University of Georgia Magazine Summer 2023

Band of Bulldogs

The Redcoats are Coming!

The President’s Pen

President Jere W. Morehead discusses advancing Georgia’s agriculture.

UGA to Z

Highlights from across the UGA community.

36 38 40 56

On the Bulldog Beat

Glory! Glory! On the intramural field.

Bulldog Bulletin

News for UGA alumni.

Class Notes

Meet UGA’s newest Grammywinning alumna, a filmmaker who left L.A. to come home to Athens, and a doctor who uses social media to offer valuable mental health advice.

Faculty Focus

Get to know Jeffry Netter, Georgia Bankers Association Chair, Terry College of Business.

FEATURE 16 Small Town, Big News

Grady students are teaming up with UGA faculty and alumni to rescue a 150-year-old newspaper near Athens and take it to new heights.

20

Fishers of Men

When UGA’s Henry Young heard rural Georgia communities were suffering from chronic, manageable health conditions, he partnered with faith leaders to see how they could help.

24 Centered on Research

UGA’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities gives students a platform to perform introductory research. But the results are far more advanced.

30 A Huge Machine in Red and Black

What’s that coming down the track?

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

We love turtles! See why on p. 24.

The Georgia Redcoat Band is one of the university’s most recognizable and popular symbols. The band’s red coats are iconic, and elements within them are filled with meaning. For instance, this embroidery, captured by UGA photographer Andrew Davis Tucker, has been a part of the band uniform since 2014. It pays homage to the band’s first members, who picked up their instruments more than a century ago.

cover photo by andrew davis tucker

UGA is working with rural community faith leaders across Georgia to fill health care gaps, p.20.

Grab a Paddle

each semester, recreational sports hosts a range of trips and clinics that introduce a variety of outdoor activities to newbies as well as challenge more experienced participants. They range from backpacking to spelunking, fly-fishing to kayaking, as seen here. UGA students (from left to right) Tori Newman, Tosin Oke, Zoe Bunch, and Kylie Adams recently visited Devil’s Fork State Park in South Carolina to perfect their paddling skills.

chamberlain smith

SUMMER 2023

VOLUME 102 ISSUE NO. 3

GEORGIA MAGAZINE

Editor · Eric Rangus MA ’94

Associate Editor · Aaron Hale MA ’16

Writers · Leigh Beeson MA ’17, Erica Techo AB ’15, and Jayne Roberts

Art Director · Jackie Baxter Roberts

Advertising Director · Kipp Mullis ABJ ’93

Photo Editor · Peter Frey BFA ’94

UGA Photographers · Andrew Davis Tucker, Dorothy Kozlowski BLA ’06, ABJ ’10, and Chamberlain Smith ABJ ’18

Contributing Writers · Elizabeth Elmore BBA ’08, ABJ ’08, Clarke Schwabe ABJ ’08, and Alexandra Shimalla MA ’19

Contributing Designer · Amy Gunby BFA ’20

Editorial Interns · Ireland Hayes AB ’23, Rachel Cooper MA ’23, and Navya Shukla

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

Vice President · Kathy Pharr ABJ ’87, MPA ’05, EdD ’11

Senior Director for Integrated Media Communications · Rod Guajardo

Senior Executive Director for Operations & Fiscal Affairs · Fran Burke

ADMINISTRATION

President · Jere W. Morehead JD ’80

Senior VP for Academic Affairs & Provost · S. Jack Hu

VP for Finance & Administration Ryan Nesbit MBA ’91

Interim VP for Development & Alumni Relations Jill Walton BSA ’99, MPA ’03

VP for Instruction · Marisa Anne Pagnattaro PhD ’98

VP for Research · Karen J. L. Burg

VP for Public Service & Outreach · Jennifer Frum PhD ’09

VP for Student Affairs · Victor Wilson BSW ’82, MEd ’87

VP for Government Relations · Kevin Abernathy AB ’99

VP for Information Technology · Timothy M. Chester

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FINE PRINT

Georgia Magazine (issn 1085-1042) is published quarterly for alumni and friends of UGA.

POSTMASTER | Send address changes to: University of Georgia 286 Oconee Street, Suite 200 North Athens, GA 30602

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andrew davis tucker

Advancing Agriculture

Supporting Georgia’s economy and securing the world’s food supply

The University of Georgia made a positive impact of $7.6 billion on our state’s economy last year. Much of that impact came from our support of agriculture, Georgia’s No. 1 industry. In myriad ways, UGA’s teaching, research, and outreach endeavors help this vital industry to grow and thrive across our home state and throughout the world.

UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) ranks third in the nation among the best colleges for agricultural sciences. We are proud that two CAES students recently were named Future Leaders in Agriculture by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Other UGA schools and colleges, such as the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, the College of Veterinary Medicine, and the College of Engineering, are also preparing students to contribute to the industry through management of timber resources, care of food animals, design of equipment for harvesting and processing, and much more.

Our renowned faculty conduct cutting-edge research that promotes food security and agribusiness prosperity. For example, UGA’s Institute for Integrative Precision Agriculture is harnessing the power of technology and big data to sustainably provide for our planet’s growing population. A state-of-the-art Poultry Science Building, set to open this fall, will accelerate innovation in the poultry industry. Poultry vaccines are among the hundreds of products UGA has helped bring to market to support agriculture, as is the world’s first vaccine for honeybees, which protects these important pollinators of much of our food supply.

UGA Extension, the cornerstone of our service mission as a land-grant university, has brought research-based practices to Georgia farmers for more than a century. Today, additional UGA resources are available, including the Small Business Development Center, which assists agribusiness owners and aspiring entrepreneurs in areas such as business planning, loan proposals, and marketing. UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences recently launched a virtual platform called agrileadHER to connect women in agriculture for networking and educational opportunities.

These are just a few of the countless examples of UGA’s close relationship with the agriculture industry and our commitment to its success. As the global population expands, the need for UGA’s expertise, education, and innovative solutions is sure to expand as well. We are ready for the challenge.

Jere W. Morehead President

“As the global population expands, the need for UGA’s expertise, education, and innovative solutions is sure to expand as well. We are ready for the challenge.”

UGA Z

Retiring Student Affairs VP Leaves Tremendous Legacy

Victor K. Wilson, vice president for student affairs, will retire on Sept. 30. Wilson BSW ’82 , MEd ’87 held the position for 10 years. He has also served as director of new student orientation and assistant to the president during his time at the university, which spanned some three decades in total.

Wilson’s leadership has forged numerous successes in student support and management, including major initiatives in student well-being and engagement, as well as advancements in communication with and outreach to students.

“This has been a labor of love,” Wilson says. “Students are the most important part of our institution. I hope my legacy will always exhibit my concern and care for our students.”

Additionally, Wilson has authored numerous scholarly articles and given presentations on issues of race, ethics, and crisis management while also holding leadership roles in both national and local community organizations.

To formally recognize Wilson’s contributions, President Jere W. Morehead JD ’80 announced a campaign to name the Memorial Hall Ballroom in his honor.

to

Highlights from across the UGA community

Michelle Cook, UGA’s senior vice provost, steps into the student affairs VP role on Oct. 1.

THANK YOU!

11,091 GIFTS

$5,628,560.55 RAISED

EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

UGA Dedicates New Center on Georgia Coast

A new $1.8 million Experiential Learning Center at the Center for Research and Education at Wormsloe opened in February.

Established by Noble Jones in the 1780s, the Wormsloe property, located on the Isle of Hope near Savannah, is one of the most ecologically and historically significant sites along Georgia’s coast. For nearly a century, Jones’ descendants have partnered with and supported UGA in many capacities.

In 2012, the Wormsloe Foundation, led by UGA alumni Craig AB ’65 and Diana Barrow AB ’65, donated 15 acres of the Wormsloe estate to the university. The Experiential Learning Center will serve as a classroom, laboratory, and gathering space for UGA graduate students and faculty researchers in a wide variety of fields.

GENEROUS DAWGS

Dawg Day of Giving Nets $5.6M

UGA supporters set a single-day record when donors made 11,091 gifts to the university during Dawg Day of Giving on March 30. After reaching a then-record 9,339 gifts on last year’s giving day, UGA set a goal of 10,000 gifts for 2023, which donors easily surpassed. Gifts totaled $5.6 million, and donors hailed from all 50 states. Visit givingday.uga.edu to learn more about the day and see leaderboards for a variety of giving categories.

THE PACE SETTERS Meet UGA’s Newest Regents’ Professors

Three University of Georgia faculty members have been named Regents’ Professors, a recognition of the reach of their innovative scholarship. Regents’ professorships are the highest professorial recognition in the University System of Georgia.

Jenna Jambeck, a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor in Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering, is an internationally recognized specialist on global waste management, specifically researching the impact of plastic contamination on the world’s oceans and waterways.

David P. Landau, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Center for Simulational Physics in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, is recognized for his work in computational/simulational condensed matter physics.

Michael Terns, Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Department of Genetics in the Franklin College, is one of the scientists whose foundational breakthroughs led to new gene-editing techniques and possibilities in the development of anti-cancer drugs.

andrew davis tucker

peter frey

dorothykozlowski

dorothykozlowski

The new Experiential Learning Center at Wormsloe (left) will serve as a classroom, lab, and gathering space for faculty and students from across the university.

Southern/Modern @ Georgia Museum of Art

Saturday, Jun 17, 2023 — Sunday, Dec 10, 2023

PICTURING THE SOUTH

Museum of Art Exhibition Highlights Region

Featuring more than 100 works of art drawn from public and private collections, “Southern/Modern” will be the first project to comprehensively survey the rich array of paintings and works on paper created in the American South during the first half of the 20th century.

The Georgia Museum of Art exhibition takes a broad geographic look at the South, featuring artists who worked in states below the Mason-Dixon Line and as far west as those bordering the Mississippi River. It will also include major artists from outside the region who produced significant bodies of work while visiting the South.

“Southern/Modern” aims to be the fullest, richest, and most accurate overview to date of the artistic activity in the South during this period and illuminate the important and somewhat overlooked role that it played in American art history.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

UGA Posts Record $545.6M in R&D Spending in FY22

In fiscal year 2022, for the first time in its history, the University of Georgia surpassed a half-billion dollars in research and development spending. Total expenditures numbered $545.6 million. That’s a jump of more than 10% from the previous year and UGA’s largest single-year increase in recent history.

The growth of UGA’s research enterprise arose from years of planning and execution. Two areas of focus have been:

• Strategic investments to expand research infrastructure.

• Targeted efforts to recruit faculty who could attract funding from both public and private sources.

UGA has been renovating and constructing multiple facilities on campus dedicated to the sciences in order to accommodate modern technology, such as the new Interdisciplinary STEM Research Complex and the soon-to-open Poultry Science Building.

UGA’s Task Force on Academic Excellence identified some of the university’s strongest research fields, such as security, environmental science, behavioral health, and agriculture. Targeted hiring initiatives then bolstered its research in those areas.

For example, UGA recruited the inaugural John H. “Johnny” Isakson Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Parkinson’s Research, Anumantha Kanthasamy, in 2021. UGA then launched a new Center for Brain Science and Neurodegenerative Diseases, with Kanthasamy at the helm, securing $5 million in federal funding for facilities and equipment to support the center.

FACS Faculty Member takes on USDA Role

Caree Cotwright, an associate professor in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, has been named director of nutrition security and health equity for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In this role, Cotwright MS ’04, PhD ’08 will lead the USDA Food and Nutrition Service’s strategic focus on nutrition security, including raising public awareness of USDA’s actions to advance food and nutrition security and building partnerships with key stakeholders.

An Atlanta native, Cotwright received her undergraduate degree in biology from Howard University before moving on to UGA, where she completed her master’s and doctoral degrees in nutrition within FACS.

In 2013, she joined the FACS department of nutritional sciences faculty, where she conducts research in early childhood obesity prevention, teaches both undergraduate service-learning and graduate level food and nutrition education courses, and is the principal investigator of the Childhood Obesity Prevention Laboratory. Cotwright also has served as a fellow with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Cotwright began her duties with the USDA on April 10.

NATIONAL LEADER

Two Bulldogs Recognized for Community Contributions

In January, the University of Georgia named Richard Dunn and Xernona Thomas as the recipients of the 2023 Footsteps Award. The annual honor recognizes UGA graduates who are following in the footsteps of Charlayne Hunter-Gault ABJ ’63, Hamilton Holmes Sr. BS ’63 , and Mary Frances Early MMEd’ 62 , EdS ’67, UGA’s first African American students.

