Honors Magazine, fall 2020

HONORS Magazine of the University of Georgia Honors Program

60

Fall 2020

years of

HONORS at the University of Georgia

INSIDE:

Rhodes Scholar

| UGA in Space | Math Major | Feed the Frontlines | UGACounts | Student Support

Tony Thawanyarat An Honors alumnus from Atlanta, Tony Thawanyarat is a first-year medical student at the Augusta University/University of Georgia Medical Partnership. This past May, he completed his bachelor’s degree in economics (with a minor in biology and certificate in personal and organizational leadership).

He hopes to match into a surgical residency program. Eventually, Tony would like to explore different business schools to find an MBA program that can help him better understand the practice and management of medicine.

“The beautiful campus, culture, and community that Athens had to offer, coupled with a superlative Honors Program and the first-rate Terry College of Business, led me to UGA. I knew the Classic City was the place for me.�

Andrew Davis Tucker

Read more about Tony online at news.uga.edu/amazing-student-tony-thawanyarat.

60 HONORS years of

Fall 2020, Volume 7, Issue 2

at the University of Georgia

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University of Georgia President

Jere W. Morehead Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost

S. Jack Hu

Associate Provost & Director of the Honors Program

David S. Williams

Associate Director of the Honors Program

Maria Navarro

Assistant Director & Major Scholarships Coordinator

Jessica Hunt

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20

Assistant Director & Programming Coordinator

Maria de Rocher

Assistant Director of Development

Colleen Pruitt

Magazine staff Editor/Designer

36

Stephanie Schupska Writers

Kora Burton, Sara Freeland, Eric Rangus, Stephanie Schupska Photographers

Paul Efland, Nancy Evelyn, Peter Frey, Matt Hardy, Walker Montgomery, Chad Osburn, Dot Paul, Stephanie Schupska, Andrew Davis Tucker, Cassie Wright Proofreaders/additional assistance

Michelle Belikova, Kora Burton Honors Magazine is published biannually for students, alumni, friends, and supporters of the University of Georgia Honors Program.

For reprint permissions, address changes, or additional copies, email schupska@uga.edu.

Copyright © 2020 by the University of Georgia. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any way without permission from the editor. The University of Georgia is committed to principles of equal opportunity and affirmative action.

Postmaster | Send address changes to: UGA Honors Program Magazine 005 Moore College, 108 Herty Drive Athens, GA 30602-6116

Find us online at honors.uga.edu.

On social media, we are:

@HonorsAtUGA

Inside 2

Briefs

6

For the love of math

8 10 20 24

Highlights of the Honors Program

Trevyn Gray finds an outlet for his passion through math education

Q&A with the director David S. Williams discusses today’s successes and tomorrow’s challenges

60 years of Honors The Honors Program looks back on 60 years at the University of Georgia

Rhodes Scholar Education major Phaidra Buchanan is named UGA’s 25th Rhodes Scholar

Udall Scholar Angela Tsao focuses on computer science and sustainability

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Staff spotlight

30

UGA in space

34

Feed the Frontlines

36

Census 2020

39

Extremely thankful

40

Alumna gives back

Two Honors alumni in the Major Scholarships Office share stories

UGA’s Small Satellite Lab just watched its first satellite enter orbit

Collaboration provides meals for health care workers in Georgia

Honors students help Athens-Clarke County accurately enumerate residents

Brian Quinif, vice president at HSBC, is a trader for the Latin American market

Kit Trensch says her support is always ‘all about the students’

HONORS

in Brief

Flexible classrooms

Engineering content This summer, Honors sophomore Celena Michaud interned as an online instructional content designer for the College of Engineering.

“My experience in computer systems engineering,” she said, “guided me toward helping professors teaching foundational engineering courses create more supplemental content for their lectures.”

She and other engineering students helped faculty as they developed instructional content to aid in the rapid transition to online and remote learning environments. They also created materials for foundational courses to help compensate for lessened face-to-face instruction during fall 2020.

Celena is working toward a degree in computer systems engineering. In fall 2019, she completed the first of five full-time semester-long rotations in Savannah interning for Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation. In the photo at right, she is soldering electrical connections for an embedded systems robot.

Graduate education

NSF fellowships

Mental health help

Breaking barriers Ciera Thomas, an Honors junior majoring in microbiology, is currently Senate President Pro-Tempore for the UGA Student Government Association.

Last school year, she spearheaded Breaking Barriers, a week of programming co-hosted by the University Health Center that focused on mental health awareness and crisis prevention.

“I was tasked with leading the efficient revision of legislation pertaining to organizational and student-conceived initiatives,” she said. “This role is one central to our ability to effectively represent the voices of over 30,000 students as it allows us to actively engage with our constituents and work toward resolving the issues they face on our campus.”

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Seven Honors Program alumni were among 10 University of Georgia graduates recognized this year through the highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support with an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the institution.

The 2020 Honors recipients are listed below along with their graduation years, UGA degrees, graduate institution, and graduate program.

• Jacob Lee Beckham, graduated from UGA in December 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, attending William Marsh Rice University for a Ph.D. in chemistry (chemical synthesis) • Mackenzie Joy, graduated from UGA in May 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and astronomy, attending the University of California, Berkeley for a Ph.D. in physics • Katie Luedecke, graduated from UGA in May 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, attending the California Institute of Technology for a Ph.D. in chemistry (chemical synthesis) • Arturia Melson-Silimon, graduated from UGA in May 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, attending UGA for a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology • Bailey Palmer, graduated from UGA in May 2018 with bachelor’s degrees in Arabic and economics, attending the University of California, Berkeley for a Ph.D. in economics • Jordan Peeples, graduated from UGA in May 2019 with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics, attending the University of Pennsylvania for a Ph.D. in economics • Zach Weingarten, graduated from UGA in May 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in economics, attending the University of Pennsylvania for a Ph.D. in economics

Class of 2020

Outstanding Honors Students The Honors Program celebrated its Outstanding Honors Students for the Class of 2020 through congratulatory emails and social media this spring in lieu of the usual April banquet. The honorees (from left to right, top to bottom), their majors, and their awards are listed below: • Logan Ballard; biochemistry and molecular biology and microbiology; Alan J. Jaworski Science Award, Life Science • Shelby Boykin; finance and real estate; Outstanding Honors Student in Business • Paige Collins; classics and history; Outstanding Honors Student in the Humanities • Hannah Dickens; sociology, psychology, and criminal justice; Outstanding Honors Student in the Social Sciences • Monte Fischer; mathematics (BS/MA) and computer science (BS); Alan J. Jaworski Science Award, Physical Science • Austin Gibbons; political science and public relations; George M. Abney Award (Grady College Outstanding Honors Student Award) • Janelle Hampton; early childhood education; Outstanding Honors Student in Education • Grace Anne Ingham; environmental

economics and management; Outstanding Honors Student in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences • Lauren Lewis; human development and family science; Outstanding Honors

Student in Family and Consumer Sciences • Katie Luedecke; chemistry; Joy P. Williams Science Awards, Physical Science • Callan Russell; genetics; Joy P. Williams Science Awards, Life Science

New Student Orientation

Undergraduate welcome Joseph Benken guided incoming undergraduates this past summer as they were virtually welcomed to the University of Georgia through New Student Orientation.

In October 2019, he was one of 16 students selected as an orientation leader from more than 340 applicants. An Honors junior majoring in international business and business management, he collaborated with New Student Orientation staff to welcome 8,000-plus new students to campus. He provided mentoring for more than 40 students each session as he introduced students to academic opportunities and campus engagement activities.

“Each week I was able to meet and develop relationships with incoming first-year students,” he said. “Through the use of small groups, webinars, and panels, I assisted parents and students through the transition to college during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Joseph also presented at the Southeast Regional Orientation Workshop on team development and how to effectively use prior experiences in times of uncertainty.

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HONORS

in Brief

Alumni achievements

Georgia Writers Hall of Fame The literary achievements of A. E. Stallings—award-winning poet and translator, noted essayist and reviewer—go hand in hand with the high regard her readers, critics, and fellow poets and translators on both sides of the Atlantic have for the Georgia-born writer and her work.

Alicia Elsbeth Stallings grew up in Decatur with her parents and sister and attended DeKalb County’s Briarcliff High School, where her literary aspirations took hold. She published poems in Cat Fancy and Seventeen Magazine in her teens. She studied Latin at UGA where she was an Honors student and Foundation Fellow (AB, ’90) and then earned a degree in classical languages and literature at Oxford University in England (MSt, 1991). Since 1999 she has lived in Athens, Greece.

In interviews, when asked about what influence her work with classical writing has had on her own work, “the ancients taught me how to sound modern,” she told Forbes magazine in 2009.

“They showed me that technique was not the enemy of urgency, but the instrument.”

In 1999 her poetry collection, Archaic Smile, won the Richard Wilbur Award. She has since published three more collections of her poetry. Hapax (2006) won the Poets’ Prize, from a jury of 20 American poets, as the year’s best book of American poetry. Olives (2012) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Alumni honors

Eight Honors Program alumni were selected for UGA’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2020.

The UGA Alumni Association’s annual program began in 2011 and celebrates the personal, professional, and philanthropic achievements of UGA graduates under the age of 40.

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Her collection Like (2019) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her translation of De rerum natura (The Nature of Things) by the Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius was published as a Penguin Classics book in 2009. The London’s Times Literary Supplement editor called A. E.’s version of the Epicurean classic, “one of the most extraordinary classical translations of recent times.” Her next book translation—the ancient Greek poet Hesiod’s 800-line poem Erga kai Hēmerai (Works and Days), another Penguin Classics publication—was a finalist for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award.

In 2011, she was given a MacArthur Foundation fellowship— commonly known as the “genius grant.” In 2012, she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In fall 2019, she published her most recent book, her translation of the ancient Greek fable The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice (BatrachomyomachiaI).

—Adapted from her Georgia Writers Hall of Fame biography

Ginny Barton Bowen (BS ’04) Atlanta, Georgia Lieutenant Commander, CDC, US Public Health Service

Cheryl L. Maier

(AB ’04, BS ’04) Atlanta, Georgia Medical Director, Emory Special Coagulation Laboratory

Laine Bradshaw

Jay McCracken

(BSED ’07, MED ’07, PHD ’11) Athens, Georgia Founder and CEO, Navvy Education LLC

(BS ’05) Atlanta, Georgia Neurosurgical Oncologist, Piedmont Atlanta Hospital Brain Tumor Center

Wells Ellenberg

Erin Mordecai

Houston A. Gaines

Charles T. Tuggle III

(AB ’13) Washington, DC Governmental Affairs Manager, Southern Company

(AB ’17, AB ’17) Athens, Georgia State Representative, Georgia General Assembly

(BS ’07) Stanford, California Assistant Professor of Biology, Stanford University

(BS ’05) New Orleans, Louisiana Assistant Professor of Clinical Surgery, LSU Health Sciences Center

MicroRNA discovery

Eye cancer research

Spring in the fall

Honors cords The Honors Program hosted a socially distanced cord and certificate pickup for graduates attending the spring undergraduate Commencement ceremony on Oct. 16 in Sanford Stadium. Honors student worker Jack Cenatempo, right, hands an Honors graduation cord and certificate to Aven Jones, who completed degrees in fine arts and scientific illustration in May.

Ayushi Vashishtha presented on her findings on eye cancer research at Augusta University’s Igniting the Dream of Medicine Conference on Feb. 29. A third-year Honors student majoring in cellular biology and minoring in global health, she is a pre-medical student.

Ayushi’s first-author paper on eye cancer research was published in the journal Oncotarget in April. It focuses on a rare eye cancer known as uveal melanoma and the median overall survival rate of patients with metastasis, which is less than a year.

“In my recently published research paper, we discovered the microRNAs that are associated with metastasis and overall survival in these patients,” she said. “Our findings have the potential to serve as future biomarkers and therapeutic targets for the treatment of this rare cancer.”

Zoom connection

Featured in The Atlantic

Instagram fun

New year, new mask Maggie Whitehead celebrated the first day of classes this fall with a punny Instagram caption: “M{ask} me how excited I am to be back in class!!” The Honors sophomore is studying exercise and sport science.

