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April 21, 2008
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Students make their mark during Honors Day
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Joshua Preston McAuliffe found the source of the gunshots on the drill field, a Living Military History reenactment, and she spent the next hour learning about U.S. military weaponry, history, survival gear and communications devices.
History alumnus Eric Tedder, NG '06, had been shooting blanks with a replica of a Revolutionary War musket along with World War II and Civil War reenactors, attracting the attention of McAuliffe and others around campus. The half-day reenactment, part of the university's annual Honors Day, included students and volunteers dressed as soldiers from different U.S. wars demonstrating how soldiers fought and lived. Honors Day, which took place on April 15, was as diverse in
its delivery of subject matter as it was in the content itself. The event, in
its 13th year, was originally designed to showcase student achievement in
various academic disciplines throughout the schools. It has morphed into much
more, giving students opportunities to learn about disciplines outside their own
majors; engage in dialogue and debate on social and political issues; advocate
literary, environmental and artistic interests; and for some seniors, to receive
a final prep for the workforce. Fighting for a better future 11:55 a.m. The last English presentation from the Modern Languages, English and Fine Arts panel in Gloria Shott Performance Hall wasn't the typical book reading or deconstruction of a famous literary work. Jason Dyer, a 32-year-old double major in English and music, instead shared his Advanced Composition writing, which centers on his pursuit of developing alternative-fuel sources.
"When I was in the 4th grade, I read an article in the Weekly Reader about oil running out, and I've been worried ever since," he says. The comment drew laughter from his audience, but the message is a serious one, and Dyer is actively working to ensure that such an energy forecast won't spell disaster for the world's populace. He is involved in a new local venture to produce sorghum ethanol, made from Sweet Sorghum grass. Born in Blairsville the self-proclaimed sorghum capital of the world and home to Georgia's official Sorghum Festival Dyer says that his life came full circle when he became a partner last year in a new sorghum-ethanol manufacturing company, Genesis Alternative Inc., based in his hometown. "We have become dependent upon petroleum to produce the energy necessary to grow our food," he writes. "As the population increases, the demand for oil will increase and with no new oil being made we face the possibility of widespread famine and resource wars. Join us in our quest to avert these tragedies our solution is the production of sorghum ethanol." Sweet Sorghum has many benefits, according to Dyer, including its widespread availability in nature, its ability to be cultivated in various climates and the fact it provides a higher ethanol yield per acre than corn. He says sorghum ethanol is a "zero energy" concept because there is an excess of energy created in the process, and it can be easily integrated into current energy infrastructures. "I want to be able to survive and live in southern Appalachia without this constant dependence," he says. "Every afternoon we experience it at the gas pump or when we go to the store and milk is a dollar more. It's time we do something."
12:20 p.m. June Koehler, an Army brat, has lived in 29 homes in her 21 years of life, averaging less than a year at each location. She'll make the move again for graduate school to the University of Granada in Spain in 2009, but this time it will be with a greater sense of self. Koehler's exploration of family history infused her art this year and defined her journey to find peace in a nomadic life.
Following are excerpts from her presentation, revealing the inspiration of her senior art show, which helped Koehler find meaning in "home" and a deeper sense of identity: "For years, I didn't know exactly how to respond when asked where I was from. I felt very little connection to any one place in particular. More than anything else, I thought of myself as a person intimately acquainted with the language of goodbyes. "Since my move out of my parents' house and into a dorm room at the age of seventeen, I had uncovered many of the misconceptions I had held about the word 'home' and all that it had implied to me previously. I realized that it was less about geographic proximity or even familial obligation, and more about sharing time with the people I love in the places that I love.
