Honors Magazine Spring 2017

Spring 2017

Road to Rhodes

Laura Courchesne’s unique course of study at UGA becomes her route to Oxford

Inside:

Engineering a Global Focus | Experiential Learning | Morehead Professorship | Committing to Honors

Quotables

Madison Miracle A senior pre-med student from Woodstock, Madison is majoring in biology and psychology with a minor in Spanish.

In this photo, she runs along a trail in Oconee Forest Park, which is located next to the UGA Intramural Fields.

“The summer after my sophomore year, I was awarded a scholarship from the Honors International Scholars Program to study abroad and volunteer in Peru. As a part of the UGA en España Peru Medical Maymester, I learned medical Spanish while observing physicians in the Peruvian hospitals. One of the coolest things about this program was the fact that we were able to explore all the different parts of Peru— from the Andes Mountains and Machu Picchu to the desert lowlands and northwestern coast all the way to the Amazon jungle.”

Cover photo by Andrew Davis Tucker

Chad Obsurn

Read more about Madison on page 16.

9 Spring 2017, Volume 4, Issue 1

University of Georgia President

Jere W. Morehead Provost

Pamela Whitten

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Associate Provost and Director of Honors

David S. Williams

Associate Director of Honors and CURO

Martin Rogers

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Assistant Director & Major Scholarships Coordinator

Jessica Hunt

Assistant Director & Programming Coordinator

Maria de Rocher

Honors Director of Development & External Affairs

Dorothé Otemann

Honors Recruitment & Enrollment Coordinator

Lakecia Pettway

Magazine staff Editor/Designer

Stephanie Schupska Writers

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Melissa Campbell, Stephanie Schupska Photographers

Melissa Campbell, Wingate Downs, Matt Hardy, Chad Osburn, Stephanie Schupska, Jason Thrasher, Andrew Davis Tucker

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Copy editors

Melissa Campbell, Elizabeth Hughes, Jessica Hunt 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 © 2017 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 Global Focus

10 Cover Story

4 Experiential Learning

13 Morehead Professorship

Gaby Pierre eyes future as an international city planning consultant.

New UGA initiative focuses on “learning by doing.” We highlight:

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Internships

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Travel-study

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Research

Sisters craft unique internships.

Students experience Cape Town.

Terns Lab explores CRISPR-Cas.

Laura Courchesne readies for Oxford as UGA’s 24th Rhodes Scholar.

Professorship recognizes UGA president’s accomplishments in Honors.

14 Honors Highlights

Crane Scholars, other students featured.

17 Committing to Honors

Alumna helps Honors Program students reach their full potentials.

Gaby Pierre

Matt Hardy Photography

the

Re-engineering of Gaby Pierre Wingate Downs

A switch from solar nanotechnology to international city planning is giving Gaby the opportunity to find her true passion(s).

by Stephanie Schupska

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o say Gaby Pierre has done a 180-degree turn since she first stepped foot in a classroom at the University of Georgia would be downplaying it slightly. She has done several of them, spinning until she has found herself moving in a direction truer to who she is as a student, engineer, future city planner, dancer, and global contributor.

Before coming to Athens in 2013 as a Foundation Fellow and Honors student, she was determined to be a solar nanotechnologist. It sounded incredible—until she couldn’t reconcile the lab time with her need to interact with people.

“I really like people and talking to people, and I really like data,” she said. “I am both an analytical mind and an artsy mind, and I had to find a way to combine those. I fumbled into city planning, and it helped me reconcile two parts of me that I thought were irreconcilable.”

Now she is working on combined bachelor’s and master’s degrees—the first in environmental engineering and the second in environmental planning and design. Her goal is to become an international city planning consultant when she finishes her master’s in 2018.

From Jamaica to Athens

Gaby loves Southern accents almost as much as people love her Jamaican lilt. She laughs when asked how she ended up 1,172 miles away from her hometown of Kingston, Jamaica.

“I grew up in this international church,” she said, “and they have this teen camp outside of Athens called The Swamp; 90 percent of the counselors went to UGA. That’s why I applied to

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UGA. I ended up coming because of the Foundation Fellowship.”

Through the Fellowship, she stretched her global connections, traveling to New York City; Washington, D.C.; Cuba; South Korea; Costa Rica; and England and, while backpacking, visiting Italy, France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, and Luxembourg. She spent a month in Turkey doing city planning consulting for the municipality of Taskopru and nine weeks in Panama working for a research institute building a sustainable city in the Panamanian rain forest.

She also studied environmental economics at the University of Oxford and won third in the cha-cha at the Oxford Dancesport’s Cuppers ballroom dancing competition.

“I have been able to carve out my own path through the Fellowship,” she said, “and having the funding and support backing me has been really cool.”

A Driftmier collision

“Are you really an undergraduate?” That was one of the first questions that popped into engineering professor Brian Bledsoe’s head when he met Gaby. They were waiting to heat up their lunches in the Driftmier Engineering Center’s break room.

“Gaby started telling me about her interests, and I invited her to stop by some time,” said Bledsoe, who is the UGA Athletic Association Professor in Resilient Infrastructure and, in October, started the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems at UGA. “She immediately struck me as a critical thinker.”