In May, The Atlantic featured Honors juniors Claire Bunn, Emma Ellis, Will McGonigle, and Spencer Sumner for their Survivor game played over Zoom.

“In between our late-night study sessions, our friend group played Survivor as a way to stay in touch during quarantine,” said Emma, a Foundation Fellow majoring in genetics and Spanish. “Our story was actually featured in an Atlantic installment of the ‘Friendship Files.’”

The four friends were all in the same organic chemistry class, and when UGA moved to virtual instruction after spring break in March, Will moved their Survivor obsession online.

“When Will started the Survivor game, that helped me pick my social life back up,” Spencer shared in The Atlantic’s Q&A. He’s majoring in biology and anthropology. “It gave me something to look forward to. I would schedule my family’s day around it.”

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on Campus

Andrew Davis Tucker

HONORS

For the love of math

Trevyn Gray finds outlet for his passion through education

By Sara Freeland

T

revyn Gray started out his school year at the University of Georgia volunteering at housing movein. “You will see me everywhere,” said Trevyn, a third-year education major from Americus. “I do everything. It keeps me busy.”

Trevyn, an aspiring math educator, volunteered because after months at home, he was more than ready to get back to campus—and to see his friends, who were also volunteers.

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UGA HONORS PROGRAM MAGAZINE FALL 2020

Trevyn describes himself as a very Type A personality who likes to help others.

“I feel like if I’m not doing anything, I’m not being productive,” he said. “I take my relaxation seriously, but I also can’t have too much of it.”

He’s involved in UGA’s Black Male Leadership Society, where he serves on the executive board. Last year, he was cocommunity outreach chair. He volunteers with Young Black Kings, a program that mentors 10-12 young men at Clarke

County Middle School. Once a week, they mentor the students and teach them about professionalism, financial literacy, and character. He’s an ambassador with Georgia Daze, a minority recruitment event at UGA. He’s also just been named an ambassador for the Mary Frances Early College of Education, where he’ll give tours as well as work convocation, orientation office hours, and First Fridays and be available to talk to prospective students.

Future educator Trevyn always knew he wanted to be a teacher. He loves math and was captain of the math team in high school. When other students kept asking him for math help, he realized that he was really good at explaining the concepts. “It just came together,” he said.

He also had inspirational high school math teachers.

“Most math classrooms feel very bland, mundane. It feels the same, how teachers teach. Present, do problems, and that’s it. With Dr. N (David Ndaayezwi), it was a more fun experience. We joked around.

We had fun in the classroom. We moved around a lot more. It was more fluid. He was open to critique. It just felt different.

“I want to make my classroom very interactive, to make sure everybody is included, and that nobody is left behind.

I want to make sure my classroom is not judgmental.”

“I want to make my classroom very interactive, to make sure everybody is included and that nobody is left behind.”

Trevyn Gray

Honors junior majoring in mathematics education

He applied. It’s the reason he’s at UGA. For Trevyn, it’s all about the riskreward ratio.

“I think about risks a lot. If this is going to hurt me, I’d rather not do it. But a lot of things you see me do—high reward, low risk,” he said. “My motto is, ‘Go for it. Why not?’ If there’s no good answer for why not, I’m going to do it.”

Trevyn is also a student in UGA’s Honors Program. A friend in the Honors Program gave him an elevator speech on why he should apply—small class size, early registration, a good resume builder,

and allows you to challenge yourself.

He didn’t think he had a chance of getting in. But he did.

“You don’t really lose anything by applying,” Trevyn said. “You only live one life. Why sit around not doing things that you could do? What do you lose by doing it?”

For Trevyn, that might mean riding the night bus around campus with his friends singing the “Phineas and Ferb” theme song or going to grab pizza. It might mean hanging out at Tate Time with his fellow Black students or exploring the local mall and making it into a fun trip.

For him, it’s about “making the best out of what we have.”

Trevyn says that work ethic is another part of his formula for success. It’s what he tells the middle school youths he mentors.

“Your work ethic is important in everything you do. Discipline is important.

You can’t do much without discipline. You can’t stay on track without it.”

From Skate Night hosted by the African Student Union to working the concession stand at football games, Trevyn packs his schedule at UGA. His goal is to surround himself with friends and mentors. It’s the last part of advice he would give his younger self: “Have people around you that can contribute to your life and you can contribute to their lives.”

Andrew Davis Tucker

Coming to UGA Trevyn was originally drawn to UGA after a Future Business Leaders of America trip his sophomore year in high school. A teacher showed him around campus, and it was love at first sight.

“Wow, it’s beautiful, I love this,” he said of UGA, which really impressed him. He did his research and learned about the rankings, the people, the culture, and the football. “UGA is an amazing school.

It’s prestigious. It has a lot of people. I learned about the 24-hour dining hall.

I gotta have that. Why wouldn’t I go to UGA?” But Trevyn had a small detour. While he was admitted to UGA, his admission was for the spring semester, not fall.

For his first semester of college, he took classes at Georgia Southwestern State University in Americus before officially becoming a Bulldog in spring 2019.

Gates Scholar Trevyn is a recipient of the Gates Scholarship, a full scholarship for five years given to 300 minority students nationally each year.

While he was in high school, a guidance counselor sent Trevyn an email about the scholarship.

“There was no way I was going to get it,” he said to himself. “But what do you lose by applying to a scholarship that prestigious?”

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HONORS

Celebrates 60

Q&A with David S. Williams,

Associate Provost and Director of the Honors Program

u You are now in your 16th year as director of the Honors Program, and you are the first person in your role to have been an Honors student at UGA yourself. What has changed since you were a student?

I guess first I’d like to point out what has stayed the same. When I was introduced to the Honors Program in the 1970s as a high schooler from Marietta, I was told that it could offer me the chance to tailor my student experience and personalize it through individualized advising and meaningful contact with stellar faculty members in small classes, as well as the ability to meet and interact with fellow students who were similarly academically driven. These things no doubt still remain at the heart of our program.

I think that what has changed the most is that we now offer such a broad array of opportunities beyond the classroom to a much larger number of students—from the 800 or so of my day to our current number of around 2,500.

I should also add that we have moved locations since my student days from the Holmes-Hunter Academic Building to the current home of the Honors Program, the Moore College building, which was renovated and rededicated for the Honors Program in 2001. Every day when I walk in, I am still struck by how beautiful our campus setting is—on North Campus, next to Herty Field and the Chapel Bell, and across the street from the quintessential college-town— it just looks to me like how college is supposed to look. u You just mentioned that the Honors Program offers a broad array of opportunities. What specifically would you point to or single out?

I should start by saying that we helped to pioneer a number of programs that are now known as experiential learning

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UGA HONORS PROGRAM MAGAZINE FALL 2020

Cassie Wright

Dr. David S. Williams discusses topics ranging from his own past association with the Honors Program to today’s successes and tomorrow’s challenges.

opportunities, which are available to all undergraduates at UGA. For example, the highly popular Double Dawgs initiative, which allows students to earn concurrent undergraduate and master’s degrees, started as the Honors Combined Degree Program. The Honors Program also provides campus-wide leadership with regard to undergraduate research through CURO—the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities— which was started to serve Honors

students but is now available to all undergraduate students at UGA, regardless of their Honors status. I am very pleased that UGA stands virtually alone in the nation in facilitating faculty-mentored undergraduate research in any academic discipline for up to four years. That speaks to the quality of our students as well as the commitment of our faculty.

Beyond these sorts of programs, there are a number of Honors-specific

the kinds of success that we see our students accomplish each and every year, whether they head next to a professional or graduate school, or to start their career.

Stephanie Schupska

u How is the Honors Program able to offer so much to its students?

Without question, it all begins with the amazing Honors students themselves and the dedicated faculty and staff members who work with them. On the one hand, you have people with enormous potential, and on the other they are served by people who are positioned to help bring that potential to fruition. But we could not deliver on what we promise—to help our students not only to meet, but to exceed their dreams—without the assistance of our many alumni and friends. Their connections, advice, and financial support make everything possible.

Stephanie Schupska

u As you look ahead, what does the future hold?

We in the Honors Program are committed to the proposition that a diverse student body is a better student body. Diversity of background, identity, and opinion fosters enriched discussion and experiences. So as we look ahead we need to do all we can to attract and support an ever more diverse group of students and provide greater access to our programming.

Top: In 2018, David S. Williams flips and serves chocolate chip pancakes to Honors students at Flipping Out Over Finals, an annual event hosted by the Honors Program Student Council in Myers Hall each December. Bottom: Williams addresses first-year Honors students at the Fall 2018 Convocation ceremony. Facing page: Williams chats with, left to right, Honors students Osama Hashmi, Mariana Satterly, and Chenée Tracey in 2012.

opportunities, such as focused Honors internships in Savannah; Washington, D.C.; and New York City, as well as the Honors International Scholars Program, which supplies funding that can be used for a range of purposes such as traditional university-sponsored study abroad programs, university exchanges, and language institutes.

Each of these programs sponsors and supports Honors students every year— especially during the summers. Just to mention a few more areas of emphasis,

we also have thriving civic engagement and mentoring programs as well as enrichment programming such as Book Discussions and alumni and faculty lectures.

All of these opportunities add up. As but one example, over the past 25 years, UGA has had more Rhodes Scholars—the top academic scholarship in the world—than all but two other public universities, and all of our recipients have been Honors students. That’s a leading indicator of

u Any final thoughts about the 60th anniversary of the UGA Honors Program?

Yes. This program has obviously meant so much to me personally and professionally. From being an Honors student myself, to teaching Honors courses after I earned my Ph.D. and joined the UGA faculty in 1989, to having the incredible privilege to serve in my position, and to have had the chance to get to know such remarkable and impressive people over the years— it’s just all been so enriching and rewarding. I am fond of saying that the best illustration I know of that “it takes a village” is the UGA Honors Program.

So many wonderful people have been associated with it for so many years and have done so much to build and sustain it over these 60 years. Let’s keep it going!

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HONORS

Celebrates 60

60 HONORS years of

at the University of Georgia

1973

1961

1960 1956 UGA begins a review, which initiates the possibility of an Honors Program at the university.

A proposal for an Honors Program is adopted in March 1960.

By fall 1960, 43 students are enrolled, and the first Honors courses are in place. The seven courses are in chemistry, history, philosophy, geometry, French, and political science.

The original team (left to right) included Honors Program founding director C.Jay Smith, Charles Beaumont, Gayther Plummer, Robert W. Miller (Class of 1964), and Lothar Tresp. Photo is from the Honors Program's 25th anniversary booklet.

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Fred F. Manget is the first Honors student to be named a Rhodes Scholar and the 15th at the University of Georgia. He graduated from UGA in 1973 with a degree in political science.

The Honors Program grows to 13 course sections during winter term.

Enrollment increases to 126 by the spring.

Read more from Fred on page 18.

1966 The Honors Program Student Committee, today known as the Honors Program Student Council, is constituted.

1967 Lothar Tresp is named director of the Honors Program. He first joined the program in 1963 as a faculty advisor.

Having retired in 1994, he is the Honors Program’s longest-serving director to date.

1984 The designations High Honors and Highest Honors are awarded to 23 graduating Honors students. The designations were instituted in 1982.

2001

1997 1993 The J. Hatten Howard III Award, named after late geology professor J. Hatten Howard III, is established to recognize faculty members who exhibit special promise in teaching Honors courses early in their careers. The first Hatten recipient was Catherine Jones, now a professor of French and Provenรงal. The Outstanding Honors Professor Award (established in 1970 with its first recipient Charles Bullock, Richard B. Russell Chair in Political Science) is renamed the Lothar Tresp Outstanding Honors Professor Award.

The Foundation Fellowship, the top academic scholarship for undergraduates at UGA, is moved under the administration of the director of the Honors Program, following a gift

by Bernard Ramsey, the largest individual benefactor of UGA. The fellowship was founded in 1972 by UGA Foundation Trustees.

