Georgia State University Magazine, Spring 2016

MAKING IT

KELLY JENRETTE’S HOLLYWOOD STORY

UNCORKED

NORTH GEORGIA WINE REBOUNDS

D I G I TA L D I G

A TAVERN’S LORE IS ARCHIVED ONLINE

Q 1 . 1 6 MA GA Z I NE.GS U.E DU

M A G A Z I N E

Holding Pattern

The phenomenon of helicopter parenting in higher ed

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DE VE LOPME NT & A L U M N I A F FA I R S

leave a legacy... support georgia state Sarah Agnew didn’t take up beach volleyball just because it was fun. She wanted a challenge. “It was the hardest thing I had ever done, so I knew it was the sport that I wanted to do,” she says. Thanks to scholarships, she’s also been able to challenge herself with the unique opportunities made available through donor support of Georgia State’s Honors College. And she is thriving — both in the classroom and on the court.

the gi ft t hat i g ni te d

my leadership

“Balancing classes with athletics can be hard, but I see it as more of an opportunity than a challenge, because they’re both things that I love. The true opportunity lies in learning how to be a leader both off the court and on.”

Please contact Laura M. Sillins, J.D., at (404) 413-3425 or lsillins@gsu.edu to discuss a planned gift today.

OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING | giftplanning.gsu.edu

CONTENTS 08 Her Big Break Kelly Jenrette (B.A. ’02) recounts her decade-long journey to a starring Hollywood role.

09 A Sound Story Professor Glenn Eskew uses the Georgia State Library to explore the legacy of Johnny Mercer.

22 THE NEW NAPA

Georgia State alums help to sow Georgia’s burgeoning wine industry.

14 Maria’s Way Humble beginnings led Maria Manahan (B.S. ‘94, M.S.’96) from office assistant to CEO.

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THE CONSTANT SHADOW

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Surveillance by “helicopter parents” doesn’t stop after kids get to college.

A CLICK DOWN MEMORY LANE

Christina Ernst, (B,A, ’98) of VIP Southern Wine Tours

A professor leads a digital documentation of the walls of iconic Manuel’s Tavern.

COVER ILLUSTRATION BY R. KIKUO JOHNSON; THIS PAGE PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN ROLLINS

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FROM THE PRESIDENT Twelve teams posted a GPA of 3.0 or higher, and 206 studentathletes earned academic honors for the fall, including a record 44 on the President’s List.

TREMENDOUS UPSIDE

W

HEN GEORGIA STATE began its football program in 2010, ESPN the Magazine featured a cherubic baby wearing Georgia State eye black and declared “A Program is Born” on its cover.

It’s been a little more than five years since we headlined the magazine’s college football kickoff issue. Georgia State is relatively new to the world of “big-time” intercollegiate athletics and we have much to do to continue developing the rich traditions and allegiances that can enhance our student experience and continue to draw fans and supporters.

But we’ve entered a new phase altogether, and I am proud of the incredible momentum we have achieved. Under the leadership of Athletics Director Charlie Cobb, we have accelerated the upward trajectory of all of our programs.

Our football team played in its first bowl game this fall. Although we lost to San Jose State in the first AutoNation Cure Bowl, it’s clear our young program has turned a corner. I’m looking forward to

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A BOWL GAME AND NCAA TOURNAMENT WIN USHERS GEORGIA STATE ATHLETICS INTO THE SPOTLIGHT watching as the team builds upon the success of our first winning season in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision.

Our men’s basketball team is also eyeing a return to the postseason. Last year, R.J. Hunter made a long-distance three-pointer to beat Baylor in the NCAA Tournament — a basket remembered around here simply as “The Shot.” R.J. is playing for the Boston Celtics now, but his dad, Ron Hunter, has the Panthers again playing at a high level in the Sun Belt Conference.

Our beach volleyball team, just three seasons in, has also had a meteoric rise.

The team was one of just eight programs out of 50 that competed in the American Volleyball Coaches Association National Championship in May. Beach volleyball has now become an NCAA-sanctioned sport and teams will compete for a true national championship for the first time this spring.

Our student-athletes succeed in the classroom as well. This fall, they earned a 3.17 cumulative grade-point average (GPA), the highest on record. Twelve teams post-

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ed a GPA of 3.0 or higher, and 206 studentathletes earned academic honors for the fall, including a record 44 on the President’s List.

We are continuing to move forward on our plans for Turner Field, a project that will be transformational for the surrounding neighborhoods, the city and our university. It promises to have a momentous and enduring impact on our university and our community.

I know our alumni and friends share my pride in seeing our vision for athletics mature and grow. We’ve come a long way in a short time, and Georgia State sports is now a nationally recognized brand and getting bigger and better each day.

Go Panthers!

Sincerely,

Mark P. Becker President

ILLUSTRATION BY ANDY FRIEDMAN

• Download a PDF of the magazine to your favorite tablet or device by visiting magazine.gsu.edu

LETTERS ADD SENIORS TO THE MIX

I had to write and congratulate you on your wonderful coverage of the consolidation of Georgia State and Georgia Perimeter College. I graduated from Henry Grady High School in 1959. The next opportunity I had to go back to school was in 1983, to DeKalb College — which became Georgia Perimeter College. Since I was working at the time, it took me four years to do the two years’ work. I graduated with honors in 1987.

After that I went to Georgia State, still working and doing night classes, and got my degree in anthropology. After that, I received my master’s in heritage preservation on my 55th birthday in 1994. I loved every minute of it.

I retired last April from my job as our church’s counseling center office manager and thought, “Now what do I love to do the most?” The answer was go back to school.

I have just finished two classes back where I started at Georgia Perimeter College, this time in Dunwoody. I am now 76 and I’m expecting two A’s in the two classes I finished. My new associate degree will be in English.

Only four more classes to go.

Things have changed a bit. It’s a lot more multicultural. This is one reason why I think seniors should be included in the plans to consolidate. Although we seniors get to attend tuition-free, I feel our presence is very important to the younger students. Senior citizens can be encouragers and mentors: We are in school because we are very motivated, which is contagious.

It takes some bravery to start the whole process, but older students can help grow the school. Diversity in the student body to include more seniors will make a difference. Lynne Barfield Byrd (A.S. ’87, B.S. ’92, M.H.P. ’94) DIVERSITY LACKING

First, I wish to share how much your magazine means to me. However, I was stunned that the diversity in photos was lacking. Except for the back page (with a basketball player) and the back of the front cover thanking alumni for their legacy, there were no pictures representing people of color.

I am not a person of color. However I was taken aback by the lack of inclusion of all races. Vickie Scheer (M.A. ’73)

VIA TWITTER Love how @ gsumagazine organizes and displays its social media interactions via print.

Matt Henderson @MattHenderson44 Great overview of the Perimeter College addition to @GeorgiaStateU - looking forward to the final vote.

B Parthasarathy @bpartha

VISIT US ONLINE AT MAGAZINE.GSU.EDU Follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/ GSUMagazine Follow us onTwitter at twitter.com/ gsumagazine Follow us on Instagram at instagram.com/ georgiastateuniversity

For sure there have been numerous accounts of Secret Service agents on protective details, but the story on Michael Pritchard (B.S. ‘76) was an insightful and rare glimpse into the real-life world of an agent.

Susan Berry (J.D. ’04)

Spring 2016, Vol 7, Number 1 Publisher Don Hale Executive Editor Andrea Jones Editor William Inman Contributors Ben Austin (B.A. ‘03, M.A. ‘13) Dave Cohen (B.A. ‘94) , Sonya Collins, Charles McNair Copy Editor Ben Hodges (B.A. ‘08) Creative Director José Reyes for Metaleap Creative MetaleapCreative.com Associate Creative Director Eric Capossela Designer Harold Velarde Contributing Illustrators Adam Cruft, Andy Friedman, R. Kikuo Johnson, Pablo Lobato, Vincent Mahé, Thomas Porostocky, Alexandra Wang Contributing Photographers Brinson+Banks, Hastings Huggins, Andrew Thomas Lee, Ben Rollins Send address changes to: Georgia State University Gifts and Records P.O. Box 3963 Atlanta Ga. 30302-3963 Fax: 404-413-3441 e-mail: update@GSU.edu Send letters to the editor and story ideas to: William Inman, editor, Georgia State University Magazine P.O. Box 3983 Atlanta Ga. 30302-3983 Fax: 404-413-1381 e-mail: winman@GSU.edu Georgia State University Magazine is published four times annually by Georgia State University. The magazine is dedicated to communicating and promoting the high level of academic achievement, research, faculty scholarship and teaching, and service at Georgia State University, as well as the outstanding accomplishments of its alumni and the intellectual, cultural, social and athletic endeavors of Georgia State University’s vibrant and diverse student body. © 2016 Georgia State University

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IN THE CITY

CAMPUS WINNING BID Georgia State will redevelop Turner Field.

