News Archive - 2012

  There are so many reasons that Benjamin Franklin was chosen as the namesake for the Franklin College - and every one of them accrues to our benefit as well as feeds our ambitions for what the College should be. None of the noble epithets with which we connect Franklin demonstrates that more than the unfinished autobiography he worked on but purposefully left unfinished so as  'to immerse his reader in the formal and textual…

Energy-related research, thankfully, continues to filter into numerous basic-science disciplines. Because it is going to take everything we know and more to make a decisive turn toward renewable fuels: Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, two University of Georgia researchers will pursue innovative approaches to more efficient methods of energy transmission and storage that involve maneuvering microscopic particles. Tina Salguero and Gary…

From an interview in The Humanist with New Jersey congressman Rush Holt: The Humanist: How do you define critical thinking? Rush Holt:  Let me define instead what I like to call “thinking like a scientist.” It’s asking questions that can be answered based on evidence; it’s expressing questions in a way that allows someone to check your work. If you don’t have both of those elements, it’s too easy to fool yourself or to get lazy in…

The Lamar Dodd School of Art presents "phlood," a one day show of Maymester student work on Tuesday June 5, 2012. The show includes graduate and undergraduate students working with animation, heroic painting*, printmaking and construction paper boat forms. A reception will be held from 4-6 pm, with animation showings at 4:30 and 5:30 pm in room 150 of the school of art. The reception is free and the public is invited to attend. *A bit of an odd…

In the public realm at least, biofuels have been on a bit of a roller coaster ride over the last 12-15 years, as their promise becomes mired in politics and regional agriculture issues. But in research labs across the country and at UGA, scientists have held steady. A newly published genetic sequence and map of foxtail millet, a close relative of switchgrass and an important food crop in Asia, is giving scientists working to increase biofuel…

Simon Wildman, a second year Doctoral student at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, was recently awarded Second Prize at the International Instrumental Competition in Markneukirchen, Germany. The competition is held for tuba once every four years, rotating among other orchestral instruments, and is considered to be one of the most prestigious international solo competitions for many orchestral instruments. The field of competitors began…

  One benefit, and there are many, of pulling together content for unit-level newsletters and soliciting news from faculty directly is that I find out about things they are doing that might normally escape (my) attention - professional activity that doesn't rise to the level of press releases, but a host of exhibitions, lectures, interviews and other work. There is a lot of this and it's too-often elusive at the college-level. But much of…

It's the medium of the internet age, but still one we don't take enough advantage of: blogging. A funny argument to make on a blog, sure; but here I'm thinking specifically of a weblog as a kind of informational travelogue for students when they study abroad. Not only can you share photos and written descriptions of your experiences with family, friends and colleagues; a blog helps us all piece together and understand the story of what it is you…

 

  Franklin alumna and 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Trethewey has been named the 19th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, the Library of Congress announced. Trethewey, 46, who has been the Poet Laureate of Mississippi since January, says that she’s excited and nervous and that “the position of the laureate is one where you can really do significant things.” One role of the poet is to record “across time and space what speaks to us…