taught and prepared actors. (In time, the mother taught her daughter how to do vocal warm ups and seven preparatory steps, including an “intention list,” to employ before making public presentations. This, Gehman points out, sure did come in handy.) She was a bit of an adrenalin junkie, and became a springboard diver in high school, and later, in college, Gehman learned to do trapeze work. Common threads were physical challenge and performance. “When I was a kid in high school, I wanted to be an actor. Then I took a marine science course, and had two amazing teachers. They were challenging, and we learned collegelevel things. They even took us on a student trip to Maui. Just amazing teachers,” Gehman recalls about her teenage years in Seattle. “We had a big outdoor program, and we learned to scuba dive. And this is an inner city school!” she says, picking through her lunch at an Athens bakery. The science teachers had a significant impact on Gehman’s destiny, but their student took a few creative side trips. Along with a core group of friends, she learned to make and edit videos while in high school, and to storyboard and edit. She became part of an actor’s studio. Gehman loved music, and decided to become a flautist. She studied dance, acting, and singing. She knits, crochets and sews. “I’m a hobby collector,” she laughs. She also liked almost every outdoor sport, sometimes slack lining on an improvised trapeze between two trees, skiing, or rock

The speeches of NELSON MANDELA

T H E M O T H , a podcast

T H E S O N G H O M E , by Edward and the Magnetic Zeroes S H A N N O N M I L L E R , gymnast

climbing—perhaps as passionate about these adventures as much as science. Since high school, she knew that her life’s work would be marine science. “That was it,” she says. And she decided that, like her mother, she wanted to teach. Gehman attended college in Colorado due to her love of outdoor sports, she admits. “I went there because one of my high school teachers told me to get a general biology degree, then specialize.” When Gehman took her first parasitology courses, she found focus. “The hook was the idea that every type of organism has at least one parasite. Most living organisms are some kind of parasite…they are complex systems. Parasites can manipulate host behavior.” In Colorado, she was told about a professor named James (Jeb) Byers at the University of Georgia, who is now her advisor. “I knew I wanted to do parasite ecology. Just about everybody who knew this told me Byers was the one to study with…otherwise, I wouldn’t have considered coming to UGA.” She had never been to the South before, let alone Georgia. “What I’ve



I N S P I R AT I O N S that feed Alyssa Gehman



S KY B L U E , as in the Nebraska sky F L I G H T B E H AV I O R , by Barbara Kingsolver

found, is, it’s a really nice community in ecology, a solid community, and intellectually engaging,” she says. But why parasites? Gehman sums it up. “The way the world works, if parasites disappeared, we would learn that parasites outnumber us, and they serve a function.” This was a message that apparently struck a chord when Gehman competed for monies with the support of SciFund. “It was 100 percent funded,” she reports. “I emailed probably 100 family and friends. I said I was raising money for research, and if interested, asked them to check it out. Went onto Facebook. UGA’s ecology writer, Beth Gavrille, wrote a press release.” Then Gehman got a break while doing research in Savannah. “Mary Landers writes for the Savannah Morning News and she ran into me. She likes science. So I decided to contact her, and

she wrote about the SciFund project.” It was Landers who quipped later about Gehman’s mud crab research on the “eyebrow-raising behavior of a parasitic barnacle that attacks it.” Daniel Harris, Gehman’s friend and lab mate, made business cards and handed them out to people in Savannah. During the annual Tybee Island Water Fight, a major crowd-draw, they laminated a bunch of Gehman’s cards and handed them out. She grins. “To be fair, I have generous family and friends,” she says. “My friend’s grandmother gave me money. She’s not a scientist, but the wife of a missionary.” Gehman collected steady contributions ranging from $5-$250. She received $1,200 in total. “Somebody from New Zealand gave me money. I got money from a father whose daughter was going to UGA. He called me and chatted. He—I believe he might have been a cop?” Gehman had interacted with so many different people she searches to place every donor. “I loved it. It was helpful.” She mentions it was an affirmation. “My sister’s boyfriend’s dad sent me money from the west coast. He’s a fishery scientist.”

“SCIFUND IS DIFFERENT IN THAT IT IS RUN BY A GROUP OF PROFESSORS, WHO WANT TO GET SCIENTISTS TO COMMUNICATE,” EXPLAINS GEHMAN. “USING A PLATFORM TO RAISE MONEY FOR OUR RESEARCH, AND TELLING PEOPLE WHY THEY SHOULD FUND IT.”

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THE PARASITE LADIES: On Becoming Attached to Earning a Doctorate When Alyssa Gehman initially arrived in Athens, four scientist friends helped create a support group dubbed the Parasite Ladies.  The Parasite Ladies includes Dara Ashley Satterfield, Sarah Budischak, Carrie Keough, Alexandra Kay Fritzsche, and Alyssa Gehman. The name is intentionally ironic, because not all of them are parasitologists. Each of them is a scientist pursuing a doctorate. Satterfield acknowledges “we are a lucky group of women,” and answers a question about the intriguing Parasite Ladies.  WHAT IS IT LIKE TO COME TOGETHER AND WORK THROUGH ISSUES—AND WHAT HAS THIS MEANT FOR YOU PROFESSIONALLY AND/OR PERSONALLY? "What's great about the Parasite Ladies is that we have helped each other both professionally and personally—and in graduate school, there's hardly any separation between the two anyway. It's such an intense time! Having a group of smart, driven and authentic women to share the hardships and victories with through grad school has helped me more than I can say. I don't think I would still be here at UGA, four years into my PhD, without them."

Then, Gehman discusses the follow up, which emulates professional fundraising efforts. “We have to give them something, as a thank you.” Gehman made oyster jewelry and other premiums as donor gifts. “A donation of $20 meant a gift of an oyster necklace, or soap dishes. If I received a $30 donation, it meant that I thanked the donor in my research presentation.” This was a very southern thing to do—to formally acknowledge a gift. “As part of SciFund, they collect data on how we’re doing,” she says. She reports back, and is also writing about the process.

GEHMAN HOW? “SciFund is different in that it is run by a group of professors, who want to get scientists to communicate,” explains Gehman. “Using a platform to raise money for our research, and telling people why they should fund it.” Crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter feature a free-for-all of both entrepreneurial and nonprofit ideas, while also making a case for funding. Donations are solicited in exchange for contributions, goods, or sometimes simple good will. When the funding