The City of Atlanta and Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority announced Georgia State and its two partners, Carter and Associates, and Oakwood Development as the winning bidders for the redevelopment of Turner Field and about 70 acres of adjacent property.

“Georgia State is extremely pleased that this important next step has been taken in the redevelopment of the Turner Field site,” said President Mark Becker. “The Turner Field project will be transformational for the surrounding neighborhoods, the city and our university, and we embrace our responsibility to work closely with community and civic leaders in getting it done.”

The $300 million plan calls for a redesign of Turner Field to serve as the home field for Panthers football, a new 1,500-seat baseball stadium on the footprint of the former Atlanta-Fulton County stadium, academic facilities, student housing, apartments, single-family residences and retail.

A final sales agreement has yet to be reached but Becker says no state funding nor a student fee increase will be necessary.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, executive director of the City Atlanta and Fulton County Recreation Authority, said the Georgia State team was selected because of its capability to renovate or replace Turner Field with a major facility and to provide housing, retail and employment opportunities for existing and future residents within five years.

“Our most important objective is that the future redevelopment of this area is one that we can all be proud of. We believe that we have the right match for Turner Field and the surrounding communities,” Bottoms said.

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DOWNTOWN LIVING

GEORGIA STATE WILL SOON UNVEIL LATEST STUDENT HOUSING COMPLEX. NEW HOME: This fall, the university will admit students to a new housing and dining hall complex at the intersection of Piedmont and John Wesley Dobbs avenues, called Piedmont Central.

The new building will house about 1,100 students, making it the second-largest student housing facility on campus.

BUILDING PARTNERS: The facility is the first in the University System of Georgia to

be built and operated under a new public-private partnership between the system and Corvias Campus Living.

SENSE OF PLACE: President Mark Becker said the project is the latest in a long-

term institutional goal to have on-campus housing for more than 20 percent of the undergraduate population. The partnership with Corvias allows for a more efficient way to move forward with student housing projects, Becker added.

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ILLUSTRATION BY VINCENT MAHÉ

MAKING IT After nine years in Hollywood, Kelly Jenrette (B.A. ’02) is ready for her close-up.

BY DAVE COHEN (B.A. ’94)

PHOTOS BY BRINSON+BANKS

M A G A Z I N E. G S U. E D U

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MAKING IT

N

o one can accuse Kelly Jenrette of not chasing her dream.

Before Jenrette landed her current gig starring alongside John Stamos in the Fox TV series “Grandfathered,” she lived through nearly a decade of auditions, rejections and bit parts patiently waiting for that big break.

“Somebody once told me Harrison Ford was asked what the difference was between him and some of his friends as far being in the industry and he said, ‘I stayed and they didn’t,’” Jenrette said. “I have had friends who have come and gone, and nine years is a long time to be out here pursuing things.”

While it may have taken some time for her to land a big-time role, Jenrette says she has no regrets.

“For me, it’s really been about being able to pay my bills doing what I love to do,” she said.

“There are stories of overnight success that people tend to latch onto and have that expectation [but] the expectation should be doing the work and having fun at it.”

At Georgia State, she was part of a theatre group called The Thearadicals where she “had to do just about everything — direct, some behind the scenes stage managing, lighting and building sets. It was really a great program to be a part of.”

She remembers well that moment when she knew she wanted to pursue a full-time acting career.

“I thought I wanted to be a forensic psychologist,” she said. But after her second year of college, she realized that “I would much rather play a forensic psychologist on TV than be one in real life.”

In “Grandfathered,” Jenrette plays Annalise Wilkinson, the no-nonsense assistant

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and right-hand woman to Jimmy Martino (played by Stamos), a successful restaurant owner and playboy who discovers he has an adult son with a young daughter from a previous relationship.

During her audition, Jenrette found out Stamos would be reading with her.

“It was crazy!” she said. “We did the scene three times, and about about three days later I found out I had booked the role.”

In October, Fox announced the sitcom would be picked up for a full season.

For Jenrette, that 2006 decision to head to Hollywood is finally paying off.

“There were moments where you feel like, ‘Is this ever going to happen?’” she said. “After hearing hundreds and hundreds of ‘no’s’ and then you hear that one ‘yes,’ it truly is a dream come true.”

• Panther Family Visit magazine.gsu.edu for a short video of the sign unveiling ceremony at

Georgia State’s Perimeter College location in Clarkston, Ga.

• Brag with your Tag Show your Georgia State spirit and help support scholarships by

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51,000

Students at Georgia State University after the January consolidation with Georgia Perimeter College.

ENSURING OPPORTUNITY Grants bolster Georgia State’s Summer Success Academy.

Georgia State has been awarded two grants totaling $1.2 million to improve and expand its Summer Success Academy, a program supporting incoming freshmen who may need help in the transition to the college classroom.

The Kresge Foundation made a $981,000 grant and ECMC contributed $250,000 to support the Academy.

The program has increased the retention rate for students enrolled in the academy from 50 percent in 2011 to 87 percent today.

“We are thrilled to receive this generous support from the Kresge and ECMC Foundations,” said Timothy M. Renick, vice provost and vice president for enrollment management and student success. “The Success Academy has already changed the lives of hundreds of students, affording them the opportunity to succeed in college. These grants will help us expand the program and create a blueprint for other universities to follow nationally.”

Hundreds of students have benefitted from the academy, and many participants were representative of groups that struggle, including first-generation and low-income students, as well as members of underrepresented minority groups.

IT’S OFFICIAL Georgia State consolidates with Georgia Perimeter College.

Georgia State became the largest university in Georgia and one of the largest in the nation with the approval of its consolidation with Georgia Perimeter College by the Board of Regents on Jan. 6.

The board’s approval was the final step in a year-long process to consolidate the two institutions, which have a long history of collaboration. The consolidation will become fully operational when classes begin in fall 2016.

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ILLUSTRATION BY PABLO LOBATO

A SINGER’S STORY

HISTORY PROFESSOR GLENN ESKEW DIVES INTO THE LIBRARY’S MERCER COLLECTION FOR HIS NEW BOOK, “JOHNNY MERCER: SOUTHERN SONGWRITER FOR THE WORLD.” Not many people realize the Georgia State library holds the Johnny Mercer Collection. How did we get it?

George Manners, the first dean of the business school, and his brother Nick were friends of Johnny’s wife Ginger and persuaded her to donate to Georgia State his private and professional papers as well as his memorabilia and unfinished biography. Manners also convinced the school to create a new Popular Music Archives in its Special Collection to attract the Mercer papers.

What are some of the highlights ?

There are letters between Johnny and just about everyone who was anyone in American entertainment in the 20th century. I loved reading the personal correspondence he received from his friends and colleagues such as Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Louis Armstrong and Fred Astaire. Among the most famous is the back of a daily calendar page on which Sadie Vimmerstedt wrote “I Wanna Be Around To Pick Up the Pieces When Somebody Breaks Your Heart.” The photos are also amazing. It would

be hard to select a single one to highlight.

What inspired you to write the book?

My interest in Mercer derived from a love of jazz music and a desire to undertake a research project on a Georgia topic that focused on Southern culture. Mercer played an integral role in America’s popular music as a songwriter, as one of the country’s most popular entertainers on radio and records, and as co-founder of Capitol Records.