1999 The Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities (CURO) is established at UGA and housed within the Honors Program. In 2010, CURO expanded to include all undergraduates at UGA. Jere W. Morehead, now the 22nd president of the University of Georgia, is named the director of the Honors Program.

The Honors Program moves into the remodeled and rededicated Moore College building, which is adjacent to Herty Field.

Completed in 1876, the building initially held the State College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts. Until its renovation and rededication, it housed Romance languages and various other departments.

2010 The Honors Program celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Honors alumnus James C. Cobb, now the B. Phinizy Spalding Professor Emeritus in the UGA Department of History, discusses his experience as an Honors student and professor.

2004 David S. Williams is named director of the Honors Program. In 2017, he becomes the first Jere W. Morehead Distinguished Professor, which will be held by all subsequent Honors Program directors.

2020 The Honors Program celebrates its 60th anniversary.

60 years of

HONORS

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HONORS

Celebrates 60

60 HONORS years of

at the University of Georgia

H

appy 60th birthday, Honors Program! We are thrilled to print the stories sent in by alumni this year—and we would love to continue to publish your stories in the Spring 2021 edition of the magazine. Please continue to share them with us.

We are fortunate to have a thorough early history of the Honors Program recorded in the Silver Anniversary booklet, produced and published in 1985 by Honors alumni (UGA celebrated its bicentennial that same year). We share a few excerpts below.

“Any account of the establishment and early years of the Honors Program would be remiss if it neglected to mention the efforts of the late Professor C. Jay Smith, Jr., the Honors Program’s first Director. Smith substantially envisioned the programs and largely provided the initial impetus to get it underway. The Honors Program, still in the main as he envisioned it, is in part his legacy.

“The initial offerings were modest: Seven courses altogether, in chemistry, history, philosophy, geometry, French, and political science. Demand was heavy, and extra sections became necessary.

Thirteen sections were offered in the winter of 1961 and 16 the following spring term, including additions from English and world literature, Spanish, sociology, zoology, art history, and classical culture. Enrollment, which stood at 43 that autumn, had by spring reached 126. “…The day-to-day administrative work of the program was conducted by Smith himself. He and Professor Charles Beaumont, and, somewhat later, professors Gayther Plummer and Lothar Tresp, advised all Honors students. They and a part-time secretary were housed in a single room on the second floor of Old College.

“When Smith was invited in 1965 for a stay at Newport Naval College, Tresp of the History Department stepped in as acting director. Tresp, who joined the university’s faculty in 1957 and the Honors Program as advisor in 1963, took the tiller permanently in 1967, when Smith left Georgia for Florida State University.

The administration, seeing the advantages of keeping a single steersman, has avoided the problems attendant on rotating the office.

“By this time enrollment had grown enough to justify more adequate accommodations in Old College, additional secretarial help, and other forms of assistance. The task in the late 1960s was an expansion of the program to allow coursework outside arts and sciences and to accommodate the various activities which seemed to gravitate to the Honors Program. The broader university-wide functions of the program were recognized officially in 1970 when the Honors Program and the Advanced Placement Program were brought together.

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The first graduates of UGA’s Honors Program 1963 Commencement Bachelor of Arts Sandrea Gaines (Psy.), magna cum laude E. Walter Bowman III (Hist.), cum laude Grace Winston Stephens (Eng.), cum laude Linda Ann Carstarphen (Pol. Sci.) Bachelor of Science Ravenel Terrell Weitman (Chem.)

1964 Commencement Bachelor of Arts Robert Eugene Blackwell, Jr. (Pol. Sci.), magna cum laude Tommy Drew Earles (Pol. Sci.), magna cum laude Susan Jayne Hill (Math.), magna cum laude Robert Wayne Miller (Hist.), magna cum laude Charlene Elizabeth Rushton (Soc.), magna cum laude Georgia Carole Watterson (Hist.), magna cum laude Ashby Franklin Colvin, Jr. (Eng.), cum laude Donald Campbell Dixon, (Pol. Sci), cum laude John Dell Evans (Span.), cum laude Ronald Kent Shelp (Hist-Pol. Sci.), cum laude Thomas Marcene Barksdale (Pol. Sci.) Calvin Hugh Brown (Ent.) Martha Vera Cobb (Eng.) James William Garner (Pol. Sci.) Jane Frances Garvey (Mod. Foreign Lang.)

Samuel Lamar Oliver (Law) Bachelor of Science Constance Jane Boyd (Math.), magna cum laude William Eugene Odum (Zoo.) Josie Anne Smith (Psy.) Bachelor of Science in Chemistry Thomas Howard Ledford

“Since Honors courses would now be offered through most of the university’s schools and colleges, administrative reorganization placed the new program within the scope of the Office of the Vice President for Instruction.

“In the decade following, opportunities for Honors students multiplied as well.

The Honors Council approved in 1971 the area study major (now the Honors Interdisciplinary Studies major), which allows an Honors student to build an

integrated interdisciplinary program for breadth and depth in the field.”

To start us off, we have stories sent in by Martha Cobb Woodward and Bob Miller, two alumni from the Honors Program’s first class of students.

Guinea pigs and wondrous opportunities

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Above: Martha Cobb Woodward prepares for the drive back to the University of Georgia campus from her home in LaFayette, Georgia, in the 1960s. She now lives in Huntington, West Virginia. Below: Bob Miller in the 1960s and now.

e were guinea pigs back in 1960. It all started in Dr. C.J. Smith’s office where you ran the registration gauntlet. You see, you had to have his approval for your schedule, and that was not an easy matter. He chatted about your potential and told you to sign up for Advanced Russian or a graduate Economics class, “just for the experience.” Thus the creation of The Game.

“Why yes, Dr. Smith; that sounds fascinating. If you will just sign at the bottom here, I will go out in the lounge and fill in the form with the proper section numbers.” Whew! Another narrow escape as we inserted the classes we actually intended to take over the magic signature.

But the experimentation led us to wondrous opportunities in classes of six to 10 people. We were active participants in every class and even spilling into lively sessions in professors’ homes.

After my wide-ranging Honors education at UGA, I felt prepared for any challenge. It has been so. ~ Martha Cobb Woodward Class of 1964

Little band of students

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hirty-two of us comprised the first class of Honors students at Georgia in September 1960. Given the small numbers, we soon knew each other well, including Gus Turnbull, who died all too young as academic vice president of Florida State University and who was a former state champion sheep shearer; Winston Stephens, whose father was the congressman from Athens; and the memorable E. Walter Bowman, from Perry, known to us as “Ethelred the Unready” for reasons lost in time.

C. Jay Smith, who taught me Russian history courses, was director of the Honors Program; and the assistant director was a young history professor,

Lothar Tresp. As a history major, I knew both outside their Honors Program duties.

I had no interest in English literature until I had Professor Calvin Brown in Honors Sophomore English. I had zero interest in zoology until I had Honors Zoology taught on a rotating basis by Professors Hinton and Cosgrove, with lab sessions run by the professors themselves—not by assistants. And I could go on.

For our little band of 32, the UGA Honors Program transformed our college

educations.

If we had thought about it at all, we would never have guessed what Honors at Georgia would be like today. ~ Bob Miller Class of 1964

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HONORS

Celebrates 60

Achieving honors

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am long since gone from the Honors Program, but it remains with me in my memory as a bright and wonderful time these 50 years on. The program and I were both young then.

I arrived at UGA in 1969 with probably the most undistinguished academic record in high school by any Honors freshman. I wanted to be a professional athlete.

I was not in the Beta Club or the National Honor Society, and I did not take the National Merit test. I didn’t even know what that was. I had scored high enough on advanced placement tests that summer to get “invited” to “apply” to the Honors Program, but I didn’t know what that was, either.

When I went to orientation that summer, one of the program speakers was a tall, distinguished professor with a shock of white hair and a hint of a German accent. So I asked him from the audience, what was the Honors Program? Was it an honor to be in it, like an honorary fraternity? Or was it a program to achieve honors?

I think Lothar Tresp (it was him) must have laughed inwardly at this ignorant question from a semi-rube from the suburbs, but he kindly led me through the answer: It was a bit of both. So I took a chance and signed up. That fall quarter I took the most charming and fascinating Honors French course from Professor Jordan, and never looked back. I took every Honors course I could find. I ended up being graduated

Above left: A photo from Fred Manget’s student days was included in the Georgia Alumni Record in June 1973. Above right: In addition to a career as a lawyer with the CIA, Fred is a retired Army JAG colonel. In 2008, he was a visiting adjunct faculty lecturer at UGA.

summa cum laude, with general honors and honors in political science, Pi Sigma Alpha and Phi Beta Kappa, won a Rhodes Scholarship, and was president of the Honors Program Student Association.

Thank you, Professor Tresp! ~ Fred Manget Class of 1973

Truly home at UGA

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GA’s Honors Program is the reason I have a UGA degree. I started at the University of Georgia as a somewhat lost freshman from a small town—and felt so insignificant in 300-person lecture classes. I’d heard of UGA’s Honors Program—that helped students get smaller classes. I had the grades, so I applied during my freshman year.

Taking that first Honors class— multicultural geography with Kavita Pandit, now associate provost at Georgia State University, made the difference between me staying or transferring to another school. Having a smaller class and having a teacher who knew my name and was genuinely interested in me made my college career so much better.

There were so many outstanding professors.

I took the legendary Conrad Fink’s journalism ethics course. As an aspiring journalist and complete newbie, I once made the mistake of referring to a newspaper story title. “That’s a

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headline, bud,” he said in a gruff but stern way. I never forgot the lesson or so many other lessons—especially on how to be impartial and cover stories objectively. In a world of partisan news coverage of clickbait headlines, the world needs more Conrad Finks.

I remember I took Honors public relations during my junior year. I remember the group project and crisis management scenario we had to present. I remember making an American flag cake and dressing up as our group’s celebrity spokesperson.

I had no plans of public relations becoming my career. But almost a decade later, I transitioned from journalist to public relations coordinator, and lessons in Karen Russell’s class came in handy. The class set me up for success, as I was just named to PRSA Georgia’s 40 under 40.

The Honors Program is what made this introverted, small-town girl feel like she was truly home at the University of Georgia.

~ Sara Freeland Class of 2005 Sara is now a public relations coordinator for UGA’s Division of Marketing and Communications. She wrote the story on Trevyn Gray on page 6.

Tea, brownies, and English

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s my daughter McAuley begins her journey in UGA’s Honors Program, a million memories are flooding back.

I arrived at Honors Orientation nervous and frustrated. My family had moved—again. I didn’t have connections at UGA, and my tank was empty from the effort it took to transition from a farm town of 10,000 in central Illinois to the suburbs of Richmond, VA, in my junior year. In addition, I had worked really hard in school and been accepted to UVA (then waitlisted—taxes/long story), but an unexpected job change for my dad made finances a priority, and I needed to accept the generous Alumni Scholarship that UGA offered without ever stepping foot on campus.

Honors Orientation was a breath of fresh air. Like all new UGA students, the beauty of the campus, quaintness of the town, and energy of the Orientation Leaders enthralled me.

I was energized by the other students who were sharp and like-minded, wanting to push themselves and absorb all they possibly could. At Orientation, I particularly remember meeting Carrie Dieterle Raeber. Four years later, we served as Orientation Leaders together and five years after that, she was the maid of honor at my wedding.

But I’ve jumped ahead. On my first day of class, I arrived at Park Hall for my 8 a.m. Honors English class with Dr. Hutchinson. I was in heaven. An exceptional professor, leading a class of 10 students who wanted to be there as much as I did—my brain was on fire with wonder at everything there was to learn and fed by the energy and drive of my fellow students. The small size of my class led to making friendships quickly. Craig Smith was in that class and ended up serving as a 1990 Orientation Leader as well. One of my fondest memories from that class was Dr. Hutchinson inviting all of us to enjoy tea and brownies in his parlor.

The personal interest the professors in the Honors Program took and their insistence that I give my best effort developed my critical thinking skills and confidence. During a visit to my parents’ this summer, I cleaned out a box of old schoolwork.

