Looking back now, it's easy to see where farmers in the 1800s went wrong. Attempting to grow profits from a lush environment, landowners cleared entire forests in the South to make room for agricultural farmland. But using primitive agricultural techniques scarred the landscape, and when the profits dried up, they abandoned the barren land. Now University of Georgia researchers want to understand the ongoing repercussions of a bygone era. Five UGA researchers are joining with the U.S. Forest Service on the project to calculate how past land use has influenced the present environment-and how it will impact the future.
Karen E. Watkins, professor and associate head of the lifelong education, administration, and policy department in the University of Georgia College of Education, has been inducted into the Academy of Human Resource Development Scholar Hall of Fame.
Induction into the Hall of Fame is the highest honor bestowed by the academy. Only one scholar is inducted each year. Recipients must have a continuing record of scholarly productivity and have received the academy's Outstanding Scholar Award.
The International Peanut Genome Initiative—a group of multinational crop geneticists who have been working in tandem for the last several years—has successfully sequenced the peanut's genome. Scott Jackson, director of the University of Georgia Center for Applied Genetic Technologies in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, serves as chair of the International Peanut Genome Initiative, or IPGI. The new peanut genome sequence will be available to researchers and plant breeders across the globe to aid in the breeding of more productive and more resilient peanut varieties.
Deep-sea hydrothermal plumes—waters nearly two miles down in the ocean—are home to processes that effect life across the planet. However, high pressure and water temperatures that exceed 300 degrees Celsius have made research on the plumes very difficult. With a new grant from the National Science Foundation, a University of Georgia researcher will develop instrumentation to collect data at these depths.
Marketing EDGE, a nonprofit education organization (formerly known as the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation), has announced that Charlotte Mason, professor of marketing in the University of Georgia Terry College of Business, will receive this year's Robert B. Clarke Outstanding Educator Award, recognizing an academician's overall achievement in marketing education.
The University of Georgia College of Education has established a partnership with Roborobo Co. Ltd., a robotics education company in South Korea, to bring robotics to local K-12 classrooms. The partnership will bring Roborobo's robotics kits and education programs to the U.S. for the first time, according to Ikseon Choi, an associate professor in learning design and technology who is leading the project.
With the end of the economic recession, the Georgia General Assembly, which adjourned March 20, passed a fiscal year 2015 state budget that includes a spending increase for higher education and salary increases for University System of Georgia faculty and staff.
Yuliya Bila, a fourth-year Honors student at the University of Georgia, has been awarded a Carnegie Junior Research Fellowship. As a junior fellow, Bila will have the opportunity to conduct research for books, co-author journal articles, participate in meetings with high-level officials, contribute to Congressional testimony and organize briefings attended by scholars, journalists and government officials
Rick Watson, the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy in the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, has been named a Regents Professor effective July 1.
Regents Professorships are awarded by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to distinguished faculty whose scholarship or creative activity is recognized both nationally and internationally as innovative and pace setting. The professorship, which includes a $10,000 salary increase, is granted for an initial period of three years and may be renewed. No more than one such award may be given at UGA in any year.
Two University of Georgia Honors Students—Tuan Nguyen and Amy Webster—have been named 2014 Barry M. Goldwater Scholars.
The UGA Goldwater Scholars are among a group of 283 recipients of the one- and two-year scholarships that recognize exceptional sophomores and juniors in engineering, mathematics and the natural sciences. UGA students have received the Goldwater Scholarship almost every year since the mid-1990s, and the 2014 recipients bring the university's total of Goldwater Scholars to 46.
Nguyen is a junior from Douglasville majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology as well as mathematics in UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. He plans to pursue a combined M.D./Ph.D. degree with the ultimate goal of improving cancer diagnostics and treatment.
Webster is a junior from Kennesaw majoring in genetics and mathematics in the Franklin College. She plans to pursue a doctorate in genetics with the goal of studying the processes that regulate gene expression while also teaching at the university level and promoting scientific literacy.
