Kudos, March 2015

If you've noticed recent issues of Columns, you know that Franklin College faculty are among the recipients of this year's top university honors, awards and professorships. Here are some of those honors plus appearances and grants. Congratulations on all of these important professional accomplishments.

Congratulations to Franklin College faculty members Jennifer Palmer (department of history) and Peter Jutras (Hugh Hodgson School of Music) who received the Richard B. Russell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, the UGA’s highest early career teaching honor.

Malcolm Adams, professor of mathematics and department head, was among four UGA faculty members named Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professors, the university's highest recognition for excellence in instruction at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Norman named associate VP for instruction

Naomi Norman, a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor and administrator in the department of classics, has been named associate vice president for instruction. The appointment is effective April 1.

Spalding Distinguished Research Professor of History James C. Cobb will receive the 2015 Woodard-Franklin Award for Historical Writing from the Fellowship of Southern Writers during the Southern Lit Alliance’s Celebration of Southern Literature in Chattanooga. The event will take place April 16 to 18 in the Tivoli Theatre in downtown Chattanooga. Founded in 1987, the Fellowship of Southern Writers (FSW) is a nonprofit organization that recognizes and encourages excellence in Southern literature. The FSW commemorates outstanding literary achievement, encourages young writers through awards, prizes, and fellowships, and recognizes distinction in writing by election to membership.

Levon Ambartsumian, Franklin Professor of Violin in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, was named a Regents Professor.

David P. Landau, Distinguished Research Professor and Founding Director of the Center for Simulational Physics, presented an Invited talk at the TMS2015 144^th Meeting and Exhibition in Orlando, FL.  The title of his presentation was: Replica Exchange Wang-Landau Sampling:  Pushing the Limits of Monte Carlo Simulations for Materials.  This series of meetings brings together approximately 5000 members of the international scientific and engineering communities who are involved in metals and materials research. 

Hong Qiu, a postdoctoral research associate working under the mentorship of associate professor biochemistry and molecular biology Lianchun Wang at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, received $105,000 from the American Heart Association to decipher the role of a sugar molecule called heparan sulfate in the production of blood cells.

Researchers from the College of Family and Consumer Sciences and Jerry Shannon, assistant professor in the department of geography, were awarded a five-year, $474,998 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study community revitalization needs across Georgia. The research team will be assessing housing and neighborhood challenges and collecting community-level social capital data for 353 small and nonmetropolitan municipalities in Georgia.

Image: From the drawing stage of Art Rosenbaum's "Doors" mural in the Richard B. Russell Building Special Collections Library (whew). Photo by your blog host. The mural is greatly changed now that it is finished, but you can go over and see it anytime during the week day. And you should. Oh, and there's a documentary about it.