Now, Gaby is an undergraduate research assistant in his lab, and they are working on a project looking at flooding,

infrastructure, and resilience in Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, and Baltimore.

“Part of our question is how can green infrastructures, the natural systems, work together with the built, or gray, infrastructure, the concrete and steel and all that, and our traditional storm water and flood plain management strategies,” Bledsoe said. “We are looking at these interactions

It’s interesting how the solutions to problems, like flooding, aren’t just data-driven solutions, because people, culture, and context matter.

”

• Gaby Pierre, fourth-year engineering major in the context of trying to clarify what resilient cities and communities look like.”

Bledsoe, Gaby, and others are thinking beyond the traditional definition of resilience—basically, how long it takes a man-made system to go back to functioning at the level it was before something happened to it—and adding economic, environmental, and social resilience to their research.

Gaby is particularly focused on social resilience—the human side of infrastructure. She sees cities as meta versions of living and breathing organisms.

“It’s interesting how the solutions to problems, like flooding, aren’t just datadriven, because people, culture, and context matter, a lot more than we give them credit for,” she said. “You can have all this wonderful data analysis, but if you don’t design it for the people who are going to be living there, it’s not going to work.”

A salsa, a waltz, a foxtrot

Throughout her global learning, the one passion that has steadied Gaby is dancing.

She started when she was three, taking 14 years of ballet and five years of modern/ contemporary, jazz, and African/folk dancing. A masterful salsa done for fun during UGA’s international student orientation landed her an audition with the UGA Ballroom Performance Group. She is now president of the 50-member pre-professional dance company.

“I was skeptical at first because I had never really done anything quite like ballroom dancing,” she said.

Her Foundation Fellowship mentor, Rand Pope, was in the group and talked her into it. And now, “I don’t think I’ll ever stop dancing,” Gaby said. “There’s an indescribable moment when I’m performing a piece for the last time: the audience blurs, the adrenaline kicks in, just me, my partner, and the music. I leave my heart on the stage. It’s electric.”

Stephanie Schupska

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Brian Bledsoe and Gaby Pierre discuss their infrastructure research in Bledsoe’s office in Driftmier Engineering Center.

The juxtaposition of Gaby Pierre

Gaby surrounds herself with what she loves—friends, dancing, research, books, Excel spreadsheets, the outdoors, Athens, and alone time.

She is an ambivert, according to her personality test, balancing at 51 percent extroverted and 49 percent introverted.

“I love quality time with my people but also love being alone, reading and hiking,” she said. “I really like dancing, but I also sketch for fun. I really like having friends over for tea and dinner.”

She’s a student ambassador for engineering and Honors, content head for energy and science at the Energy Con-

cept, executive director and co-founder of Project Empathy, a member of the Blue Key Honor Society, a Peach State LSAMP Scholar, an Omotola Taofeqat Aderibigbe Engineering Scholarship Recipient, and a Classic Scholar.

She is glad to stay in Athens an extra year to finish her master’s degree.

“Athens is an excellent town,” she said.

“I have truly loved becoming a regular at certain stores, coffee shops, and restaurants, knowing the owners by name, hearing about their lives and experiences, and participating in the volunteerism and community that makes Athens, Athens.

When I go, I’ll miss that most.”

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Internships • Travel-study • Research

Experiential Learning The Honors Program excels in crafting opportunities for undergraduates, giving them the chance to see their learning environments in a whole new light.

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n fall 2016, the University of Georgia added a new requirement to its curriculum. Known as experiential learning, the initiative gives undergraduates the opportunity to open doors to their futures—and to move beyond the traditional classroom setting and “learn by doing.”

Undergraduates may fulfill the requirement by participating in creative endeavors, study abroad and field schools, internship and leadership opportunities, faculty-mentored research, and service-learning.

In the Honors Program, experiential learning is at the core of what we do. Our goal is to give students opportunities to extend themselves beyond their current boundaries. Our official programs touch on all aspects of experiential learning, and we excel at three in particular.

“The Honors Program is centered on providing enriched learning experiences for our students,” said David S. Williams, associate provost and director of the Honors Program. “To maximize their personal growth and ability to contribute in the future, today’s best students must learn not only in the classroom but also beyond it. To meet this need, the Honors Program has focused on facilitating undergraduate research, internships, and travel-study.”

Internships: Honors offers our second- and third-year students career-specific summer internships in three locations—Washington, D.C., New York City, and Savannah. Interns work an average of 40 hours a week for a minimum of nine weeks.

Of the three, Honors in Washington is by far the largest program. Each summer, 16 Honors students gain experience working in the nation’s capital. Some will be selected for specific placements, and others may pursue new locations, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, where Jennifer Hardister (story at right) worked. All Honors in Washington students live in Delta Hall, the UGA residential facility located at 608 Massachusetts Ave. NE. The three-story, 20,000-square-foot space is capable of housing 32 students and additional faculty and staff and was named in recognition of a grant from the Delta Air Lines Foundation.

Honors in New York places two students with the Greater New York Hospital Association and is de-

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signed for undergraduates interested in public health, health management, and health policy, while Honors in Savannah places one intern in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia. This past summer, Elizabeth Hardister (story at right) deepened her understanding of disaster management while living in the Big Apple.