• Read more at magazine.gsu.edu

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IN THE CITY “This is not only a historic day for Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College, it is also an important day for the students of Georgia,” said President Mark Becker. “We look forward to helping thousands more students graduate with the support of our nationally recognized programs aimed at ensuring student success.”

Georgia State has become a national model for student success by dramatically increasing graduation rates over the last decade. The university has closed the achievement gap, proving that students from all backgrounds can succeed at similar rates.

The board’s approval of the consolidation came a month after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, a regional higher education accrediting body, approved a prospectus and plan for the proposed consolidation.

Peter Lyons, Georgia State’s associate provost for institutional effectiveness and a professor of social work in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, was named Perimeter College’s first vice provost and dean in November.

DISCOVERY TEST IMPROVEMENTS School of Public Health makes breakthrough in prediabetes research.

With a staggering 130 million Americans projected to have prediabetes by 2050, research at the School of Public Health has uncovered a milestone toward early detection. Prediabetes warning signs can now be better detected by combining two common blood sugar tests.

Ike S. Okosun, associate professor in the school, says improving detection of prediabetes would “motivate subjects with prediabetes to seek preven­ tative care.”

“Given the increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes, coming up with methods

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to catch the disease and stop the disease is a public health imperative,” Okosun said.

Current methods can miss cases of prediabetes, giving some people a false sense that they are free of the condition.

Most people being tested for prediabetes undergo either a fasting plasma glucose test, which measures their blood sugar after a period of not eating or an oral glucose test, which measures their blood sugar soon after consuming a certain amount of carbohydrate.

The American Diabetes Association supports the use Percent rise in Early of a different test Action applications — the hemoglobin over last year. Early A1C (HbA1C) test Action applicants to diagnose paare those for whom tients with type 2 Georgia State is a diabetes. top choice school.

Okosun’s study noted that the oral glucose test is the benchmark diagnostic but is also “laborious and uncomfortable to patients.”

The research, based on an analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, shows that measuring both a person’s fasting plasma glucose and hemoglobin A1C results in more accurate detection across age, body mass and race or ethnicity than using just one of the tests.

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REMEMBER YOUR LUNCH Researchers find that eating sweets causes the brain to remember meals.

According to researchers at Georgia State, Georgia Regents University and the Charlie Norwood VA Medical Center, the part of the brain that is critical for episodic memory is activated by consuming sweets.

Episodic memory is the memory of autobiographical events experienced at a particular time and place.

“We think that episodic memory can be used to control eating behavior,” said Marise Parent, professor in the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State. “We make decisions like ‘I probably won’t eat now. I had a big breakfast.’ We make decisions based on our memory of what and when we ate.”

That possibility is supported by the researchers’ previous work, which showed that temporarily inactivatCONT’D ON P.12

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CREATING OPPORTUNITY Former basketball star Odie Donald (B.A. ’03, MBA ’12) helps others gain skills for a strong workforce.

BY DAVE COHEN (B.A. ’94)

PHOTO BY ANDREW THOMAS LEE

I

n the summer of 2000, Odie Donald transferred home to Atlanta from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to be closer to his mother, Patricia (B.S. ‘90), who was ill. The former top-50 high school recruit in basketball also hoped to become a contributor to then head coach Charles “Lefty” Driesell’s squad.

But Donald got a bad break, literally. The 6-foot 9 power forward broke his wrist and never played in a game for the Panthers.

“I still have those metal screws,” he said.

Despite that injury, Donald received offers to play professionally in Mexico, Jordan and China. During the summers, with his mother fully recovered, Donald would come home to chip away at his degree.

After an internship with Joint Action and Community Service, a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth find productive jobs, Donald decided to shelve his hoop dreams and begin what is now a 13- year career in workforce and economic development.

Along the way, Donald came back to earn his MBA. As the workforce innovation and opportunity act services director for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, Donald has been recognized as one of Georgia Trend’s 40 under 40.

In January, Donald headed to Washington D.C. to become executive director for the Workforce Investment Council there.

“There’s a lot of responsibility,” he said of his work, “but you’re also able to see how lives are changed and having some influence on that is something I am really proud of.”

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IN THE CITY ing dorsal hippocampal neurons following a meal involving sweets accelerates the onset of the next meal and causes rats to eat more.

Forming memories of meals is important to a healthy diet. Studies show that disrupting the memory of a meal, such as by watching television, increases the amount of food consumed during the next meal. Researchers have found that people with amnesia will eat again if presented with food, even if they’ve already eaten, because they have no memory of the meal.

To understand energy regulation and the causes of obesity, scientists must consider how the brain controls meal onset and frequency, Parent said.

Studies have found that increased snacking is correlated positively with obesity, and obese individuals snack more frequently than people who aren’t obese. Research also shows that over the past three decades, children and adults are eating more snacks per day and deriving more of their daily calories from snacks, mostly in the form of desserts and sweetened beverages.

PROTECTING THE GENOME Professor gets major grant to study cancer and DNA replication.

Ivaylo Ivanov, associate professor of chemistry, has received a five-year, $1.675 million federal grant to study how problems with DNA replication and repair may lead to cancer susceptibility and inheritable genetic diseases.

DNA replication and repair are essential life processes that are critical for maintaining the genome, or an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes.

Ivanov will analyze certain core replication complexes that are crucial for repairing damaged DNA and intimately connected to cancer initiation and progression.

“This has implications for human health because the maintenance of the genome is tightly linked to disease, specifically cancer or inherited genetic disorders,” Ivanov said.

Ivanov will use advanced computational methods to analyze structural data that are supplied by collaborators from across the country. His goal is to model and structurally characterize the assembly of key proteins that are critical in DNA replication and repair activities.

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3,600

Undergraduate students admitted in December. Of those students, 673 were admitted to the Honors College.

CREATIVITY THE BOOK ON GALILEO Associate Professor of History Nick Wilding is lauded for his research on the influential scientist.

Nick Wilding may be the preeminent researcher on famed Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. In 2008, he discovered an important Galileo biography that had been missing for 200 years, and in 2014 he discovered a forgery in “The Siderius Nuncius,” Galileo’s most important work, that led to the arrest of a rare-book criminal.

Late last year, the Modern Language Association of America presented Wilding with the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies for his new book, “Galileo’s Idol: Gianfrancesco Sagredo and the Politics of Knowledge.”

The award is bestowed biennially for an outstanding book by a member of the association in the field of Italian literature or comparative literature.

The selection committee’s citation for Wilding’s book reads, “‘Galileo’s Idol’ presents a vivid portrayal of a peculiar but very fruitful interaction between two early modern men — Sagredo was Galileo’s student and patron and friend.”

ATHLETICS CONFERENCE TRIUMVIRATE Panthers’ quarterback, wide receiver and head coach headline All-Sun Belt team.

Georgia State boasts the Sun Belt Conference Student-Athlete of the Year, quarterback Nick Arbuckle, Freshman of the Year, wide receiver Penny Hart, and the

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league’s Coach of the Year, Trent Miles.

Wide receiver Robert Davis and safety Tarris Batiste were also named first-team AllSun Belt performers.

Miles, who led the team to the program’s first bowl game, gave credit to his fellow coaches.

“I’m very honored and humbled, but the award really goes to our coaching staff,” Miles said.

Arbuckle finished season by setting Sun Belt records with 4,368 yards passing and 4,273 yards of total offense. He also owns Georgia State season records for completions (307), touchdown passes (28) and total offense (4,273).

Arbuckle’s top target during the season was Hart, who led the Sun Belt in receptions (5.5 per game) and receiving yards (84.5 per game) while ranking third with eight touchdown receptions. He tied the Georgia State season records with 71 receptions and eight touchdown catches and set a Sun Belt freshman record with 1,099 receiving yards, the second-highest season total in school history.

WITH CLASS Student-athletes post highest-ever GPA. Georgia State student-athletes capped a year of unprecedented success on the playing field with another record-setting year in the classroom, ending the fall semester with a 3.17 cumulative grade-point average (GPA) the highest figure on record, and a 3.16 semester GPA, equaling the program high.