Dunn ABJ ’93 established The Athens Courier in the 1980s to address the needs of the minority community in Athens and hosted the weekly radio show “Community Forum” to address politics and regional issues. Dunn, now retired, also served as the executive director of the Athens-Clarke County High School Completion Initiative, a program he founded to increase graduation rates across the county.

Thomas ABJ ’91, MSW ’92 , EdD ’17 spent 31 years working in education in a variety of roles and leadership positions, including as the first female superintendent of the Clarke County School District. Thomas now serves as the executive director of College Factory, an Athens-based nonprofit aiming to prepare youth for post-secondary work and education.

RECORD BREAKER

Bulldog Senior Named Indoor Track Athlete of the Year

Bulldog senior Kyle Garland (right) was named National Indoor Men’s Field Athlete of the Year by the U.S. Track & Field and Cross Country Coaches Association, making him the first man from UGA’s track and field program to earn the honor.

Having already been named the South Region Men’s Athlete of the Year by the same group, Garland, a native of Philadelphia, had a historic final collegiate indoor season. Garland destroyed the collegiate record—and fell just six points shy of the world record—in the heptathlon to win the combined event at the NCAA Championships. He finished with 6,639 points, 140 points more than eventual two-time Olympic gold medalist Ashton Eaton did when he set the record to win the 2010 NCAA title.

SUPPORTING STUDENT VETERANS

UGA Named the Top Military-Friendly Institution

The University of Georgia has been named the country’s No. 1 Military Friendly tier 1 research institution for the third time in six years. UGA previously received this title in 2017 and 2021 and has been recognized as a Military Friendly school every year since the Student Veterans Resource Center’s (SVRC) inception in 2013.

UGA student veterans are 33 years old on average, and many support families and hold full-time jobs. On top of that, more than 20% of these students are still serving with the active-duty military or in the reserve component forces, which can make navigating these personal, professional, and academic responsibilities extremely challenging.

To support student veterans and service members, the SVRC works with units across campus to ease the transition from the military to higher education, improve the UGA experience, and facilitate career readiness, while also guiding students to explore all the opportunities given by their military benefits.

Richard Dunn and Xernona Thomas are the Footsteps Award recipients for 2023.

Ghosting can be Tougher than Direct Rejection

Odds are, you know someone who has been ghosted. And according to a new study from the University of Georgia, it can be a haunting experience.

The study found about two-thirds of participants have either ghosted—ended a relationship by ignoring the other person without offering a clear explanation—or been ghosted.

The researchers also found that a desire for closure can amplify feelings after a breakup, says researcher Christina Leckfor, a doctoral student in the UGA Department of Psychology.

“When someone with a high need for closure recalled a time where they were ghosted, it hurt more than if they recalled a time when they were directly rejected,” says Leckfor, lead author of the study. “But they also felt more positive after recalling times when they were included in the breakup or acknowledged by their partner.”

And ghosting’s not just for dating apps. More than half of the study participants wrote about a time when they were ghosted by a friend, rather than a romantic partner.

WELCOME BACK UGA Names the Next Franklin College Dean

Anna Westerstahl Stenport, most recently the dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology, will become the next dean of the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Stenport has an extensive career in academia. She served as a professor of global studies and chair of the School of Modern Languages at Georgia Tech, where she founded the Atlanta Global Studies Center. Before that, Stenport served as a Conrad Humanities Scholar and Scandinavian studies professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

She’s been a visiting faculty member at Stanford University; the University of California, Berkeley; Queen’s University in Canada; and several institutions in Scandinavia.

Even though relationships that end without explanation can be more painful than a traditional breakup, research out of the Department of Psychology reveals that two-thirds of respondents have ghosted someone.

A native of Sweden, Stenport spent her first year of college as an international student at UGA before returning to her home country to earn her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Uppsala University. She also holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature from UC Berkeley.

Stenport officially joined the UGA faculty as the University of Georgia Athletic Association Professor in Communication Studies in April, and she will assume her role as dean of Franklin College on June 1.

Avian Flu Strikes Bald Eagle Populations

Bald eagles are a massive conservation success story due to their rebound from near extinction in the 1960s.

But now a highly infectious virus may jeopardize that hardfought comeback, according to UGA research published in Nature’s Scientific Reports

The study showed that highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as H5N1, is killing off unprecedented numbers of mating pairs of bald eagles.

The researchers found that just under half of bald eagle nests along coastal Georgia successfully fledged at least one eaglet in 2022. That’s 30% below average for the region.

The success rate for nests was halved in one Florida county, dropping to 41% from an average of 86.5%. Another Florida county experienced a less dramatic but still concerning decrease from an average of approximately 78% to 66.7%.

A highly contagious virus is endangering bald eagle populations along the Georgia and Florida coasts.

“Even just one year of losses of productivity like we’ve documented regionally is very concerning and could have effects for decades to come if representative of broader regions,” says Nicole Nemeth, lead author of the study and an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine.

EAGLES IN CRISIS

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"Their actions—their willingness to become comfortable being uncomfortable—caused us as Georgians to evolve and move beyond where we were," said Georgia Supreme Court justice Verda Colvin about the namesakes of the Holmes-Hunter Lecture during her February address.

GETTING UNCOMFORTABLE Georgia Supreme Court Justice Shares Valuable Lessons

Verda Colvin, a Georgia Supreme Court justice and School of Law alumna, encouraged audience members to “become comfortable being uncomfortable” during her 2023 HolmesHunter Lecture in February.

The lecture, held annually since 1985, is named in honor of Hamilton Holmes Sr. BS ’63 and Charlayne Hunter-Gault ABJ ’63, the first African American students to attend UGA.

“Their actions—their willingness to become comfortable being uncomfortable—caused us as Georgians to evolve and steadily move beyond where we were, progressing toward a committed community that recognizes true democracy and embraces all people and recognizing the values and contributions of every individual,” Colvin JD ’90 said of the lecture’s namesakes.

Colvin said that educational institutions like UGA are vital because they introduce students to people and matters beyond their front doors.

PRESERVING RAINFORESTS UGA Receives $5M Grant to Strengthen Conservation in Liberia

Over many years, the Republic of Liberia’s forests have been degraded by unsustainable practices, land conversion, and other pressures.

But a new grant awarded to the University of Georgia aims to help.

The U.S. Agency for International Development awarded approximately $5 million to the university for a program called Higher Education Conservation Activity in Liberia. The timing of the project comes at a tipping point for Liberia’s forests, which account for roughly half of the remaining rainforest in West Africa.

The project aims to strengthen forest management and conservation in Liberia through education, training, and technical assistance. UGA is partnering with Alabama A&M University, Tuskegee University, the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, the University Consortium for Liberia in the United States, the University of Liberia, and the Forestry Training Institute in Liberia to establish a Center of Excellence in Forestry, Biodiversity, Conservation, and Green Enterprise Development.

The partnerships enabled by the program will create lasting connections between Liberian higher education institutions and historically Black colleges and universities, liberal arts, and land-grant universities in the U.S.

Liberia is home to roughly half the remaining rainforest in West Africa. UGA is part of a multi-institutional consortium to help conserve it.

LIBERIA

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Georgia Women Give

A new initiative seeks to engage women through community, learning, and philanthropy

Former University of Georgia administrator and Georgia state legislator Louise McBee concluded her 1974 book, The American Woman, Who Will She Be?, by calling readers to action: “Now, the task is ours. It is up to us to plan and work for tomorrow and for the next generations. This is our responsibility, our challenge and our hope.”

This message is at the center of Georgia Women Give (GWG), a new, womendirected fundraising group inviting more women to become philanthropists and engage more deeply with UGA. And thus far, the message has resonated. In a matter of months, GWG has raised over $500,000—from both women and men— for scholarships, study abroad support, and other UGA priorities.

“Women are ready for a group like this,” says Elizabeth Correll Richards, a UGA Foundation trustee and chair of the GWG executive committee. “Georgia Women Give brings together women of different ages, with different backgrounds, with different life goals all in support of this university that unites us all. We commit to UGA, but our commitment is more than financial.

“We want to connect with each other, learn from people on campus, and—through forging those deep connections—feel fully invested in UGA.”

Focusing on women donors yields numerous benefits, and the data bears that out. A 2020 McKinsey & Company report found that women currently control roughly a third of total household financial assets in the U.S., but by 2030, women are expected to control much of the $30 trillion of baby boomer financial assets. And UGA regularly graduates thousands of women that GWG wants to provide a path to philanthropic impact.

Developing that pipeline is beneficial to UGA, but GWG’s end result benefits everyone. Research from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy found that women are both more likely than men to give to charity and more generous than men when they donate. Women in the top quarter of permanent income, for example, gave 156% more to charity than their male peers.

Put simply, empowering women leads to greater giving, to better student outcomes leads, and, ultimately, to a stronger future.

GWG concentrates giving and increases impact by asking donors to designate their gifts to any of three specific funds.

• A merit-based scholarship fund.

• A study away support fund.

• An unrestricted fund that will send money to high-priority areas as directed by GWG’s executive committee.

“There are so many women out there who have a strong affinity for UGA, who want to see this university and its students succeed,” says Jill Walton BSA ’99, MPA ’03, UGA’s interim vice president for development and alumni relations. “Women’s presence and interest in the world of philanthropy is growing, and we need to ensure they have a path to support UGA that fits their lives and their interests.”

Just three months after the public launch of the initiative (see next page), GWG funds have already received over 50 commitments of $25,000 or more. To build on this momentum, the group is exploring innovative ways to encourage volunteers and donors at all levels moving forward.

“The early response has been fantastic,” says Correll Richards. “And if it’s any sort of indicator for our future, Georgia Women Give’s impact will be felt quickly, significantly, and enduringly.”

Several hundred women arrived in Athens for the public launch of Georgia Women Give on March 23-24. UGA President Jere W. Morehead JD ’80 and Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp BSHE ’90 (top photo, far right) took part in the event. Attendees heard from esteemed alumni like Dana Spinola BBA ’96 (top photo, far left), faculty, and students. They also explored campus and exchanged ideas on the future of the initiative.

Women at UGA

• In the 2022-2023 academic year, UGA had just over 23,000 female students, accounting for 59% of the total student body.

• Over the past year, female UGA students have earned multiple Boren and Fulbright Scholarships, a Rhodes Scholarship, and Gates-Cambridge, Goldwater, Marshall, Schwarzman, and Voyager Scholarships.

• Nearly 700 of the 1,129 Georgia Commitment Scholarship recipients to date are women.

• Nine of UGA’s 19 schools and colleges are led by women.

Women’s Philanthropy at UGA

The effect of women’s philanthropy at UGA is evident all over campus, from building names to scholarship recipients. Here are just a few of the women donors who have enhanced the university.

Gifts from the late Mary Virginia Terry and her late husband, Herman, led to faculty endowments, medical research, scholarship funds, and the naming of the Terry College of Business.

Bobbie Meeler Sahm BBA ’92 made a gift in 2021 to create two endowments: one that awards grants to collaborations between UGA and the Athens-Clarke County community, and another that provides scholarships to UGA students with disabilities and supports programming by the UGA Disability Resource Center that affects the Athens area.

A champion of education in Georgia for over 55 years, Louise McBee made one last contribution to UGA upon her passing in 2021: a gift of $3.5 million from her estate to UGA’s Institute for Higher Education. In honor of the transformational gift, UGA renamed the institute in McBee’s honor.

Two alumnae groups from UGA’s Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta sorority chapters ran successful fundraising campaigns among their respective memberships, creating four endowed scholarships for a sum of nearly $300,000.

To find out more about the Georgia Women Give initiative or make a gift to one of their funds, visit give.uga.edu/georgiawomengive

GIVE.UGA.EDU

justin evans

justin evans

the oglethorpe echo

WRITTEN BY JAYNE ROBERTS

In an era of instant online news and social media, little attention is paid to the decline of community newspapers and the estimated 3,000 U.S. weeklies that closed in the last 20 years.

When Dink NeSmith ABJ ’70 heard that his friend Ralph Maxwell was shutting down his weekly newspaper, The Oglethorpe Echo, he was determined to prevent the nearly 150-year-old publication from being forgotten.