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goal is achieved, donors reap rewards, which are sometimes merely warm fuzzies. In Gehman’s case, premiums for donors included an oyster shell soap dish, or mention in her research, or even her own hand-made jewelry. According to the news magazine Forbes, crowdfunding efforts tripled between 2011-2013. In 2013, Forbes projected more than $5.1 billion would be raised worldwide. Gehman recalls, “I first found out about it through a friend in California who is friends with the founder.” Yet, despite all her background knowledge and particular skills in performance, she admits: “I was scared. You’re signing on to make a video.” But make it she did. The link describing Gehman’s research in coastal Georgia, is still live: www.rockethub.com/projects/7476a-climate-for-castrators. Mary Landers’ story remains on the Savannahnow website. “The video is a nice encapsulation of my mission.” Gehman is also a Wormsloe Fellow, who spoke after UGA’s President Jere Morehead last December when in Savannah. When Gehman initially arrived in Athens, she discovered another new

stress-releasing interest—something hardly new for her temperamentally. “I started with a dance/gymnastics/ martial arts/singing group called ‘Capoeira’—which is developed from the Brazilian slave culture.” She also started to reach out to others and find community again. “We gathered four friends, and we call ourselves the Parasite Ladies.” Despite the name, not all of them are parasitologists like Gehman. One is in marine systems; one studies butterflies. And another is applying for a post doc. The women take turns choosing the place and plan, and work through issues together. The members of the Parasite Ladies choose a singular question to point them towards solutions: “What is the most interesting thing I could do?” The Parasite Ladies created their own challenge, fueled by imagination. In turn it appears that the world becomes their oyster. n Right: The Parasite Ladies in fine company at Dondera's restaurant. Pictured left to right: Dara Ashley Satterfield, Alyssa Gehman, Sarah Budischak and Carrie Keough. Dame Miriam Rothschild became one of the first "parasite ladies" in 1952 when she ascended into fame, most notably for her writings on fleas.

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TA K E N BY STO R M : T H E AU S P I C I O U S PAT H O F O N E F E N W I C K B R OYA R D TO AT H E N S , BY WAY O F N E W O R L E A N S

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C A PA B L E

T E N AC I O U S

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

POETIC

D E E P LY I N S P I R E D

PA S S I O N AT E



AGILE

KIND

TA L L

RESILIENT

FOCUSED



BRAINY

DRIVEN

FAST

SOMETIMES, IT’S POSSIBLE TO WIN, EVEN WHEN YOU APPEAR TO LOSE. Fenwick Broyard chose to relinquish something very prestigious and valuable— a f u l l y f u n d e d g ra d u a te e d u c a t i o n — i n o rd e r to p u r s u e h i s t r u e d e s t i ny. With an open hand and heart, he let go and grasped his dream.

BY CYNTHIA ADAMS PHOTOS BY NANCY EVELYN

enwick Broyard, the newish executive director of Community Connection, was supposed to be a physicist. He started on that track, impressively kitted out with a prestigious scholarship from the Packard Foundation and excellent grades from his private school education. He left New Orleans, the Little Apple, after earning an undergraduate degree in physics at Xavier University and went to the Big Apple intending to earn a PhD at Columbia University. In New York, he noticed that his roommate’s sociology textbooks interested him more than his physics texts. By the time a psychological storm blindsided him (the sudden death of a childhood friend) Fenwick Broyard was a changed man. He tacked into the wind and changed course: Broyard relinquished the Packard scholarship, one paying all costs related to a STEM degree. He abandoned pursuit of a doctorate in physics to study public health. And he left Columbia. Sailor's wisdom dictates that we cannot control the winds, but we can adjust our sails, and so Broyard did. He eventually found his true calling and storm shelter far inland—540 miles from his New Orleans home, in the small town of Athens,

Ga. He found both community and an utterly amazing opportunity for connection. This is his story. Finding a New Path to Achievement One teacher made all the difference, Broyard explains. As a young high school student in New Orleans, he learned critical thinking skills, which in turn led to prestigious scholarships and opportunities. And he credits this largely to one New Orleans high school teacher, known to his students as “J.C.” “John Charles, or J.C., as we called him, excited and challenged me. He taught physics.” Broyard says, and he was soon hooked by physics. In retrospect, he says it is because it was the first time he felt intellectually engaged. In his senior year of college, after having completed all of his major courses, he began taking liberal arts courses, which he also enjoyed. But excelling in physics carried a huge bonus. “I discovered at graduation from college that I won an award from the Packard Foundation to go and pursue a degree anywhere I wanted to go. But it had to be in STEM.” (STEM academic fields include science, technology, engineering and mathematics.)

UGA Graduate School Magazine F A L L 2 014

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C A PA B L E



Broyard entered the doctoral program in physics at Columbia University. When his childhood friend, Kendall Regis, died suddenly, Broyard was stunned. Regis had chased the dream to play professional sports despite a known health issue. “He knew that his athletic dream was dangerous.” Broyard decided to walk away from the STEM money and follow his own dream at all costs. After two years at Columbia, he felt a tug to return to New Orleans and study social issues. “Kendall’s death was the nail in the coffin of my PhD pursuit, and it was upon leaving New York that I started teaching in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans.” Broyard returned to New Orleans to teach in 2002. His family thought he was crazy. In response, he quotes a line from the film Braveheart: “Every man dies, but not every man truly lives.” Broyard’s parents had paid for his private education through high school. Ninth Ward public schools were a very different reality. As a teacher in New Orleans’s public system, Broyard now scrambled to find enough desks and texts for his students. “I was teaching pre-algebra to public school students who couldn’t do long division. And I couldn’t send books home. And the copier didn’t even work three days a week.” The broken down copier problem was exacerbated by the fact that, “I had 16 textbooks and 28 desks for an average of 32 students.” A frustrated Broyard quit teaching after one year, and spent the following year “working odd jobs, and traveling, and earning money as a spoken word poet. And, it was at the conclusion of that second year in the city that I enrolled in the graduate public health program at Tulane.” The arrival of a storm named Katrina in August 2005 coincided with the scheduled start date of Broyard's graduate studies. “The hurricane hit the day of orientation for the public health program. We ended up in Atlanta. It became apparent we weren’t going to have a home to return to.” Katrina became one of the deadliest U.S. hurricanes in history. Nearly 1,900 died; more were displaced or never found. "Katrina didn't create the poverty in New Orleans. It exposed it." Was there anything left to know about New Orleans post Katrina that hasn't been dissected by the media? The firstperson perspective of a native son, one who had just returned to a new course of study and life direction, still jars. The Broyard family had the means to leave and escape the storm and did. They retreated to Atlanta, in a terrifying “exodus to get out of New Orleans during Katrina.” Pre-Katrina, residents had struggled to survive. Many of the

Above: Young community activists in training: Jack Williams, front left, and Sam Williams, center right, with father Blaine Williams (in red plaid) working with Broyard, front right, on a community garden project. Next Page: Ethel Collins, standing, is a local resident and founding member of a community garden in Athens, shown with Broyard.

New Orleans poor could not escape the storm because they lacked gas or motel money to evacuate. Broyard folds his hands. Perhaps, he adds seriously, creativity is borne out of suffering; “the juxtaposition of suffering.” As homes were destroyed and their contents swirled in a toxic morass of water and detritus, student records were lost along with other essential records. College students were left in the lurch. Many colleges made exceptions to allow students to continue studies although their records were irretrievable at first. Emory College in Atlanta allowed Broyard to provisionally transfer into a graduate program there for one semester. “Then in January, after Katrina, Tulane was reopening. I lived in a Tulane dormitory, and it was better than the FEMA housing.” Others in his family did not fare so well, as their repaired homes molded and became uninhabitable soon after they were completed. Broyard watched his family members and a battered New Orleans as it suffered a second, man-made disaster. Once again many were displaced. “The Chinese company providing the dry wall sent defective material, so houses were once again destroyed.”

