News from the Chronicles - January 2021

photo of man with mountains in background
Mountains as socio-ecological landscapes

The highest point in the state of Georgia, Brasstown Bald, is known to native Cherokee as Etonah and to many Georgians as among the best locations to view the changing fall colors. The term “bald” is used to describe deforested mountaintops in the southern Appalachians that have 360-degree unobstructed views. And the views can indeed be spectacular. But the high, grassland mountaintops, rather than naturally occurring, are part of a…

photo of man, chemical diagrams in background
Focus on the Faculty: Eric Ferreira

Eric Ferreira’s own early fascination with solving puzzles helps him inspire students to piece together the logic behind organic chemistry. “I was always interested in logic puzzles and things of that nature that as a kid,” said Ferreira, an associate professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ chemistry department. “As a sophomore in college, my first semester organic chemistry professor really illustrated the logic behind it,…

photo of hands and two newspapers in different languages
Noted and Quoted, January 2021

“Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory,” by UGA history professor Claudio Saunt, was a 2020 National Book Award finalist and has found a place on several best books of 2020 lists, including the Washington Post and The Atlantic magazine. In it, Saunt argues that removal of the Southeastern native tribes was not a historical sidebar, but a critical event leading to the Civil War two decades later…

photo of two people wearing masks, outside
Kudos, January 2021

Excellence in research and scholarship already abounds in the New Year. Congratulations on the many recently announced, fellowships, grants and honors for Franklin College faculty. A sample: Cassia Roth, assistant professor of History & Latin American and Caribbean studies, has been awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for research on her second book, “Birthing Abolition: Enslaved Women, Reproduction, and…

photo of woman in greenhouse, with plants
Devos part of team to unlock switchgrass genome

As reported Jan. 27 in Nature, a nationwide team that includes UGA faculty member Katrien Devos has produced a high-quality reference sequence of the complex switchgrass genome, marking a critical step for a plant species that has long been studied for its potential application in the production of biofuels. The team was led by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the U.S.…

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