I had a lot more Cs on papers than I remembered! Those professors pushed me, and I am grateful. After a few years working in PR for Cohn & Wolfe in Atlanta, I returned to school to get my MBA at Emory. I had no idea how an English major would fare, but I graduated in the top 20% of my class and went to work for Procter & Gamble. Each step was exciting and challenging and was built on the foundation of the critical thinking skills I developed in the Honors Program at UGA. In addition, it was the small size of those classes and the personal interest from the professors who inspired me and helped build my confidence. In addition to Dr. Hutchinson, I particularly remember my advisor Dr. Judith Shaw, Dr. Loch Johnson, and Dr. James Kilgo.

Although it is bittersweet to have my daughter leave home, I have every confidence the breadth and depth of UGA has everything she needs to soar, and the strong infrastructure of the Honors Program will challenge and nourish her. To come full circle, it was McAuley’s direct admission to Honors that led her to select UGA over our home state and UNC Chapel Hill. ~ Salina Hovey Millen Class of 1991

Above: Salina Hovey Millen hugs her daughter McAuley, who is an Honors freshman at UGA. Right: UGA Orientation Leaders from 1990 include Salina, standing at right with arms folded. Perched on the center pillar of the Arch is her good friend Carrie Dieterle Raeber.

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From bus stop to 27 years married

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n 1989, I met my future wife at the bus stop at Memorial Hall during Winter quarter. She doesn’t remember meeting me then for understandable reasons, but then came Spring quarter when I had registered for Dr. Betty Whitten’s Honors Statistics class (may she rest in peace). I fancied myself quite the mathematician, so I was looking forward to this class.

On day one, I walked in, and there she sat on the front row (technically the second row, but no one was sitting on the first row).

I panicked and quickly moved to the back of the small classroom in the journalism building and sat down on the back row. I gathered my composure, and then thought deeply about my long-term plan.

I now not only knew her sorority from our chance meeting at the bus stop, but I also knew she was in the Honors Program! I would make this happen…at least by graduation in 1991.

Over the course of the quarter, I would lob into the classroom conversation very witty and insightful comments…so I thought.

Then one day about mid-quarter, I had the courage to catch up to her in the hallway after our dismissal.

I thought of the most incredible line and said, “So how’s things?”

She said fine, and then I said that we were having a social with her sorority and I hoped to see her there.

The rest is history, and we have been happily married for 27 years and have three children and three dogs. Michelle was then and still is the love of my life. She is a miracle of a person, and I am blessed to be her soulmate. ~ F. David Leiter, Jr. Class of 1991 David is the managing partner-Atlanta and MidSouth Hub leader for KPMG.

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Above: David and Michelle Leiter connected in an Honors Statistics class at UGA in 1989. Left: David and Michelle cheer on the Bulldogs.

10 years after graduation Rebecca Perrera (AB ’10) looks back on how the Honors Program prepared her for a career as a fiscal analyst for the Arizona Legislature

By Stephanie Schupska

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his summer, Honors alumna Rebecca Perrera was named a 2020 Flinn-Brown Civic Leadership Fellow in her home state of Arizona. The highly competitive program selects civic leaders in the state each year and focuses on public policy and leadership development.

“I would not have been so successful without the help of my alma mater, the University of Georgia,” she said. “I recall several Honors courses on political science theory and my Honors statistics classes as especially helpful in my career.”

Ten years ago, Rebecca graduated from UGA with degrees in political science and sociology and a minor in statistics. The country was in a recession, so she went back to school, earning a Master of Public Administration from the University of Arizona. She was very interested in non-profit work, specifically program evaluation, and started a job as a performance auditor for the State of Arizona.

She is now a Principal Fiscal Analyst for the Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the Arizona Legislature.

“We provide nonpartisan budget analysis for the 90 total members of the Arizona Legislature,” she said. “Part of the critical thinking the Honors Program provides is the ability to see both sides of the coin. Part-time legislators need help navigating state government.

My office gives them guidance and

“Part of the critical thinking the Honors Program provides is the ability to see both sides of the coin. Part-time legislators need help navigating state government. ” Rebecca Perrera

Honors alumna and principal fiscal analyst, Joint Legislative Budget Committee of the Arizona Legislature

information so that they can implement better public policy that achieves the outcome they’re hoping for.”

As a Flinn-Brown Civic Leadership Fellow, she will continue to develop her leadership skills at the state level, noting better public policy is driven by those who can understand how government works and listen to diverse viewpoints.

Rebecca was last on UGA’s campus in 2015. When asked what she enjoyed most about her time in the Honors Program, she points to mentoring and book discussions led by UGA faculty.

“Book club was one of my favorite things about the Honors Program,” she said. “I attended one every semester in Honors.”

In addition to book discussions, she recommends that current students take the time to study abroad—and learn how to write.

“Writing is so important,” she said. “I spend more time writing than looking at spreadsheets. Even in a STEM field, you need to communicate well. Don’t be afraid to seek out a class that’s going to require you to write. I didn’t fully appreciate that as an undergraduate.”

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HONORS

Celebrates 60

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Walker Montgomery

Walker Montgomery

Walker Montgomery

Walker Montgomery

Glancing back at 60 years

Paul Efland Nancy Evelyn

Andrew Davis Tucker

Peter Frey Paul Efland

Left page, top: Honors Program students listen to a professor in a small seminar classroom in Park Hall in 1970; bottom left: Professor Gayther Plummer teaches an Honors botany class in 1975; center right: Honors students discuss an assignment in 1975; bottom right: An Honors staff member advises a student in 1978. This page, top left: David S. Williams, current director of the Honors Program, says hello to Lothar Tresp, director emeritus, at the Honors Program 50th Anniversary Lecture in 2010; top right: Honors students take notes in 2001; right: Honors teaching assistant Elizabeth Carter, far right, leads an Introduction to Honors course in September 2020; bottom left: Honors students work in the Moore College computer lab in 2001; bottom right: a student rides by Moore College in 2005.

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HONORS

Scholarships

Rhodes Scholar Phaidra Buchanan, UGA’s first Black Rhodes Scholar, plans to work as a social studies teacher—and to generate policy that promotes equitable funding, school desegregation, and culturally responsive curricula, pedagogy, and assessments.

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Andrew Davis Tucker

By Stephanie Schupska

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haidra Buchanan sat on one end of the Zoom call, eyes focused on the computer monitor.

She was both sweating—worried about her computer losing its Ethernet cable or the WiFi cutting out—and ready to have an engaging conversation.

It was Saturday, Nov. 21, and she was interviewing virtually for a Rhodes Scholarship.

Phaidra was about to make history in more ways than one: She is in the first class of Rhodes Scholars to be elected virtually—she is one of 32 U.S. Rhodes Scholars for 2021—and she is the University of Georgia’s first Black Rhodes Scholar.

“I went into the interview feeling confident and ready to have a fun conversation,” she said. “I just enjoyed it.”

Phaidra was one of four Rhodes finalists from UGA— the highest number of finalists the institution has produced in a given year—and she said she was able to go into the interview with good energy because of all of the encouragement and preparation the finalists received from Jessica Hunt, UGA’s major scholarships coordinator; Dr. David S. Williams, director of the Honors Program; and other UGA faculty.

“As director, I interact on a daily basis with wonderful students and people,” Williams said.

“In Phaidra’s case, I’ve had numerous interactions, including helping to recruit her to come to UGA, leading domestic and international travel study groups that included her, and teaching her in a course. I have had the chance to watch Phaidra grow over the past four years. As the Rhodes Scholarship campus representative, it has been great to work especially closely with her.

“I can honestly say that while I am impressed by Honors students all the time, some stand out because they also inspire me. Phaidra definitely does.”

The finalists also chatted over Zoom with previous UGA Rhodes Scholars.

“They really helped to demystify the process,” Phaidra said of Laura Courchesne, a 2017 Rhodes Scholar, and Elizabeth Allan, a 2013 Rhodes Scholar.

“They helped make it feel possible, make it feel attainable, like we had a shot. Talking to them energized me.”

Phaidra is UGA’s 25th Rhodes Scholar.

Pop-Tarts and Pictionary It was a four-hour wait from the time her interview ended until the time Phaidra was called back to the computer. She spent every one of those hours in the Foundation Fellows Library on the second floor of Moore College, perched on the couches, pacing the floor, sitting at the table at the back of the room.

She and the other finalists played Pictionary and made a Spotify playlist during their wait.

“When the announcement came, we were not paying attention, and it just hit, and we all sat up straighter,” she said. “I had a little Pop-Tart that I was working through when they told us the decision was ready. I was so excited that I spilled the Pop-Tart. I think my eyes went huge.”

Immediately after the Rhodes committee made its announcement and finished its housekeeping duties with the recipients, Phaidra pulled out her phone.

“As soon as it was over, I called my family, and we screamed, and I wiped down the computer and cleaned up the Pop-Tart,” she said. “It was very surreal.”

Her triplet sister Portia had been waiting in her car near North Campus, ready to drive them home to Atlanta. Texts flew between the two and their brother during those four hours.

Phaidra and Portia are roommates at UGA—catching shows on Netflix and staying on each other about the little things. The day before the Rhodes interview, Portia was the one who made sure Phaidra ate and helped settle her nerves.

“Portia has been my biggest support system through this whole thing,” Phaidra said. “She’s the biggest reason this is all possible.”

Road to Rhodes In February 2017, Phaidra walked into Moore College for the first time. She was a finalist for the Foundation Fellowship, and she spent a Friday learning about UGA and the Honors Program. The next day, she fielded questions from a group of panelists that included Jessica Hunt; Yannick Morgan, Foundation Fellow Class of 2007; and Dan Coenen, Harmon W. Caldwell Chair in Constitutional Law in the School of Law. Three and a half years later, those individuals helped prepare her for the Rhodes interview.

“They have been supporting me this entire time,” she said. “I made sure to mention in the interview all the people who helped me get to this point. When I saw Jessica at the end and it looked like there were tears in her eyes, it was a big moment because I knew that she believed in me from the very beginning, since before I knew what the Rhodes Scholarship was.”

When Phaidra applied to the Foundation Fellowship, she wrote a bio that still holds true: “An aspiring teacher … she plans to major in education with a focus on education policy.”

Now a Foundation Fellow in her fourth year, Phaidra is majoring in social studies education in the Mary Frances Early College of Education and minoring in German.

“What a gift it has been to work with Phaidra over

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the last four years and what a joy it is to imagine the positive impact she’s going to make as a teacher and an agent of change,” Hunt said. “Having worked within K-12 schools and higher education for over 30 years, I have encountered a lot of inspirational teachers whose impacts have rippled across communities and generations.

Phaidra embodies the best qualities of these visionaries and practitioners. She has lofty goals, and at their core, those goals are about making students and teachers feel valued, understood, and supported—so they can soar.”

Phaidra plans a career as a teacher “who fosters criticality, compassion, and joy,” and as an advocate for policies that empower students and communities, according to her Rhodes bio. At Oxford, she plans to pursue an M.Sc. in comparative and international education.

“Phaidra exhibits exceptional intellectual curiosity and determination, characteristics that will serve her well as a teacher and a Rhodes Scholar,” said Dr. Denise Spangler, dean of the Mary Frances Early College of Education. “She is genuinely curious about the experiences of marginalized people, the historical actions that led to marginalization, and research into possible solutions.

“She is determined to make a difference for the students in her classroom and to change policies to be more equitable. I am incredibly proud of her and excited to see what she will do in the world.”

Phaidra is a volunteer with U-Lead Athens, a tutor for the Athens AntiDiscrimination Movement Tutoring Service, and an assistant and panel moderator for the Morehouse College Annual Math Competitions Bootcamp.

She was a student assistant in the history department, on the Meigs Professorship Selection Committee, on UGA’s First Look Academic Panel, and in the LEAD Fellows Program. Through the Honors Team-Based Problem-Solving Course, she also worked with Envision Athens and its partner organization MOB Athens.

She is especially proud of her work with U-Lead, an organization that provides educational support, scholarships, and mentoring to local students of various immigrant

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backgrounds and documentation statuses, she said in an Amazing Student interview back in February.