Fenwick Broyard has spent recent years opening doors for others. Now, he continues this servant leadership at the helm of Athens’ most comprehensive nonprofit,

INSPIRED



Community Connection.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION

The New Orleans he had returned to was leveled, and resources were even fewer than pre-Katrina. Broyard explains that New Orleans “was a food desert for long after Katrina. I became interested in urban agriculture. I worked on the farmer’s market project and my partner ran the Edible School Yard program.” He had a child, Addis, now age three. He completed a master’s of public health degree from Tulane. “My favorite minister’s quote was, “be excellent where you are,” Broyard says with a smile. Physically, Broyard is tall, thin, and has a neatly trimmed mustache and beard. After his master’s, he spent four months in Peru, then Brazil. “I was interested in the theater of the oppressed; envisioned theater as a tool for social change. I bought a plane ticket and went to Brazil, but did not speak Portuguese. I got a 90-day ticket—no plans.” When he returned from Brazil, Broyard learned he had won a Ford Foundation fellowship to study international health and development. He kept seeing a connection to nutrition. “I saw chronic diseases were also diet related.” He used his travels and exposure to other cultures to develop ideas for farmer’s markets back home in New Orleans. The Big Easy’s Big Pull The New Orleans born and bred Broyard says his hometown’s visceral pull is “almost like a bungee cord.” Its allure is undeniable, yet there remains a swift undercurrent of suffering. But it is the city’s “violent swing between places,” Broyard observes, that is so extreme he says he now “finds it hard to live in a place with that much disparity.” Broyard made his final departure from New Orleans with his ex-girlfriend and young daughter in tow. “We were

The mission of Community Connection of Northeast Georgia is to strengthen the individuals and organizations of our region to ensure that no need goes unmet. For the past 30 years, Community Connection has been at the forefront of the community-wide effort to identify and address needs in and around the Athens-Clarke County area. Community Connection pursues this mission in three ways: 1. 211 Information and Referral Hotline Community Connection seeks to help people in need by joining individuals or families together with the right agency that can help the most — right now. 2. HandsOn Northeast Georgia Community Connection connects volunteers with the non-profit service organization that best matches their individual interests or skills. 3. Non-Proﬁt Development Alliance When community members join forces to create a non-profit organization Community Connection understands the commitment that's required and challenges that lay ahead. Through the Non-Profit Development Alliance, Community Connection provides referral resources, leadership learning and even technical assistance.

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“I’M MOST PROUD OF THE FACT THAT WE HAVE INCUBATED OTHER PROGRAMS,” Broyard says. "THE AGENCY NOW HAS OVERSIGHT OF 124 COMMUNITY-BASED AGENCIES," he explains. "The focus, at the outset, was on aggregating all the available information on providers offering services to the disabled. However, we were always viewed as an information and referral agency, which is how we ended up being awarded the United Way 211 contract when that program developed.”

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

TENACIOUS



all living together in New Orleans. We left the city together to find safe harbor elsewhere.” The “elsewhere” was Atlanta. During the fall of 2011, Broyard noticed a job listing that caught his eye. The posting was for an opportunity to work with the Athens Land Trust, with the task of setting up a community garden project. It felt like a perfect fit and he was chosen. He also made the decision to apply to the UGA School of Social Work. “I had the social background,” he explains, “and while working at this farm, I learned I was accepted in Graduate School.” Broyard worked with the Community Agriculture Program at the Athens Land Trust and entered his second master’s program. During his time at the Land Trust, he spearheaded the establishment of the West Broad Market Garden and Farmer’s Market, as well as the Young Urban Farmer Development Project in partnership with the Clarke County School District. By December of 2011 he had set up a garden behind the West Broad School. Broyard adds this school is the oldest standing African-American educational building in the county. He worked with the Land Trust until graduation from the MSW program in the spring of 2013. He also plunged headlong into work for his newest role as executive director of the Community Connection of Northeast Georgia. He has only been in his new position a short while, but slipped into it with seeming ease. The agency has oversight of 124 Athens community-based agencies, he explains. “The founders started the organization with the aim of being an information clearinghouse. The focus, at the outset, was on aggregating all the available information on providers offering services to the disabled. However, we were always viewed as an information and referral agency, which is how we ended up being awarded the United Way 211 contract when that program developed.” Today, Community Connection is staffed primarily by 10 volunteer interns, and 3.5 paid staffers. There are numerous UGA student interns working at Community Connection. UGA graduate students are among the many volunteers who help power the agency’s work. The agency, having tightened its belt since Broyard took directorship, is largely volunteer reliant. A whippet thin Broyard seems to have no problem with belt tightening. Three of the Community Connection interns are currently working towards master’s in social work degrees. One

Broyard consults with UGA graduate student Lingman (Lynn) Guo pictured here and on the preceding page. Guo works a 40-hour work week at the agency as part of her degree program for a real-life immersion experience.

student, Lingman Guo, (also known as Lynn) works there as an intern 40 hours weekly while completing her master’s degree in nonprofit organization. Broyard walks through the agency and rattles off several recent developments in the resonant, strong voice of a newscaster. He describes steps taken to make the agency more financially strong and even leaner. That morning, he took a call from a former mayor, the founding director of Community Connection, Gwen O’Looney. Broyard also communicates frequently with the current mayor of Athens, Nancy Denson—a point that reinforces the gravitas of both his position and the agency’s role within the greater community. These days, Broyard favors three-piece suits, crisp shirts and ties. He sits at a conference table at Community Connection during the winter, preparing for a major fundraiser and also bracing for a massive winter storm about to slam through the Southeast. The snow storm, it turned out, was temporarily dangerous, inconvenient and paralyzed Georgia—one extreme by southern winter standards. Yet compared to a category three hurricane like Katrina, it was a nuisance, easily forgotten, with few exceptions. Storms without names seldom alter thousands of destinies, like that of one exceptional scholar named Fenwick Broyard. n

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SCIENCE CAFÉ organizers and scientists break down hard science into appetizing servings. “The Science of L-O-V-E,” “4-1-1 on GMOs,” and “Winds of Change” were early topics. Each were slurped up by thirsty audiences. Stephanie Pearl, UGA postdoctoral fellow, helped organize Athens’ brand of SCIENCE CAFÉ.

www.grad.uga.edu

Canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Remember the PERIODIC TABLE TABLE, or

the Difference Between WEIGHT and MASS? Not to Worry!

The SCIENCE CAFe IS A

Fun Loving Society Scientist in All of Us.

FOR THE

(NO EXAM AFTERWARD!)

By Cynthia Adams

Photos by Nancy Evelyn Illustrations by Rishi Masalia

UGA Graduate School Magazine F A L L 2 014

SCIENCE CAFÉS take science to the people worldwide—bringing scientists into a friendly and fun setting. “I co-created a communications seminar a couple of years ago, then became more involved after taking a course in communicating science,” Pearl says.