Small Town,

Both NeSmith and Maxwell are long-time residents of Oglethorpe County, just east of Athens. They have known each other for almost 50 years.

NeSmith is a co-owner of Athens-based Community Newspapers, Inc. (CNI), with publications in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina. He has also been contributing a column to The Echo ever since he moved to Oglethorpe County a decade ago.

In 2021, Maxwell called NeSmith to let him know that due to health issues, he would be closing The Oglethorpe Echo. Though NeSmith understood, he couldn’t stop thinking about the history behind the local publication.

Maxwell’s father bought The Oglethorpe Echo in 1956 after retiring from the Navy, but the newspaper has been around since 1874. It’s a record of everything from local weddings to major changes in the legislature.

NeSmith remembers waking up at 6 a.m. after that phone call and realizing he needed to speak with Maxwell right away. He jumped into his pickup truck and drove to The Echo offices. NeSmith arrived just as Maxwell was finishing the story that announced the end of the newspaper. He immediately urged his friend to think of a new solution.

“Well, what are we going to do?” Maxwell asked him. “Are you going to buy the newspaper?”

NeSmith looked up at the ceiling, searching for an answer. Then, inspiration struck.

He would create a nonprofit and Maxwell would donate The Echo to it. All that was left was to hammer out the details. After leaving the office, NeSmith called Charles Davis, dean of the University of Georgia’s Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

“I’ve got an idea," NeSmith told him. "I want to turn The Oglethorpe Echo into a real-life experience for aspiring journalists

at the Grady College.”

Davis loved the idea, and he and NeSmith built a sustainable business model for the future of The Oglethorpe Echo.

They developed a capstone course with The Echo as its foundation. Students experience a working newsroom which acts as a springboard into their careers.

At the same time, The Echo, which normally functioned with a single reporter, gained a revolving team of eager student journalists.

When longtime newspaperman and UGA alumnus Dink NeSmith learned that The Oglethorpe Echo would be closing down, he came up with an idea to save it using talent from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Town, Big News

With NeSmith and Davis working together and the community supporting them, they built the program’s framework in less than two weeks. Of course, they needed someone to run the newspaper. But that was an easy decision.

Andy Johnston ABJ ’88, MA ’21 had been teaching at Grady for a month when Davis called him in for a meeting.

“Oh, no, what have I done already?” Johnston remembers thinking.

It was a pleasant surprise when Davis invited him to lead the new partnership between The Oglethorpe Echo and Grady College. As the adviser for The Red & Black from 2018 to 2020, Johnston was familiar with working with students and had an extensive journalism background.

Most importantly, he believed in the project.

“We’ve heard about other newspapers closing, especially in rural counties,” Johnston says. “When that happens, it means their only source of news and the only thing that holds people accountable is closing.”

Now Johnston joins the class weekly to review the week’s publication during their “postmortem.” They discuss what went right that week, what went wrong, and the students’ experiences reporting the stories.

He teams up with Amanda Bright, who teaches the course. Bright, a community journalist for her whole career at everything from midsize dailies to digital startups, helped create new digital platforms for The Echo, including an email newsletter, four social channels, and an updated website.

“Audiences want to engage with different types of storytelling, and different types of stories need to be told on different platforms with different tools,” Bright says.

UGA community comes together to breathe new life into a 149-year-old newspaper.

Top, Grady faculty member Andy Johnston (seen here with fourth-year journalism student Olivia Shapiro) leads the capstone course and serves as The Echo's editor.

Fellow faculty member Amanda Bright (above) teaches the course.

dorothy kozlowski

dorothy kozlowski

In addition to the student reporters and faculty leads, The Echo also runs on a team of 12 volunteers from Oglethorpe County that work at the main office. The reason The Oglethorpe Echo was able to continue its legacy is because everyone worked together—the students, Grady College, NeSmith, Maxwell, and the residents of Oglethorpe County.

“A good newspaper is a community talking to itself through its pages,” says NeSmith. “This newspaper is not only a recorder of history. It holds us all together.” GM

Molly Linder

Linder is a journalism major in the sports media program and is also completing the Double Dawgs program for her master’s in emerging media.

Molly Linder is from Dade County, a rural county in the northwest corner of the state with a population of just 16,000 people. She was drawn to The Oglethorpe Echo and its stories that seemed so familiar to the ones she grew up reading.

“Working for The Echo kind of feels like home,” says Linder, who is on the sports and recreation beat. “It's very similar to my hometown. The people are super welcoming, and I wanted to get that feeling

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Molly Linder

learns how to line dance from instructor Debbie Winsett. It was one of the most memorable stories she has written for The Echo

of being at home but still exploring a different avenue.”

She recently completed a story about a

line dancing teacher where she created a video package of the class and even learned a few moves herself.

(left)

“This newspaper is not only a recorder of history. It holds us all together.”

—dink n e smith

Student journalists Shelby Wingate (left) and Gianna Rodriguez (second from right) interview pageant participant Kamryn King while Kamryn’s mother Tracey (second from left) looks on. Wingate and Rodriguez were covering the Miss Oglethorpe Pageant at Oglethorpe County High School for The Echo

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Destiny Hartwell

A journalism major with a double minor in sports management and communication studies, Hartwell also received a certificate in sports media from UGA.

Volleyball. Basketball. Shotput. Discus.

Calling Destiny Hartwell an athlete would be an understatement. But at UGA, Hartwell went from being the interviewee to the interviewer. She hopes to one day work for a major sports broadcasting network. Until then, she is polishing her skills at The Echo.

Students in The Oglethorpe Echo capstone work in pairs on a variety of “beats,” or topics. During reporting weeks, students in each beat do their own photo, video, and graphics work. Every other week, they serve in editor or producer roles for the whole publication. Hartwell is on the cities and breaking news beat.

“I didn't expect people to allow me into their lives,” she says. “When I realized they were so welcoming, I was able to really dive in and find these cool stories.”

Jack Rhodes

One of those stories was about Kendall Strickland, a Black entrepreneur who owns a fresh produce stand in Oglethorpe County. In a county that is predominantly white, Hartwell wanted to explore a Black-owned business and its place in the community.

Hartwell spoke to Strickland for several hours in multiple interviews, but she got the most out of their conversation while he worked at the stand, listening to him speak to customers.

the rhode less traveled

A double major in journalism and marketing, after graduation Rhodes will attend the School of Law.

Soil amendments.

It’s not a term that gets a lot of attention, but Jack Rhodes’ threepart series (so far) about the legal dumping of waste on private property has generated a lot of buzz. He’s reported on concerns from Oglethorpe citizens as well as the state legislature, and the headlines just keep coming.

This is a prime example of how solutions journalism works in small communities. Major news networks are flooded with stories focused on problems. However, solutions journalism, what Bright loosely describes as “rigorous reporting on the responses to problems,” highlights how communities react to an issue and what's being done in response.

Everyone in The Oglethorpe Echo capstone writes a solutions journalism piece. In 2022, Grady College was named one of the nation’s first solutions journalism hubs.

“We go in, and it does not feel like class. When I’m headed there, I feel like I’m gearing up to go to work,” Rhodes says.

fulfilling a destiny

Undergraduate student Destiny Hartwell works on her upcoming story during her capstone course for The Oglethorpe Echo

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Jack Rhodes deep dives into both his recently published story and his upcoming one. There's always something to be done.

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Fishers of Men

WRITTEN BY LEIGH BEESON MA ’17

It’s 11 p.m. when the Rev. Jeffrey Lawrence’s phone goes off.

He already knows who’s on the other end of the line. One of his parishioners at Sandridge Baptist Church, a little girl with sickle cell anemia, is in the hospital again.

The girl’s family has taken her all over the state looking for answers—and ways to keep her out of the ER. But so far, nothing’s worked. Every week, she’s back in the hospital.

And their hometown of Hawkinsville, Georgia—a small town about two hours east of Columbus with a population of less than 5,000 people—doesn’t have a lot of options.

“The dearth of health care and medical support down in this area is crazy,” says Lawrence MSW ’88. “I have parishioners who live just a mile from our church who have to go to Perry, Macon, or Madison to speak to a specialist or a doctor.”

All those towns are at least a half-hour drive away. For locals, that drive can mean the difference between receiving the specialized care they need and trying to just tough it out until their health spirals.

That’s something Henry Young, Kroger Professor in the University of Georgia’s College of Pharmacy, finds unacceptable.

“It’s important for us to work together to implement preventive programs where folks learn how to manage their conditions,” Young says. “By the time they actually need to go to the hospital, their condition might be way down the road. But if we can use our resources to provide education about different conditions like diabetes or cardiovascular problems, I think we can slow down the tide a little bit.”

So Young, along with Lawrence and a few other pastors from the area, sat down to figure out how they could change things.

A partnership between UGA and rural churches is helping bring health care resources to communities in need.

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Local church leaders meet at Renee’s Southern Bar & Grill in downtown Hawkinsville, Georgia, to discuss their role in health and wellness initiatives and outreach in rural Georgia.

Using Churches as Health Care Hubs

When Young first arrived at UGA in 2013, he took the New Faculty Tour, a multiday trip around the state organized by UGA Public Service and Outreach. The tour introduces new faculty members to the diverse offerings of the state and shows them how UGA is making a difference in communities throughout Georgia.

Young met Michelle Elliott, director of the Archway Partnership, on that trip. And she explained how the partnership connects communities in need with the UGA resources that can help them.

In 2016, Young began working with administrators at Taylor Regional Hospital in Pulaski County on a community needs assessment. He helped identify available resources and whether they were sufficient to meet the community’s health care needs.

Chronic health conditions, like diabetes and heart disease, that are manageable with proper preventive care, were putting people in the hospital. Patients didn’t have the ability to seek specialized care, and by the time they did, it was often too late. The men in the communities were particularly hard hit.

That got Young’s wheels turning.

He and Sarah Jones AB ’96, who at the time was the College of Pharmacy’s I.T. professional, started brainstorming. Churches were clearly the center of activity and fellowship in these rural communities.

Could technology be used in those churches to provide telehealth services to the people living there?

There was only one way to find out.

Young and Jones partnered with Lawrence, the Rev. Victor Cooper AB ’80 of St. Mark Baptist Church in Cochran, the Rev. Keith Green of Mt. Cilla Baptist Church in Hawkinsville, and Deacon Gregory Brown of Christian Hope Missionary Baptist Church in Hawkinsville to bring UGA’s vast resources to those in rural Georgia who need them most.

With a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant of just under $1 million in 2020, the Fishers of Men project—a partnership encompassing more than 20 different churches from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Georgia Union Missionary Baptist Association —was born.

A view out of a window shows the cotton fields and red clay road leading to Hawkinsville's Sandridge Baptist Church. The church is one of many participating in the telehealth partnership led by UGA's Henry Young.

Opposite, Henry Young, a professor in the College of Pharmacy, stands between the Revs. Victor Cooper (left) and Jeffrey Lawrence. The three men, in addition to the Rev. Keith Green (not pictured), are the founders of the Fishers of Men project.

Bringing Telehealth Services to Rural Georgia

Lawrence’s Sandridge Baptist Church is quintessential rural Georgia. Calm and peaceful, the church is on the smaller side, situated down a long red clay road in the middle of cotton fields and woods. It’s nearly silent out there, except for the birds singing and bugs chirping.

It’s an undeniably beautiful spot, but its rural location also presents a challenge.

A half-mile across the rows of cotton in front of the church, there’s a house with internet service, but the church is just beyond the reach of the provider.

Sandridge is hardly the only church in the partnership to face that challenge. Lack of internet coverage is one of the biggest issues for rural areas not just in Georgia but across the country. The massive shortage in rural health care providers only compounds the difficulty.

The goal of Fishers of Men is to create telehealth hubs at participating churches, with support from the UGA Archway Partnership. These hubs have widescreen TVs, computers, internet capabilities, and various other devices, such as scales, to facilitate medical appointments and educational seminars on health and managing chronic conditions.

An additional grant of nearly $400,000 from the Georgia Department of Public Health is helping the Fishers implement a new branch of the program: the CDC’s Diabetes Prevention Program.

“We study how people can’t get to the resources they need, but that’s not an excuse for us,” says Caleb Snead, a Double Dawgs student in the College of Public Health who works with Young on the Fishers project. “We have to bring ourselves, that education, those preventive measures to the community.”