“As a second-generation immigrant whose life was shaped by my parents’ educational attainment, I’m proud to have served as a college coach, tutored in math, and enjoyed spending time with such brilliant, passionate, and fun students since my first year.”

Three of the students she tutors through U-Lead are waiting on their own news about college admissions— and one found out they were accepted into UGA about the same time Phaidra found out about her Rhodes Scholarship.

“I’m very excited to see where the students end up,” she said. “We’ve been going through this process of applying together, and it’s more like we’re mentoring each other.”

Phaidra has also worked on several research projects at UGA. As an undergraduate pre-service teacher, she investigated structural inequities in the American educational system and their historical roots, and how teachers, teacher educators, and educational theorists have sought to combat them.

Her current research includes two separate projects—the first helps facilitate workshops designed to develop pre-service teachers’ cultural awareness and is known as CAM Up! (Cultural Awareness in Mathematics Unit Project). The second involves investigating the history of slavery at UGA. She helps examine the university’s role in the institution of slavery and studies the lived experiences of enslaved people connected to the university as a member of the History of Slavery at UGA research team.

In 2019, she completed an inquiry into the history and current state of school segregation in Fayette County, the school district where she completed her primary and secondary education.

While she is excited about research, Phaidra’s real passion lies in the classroom. She starts student teaching this spring.

“I’ll either be at a middle school or a high school, and I can’t wait,” she said.

To Oxford and back again In May 2018, Phaidra walked into a terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta

International Airport and boarded a plane headed to England. UGA had just wrapped up the spring semester, and before grades were even posted, Phaidra was back in class, studying computer ethics at the University of Oxford.

The Rhodes Scholarship and its application and interview process weren’t even a blip on her radar.

“I was taking a class that had nothing to do with education,” she said. “The whole tutorial system (a style of teaching used at Oxford) was challenging in the best way. It was just such a huge deal to think about what it would be like to be an Oxford student at all.”

Phaidra spent May and the early part of June studying at Oxford and exploring in the country with other Foundation Fellows in her class year.

She can’t wait for the memories to come flooding back when she arrives on campus in September.

“I am honored to join a long line of people pushing for equity and justice in education,” she said. “I aspire to work alongside them to create a system that values and empowers all children to find their place in the world and improve it in their own unique ways. I appreciate the supportive community around me, and I look forward to representing them as I take my place at Oxford.

“Most of all, I’m looking forward to meeting the other Rhodes Scholars from around the world. I can’t wait to hear their stories.”

Top left: Phaidra Buchanan waits in line with Rachel Yuan, Angela Tsao, and Kunho Kim as the Foundation Fellows prepare to swear the Bodleian Library oath at the University of Oxford in 2018. Top right: She practices her rhythm in Bali in 2019. Middle left: Phaidra and David S. Williams tour the Glastonbury Abbey with other Foundation Fellows in 2018.

Bottom left: Phaidra chats with Aparna Pateria in the Fellows Library in 2019. Bottom middle: Phaidra catches a break on North Campus in 2020. Bottom right: Phaidra hikes in Cornwall in 2018.

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Better analytics UGA’s newest Udall Scholar focuses on computer science and sustainability

By Stephanie Schupska

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ngela Tsao is working to advance research at the intersection of computer science and sustainability, and her focus has earned her national recognition as a 2020 Udall Scholar.

She was one of 55 undergraduates selected from across the nation and U.S. territories for the scholarship, which is awarded to sophomores and juniors based on their commitment to careers in the environment, Native health care, or Tribal public policy.

Angela, a senior from Manchester, Missouri, is working toward bachelor’s degrees in computer science and cognitive science and a master’s degree in artificial intelligence. An Honors student and Foundation Fellow, she plans to earn a doctorate in artificial intelligence, developing and applying novel machine learning techniques for environmental data analysis.

“Angela is an extremely dedicated and engaged person, and she is a very deserving Udall recipient,” said David S. Williams, associate provost and director of UGA’s Honors Program. “We congratulate Angela on earning this prestigious award, and we look forward to all the further contributions she will make in the future.”

With the addition of Angela, UGA has had 14 Udall Scholars in the past 10 years and 19 since the scholarship was first awarded in 1996. The Udall Scholarship provides up to $7,000 for eligible academic expenses.

“I’m advancing research at the intersection of computer science and sustainability in order to revolutionize our study of the natural world.”

Angela Tsao

Udall Scholar and Honors senior majoring in computer science and cognitive science and earning a master’s degree in artificial intelligence

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Angela’s goal is to become a lead researcher at NOAA, where she plans to apply machine learning techniques to environmental data in order to advance the understanding of natural processes.

“I’m advancing research at the intersection of computer science and sustainability in order to revolutionize our study of the natural world,” she said. “Working at the water-energy-food nexus, I will inform sustainable development by improving food systems with better analytics.”

She hopes to use emerging technology—from virtual reality to genetic algorithms to neural nets—to bridge the gap between science and society.

“With an unwavering commitment to environmental research and advocacy,” said Jessica Hunt, UGA’s major scholarships coordinator, “Angela is harnessing new technologies to improve food systems and reduce water, food, and energy waste.

Encouraging sustainable practices within both higher education and global agriculture, she embodies the Udall mission of environmental stewardship.”

Angela is a 2019 NOAA Hollings Scholar. Her UGA involvement includes serving as Georgia Political Review editor-in-chief, Roosevelt Network at UGA team lead, Bag the Bag treasurer, Women in Science vice president, SGA senator, Agricultural and Environmental Economics Club president, and Association for Computing Machinery-Women cofounder and secretary. She is also a Lunchbox Garden Project lesson leader, Athens Science Café core leader, and an alumni mentor through the Public Service and Outreach Student Scholar program, previously interning for UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant.

She is an intern for UGA’s Office of Sustainability, conducts virtual reality research with UGA’s Center for Geospatial Research, is a CURO research assistant studying machine learning in sustainable development, and is the financialization coordinator for the Roosevelt Institute National Network.

In summer 2019, Angela was an ecological researcher in software development—studying Inner Mongolian deserts and grasslands—through the NSF’s International Research Experiences for Students program. She also spent a Maymester studying computer ethics at the University of Oxford and was a summer farm apprentice in Scotland through WWOOF, World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms.

Stephanie Schupska

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Major scholarship support The fall Staff Spotlight focuses on two Honors alumni in the Major Scholarships Office—with bonus stories from their time as students

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n the second floor of the Moore College building—and virtually through thousands of Zoom meetings—Jessica Hunt and Emily Shirley oversee the Major Scholarships Office. Housed within the Honors Program, they share duties in managing two of the internal scholarships in Honors—the Foundation Fellowship and Ramsey Honors Scholarship (FFR for short).

Jessica has the additional role of major scholarships coordinator, supporting the pursuit of external scholarships and fellowships, such as the Rhodes, Marshall, Churchill, Gates Cambridge, KnightHennessy, Schwarzman, Mitchell, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall awards. While the FFR programs are particular to Honors, external scholarship support extends beyond Honors and across campus.

“It also extends beyond graduation— we work with a lot of alumni as they apply for graduate fellowships,” Jessica said.

Both Jessica and Emily are graduates of UGA and the Honors Program—Jessica in 1984 with a degree in English (she earned an M.Ed. in instructional technology in 2008) and Emily in 2010 with degrees in French and international affairs.

In the following Q&A, Jessica and Emily share what they like about working with Honors students, their memories of the Honors Program, and a few fun facts about their travels with the FFR program. u What do you enjoy most about working with students?

Jessica: There is nothing better than connecting with students and alumni who are making a positive impact in the world.

Every day I am inspired by their work, their stories, their engagement, and their insight.

I’m already a Double Dawg, but hearing about research students are conducting has given me an education in so many new areas of inquiry.

Just this fall, students have taught

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“There is nothing better than connecting with students and alumni who are making a positive impact in the world. Every day I am inspired by their work, their stories, their engagement, and their insight.”

Jessica Hunt

assistant director and major scholarships coordinator, UGA Honors Program

me about CRISPR-based gene editing therapies, public-private partnerships in international development, nuclear nonproliferation policy, algebraic geometry, combatting the international drug trade, harnessing artificial intelligence to combat food waste and to promote sustainability, issues of bias in AI, human rights law, data analytics, entrepreneurship in the MENA region, educational policy to promote racial equity and inclusion within school systems, new avenues for treatment of anxiety and depression, gender dynamics in recruitment of non-state armed groups, public health approaches to preventing gun violence and substance use disorders, ancient musicology and Augustine’s theories on musical communication, and the economics of rural hospitals. I feel like a Triple Dawg now!

Emily: It is wonderful to almost never have to say “no” when a student comes to

you with an ambitious plan for a study abroad program or a conference they want to attend. Seeing the research students are working on, the goals, internships, and jobs they are pursuing—it is gloriously inspiring and gives me hope for the future. u What’s the coolest place you’ve visited while working with the Foundation Fellowship?

Jessica: I’ve told stories around a fire pit in the Sahara Desert, listened as hyenas circled our wild camp at night in the Serengeti, met Tolak Reklamasi activists in Bali and Bri Bri community elders in Costa Rica, visited Cao Dai temples in Vietnam, and kayaked Ha Long Bay. For over a decade of Maymesters, I’ve also returned to the UK with Fellows as they studied at the University of Oxford. But the most memorable was probably a late-summer trip to Mongolia led by Dr. Hyangsoon Yi, a comparative literature professor who studies East Asian Buddhism and who has traveled with Fellows to South Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. On this particular trip, Dr. Yi introduced us to the post-Soviet landscape in Mongolia, which was undergoing a resurgence of Buddhist traditions. Traveling in a van across the Central Asian Steppe—often with no discernible roads—was quite an adventure!

Emily: High on the list are glamping (camping with comfortable amenities) in the Sahara in Morocco; staying in a gher (a yurt) on Lake Khuvsgul, one of the clearest lakes in the world, in Mongolia; and practicing 3:30 a.m. morning chanting with Buddhist nuns at Unmunsa Temple in South Korea, which has only ever hosted UGA students due to Dr. Hyangsoon Yi’s connection to the temple. u What did you appreciate about the Honors Program as a student?

Emily: So, so much. I took some really fabulous Honors classes—a 10-person English class focusing on works inspired

Top left: Emily Shirley, Jessica Hunt, and faculty trip leader Andy Owsiak attend LIVE with Kelly and Ryan with first-year Foundation Fellows. Bottom left: Jessica, Emily, and, at left, Maggie Middleton (graduate assistant for the Foundation Fellowship from 2017-2019), hike during the annual Fellows Maymester in the U.K. Right: Jessica, Emily, and Caleb Ingram stand on the stairs that run through the Chinggis Khan Equestrian Statue in Mongolia.

by Hamlet, Honors versions of French language and literature classes that cemented my love of the major, a surprisingly fascinating geology class for my non-STEMmy brain, among others— and wrangled my way into all the Honors Book Discussions and Lunchbox Lectures they’d let me sign up for. The CURO Summer Fellowship allowed me to stay in Athens one summer and dip my toe into undergraduate research in international affairs with Dr. Patricia Sullivan (now at UNC Chapel Hill); Honors facilitated my CURO research in French linguistics with

Dr. Diana Ranson. On the non-academic side, Honors helped me support myself through college by hiring me as a student worker, where I acquired the daunting skill of Answering the Phone When People Call.

Jessica: When I was a student in the 80s, Honors meant small classes, connection to faculty, and early registration. More than anything, I valued the faculty mentorship I received from Dr. Emory Thomas, a professor of history who also managed the Foundation Fellows program at the time; Dr. Judy Shaw,

my Honors advisor in English, who established the UGA@Oxford program and put up with me in her Chaucer course; Dr. Bernard Dauenhauer, who changed my life by introducing me to existential philosophy; and Dr. Jim Kilgo, who changed my life by introducing me to the works of Toni Morrison. u How has the Honors Program changed since your time as a student?