T tephanie Pearl, an organizer of Science Café in Athens, stirs her coffee to cool it before heading over to the lab. Pearl wears a scarf looped around her neck. She not only looks too young to be a PhD, but could easily pass for an artist. But Pearl is a bona fide plant scientist. Scott Jackson is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar known for his peanut research. Pearl wrote her dissertation on safflower oil last year, and afterward found an opportunity to do postdoctoral work within Jackson’s lab. Pearl loves science. And what is great fun at the moment is advancing the cause of Athens’ Science Café, taking place in friendly settings like the bakery where Pearl sits. She explains the premise. The grassroots movement brings scientists directly to the public. Science Cafés are springing up around the globe, especially in popular community gathering places and homey cafes. Last summer, Pearl began working with a group of key players in support of the idea taking root in Athens. Rishi Masalia, a plant biology doctoral student and teaching assistant, pressed for the venture to happen in the first place. While both attended the Plant Biology Research Symposium in August 2013, “Rishi suggested starting a Science Café,” Pearl says. Others who knew about the Science Café phenomenon were thinking the same. “Terry Hastings and Rishi Masalia both independently thought of having an Athens Science Café,” she recalls.

www.grad.uga.edu

A packed crowd in a popular Athens watering hole enjoy learning about the science of genetics from UGA professor Wayne Parrott.

Their first meeting took place at the beginning of October, only two months later. “I helped make it happen, and the four of us, Terry, Rishi, James Hataway and I, have been working on it since the first meeting.” Things moved quickly, and Masalia prepared kicky promotional posters. The events were billed with tongue-incheek pop cultural references. And oh, how it worked! On February 25, psychology department head Keith Campbell presented “The Science of L-O-V-E” at Ciné downtown. In the spirit of things, Ciné offered Love Potion #9, a special cocktail for the event. Pearl describes the scene: “At the first one, there was standing room only—about 100 people! There were grad students, post docs, some of the UGA public relations people.” Plus, she spotted a large number of

graduate students from plant biology and genetics. On March 18, they staged a second café downtown led by UGA professor Wayne Parrott titled, “The 4-1-1 on GMOs” at The Globe on Lumpkin Street downtown. Pearl says they began using social media and did live tweeting from the event. The third café, “Winds of Change: Using Social Media to Study the Weather,” was led April 23 by Professor John Knox at Hendershot’s coffee and bar downtown. Meredith Welch-Devine compares Science Café to TED Talks, a nonprofit that creates conferences based on “ideas worth spreading.” But with Science Café, the setting is potentially anywhere. “You put the professor in a bar,” she says. “The idea,” as Welch-Devine explains, “is that of breaking down the walls of the ivory tower.”

While attending the Plant Biology Research Symposium with Pearl in August 2013, RISHI MASALIA, a UGA

plant biology doctoral student and teaching assistant, suggested starting a Science CafĂŠ. He created kicky

promotional posters drawing audiences to the events.

UGA Graduate School Magazine F A L L 2 014

Science Café organizers,

Stony Brook University offers a series of bar talks titled, “Science on Tap.” Welch-Devine, who works in the Graduate School, attended a seminar at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science a few years ago. The experience inspired new initiatives, expressly aimed at teaching graduate students to better communicate scientific ideas. Alda, a famous pitch man for science, was interviewed by The New York Times in February of this year. He said, “Scientists often don’t speak to the rest of us the way they would if we were standing there full of curiosity.” The actor summarized the problem. “If a scientist doesn’t have someone next to them, drawing them out, they can easily go into lecture mode…a lot of insider’s jargon. If they can’t make clear what their work involves, the public will resist advances. They won’t fund science.” In Athens’ first forays, Science Café ignited eureka moments for the average Joe and Jill—and the scientists and community become interactive players in the zeitgeist of the moment. From what attendees say, the public is thirsty for more than just a brew. They wanted knowledge. Reviews in the local press were equally enthusiastic. “When did you last see a bar with standing room only for people who came just to hear about genetics?” asks a photographer who attended the session at the Globe. And Pearl couldn’t be more pleased, even though the challenge to find venues and pay for costs is, well, a challenge. “Money is an issue,” she admits, but says organizers met with helpful academic program heads and the science library for additional support. They agreed to something a bit old fashioned. Herb and bake sales were soon launched to raise Science Café funds.

www.grad.uga.edu

Rishi R. Masalia at left, John Spiekerman, center, and James Hataway. Masalia and Spiekerman are also fellow graduate students in plant biology. Hataway works for the University.

Lots of Good Bar Hands Pearl says, “The folks who were there who are still involved are Rishi, James Hataway, Terry Hastings, and I.” Hastings is director of research communications at UGA. Hataway works in the office of the vice president for research. The concept is still new and so is the enthusiasm of the core group. Masalia still creates visuals for the meetings. Meanwhile, Pearl vets possible venues, calls meetings, helps with speaker arrangements, and works with Hataway and science writer April Sorrow to get stories out to the public. During cafés, Hataway serves as the moderator. With an affable vibe, Pearl fits the science ambassador slot nicely. She credits the team effort of Hastings, and science writers and public relations specialists like Hataway and Sorrow with getting the message to the public Pearl steers the conversation away from herself, talking up the Science Café on an early midweek morning, although the blue-eyed, brown-haired multi-tasker has lab work aplenty waiting for her afterward. Her breakfast pastry can wait, and Pearl ignores it. “The traditional mindset is you pursue a post-graduate research career after a doctorate,” Pearl says. “It’s not realistic. You have to seek other options and avenues.”

She not only pursued science, but studied piano for 17 years and could have easily become a musician. Also, she studies tap and jazz dance at the Dance FX studio in Athens. This segues to STEM disciplines (science, technology, engineering and math) versus STEAM disciplines. STEAM includes the STEM disciplines while acknowledging the “A”—the crucial role of arts. In many ways, Pearl is the face of the new scientist, increasingly challenged to take their work and knowledge to the public in the interest of funding and overcoming misinformation. Her fascination with the Science Café was born out of her conviction that she couldn’t do much with her doctorate if she didn’t develop teaching and communicating skills. Science Café created an opening for her and others like Pearl to take what they know to a general audience. "And in a nutshell, it is just fun," Pearl says. “People may be scientists at heart, but want to have fun with science and don’t get that opportunity,” she adds. “We’re a community organization, not a university one.” With the force of brain power behind them, Science Café offers serious fun. n

According to the website

SCIENCECAFES.ORG, these serious but fun cafĂŠs

take place in community

centers, coffee houses or

pubs. The public hears from professional scientists on

topics of interest, but with

a difference. The events are more like conversations than pure lectures.

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JIM& MOORE

SCOTT BROWN

Introduce

the Educational

GAME

CHANGERS. INSIDE A SQUATTY LITTLE BUILDING, THESE BRAINIACS ARE PLOTTING TO MAKE TEACHING AS MIND-BENDING AS CIRQUE DE SOLEI.

www.grad.uga.edu

Above left to right: Co-directors of the Educational Resource Center, or ERC, Jim Moore and Scott Brown. Bottom left, ERC medical illustrator Joe Samson and right, UGA doctoral student Rafael Silva. An interdisciplinary project team includes graduate students and staff from engineering, virtual reality, medical illustration, scientific illustration, 3-D animation, photography, videography, graphic design and dramatic media production. Next page, left to right: Row 1: Assistant professor Kyle Johnsen; graduate student Aryabrata Basu; medical illustrator Neil McMillan. Row 2: Medical illustrator Kip Carter; graduate student Will McAbee; graduate student Dominique Edwards. Edwards received a graduate assistantship for the past two years, funded by the Graduate School. Row 3: Scientific illustrator Stephanie Pfeiffer; medical illustrator Brad Gilleland; graphics artist Harsh Jain. Row 4: 3-D graphics artist Thel Melton; graduate student Tasha Obrin; photographer/videographer Chris Herron.