While internet connectivity remains a problem, Lawrence is making do with hotspots while Young and his team work on other options.

But as Lawrence says, even if you bring all the technology and educational tools to the community, “you can’t make the horse drink.”

“I say to myself, if I only get information in the hands of three people, that’s three people who have the information that didn’t have it last week,” he says. “Even if it’s just one, it’s worth it.”

Young, however, is determined to reach even more.

He’s thinking of advertising the new diabetes prevention program in local papers. And he and the pastors and deacons of an ever-growing list of churches are setting up workshops to train diabetes program facilitators who will help guide people on their health journey.

“It’s a true community-academic partnership,” Young says. “We’re aligning what the community wants and needs with our strengths. What we’re doing is reducing the barriers that prevent people from getting the health care and resources they need when they need it.” GM

on Research

Whitehall Forest, outside of Athens, is a haven for common musk turtles, making it an ideal research base for Séamus O'Brien.

WRITTEN BY ERICA TECHO AB ’15

Exploring a lifelong passion. Discovering a potential career path. Building new knowledge. These are opportunities that college can present to any undergraduate, but for the University of Georgia students participating in CURO, they do it all through research.

CURO—the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities— connects students with research opportunities across campus. It is open to all undergraduate students, no matter their major, year, or level of research background. As long as participating students are ready to embrace intellectual curiosity, explore new topics, and even travel the country, CURO can enhance their undergraduate experience.

And for some CURO students, research proves lifechanging.

UGA's Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities opens the door to funding, research, and valuable experience.

dorothy kozlowski

Séamus O’Brien

MAJOR: Fisheries and Wildlife

HOMETOWN: Dublin, Ireland

Séamus O’Brien is studying the common musk turtle, a species that he (affectionately) refers to as small, stinky, and “kind of drab.”

He’s not that far off. The turtle’s scientific name, Sternotherus odoratus, reflects the species’ distinct smell, and their dark coloration makes them appear nondescript next to other species. Common musk turtles walk along the bottom of rivers rather than basking in the sun. So for most of us, they are out of sight and out of mind.

But O’Brien wants us to know more.

“Where the common musk turtle gets really important is there are a lot of them, and they’re something we don’t study a lot in the scientific community,” O’Brien says. “A lot of times, we shine a light on things that are really rare, cryptic, or endangered, and we can neglect some more common animals that impact our day-to-day lives and the areas where we recreate, fish, and do other things.”

O’Brien catches common musk turtles; catalogs their weight, sex, and physical characteristics; and releases them back into their environment. He has caught hundreds of turtles and detected trends in their physical appearance and population in different areas. For example, musk turtles in the manmade ponds of Whitehall Forest, south of Athens, are smaller than their peers in naturally occurring wetlands. This data creates a foundation for future research on the musk turtle’s diet, habitat conservation, and more.

As a CURO Summer Fellow, O’Brien works with mentor John Maerz, a distinguished professor in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Maerz specializes in animal ecology, evolution, and conservation management, and his lab is a home base for O’Brien’s research. But funding through CURO filled important gaps, enabling O’Brien to purchase traps and materials necessary for the scope of his project.

O’Brien holds two common musk turtles, one male and one female, to compare their size and characteristics.

As part of his research, O’Brien uses calipers to measure the turtles’ sizes, as shown below. This does not hurt the turtles.

CURO also afforded networking opportunities that led to O’Brien’s next step: Graduate research with musk turtle expert Grover Brown at Jacksonville State University in Alabama. He will study the flattened musk turtle, a federally threatened species under the endangered species act.

“This wouldn’t be possible without CURO,” O’Brien said. “Doing this allowed me to meet the professor who will allow me to essentially pursue my dreams.”

dorothy kozlowski

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Sherifa Akinniyi

MAJOR: Nutritional Sciences

HOMETOWN: Lithonia, Georgia

Sherifa Akinniyi saw the impact of nutritional sciences first-hand in high school when her mom faced several health complications.

“We didn’t have a physician or someone I could turn to for more information on obesity or hypertension,” she says. “I had to look up a lot of information myself through the NIH, CDC, and scientific papers. That was the first time I really did extensive research.”

She used that research from the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to establish a dietary plan, and her mother’s health improved. It also set her on a path forward at UGA.

“When I applied to UGA, one of the big things for me was determining what major would capture my personal experience and my interests,” Akinniyi says. “I didn’t want to go the conventional route as a premed student, and after meeting with the Department of Nutritional Sciences, I knew this was the right path.”

Sherifa Akinniyi studied lactation support services and breastfeeding rates across Georgia. Her data is a first step in building improved resources in the state.

She found faculty mentor Sina Gallo, an associate professor and clinician-scientist in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, and chose to study lactation support services and breastfeeding rates across Georgia. The topic combined her knowledge in statistics with her interest in minority health and health disparities.

Through CURO and funding from the Peach State Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, she examined the state’s lactation resources, as well as their accessibility and utilization across communities.

“My biggest goal was to provide a visual of what’s going on with Georgia,” she says. “I can spit out all of these facts and provide all of this math, but the whole point is to reach an audience: Georgia citizens and health care providers. I want the public to understand what I’m talking about.”

In addition to data collection graphing where resources are utilized and categorizing potential obstacles to access, Akinniyi built a map of existing resources and the factors that impact their effectiveness.

“Research is never really complete, but this data is a great way to see what’s going on. We see trends, and that data is the catalyst for more knowledge,” she says.

THE CURO PROCESS

Students have a lot of freedom to determine their path, but all projects include a few basic steps.

Step 1: Find a research topic. Students are encouraged to pursue their interests and reach out to potential mentors in related fields and departments.

Step 2: Find a mentor. When students have identified potential paths for research, they can search the university’s schools and departments for faculty mentors in related fields and departments. Mentors can then help students build on their interests before finalizing their project.

Step 3: Establish a research plan. After finding a faculty mentor, students can set goals for their project and begin their research.

Step 4: Apply for credit or funding through CURO. While not required, CURO opens opportunities for academic credit and funding. This funding can go toward research supplies, conference fees, and other materials.

Step 5: Present research findings. Once their projects are complete, students can submit their abstracts for presentation at the CURO annual symposium. Not only does this event enable students to share their findings, but it also provides an opportunity to build public speaking skills and research translational skills.

Sherifa Akinniyi has presented her research at multiple conferences, including the CURO symposium on campus in March.

Emilio Ferrara

MAJOR: Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

HOMETOWN: Atlanta, Georgia

Emilio Ferrara did not realize it at first, but his experience with CURO led to a whole new career path. When you hear the title, “Elucidating the Structure & Function of Type IV CRISPR Systems,” it might seem indecipherable. But as a biochemistry and molecular biology major, as well as a Foundation Fellow, Stamps Scholar, and 2023 Goldwater Scholar in the Jere W. Morehead Honors College, Ferrara sees the complex topic as a first step toward transforming patient care.

“Some of the questions I have been wrestling with the more I dig into scientific research are: How can these discoveries make a difference for patients? What does it take to move from the bench side to the bed side?” Ferrara says.

Just as the human immune system fights off new bacteria or diseases, CRISPR fights off viruses attacking a bacterium. And not much is known about Type IV CRISPR systems. They have some of the rarest structures, but relate back to plasmids— single-strand DNA that can transfer DNA from one cell to another.

“Other than that, our knowledge of Type IV systems is essentially a blank slate,” says Ferrara, who works with faculty mentor

Michael Terns, a Regents’ Professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “This research is working to understand how the system is structured and how that structure corresponds to function—what kind of protection does it give bacteria and how

does it work as an immune system?”

Insights from this research are an early step in biotechnology, but one day they might translate to patient care, Ferrara says.

“Starting with scientific research here at UGA, I have begun to investigate the

Top, Emilio Ferrara studies Type IV CRISPR systems as part of his CURO program. Above, Ferrara works with mentor and Regents’ Professor Michael Terns to analyze CRISPR structure and functions.

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many steps involved in taking science and turning it into something tangible that can save or improve someone’s life,” Ferrara says. “As I came through CURO and my biochemistry courses, I found that I was less interested in physician-patient interactions and more interested in understanding the mechanisms that are driving diseases.”

As a result, his path shifted a bit, away from medical school and toward a Ph.D.

“CURO has absolutely helped me form that decision and become confident in my decision,” Ferrara says. “It exposed me to researchers all across campus, and it opened my eyes to a whole other area of science that I didn’t know existed. I realized you can get a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences or biochemistry and do really innovative research that could translate into potential new drugs to treat many diseases, possibly even cancer.”

Research Firsthand

by Ireland Hayes

Ireland Hayes

MAJOR: Journalism & Mass Communication

HOMETOWN: Folkston, Georgia

Misinformation is one of the biggest threats to modern journalism, and it often stems from a lack of access to accurate and verified information. Growing up in a rural county in Southeast Georgia, I experienced firsthand the detrimental effects a lack of news coverage can have on a community. As local news outlets continue to disappear due to a lack of funding and a lack of journalists, communities like mine are having to fill in gaps in coverage through lessthan-ideal means, often on online forums or Facebook pages, which opens them up to a much higher risk of consuming misinformation.

In my research project, "Black Holes of Information: "The State of Local News in Southeast Georgia," I developed a case study of Charlton County, Georgia, the community where I grew up, analyzing the lack of traditional news coverage experienced in rural areas.

CURO provided the opportunity for me to explore and hopefully find solutions to issues affecting my own community and gave me hands-on research experience that I hope to one day carry into graduate school or a career as a journalist myself. I have also traveled to research conferences, where I shared my research with other scholars from around the country. It was an opportunity I would have never had without the support of CURO.

My mentor Karin Assmann, assistant professor of journalism, has been an invaluable resource, guiding me through the research process from the initial brainstorm up to working on a research paper for publication. I entered her office with no formal training, but now after nearly two years working with her, I feel more than equipped and very excited to continue in the field of journalism research.

Your support of the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities helps make these out-of-the-classroom experiences and discoveries possible.

Ferrara prepares a gel to analyze CRISPR systems. The gel is used to pull out small fragments of DNA in order to visualize them and make comparisons.

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peterfrey

A Huge Machine that’s Red&Black

WRITTEN BY ERIC RANGUS MA ’94

So, what are the words to the Redcoat Chant? What’s comin’ down the track? Who’s that coming? What kind of a machine?

The lyrical Mad Libs of the Redcoat Chant is a feature rather than a bug.

Yes, there are Redcoat alumni (and a lot of nonRedcoat alumni) who solemnly swear that their version of the university’s most famous rallying cry—heard at football games, outside of football games, and frequently at any gathering of three or more UGA alumni—is the official one.

Brett Bawcum, director of the Redcoat Marching Band, takes a more philosophical approach.

“Whatever makes you keep talking about it, those are the words,” says Bawcum, BMus ’97, MM ’00, DMA ’17.

Bawcum has been a part of the Redcoat Band for more than 30 years, first as a saxophonist and then as drum major, graduate assistant, and associate director before being named director in 2020. He’s heard lots of iterations of the Redcoat Chant.

“The way the band performs the Chant changes every year, but the basics are still the same,” he says. “That’s on purpose, and it’s OK. It’s like the old saying, ‘You can put your stamp on it.’” (The official lyrics are to the right.)

What Bawcum means is that traditions change. Each class of Redcoats makes its own. And many of those traditions became University of Georgia traditions. Then the process repeats itself.

The Redcoat Chant

Hey lift your head up to the sky

'Cause we’re the Redcoats passing by And if you heard what I just said Get down on your knees and bow your head

GO DAWGS

GO DAWGS

GO DAWGS

GO DAWGS

Hey what’s that coming down the track

A huge machine that’s red and black

Ain’t nothin' finer in the land

Than the Georgia Redcoat Marching Band

GO DAWGS

GO DAWGS

GO DAWGS

GO DAWGS

The Georgia Redcoat Band was founded in 1905 and is one of the university's most enduring and recognizable symbols.

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The Early Days

The University of Georgia Cadet Band was founded on Oct. 31, 1905. All 20 members (right, top) were part of what would eventually become Georgia’s ROTC program. The Redcoats’ current uniform still contains flourishes from its military origins.

