Associate Professor of political science Dlynn Armstrong-Williams is leading the effort to create more international education opportunities on campus.

DAHLONEGA (Jan. 19, 2007) – North Georgia College & State University is the first recipient of the Internationalizing the Campus grant from the Board of Regents Office of International Education.

The $40,000 award will help implement initiatives of North Georgia’s Center for Global Engagement. The funds will be used for faculty travel, support for a Chinese Visiting Scholar, a China and Korea faculty workshop and for secretarial and clerical office support.

“This grant comes at a strategic time in the history of our university,” said Dlynn Armstrong-Williams, director of the Center for Global Engagement and author of the winning grant proposal. “The funds make it possible to jump-start our efforts.”

North Georgia, she explained, now requires more foreign language study of all students, regardless of their major.  

ATLANTA (Jan. 18, 2007) – Included in Gov. Sonny Perdue’s $228 million bond package for Georgia’s University System of Georgia is $2 million for equipment for the North Georgia College & State University Library & Technology Center, to be completed in May 2008. Perdue presented the governor’s FY08 budget proposal to the Georgia General Assembly on Jan. 11.

“These funds are critical for the new Library & Technology Center,” said NGCSU Vice President for Business and Finance Mac McConnell.

 

A groundbreaking ceremony for the new 84,000 square-foot building will take place on Feb. 1. The facility will include the library’s current book and reference material collection, as well as new instructional technology, including computer labs, video and audio equipment and wireless connectivity.

 

“This technology-rich learning environment offers the collaborative spaces that are necessary to support new teaching opportunities and extend learning far beyond the classroom,” said Shawn Tonner, the library’s director.

 

State bonds will fund new construction and renovation projects throughout Georgia’s University system. The list of Governor Perdue’s FY08 Board of Regents bond projects is located at www.gov.state.ga.us/press/2007/press1327.shtml on the Web. 

Sen. Chip Pearson, R-Dawsonville, supported the funding request for NGCSU.

“I appreciate Governor Perdue for including this project in his budget,” Pearson said. “His support for North Georgia College & State University and for the students there is reflected not only in his decision to fund this important project, but also in his entire budget proposal.”

DAHLONEGA (Jan. 18, 2007) – North Georgia College & State University has been selected as one of 12 sites in Georgia for the Smithsonian Institution and Museums on Main Street exhibit “Key Ingredients: America by Food.” It will be on display in the Peach State from May 2008 to early 2010. It will be at North Georgia from Jan. 31 through March 15, 2009.

The NGCSU Appalachian Studies Center staff worked with the Georgia Humanities Council to bring the exhibit to campus, one of 60 locations considered in Georgia.

The online educational companion to the Smithsonian Institution's traveling exhibition is at www.keyingredients.org.

According to the Web site, “Key Ingredients” – through a selection of artifacts, photographs, and illustrations – examines the evolution of the American kitchen and how food industries have responded to the technological innovations that have enabled Americans to choose an ever-wider variety of frozen, prepared, and fresh foods. The exhibit also looks beyond the home to restaurants, diners, and celebrations that help build a sense of community through food.

DAHLONEGA (Jan. 12, 2007) –  The first book published by the University Press of North Georgia is a study of Appalachian art.

“Billy Roper: Visual Storyteller,” features the work of a folk artist from the north Georgia mountains who finds inspiration from decades of struggle and his family background. Often he writes on the back of a painting or sculpture to give insight into the meaning of the piece.

Now serving as the 2006-2007 Fine Arts Artist-in-Residence at North Georgia College & State University, Roper also has created musical instruments on which he produces “homemade” music. At the university, he participates in studio art classes and workshops. The University Press publication also serves as the exhibit catalog accompanying an art exhibit on campus of Roper’s works.

The University Press of North Georgia is a scholarly, peer-reviewed press supported by the NGCSU President’s Innovation Fund.

“Our primary function is to promote education and research, with a special emphasis on local and global cultures,” said B.J. Robinson, director. “We define culture in the broadest sense of the term to include intellectual and artistic activity as well as shared community.”

She said the University Press partners with NGCSU to provide a learning environment for students to gain “real-life experiences in publishing and marketing.” Robinson and Donna Gessell served as editors of the Roper book that was written by Pam Sachant, NGCSU Fine Arts Gallery director. With a foreward by NGCSU President David Potter and an introduction by Thomas Scanlin, the publication explores the intrinsic link between the visual and the verbal in Roper’s art, and the notion of his paintings as a form of visual storytelling.

NGCSU University Press invites submissions

The press is now accepting submissions for a second publication, “Don West as Metaphor for Change,” to pay tribute to West, who was born in 1906 in Devil’s Hollow near Ellijay in Gilmer County and died in Charleston, W.Va., in 1992. Considered one of the foremost Southern regional poets of the 20th century,

West also was a labor organizer, political radical, preacher, progressive educator, and a spokesperson for mountain culture, working people in the South, and equality prior to the civil rights movement. What is considered to be his finest work, “Clods of Southern Earth,” was published in 1946. West and his wife Connie Adams West established the Appalachian South Folklife Center at Pipestem, W.Va., in 1964.