“These internship programs have been transformative for our students,” said Maria de Rocher, assistant director of Honors. “They gain marketable skills, insight into possible career paths, connections with mentors who share their interests, and the confidence that comes from experiencing the world from a different perspective.”

Travel-study: Each year, 50-60 Honors students receive travel-study scholarships after going through a rigorous essay and interview process. The Honors International Scholars Program, or HISP, supports second- and third-year Honors students as they participate in traditional university-sponsored study abroad programs, university-to-university exchanges, intensive language-training institutes, internships, and public service projects. On page 7, we feature three undergraduates who spent their summers around Cape Town, South Africa.

Research: The Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities, which is housed in Honors, is open to all UGA undergraduates regardless of discipline, major, or GPA. Through CURO, undergraduates delve deeper into faculty-mentored research on subjects that range from gene editing to business analytics to Romance languages.

“Undergraduate research at UGA has been associated with a higher GPA, improved graduation rates, and major scholarship awards,” said Martin Rogers, associate director of Honors and CURO. “Honors students at UGA can begin conducting research as soon as their first semester if they can find a faculty member willing to take them on.”

In biochemistry and molecular biology professor Michael Terns’ lab, seven Honors students are researching the future of gene editing by studying CRISPR-Cas. They are also getting a head start on their careers as scientists and research-trained physicians in the process (pages 8-9).

Experiential Learning: Internships

Prep work Sisters find perfect fit through Honors’ summer internships

by Stephanie Schupska

Wingate Downs

J

While Elizabeth and Jennifer Hardister share much in common, like a love for public service and a desire to run toward disasters (whether a financial scandal, a natural disaster, or a nuclear incident), they have found ways to carve their own paths at UGA through the Honors Program.

ennifer and Elizabeth Hardister have been moving in each other’s circles since the very first moments of their existence. In high school in Dunwoody, the twins had to work hard to separate their identities. This past summer, however, the third-year CURO Honors Scholars were able to put their own touches on two different Honors-sponsored internship programs.

Jennifer, an accounting and international business double major, found her fit at the Securities and Exchange Commission through Honors in Washington. Elizabeth, who is earning combined bachelor’s and master’s degrees in international affairs and disaster management, thrived in the ultimate emergency management environment through Honors in New York.

“My summer was incredible,” Elizabeth said. “I was in New York with Susan Waltman at the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), and you could not have found a more perfect internship for me.”

Through Waltman, a UGA alumna and GNYHA’s executive vice president for legal, regulatory, and professional affairs and general counsel, Elizabeth was able to make connections with key players in her field of research.

“I study hurricane evacuations,” she said. “The scenario my research explores in Georgia happened to New York with Hurricane Sandy. I got to see projects on patient movement in evacuation and tools and protocols they can use in case of a major disaster.”

She attended a conference on radiation risk communication and heard the New York Police Department talk about the city’s efforts to combat terrorism.

“My major project, especially after the Orlando shooting, focused on best practices in mass casualty incident response,” Elizabeth said. “It was exciting to see new protocols being worked through and implemented while I was there.”

Jennifer, who had been admitted into UGA’s accounting program the previous spring, knew her research experience would help her in securing an internship in Washington, D.C. At the Securities and Exchange Commission, “being able to go as an intern and get exposure to these critical organizations in our financial system was really incredible,” she said. “Being able to connect my career to service was transformative for me.”

The SEC holds stock market players accountable for information they provide to investors. Her internship was with the SEC’s Office of the Inspector General, which is in charge of holding the SEC accountable by preventing fraud, waste, and abuse.

“I was in a group of auditors, and essentially, we were reviewing the SEC’s oversight of national exchanges, like the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ,” she said.

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Caitlin Felt

Top left: Jennifer Hardister at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Top right: Elizabeth Hardister at the Greater New York Hospital Association. Bottom: CURO Honors Scholars Nivita Sharma, Jennifer, Trace Calloway, Megha Kalia, and Elizabeth crowd in for a group photo at an Honors Program Parents Society football tailgate event.

Jennifer stayed with 30 other UGA students at Delta Hall, the UGA in Washington residential facility, and her commute was a 15-minute walk to Union Station, which neighbors the SEC headquarters. Her fondest memory involved an employee recognition day.

“I had cookies and cream ice cream in my hand and Mary Jo White was walking down to the elevator,” she said.

“We made eye contact, and she smiled at me. Being a rising junior in college and being able to have contact with people like that was huge.”

Back in Athens, Elizabeth works virtually for the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau for International Security and Nonproliferation as a social media intern. With UGA’s Institute for Disaster Management, she studies hurricane evacuations in Georgia. She works with the Center for International Trade and Security on nuclear security research and through the center was able to participate in a nonproliferation conference in Prague in October. She volunteers for “every disaster preparedness organization on campus,” including UGA Red Cross, Medical Reserve Corps, Campus Emergency Response Team, and Office of Emergency Pre-

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paredness’ Prepared Dawgs Ambassador program.

Jennifer is a Leonard Leadership Scholar in the Institute for Leadership Advancement in the Terry College of Business and is a student coordinator for the Terry Women’s Initiative.