The Athletic Department has posted a GPA of 3.0 or higher (semester or cumulative) for 15 consecutive semesters, dating back to the fall of 2008. The Panthers have been at 3.12 or higher for both semester and cumulative GPA for the last three full semesters.

Twelve Georgia State programs achieved a team GPA of 3.0 or better for the semester, led by women’s golf (3.79), cross country (3.78), beach volleyball (3.72) and men’s golf (3.52).

A total 206 student-athletes earned aca-

A BETTER METHOD

ProCA1.GRPR, which can image GRPR without the use of radiation, is expected to have implications for early cancer detection.

BIOMARKER

Gastrin-releasing peptide receptors (GRPR) are expressed on the surfaces of various diseased cells, including prostate and lung cancer.

• Share your Success Class Notes are sharable through Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Post your

good new and share with your network by visiting magazine.gsu.edu/addclass-notes.

demic honors for the fall semester, including a record 44 Panthers on the President’s List. Georgia State’s highest academic distinction signifies a semester GPA of 4.0 or higher with at least nine credit hours. The Athletic Department boasts 20 or more President’s List honorees for the sixth straight semester.

The softball program led the way with seven President’s List honorees, followed by baseball and beach volleyball with six each and football, women’s Percent of newly adsoccer and wommitted students are en’s golf with four from Georgia, while apiece.

14 percent are outAnother 70 inof-state applicants. dividuals achieved Dean’s List status with a semester GPA of 3.5 or higher and at least nine credit hours, while 92 student-athletes were named to the Athletic Director’s Honor Roll with a semester GPA of 3.2 or higher.

86 RADIATION EFFECTS

Monitoring GRPR using magnetic resonance imaging is hampered by other imaging agents used to spot cancerous tissue.

ENHANCING EARLY DETECTION

ALUMNI

GEORGIA STATE RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVELOPED A NEW WAY TO MORE EFFECTIVELY DIAGNOSE AND TREAT CANCERS. A new technique developed at Georgia State has shown to be an accurate and non-invasive method to trace changes in cancers and treatment without using radiation.

Led by Jenny Yang, Distinguished University Professor and associate director of the Center for Diagnostics and Therapeutics, researchers developed a new imaging agent they named ProCA1.GRPR and demonstrated that it leads to strong tumor penetration and is capable of targeting the gastrin-

ILLUSTRATION BY THOMAS POROSTOCKY

releasing peptide receptor expressed on the surface of diseased cells, including prostate, cervical and lung cancer.

“ProCA1.GRPR has a strong clinical translation for human application and represents a major step forward in the quantitative imaging of disease biomarkers without the use of radiation,” Yang said. “This information is valuable for staging disease progression and monitoring treatment effects.”

The researchers’ results are an important advance-

ment for molecular imaging with a unique ability to quantitatively detect expression level and spatial distribution of disease predictors without using radiation.

Improved imaging agents such as ProCA1.

GRPR have implications in understanding disease development and treatment.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the University of Georgia Bio-imaging Research Center and Georgia Research Alliance Ventures.

CITY BEAUTIFUL Dan Reuter (M.S. ’92) manages the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Centers Initiative.

For Dan Reuter, a bad economy turned out to be a good thing. Reuter hoped to start a career as a land developer, but because of a poor market in the late 1980s, he found himself pursuing a graduate degree at Georgia State instead.

“I wanted to study problems in big cities and urban places, specifically the metro Atlanta area, including the creation of more mixed-use livable urban centers,” Reuter said.

He now manages the Livable Centers Initiative of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s (ARC) Center for Livable Communities. This initiative was created in 1999 — the same year Reuter joined the ARC — to help fund CONT’D ON P.15

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MARIA’S WAY The CEO of Hemophilia of Georgia has led an altruistic career spanning three decades.

BY BEN AUSTIN (B.A. ’03, M.A. ’13)

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PHOTO BY ANDREW THOMAS LEE

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aria Perez Manahan (B.S. ’94, M.S. ’96) contemplated her next step. Her boss was retiring. It was expected that she would add her resume with the other hopefuls to lead Hemophilia of Georgia. She wasn’t so sure.

“Am I wired like a CEO?” she wondered.

On paper, yes. Working her way from office assistant to vice president, Manahan’s life encompassed the experiences and training that lead one to the final stop in the chain of command. Chief executive was the natural fit.

Forty-five years earlier the question would have registered purely as fantasy.

When she was nine, her father relocated the family from Cuba to another island — Manhattan — for six months before settling finally in Atlanta.

“You can imagine leaving Cuba in the middle of winter and arriving in New York City in January with no coats, nothing,” Manahan said.

In the summer of 1971 the family moved to Atlanta and learning became a constant in her life. She learned conversational English in a couple of months; she elevated to the top of her class by seventh grade and graduated a year early. She got a job and began helping her parents financially.

“That’s all I wanted. A job.” she said “And [to] get married.”

He was a Georgia boy named Russell.

They met at church, and they married when Manahan was 19. Neither attended college, both worked very hard, and a few years later her daughter Natalie was born.

Manahan got a secretarial job at a church with a daycare to keep Natalie close. She was good at the job, but the family always would make only just enough. She and her husband talked it over, and decided Maria would enroll in college.

A few years after graduation she returned to get her master’s, this time concentrating on the business side. That path, nonprofit first, business later, fit her.

“I could have gone into business,” she said. “But I don’t think I would have been as fulfilled as I am in the nonprofit sector.”

This past March came the news. Maria Perez Manahan, who came to the United States as a stranger in a strange land, would be adding a new title to her resume.

• Shared Experiences Visit magazine.gsu.edu for a Web exclusive story on how life growing up

development projects in municipalities across the metro area.

Reuter’s division handles state-required local and regional planning special programs like housing, creating walkable mixed-use spaces, planning around MARTA rail stations and leadership programs.

Reuter lists many reasons why Atlanta is unique in its urban development, such as its high in-migration rate from more expensive areas, “legacy assets” such as Coca-Cola and Home Depot, its standing as the cradle of the Civil Rights moveGeorgia State’s place ment, and instituin a U.S. News ranktions such as The ing of the top collegCarter Center and es making the most Hartsfield-Jackinnovative improveson International ments in terms of Airport. curriculum, faculty, However, Atlanstudents, campus ta also faces devellife, technology or opment hurdles. facilities.

“Growth patterns are creating more urban densities, leading to gentrification of neighborhoods,” Reuter said. “Atlanta will see a lot of displacement and new challenges as a result.”

Although many planning challenges can be both positive and negative, there is a solution that Atlanta has a rich history in producing.

“Most of the issues in big cities aren’t drawing something on a piece of paper, but about making partnerships and getting resources to take action,” Reuter said.

“A lot of different skills are needed.”

as “military brats” has made a positive impact on five women’s basketball players.

• Panther Cub Club Panthers under 10 are eligible to join the Panther Cub Club. Cubs will receive

an official Panther birth certificate and a special gift. Visit pantheralumni. com to join .

5

CHANGE AGENT Cheryl Johnson (B.A. ‘08, M.A. ’11) leads the emerging work on HIV self-testing Cheryl Johnson’s groundbreaking work is creating ripple effects internationally.

After earning her master’s degree in anthropology and a certificate of Public Health, Johnson accepted a position as a Global Health Fellow, where she had the opportunity to intern at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“I was tasked to learn everything I could about HIV self-testing and what the implications might be for global health,” she said. “In the process, I found my passion for HIV testing and innovative approach-

ILLUSTRATION BY ADAM CRUFT

CHERYL JOHNSON (B.A. ’08, M.A. ’11)

“I was tasked to learn everything I could about HIV self-testing and what the implications might be for global health.” es, like self-testing, to improve global access to health services.”

Her time with USAID showed her a unique route for channeling that passion.

In 2013, Johnson accepted a job with the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide technical support on HIV testing services.

Her time with the WHO has been nothing short of dynamic.

“One of the most rewarding parts of my career has been the development of the WHO Consolidated Guidelines on HIV testing services, which includes new approaches like self-testing and allowing lay

provider HIV testing services,” she said.