“This collection of articles and essays, poetry, artwork, and interviews will pay tribute to Don West’s life work, developing it as a metaphor for transformation of communities and community members in the Southern Appalachia region,” said Robinson.

Book order forms and submission guidelines are available from B.J. Robinson, Department of English, NGCSU, Dahlonega, Ga., 30597, telephone 706-867-2964.

DAHLONEGA (Jan. 12, 2007) –  A “Billy Roper: Visual Storyteller” exhibition in the North Georgia College & State University Fine Arts Gallery in the Hoag Student Center will continue until Feb. 22. A reception and book signing of the exhibition catalog will take place on Jan. 18, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Gallery Director Pam Sachant said that Roper, currently an artist-in-residence at NGCSU, will be featured in the February issue of “Southern Living” magazine.

“Roper’s paintings offer him a means of twice telling a story – on the front, in the form of a visual representation, and on the back, as a written narrative,” Sachant said. “He sees the two as complementary, and does not consider one to be a complete telling of his story without the other.”

Working in a variety of formats and styles in two- and three-dimensional media, Roper’s subject matter, Sachant explained, “ranges from minutiae of his childhood memories to contemplations on his cultural heritage, and from an accounting of the day’s events to reflections on the nature and meaning of life.”

The exhibit catalog was written by Sachant. The publication, the first published by the University Press of North Georgia, was edited by Sachant, Donna Gessell and B.J. Robinson. With a foreward by NGCSU President David Potter and an introduction by local craftsman Thomas Scanlin, the book explores the intrinsic link between the visual and the verbal in Roper’s art, and the notion of his paintings as a form of visual storytelling.

The exhibition and the catalog are funded by the NGCSU Appalachian Studies Center, the University Press of North Georgia, the Nix Family Living Heritage Fund, and the Buisson Family Foundation.

The gallery is open weekdays, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Saturday, 12 - 4 p.m. For more information, telephone 706-864-1512.

DAHLONEGA (Jan. 5, 2007) – Donna Gessell, the director of Graduate Studies & External Programs at North Georgia College & State University, is currently the featured reader on www.peacecorps.gov/wws/multimedia/podcasts, a Peace Corps Web site.

Until Jan. 11, Gessell’s voice can be heard reading her recorded story, “Living by the Book,” about her experience while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji from 1979 to 1982. After Thursday, the podcast will still be available in the site’s archives with other volunteers’ stories. The essay also is published in Peace Corps: The Great Adventure.

 

Gessell, also a professor of English at North Georgia, was a community development volunteer in Naqelewai, Fiji, where she worked with five villages on development projects. In Suva, Fiji, she helped train women community leaders from across the Pacific at the Community Education Training Center of the South Pacific Commission.

 

She lives in Dahlonega and is married to John D. Segars, an associate golf professional, at The Traditions in Braselton, Ga. Their daughter, Amanda Frye, who graduated from Lumpkin County High School in 2002 and from MIT in 2006, is teaching physics for Teach for America in the Philadelphia public school system.

ATLANTA (Jan. 5, 2007) –  Thousands of Georgia residents who've seen combat while in the Georgia National Guard or the U.S. Military Reserves, as well as their offspring, may qualify to receive up to $8,000 each to attend college in the University System of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Technical and Adult Education or an eligible private college or university.

The Georgia HERO (Helping Educate Reservists and their Offspring) Scholarship Program has been providing educational grant assistance to U.S. servicemen and women and their children since March 2006. To date, more than 200 scholarships totaling nearly $400,000 have been awarded.

"We are extremely grateful for the sacrifices made by our returning heroes and want to encourage them to take full advantage of this opportunity to continue their education," said Dr. Beheruz N. Sethna, interim executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer for the University System of Georgia. "Whether guard members or reservists use the scholarship to further their own education or have their children apply for it, this is an excellent reward for the service they gave their nation."

To qualify, Georgia residents must be active members of the Georgia National Guard or the U.S. Military Reserves who have served in a combat zone for at least 181 consecutive days since May 3, 2005. Depending on when they were born, the children of eligible servicemen and those killed in action, totally disabled, or evacuated prior to completing 181 consecutive days in a combat zone, also are eligible for the HERO award.

Soldiers and eligible offspring may receive up to $8,000 for four years of undergraduate study $2,000 per academic school year for each qualifying term of service served in a combat zone.

The Georgia General Assembly passed legislation sponsored by senators John Wiles and John Douglas establishing the HERO Scholarship Program during the 2005 session. The first nine recipients, all children of qualifying service personnel, received their awards in March 2006 from the Georgia Student Finance Commission (GSFC), the agency that administers HERO, HOPE and other state and lottery-funded financial aid programs.

Full details of the Georgia HERO Scholarship Program, a list of eligible colleges and universities and an online scholarship application are available in the For Students section of the Gacollege411 website (www.Gacollege411.org). Potential students are encouraged to make early contact with the institutions of their choice to determine eligibility for admission and complete the application process in time for the start of a future term.

Online at www.usg.edu/news/2007/010507.phtml