As executive director of ServeUGA, she oversaw the 2016 Dawg Day of Service, which had over 500 students volunteering around Athens. She is a Vinson Fellow at the Carl Vinson Institute of Government and conducts government accounting and financial management research. This summer, she will work for a public accounting firm in Atlanta that caters mainly to German clients, and she plans to study tax law at the London School of Economics.

“As twins, it is really easy to get competitive with your sister,” Jennifer said. “In our own way, we are both in fields that try to prepare for and prevent a disaster of some kind, whether it be a financial scandal or a hurricane or a nuclear bomb.”

“We find ways to support each other,” Elizabeth said. “When we started at UGA, there was a lot of pressure to differentiate. And now we have landed in completely different areas.”

Mallory Walters

Shanlin Shoemaker

Experiential Learning: Travel-study

Honors students explore South Africa Students find career-advancing adventures in three programs centered around Cape Town

by Melissa Campbell

Above: Shanlin Shoemaker, seen from the back, practices a surf rescue aboard a 4.2-meter rigid inflatable boat in Jefferys Bay, South Africa. Top left: Caitlin Felt explores all aspects of Cape Town. Middle left: Mallory Walters tests a patient’s hemoglobin. Bottom left: Shanlin prepares for the waves.

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onors students Caitlin Felt, Mallory Walters, and Shanlin tastings, food markets, zip lining, and endless cafes. One Shoemaker had the opportunity to study abroad in South weekend, we took a road trip across South Africa that included Africa last summer through the Honors International cave exploring, ostrich riding, elephant riding, kayaking, and Scholars Program. Each year, the program provides merit-based bungee jumping off the highest bungee bridge in the world. scholarships to 50-60 Honors students engaging in overseas Every day held the possibility of a new adventure.” activities.

After graduating, Mallory plans to become a physician’s Caitlin Felt is a fourth-year international affairs and Arabic assistant while pursuing her master’s degree in public health double major who had the chance to work at Vision Afrika, an with a focus on global health programs. educational development program for South African youth.

Shanlin Shoemaker, a third-year biochemistry and genetics “The chance to see the impact of the public education system double major, had hopes of securing a medical internship abroad. on generally disadvantaged However, when all of the slots at children’s everyday lives was Volunteer Adventure Corps filled definitely a unique one,” Caitlin quickly, Shanlin was placed at I was more than 8,000 miles away from said. “It taught me a lot about the National Sea Rescue Instisystematic disadvantage as well tute, or NSRI, in Cape Town and home in a night-time trauma unit in one as the human lives at stake in was surprised by how much she of Cape Town’s most dangerous areas. these systems.” enjoyed her time there.

Caitlin currently interns at The NSRI is a nonprofit And in that moment, I realized there was The Carter Center in Atlanta organization dedicated to the no other place I would rather be. and plans to attend law school difficult and dangerous job of in the fall. saving lives on the South African • Mallory Walters, third-year biology major Third-year biology major waters.

Mallory Walters spent her “We were launching a small summer interning at Crossroads 4.2-meter rigid inflatable rescue Clinic, a local primary care center in Cape Town, South Africa. boat into the surf at Jefferys Bay, one of the most famous surfing “I was more than 8,000 miles away from home in a night-time destinations in the world,” Shanlin said. “Before heading into trauma unit in one of Cape Town’s most dangerous areas. And in the water, I was briefed on the conditions: We were launching that moment, I realized there was no other place I would rather straight into a rip current. It wasn’t ideal, but there was a hybe,” Mallory said. pothetical drowning in progress, and rescues at sea rarely occur “While I wasn’t at the clinic, I was exploring the city of Cape under perfect conditions anyway.”

Town. My days were filled with hikes, shark cage diving, wine Shanlin plans to apply to medical schools in the fall.

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Photo at left: Terns Lab undergraduates line up in order of lab seniority.

From newest to oldest (left to right) are Alyssia Mitchell, Sonam Brahmbhatt, Chip Chambers, Jesse Hu, Nikita Vantsev, Josh Kalter, and Erin Hollander.

Photos at right (clockwise from top left): 1) Michael Terns shares a laugh with Jesse, Nikita, and Erin. 2) Jesse and Alyssia work with samples in the lab’s glove box. 3) Nikita, Erin, and Josh examine proteins on a gel.

4) Jesse and Alyssia work with their lab mentor and Ph.D. student Julie Grainy.

5) Sonam sterilizes equipment.

6) Chip slices sections in a gel in the lab’s darkroom.

Story and photos by Stephanie Schupska

Experiential Learning: Research

Research revolution: T he sound of a knock echoed around the empty lab. A second of silence followed, and then an undergraduate peered around the door. It was 1995, and Michael and Rebecca Terns were unpacking boxes from a recent move to the University of Georgia.

“This super-composed student walked in and told us all about herself and asked if she could do research with us,” said Michael Terns, a Distinguished Research Professor in biochemistry and molecular biology. After brief consideration, they said yes, and “we learned right away how valuable and smart and fun undergraduates make the lab.”

After 22 years at UGA, the Terns Lab is an establishment in the biochemistry and molecular biology department. Both Terns were fixtures in the lab until late last year when Rebecca transitioned from senior research scientist to a new job in the UGA Office of Research. She now works with faculty across campus as a proposal enhancement officer.