Her work has worldwide impact — and the world is taking notice. Johnson was featured on the Forbes Magazine 2016 list of 30 under 30 for Healthcare.

“The most rewarding part has been the opportunity to connect and collaborate with so many communities, policymakers and health experts all over the world,” she said. “And to work together to improve health outcomes and the provision of quality health services every single day.”

Got a promotion? A new addition to the family? Go ahead, brag a little. Visit magazine.gsu.edu for news from your classmates and fellow Georgia State alumni.

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The phenomenon of helicopter parenting in higher ed

BY SONYA COLLINS I L LU ST R AT I O N S BY R . K I K U O J O H N S O N

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When I was kid, my mom would send me out to play after breakfast and I wouldn’t come home until dinner.

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Scores of older Americans describe their childhoods this way. Kids today know little of this freedom to wander during unstructured Saturdays. Between organized play dates and soccer games coached by mom or dad, today’s kids grow up with a lot more parental supervision than their parents did.

One particular brand of supervision — where mom or dad is always hovering just a few feet away even after their children have grown — has become something of a cultural phenomenon.

Last year alone, helicopter parents and their adult children were the subject of stories in Forbes, Time, U.S. News & World Report, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, New York Post and Psychology Today.

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In these stories, parents called graduate school admissions offices on their children’s behalf and sat in on meetings with their grown son’s and daughter’s professional career coaches, among other jaw-dropping faux pas.

Studies show that the parenting style probably hasn’t reached the epidemic proportions the media suggest, but it is nevertheless a reality professors, administrators and students face at many universities.

What is helicopter parenting?

Helicopter parents, as they are portrayed in the media, are over-involved and oppressive, never letting their children make their own decisions and never letting them fail. But that’s not the whole story.

“Helicopter parenting has three elements: overinvolvement; not granting your child age-appropriate autonomy; and benevolent intentions. They don’t want to harm their kids. They want to protect them from harm,” says Kyong-Ah Kwon, an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development.

Kwon and her colleague Gary Bingham, also an associate professor in the college, recently published research on college students’ perceptions of helicopter parents in the Journal of Child and Family Studies.

Does it happen at Georgia State?

For Angela Hall-Godsey, associate director of the lower division in the Department of English, helicopter parents are all in a day’s work.

“We hear from parents when their student is failing a class or has been charged with plagiarism or academic dishonesty,” says Hall-Godsey. “We have parents who demand that their student be removed from a class because it requires them to use Twitter or Facebook and they don’t want their child — even though the student is 18 years old — on social media. Parents call because an instructor used profanity in class. They call to provide false alibis for their children when they’ve missed class.”

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits college faculty from discussing student information with parents. But when parents go to bat for their college students, the students sign those privacy rights away.

Hall-Godsey has faced parents who march into her office flanked with lawyers or a big entourage.

“A mother whose son had plagiarized came in and she was irate,” Hall-Godsey says. “She showed up with six other people and said that we were going to be in trouble. She really didn’t need all those people. It was intimidating.”

Another parent, a local judge, threatened to sue the university on a technicality. His daughter had been charged with plagiarism, and the father didn’t refute that. He wanted the charge dropped, however, because the university notified her via email rather than a pink carbon copy form.

“The old policy says that the student needs to be notified

We want children to have an internal locus of control, where they own their behavior, and they realize that what they did was their responsibility.

via triplicate — a pink piece of paper.

We’ve since gotten rid of that because we have email. So he claimed he was going to sue because his daughter didn’t receive a pink piece of paper,” Hall-Godsey recalls.

After the English Department retained legal counsel and spent a month preparing for the appeal, the young woman and her father didn’t show up.

“The threat to sue was just a bullying tactic,” Hall-Godsey says. “That’s the lesson he was attempting to teach his daughter: Don’t worry, if you plagiarize you can bully your way out of that.”

A changed worldview When these students get out into the world, Hall-Godsey suspects they are ill-equipped for adult responsibilities.

“I have to believe that students who understand that their education is their responsibility, and that they will suffer the consequences of their own bad choices, will learn how to make better choices,” she says. “That has to affect them as adults when they get out into the working world.”

Research shows that helicopter parents, by swooping in to solve their children’s problems, create in their kids a sense that the things that happen to them are not their fault.

“It creates what we call an external locus of control,” says Bingham. “We want children to have an internal locus of control, where they own their behavior, and they realize that what they did was their responsibility. And we want parents to realize that if they over-control their child, they’re often helping their child develop a very wrong way of looking at the world and how it works.”

Why now?

“Helicopter parent” is not a new term.

By some accounts it first appeared in Haim Ginott’s 1969 book “Between Parent and Teenager.” But mounting academic research suggests that the rise of this parenting style is a more recent phenomenon.

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Who are these parents?

A number of circumstances over the last few decades might help perpetuate the hovering. Some researchers mark the kidnappings of the late ’70s and early ’80s — such as six-year-olds Adam Walsh of Hollywood, Fla., and Etan Patz of New York City — as the end of the days when kids could roam free.

Children who once walked to school alone now don’t even wait at the bus stop alone.

These days, so-called “free-range parents,” who let their kids walk to school or play in the park unsupervised, may be considered more anomalous than their helicopter counterparts. In the last couple of years, parents in South Carolina, Florida and Maryland were arrested or investigated for child neglect because their children were playing in parks without an adult.

While fear of foul play — or of arrest for neglect — may motivate parents of little ones to hover, what keeps them in a holding pattern when their kids are 18, 19 and 20 years old?

“Technology,” says Kwon, “is partly to blame.” Today’s parents have unprecedented means — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram among countless other platforms — of surveilling their children. And adult children willingly tether themselves to parents through cell phones, dubbed by many “the world’s longest umbilical cord.” College kids who might’ve checked in with parents weekly just 20 years ago now interact with their folks by phone or text multiple times a day. The result is parents who are far more involved in the dayto-day lives of their grown children than those of generations past.

Technology also allows students and their parents to receive instant alerts about crime and other dangers happening on or near school campuses. The constant barrage of unsettling information can feed a parent’s suspicion that their child is alone in an unsafe world that they don’t know how to navigate.

And technology gives those anxious parents instant access to professors.

Phone numbers, email addresses, office locations and hours are all online.

Any parent can find a professor’s email address, but not all of them would consider making contact. When Kwon asked her colleagues in the College of Education and Human Development whether they had ever encountered a helicopter parent, those who had met them cited experiences at other schools that typically have a more affluent student body.

“In the 10 years I have taught here, I have had no helicopterparent experiences compared to three incidents while teaching one course at Emory,” says Rhina Fernandes Williams, a clinical assistant professor.

What’s the difference? For one thing, parents of Emory students are more likely to have gone to college themselves.

Forty percent of Georgia State students are the first in their family to go to college. A college degree may equip parents to offer their children specific advice on how to succeed in college and to intervene on their child’s behalf. They know how to navigate academia and it doesn’t intimidate them.

“Most of the parents I hear from went to college, or at least they claim they did,” says Hall-Godsey. “They’ll call and say that they received degrees from prestigious universities and that their child’s paper was well-written and should have received an A.” Parents of younger students may also be more likely to try to argue grades and policies with their children’s professors

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The helicopter parents are constantly telling their children, ‘This is how you play school.

This is how you win at this college thing, and this is how you win at life.’ At Georgia State, I feel like we need to be those mentors.

lack of these parental intercessions at Georgia State points to a different issue. While children of helicopter parents may need to learn to be independent, first-generation college students may need extra initiation into college life that other students don’t.

The university addresses some of these specific needs through the voluntary Gen1: First Generation Success Programs. Its mission is to foster a smooth transition into college for firstgeneration students. But Williams sees a place for professors to help these students individually as well.

“I think the helicopter parents are constantly telling their children, ‘This is how you play school. This is how you win at this college thing, and this is how you win at life.’ At Georgia State, I feel like we need to be those mentors,” says Williams. “That we don’t have as many helicopter parents means we need to be even more intentional and mindful of how we help our students become successful.”

What’s to be done? than those of students further along in their studies. Hall-Godsey frequently hears from parents of students in 1000and 2000-level classes, but never from parents of students in the 3000-level classes she teaches.