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INSIDE THE AMAZING FUTURE OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

A "trigger" image scanned by a tablet or smart phone is key to making a one-dimensional picture spring to life—as fully dimensional and interactive as well. To experience augmented reality, go to http://t.uga.edu/R7, and see the image on page 29 come alive!

BY CYNTHIA ADAMS PHOTOS BY NANCY EVELYN

stopped a human heart from beating with a flick of my wrist. Then, effortlessly, I restarted it again. Yes, I did. Then, I poked around inside the heart’s cavity for a look-see. It was a David Copperfield kind of moment. Holding a small cereal-sized box of “Lion Flakes” in my right hand, I aimed a smart phone at the box and scanned it. Instead of the box, a throbbing human heart appeared on the screen. With a twist of the box, the heart rotated. It pumped. It was fully dimensional, anatomically correct and reactive to each movement of my hand. It felt as if I could reach into the screen and massage that heart if it suddenly arrested. The technology used to create this spectacular illusion— partially computer-generated, partially technology driven, partially painstaking human illustration—is called augmented reality, or simply, AR. AR removes the dividing membrane of perceived reality and can potentially render any anatomical subject transparent, interactive and multidimensional. “The most common reactions are amazement and wondering what’s magical about the box!” says Jim Moore, who is possibly the only full-time working retiree on campus. “Augmented reality has the potential for engaging students,” adds his colleague, Scott Brown. “It wows people.” But Moore stresses that augmented reality is only one amazing endeavor at the Educational Resources Center, which he co-directs with Brown. There is more inside, they say. Creative Building Blocks in an Unassuming Place: Imagining a Different Teaching Dynamic

The obscure Educational Resources Center, or ERC, building sits within the campus of the College of Veterinary Medicine. A smallish, squat white building is tucked near a paddock and a small hospital. It teems with an ensemble of technical, medical, scientific and creative thinkers, who are also tinkers, and illusionists. “They—the team involved—are the ones who do the work,”

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Brown insists as Moore listens. “If you gave Jim and me a year, and all the computing equipment you want, and a cereal box—you would still just have a cereal box.” The two men howl with laughter. “The people from ERC are incredibly talented artists,” Moore agrees. Developing projects like AR, interactive text books and dynamic experiences requires art and finesse. To create future-forward tools like AR and virtual reality, it really takes a cast of developers, including medical illustrators, scientists, researchers, 3-D graphic artists, engineering faculty, and engineering/computer science students. Using NIH grant proceeds, Moore and Brown hired Joe Samson, a medical illustrator from Johns Hopkins. Sampson created the 3-D heart and ERC collaborated with engineering assistant professor Kyle Johnsen to render it interactive. “Then Rafael Silva came into the picture with an interest in augmented reality,” says Moore. Augmented Reality Lies at the Vector of Science and Art It has significant differences from virtual reality. The experience is directly viewed—while virtual reality requires headgear or head-mounted displays. Augmented reality requires nothing more than a tablet or smart phone camera to read code embedded upon an object. One source calls this method “rotation representation with exponential map.” The code that looks like a graphic on the small box contains an algorithm written by Silva, and employs imagery from a library created by Vuforia. The notion behind AR is another seminal change—one radically augmenting the way we educate, says Moore. No more dusty chalk lectures. Thus the beating, interactive heart, which requires neither headset nor helmet, is a product of augmented reality. “Brown believes that AR is most useful for teaching complex concepts that involve imagery,” says Moore. “Like body functions, or molecular interactions, seen

image by Joe Samson

“We said, ‘Could you make it beat?’ Then, we asked Rafael, ‘Could we look on the inside?’” Moore laughs. “We kept asking him to make the heart do more things, and he did!” UGA UGAGraduate GraduateSchool SchoolMagazine Magazine F A L L 2 014

THEATER &

ENGI-

NEERING

have long

been Team Players in the Progression

of Virtual

REALITY. 30

www.grad.uga.edu

in real—almost real—three-dimension interactions. It’s very powerful where anatomy is important in studying a body part,” Brown agrees. “The heart is a complex organ to see come to life.” Indeed. A Different Set of Tools in the Tool Box The unassuming Center has quietly gone about its business for four decades—Moore and Brown say few such entities even exist on other campuses. The ERC used to solely produce videos, still images, print projects and posters—all manner of technical support to faculty and graduate students. They still do, of course, and some of the staffers who do this work have logged as many as three decades there. But today, they do work that is attention-getting and elicits the “Wow!” reaction. But the directors emphasize this group was doing amazing work then, given the technology that was available. The ERC, Moore says, “has always tried to be the sticky side of the envelope.” He is emphatic that the difference is technology has given them greater tools to expand their creative skills. “Our push now is to make the best use of technological advances coming out of computer engineering,” says Moore. “That translates into working with Johnsen and two of his graduate students (Silva and Aryabrata Basu) and pursuing extramural funding for graduate assistantships.” But think of this modest-looking compound as an innovations incubator. Soon, the ERC will be ready for a public roll-out of another brain child. Playing with a New/Old Idea This is not their first rodeo when it comes to key players developing interactive educational projects on campus. Moore, Brown and an extended group within and beyond the ERC have long been interested in interactive teaching tools. Over a decade earlier, Steve Oliver, a professor in the College of Education, was principal investigator on an NIH project which resulted in dynamic teaching models. In 2001, a group animation project called the Glass Horse came to fruition. This was followed by the Glass Dog. The interdisciplinary project included two from ERC: Thel Melton and Brad Gilleland. Melton worked on both the animations, and Gilleland played a key role on the Glass Dog. Oliver worked with faculty (including, among others, Brown, Moore, Tom Robertson and Mike Hussey) and students on an educational project producing animated 3-D games. Those games, intended to engage and delight students on difficult to learn physiologic processes such as osmosis, were intended for high schools as well as college

An application written by engineering doctoral student Rafael Silva allows a smart phone to read encrypted information on something such as a simple box (above) to reveal interactive, complex medical models. A team of illustrators and artists created the medical model. On the preceding page, Silva playfully demonstrates the brain medical model.

classrooms. Their idea, then as now, was to articulate scientific processes in a more realistic way. (See our Winter, 2011 GSM feature.) UGA researchers have been working with 3-D models and animations. A current project for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is headed by Brown. It is creating materials for use in undergraduate physiology, in an effort to interest students in research careers related to diabetes and kidney disease. According to Moore, the project’s development is heavily dependent upon staff “which includes Joe Samson and Neil McMillan. Neil is handling the pancreas/diabetes side of that project.” Faculty member Johnsen teaches virtual reality courses and works with cross-disciplinary research. He is also working on the NIDDKD project as a co-investigator. Silva is the graduate assistant. Virtual reality and multimodal 3-D user interfaces—a hybrid of computer science, computer engineering, and research—are Johnsen’s specialties.