The Terns Lab is known for basic biology research of CRISPR-Cas systems, a technology revolutionizing the world of gene editing. The lab is trying to understand the mechanism of how bacteria

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Undergraduates in Terns Lab help forge future of gene editing

and other single-celled organisms use CRISPR-Cas to fight off viruses by slicing and dicing their DNA. Around the world, researchers use CRISPR-Cas like molecular gene-snipping scissors, selecting a target in a cell and snipping out and replacing the DNA segments inside it. The technology is incredibly precise—and much less expensive than previous gene-editing techniques.

Learning through research

Michael Terns’ student-focused approach—and the attraction of working in a lab that is literally doing cutting-edge research—has undergraduates lining up at his door via email, hoping that their virtual knocks will land them an interview and then a job in the lab.

The Terns Lab has had 82 undergraduates, and all seven currently there are in Honors, which is not a requirement, and four are CURO Honors Scholars.

Josh Kalter, a junior biochemistry and molecular biology major, started searching for a research assistantship toward the end of his freshman year at UGA. “My experience in the Terns lab has proved extremely valuable,” he said. “In my first month in the lab, I learned more

than I have ever learned in a classroom.

I learned how to read and understand scientific literature, how to be organized, how to work diligently, and how to write thoroughly, all skills that make me a better student and researcher.”

Jesse Hu, a senior double-majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology and genetics who is headed to medical school this fall, “chose the Terns Lab because I was interested in CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology and wanted the opportunity to learn more about the bacterial immune system it was based on.”

The Terns Lab is studying diverse CRISPR-Cas systems found in various bacterial or archaeal organisms. These include Streptococcus thermophilus, a bacterium used by the dairy industry as a starter culture for yogurt and cheese and Pyrococcus furiosus, a hyperthermophilic archaeon that naturally dwells near hydrothermal ocean vents and thrives at the boiling point of water.

“There are three stages of CRISPR: the adaptation stage, the expression stage, and the interference stage, and we are looking at that first stage,” said Chip Chambers, a sophomore CURO Honors Scholar studying biology and economics.

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6 “We are looking at several of the proteins involved in that first stage, trying to get insight into some of the biochemical mechanisms of how that stage works.”

“The fact that we are breaking the CRISPR-Cas process down into smaller pieces to make it more efficient to use is really cool,” said Alyssia Mitchell, a freshman CURO Honors Scholar.

A pre-med student majoring in accounting, Alyssa became interested in studying biological processes like CRISPR-Cas because of her cousin, who has sickle cell anemia.

Fostering community

Teamwork is a big part of what makes the Terns Lab tick. In order to provide seven undergraduates with the supervision that they need, Terns serves as primary mentor and depends on doctoral students and postdoctoral research associates to guide each new student who comes into the lab.

“We won’t take on a student unless there is someone willing to be the in-lab mentor, someone to stay and spend every minute in the lab and show them all the details,” Michael said. “The students know they are part of a big group in a caring environment, and they know their research matters.”

In the break room, a birthday calendar takes up one wall, and three giant iMacs—where lab members work on reports, presentations, and journal articles—claim another. A plaid couch from the 1970s is under a window holding potted plants. On the adjacent wall, a bookcase/filing cabinet holds coffee mugs just above two drawers—one labeled “radioactive lab reports,” where radiation safety reports are stored, and the other “party favors.”

“We have a great team environment,” Chip said. “It is always a lot of fun, but it is also a very intellectually stimulating environment. Everyone here loves the work that we are doing and are very good at what they do.”

The Terns work hard to make sure students feel welcomed, partly by making sure they know the research they are doing has value. “We have had so many students say that working in our lab

is the capstone of their entire undergrad career,” Michael said.

“The undergraduates in the lab make real contributions,” Rebecca said. “They are coauthors on papers, and they have legitimate projects we care about. We care about the results. The world cares about the results of their experiments.”

Experiential learning

The Terns welcome UGA’s new experiential learning initiative.

The department they work for has had a similar requirement since they arrived.

“I think the experiential learning component of their education makes students a lot more sophisticated,” Rebecca said, “because they start to understand how is it that we know what we know, understanding that behind every sentence they read in a textbook there is evidence that supports it.”

When the CURO program started about a decade ago, the Terns enjoyed watching it grow from a few interested students into the hundreds that now pass through each year.

“Many of our students can handle anything you can throw at them in a classroom, but in the lab, that is when everybody meets the ultimate challenge,” Michael said. “There is no one who can do lab work easily. Even if you are great, you will fail. Research teaches them to be resilient.”

Erin Hollander, a senior genetics major, Goldwater Scholar, and Foundation Fellow who plans to develop novel therapeutics for cancer or neurological disorders after completing an MD/PhD program, knows what it is like to focus on moving forward.

“You are going to make mistakes,” she said. “The trick is to make unique mistakes, rather than repeating the same mistakes, and to forgive yourself when they happen.”

—Additional undergraduates in the lab are Sonam Brahmbhatt, a pre-med student double majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology and Romance languages, and Nikita Vantsev, a CURO Honors Scholar from Russia studying biochemistry and genetics.