Here in Georgia, the HOPE scholarship might also prompt parents to fight their kids’ grades.

“Students on the HOPE Scholarship have to maintain a certain grade point average. So families feel they really have to argue the grades in order to try to keep that tuition assistance,” says Hall-Godsey.

Different students, different needs The majority of college students are probably not under helicopter control.

“Based on our research, the prevalence of helicopter parenting is probably a bit overestimated in the mass media,” Kwon says. “That’s partly because of the informant they interview with.

If they interview school counselors or administrators, they will hear about all sorts of problems because they are interviewing the people who deal with those issues.”

But the opposite extreme is not ideal either. Williams doesn’t miss the uncomfortable interactions she had with a handful of parents at Emory, but the

Sonya Collins is an Atlanta-based independent journalist who covers health, health policy and scientific research.

She is a regular contributor to WebMD Magazine, Pharmacy Today, Genome and CURE.

The airspace over Ivy League campuses may be more congested with hovering parents than the skies over downtown Atlanta. Still, faculty at colleges everywhere are meeting more meddlesome moms and dads than they did in decades past. At Georgia State, parent orientation seminars aim to clarify what is and isn’t an appropriate level of involvement.

“I’ve attended a couple of the seminars, and they’re very clear that parents can’t be involved because their children are adults now,” says Hall-Godsey. “They say that you can’t argue for a grade, but you can encourage your student to attend class and those kinds of things.”

But she doesn’t know if all the parents are getting the message. Few students try to resolve the problem directly with their professor before their parents contact Hall-Godsey.

“When the problem arises,” Hall-Godsey says, “it’s often that we hear from the parents right away. The students very rarely contact us. It’s just all of a sudden we start getting emails from a parent.”

Parents ought to encourage their children to solve these problems, says Bingham, rather than taking the situation into their own hands.

“Research shows parents need to provide a secure base.,” Bingham says. “You can be warm and supportive, but your child still needs to find the way to solve the problem his- or herself. Rather than ‘How can I help?’ there needs to be a switch to ‘What do you think?’ ‘What are you going to do?’”

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SAUTEE NACOOCHEE, GEORGIA— Beneath a craggy outcropping of Yonah Mountain here in the foothills of the Appalachians, rows and rows of vitis vinifera belonging to the Miller family grow on about 20 acres of hillsides. The vinifera, or old world wine grapes, include well known varietals such as sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, merlot and malbec.

That chardonnay, people swear, stacks up against some of the finest from Napa Valley.

“Six out of 10 chose ours,” says Eric Miller (B.Mu. ‘01), general manager for Yonah Mountain Vineyards, remembering a recent head to head against a celebrated Sonoma County chardonnay during one of the vineyard’s wine cave tours and tastings.

“People are starting to take notice of us up here,” Miller says.

He’s right, there’s something in these hills.

(Legend has it the gold nugget that set off Georgia’s gold rush of the 1890s was found in nearby Duke’s Creek). Yonah Mountain Vineyards is one of a dozen or so wineries that have sprung up in the area in the last 10 years, and a 2009 study by the University of Georgia’s Carl Vinson Institute estimates that wineries in North Georgia have an economic impact of nearly $17 million.

The Georgia mountain “terroir,” or all of a region’s influences that give the grapes their unique character and flavor, is taking off again.

Two years ago, the Chamber of Commerce for White County, where Yonah Mountain Vineyards is located, brought in Christina Ernst (B.A. ’98) to meet with the owners of the county’s seven winer-

ies to see how to better grow the industry.

Ernst and her husband Charles (B.A. ’98) run a full-service travel agency, and she’s made dozens of trips to the world’s finest wine-producing regions.

“It was pretty clear what we needed to connect the vineyards was a winery tour,” Ernst says.

And thus, VIP Southern Wine Tours was born, the first of its kind in North Georgia. It began humbly with just one 12-seat van and 60 tours. Today, Ernst has three vans in her fleet and in 2015 led more than 130 tours that took about 1,600 wine enthusiasts to the vineyards surrounding Sautee Nacoochee.

That it’s taken this long for the region’s wines to get back in the game is a story in itself, because the chances are good that those same hillsides the Miller family farms were used for growing fine wine grapes more than a century ago.

V I T I C U LT U R E I N THE PEACH STATE

Around the turn of the 20th century, Georgia was one of the nation’s leading producers of vinifera. In fact, Georgia’s founder, James Oglethorpe, introduced European viticulture to the state as a part of his economic plan.

But as the third wave of the temperance movement swept through the South, Georgia enacted a statewide prohibition from 1908 until 1935, a period that began before and lasted longer than national prohibition, which ran from 1920-1933. As a re-

Opposite: Charles (B.A. ‘98) and Christina Ernst (B.A. ’98) of VIP Southern Wine Tours.

Left: Eric Miller (B.Mu. ’01), general manager of Yonah Mountain Vineyards.

sult, the more than 20,000 acres of vinifera vines were yanked up.

“The revenuers didn’t stop there, they cursed the place, they salted the earth,” laments Michael Fisher, the region’s resident raconteur and a driver for VIP Southern Wine Tours. Fisher, better known as Captain Malbec in these parts, is holding court over a glass of Stonewall Creek Cabernet Franc from Tiger, Ga., at Stonewall Creek’s tasting room in Sautee Nacoochee, the first stop on Ernst’s wine tour.

Georgia’s once robust wine industry remained torn asunder until the mid 1990s when a new generation of vintners planted vines in the area. Today, there’s only about 250 acres dedicated to growing vinifera.

According to the Winegrowers Association of Georgia, there’s good reason why Oglethorpe and early winegrowers were attracted to the Georgia mountains. First, the elevation is just right; too low and the warmer climate fosters disease, too high and the cold weather can limit production.

But the greatest feature in the North Georgia terroir, Miller says, is the work of the sandy, red clay soils in the hillsides.

“The sandy soil up here is fantastic for grapes,” says Miller. “You want the vines to go deep and struggle, and the more they

“THE SANDY SOIL UP HERE IS FANTASTIC FOR GRAPES. YOU WANT THE VINES TO GO DEEP AND STRUGGLE, AND THE MORE THEY STRUGGLE, THE MORE IT PUTS THAT ENERGY INTO THE GRAPES. IT’S AN IDEAL SOIL.”

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struggle, the more it puts that energy into the grapes. It’s an ideal soil. The red clay is a good thing, too. It imparts flavors and repels water. And the hills provide natural irrigation.”

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS

Miller’s father, Bob, purchased the 200 acres where Yonah Mountain Vineyards operates in 2005 without the intention of building a winery.

“He was told he should plant something on the property to get an agricultural write-off,” Eric Miller says, laughing.

“So he planted some grapes.”

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Miller, who leads the Atlanta Falcons Drum Line and was percussion director for the Georgia Tech Marching Band, says that, with a little help from his father’s friends — mainly Yonah’s current winemaker Joe Smith — the land began to yield some outstanding wine.

“One day I got a call from my dad, and he said, ‘This is getting big,’” he remembers.

So the younger Miller headed north and joined the family business. As general manager, Miller oversees the day-today operations of the winery.

“From bookkeeping to barrels and bottles,” he says.

Since coming on board, Miller has over-

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seen a major expansion of the facility. The grounds now include a new tasting room and event space, but the crown jewel may be the Yonah Mountain wine cave. The cave, its walls stuccoed and lit by torch sconces, is a climate-controlled space where barrels upon barrels of the vino ages. It’s the only one of its kind in the state.

Miller’s next big plan is to offset some of the energy costs of running the business with solar power.

“We’re looking to install about 100 solar panels on the hills between the vines,” he said. “It’ll be like a solar farm.”