Emily: It has only been 10 years, but I’m thrilled at how much more robust student support has become. Honors

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has more than doubled the amount of Honors International Scholars Program scholarships it awards, and CURO is now available to all undergraduates across campus. CURO now offers stipends for semester research and grants for students presenting research at conferences across the U.S. Jessica: Honors still means smaller classes, great faculty mentorship, and early registration—with the added benefit of many more opportunities to build community and bring students together to share ideas and inspire each other. The program harnesses the power of alumni

connections, Book Discussions, Lunchbox Lectures, HPSC events, the Honors Network and Listserv, CURO Symposium, and financial support for experiential learning (internships, travel-study, leadership, service, and research). Also, Honors now offers professional development support for all of our students.

professional development support, helping Honors students develop resumes, personal statements, and cover letters and prepare for job and grad school interviews. This extends the support to all students across Honors that in the past was reserved for external scholarship applicants.

u You just started to talk about a staff position Honors created since your time as students. Tell us more.

Emily: Elizabeth Hughes! She is an amazing resource for students.

Jessica: Yes! Elizabeth provides

u How does being an Honors Program alumna help you in your current job?

Jessica: Having stayed connected to Honors alumni throughout the last four decades of my life, I enjoy building bridges between Honors students and alumni

Clockwise from top left: 1) Jessica with her husband, Chris Starrs, before officiating a wedding in January 2020; 2) Jessica, second from right, explores Sapelo Island in the 1980s with other Foundation Fellows Billy Steen, Margaret Crowder Lawrence, and Christopher Vickery and, not pictured, Eugene Odum (now known as the father of modern ecology); 3) Jessica (far right) at the Peace Corps Guatemala Training Center with Rosemary McCloskey and Rodolfo Flores in 1989; 4) Jessica in her office in the Moore College building in 2013; and 5) Jessica jokes with Brian Woolfolk and Rachel Yuan, Fellows from the Class of 2021.

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who can provide inspiration and guidance for navigating a host of academic and professional paths.

Emily: I have seen many angles of the Honors Program—I was a student, a student worker here, worked at the front desk for a year, and now have been in the scholarships office for eight years.

Being familiar with Honors programming, requirements, and procedures definitely helped me acclimate to joining the staff.

Also, it may have taken 10 years, but I no longer get turned around about which staircase I’m on in Moore College!

u Describe a favorite student memory.

Emily: I did theatre in high school with my college roommate Joanna, and we were eager to maintain that creative outlet. Our freshman year, we dared each other to audition for Play It Again, Sam at Town & Gown, Georgia’s longest-running all-volunteer community theatre. The rest is history—we both were cast in the show and kept coming back for future productions. Bonus fun fact: We each met the people we would later marry through Town & Gown.

Jessica: Oh wow—so many! They include pulling all-nighters at the IHOP to study

and write papers, walking the beaches and skirting the marshes of Sapelo Island with the wonderful Eugene Odum as guide, studying abroad in London and seeing Tim Curry onstage as the Pirate King in Pirates of Penzance and a young Rupert Everett in a production of Another Country, seeing R.E.M. perform on Legion Field, studying Shakespeare with Dr. Fran Teague and 20th century American literature with Dr. Hugh Ruppersburg and Dr. Jim Kilgo, attending dinner-seminars with amazing speakers: Betty Jean Craige, Phinizy Spalding, and former Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

—Stephanie Schupska

Clockwise from right: 1) Emily Shirley stands with Megan White at Lake Khuvsgul, Mongolia; 2) Emily travels in Morocco with Sandip Minhas and other Foundation Fellows; 3) Emily honeymoons with her husband, Adam Shirley, in Dubrovnik, Croatia, in 2019; 4) Joanna Eldredge and Emily, right, prepare to go on stage with Town & Gown in 2007; and 5) Emily with her mother, Lisa Myers, after graduating from the University of Georgia in 2010.

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HONORS

Research

C A T C H I N G

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R I D E

TO SPACE UGA’s Small Satellite Research Lab—started with a dream and moved along by grant funding—just watched its first satellite enter orbit from the International Space Station

By Stephanie Schupska

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“Part of our mission in designing these satellites was to put UGA on the map.

We wanted people to start associating aerospace and UGA.” Paige Copenhaver

Honors alumna, physics and astronomy

Searching for space It took five years for the University of Georgia to rocket into space—half a decade, a span of time barely longer than the average undergraduate degree program.

In 2015, UGA undergraduates Caleb Adams and Hollis Neel were looking for a way—any way— to do aerospace research.

They won a hackathon that February with a low cost remote operated telescope, built a company,

and then, in August, met with Cotten and geography professor Deepak Mishra, now director of the SSRL. That meeting resulted in a partnership and collective work on NASA and Air Force Research Lab grant proposals. The students would be able to build a working satellite (and an undergraduate program at UGA—which had a growing engineering college but no aerospace component), and the faculty members would be able to collect their own data from the satellite they would send into orbit.

In the early days, it wasn’t just about getting to space. It was about finding space— any space—in which to do their research.

“The bureaucracy of trying to secure

Photo courtesy of NASA

O

n Oct. 2, a day after the Antares rocket launch was scrubbed roughly two and a half minutes before liftoff, the countdown continued. The wind held steady, equipment worked properly, and the five, four, three, two, one ended with the earth shaking and an artificial dawn flooding the night sky for miles around the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

“It was really special,” said Godfrey Hendrix, an Honors alumnus who graduated from UGA in 2020 with his bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering. “It was the second rocket launch I’ve ever been to, and it will probably be the closest I will ever get.”

With that liftoff, the Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft was on its way to the International Space Station, carrying UGA’s small SPOC satellite—short for SPectral Ocean Color—along with other much-needed cargo in its almost four-ton payload, including a 360-degree camera, fruits, vegetables, seeds, specialty meats and cheeses, and a $23 million nextgeneration space toilet.

“The launch shook my clothes, and my actual breathing changed from the force of it,” said David Cotten, associate director of the Small Satellite Research Laboratory, or SSRL, and a research scientist in the geography department. “We were so close the rocket was actually shaking my chest.

It was emotional in a way I haven’t felt, because you really felt it.

“Once it launched, I was like, ‘great! We did this! Now we just need to talk to it.’”

lab space to begin with—people didn’t believe we were legitimate,” said Paige Copenhaver, an Honors alumna who graduated from UGA in May 2018 with a degree in physics and astronomy. They found a giant lab in the basement of the physics building that was being used for storage, started defending it from other possible occupants, and “just took over.

There were experiments in there from 20 years ago.”

The students held on, and after securing their first grants from the Air Force (in January 2016 for the design of the satellite MOCI, or Multi-view Onboard Computational Imager) and NASA (in April 2016 for SPOC), the laboratory officially became theirs.

Not long after, an orange-walled clean room joined the desks, tables, satellite components, couches, laptops, and posters that marked the space as the SmallSat Lab. Funding also came from inside UGA. The Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities, or CURO, still provides research assistantships, conference funding, and summer fellowships to many of the lab members. Having that In this photo, the Antares rocket lifts off from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 9:16 p.m. on Oct. 2.

extra income enables them to work in the lab without adding a second job.

The ‘unknown unknown’ Originally, Cotten and Mishra wanted a satellite that could take images of the Georgia coast. They were getting limited, once-a-day visuals from existing NASA satellites, but to advance their research, they needed new information more frequently. SPOC would be their first solution to that problem; it would primarily be an ocean science mission, imaging the oceans and the animals within them.

With that as a starting point, the lab got to work.

“It is rewarding but so difficult,” Cotten said. “It’s ‘the unknown unknown.’

I forgot who came up with that quote, but it seems to be the theme of what we have to deal with. We’re building everything from scratch. It’s rewarding when we solve it, but it’s just so hard and tiring.”

Paige and Godfrey echoed Cotten’s comments.

“We started from nothing,” Paige said.

“We didn’t have anything before, and we did this all by ourselves.”

“When we first started, we also knew basically nothing,” Godfrey said. “We started from the absolute bottom.”

With Cotten and Mishra as the mentors and the students as the drivers, the undergraduates were all in— throwing themselves at learning about cubesats, space, GPUs, components, and radios (Paige says that the Athens Radio Club “taught us everything” about radio frequencies and how satellites communicate).

“Part of our mission in designing these satellites was to put UGA on the map,” Paige said. “We wanted people to start associating aerospace and UGA, thinking of it as a really good engineering school and a really good physics and math school.”

Their hard work would pay off in a big way on some big stages against some really big competitors.

Launch dollars Initial NASA funding for the SPOC project paid for its design and build, but not for the launch. The breadboxsized satellite (it measures 4-inches by 4-inches by 13-inches) would still be sitting on a lab bench had it not been for a second round of highly competitive NASA funding.

In early 2017, the SSRL learned that NASA had selected SPOC as one of 34 small satellites that would rocket into space between 2018-2020. The timing would depend on available cargo space.

In SPOC’s case, that originally meant December 2019, but a hardware glitch and then a pandemic pushed its launch to October 2020.

With SPOC funded, that just left MOCI, and a huge Air Force competition in January 2018 in Albuquerque where they would vie for funding.

At the University Nanosat Program’s Flight Selection Review, UGA would be squaring off against schools like MIT, the U.S. Naval Academy, and the University of Colorado Boulder for the dollars that could send them into space. The top two teams would be able to launch their satellites.

“For the final round of Air Force

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Stephanie Schupska

Above: Alex Lin works in UGA’s Small Satellite Research Laboratory on Oct. 22. Her biggest task in October was to make sure the lab could talk to the SPOC satellite when it was released into orbit from the International Space Station. Right, top: Adam King speaks during the UGA Small Satellite Research Lab—Spectral Ocean Color (SPOC) Launch ceremony on Oct. 1. Right, bottom: This Oct. 2 graphic from NASA shows the Antares rocket’s trajectory from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to the International Space Station.

funding, we were competing almost completely against graduate students,” said Adam King, an Honors alumnus who graduated in December 2018 with dual bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science. “Undergraduates don’t do this kind of thing.”

“This shows just how unique our program is—at that time we were 100% undergraduate, and it was founded and run by undergraduates,” Godfrey said. “With these other schools, you were lucky to step foot in a lab as an undergrad. That was pretty wild once I made that connection.”

For two years, the SSRL had been using Phase A funding to pay for MOCI’s design and build. Albuquerque was their opportunity to move on to Phase B. The competition was fierce. And UGA came out on top. They were the first school to win the University Nanosat Program’s competition that had never competed in it before—and the first team to win without an official aerospace program.

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“I’m also very, very, very certain that we were the first school to be 100% undergraduate,” Godfrey said.

CU Boulder came in second. The MOCI mission was a go.

“We learned we can actually do aerospace things without aerospace programs,” Adam said.

Long-distance connection When Alex Lin watched the Antares rocket launch on Oct. 2, she said it was exciting at first. As the SSRL’s MOCI systems engineer, Alex is an Honors senior and is the lead above all the other subsystem team leads in the lab—electronics, software, hardware, mechanical, and mission operations. She also communicates with the Air Force and industry partners to make sure hardware gets to their lab on time.

“It was comforting knowing that when the launch was aborted the first time on Thursday that this rocket has to go up really soon,” said Alex, who is majoring in

computer systems engineering. “It holds supplies and food and this very fancy space toilet. But after those first five seconds, I just felt this feeling of dread, that now we have to prepare to talk to it when it actually deploys from the International Space Station.”

Honors alumna Megan Arogeti had the same feelings.

“The launch felt like both the end of an era and the beginning of one,” said Megan, who graduated from UGA in May with a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics.

“So much of what I did as missions ops lead was preparing for post-launch, the mission at work. For us, launch was just the beginning.”

On Nov. 5 at 4:05 a.m., SPOC would be pushed into orbit from the International Space Station, and they had to make sure all operations were ready by then.

“Space brings all kinds of unique challenges that aren’t present on the ground,” said Keaton Coletti, an Honors

junior and Foundation Fellow who is studying mechanical engineering and applied mathematics.

The lab would also be saying goodbye to the small satellite they had spent four years building.