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Road to Rhodes Laura Courchesne’s unique course of study at UGA becomes her route to Oxford

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Stephanie Schupska

by Stephanie Schupska

Cover story

Experiential learning

Internships

It is 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 19, and Laura Courchesne is settling into her chair. Across the table, Rhodes Scholarship interviewers begin to pepper her with questions.

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he has readied for this day, studying current events and honing her research on behavioral approaches to conflict. But last night after the introductory reception, she decided to cram in a few extra facts—about football. This year, the Rhodes Scholarship interviews were held at the NFL Headquarters in the heart of New York City, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was one of the interviewers.

While he didn’t hand her a jersey and a hat a few hours later and didn’t ask her any questions about the sport he oversees, Goodell did stand at the front of the room and announce her name.

In one surreal moment, Laura moved from being a Rhodes finalist from the Northeast to being one of 32 students in the U.S. chosen to attend the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, receiving the oldest and most celebrated international fellowship award in the world.

Approaching conflict

Laura, an Honors Program student and Foundation Fellow from Fair Haven, New Jersey, is the 24th UGA student to be awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. Over the past two decades, UGA has produced more Rhodes Scholars than all but two other public institutions in the nation.

Laura’s studies focus on the emerging field of behavioral approaches to conflict, and because no degree program at UGA quite fits with her career aspirations, she took the unusual route of majoring in economics and religion.

“UGA has offered me the opportunity to really customize my education and have the opportunities I thought were best to help prepare me for the future,” she said. “The Honors Program and Foundation Fellowship enabled me to create something that was unique to me.”

The bulk of her work, which explores the link between non-state armed groups and civilian populations, has been focused on rebel groups such as Afghanistan’s Taliban and al-Qa’ida, Africa’s Boko Haram, Colombia’s FARC, and other groups in Southeast Asia.

She is hunting for behavioral patterns—specifically, generalizable behavioral models—shared by groups in different countries and types of conflict. Her goal is to build better conflict policies by rooting them in anthropology, sociology, psychology, and organizational behavior.

She is fascinated with what influences non-violent populations to begin endorsing and engaging in violence.

“Inherent in the work that I do is putting myself in the shoes of either the victim or the perpetrator,” she said.

“Empathy is important for me in understanding why someone would engage in this kind of action and why they think violence is necessary.”

Her work centers on people who are suffering. “For example, I’ve been working for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for about a year and a half now,

and part of what we’re doing is looking at the initiation rituals of a lot of these groups,” she said. “I’m looking at videos that are quite graphic. Because I have great mentors, I’m able to work through making sure I’m in an appropriate mental state before I approach these topics.”

As a student creating her own field of study, connections are crucial for Laura, and on this project, she is working with the ICRC’s Brian McQuinn. She first met Brian when he was a post-doctoral researcher at Oxford.

When he moved to the ICRC, he asked her to join his research team.

Driven by research

At the Rhodes interview, Laura was surrounded by incredibly talented students, the majority from Ivy League schools. She had toured some of these leading institutions and chose UGA because it offered something she wouldn’t receive at an Ivy until her junior year—the opportunity to conduct research as soon as she set foot on campus.

“For me, research was the reason I chose to come to the University of Georgia rather than go to another school,” she said. “My priority was being able to do research and do research right away.”

With research, she can use creative problem-solving to put her own touch on the examination of different issues.

At UGA, she currently works with Jeffrey Berejikian, a Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor in international affairs, studying the effect of drone strikes on moral reasoning in affected communities. The research spans fields as diverse as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and international affairs. She received a research assistantship through UGA’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities and, in 2016, presented her findings at the CURO Symposium.

“Laura is extremely intelligent, tough, and focused,” Berejikian said. “Good interdisciplinary research is hard to do. Normally, it takes a team of people, each with their own expertise. What is so impressive about Laura is that she is, basically, a one-person team. More than that, Laura is simply a good person.

“Students like Laura come around once in a decade, perhaps. Getting to work with students like her is the best part of my job.”

Prior to her research with Berejikian, she studied the psychology of leaders and organizational behavior with psychology professor Adam Goodie; surveyed literature on Holocaust theology and religious propaganda under the Nazi regime with associate provost and Honors Program director David S. Williams (who is also a professor of religion); and looked at recidivism rates of prisoners with underlying mental health issues and alternative rehabilitation measures with economics associate professor David Mustard.

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Road to Rhodes,

continued from page 11

In fall 2015, Laura assisted in Goodie’s lab on a project on leadership emergence.

In 2016, she took his course on judgment and decision making. He also supervised her Honors thesis and her research on judgment and bias with application to conflict and peace agreements. “This is an example of Laura’s seeking incredibly diverse facets of the problem of armed violence on an international stage,” Goodie said.

“Laura Courchesne is just about the smartest, hardest-working undergraduate student I’ve worked with in my 18 years at the University of Georgia. Among the students I’ve worked with, she’s distinctly the most dedicated I’ve seen to courageously making the world better for all its inhabitants, especially the most vulnerable.”

Adding to her list of current endeavors, Laura is a research assistant for the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project at Princeton University and a research analyst for the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Unit for Relations with Arms Carriers.

She has conducted research in Bali, Indonesia; Binghamton, New York; Lausanne, Switzerland; the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and the Carter Center’s Americas Program in Atlanta.