In 1955, they became the Dixie Redcoat Band—Dixie was dropped from the name in 1971. That year, 1955, is also when Roger Dancz (right) stepped in as director of bands, a role he would hold until 1991. He is a legend in Redcoat circles—really, all UGA circles—and it is under his leadership that the band became nationally regarded.

In 1977, the Redcoat Band marched in the inaugural parade for President Jimmy Carter, and in 2018, they marched in the Rose Parade—to name just two of their most prominent performances.

Emotional Times

The band of 20 cadet musicians from 1905 has grown to more than 400 Redcoats. Today that number includes musicians, logistics personnel, and the auxiliaries: the majorettes and feature twirler, the Georgettes dance team, and the flagline. The last two were founded by Dancz's wife Phyllis, herself a UGA legend and director of Redcoat Band auxiliaries from 1955 to 1991.

With so many performers, it’s a challenge for the directors to even learn everyone’s names. They rely on levels of student leadership, and one of the leaders is Sarah Secrist, a fifth-year music therapy major from Dallas, Georgia, and a Redcoat captain.

Secrist began in the trumpet section but is now a drum major; she begins her third year in the role this fall. She was on the ladder conducting the band when Kelee Ringo’s pick-six solidified UGA’s 2021 national championship.

“In the moment, I knew that it was something that I’d never forget,” says Secrist, who attended her first UGA game as a baby, supporting her sister, Julie BFA ’02, a Redcoat herself. Tears flowed not just out of Secrist’s eyes that day, but many of the other band members’ too. Some couldn’t even play their instruments after the pick-six.

“That doesn’t bother me,” says Bawcum. “That’s why I love live music. Students are responding in the most genuine way they can.”

The Redcoats were front and center for both of the Bulldogs' recent national championships. This photo is from 2022 in Indianapolis.

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Fifth-year student Sarah Secrist is one of four Redcoat drum majors. She begins her third year on the ladder this fall.

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A Sort of Homecoming

The Redcoat Alumni Band is one of UGA’s most enthusiastic and engaged alumni groups. Living Redcoat alumni number more than 6,000, and two-thirds are registered with the Alumni Band.

The Alumni Band not only keeps dozens of band classes together through regular email communication, they also support the current band's recruitment and fundraising efforts, along with administering the annual Homecoming alumni reunion, which regularly draws more than 400 participants. The Alumni Band performance—along with that of the alumni cheerleaders—is a highlight of every Homecoming.

“Being Redcoat alumni brings tremendous satisfaction,” says Danny Roberson BMus’84, MBA ’87 president of the Redcoat Alumni Band. “Watching the current Redcoats perform at games is particularly exciting, as the band gets better and better with each year. It’s incredible to see what they—the staff, props crew, instrumentalists, and the auxiliaries—come up with each year and with each show.”

The current Redcoat uniform debuted in 2014. If you look closely, you can see echoes of the band's miliary-inspired beginnings.

andrew davis tucker

andrew davistucker

andrew davis tucker

The Other Bulldogs

The Redcoats first appeared in Georgia Magazine in November 1929. They helped open the brand new Sanford Stadium and also hosted the Yale band, which accompanied the Bulldogs’ opponents for that storied contest.

Some long-distance photos—the best available at the time—appeared with a write-up from the New York Sun’s George Trevor. “Yale’s Disastrous Southern Argosy,” read the self-pitying title of the piece, chronicling Georgia’s 15-0 win over the visitors.

In 1979, as part of Sanford Stadium’s 50th anniversary, the magazine ran the UGA yearbook Pandora’s coverage of the game, which included some additional photos. One is of the band parading down College

Avenue (top left). Another shows the Georgia and Yale bands facing each other on the field like some sort of Napoleonic standoff (above).

UGA performing with other bands is uncommon, but it happens. The national

anthem at the SEC Championship is performed by both teams’ bands, and the Redcoats also shared the field with Georgia Tech’s band at Sanford Stadium in November.

In November, the Redcoats shared the Sanford Stadium turf with the band from Georgia Tech. Such partnerships are uncommon but always special.

The Georgettes, the Redcoat dance team, was founded in 1959. They were the SEC's first dance team.

The Redcoat Marching Band marches in the 2021 Homecoming Parade down Clayton Street in downtown Athens.

History Making

For such an important part of the UGA community, surprisingly little has been written about the Redcoat Band. There are just three books about it. One is out of print; another is a children’s book, Dreaming of the Redcoat Band, written by Richard Gnann BMus ’77, MMEd ’82; and the third, The University of Georgia Redcoat Band 1905-2005, by Robin J. Richards AB ’98, MEd ’07, is part of the Images of America series.

Bawcum is part of a project to remedy that. With Redcoat alumnus Jacob Weinstein BMus ’19 spearheading the effort, Bawcum has been gathering images from university archives, Redcoat alumni, and other resources for a comprehensive new book chronicling the band’s history.

The band office, which Bawcum shares with associate directors Rob Akridge BMus ’87, MMEd ’10 and Mia Athanas MMEd ’17, PhD ’21, is a minimuseum in itself of Redcoat paraphernalia. Posters, photos, advertisements, a bent instrument or two, and even a huge Lamar Dodd print (“Seven Tubas”) decorate the area.

Another treasure trove of Redcoat history is the Richard B. Russell Special Collections Libraries. Photos, uniforms, sheet music, and even instruments are part of the libraries’ vast holdings. Videos and recordings of performances are also part of the collection.

“I've always loved the idea of being part of something that's bigger than myself,” Bawcum says. “This program has such a long and interesting history. You look at pictures of Redcoats from the ’70s or ’80s, it's hard to believe we're the same. But then you see the G on the uniform and you know that you are.”

GM

See

more photos,

andrew davis tucker

FUN& GAMES

WRITTEN BY IRELAND HAYES AB ’23 AND RACHEL COOPER MA ’23

From football to basketball and cornhole to billiards, the University of Georgia Intramural Sports program has something for just about everyone.

As one of the most popular programs on campus, IM gives literally everyone the opportunity to play– even faculty, staff, and their spouses. Participants can form their own team and play with friends or sign up as a free agent and make some new ones.

A history professor tennis league? College dean flag football tournament? Husbands versus wives pickleball? Creswell 4th floor against 5th floor ultimate frisbee? The possibilities are endless.

More XX are offered, including ESports, which has spiked in popularity over the past several years.

IM is housed within UGA’s Recreational Sports Department, but don’t let the recreational nature fool you. The games get competitive. Stakes are high when championship games are held on legendary UGA stages like Sanford Stadium and Stegeman Coliseum. But win or lose, the goal of the program is safe, inclusive fun.

“This is one of the coolest experiences I've had at UGA so far,” said third-year business major Trent Nesbit, after his team won the fall 2022 IM Flag Football Championship in their category. “Especially tonight, playing here in Sanford.”

“IM sports does a great job of just keeping it competitive, keeping it clean, and keeping it fun.”

“It's just a fun way to get together with friends and play a sport that we all enjoy playing. It's maybe not as competitive as we may have played before, but it's still just a good way to stay active and have fun.”

“It’s important to have a variety of IM sports in order to attract a larger portion of UGA's diverse student population. I believe it adds to the student experience and UGA's student atmosphere to have as many IM sports as people want to play.”

“I think IM sports is a great way to get connected with the other students that are on campus and to have a competitive outlet. Put away your school for a little bit and just go out and ball out.”

“So many people look forward to IM sports. If you didn't have it, I feel like you'd be taking a lot away from the student experience.”

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1. HOLLAND BOONE BSEd ’21 | IM FOOTBALL (far left)

2. SIERRA CURRY | IM VOLLEYBALL

3. BRICE PEELER | IM BILLIARDS

4. REGINA METZ | IM FOOTBALL (#45)

5. WILL SHUFORD | IM BASKETBALL

Don’t Miss Out!

CHATTANOOGA CHAPTER NIGHT AT THE LOOKOUTS

June 14

The Chattanooga Alumni Chapter will host local Bulldogs for an evening at AT&T Field as the Lookouts take on the Rocket City Trash Pandas.

FREE CAREER WEBINAR: LEARNING FROM CAREER REGRET

July 19

We’ve all made professional decisions that weren’t ideal, but the key is making better choices in the future. This webinar will share how to proactively steer your career in the right direction and how to address common career regrets.

See these events and more at alumni.uga.edu/calendar

FREE CAREER WEBINAR: MAKING THE MOST OF UNEMPLOYMENT GAPS

August 16

BULLDOG 100 NOMINATION DEADLINE

July 31

Know a business owned or led by a UGA grad? Nominate them for the 2024 Bulldog 100, which recognizes the fastest-growing Bulldog businesses. Nominate at alumni.uga.edu/b100

UGA MENTOR PROGRAM 101

August 2

This virtual event will introduce alumni and students to the UGA Mentor Program and how mentorship changes lives. alumni.uga.edu/mentor101

Chapter Spotlight

NYC DAWGS

Serving the Tri-State Area

Chapter President: Mallory O’Brien ABJ ’12

Number of Local Alumni: 4,611

Instagram: @NYCDawgs

The NYC Dawgs are perhaps best known for their spirited game-watching parties, held at multiple locations in Manhattan during football season. The rest of the year is filled with a host of exciting events that gather Bulldogs from all five boroughs to celebrate, connect, and support each another, including exclusive tours, SEC alumni networking events, yoga classes, Welcome to the City picnics in Central Park, NYC Football Club matches, and more. This local UGA community’s resilience shined brightly throughout the COVID-19

pandemic, and it is proudly enjoying a resurgence of alumni engagement thanks to an expanded leadership board and by a commitment to fundraising for the New York City Experiential Learning Support Fund.

Whether your unemployment gap is large or small, addressing it with future employers can be stressful. A certified career coach will share how you can best communicate gaps in your cover letter, resume, and LinkedIn profile, and how to leverage your network to overcome those gaps.

WELCOME TO THE CITY

Mid-August

Alumni chapters host annual gatherings prior to football season to connect current Bulldog locals to each other and to new graduates arriving in their cities. The calendar of events will be released by early August at alumni.uga.edu/welcome-to-the-city.

UGA Students Are Seeking Mentors

Mentoring a UGA student takes only an hour or two each month and it can profoundly affect their personal, academic, and professional pursuits.

The UGA Mentor Program offers you an easy way to connect with a student who shares your background or career goals. You can guide them during phone, text, or inperson meetings. Learn how you can change a life at mentor.uga.edu.

UGA Recognizes 2023 Alumni Award Recipients

In April, UGA recognized the individuals who received this year’s Alumni Awards:

• Alumni Merit Award: Joe AB ’66 and Ann Frierson AB ’65

• Alumni Merit Award: Neal Quirk BBA ’82, JD ’87

• Alumni Merit Award: Sonny Perdue DVM ’71

• Faculty Service Award: Paige Carmichael PhD ’94

• Friend of UGA: Jack and Nancy Fontaine Family

• Family of the Year: Paul BBA ’63 and Susan Holmes BSEd ’63 Family

• Young Alumni Award: Allison Schmitt BS ’14

Learn more about these outstanding UGA supporters and how they’ve made a difference for the university at alumni.uga.edu/alumniawards

Class of 2023 Sets Senior Signature Record

Students in the Class of 2023 paid it forward in record numbers, establishing another record for student giving through the Senior Signature class gift campaign. In total, 3,377 students contributed over $112,000 to more than 500 funds across campus that enhanced their college experience.

Check out what's going on for alumni and update your email or mailing address with UGA.

class notes

Fear is Not Her Future

Every Sunday morning at Northlands Church in Peachtree Corners, Hannah Shackelford plays keys for the worship team. The music is frequently upbeat and empowering, the parishioners participatory. The worship team plays traditional hymns and contemporary Christian hits. Sometimes they improvise.

Such was the case one Sunday morning a couple of years ago when vocalist Nicole Hannel started singing some unfamiliar lines. Shackelford followed along from her unobtrusive spot in the back, stage right.

“As a keys player, I’ve become really good at reading the back of people’s heads,” Shackelford AB ’13 says. “So, when Nicole is out front, I’m just watching her and catching her vibe, and the rest of the team is doing that too.”

That type of improvisation is known as spontaneous worship. Hannel’s words sprung from a journal entry she had written during a particularly difficult time.