“On the live feed will be the last time anyone will ever be able to see it,” Cotten said, “because after that, you can’t see it anymore, you can just talk to it through the system. It will burn up in the atmosphere in about two years, and then it will be gone.”

SPOC’s push into space from the International Space Station was shown live on YouTube. SPOC popped out first, followed by the identical-looking cubesat Bobcat-1, developed by students at Ohio University.

Back on Earth, 200 miles away from the International Space Station, a small box sits on a table behind Cotten’s desk. It is connected to a giant dish on the roof of the physics building. The dish pulls down data from SPOC, which is now monitoring coastal ecosystems. SPOC’s initial data looks good.

Next up MOCI is set to launch in fall 2021, although a date hasn’t been set yet. While its design is similar to SPOC, it will have the added benefit of a GPU, or graphics processing unit.

Eric Miller, an Honors junior and Foundation Fellow majoring in computer science and mathematics with a masters in artificial intelligence, is coordinating the Nvidia GPU. “That’s actually the coolest part of our MOCI mission in my opinion: Instead of sending down large amounts of raw data every day to be processed on the ground, we’re including a GPU onboard to do all the heavy computation in orbit,” he said.

“Currently, I’m working on the software to keep the GPU working in the case of radiational interference, and to selfcorrect any potential corruptions.”

When the lab members first approached Cotten about the idea of putting a GPU on MOCI, he said he would ask his colleagues in the aerospace industry about the possibility.

“Everyone I talked to said, ‘no, you don’t want to do that. It’s too hard,’ or ‘it’s not going to work,’” Cotten said. “That was four years ago, and then two years ago, everyone started to do the same thing. I’ve started to really see that, yes,

our students may have these extreme or out-of-the-box views, but that’s how you progress.

“Not having a lot of experience has been a big benefit because they approach problems very differently, instead of thinking about everything in this same little box.”

Back in the lab, Alex fine-tunes the components that will be housed on MOCI. In May, she will graduate from UGA and move on to a job working as a flight software engineer at Northrop-Grumman, an aerospace and defense company.

It all started with the SSRL, which has now grown to more than 100 lab members, including a handful of graduate students. Its students now regularly intern for NASA, and four of its alumni have been hired by NASA’s Ames Research Center. Others work in aerospace, and many are pursuing graduate degrees.

“I heard about the lab through my Introduction to Honors class, when my instructor told us to reach out and join some clubs,” Godfrey said. “When I went to the interview, I realized, ‘oh, wow, this is not really a club, and I’m definitely not getting in.’ But to my surprise, I got in.”

He is now working on a master’s degree in aerospace systems at Purdue University.

“Toward the end of my freshman year, I read an email saying that this group was starting a satellite lab and that they needed help,” Adam said. “It was never something I’d imagine I’d be doing at UGA.” He is now a software engineer at Generation Orbit, and they are building the X-60A hypersonic rocket.

“I can safely say I would not be where I am without the lab,” Megan said. “I not only learned certain technical skills, because my research was so different than my degree, but I also learned interpersonal skills and networking skills.”

She is now earning a Ph.D. in physics with a focus on astrophysics at Georgia Tech.

“It felt like I was part of something really, really big,” Paige said. “Working in the lab was literally probably the most important thing I could’ve done in my career or education.”

She is now working on a master’s degree in coastal and ocean policy at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

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HONORS

in the Community

In the center photo, a staff member from The Rocket, a restaurant in Albany, Georgia, delivers 100 meals to Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital for their COVID-19 staff in mid-October. Anita Qualls, left, and Aditya Sood, right, may be socially distant, but they still worked together to form a nonprofit that helps ease the burden of thousands of frontline health care workers (portraits by Andrew Davis Tucker).

Feeding the Frontlines Collaboration between Honors alumni and current students provides meals for health care workers and revenue for restaurants

By Eric Rangus

A

nita Qualls and Aditya Sood don’t remember when they met.

Maybe it was during a group gathering in Myers Hall, where they both lived freshman year. It could have been in one of the many biology classes they shared. Regardless of the starting point, Honors alumni Anita and Aditya both agree that they became close friends while taking an evolutionary biology course their senior year.

In the spring, when Anita was looking for a way to support those fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, Aditya was one of the first people she contacted. The nonprofit they formed has helped ease the burden of thousands of frontline workers across the state. At a time when collaboration is more important than ever, they are helping bring the UGA community closer together.

When the pandemic hit, Aditya was in his second semester of medical school at Emory. Anita was in Cambridge, England, as UGA’s first-ever Churchill Scholar. The scholarship gave her the opportunity to study immunology before entering medical school at the University of California, San Francisco this fall.

After Anita was forced to return to the States in mid-March,

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she actively sought ways to contribute to the fight against COVID-19. One of the friends she reached out to was Honor alumna Cali Callaway, a third-year medical student at Cornell who graduated from UGA in 2017. She was involved in an effort to deliver restaurant-made meals to health care workers around New York, called NYP

Healthcare Heroes.

The concept created a partnership between the organization and local restaurants who made and then delivered fresh meals to health care workers in hospitals and medical clinics around the state. To minimize touchpoints, Feed the Frontlines volunteers aren’t directly involved with food preparation or delivery. Instead, they handle the logistics of connecting with health care providers and providing funding to restaurant partners.

When Anita, who was quarantining in Hiawassee but lives in Johns Creek, learned about Feed the Frontlines, she set up a similar effort in Athens.

But she didn’t want to stop there, so she contacted Aditya, who lives in Alpharetta.

“We realized there was a need, not just with healthcare workers who were struggling but also with local restaurants that had no source of income but massive rents to pay. We realized we could join these two together, not just in Athens but across all of Georgia,” Aditya said.

What followed was a masterclass in networking and coordination. Anita and Aditya cast a wide net and reeled in dozens of friends and acquaintances from across Georgia who, like them, were trying to figure out a way to make an impact.

Feed the Frontlines Georgia grew from four people to 80 in just two and a half weeks, and it now serves more than 40 hospitals and clinics across the state. More than 1,000 meals are delivered statewide every week. Anita estimates that 90% of the volunteers are current UGA students or alumni.

“We were amazed at the interest from our friends to be involved,” Anita said.

“We’ve never worked on something that has been so fast paced and growing like this. We’ve both run organizations before, and we’ve both been in leadership. But this was really unique because of the timeline and because of the eagerness of every person in our organization.”

Feed the Frontlines Georgia serves not only cities like Athens, Atlanta, and Columbus, but it also provides crucial support to rural areas like Berrien County (east of Tifton) and Lanier County (near Valdosta).

To date, they have raised more than $75,000, which has kept dozens of restaurants afloat. Anita and Aditya say Feed the Frontlines Georgia will continue as long as there is a need.

Q&A with Honors students working with Feed the Frontlines

C

urrent Honors students Landon Clark, Arnav Goyal, and Jaaie Varshney share more about their involvement with Feed the Frontlines. Landon, a CURO Honors Scholar, and Arnav are fourth-year students majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology. Jaaie, a third-year Foundation Fellow, is double majoring in political science and women’s studies. u What was going on when you first learned about Feed the Frontlines?

Arnav: When I first learned about the Feed the Frontlines effort, the COVID-19 pandemic was at its peak and everything was confusing, chaotic, and unprecedented. At that time, those involved in health care were needed the most and showed admirable resilience in their work despite the pandemic.

Landon: It was around mid-April when I first got the call from Anita. Although some regions of Georgia were not especially bad at the time, my hometown in Albany, Georgia, had it the worst. We were known to have the highest deathsper-capita in the world rivaling Wuhan, China. Our sole hospital in a large majority of the Southwest Georgia region was nearing full capacity and depleted the majority of its hospital supplies in the span of a week. Anita called me about her new project, and I knew I wanted to get involved and help my hometown.

Jaaie: Anita approached me and my sister to be the coordinators for our hometown of Rome, Georgia. u What is it like being a Feed the Frontlines Georgia volunteer?

Jaaie: I was a coordinator from April to June 2020. In that time, I was able to help local restaurants during a tough time by ordering hundreds of dollars’ worth of meals, which were then delivered to health care workers at hospitals in the same area. I really enjoyed this work because I got to work with a team of dedicated coordinators.

Arnav: I feel glad, fortunate, and hopeful.

I am glad to be able to be part of the effort to deliver meals to ease the burden of health care workers. I am fortunate to have been a part of this organization since its inception. And I am hopeful that our endeavors will continue to combat the pandemic by making positive contributions to the community’s businesses and health care workers.

Landon: It has been an amazing experience serving as the Albany regional coordinator! In total, I facilitated 1,5002,000 meal deliveries to various hospitals and clinics in Southwest Georgia. u Tell us about an impactful moment you’ve witnessed as part of this effort.

Landon: One event I particularly remember occurred with Phoebe Worth

Medical Center, a smaller clinic receiving the overflow of patients from the main hospital. I remember ordering from Fat Boys BBQ, and since the clinic was so small, we managed to feed the entire day and night shift at the hospital. I think it is important to recognize it was not only large hospitals taking a hit from the pandemic but smaller ones as well.

Feeding smaller clinics and EMS services that catered toward various patients was something I really loved about it all.

Arnav: Feed the Frontlines received letters from hospitals all across Georgia with simple gratitude and thanks. As everyone in the organization continues working in unison to help our frontline workers, I know we are making a positive impact. u How has this effort helped you feel involved during the pandemic?

Arnav: Working with Feed the Frontlines Georgia has helped establish a coordinated effort we can all engage in no matter where we are. I am happy to be working alongside many of my peers and friends as part of a large team to mediate the day-to-day activities of Feed the Frontlines. It provides a valuable opportunity for students, like myself, to escape powerlessness and make positive impacts on our community.

Jaaie: Being a part of this effort during the early stages of the pandemic helped me feel connected with UGA, and I got to help organize a fundraiser targeting UGA students. I was tasked with reaching out to student organizations and local businesses to provide prizes. We raised over $12,000 in our effort, and the money went toward meal purchasing.

—Kora Burton

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Tallying for the decade Five Honors students start UGACounts to help Athens-Clarke County accurately enumerate residents for the 2020 Census

By Kora Burton

E

very. One. Counts. One group of University of Georgia undergraduates has been working hard to make sure occupants of Athens-Clarke County, including the county’s almost 40,000 UGA students, are tallied correctly for the 2020 Census—even after the addition of policy and logistical challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The undergraduates—including Ramsey Honors Scholar Marshall Berton; Foundation Fellows Shashank Ganeshan, Priyanka Parikh, and Christopher Rosselot; and Honors student Sophie Murtey— established UGACounts to alert UGA students to the responsibility (and the benefits) of being counted in the 2020 Census.

“We have a responsibility as UGA students to pay it forward, because this one census impacts Athens for the next 10 years,” Shashank said.

University students represent approximately 25 percent of AthensClarke County occupants, Sophie said.

While in a typical census year, universities count and report their on-campus residents to the Census Bureau, a large number of off-campus students could potentially go uncounted.

“The main thing that the census does that a lot of people don’t really think about is that it provides millions of dollars in additional federal funding to local cities and ordinances,” Marshall said.

“We take advantage of the resources of the city and the community all the time, whether it be the roads, public transit, and all of the great local businesses that we love to shop at, eat at, etc. Those places can’t survive, or will be negatively affected, without this additional census money.”

Left to right are, top, Sophie Murtey, Priyanka Parikh, and Marshall Berton, and, bottom, Shashank Ganeshan and Christopher Rosselot.

“It’s really easy to be here four years and just think of yourself as a UGA student, but we have to realize we’re part of the Athens community. It’s important for us to recognize what issues exist outside of UGA’s campus borders.”

Priyanka Parikh

Honors sophomore majoring in biology and economics

Because of this, Marshall said, it is important to get an accurate count of the population, which includes UGA students.

Committee work At the start of the project, UGACounts members asked themselves, “how do we make ourselves members of both the UGA and Athens communities?” Christopher explained. To answer this question, they became closely involved with the Athens Complete Count Committee (CCC) as part of their push for representation of postsecondary education in the city’s counting plans—known in census terminology as enumeration.