She was an Honors teaching assistant at UGA and an editor for the UGA Journal for Undergraduate Research Opportunities. She is on the board of trustees for the Jonathan D. Rosen Family Charitable Foundation and is fluent in English, French, and Spanish and conversational in Chinese.

Across the pond

For Laura, her move to Oxford in October to pursue a master’s degree in development studies will build on the relationships she previously established at the institution. She attended Oxford during its Trinity Term in 2014 and 2015 and conducted research with the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology.

This past June, she assisted with Oxford’s executive leadership course on the changing character of armed conflict.

She is currently working as a research assistant under the supervision of Annette Idler, director of studies at the Changing Character of War Programme, examining illicit economies, militant groups, and local populations at the borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan and between the Dem-

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ocratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda.

She has been invited to join Idler’s team to conduct a four-year project on military transformation, consulting with the Colombian army in their ongoing peace proceedings with FARC and other rebel groups.

“I’ve been doing a lot of work for my Oxford colleagues remotely from Athens,” she said. “It will be nice to overcome that barrier, to grab coffee and talk instead of waiting two weeks in between emails and Skype calls.”

She is also looking forward to Oxford’s teaching style. Instead of lectures and note taking, professors meet one-on-one with students, allowing them to shape courses to their interests—something Laura has done at UGA through directed readings and research projects.

Fishbowls and tombstones

When she found out in early November that she was a finalist for the Rhodes, Laura was fresh from interviews for the Schwarzman Scholars, a China-based program similar in scope to the Rhodes.

After two nerve-wracking weeks of preparation, she flew home to New Jersey and took a train to New York City. After a taxi trip to the NFL Headquarters, she arrived at the Rhodes’ opening reception on Friday, Nov. 18. She mingled with finalists and former Rhodes Scholars before drawing her interview time from a fishbowl.

That Saturday, after 13 finalists went through first-round questioning, three were chosen for the final round. Laura went first.

“My second interview was really grueling,” she said. “It was a lot longer than the first. They were really giving me pushback on the responses I gave.”

She had prepared for a barrage of current event questions typical of a Rhodes interview. Instead, she was met with “a lot of strange personal questions, like what line would be on my tombstone, about the last time I cried, and when was a time I got mad.”

After the final second-round interview and an hour and a half of deliberation, Roger Goodell announced the winners.

“It was surreal,” Laura said. “And then I had 30 minutes to catch a train to New Jersey for my parents to pick me up. I was in this surreal state the whole time.

“It still really hasn’t set in. I don’t think, until I’m there, will I realize that I’m actually a Rhodes Scholar.”

Top photo: Laura Courchesne visited Morocco in spring 2016 through the Foundation Fellowship.

Top center: She attended UGA at Oxford’s Franklin College spring semester program in 2015 with Danielle Weiner, left, and Honors student Madeline Hill. They are standing in front of the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford. Bottom center: Laura explored Tanzania in 2015 with Susie Jones, a fourth-year Foundation Fellow and Honors student, left; and studied at Oxford in 2014, bottom photo.

UGA establishes Morehead Distinguished Professorship

T

he University of Georgia has established a new professorship to honor its current president and his legacy as director of the Honors Program.

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia approved the Jere W. Morehead Distinguished Professorship for the Director of the Honors Program during its January meeting.

In addition to commemorating Morehead, who served as director of the Honors Program from 1999 to 2004, the professorship is designed to strengthen opportunities within the Honors Program.

Its first recipient is Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Religion David S. Williams, who serves as associate provost and director of the Honors Program. He succeeded Morehead as director in fall 2004.

As director, Williams oversees the Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities and the Foundation Fellowship, the university’s premier academic scholarship. He also serves as UGA’s campus faculty representative for several nationally competitive scholarships, including the Rhodes, Marshall, Goldwater, Truman, and Udall scholarships.

Among the many accomplishments that mark Morehead’s five-year tenure as director of the Honors Program, UGA had two Rhodes Scholarship recipients, the Honors in Washington internship program was established, and the Honors Program

moved into the renovated Moore College building.

Prior to becoming president, Morehead served UGA in many other key administrative roles, including senior vice president for academic affairs and provost as well as vice president for instruction.

Jere W. Morehead, Morehead is the first alumnus UGA’s 22nd president of UGA to be named president in more than 45 years. He received his law degree (J.D.) from UGA in 1980 and served as an Assistant United States Attorney with the Department of Justice from 1980 to 1986. He is the Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Legal Studies in the Terry College of Business, where he has held a faculty appointment since 1986.

He has been included in Georgia Trend’s list of Most Influential Georgians for four consecutive years.

An alumnus of the UGA Honors Program, Williams received his bachelor’s degree in 1979 and also a master’s degree from UGA in 1982. After earning his Ph.D. in 1988, he joined the UGA faculty in the Department of Religion in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences in 1989. Prior to being appointed director of the Honors Program, he served as head of the department from 2002 to 2004.

Honors Highlights

Jacob Pope: Jason Thrasher

Athlete, advocate, Honors student

by Melissa Campbell

S

enior Honors student Jacob Pope balances studies, athletics, and other activities while raising awareness for hemophilia, a disorder he was born with 21 years ago.

