News from the Chronicles - January 2021

The Franklin College wishes all University of Georgia students, faculty, staff, friends and alumni a safe, happy and healthy 2021. Let your creative pursuits, your scholarly endeavors, and your generous spirit flourish from the very beginning this year.  See you in 2021!

UGA has increased capacity of its COVID-19 voluntary surveillance testing program for spring 2021, with an increasing reliance on saliva-based testing. The campus community is encouraged to participate in these important efforts to support a successful semester for everyone: The Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory has developed a saliva-based test that has proved to be just as reliable as the nasopharyngeal swabs that have…

Hamilton Homes, Jr., whose father was one of the first Black students to desegregate the University of Georgia in 1961, along with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, will present the keynote address for the 18th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Breakfast: Hosted by the University of Georgia in collaboration with Athens-Clarke County and the Clarke County School District, the event, with the theme “The Power of the Dream: Forging a Path…

The Royal Astronomical Society has announced the winners of its medals and prizes, awarded to scientists around the world for significant achievement in the fields of astronomy and geophysics. University of Georgia Assistant Professor Cassandra Hall has received the Winton Capital Award for astronomy for 2020.  There are two Winton awards per year, one each in astronomy and geophysics and they are funded by the Winton Capital…

Traditional gendered patterns of child care persisted during the COVID-19 shutdown, with more than a third of couples relying on women to provide most or all of it, according to a study from University of Georgia researcher Kristen Shockley. Some previous research has found that typical familial patterns may get upended during crises, but that’s not what Shockley and her colleagues found in the early months of the COVID-19 shutdown. “Most people…

The UGA Willson Center for Humanities and Arts has received a $1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to partner with Penn Center, one of the nation’s most important institutions of African American culture. The partnership will support education and sharing among communities in the Sea Islands region of the Southeastern United States and students from UGA and its partner institutions. Located on St. Helena Island, one of the…

What do the 3,000-year-old actions of an Egyptian pharaoh say about how we should tackle the biggest challenges of the 21st century? Quite a bit, according to anthropologists at the University of Georgia who analyzed archeological evidence over thousands of years to examine how societies have approached adversity. Their work suggests that rigid, top-down approaches to complex problems have been a doomed strategy throughout human history.…

The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. explained it succinctly in a March 22, 1964 speech in St. Louis, that "We must learn to live together as brothers or we will perish together as fools." Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We can do better, let's do better.

Cassia Roth, assistant professor of History & Latin American and Caribbean studies, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship. Roth’s award is among the grants announced by the NEH Dec. 16 to support 213 humanities projects in 44 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The fellowship will support Roth’s writing a book based on her scholarship, “Birthing Abolition: Enslaved Women, Reproduction, and…

UGA Faculty members Melanie Reber and Eric Harvill have been named Innovation Fellows for spring 2021, a semester-long fellowship designed to help faculty align their research activities with industry needs and bring their discoveries to the marketplace: Reber, an assistant professor of chemistry in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, is developing a cavity-enhanced, two-dimensional spectroscopy that uniquely combines…