"I knew that I wanted to explore the idea of home, in particular how it informed the individual and provided a sense of identity. I thought it would be presumptuous of me to create images that weren't specific to my own life journey or that of other members of my family, but I wanted the works to be ambiguous enough that viewers would be able to relate their own experiences with my imagery. "My chief concern was to showcase human commonalities rather than differences." June Koehler's mixed-media art collection, "When the Veil is Lifted," is on display in the Nix Center through April 28. Her full presentation explaining the different pieces in the art collection is available here: "When the Veil is Lifted." [PDF]
Making a difference 1:15 p.m. Brittany Peck was giving a biology presentation in the Health & Natural Sciences Building on the effects of human recreation in the Chattahoochee River at the same time as other science students were scouring the campus to mitigate the effects of another type of manmade pollutant.
"We're supposed to have gloves for this," says special education sophomore Laura Pitts. She and her environmental science classmates used Honors Day to fulfill a community-service project by picking up trash on the main campus. With their schedules cleared for the day, the students split into several small groups and covered the whole campus in a six-hour period. Discarded socks, construction debris, used Q-tips, empty cans and curbs lined with cigarette butts were the scenery for the day. "We saw the human impact on the world and it's nice to reverse a little bit of the negative part," says Student Activities Board president Martin Erbele. Erbele was responsible for his group's bag of recyclables. By the end of the day, it was filled with aluminum, glass and other salvageable content that he and his group intended to separate and send to a recycling facility. Even after the long day of trash collection, the group made the decision on its own to take the extra step to recycle. "Right at the very beginning, we found a lot of beer cans and bottles on campus, probably more than anything else, so we decided why not recycle them," says Shelley Backstrom, a Spanish major. "We didn't think the campus was going to be that bad or
that it would take that long to clean up," she says. "You don't see the litter
unless you look for it, and it's there it's like a disease." Anatomy of a crime scene
1:30 p.m. Young Hall's second-floor corridor was nearly impassable with students crowded in the hallway like tourists waiting to see a major attraction. Awaiting them at the end of the hall was a popular crime scene demonstration complete with fake blood, body and bullet casings. Ten spectators at a time had the chance to critique the investigators' work and ask questions. Criminal justice students talked to audience members about the process of documenting and securing a crime scene and the evidence collection process. "As an investigator, it's important that you know what you're doing and can explain the process," says senior Jessica Oakes, president of the Criminal Justice Association, which organized the presentation. Investigators may be witnesses in a criminal case and must document a crime scene correctly and explain how they did it to a jury to maintain credibility, she says. Assistant professor Joe Morgan says that the crime scene showed students outside of the criminal justice program that North Georgia's curriculum is continuing to evolve and move forward. "I think it also announces the presence of these students
who have an interest in forensics and shows their desire to be on the cutting
edge and learn these processes in the forensics field." A career primer for business students
2:15 p.m. Will Dunson has less than five months before he graduates. He's looking for a career straight out of college, so the business school's Honors Day sessions focusing on domestic and international business careers, interviewing and job-hunting tips, business ethics, personal finance and other related topics were the perfect motivation for the management senior to step up his efforts. A leadership course for business students that Dunson was enrolled in this semester planned the entire Mike Cottrell School of Business's Honors Day agenda. In years past, Dunson says that student speakers may have benefited from presenting, but there was little incentive for other business students to attend. Dunson and his classmates invited business people from around the region to speak on relevant topics, promoted the event and helped coordinate all the logistical support for the event planning.
The business sessions attracted more than 150 participants to 17 distinct forums. Students took advantage of the experience of senior-level business professionals, including the school's major benefactor, Mike Cottrell, who was interviewed by dean Max Burns. The two carried on a discussion that explored topics ranging from Cottrell's business to the development of the Center for the Future of North Georgia at the university. "With the economy getting as rough as it is, the more knowledge we get, the better off we'll be," says Dunson. He says the day was beneficial for him and he hopes it was for others as well. Nikki Harben, a senior in management who graduates in mere
weeks, says that "this was good for me, because it's all related to real life. I
got tips from people who actually know what they're talking about." Tackling real-world problems
3:05 p.m. Dunlap Hall's education classrooms were jam-packed during a three-hour afternoon session on April 15. Seniors majoring in early childhood and special education shared their student-teaching experiences and challenges through a series of presentations with juniors and other seniors. Caycee Nash openly admits the presentations mean more to the seniors, because they essentially work full time in school systems during part of their final year in the teacher education program and can identify more readily with the experiences. "As a senior, when you're in the schools all day long, you get a lot more involved," Nash says. "When Honors Day comes around, you compare the experiences of other student teachers with your own and that helps you to understand what's waiting for you out in the teaching workforce."