Fear is not my future

You are, You are Sickness is not my story

You are, You are Heartbreak’s not my home

You are, You are Death is not the end

You are, You are

Those words connected immediately. The crowd joined in that morning—and for many mornings after.

“That was an anthem for about a year at our church,” says Shackelford, who serves as director of operations at Northlands. Hannel is the church’s director of events. Music is not their full-time job, but they know a transformative song when they hear it.

During their off-time, Shackelford, Hannel, and Jonathan Jay—a worship leader at Northlands and

Compiled by Ireland Hayes AB ’23, Rachel Cooper MA ’23, and Navya Shukla

ALUMNI PROFILE

1970-1974

Janice R. Johnson BSEd ’70 published her novel, After All, a sequel to A Heart’s Memory, in January.

Edward Blumberg AB ’72 has been elected chair of the 21-person Board of Trustees of the National

Judicial College, a large and widely attended school for judges in the U.S. He is also a founding partner of the Deutsch, Blumberg, and Caballero law firm in Miami.

Vicki Webb ABJ ’72 is retired and remains active with several local

nonprofits in Nashville, TN.

G. Philip Morgan BBA ’76, MACC ’78 has retired from his career as a certified public accountant in Savannah.

1975-1979 Del Martin BFA ’77 co-authored

co-founder of the Atlanta-based Maverick City Music collective— fleshed out the music and built on Hannel’s lyrics, which would become the bridge of “Fear Is Not My Future.”

Jay shared the work with contemporary Christian music (CCM) star and Maverick City contributor Brandon Lake, and they added verses. Eventually, gospel legend Kirk Franklin got involved and applied the finishing touches. Lake released a single version in May 2022, and it debuted at No. 13 on the Hot Christian Songs chart.

Two months later, Maverick City released a live version. Four months after that, “Fear Is Not My Future” was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song category, a songwriter’s award.

In February, Shackelford walked the red carpet at the Grammys, and as Maverick City began cleaning up the CCM awards (the collective won four on the night), her category came up.

“I heard them say ‘Fear,’ and I don’t remember anything after that,” Shackelford says. Shock aside, she made it to the stage where she stood next to Hannel, beaming, as Lake accepted the Grammy.

“Fear Is Not My Future” is the first song Shackelford has ever published. And she won a Grammy for it. It’s an impressive starting point.

“It feels almost too big to understand,” Shackelford says. “Someone told me that winning a Grammy is like a dream come true. Actually, it’s not a dream come true because I literally never dreamed this. I never imagined it.”

The Adventures of Phil An Thropy, a children’s book that teaches the importance of philanthropy.

Nate Newman BS ’77 retired from his position as Chief Medical Officer of WellMed Medical Management, a large clinical care delivery system. He has also held

THE MAKING OF A GRAMMY WINNER

As a kindergartner, Shackelford could play Bach by ear. She wrote her first song when she was 5: “Mom, I Got Stung by a Bee.”

It was autobiographical.

And while Shackelford’s talent is easy to see and hear, she never considered music as a career.

At UGA, she majored in psychology and had a job playing piano in the O-House dining hall. She kept a sheet of paper that listed all the songs she knew— from Katy Perry to John Mayer to Chopin—and took requests from student diners.

“I was like a little jukebox at O-House,” she says. Shackelford also played keys on the worship team at the Wesley Foundation, where she met her husband Rob BS ’14, BSES ’14, MS ’17

She joined the Northlands Church staff in 2018. It’s the ideal place for her—one where she can easily blend her professional, creative, and faithful sides.

After the success of “Fear is Not My Future,” Shackelford and Hannel are already talking about writing new material, and Shackelford co-wrote a song with CCM artist The Bluejay House that will be released later this summer.

“As someone who connects deeply with music, it’s so powerful when music and faith collide,” Shackelford says. “Music can express thoughts and emotions that people don’t yet have the words for. Music that brings hope, that brings healing, and reminds us of God’s promises—that type of music, for me and for a lot of people, is an irreplaceable part of life.

“Even if you take it outside of a Christian context, music has this power to set us in mental and emotional spaces that we don’t reach otherwise. That’s the way God designed us to be.”

Written by Eric Rangus MA ’94

Hannah Shackelford AB ’13

peterfrey

UGA’s newest Grammy winner is perhaps its unlikeliest.

the position of National Medical Director of Concentra and President of the Urgent Care Association of America.

Peter Stoddard BBA ’79 was named COO of the crowd-funding platform KrowdFire.com, which launched in January.

1980-1984

Debbie Verlander BBA ’80 retired from her 30-year career at Accenture in May.

Mark Davis BSA ’81 is a Marine Corps veteran and co-owner of the Soldier of the Sea Distillery. The distillery, located in Comer, has released three organically sourced, hand-forged whiskeys.

Jamie Wilcox Lovett BSEd ’83 has been elected president of Friends of Historic Woolsey, a nonprofit organization in

Fayette County.

Christopher Phillips BSFR ’83, MFR ’85, JD ’88 is a partner in the Savannah office of Hunter Maclean and has been recognized as a 2023 Georgia Super Lawyer.

Susan Reinhardt ABJ ’84 published her book, The Beautiful Misfits, in March.

1985-1989

Steve Daniel BBA ’83 was named to Georgia Trend’s Georgia 500: Georgia’s Most Influential Leaders 2022.

Cynthia Griffin BBA ’86 has been elected vice president of Friends of Historic Woolsey, a nonprofit organization in Fayette County.

Myra Howard ABJ ’86, MA ’87 owns a State Farm agency in Richmond, VA. She is the chair of the Commonwealth of

Virginia Fair Housing Board, as well as chair of the State Farm Federal PAC/Virginia Advisory Committee.

Karen Morgan BFA ’86 released her second Dry Bar Comedy Special, “Rub Some Dirt On It,” in February.

Stacey Rasner BSEd ’86 is an exceptional-student education specialist at Fox Trail Elementary in Broward County, FL.

Todd Rasner BS ’88 is a practicing obstetrician and gynecologist in Jacksonville, FL.

Richard Batson BSPH ’89 is a hospital pharmacist at Piedmont Athens Regional Hospital.

1990-1994

Mitchel Hires AB ’90 is CEO of Construction Resources and International Designs Group,

a construction company in Decatur.

Richard Mandell BLA ’90 released his book, Principles of Golf Architecture, in August 2022.

Kimberly Hilliard Sharpe BSFCS ’92 is national director of field training for Spring Education Group, a private school education network.

Hadley Lowy ABJ ’93 joined Lumen spin-off Brightspeed in the Pricing & Offer Management Group in October.

Sam Couvillon AB ’94 began his first term as mayor of the city of Gainesville, GA, in 2022.

Cynthia Harris ABJ ’94 published the first three novels in her Scottish historical fiction HOLD FAST series, as well as a contemporary romance novel, Fun & Games, in 2022.

Lawfully Made

Jacqueline Bunn ABJ ’84, JD ’87

Jacqueline Bunn was 10 years old when her cousin opened his private law practice.

Bunn, ever the Perry Mason fan, was regaled with tales about the cases he worked on. When she came to UGA, Bunn held onto the notion of getting a law degree but focused her immediate attention on the broadcast journalism program, her sorority, community service, and serving as the third director of the Black Theatrical Ensemble.

When she went to law school, she only applied to one program.

“I was always very grateful for the opportunities UGA afforded me,” says Bunn ABJ ’84, JD ’87. “At this point in my career, I can look back and truly say that the university prepared me to go wherever I wanted.”

Now, more than three decades into a stellar career, Bunn serves as the vice chair of Georgia’s State Board of Pardons and Paroles, a position that required a gubernatorial appointment. “I was blessed with a very supportive family that never told me because I’m a woman, I couldn’t,” says Bunn.

Her career began with 10 years in private practice in New Jersey, but Bunn has been working for the State of Georgia since 1997. Now, she and her colleagues make decisions

Written by Alexandra Shimalla MA ’19

that impact the future of prisoners’ lives, such as if they receive parole, how much time they serve in prison before parole, and the granting of pardons.

In 2022, the board considered almost 14,000 inmate cases, all of which were delicate balancing acts of public safety and second chances.

“It’s a bit of a challenge. You have family members whose loved ones have been impacted by a crime, and they never want to see the person released, but at some point, of those parole-eligible, most are going to be,” says Bunn.

Through her career, Bunn has gained an understanding of “the importance of having victim input in the criminal justice process.” So when former Gov. Nathan Deal called her into his office to speak about her current appointment, they spoke about criminal justice reform.

“With each job, there’s been an opportunity to make significant changes that will improve the quality of the lives of the citizens of this state,” says Bunn, who also has served as deputy director of legal services for the Georgia Department of Public Safety, where she helped write legislation promoting highway safety.

Bunn was introduced to the Board of Pardons and Paroles during her time in Georgia’s attorney general’s office, where she handled the board’s cases, which were mostly about inmate rights. In fact, she helped argue a Pardons and Paroles case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000.

When Bunn moved back to Georgia, she felt drawn to public service—and a desire to make a difference. “I decided instead of chasing money in private practice, I really wanted to give back to my state,” she says. “I was moving back home and felt compelled to work for the citizens of the state.”

In addition to her vice chair role, Bunn also sits on the Georgia Commission on Family Violence and serves as chair of the state’s victims compensation fund. Bunn also has been an active member of the Georgia Association of Black Women Attorneys since 2003, including being president in 2013 and hosting its television show for 10 years. She’s received numerous awards for her dedication and desire to uplift young attorneys.

“I’ve always had a heart for public service, and I do believe that we’re here to give back. It’s not just about me; it’s about helping others,” she says.

Public service has been a hallmark of attorney Jacqueline Bunn's career.

Steve Layson AB ’94 owns the private counseling practice Layson Counseling Group in Ridgeland, MS, where he primarily works with men on general and addiction-related issues.

1995-1999

Monica Allen BBA ’96 and Ethan K. Allen AB ’98 are co-owners of Zeus’ Closet, a clothing store in Atlanta that provides custom Greek apparel for fraternities and sororities. Their business has appeared on the Bulldog 100 four times.

Andy Lipman BBA ’96 released his fifth book, The CF Warrior Project, Volume 2: Celebrating Our Cystic Fibrosis Community, in February.

Adam Rasner AB ’97 is the vice president of technology operations at AutoNation.

Amy Robertson ABJ ’97 started a new position as vice president of advertising for Hoffman Media in June 2022.

Jennifer Berry BSA ’98, MS ’00 is co-owner of the Soldier of the Sea Distillery in Comer. So far, the distillery has

Becoming a Storyteller

Sanford Stadium. He held the position for three years.

When he wasn’t in class or leading the stadium in “calling the Dawgs,” Bridges was scrounging around for equipment to make movies with his buddies.

“I built relationships with people who are some of my best friends now, and we were making films on the side with whatever cameras I could get a hold of through the journalism school,” he says. “I loved it, and I fell in love with UGA.”

A LEAP OF FAITH

Despite his Georgia roots, Bridges struggled with the decision to leave Hollywood and return home.

“I’d be leaving the place where decisions are made,” he says. “So that could be perceived as almost waving a white flag. That was hard to get over.”

But his confidence in his faith and family helped Bridges overcome his hesitation.

Sometimes a dream come true isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Dugan Bridges had just gotten his first big break producing and co-writing the independent feature Little Tin Man, released in 2013. The film tells the story of an actor who, tired of being typecast because of his dwarfism, auditions for the Tin Man role in a remake of The Wizard of Oz

The movie garnered several nominations and awards on the independent film festival circuit.

There were plenty of reasons to celebrate. Instead, Bridges ABJ ’06 was reeling.

His experience as a producer was dreary and uninspiring.

“I learned that I hated what I was doing,” he says. “I made this movie in New York and then moved to Los Angeles heartbroken.”

After graduating from UGA, Bridges went to New York with dreams of moviemaking, but he wasn’t confident in his innate creativity. That’s why producing, essentially being a film’s designated problem-solver, seemed

Written by Aaron Hale MA ’16

like a natural fit. But by the time he was leaving for LA, he no longer knew where he fit in as a storyteller.

Though his confidence wavered, he gave writing another try. This time on a solo project.

He wrote a new script that gave him agency representation and a foot in the door at Warner Brothers. He found more work and began carving out a role for himself in Hollywood.

LOOKING HOME

When he and his wife, Jennifer, were ready to start a family, they weren’t sure about raising children in LA. That’s when they started looking back near Bridges’ hometown.