Last year, the winery produced about 3,000 cases, which makes it small by in-

MAP BY ALEXANDRA WANG

NORTH GEORGIA WINERIES 1 . Engelheim Vineyards, Ellijay engelheim.com 2. Chateau Meichtry Vineyards, Talking Rock chateaumeichtry.com 3. Sharp Mountain Vineyards, Jasper sharpmountainvineyards.com 4. Cartecay Vineyards, Ellijay cartecayvineyards.com 5. Serenberry Vineyards, Morganton serenberryvineyards.com

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15. Habersham Winery, Helen habershamwinery.com

6. Montaluce Winery & Estates, Dahlonega montaluce.com

16. Hightower Creek Vineyards, LLC, Hiawassee hightowercreekvineyards.com

7. Odom Springs Vineyard, Blairsville odomspringsvineyards.com

17. Stonewall Creek Vineyards, Tiger stonewallcreek.com

8. Paradise Hills Winery Resort & Spa, Blairsville paradisehillsresort.com

18. Tiger Mountain Vineyards, Tiger tigerwine.com

9. Cavender Creek Vineyards and Winery, Dahlonega cavendercreekvineyards.com

19. 12 Spies Vineyards, Rabun Gap 12spiesvineyards.com AT

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Cottage Syrah This is one of my favorite wines. It is not too heavy, and is a great wine to sip with a big steak! It is peppery but not too spicy.

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dustry standards. Miller says the business is just getting its legs, and he’s working to increase its distribution. Yonah Mountain wine can be found in several Atlanta area restaurants and fine wine shops.

“We’re still on the ground floor of this whole operation,” he says. “Our marketing has been basically just word of mouth.”

For her part, Ernst is happy to help spread the word. The daughter of an Austrian clockmaker, Ernst was born and raised in White County and she’d like nothing more than to see the area prosper.

She met her husband Charles when they were both at Georgia Perimeter College. They graduated from Georgia Perim-

Stonewall Creek Boriana This is a wonderful dry, white wine made from my favorite white grapes. It is a Petite Manseng. This is a great wine with seafood, or any food, really. Stonewall Creek Vineyard, Tiger, Ga. (17)

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10. Crane Creek Vineyards, Young Harris cranecreekvineyards.com

Babydoll Legs Great citrusy local wine. It is perfect to sip on the porch on a lazy summer afternoon. It is not as sweet as most blush wines, and that is why I like it. The Cottage Vineyard and Winery, Cleveland, Ga. (11)

Yonah Mountain Meritage This wine has some cherry and spicy flavors, and has a great finish. Yonah Mountain has many great wines, but this one is my go-to for dinner parties or gifts. Yonah Mountain Vineyard, Cleveland, Ga. (13)

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eter together, then transferred and graduated from Georgia State together. They were married in 2001.

“I had to convince him to move up here,” Ernst says. “He’s a city boy.”

Charles Ernst, who runs a photography and video business in the area, is just fine with the decision.

“Look around,” he says, motioning toward Yonah Mountain and the surrounding, undulating hills. “This place is beautiful, and people are figuring out that the wine being produced here is really good.”

Miller agrees, noting that the area is finally beating back a reputation that Georgia wine is just sweet stuff made from

muscadines and scuppernongs.

“Now, the region is like Napa was in the ’60s. It’s getting new respect,” Miller says.

Moreover, as Christina Ernst points out, the experience of a wine tasting or tour here is distinctly different from those in California and elsewhere.

“We’re all Southern, and it’s in our DNA to make sure everyone has a good time,” she says.

Miller, who cross-registered at Georgia Tech so he could play in the marching band, takes that to heart. He still sits on a drum kit on the weekends, his father at the piano, performing for the mingling tipplers in his family’s wine-tasting room.

ON E A Georgia State professor goes back to the future to preserve the look

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and lore of Atlanta’s iconic Manuel’s Tavern.

By CHARLES McNAIR

PREVIOUS SPREAD AND THIS PAGE, PHOTOS BY HASTINGS HUGGINS WORKS

case can be made that the best-known Atlantan of all time isn’t a King or Hartsfield, Scarlett or Rhett, Hammerin’ Hank or Ted ‘n Jane.

It might be Manuel. As in Manuel Maloof, founder of Manuel’s Tavern.

Manuel’s means pleasant memories to a couple of million Atlanta patrons who have entered the legendary watering hole at the corner of North and Highland avenues since Maloof drew his first pint in 1956. Many exited less steady but brimful of heady conversation, comfort food and...effervescence.

Maloof’s father arrived in Atlanta from Lebanon to open a store in Grant Park and then, downtown, Tip Top Billiard Parlor.

Manuel grew up to become a politician, commission chairman and CEO of DeKalb County. From a familiar booth in his own bar, he later held forth as éminence grise, an influential adviser to citizens and a man of vision who advocated for the creation of Lake Lanier and the preservation of Grady Hospital, where he’d been born. Manuel’s Tavern became the de facto back room of the all-powerful (at the time) Democratic Party.

“Once, the neural node of politics in just about every Southern capital save Atlanta was a Greek restaurant. Only in Atlanta was that function served by a bar owned by a gravel-voiced Lebanese,” says Tom Baxter, retired chief political correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and columnist for the Saporta Report.

“Over time, Manuel’s became the connection point for a great many types of groups and organizations, and has grown into an institution, some even say a church. The foundation was Manuel himself. If ever a man literally became the joint he owned, he did.”

Sportswriter Jack Wilkinson dubbed Manuel’s Tavern “The Vatican.” (Any white smoke rising over the rooftop today will likely be feathers shed from chickens in the rooftop coop Manuel’s son, Brian, added after his dad died in 2004.)

The cholesterol of history, 60 years of Atlanta memorabilia, clogs the walls of Manuel’s Tavern, an archive as important in its way as that of any museum of Atlanta history.

“For decades, Manuel’s Tavern has been a place of constancy and a harbor of memories in an ever-changing city,” says Ruth Dusseault, an artist and documentarian who teaches film production in the Communication Department at Georgia State. “The evidence is on the walls. Manuel’s is a 60-year installation curated by its owners. It’s a record of a generation of cops, soldiers and politicians gathered to eat pork chops in a neighborhood occupied by hippies, emigrants and punks.”

Dusseault had an artist’s appraising eye for Manuel’s historical arcana — the plaques and political items, the paintings and photographs of Atlanta’s known and anonymous, the books and bottles, even the urns bearing the ashes of Manuel himself and another gone-but-not-forgotten patron.

That sense of place propelled Dusseault and Georgia State, in collaboration with a number of other venerable Atlanta institutions, into a worthy, if unlikely, digital humanities project.

It’s called Unpacking Manuel’s Tavern.

And thereby hangs a tale.

Jill Frank (far left), a lecturer in the Welch School of Art and Design, and Ruth Dusseault (seated), lecturer in the Department of Communication, are part of a team of artists and academics documenting the contents of Manuel’s Tavern.

Over time, Manuel’s became the connection point for a great many types of groups and organizations, and has grown into an institution, some even say a church.

Fears of losing the comfortable, unpretentious authenticity of Manuel’s Tavern to fern bar gentrification ran wild. Maloof explained tirelessly that the tavern would remain “where it is and as it is.” He assured the faithful that Green Street Properties recognized the value of the bluecollar establishment and the tight knot it held in the fabric of Atlanta’s culture and history. Not since The Coca-Cola Company attempted to introduce New Coke had such skepticism frothed Atlanta.

Enter Dusseault, bringing the kind of reassurance that settled the petite revolt once and for all.

“We came to Brian with the idea of creating a searchable, digital archive of all of

GIGAPAN IMAGE COURTESY OF RUTH DUSSEAULT

ATLANTA’S OWN STRANGE DISNEY WORLD In 2015, Brian Maloof startled Manuel’s devout congregation.

Maloof announced the sale of 1.6 acres of land under the tavern and its parking lot to a developer, Green Street Properties, for transformation into a mixed-use retail/ residential complex. He said the bar would remain, though it would close on December 27, 2015, for several months while the 108-year-old building’s structure and infrastructure got an upgrade. (Maloof will still own and operate the family place under a long-term lease.)

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A user is literally unpacking the memories associated with every little object, just like when a person moves into a new house and opens up the boxes.

mation on an oil painting of former Georgia Governor and U.S. Senator Zell Miller or an audio of the esteemed late author (and Manuel’s patron) Paul Hemphill reading from one of his signed first editions on the tavern’s shelves or a video of a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter announcing at Manuel’s his candidacy for governor of Georgia, with a presidency and a Nobel Peace Prize ahead of him.