Nash's group focused on problems plaguing the after-school program at her particular school. "The program wasn't quite as structured as teachers thought it should be," she says. "The YMCA took it over from the school system and it didn't provide the community involvement and academic-enrichment activities that it should have." Nash says the overall goal of this year's Honors Day presentations was to demonstrate to the students in the education program that they can find areas in schools to improve and then advocate their own solutions. "If you listen to the presentations, you can tie them all back to how the students perform academically and how we can help them improve their learning." That sentiment too can be applied to Honors Day as its role in the undergraduate student experience grows. The annual event has shown that it continues to reinvent itself and to provide an expanding number of opportunities for students to excel and reach their potential.
Spring break becomes profound experience
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Joshua Preston Uddin's parents volunteered their Warrenton, Va., home for the week of March 17-21, letting 19 North Georgia students take up residence there. Uddin's mother cooked Bangladesh-style entrees every night for the 13 international students and six American students along on the trip. After breakfast every morning at the Uddins, the students piled into two rental vans with packed lunches, drove 45 minutes to the Washington Metrorail and enjoyed the rest of the ride into the city on the public transit. "I wanted the international students to get out of Dahlonega and to see more of America and to do it at very little cost to them," says Uddin. He says not many of the students have transportation of their own as foreigners and he wanted their impression of America to be more than just Lumpkin County. "I wanted them to get a grasp of America's history, government system and really the heart of the country," he says. "What better place to go than Washington? Not every American can say they've even had that experience." Yun Chur, 31, from Seoul, South Korea, had a very unique experience that very few Americans have ever had. The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case on the Second Amendment, which guarantees the "right of the people to keep and bear arms," on March 18, and Chur was witness to part of the proceedings held by the Supreme Court, which last ruled on a Second Amendment case in 1939. "We waited five hours to see five minutes of the court hearing," says Chur, a nursing major. People were in line at the federal building as early as that Sunday and only the first 50 or so were accommodated for the full court session. Chur says that when his group rotated inside, the chief justices were asking pointed questions of the lawyers and sometimes did not let the counsel finish their statements.
"It was not what I expected, but it was very interesting," he says. Chur was accompanied by a few of his fellow international students who committed to the 4:30 a.m. trip into the city, and while they waited, national news media outlets swarming the area interviewed two of his friends. Chur was glad for the company. He says there were a lot of protesters and police and people were arguing all around him, but it was an experience he says he wouldn't have passed up. Nako Furukawa, 23, from Nagoya, Japan graduates on May 2, and for her, commencement will be bitter sweet. Furukawa has spent more than four years at NGCSU working toward an accounting degree. She will miss her friends in the International Students Association and the D.C. trip only punctuated the feeling. "I got to know my friends on a much more personal level," she says. The 14 girls on the trip slept on the Uddins' living room floor together and shared two bathrooms for a week. One night, everyone ended up watching the popular Indian film "Kal Ho Naa Ho," ("If Tomorrow Never Comes") that had the girls crying by the end and the boys laughing at the girls, Furukawa says. "It was one of the biggest events in the house." Furukawa says "visiting the famous places" in D.C. was fun, but the trip was made memorable because of the time that she shared with her friends from countries such as Zambia, Sweden, Malaysia and South Korea. "We were such the tourists, I'm sure people could tell," she says laughing. "I was always telling people to quiet down. I'm from the Japanese culture and we're not loud in public." Furukawa, the designated photographer and videographer of the group, was usually too embarrassed to take part in any public antics. But she was sure to film her friends acting up. Whenever crossing streets in D.C., the students, usually led by Uddin, would skip along or walk sideways like crabs or something else silly, Furukawa says. "I've never been on a trip with this many people who were such close friends," she says. "I'm going to miss them. It was memorable, but at the same time [the trip] made me sad." Binal Naik, a 25-year-old from Zambia, in south Africa, followed her sister Dharmisha, now a graduate student, to NGCSU. She will graduate with a bachelor's in accounting. Her trip to the nation's capital left her awestruck. Naik says that if she was forced to choose her favorite place, it would be the U.S. Capitol. The tour guide explained the history and