Bridges grew up outside Athens. He played soccer at Oconee County High School before enrolling at UGA.

In his freshman year, Bridges earned the role of mic man during football games at

“I felt that God was directing me and made me for storytelling; that’s where I belong. So even if I move to a different location for what’s best for my family, I still have to believe I can achieve my goals and dreams.” He returned to Athens in 2019 with his production company F7 Film Distillery. And, pandemic notwithstanding, he didn’t miss a beat. He’s busy with gigs as a freelance director, editor, and, yes, even producer. He’s worked on projects for big brands and small independent films. He directed a documentary film in Germany and a short narrative in Nepal; he’s attached to direct his first feature in North Carolina later this year.

While most of his work is out of state, Bridges is active in the Athens film scene, pushing for more projects to come to the Classic City. In 2021, he was one of the first tenants of the Delta Innovation Hub on UGA’s North Campus. Part of the university’s Innovation District, the hub hosts startup ventures and connects UGA faculty and students to industry partners.

Despite his distance from Hollywood, Bridges has found a home where he can raise a family and be a storyteller. It might not be how he dreamed it, but he is reaching his career’s highest peaks so far.

Dugan Bridges ABJ ’06

special

Dugan Bridges has lived on both coasts in his journey to become a filmmaker. Now he calls Athens home.

The Spirits Squad

Jim Chasteen still recalls his first lesson as a risk management student in the Terry College of Business.

“The first thing they teach you on day one is to avoid dogs, trampolines, and booze,” says Chasteen BBA ’98

Chasteen and his business partner Charlie Thompson AB ’99, MBA ’03, JD ’03 are recalling the genesis of their venture, ASW Distillery. They’ve just finished a tasting session of rye whiskeys—an enviable but necessary part of their job—in one of the three production facilities of their award-winning spirits company.

Despite the warnings from his business class, Chasteen has been in the booze business for over a decade. He points out that he also has two dogs at home. But at least he’s steered clear of trampolines.

THE SET-UP

In just a few years, ASW has become one of the leading craft distilleries in Georgia and is recognized for producing some of the finest craft spirits in the nation, including Fiddler Bourbon, Resurgens Rye, Duality Double Malt, and Winterville Gin.

Written by Aaron Hale MA ’16

The distillery is a six-time winner of double-gold in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the Oscars of the spirits world. ASW has been the most awarded craft distillery at that competition since 2018, and in 2020, ASW entered a product that won best craft whiskey in the entire match.

But it wasn’t too long ago that this whole operation was a pipe dream of two former college roommates.

Chasteen and Thompson met as fraternity brothers at the University of Georgia in the late ’90s. After graduation, they stayed in touch, eventually bonding over their affinity for sipping fine whiskeys.

“We both found rye,” says Thompson, almost as if they’d found religion.

A close cousin to bourbon, rye whiskey is an American spirit distilled from mostly rye grain and aged in a charred barrel.

“We started kicking around this idea: Why don’t we make our own whiskey?” Thompson recalls. “Why don’t we start a whiskey company?”

As a risk management instructor once predicted, the idea had a few hiccups.

“We had absolutely zero relevant background,” says Thompson, who had worked at a law firm and then in real estate. Home distilling is prohibited without a license, so it’s not easy to become an expert.

Charlie Thompson (top left) and Jim Chasteen (top right) founded ASW, one of the nation's best regarded craft distilleries. Five of ASW's six partners—(from left) Jim Chasteen, Kelly Chasteen, Justin Manglitz, Charlie Thompson, and Chad Rolston—are Bulldog alumni.

Jim Chasteen BBA ’98 and Charlie Thompson AB ’99, MBA ’03, JD ’03

Another problem: Decent whiskey takes years to age–typically, bourbon is aged at least four years before being sold, and often even longer. That time waiting around for their whiskey to age can mean a period of zero revenue.

During that initial aging process, many new spirit companies go to existing distillers to select a ready-made whiskey and bottle it with their own labels. But Chasteen and Thompson didn’t want to sell someone else’s whiskey.

Instead, they found a distillery in Charleston, South Carolina, which helped them develop a recipe for a lightly aged whiskey (in the barrel “more than six minutes and less than six days,” said Thompson). Chasteen says it was like a vodka with a slightly sweet bourbon flavor. They called it American Spirit Whiskey.

THE NEXT LEVEL

After years of nights and weekends on the passion project, Chasteen left his job to commit full-time to ASW as its CEO in 2015. That same year, they connected with two other Georgia Bulldogs who would become crucial to the business.

Justin Manglitz BBA ’04 earned a degree from Terry College to help fulfill his dream of opening a distillery. Thompson and Chasteen offered him the role of master distiller, a decision that has been validated by ASW’s success in San Francisco.

Chad Ralston BBA ’08 joined ASW as its chief marketing officer, and Chasteen’s wife, Kelly BSEd ’00, became a partner in her own right and runs ASW’s tasting rooms and private events.

ASW built its first distillery in Atlanta’s Armour Yards, near SweetWater Brewing. They’ve since opened a location in the West End on the Beltline, and in 2021 they opened a site at The Battery, right outside the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park.

Chasteen and Thompson are coy about what could be next for ASW but say they’re looking for the opportunity to expand and give their brand staying power. That is, as long as they can keep the core values of ASW in place.

Over the years, the team has carefully cultivated a culture of responsibility and respectability. Their tasting rooms aren’t designed as bars but as spaces to savor and learn new things.

Thompson says, “Jim and I both had grandmothers who were teetotalers, who didn’t drink at all. We wanted to build a whiskey company that our teetotaling grandmothers would be proud of.”

released three organically sourced, hand-forged whiskeys.

Timothy Smith AB ’98 is the director of A&R, digital catalog research and development for Legacy Recordings at Sony Music Entertainment. He is also a two-time Grammy nominee for the Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media.

Mary Beth Taylor AB ’99 is a librarian at Mount Sackville Secondary School in Dublin, Ireland. She also teaches Irish dancing to adults and runs Irish Dance Dublin.

Jason Thrasher BFA ’99 is co-owner of Thrasher Photo & Design, an Athensbased company that recently designed the labels for Soldier of the Sea Distillery.

2000-2004

Christy Marsh BBA ’02 founded Sugars and Sketches, a business in Statesboro that creates custom sugar cookies and varied mediums of art.

Cindy Mitchell Quinlan BBA ’02, MED ’03, EdS ’09 is lead author for the recently published textbook, Marketing Dynamics (5th ed), published by GoodheartWillcox.

Mary Bragg ABJ ’03 completed her Master of Arts in songwriting and production at Berklee College of Music. She is now an assistant professor of songwriting at Berklee NYC, as well as a record producer and Americana artist who recently completed a tour opening for the Indigo Girls.

Jim Jenkins BBA ’03 is part owner and managing partner of Dyal Jenkins, a law firm with a primary focus in personal injury litigation with offices in Atlanta and Elberton.

Jennifer Ligon BS ’03 is a general pediatrician at Pediatric Partners of Augusta in Evans.

Heather McElroy BSFCS ’03 is the president of the Athens Area Association of Realtors.

Classical Influence

You could call Alicia Stallings a language expert.

But the award-winning poet, who publishes as A.E. Stallings and translates classic poems from Greek and Latin in addition to writing original work, feels like she’s always learning.

“I believe that poets are developmentally stuck in the language acquisition phase of childhood,” says Stallings AB ’90. “It keeps you open to the strangeness of language, and it keeps you humble because you’re always in this child-like phase.”

Stallings started at the University of Georgia as an English major, but her course schedule soon skewed toward the classics. Latin gave new depth to epigrams and other turns of phrase used in English literature.

“Eventually, the head of the department, Professor Rick LaFleur, took me aside and said, ‘You’re taking an awful lot of classics courses. Maybe think about changing your major,’” Stallings says.

She did, and she didn’t look back.

In the Department of Classics, she found other students who were also interested in the past—a world we approach but can

Written by Erica Techo AB ’15

never truly enter.

“These were people who were very intellectually curious and didn’t necessarily fit into pigeonholes,” she says. “They gravitated to classics, where we studied something that wasn’t immediately useful or immediately trendy.”

As a Latin major, she studied the meter of language and classic mythology, elements which became the foundation of her poetry. Her classical allusions tie into modern life, and her knowledge of other languages has influenced her approach to poems in English. The artistic community in Athens also supported her development.

“In Athens, if you’re a young person, you could take your artistic ambitions very seriously,” Stallings says. “You’re in a town where other artists take themselves very seriously, and there’s something exciting about being in a town where those things can come true.”

Now residing in the original Classic City—Athens, Greece—Stallings is a poet that the art world takes seriously.

She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2019, and in 2011 was the recipient of a

MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. And while those fellowships provided financial support, the recognition and spotlight she received went further.

“You’re not always going to get the pats on the back, but having someone say, ‘Yes. This work is important; it’s valuable,’ can give you new courage to keep going,” Stallings says.

Her most recent selection, This Afterlife: Selected Poems, was published in late 2022 and features cover artwork from alumna artist Ashley Norwood Cooper AB ’95. The selection includes previously published poems as well as ones that did not make the cut for past collections, and compiling it was a chance for Stallings to reflect on her growth as an artist and reintroduce past work.

“My feeling is that with poems I wrote a long time ago, they were written by someone else, and it’s not really my place to change her decision,” Stallings says. “And then, if there’s a lesson that I’ve learned from this poem, you know, I carry that forward into new poems.”

A. E. Stallings AB ’90

Award-winning poet A.E. Stallings brings new life to classic languages.

my georgia commitment

Dr. Michael Smith credits relationships, community, and compassion as the driving factors that enabled him to make a difference in both his personal and professional journeys.

Those factors motivated him to support the University of Georgia, where he established the Collegiate Equity Scholarship Fund and the Collegiate Equity Experiential Learning Fund.

Even before attending Cedar Shoals High School in Athens, Smith had his sights set on UGA but knew he would need financial aid to attend. He was one of four children, all of whom were attending college in overlapping years.

During high school, he connected with the late Bob Argo BBA ’50, a longtime state representative, former UGA Alumni Association president, and father of Georgia First Lady Marty Kemp BSHE ’90. In the first of many interactions

Smith would have with countless mentors, Argo shared a list of financial aid resources, one of which resulted in Smith landing a four-year scholarship at UGA.

“I didn’t have to worry about the financial strain some of the other kids had, and I could not have gone to college without the scholarship,” Smith says. “Because of that, I was able to go to UGA, where I had a remarkable experience, and I got a degree and an education.”

Smith benefited from a litany of personal advocates who provided deep, supportive relationships as his career progressed. Over time, Smith took on a variety of prestigious roles, including heading up one of Atlanta’s first Blackled cardiothoracic surgery groups. But one question never left his mind: Who created the scholarship that enabled his UGA experience?

When Smith reached out to UGA, the answer surprised him—the scholarship was provided by UGA itself. As it turned out, the university he believed in before

he even got into high school had also believed in him.

“I don’t know how it happened, but their willingness to gamble on me changed my life,” says Smith, who is today the founder and CEO of Marti Health, an organization focused on driving better care coordination through patient engagement for socially disadvantaged populations.

The revelation further strengthened Smith’s commitment to give back to UGA—the university helped him, so now perhaps he could help the university by

strengthening its support for students. Smith set up his funds in 2021, in the hopes of providing opportunities for at-risk students and students with financial need.

“I know there are students who leave every year not because they’re not academically competitive, but because they are just not financially able to support themselves,” Smith says. “The idea is that there will be, in perpetuity, academically capable kids who won’t be hampered by financial obstacles because those who benefitted before them paid it forward.”

GIVE.UGA.EDU Too many deserving students think they will only ever dream of attending UGA. Your support can help them become alumni.

jason thrasher

Relationships drive Dr. Michael Smith BSA ’79 to pay it forward for the next generation of students

Nicole Roberts ABJ ’03 is a fifth grade teacher at Malcom Bridge Elementary School in Oconee County.

Corrin Drakulich BS ’04, AB ’04 has been named global head of litigation for Fish & Richardson, an intellectual property firm.

Joshua Wyche BBA ’04 started a new position as vice president of pharmacy analytics & business solutions at Apexus, a company that specializes in healthcare solutions.