Dusseault says it will be the task of students at Georgia State and other institutions to fill in the blanks.

“This is basically designed for educators to use as a tool to give students something to research,” she says. “Whether the major is urban design or archaeology, you want your students to think like journalists or detectives.

“I’ve always been interested in bringing students out of the classroom and exposing them to other perspectives in other disciplines and engaging them in the production of public knowledge and public scholarship. Students need to learn what the world is like.”

The project also models a spirited collaboration among universities that sometimes compete for talent, students, funds and prestige.

Brennan Collins, associate director at Georgia State’s Center for Instructional Effectiveness, helped connect the project to the manpower and brainpower of the Atlanta Studies Net-

PHOTO BY HASTINGS HUGGINS WORKS

the items on the tavern walls,” she says.

“He was very enthusiastic.”

“I’ve always seen this place as an amazing strange Disney World,” Maloof explains. “What’s exciting to me is that other people are going to see it now through the lens that I do.”

Think of Dusseault’s online brainchild as Google Earth meets Ancestors.com.

Using special cameras and technology, she and a multidisciplinary team from Georgia State, Emory and Savannah College of Art and Design, plus a collection of volunteer students and lovers of the tavern, painstakingly photographed every inch of the walls inside the tavern.

They worked after-hours setting up the equivalent of a Hollywood movie shoot (tracks, lighting, special cameras, etc.) without a budget.

The GigaPan technology (high-resolution, digital, interactive, panoramic, the same imagery technology used aboard the United States spacecraft now prowling the surface of Mars) and a 3-D laser scanner bought for the project by Georgia State instructor and mapping specialist Joe Hurley allowed two things to happen.

First, after the tavern’s face-lift, Maloof will be able to recreate, down to the last 60-year-old French fry in the corner, the interior of the original Manuel’s. Every political bumper sticker and pin can be placed exactly where it was before the renovation.

(Maloof also plans to keep the same chairs, the same tables and, yes, the same chicken house on the roof that makes customers happy with fresh organic eggs.)

Second, the technology provides an archive, with exquisite detail, of Atlanta’s political, literary, sports, arts and overall cultural history.

“Imagine an image of a wall that is a matrix of hundreds of close-up photographs all stitched together, like a wall of little drawers,” says Dusseault. “A user will be able to isolate a single photograph and zoom in to see details and read inscriptions … and out comes its story in the form of a pop-up menu. The media can be text, image, audio file, video file or other links.

“A user,” she says, “is literally unpacking the memories associated with every little object, just like when a person moves into a new house and opens up the boxes.”

The project’s 3-D scans let online users “walk” from room to room, as in a video game. They can potentially reach a wall they want, click on it, and get text infor-

work. That’s a collaboration among Georgia State and librarians in Emory’s Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library, the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, faculty and graduate students, and colleagues at Kennesaw State, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Atlanta History Center.

“It has been exciting to see how the Unpacking Manuel’s project has shown how effective this type of network can be,” says Collins. “This is a massive project that many in the community care deeply about. No one person, department or school could do this on their own.

“I think what the Manuel’s project shows,” Collins adds, “is that a local project can be a way for faculty and students from multiple universities to use their expertise — history, political science, photography, etc. — to help create something meaningful for their community.”

From atop a stepstool, Michael Page (B.S. ’01, M.S. ‘05) a lecturer in Geo­ spatial Sciences and Technology at Emory, uses a GigaPan robotic camera head to scan the walls of the tavern.

CLICKS TO THE CORTEX The day will come, late spring of 2016, when Manuel’s Tavern will reopen with lights that work and plumbing that flushes. The smiling faces of familiar waiters and bar tenders will greet old friends over suds and McCloskey burgers.

How did the burger get its name? Click the Unpacking Manuel’s online archive, and it may be possible to find out.

If the student sleuths do their research extensively enough, you’ll also learn how writer Jamie Iredell, who earned his Ph.D. at Georgia State, finds inspiration at Manuel’s Tavern.

“Hardly ever do I walk into Manuel’s,” Iredell says, “and not run into a fellow writer, with whom I might talk over a beer about the work we’ve been clanking away at.”

Click another spot on the website wall. Learn how former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes late at night sat untroubled at the bar.

“He was just a guy hanging out at Manuel’s,” says Brian Maloof.

“It was pretty neat to see the governor doing that.”

Click. Learn about the Pulitzer Pack: Ralph McGill, editor and publisher of the Atlanta Constitution. Hank Klibanoff, co-author with Gene Roberts of “The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation.” Doug Blackmon, author of “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.” Cynthia Tucker, editorial page editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). See work by the brilliant AJC political cartoonist Mike Luckovich or “Driving Miss Daisy” playwright Alfred Uhry. All these Atlantans graced tavern tables through the years. All are remembered in the unpacking.

Click. Here’s a testimonial from Atlanta attorney Mark Baker, at Manuel’s with this author when Pulitzer winner and later Poet Laureate of the United States Natasha Trethewey entered.

“When she joined us at the table, she asked me what I did to keep the bills paid. I’m an attorney, I murmured, hoping to avoid the inevitable follow-up question: What kind of law do you practice?

“Well, I hemmed, I represent banks. She stared for a moment, and with a sly smile hit me where it hurts. Oh my. How do you sleep?”

Charles McNair publishes nationally and internationally. He is the author of two novels, “Pickett’s Charge” and “Land O’ Goshen.”

He was books editor at Paste Magazine from 2005-’15. McNair lives in Bogota, Colombia.

(Within a year, Baker left his partnership to develop his own intellectual property and entertainment law practice.)

Click. See local citizens banding together at Manuel’s to stop the powerful Georgia Department of Transportation’s ambitions to build freeways through four historic neighborhoods.

“Manuel’s was the place where people would meet, go chain themselves to a tree and then come back and have a beer,” recalls Angelo Fuster, political consultant and a spokesperson for the bar.

Manuel himself mentored a younger Fuster in politics.

Click. Click. Click. Download the shenanigans of Nerd Night. The Magic Club.

The fly fishermen meetings. The improv group, Laughing Matters. The electric car club. The old-time fiddlers group. The Pathfinders. The book debuts (including this author’s second novel, “Pickett’s Charge,” in 2013).

Learn how customers watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon and the assassination of JFK and the burial of MLK. Click for the tavern visits of President Carter, Bill and Hillary, Al and Tipper, the migratory flocks of other notable politicians.

Maybe the most important result of Dusseault’s project will be the rekindling at Manuel’s of a sense of place, an institutional memory.

“Some of our students from Georgia State have experienced nothing in the suburbs more than 10 years old,” Dusseault says. “They have a sense of floating. They have nothing to attach them to the past.

“Most of the research will be done by people in their 20s and 30s,” she says, “so it’s a way for the new residents to connect to the memory of the place and have some sense of ownership with the neighborhood and Atlanta.”

Click one more time. Hear Brian Maloof on Manuel’s Tavern.

For him, it’s as personal as anything ever gets.

“The bar here was at the Tip Top, my grandfather’s place. There’s been somebody named Maloof behind that bar for more than 80 years. There’s not a day that goes by that I put the key in the door and I don’t think of my grandfather and my uncle and my dad.”

Atlanta will remember them too in years to come, thanks to Dusseault, her team of local academic archivists and her GigaPan, 3-D vision.

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INSIDE INSIGHT LOCKED IN • Head Coach Trent Miles (center) leads his Panthers onto the field of the inaugural

AutoNation Cure Bowl. It was the first bowl game for the program and unfortunately ended as a 27-16 loss to San Jose State. It took a dramatic mid-season turnaround to become bowl eligible, however. Georgia State’s record stood at 2-6 Nov. 7, but the team stormed back to win its next four games — including a 34-7 demolition of Georgia Southern in Statesboro, Ga. — to get to Orlando, Fla. “That showed a team that would never quit, never gave up on each other, believed in what was going on,” Miles said after the game.

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