the customs of the Capitol and its ornaments, which made the experience fascinating to Naik. The Holocaust Museum left an indelible impression on the young woman. She says it was a sad place to go. She walked past a room filled with shoes, representing the victims of the Holocaust and the magnitude of the atrocity. "I've read about it, but actually seeing it put perspective to the Holocaust," Naik says. "I wish people would see that this is happening in other places now and find ways to stop it." Naik was also moved by her visit to Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Being there made her realize the sacrifices of American soldiers to protect their country. "We do not have anything like this in our country to remember those who have made such sacrifices," she says. Uddin knew the trip was well worth the effort during the course of the week. "The international students learned about each other, learned about all the nations represented and about America." Uddin's intentions were to touch the lives of his fellow students in some small way, and as future leaders of their countries, he believes even this one trip will have some significance in creating a common ground among them. Best of all, Uddin stayed out of trouble during his last spring break in college and was at home where his parents could make sure of it. But he didn't stay completely on the right side of the law on the road trip north, he parked the vans on the edge of the interstate and everyone jumped out to pose in front of the signs at the state lines. "It was totally illegal, but everyone begged me to do it," he says. "What can I say, they wanted to experience everything."
Online learning transforms the classroom
Vista, formally known as WebCT, is an online courseware system used to develop and administer Web-based classes. Faculty may choose to use it to deliver fully online courses or as a technology-enriched supplement for their face-to-face instruction by posting course materials, tracking student progress using assessment tools and adding multimedia content. Four Vista servers for all campuses across the state are maintained and supported by Advanced Learning Technologies, a unit within the University System of Georgia's Office of Information and Instructional Technology. Each institution pays a yearly fee for Vista based on its number of enrolled students. "Many corporate job responsibilities involve the use of intranets, online database systems, and online training environments," said Judy McHan, NGCSU Vista institutional administrator. "When our faculty incorporate the use of online learning environments, we are helping our students become better prepared for a technology-rich career." Instructors can design courses or give selected assignments that allow students to complete them at their own pace without the rigid time and location constraints of regular class meetings. To deter students from cheating, tool settings in Vista may be enabled by the instructor to track student data for login and task completion times and to generate random-ordered tests and quizzes. Students can use communication tools like discussion boards, e-mail and chat in Vista to collaborate on group projects with their peers and to share feedback about topics related to their course work.
Senior nursing major Carrie Snead considers the online option a blessing for helping her to juggle work as a full-time nurse in Roswell and family responsibilities while attending college. "By taking online classes, I am able to take a full course load and work full time something I would have never been able to do if I had to attend face-to-face classes," said Snead. So far she has completed five fully online courses in her major, with some requiring a significant number of clinical hours at a specified healthcare facility. "All of the courses I have taken required us to post feedback and questions several times per week. By 'chatting' online, we were able to share ideas and add to the information that we were learning," said Snead. "You are able to hear comments from people who would normally not speak up in class." Web-based learning environments were first used at North Georgia in 1998 when the university purchased a 500-user license for WebCT and a handful of faculty members embarked on using it as a resource to complement their teaching. The system was upgraded to WebCT Vista in Fall 2002 and completely transitioned to Vista by Fall 2004. Usage of the online tool at North Georgia has more than doubled since two years ago, with an estimated total of 355 class sections and more than 3,600 student users this spring semester. The majority of these sections are taught by instructors who are using Vista as supplemental material for their traditional face-to-face classes. Approximately 150 instructors are using Vista in some form this semester. However, the number of fully online and hybrid courses a blend of online and face-to-face instruction with at least one class period delivered strictly online are gradually increasing as faculty members become more accustomed to using the technology and the benefits it has to offer, said McHan. Vista is currently being used by NGCSU faculty in a wide range of disciplines, with the highest number of total class sections reported in the areas of psychology, nursing, history and computer science.