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IMPACT IMPRINTS LEARNING

This summer, two graduate students, Will McAbee and Tasha Obrin, entered a new one-year certificate program in Comparative Medical Illustration. Painstaking medical illustrations are the first step towards constructing accurate 3-D medical models. Illustration and animation preceed the development of an augmented reality model. Stephanie Pfeiffer is a recent graduate from UGA's Scientific Illustration program, and worked through the summer at ERC to develop illustrations for a pending project.

THE GLASS HORSE AND GLASS DOG PROJECT In 1996, an interactive teaching project began in the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Their idea was to create teaching tools which could help veterinary students visualize the complex anatomy of the horse’s gastrointestinal tract. With guidance from the University of Georgia Research Foundation, an interdisciplinary team of inventors developed an interactive interface in which their 3-D models and animations could be viewed. This interactive animation was named The

Glass Horse CD and The Glass Horse Project was off and running. In 2010, The Glass Horse Project grew to become a new company known as Science In 3D, Inc. The Glass Dog was 3D's initial product, extending beyond equine medicine into canine anatomy. The new program included interactive models and animated movies, with more than 250 detailed and narrated images. Illustrations from The Glass Dog went on to win a 2011 Award of Excellence from the Association of Medical Illustrators.

www.grad.uga.edu

Theater and engineering have long been team players in the progression of virtual reality technologies. As futuristic as it may be, virtual reality has inched forward for more than a century. In the 1950s, it became the focus of cinematographer Morton Heilig’s “Experience Theatre,” but was moved forward in the next decade with the development of Air Force flight simulators. By the late 1970s, MIT researchers created a 3-D model and program called the Aspen Movie Map. VPL Research (the company that developed virtual reality) created a system known as ‘goggles and gloves’ in the 1980s. By the 1990s, a NASA scientist used virtual reality to create the means to control a Mars rover from Earth—but also in real time. This year, the company Oculus VR, who makes virtual reality headsets, was acquired by Facebook. (It may take more than virtual reality to unfriend a nosy Grandma, unfortunately.) Augmented reality, however, is an innovation that seeks to augment reality with computer-generated images, sounds, or data. AR is attributed to Harvard professor Ivan Sutherland. But the earlier history of AR was one drawn from fiction and cinematography, seguing ultimately with technologies used in the gaming industries and for the military. As was the case with virtual reality, augmented technology found application and advancements by the U.S. Air Force. It has since leaped into the public sector. In 2013, Google rolled out the Google Glass, which employs augmented reality. BMW announced in April, 2014 it had incorporated AR into its windshield display on its luxury sedans, and project speed limits and road signs onto the windshield. “The American Veterinary Medical Association accreditation team came in last year, and we had 15 minutes to show what we were doing here in the ERC,” says Moore. It was a very full 15 minutes. The ERC group walked through the various things happening in the unit, ending with an electronic book under development. They talked about other possibilities that could involve additional interactivity for the student. Some of the AVMA accreditation team asked to return for a chance to have additional time, wishing to see the Glass Horse and Glass Dog products in action.

THE MIND

Psychologists are parsing out how interactive videos and "brain games" engage learning and retention.

Psychology Today writes, researchers "are beginning to better understand the specific mechanisms of how patterns of electrical pulses (called “spikes”) trigger a cascade of changes in neural circuits linked to learning and memory."

“It’s important for people to see what’s happening here that isn’t happening anywhere else,” says Moore with visible pride. But there was more—the cherry on the top of the cake. What the AVMA team did not yet see was the work done in developing the augmented reality model of the human heart. “The Education Resource Center existed 40 years ago,” says Moore, as students and faculty busily move through the workplace. Graphics artists Kip Carter and Harsh Jain have been there much of that time. Carter, reportedly a gifted medical illustrator, has served as president of the Association of Medical Illustrators. Today, the ERC is an of-the-moment place where a diversity of talent brings vastly different tool boxes to work. In addition to the list of projects, the ERC group is working on seven interactive books, on topics such as neurology. These interactive books also include selfassessment tools, and UGA students are offered the electronic books free of charge for downloading. “Kyle Johnsen wants to know how AR is going to improve students learning,” says Brown. “Part of our experience as veterinary faculty is realizing that learning anatomy is tedious. It’s normal anatomy they are learning, and they want to learn to treat animals that are sick. We can also use this approach to show them anatomical anomalies, which are sometimes the best way for them to learn.” “Can We Make it Beat?” Medical Illustration and High Tech Advancements

AUGMENTED

Reality? TO SEE AUGMENTED REALITY IN ACTION, GO TO http://t.uga.edu/R7

Scientific illustration is taught at the University of Georgia. However, only four universities in North America offer postgraduate programs in medical illustration. On June 1, graduate students Tasha Obrin and Will McAbee entered a new oneyear certificate program in Comparative Medical Illustration. Remember that the medical illustrations were required to build 3-D models; both of those steps preceded the development of an AR model and many of the interactive projects underway at ERC. “It speaks to the transformative way this is helping teaching. This has always been a point of pride that we support medical illustration at the Center,” says Moore.

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ALL

OF US

were

momentarily

SILENCED,

WOWED.

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It is an integral piece of the interactive, animated, and now augmented realities that will keep a student on the edge of their seat. These tools will grab them, just as the creative principals involved imagineered. Silva, an engineering graduate student working with Johnsen, requested the heart model, which required 167 pages of medical illustration to create. Silva then used Sampson’s model to create an application that would allow the heart to jump off the page, by devising the algorithm and code that is embedded on the small paper box. He insists his role was minor, and points out the preceding work that made it possible. “We have weekly meetings at the ERC,” explains Moore, who remembers the meeting when it coalesced very clearly. “Rafael was attending those meetings, and without any directions from us, he saw the heart model. Having an interest in augmented reality he conceived of the idea,” Moore adds. “Rafael asked Joe for the heart model. At the end of a March meeting, Rafael said quietly, ‘There’s just something I wanted to show you.’” Silva pulled out a tiny box. The team members scanned it. “Initially it was just the heart that you rotated around,” says Moore. "All of us were momentarily silenced. Wowed. We said, ‘Could you make it beat?’ Then, we asked Rafael, ‘Could we look on the inside?’” Moore laughs. “We kept asking him to make the heart do more things, and he did!” Silva had been working with an Atlanta tech firm before leaving industry to return for a graduate degree. (“Very boring,” he says, pulling a face, as he describes life before UGA) “Dr. Johnsen is a specialist in virtual reality. Everything I know I learned from him,” he stresses. He first showed Moore the application and the box, which featured subtle geometric patterns the computer could read. His next step “is to learn how to replicate the experience of extracting the spinal fluid from a horse,” using a joy stick to exert the same virtual pressure required in the intricate procedure. “I’m now making less than half what I made at a corporate job,” Silva says. “But it’s worth it. It’s a wonderful quality of life. I want to go to work with a smile on my face.” Silva’s wife is a UGA graduate, and the reason he chose UGA. He plans to earn a doctorate in engineering. “It’s unfair that I take credit for it,” says Silva, who finished his master’s in May and returned to begin his doctoral program this fall. As he notes, each of the players in the project stand upon the shoulders of the last—as seamlessly as a Cirque de Soleil ensemble performance. n

EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (ERC) is a part of UGA's College of Veterinary Medicine, providing medical illustration, animation and photography. "We went into academics because of our interest in making a change in others’ lives,” says Scott Brown, who co-directs the ERC with Jim Moore.