“I’ve had the chance to connect with

community leaders across the spectrum of Athens,” Christopher said. “There are people from the local unified government, UGA, local schools, and also neighborhood leaders, ‘normal’ people who are in charge of making sure the message gets out to their community. It’s been neat.”

The Complete Count Committee has “been very supportive,” Priyanka said. “The CCC was so thrilled that students want to get involved in the process.”

When the pandemic first interrupted UGACounts’ primary goal of reaching off-campus students and the Athens community, Shashank says the CCC didn’t skip a beat.

“It was awesome being plugged into the CCC,” Shashank said. “Being able to sit in the same room as the mayor or a Census Bureau director and having them see us as equal contributors made us realize we can actually have an impact beyond club meetings.”

Policy proposal UGACounts started as a policy proposal that was the product of at least six months of work, including problem identification, formal research, and collaborating with local organizations.

Titled “UGA Counts: Accurately Enumerating the University of Georgia Student Population for the 2020 Census,” it was selected from more than 80 submissions and was published in the Roosevelt Network’s policy journal 10 Ideas in June.

The Roosevelt Network is an organization of over 10,000 students on 130 college campuses working to advance policy solutions in their communities. The UGA campus chapter is known as Roosevelt @ UGA. “Being recognized by Roosevelt gave us the extra confidence boost that we were heading in the right direction,”

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Marshall said. “Roosevelt helped us refine our policy and think about some key points to essentially take it to the next level. We always had it in the back of our minds that we wanted this to be something that contributed to actual progress.”

Their policy proposal was completed before the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to in-person everything this past spring. Although COVID-19 provided plenty of obstacles, several things worked in the group’s favor. For the first time, the Census could be filled out online; the Census Bureau allowed for universities to also count students who live off campus in addition to students living in on-campus dorms; and the original deadline for completing the Census was extended.

“Before COVID, we had a good plan— social media campaigns and tabling on campus—and that all changed. But the Census Bureau’s decision to change some policies eased the burden on us,” Christopher said. UGACounts then turned its attention to continuing to encourage the student population to fill out the census while also assisting in community issues to help enumerate local residents.

“The pandemic has certainly made enumeration of community members especially difficult, and we really had to adjust to that challenge,” Marshall said.

The group has become more involved via social media and community events, such as at voter registration booths, COVID testing sites, and food and supply banks.

Community impact Athens-Clarke County has a significant population living in poverty. Federal funds received from accurate population numbers enable the local government to institute initiatives to better help citizens who need it the most.

“Lots of students like to say that Athens has become a part of them during their time here,” Sophie said. “That’s great, but that also means that you should have a moral obligation to give back to this community, because if it means that much to you, then you should also feel the compelling need to help build an urban environment that can also nurture others.”

UGACounts’ enumeration work provided students with an impactful way to get

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2020 CENSUS Every 10 years, the federal government collects Census data and uses it to allocate billions of dollars to local governments across the country.

CENSUS IMPACTS ON ATHENS & UGA: Public works Schools Health care Representation Pell grants & federal student aid Research On-campus mental health support

involved in the community while being conscious of public health and safety.

“One of the biggest issues people have been dealing with in the pandemic is understanding how to be helpful at home in isolation,” Priyanka said. “The census has a very long-term impact. It’s been nice knowing we’re doing whatever we can to make sure when we do return to ‘normal,’ it’s a normal we can look forward to.”

The Honors community also contributed to the success of the initiative.

When the need for more social media engagement was at its greatest during isolation, other Honors students answered the call.

“A lot of the people who helped us with our information campaign over the summer came from the Honors community,” Shashank said. “Including other Honors students in our efforts was very cool just because they’re located all across the country and the world, but we are still linked and have this shared connection of belonging to Honors. It ties us together.”

As this year’s census enumeration campaign comes to an end, the founding members of UGACounts set their sights on the future.

“Talking about the census isn’t something that’s normalized in our age group,” Sophie said. “But so many of us understand the power of social media platforms to reach out to people, and, similar to other types of social campaigns, we should be able to talk about the census openly as something we as a society can work on together.”

“It’s really easy to be here four years and just think of yourself as a UGA student, but we have to realize we’re part of the Athens community,” Priyanka said. “It’s important for us to recognize what issues exist outside of UGA’s campus borders and for us to take some initiative to take what we’re learning and the connections we’re making to do something outside the UGA community. That’s the whole point of our college education—to have an impact beyond campus.”

—Additional reporting by Chris Starrs

HONORS

Alumni Connection

Brian Quinif (AB ’06, MA ’06)

‘I’m extremely thankful for the opportunities Georgia gave me’

By Eric Rangus

Peter Frey

T

Above: Brian Quinif is a vice president at HSBC in New York. In part because of his fluency in Spanish and Portuguese, he works as a trader for the Latin American market.

Right: Brian as a senior at UGA in 2005.

the same language or simply finding common ground, is a very useful thing,” Brian said. “Knowing what it’s like to be a foreigner somewhere and learning how to adapt to that culture while still being true to your own is a really valuable skill.”

His interest in travel crosses over from his profession to his hobbies, too.

For instance, a few years ago, on a trip to Patagonia with several other UGA alumni, he was introduced to ice climbing. He fell in love with the sport, and he travels not just to upstate New York but also the Rockies and Alaska to climb everything from glaciers to frozen waterfalls.

“Living in the North, I’ve become a big winter sports fan,” Brian said. “Something like skiing on ice, though, isn’t fun. But climbing on ice—that’s fun.”

Nancy Evelyn

homasville native Brian Quinif says it was a big move for him when he came to Athens to attend the University of Georgia.

He didn’t know it at the time, but there would be much larger ones to come.

Even though Brian came to UGA a year early, he wasn’t intimidated by college work. In fact, as an underclassman he earned a Foundation Fellowship, the university’s foremost scholarship, which set him up for a journey that filled his passport with stamps.

Brian studied abroad in Innsbruck, Austria. He had an internship in Barcelona and another study abroad trip in Rio de Janeiro. Those latter two experiences helped him acquire fluency in both Spanish and Portuguese. Further study at the London School of Economics honed his business acumen. By the time Brian (AB ’06, MA ’06) was finished, he was able to graduate with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics (he doublemajored in Romance languages as an undergraduate) and a job waiting for him as a trader on Wall Street.

“I combined the economics, politics, and language skills I acquired through the fellowship while studying abroad, so I’m extremely thankful for the opportunities that Georgia gave me both academically and in terms of learning about the world,” he said.

In June 2019, he started his current job as a vice president at HSBC (which is located on Fifth Avenue, not Wall Street, but you get the idea). Because of his language skills, Brian works as a trader for the Latin American market, but in a general sense, the lessons he learned traveling as a student pay off every day in the increasingly global banking market.

“Knowing how to find a common language, whether it is literally speaking

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HONORS

Alumni Connection

Kit Trensch (BA ’76)

Giving back is ‘all about the students’

By Stephanie Schupska

I

t was a Wonderful Wednesday the day that Kit Trensch first visited the University of Georgia’s campus. At the time, she was attending Mercer University in Macon, and Wednesdays were wonderful because they were set aside for studying instead of class time.

She used that Wednesday in 1975 to drive up to Athens and “immediately fell in love with the physical beauty of campus,” she said.

Her trip to UGA began much farther away than a private university in middle Georgia. It started in central Florida, in a city situated on the Gulf Coast.

“I was from Tampa, Florida,” she said. “I was hoping to find some place closer to home, but moving to Athens was the best decision that I’ve made. I spent many wonderful years there.”

Mercer originally drew her to Georgia because of its size, its close-knit community, and its recruiter, who visited Kit’s high school. Even though she was attracted to the idea of UGA, she didn’t want to lose that small college feel.

On that Wonderful Wednesday, she met with Dr. Lothar Tresp, then director of the Honors Program. She came away from their talk encouraged by the program’s small class sizes and, as a Romance languages major, excited about the Honors science courses offered specifically for non-science majors.

Since graduating from UGA in 1976, Kit has lived in Georgia—now residing in Marietta—for all but 12 of 44 years.

To use her Spanish major, she took a job as an export clerk for an international sales company in Tampa in 1977, letting them know she couldn’t start until after Jan. 1 because she had the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans to attend (the Bulldogs lost to the Pittsburgh Panthers, who clinched their ninth national title with the win).

“Then Athens was calling me back,” she said. “I could hear the call.”

This time, she was moving to Athens for a job opportunity in fundraising. Instead of exports, she would be using her talents to encourage others to give, an experience she could discuss firsthand (her first donation was to UGA’s Bicentennial Campaign in 1984-85).

Kit stayed in development for 31 years, and the driving force in her fundraising efforts was the students, she said. Her first job at UGA in annual giving led to a position with Coach Vince Dooley on the Dooley Library Endowment Fund. She

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then became director of development for the UGA Athletic Association. In 2005, she moved to Southern Polytechnic State University, which became a college housed under Kennesaw State University in 2015.

Kit has seen big crowds and big campuses. But she was able to end her career in development in 2019 the way she started her time in Athens—in a tight-knit community.

“Before I retired, I worked as the development officer for Southern Polytechnic College of Engineering and Engineering Technology,” she said. “Working in that situation, I was with a smaller group of students. I had the chance to be in front of them and be involved with them. Seeing that the fruits of my efforts had a direct impact on them meant a lot.”

Kit was last in Athens on Sept. 7, 2019. This time her trip was on a Saturday, but it was still wonderful. She was celebrating with an old friend as the field in Sanford Stadium was being named after him.

“Working for Coach Dooley, I was able to see how people revere him, because he is a great man, a renaissance man, fair and a man of integrity,” she said.

Helping donors and being an Honors Program donor “is all about the students,” she said. “My goal is to support them in a way that provides them a little bit of extra.

“One thing I love is that the Honors Program affects students across the board, no matter what their major is, mine being Romance languages. The fact that Honors students are now ultimately the best and brightest, it’s just a pleasure to know that you can help them.”

Grateful: A season

of giving thanks

As we pause to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Honors Program and reflect back on what Honors once was and has now become, I would like to offer my deep gratitude to every donor, alumni, parent, and friend of the program who has contributed to our current success. Through every volunteer hour, networking connection, alumni talk, mentor relationship, and financial donation, you have made a difference in the life of an Honors student.

Because of the generous support of our alumni, donors, and friends, we are able to help our students pursue transformational experiences each and every day—from the student who is able to participate in research through the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities to the student excited to pursue an Honors internship to the student now financially able to study abroad. Every gift helps move our students one step closer to achieving their goals. Simply put, we provide these life-changing opportunities for our students because of you.

During this holiday season, I encourage you to reflect on your own Honors experience and consider what opportunities and moments you are most grateful for.

I would love to learn what makes Honors so special to you—you can contact me at Colleen.Pruitt@uga.edu or by phone at 706-583-0698. I hope you might take a few moments to share your Honors story with me.

As we look forward to the next 60 years of academic excellence, we do so with much gratitude for all of the individuals who have shaped the Honors Program into what it is today.

The Honors Magazine

IS MOVING ONLINE. This spring, we will be sharing Honors stories with you through our new magazine website.

It’s a big change for us, but we’re looking forward to it! The digital version of our publication will still contain stories of our amazing students, and it will allow us to add a few new features—some videos, more photos, and more stories from our alumni (please send us your news!).

You will be receiving an email from us this spring with links to our stories as well as a postcard that will give you a preview of our online content. It will include a QR code so you can find our website quickly. Our online home is under construction, but soon you can find us at magazine.honors.uga.edu.

If you previously unsubscribed from receiving UGA emails and would like to opt back in, please use this link to begin receiving emails such as the Honors magazine: alumni.uga.edu/reconnect.

Colleen Pruitt Development and Alumni Relations, UGA Honors Program

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Moore College, 108 Herty Drive University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602-6116

Rhodes Scholar

On Nov. 21, Phaidra Buchanan was named UGA’s 25th Rhodes Scholar.

A social studies education major in the Mary Frances Early College of Education, she plans to pursue an M.Sc. in comparative and international education at the University of Oxford. Read more about her on page 20.

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