The challenge of switching an elective course to a required one with almost 1,000 students last fall was met with the use of Vista. Dr. Michele Hill, assistant professor of leadership and psychology, helped build the fully online course "PSYC 1001: Foundations of Leadership," a new requirement for all incoming freshmen, in Vista to handle the pacing and organization of 35 to 40 class sections. Forty-eight students, who receive credit by taking upper level leadership courses, help Hill to supervise the sections and become developing leaders in the process. "I'm learning how to enhance my teaching through this tool as I move from one term to the next," said Hill, who plans to incorporate video and other multimedia in the future. "I know that this course introduces all new students to Vista, which is then used by other instructors later, so I'm assisting them in getting comfortable with it from the very beginning." Dr. Russell Teasley, assistant professor of business management, has integrated Vista into his Strategic Management and International Business classes during the past four years with his usage running the gamut from course supplements to hybrid classes to teaching completely online, depending on the course.
I think students learn more online because they are more accountable and it forces discipline on the students, said Teasley. Most students are more responsive in Vista some because they have to, others because they want to. The asynchronous and the convenience aspects are wonderful for me and for the students. The interaction is more thoughtful. Amy Willard, a senior psychology major who is enrolled in Dr. Chuck Robertson's "Psychology of Aging" class, felt that the Vista component allowed her to concentrate better when in the actual classroom. "Having a quiz every week on Vista kept me on track by making sure I read the assigned material. I think this improved my course grade because I wasn't trying to read everything and cram the night before a big test," said Willard. "Vista does make it easier for me to pay attention in class, because I can print off PowerPoint slides and actually listen to the professor instead of just making sure I write down everything."
A major upgrade to Vista 8 is scheduled by the USG from Fall 2008 to Fall 2009 to add features to help faculty design courses easier. A new "Goals" feature will help outline specific goals for student learning and match them with components in Vista. A roster tool will allow students to add a picture to their profile. Judy McHan and Michele Barton, Information and Instructional Technology, provide initial technical training and support for faculty. Dr. Irene Kokkala, director of the Center of Teaching and Learning Excellence, then works with instructors on a one-on-one basis or in small groups to help them design their courses. Jeanette Mann provides support for nursing faculty and students. For more information, contact McHan at 864-1924 or Kokkala at 864-1862.
Employees recognized for years of service
Free, legal music download service now available The University System of Georgia recently signed an agreement enabling all 35 universities and colleges in the system to offer Ruckus to students at no cost. Faculty and staff may also use the service for an $8 monthly fee. The SGA has plans to market the service across campus. Free and simple registration is available at www.ruckus.com.
Campus in Action
Dr. Linda Williams, English, had her article "Strengthening the Ethics
and Visual Rhetoric of Sales Letters" published in March in the "Business
Communication Quarterly." Also, her article "The Mission Statement: A Corporate
Reporting Tool with a Past, Present, and Future" was published in "The Journal
of Business Communication" in March. |
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Back to The Digest University Relations | NGCSU Home Last modified on: Monday, 19 May 2008 03:10:59 -0400 by University Relations :: Disclaimer :: Accessibility |
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"When I was in the 4th grade, I read an article in the Weekly Reader about oil running out, and I've been worried ever since."
"For
years, I didn't know exactly how to respond when asked where
I was from. More than anything else, I thought of myself as
a person intimately acquainted with the language of
goodbyes."