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WOUND UP DOING EITHER ONE. TODAY, SHE IS A UGA DOCTORAL CANDIDATE WITH A MEAN FASTBALL AND A VOICE THAT PACKS A WALLOP.

★

H T E AB

N E T LA

ELI

★

E B A L L?

STUDIED VOICE. ELISABETH SLATEN COULD HAVE

RA LIK

HER FATHER WAS A COACH AND HER MOTHER

BY CYNTHIA ADAMS PHOTOS BY NANCY EVELYN

“I’M NO DIVA,” Slaten says, adjusting thick blonde hair, which is casually twisted into a stylish chignon. In casual clothes, she blends into the blur of UGA students hurrying across campus. Youthful, full of energy, she has everything in common with the fellow students she often moonlights with after classes—more often than not, they are graduate students just like her. But when Slaten takes the stage, Slaten takes the stage—every inch a rising opera star. It is difficult to imagine her as only 26; young to have already graduated from Mercer and the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. (UGA Opera Theatre Director Frederick Burchinal heard her sing at the Georgia State Council auditions for the Metropolitan Opera and urged Slaten to enter UGA’s doctoral program. She agreed.) “It was an incredible blessing: Frederick Burchinal has a 40-year Verdi career. He’s a big deal, and we have him here at UGA,” Slaten says. “I get to sing two big roles per year, and in three years I’ll have a doctorate and a performance resume. I’m getting a great education at UGA.” Slaten is an opera singer who just happens to have the classic good looks of a star like Renee Fleming. But, she would like to slay some myths about her chosen profession, including the whole matter of attitude. She’s never nervous on stage, Slaten insists, but she lacks hauteur unless it is required for the role she sings. She sings everywhere—in Italian, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. But she does not sing in the shower. Apart from that, “I’m insanely normal,” she asserts. “I think opera is for normal people.” And then Slaten tells her coming-of-age story and darned well proves it. She is a young woman who absolutely, positively loves sports. Luckily, both sports and musical performance require athleticism and a sprinkle of star power.

★

Slaten sings coveted operatic roles, and loves the idea of wowing crowds. “Getting on a stage is fun. I do not have to talk myself up, or have to get psyched up; I feel like this is my God-given ability so I’m confident.” Yet on a weekday morning, she is fresh-faced and looks the typical college coed.

“Over the past two years Elisabeth has proven herself to be a valuable and dedicated member of our opera program having been our ‘leading lady’ in all of the last four opera productions. The most recent was a live broadcast on the internet with confirmation of viewers all across the U.S.A. and as far reaching as Japan and France. Elisabeth has been a driving dynamic force not only in her performances but also as an extremely effective contributing student at UGA with her organizational skills, her marketing expertise, her nurturing and instructive analysis of her colleagues and younger ‘budding’ singers, her teaching proficiency and her always enthusiastic personality.” —Frederick Burchinal, Wyatt and Margaret

Anderson Professor in the Arts and director of UGA Opera Theatre.

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FREDERICK BURCHINAL HAS A 40-YEAR VERDI CAREER. “HE’S A BIG DEAL, AND WE HAVE HIM HERE AT UGA,” SLATEN SAYS. “PLUS, I GET TO SING TWO BIG ROLES PER YEAR, AND IN THREE YEARS I’LL HAVE A DOCTORATE AND A PERFORMANCE RESUME. I’M GETTING A GREAT EDUCATION AT UGA.”

There is another aspect of Slaten— the emerging star taking center stage in flamboyant costume and full-blown stage makeup—and then there is a young woman who is a devoted friend who enjoys playfulness and entertaining people. Turns out, she makes other noises as well, to the delight of co-workers. Although she doesn’t sing at work, Slaten is a constant whistler, as coworkers and hotel guests attest whenever she works nights at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Athens. “I whistle all the time,” she grins. “For the simple reason that there’s got to be a song going. One of the first things I ever learned from my grandmother was to whistle.” Slaten runs the famous Lauren Bacall lines, “’If you want me, just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and…blow.’” More laughter ensues. Slaten is cracking herself up. She playfully lets it be known she is a tomboy, one of the guys. It happens that way, Slaten explains, when you are the firstborn in a sports-loving family. And she can pull a mug of beer as easily as she can pitch a fastball or belt out an aria. She’s all that. Slaten is happy in stilettos, spikes, sneakers or cleats. Her future could have looked quite different—in fact, Slaten muses that she could have quite happily become an athlete, hollering, “Batter up!” And maybe even pursued coaching. Without question, she is her father’s girl. “I walk like my father. When I was a child, they were trying to teach me

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to walk like a lady,” she says, chortling. “I was going to be an athlete.” Slaten lettered in track and field in high school, to her father’s complete delight. “I threw discus and shot put. I played soccer, swam, and played baseball. It’s not all that unusual in the area of Atlanta where I’m from—well, that’s just what you do with your kids.” Her mother’s love of music and the appeal of performance tugged at her and won out during her high school years. Slaten became involved with community theater and studied voice while still a teenager. She met Dian Lawler-Johnson, a teacher who became a mentor. “My high school voice teacher taught at Shorter College in Rome, Georgia, but I studied with her in her private studio in Alpharetta. Dian saw something in me and made me feel confident. There was even a whole year where my parents were struggling financially and she gave me lessons for free. We are still close.” Encouraged by her mentor, Slaten entered voice competitions and attended auditions. At Mercer, she sang a character role in an early Baroque opera, playing Amore, or Cupid. In her junior year Slaten performed in Fiddler on the Roof. While still an undergraduate, Slaten sang at her favorite venue, the Grand Opera House in Macon. By her senior year, she played Adina in Elixir of Love, which was also staged at UGA this past winter. The die was cast. Slaten won voice competitions and kept training.

★

She once asked her father how he prepared for a game. Slaten’s father talked about the art of the game. “Dad told me how he prepared for games, and his process.” He told her about the power of positive thinking. “It was helpful. I do believe in positive thinking. I know I will do well. I’ve put tons into my work!” There’s one critical difference between baseball and opera, Slaten says: “Baseball players have to bat 400; we have to hit 1,000 percent every time. You miss more than 10 percent of the notes you are singing, and you will never get hired!” Even so, the ways that baseball is like opera helped Slaten discuss opera with her college friends. Many students have never heard an opera sung. “It’s funny. The way I now talk about the fine arts is to use the analogy of baseball. Baseball players and singers are much more alike than you think,” she adds. “Baseball players have a good raw talent. Maybe they have a strong arm, and just need to know how to throw a ball or change the pitch. And if you have a good coach, you have a good career. And you have to stay focused mentally.” Point made. One of Slaten’s favorite pitchers, John Smoltz, successfully pitched many years for the Atlanta Braves. It’s much the same with singing. “You may have raw talent, but won’t be able to use your voice in the most efficient way. More so than baseball players, you have to train, years and years. It’s about minute, muscular changes. And getting into the business is like getting into the major leagues.” n