2005-2009

Kathryn Kay Coquemont ABJ ’05, MEd ’09 is vice president of student affairs at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN.

Allen Ligon BSEd ’08 is a pediatric and adult congenital interventional cardiologist at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Heart Center. He recently performed a heart procedure on one of the country’s smallest infants to undergo the surgery.

History Maker

For the younger Hale, majoring in history at UGA was an easy choice, not just for the subject matter but for the learning process required of students.

“The liberal arts train your mind to think,” Hale says. “It’s a way to learn about the world and approach it in different ways. History is a great way to do that.”

Learning how to think at UGA prepared Hale for his next step: law school. After earning his law degree at the University of Virginia, he returned home to practice and quickly became dedicated to public service.

Hale has served on more than a dozen boards and commissions: He is an emeritus trustee of the UGA Foundation, and from 2004 to 2005, he chaired the Atlanta History Center board. Six years later, he had exited the board but was chairing the center’s capital campaign when he was invited to apply for the open CEO role. He did, and Hale now calls it the best decision he’s ever made—after attending the University of Georgia, that is.

Presenting history.

It’s a challenge Sheffield Hale tackles every day as president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center.

But with subject matter encompassing the Civil War, civil rights, and the region’s mosaic of cultures—mixed with the accompanying passions of so many observers with so many perspectives—how is it even possible to address the subject of history?

“Well,” deadpans Hale AB ’82 . “I’m a lawyer.”

Hale did practice law in his native Atlanta for more than 25 years before moving to the center in 2012, but he hasn’t looked back.

“If you want to be persuasive, you have to approach people where they are,” Hale says, turning serious. “You have to give them the ability to be surprised or to learn something that might shift their viewpoint a little bit.

Written by Eric Rangus MA ’94

And this crosses all ideologies. No one has a monopoly on truth or knowledge. We all can use a little bit more perspective.”

And that is the philosophy Hale uses to guide the center, which, under his leadership, has grown into one the country’s finest museums of public history. Case in point, in 2022, Gov. Brian Kemp BSA ’87 presented Hale with the Governor’s Award for Arts and Humanities. It’s the state’s highest award for this work, and an honor Hale considers one of the most meaningful of his career.

Hale learned his love of history, in part, from his father Bradley. The elder Hale served as chair of the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation, chair of Atlanta History Center, and as founding chair of the advisory board of the Georgia Historical Society among his many service roles.

Hale’s community mindset extends to UGA. The dean’s suite of the Jere W. Morehead Honors College is named for him; he and his sister, Ellen, established a fund with the UGA Press to honor their father; and this summer the Atlanta History Center will welcome the inaugural Sheffield Hale Fellow.

The fellowship, which provides an opportunity for a history major to study at an institution dedicated to public history, is another partnership between Hale and his sister. This time in collaboration with the Department of History.

“The UGA Press was a great way to honor my father; he had personally supported several books,” Hale says. The Bradley Hale Fund for Southern Studies is the full name of the endowment, and it has supported UGA Press publications since 2015.

“I’ve been able to touch on all the areas of the university that are important to me—the Department of History and Honors College, as well,” he says. “I’ve just had a great experience with the University of Georgia.”

Sheffield Hale AB ’82

The president and CEO of the Atlanta History Center is dedicated to telling the city’s stories in ways that speak to all its residents’ experiences.

2010-2014

Joshua Darden BS ’11, DVM ’16 became a board-certified veterinary opthalmologist in 2022 and is currently working at South Texas Veterinary Ophthalmology in San Antonio, TX.

Blake Mitchell ABJ ’11, BBA ’11 launched Blake Mitchell Consulting in January.

Callan Thomas AB ’14, AB ’14 is a supervisory passport specialist with the Washington Passport Agency at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, DC.

2015-2020

Elizabeth McMartin AB ’16, ABJ ’16 started a new position as senior marketing and campaigns manager at WEBTOON in February.

Camren Skelton ABJ ’17 married Weston Lord BBA ’17 in Greenville, SC, in October.

Joshua Mayer BSME ’18 passed the professional engineering exam and received his professional engineering license in Georgia in November. He was also promoted to mechanical

engineer at Jordan & Skala Engineers in Norcross.

William Amos Jr. BBA ’19 opened a Jimmy John’s franchise location in Woodstock in December. He owns two additional Jimmy John’s franchises in Macon.

Lashundra Bedell BBA ’19 is the founder and CEO of Credit Conscious Network in Duluth.

Brent Hadden BBA ’20 is a commercial real estate analyst at Palomar Real Estate Group.

Jackson Campbell Sharpe

BSEd ’20 is an account executive at Samsara, a software development company headquartered in San Francisco.

2021-2022

Eliza Hembree AB ’21 is a development analyst in the UGA Divison of Development and Alumni Relations.

Kasey Lee BBA ’21 is a secondyear law student at Fordham University School of Law and started a position as a summer associate at the White & Case New York office in May.

Amanda Gordon AB ’22 is the director of strategic operations at Parkway Law Group in Lawrenceville.

grad notes

ARTS & SCIENCES

Page Walley MS ’82, PhD ’84 was elected to the Tennessee State Senate in 2020. He also recently chaired the Joint Ad Hoc Committee on Juvenile Justice. Cherry Collier MS ’95, PhD ’98 is chief collaboration officer and master-certified executive coach & diversity strategist for Personality Matters, a coaching, training, and consulting firm. The company was named to the 2023 Bulldog 100 list.

Katherine Montwieler

PhD ’00 is a professor of English at the University of North

Social Media for Good

making medicine—and doctors—more approachable.

“I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be powerful if I shared this story? Would I be able to reach people who are suffering in silence right now and tell them that they’re not alone in what they’re going through? And that reaching out for your mental health is not a weakness, but it’s a strength?” Goodman says. “So I hit post.”

That’s when Dr. Jake went viral. Really viral. Which wasn’t the goal but was definitely encouraging for someone whose personal brand is built on fighting stigma and empowering people to get help when they need it.

And that includes his fellow physicians, residents, and medical students.

The photo was simple: a man in blue scrubs against a beige wall with a blue pill in his mouth.

The caption was anything but.

“My name is Dr. Jake. I’m a physician who treats mental illness, and I take medication for my mental health. And by the way, I’m proud of it.”

Dr. Jake Goodman knew he’d shake things up with his TikTok post in December 2021. But he didn’t know just how much until his phone started blowing up.

“Thank you for posting that.” “I also experience a mental health issue, and your post made me feel less alone.” “This post was the push that I needed to go to therapy.”

And perhaps the most powerful, “This post helped save my life.”

Goodman BSA ’15, MBA ’20 had been struggling for a while. A well-known advocate for mental health and one of the most followed physicians on social media with more than 1.5 million followers, Goodman seemed to have it all.

Written by Leigh Beeson MA ’17

He was young, successful, a doctor. But he wasn’t happy.

He started withdrawing from his family and avoiding the activities he used to enjoy.

Then one day, a fellow resident and friend told him he might be depressed.

“That woke me up,” Goodman says. “I was, like, I’m absolutely depressed. I’m meeting all the criteria for depression. I diagnose people with this every day, and I didn’t even recognize it in myself.”

He sought help, first through a therapist he continues to see every other week, and then with a fellow psychiatrist. He started medication and slowly began to feel more like himself again.

“The best way I can describe it is that I was living in a black and white world when all of a sudden, a few months later, I put on glasses and could see in color again.”

By that point, he had already racked up more than a million followers on social media, where most of his posts focused on sharing health information, demystifying mental health struggles and treatments, and

“The annual prevalence of depression in med students and residents is one in four. And studies show that one in nine trainees, so residents and med students, experience suicide ideation or thoughts of ending their lives,” Goodman says. “Those numbers are staggering. And when I first got into medical school, I didn’t know that. So when I started experiencing anxiety in medical school, I felt very alone in that process.”

Now Goodman is determined to make sure others don’t feel that way.

“On social media, you can reach somebody that will never, ever step foot in a psychiatric office, in a therapist office, maybe even in a doctor’s office,” says Goodman, who goes by @jakegoodmanmd on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. “My goal is to empower those viewers to realize that they’re not alone in what they’re going through and to educate them about the illness.

“I invest the time on social media because I know there’s somebody out there who sees my videos, and it has a life-changing impact on them. If it’s one person, it’s one person; if it’s a hundred, it’s a hundred. But that’s why I still, and always will, spend the time to create these types of videos to help people.”

Dr. Jake Goodman BSA ’15, MBA ’20

Dr. Jake Goodman uses his online presence to help people with mental health struggles feel less alone.

A TRAIL THAT TELLS A STORY

Thanks to the efforts of a half dozen UGA alumni, children who visit the Sandy Creek Nature Center in Athens will be able to hike the Storybook Trail, a new path inspired by the pages of a nature-themed picture book.

The trail originated in 2018 as a project of four UGA students: Sarah Lynn Bowser BSFR ’19, Joshua Cohen BBA ’18, Blake Padgett BSFR ’19, and Donald Martin BSFR ’19 They developed a plan for the center to establish a trail that would present the pages of a nature-themed picture book on permanent signs placed at intervals along it. For the specific book, the students reached out to Bart King ABJ ’97 (left, above) and Jacob Wenzka BFA ’01

The Girl Who Kept Night in Her Closet is the second of four books created and published by the duo. The 2017 book tells the mysterious story of a young girl who has a powerful connection to the natural world around her. Its pages were installed earlier this year along the trail, which zigzags along the boardwalk behind the center.

The trail was launched on Feb. 25. King and Wenzka read from the book, answered children’s questions, then led a group hike along the trail.

Carolina Wilmington and serves as Interim Chair of the Department of Theatre. Her book A Companion to the Work of Elizabeth Strout was published in September.

BUSINESS

Bernd K. Muehlfriedel MBA ’96 is a professor of entrepreneurship and investment management at the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut, Germany. He was also re-appointed by Bavaria’s Minister of Science and Culture as a member of its excellence network’s scientific advisory board.

Rick Willingham MBA ’22 is the general manager at Thruway Fasteners in Duluth.

andrew sticha

EDUCATION

B. Afeni McNeely Cobham MEd ’96 was named the inaugural associate vice chancellor and vice provost for equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. She began her new position in April.

Will Johnson MEd ’06 was named director of planning by the Columbus Consolidated Government in October.

Nicole Collier Harp PhD ’10 released her second middle-grade novel, The Many Fortunes of Maya, in January.

Heather Vaughn EdS ’17 is the associate director for the Ricks Center for Gifted Children at the University of Denver.

LAW

Elizabeth Spivey JD ’08 has been elevated to counsel at Kilpatrick Townsend, an international law firm headquartered in Atlanta, where she works on the Real Estate Investment and Development team.

Ava Conger JD ’13 has been elevated to counsel at Kilpatrick Townsend, an international law firm headquartered in Atlanta, where she works on the Complex Litigation team.

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Jeffry Netter

Josiah Meigs Professor Georgia Bankers Association Chair Department Head, Finance Terry College of Business

Jeffry Netter was going to be an astronomer. That was the goal until he took his first physics class, anyway.

On to the next thing: economics.

But in his Intro to Economics course, he didn’t study enough and got a C. His professor told him that he really deserved a C-minus, but Northwestern didn’t give pluses and minuses.

It all changed for Netter when he took intermediate microeconomics. Microeconomics focuses on how the behavior of individuals, incentives, and their choices affect and are affected by resources. A people person to his core, Netter knew he’d found his niche.

What do you wish people knew about our economic system and their place in it?

Economics is not simple. It’s complicated, and it is much easier to criticize than provide a different plan.

In my capitalism class it is important to understand the ideas about capitalism and its causes and effects as it developed. Knowing these arguments has a practical effect today, as they can provide guidance on analyzing all sorts of business, social, and life issues.

What do you hope students come out of your class having learned?

F. Scott Fitzgerald is quoted as having said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

That’s my goal for students. To really be informed in their views, they have to be skeptical of what they see and hear.

I want them to see and understand—but not necessarily adopt—different views. If an individual cannot make the opposite argument to what they believe, they do not really understand their position.

Endowed chairs—positions that receive supplemental support generated from private donations—are essential to recruiting and retaining leading faculty who are committed to world-changing research and preparing the next generation of problem-solvers, pioneers, and leaders. Learn more about supporting UGA’s leading faculty at GIVE.UGA.EDU