News Archive - 2019

Despite its rich history and cultural significance, opera’s place within the world of music has, in some ways, fallen to the wayside. Megan Gillis BMus ’13 is working every day to change that: A lifelong performer, Gillis first fell in love with opera at a young age after being encouraged by vocal instructors to pursue the art, due to her strong soprano voice. After many years of practice, she eventually found an ideal place to hone…

Schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder that affects about 1% of the population, is a leading cause of functional disability in the United States. Typically diagnosis has hinged on the display of visible “positive symptoms” such as hallucinations and delusions, but one key to earlier identification and treatment is a recognition of negative symptoms, and University of Georgia neuroscientists are developing novel technology-based tools to catch…

UGA's Public History Summer Internship Program in Washington, D.C., is currently underway.  Public history is the work that historians do outside of the university to bring history to a wider audience. This can take place in many different settings but includes historic sites, museums, archives, libraries, parks, and monuments. Associate professor of history and director of the summer program Akela Reason shares this update: The…

Fifty years ago, Jack Kehoe, professor at the UGA Lamar Dodd School of Art, went on a two-month search to select a site for the school’s Study Abroad Program. After visiting more then two dozen different locales throughout Italy, he chose not one of the major centers of art studies, like Florence or Rome, but instead, the remarkable Tuscan town of Cortona, Italy. The first group to journey to Cortona consisted of 39 summer students. The…

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a national consortium of academic and nonprofit institutions, with leadership from the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) and North Carolina State University focused on improving our understanding of how the atmosphere, ocean, land, and biosphere of Earth interact with each other and with human activity as an integrated system. The Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth…

University of Georgia faculty member Rachel Roberts-Galbraith has received the 2019 McKnight Scholar Award, which recognizes scientists in the early stages of their careers working in the field of neuroscience. An assistant professor of cellular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, Roberts-Galbraith is the first UGA faculty member to receive the award.  “Dr. Roberts-Galbraith’s studies are a unique combination of…

UGA launched its first comprehensive mentorship initiative, the UGA Mentor Program, on June 12. Alumni, including faculty and staff, who are interested in participating can create a profile at mentor.uga.edu. The site will open for student sign-ups in August: The UGA Mentor Program offered a pilot program in January 2019 to 115 pairs of alumni and students. Of the students who participated, 93% said they gained an appreciation for…

Seven UGA graduate students earned highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships this year, and six UGA alumni also have earned the fellowship, which includes three years of financial support that includes an annual stipend of $34,000 plus a $12,000 cost of education allowance and networking and professional development opportunities: Doctoral student Jordan Chapman said he was attracted to the…

As scientists improve their understanding of the impacts of microorganisms on the broad systems and that keep global biological cycles in balance, responses to a changing climate by microbes on land and sea across the Earth have become key indicators. Now, more than 30 microbiologists from 9 countries have issued a warning to humanity – they are calling for the world to stop ignoring an ‘unseen majority’ in Earth’s biodiversity and ecosystem…

Also known as Juneteenth Independence Day or Freedom Day, the holiday commemorates the June 19, 1865, announcement of the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas, and more generally the emancipation of enslaved African Americans throughout the former confederacy. Though President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an…