A G U

ELISA

FA C TETH SLATEN S

ELISABETH SLATEN BASEBALL/OPERA

★ Dre am ro le: To The M play S arriag usann e of F story ah in igaro , the . “I lo c h a ve th racte love w e rs, th ho sh e mu e is; s sic; I makin h e is rea gan ew fr l. It’s ★ “I w iend.” like ish I c o uld p ★ Wh lay p ich la iano.” ngua for he ge is r as a most singe diffic it ’s o r? “En ult ur na glish, tive t becau cond o n gue a se ucive nd no to sin on th t ging; e con y o u can sonan ★ Fav ’t sing ts.” orite pop s Wine inger house : Amy ★ Fav orite pitch er: Jo hn Sm oltz

BASE

BALL

/OPE

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Hardy Edwards III Establishes a Fellowship in Memory of His Father Graduate Education Advancement Board member Hardy M. Edwards III recently made a $750,000 commitment to establish a new full graduate fellowship at the University of Georgia in memory of his father, Hardy M. Edwards, Jr., who was the dean of the Graduate School from 1972 through 1979. “This fellowship will be awarded to the most exceptional doctoral student from any school, college, or unit at UGA,” says former Graduate School Dean Maureen Grasso. “It will increase the caliber of doctoral students at UGA.” Edwards joined the University of Georgia faculty in 1957, and went on to hold four patents as a poultry and animal nutrition scientist. Only age 42 at the time of his appointment in November of 1972, he became the University’s youngest dean. He was later named the Alumni Foundation Distinguished Professor of Poultry Science and Animal Nutrition, and taught until his death in December 2007. The new Hardy M. Edwards Jr. Distinguished Graduate Fellowship honors the memory and the legacy of Dean Edwards. “In many ways, Dean Edwards was way ahead of his time,” says Thomas Wilfong, director of development for the UGA Graduate School. Wilfong enumerated highlights of the many accomplishments of Hardy M. Edwards, Jr. during his deanship. “He was a champion of very high and consistent admission standards. He developed a procedure for periodic evaluation of degree programs, which sought to measure quality instruction

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and research. He acted to increase the quality of graduate education by emphasizing high quality work and rigorous standards. He led the Graduate School during a difficult transition, and we are all in a better place as a result.” This commitment is the first distinguished graduate fellowship given to the Graduate School by an individual, says Wilfong. “From this endowed fund, we will have a spendable income of at least $30,000 to $35,000 per year. The fellowship may cover tuition, fees, living expenses, travel, and other expenses related to graduate education. It may be renewed four times for a total of five years of study. With this opportunity to receive full financial support, top students will be more likely to apply to the University of Georgia.” Hardy Edwards III received a BS in agricultural economics in 1984 from UGA; an MS in food science in 1994; and a PhD in nutrition in 1999 from the University of Illinois. He is the president and CEO of Vitamin Derivatives, Inc.,

which produces vitamin supplements for the poultry industry. The company was formed in 2001 by Edwards and his father, along with three of his father’s colleagues in poultry science and organic chemistry. Hardy and his wife, Kim, live on a 200-acre farm in eastern Clarke County with their four-year old son, Hardy IV. They raise and show championship Herefords in their “spare” time. Grasso adds, “I can’t emphasize enough the importance of this gift. This is the first fellowship in my memory that will not be tied to another funding source to complete a financial package for a deserving graduate student. The fellowship stands alone. For those of us in the Graduate School, it is huge. We hope Hardy’s philanthropy will inspire others to make similar gifts. A few of these fellowships will transform the caliber of student in a relatively short time. "Hardy, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you on behalf of the entire UGA community.” n

Top: Hardy Jr. and Hardy III on their way to feed their Landrace pigs, circa 1963. Above: Hardy III and Hardy IV off to feed their Hereford cows, circa 2012. Pictures were taken in the same place on the family farm in Clarke County.

Dean Grasso Retires from the UGA Graduate School Dr. Maureen Grasso, dean of the University of Georgia’s Graduate School, retired from UGA on June 30, 2014, after a 12-year tenure. In 2002, she joined the Graduate School as the ninth dean, succeeding Gordhan L. Patel. In so doing, Grasso became the first dean chosen from outside the University, and the first female dean of the Graduate School. “I want to focus on the whole student, and broaden our ideas about being successful in the 21st century,” she said in an interview for the book Centennial: Graduate Education at the University of Georgia 1910-2010. On her last day in Athens, Grasso said, “The ties of family are powerful, especially now that I have a new grandson. My return to North Carolina allows me the chance to be in close proximity to my family and also to accept a brand new challenge. I’ve so many valuable friends and colleagues here in Georgia, and feel a deep kinship with Georgians and their commitment to fine education. I leave the UGA Graduate School with great expectations for its future.” As a nationally recognized leader in graduate education, Grasso's focus was building interdisciplinary programs and outreach to underrepresented students. As a result of aggressive recruitment and new initiatives, there was a 54 percent increase in African-American graduate students enrolled at UGA. She also recognized the value of outreach to graduate alumni. In 2005, the Graduate School began publishing the Graduate School Magazine, publicizing outstanding research and scholarship among its students and alumni. Since its inception, it has received regional and national honors from CASE and from APEX. Also in 2005, she initiated a Graduate Education Advancement Board, and formalized fund raising for the Graduate School. In 2009, Grasso was honored for outstanding contributions by the Conference of Southern Graduate Schools. She is a member of the Council of Graduate School's board of directors and has served the council in a number of leadership positions. Upon Grasso's retirement, Julie Coffield became the interim dean of the Graduate School. Coffield, who has worked with the Graduate School since 2012, has been involved in graduate training and administration with the

UGA President Jere Morehead presenting a gift to retiring Dean Maureen Grasso on April 29th.

University for nearly 20 years. She joined the department of physiology and pharmacology in 1994 as an assistant professor. In 2010, Julie Coffield became the director of the interdisciplinary toxicology program, a campus-wide program that includes students and faculty from several different colleges who share common interests in the field of toxicology. Two years later, Coffield became the Graduate School’s associate dean. She also became chief of operations for the Graduate School, working closely with the Graduate School staff in Admissions and Enrolled Student Services. In that role, her primary focus has been upon student affairs and program management as she assisted Graduate Coordinators. She also assisted in helping the Graduate School implement its 2020 Strategic Plan. Coffield earned both a DVM and PhD at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. n

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FIGHT CLUB Brian Williams likes to stay ﬁghting ﬁt. Williams is the associate director of facilities at the University of Georgia. He has worked in the Ramsey Center since 2006 when he earned a graduate degree in exercise science. When stress goes up, he hits the gym and discharges his stresses with a little time in the ring. Nothing relieves stress like punching a bag, he says. “You hit a bag, and your confidence level goes up.” Williams grew up studying martial arts. “I was very disciplined and respectful.” He firmly adheres to the idea of a healthy mind/ body connection. “You have to respect yourself,” he says. “You can’t eat badly, or treat yourself badly, and come in and box.”

The University of Georgia Foundation is registered to solicit in every state and provides state-speciﬁc registration information at www.ugafoundation.org/charity.

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