A management information systems major and Leonard Leadership Scholar in the Terry College of Business’ Institute for Leadership Advancement, Jacob is chief director of UGA’s Factor IX, a student organization he cofounded to advocate for hemophilia awareness.

Hemophilia is a genetic disorder in which blood does not clot normally because of a missing or defective clotting protein.

In his first year at UGA, Jacob studied hemophilia A as a research intern through Emory University at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorder Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. The following summer he worked as an intern analyst at Origami Risk, a risk management information system, where he conducted software implementation for transnational clients.

Origami Risk was a key sponsor in Jacob’s biggest milestone yet: The Great Pacific Race, an endurance competition that requires two- to four-person crews to row from Monterey, California, to Waikiki, Hawaii. The 2,400-mile distance must be covered solely through human strength.

A varsity member of the UGA Rowing team, Jacob and teammate Chris Lee set out to compete in the Great Pacific Race 2016 to raise awareness for hemophilia.

After 10 days at sea, they returned to shore because of boat damage and worsening sea conditions. Although Jacob did not complete the race, he said he achieved his goal of raising awareness of hemophilia.

Now in his final year at UGA, Jacob is a member of the Society for Management Information Systems and Society for Business Intelligence. He also volunteers at Hemophilia of Georgia, a nonprofit organization that provides support for people with bleeding disorders, and Camp Wannaklot, a residential summer camp for children with bleeding disorders.

“By supporting Hemophilia of Georgia, fostering a love of the community in young patients at Camp Wannaklot, helping young patients access higher education, and building a pool of volunteers here at UGA, I believe we can empower all hemophiliacs to live, full, active, meaningful lives,” Jacob said.

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Leading efforts:

Honors students named Crane Scholars

Associate Provost and Honors Program director David S. Williams, left, chats with Crane Scholars, clockwise from top left, Monisha Narayanan, Nidhi Aggarwal, Hunter Smith, Jennifer Hardister, Nanma Okeani, and Nicholas Twiner.

Nidhi Aggarwal

Elizabeth Hardister

Jennifer Hardister

Hometown: Statesboro Major: Genetics Minor: Public health

Hometown: Dunwoody Bachelor’s/master’s: International affairs, disaster management

Hometown: Dunwoody Majors: Accounting, international business

An Arch Society member, MEDLIFE at UGA service chair, and American Red Cross first aid responder at football games, Nidhi was treasurer of the Dean William Tate Honor Society and director of education for Dawgs for Diabetes.

A CURO research assistant, she studies Trypanosoma cruzi, a parasite that causes Chagas disease, with Distinguished Research Professor Rick Tarleton in the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases.

Off campus, Nidhi participated in a MEDLIFE mobile clinic to Cusco, Peru, and traveled with IMPACT alternative spring break trips to study veterans’ advocacy and disability/ability awareness through service.

She is a hospital volunteer in Athens and Statesboro and studies rural health disparities with the Bulloch County Health Department. After graduating, she hopes to complete an MD/MPH program.

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Stephanie Schupska

E

ight Honors students saw their exemplary leadership efforts rewarded this past October when they received the William Moore Crane Leadership Scholarship.

The $1,000 scholarship, given to third-year students in the Honors Program, recognizes leadership in extracurricular activities and/or involvement with civic or community organizations.

Administered by the Honors Program and the UGA Center for Leadership and Service, the scholarship is named in honor of a 1921 UGA graduate who was influential in the founding of the UGA Alumni Society.

UGA HONORS PROGRAM MAGAZINE SPRING 2017

As a Richard B. Russell Security Leadership Fellow, Elizabeth studies issues in nonproliferation and international security with UGA’s Center for International Trade and Security. She currently works with the Department of State’s Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation as well as the export compliance firm TradeSecure.

Through the CURO Honors Scholarship, she performs research for the Institute for Disaster Management.

She volunteers with disaster response organizations such as the American Red Cross and the Medical Reserve Corps of Georgia. She interned for the Greater New York Hospital Association in summer 2016, gaining experience in health and medical emergency preparedness.

Elizabeth hopes to work in the public sector as an emergency management specialist in health and medical services or chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense preparedness.

A CURO Honors Scholar, Jennifer has varied research experience in infectious diseases and accounting.

She is committed to service organizations including ServeUGA, in which she is the director of community outreach. In this position, she ushered in and oversees ServeAthens, the organization’s service-outreach initiative.

She also chaired this year’s Dawg Day of Service, UGA’s largest annual day of service to date, with over 500 students.

This past summer, Jennifer completed an audit internship at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Inspector General with the support of Honors in Washington.

She intends to graduate with a Master of Accountancy with a focus in audit and hopes to work in public service in the future.

Read more about Elizabeth and Jennifer and their summer internships on pages 5-6.

Maggie Little Hometown: Cumming Bachelor’s/master’s: Political science, public administration Minor: Theatre studies

Maggie works for Dawg Camp, the Center for Leadership and Service’s extended orientation and college immersion program, and served on its executive board in 2016 as the director of staff development.

With support from the Honors International Scholars Program, Maggie traveled to Seoul, South Korea, in summer 2016 to participate in an international University of Seoul case study, where she consulted Seoul government officials in public art policies.

Maggie has served as the AthFest Educates non-profit intern, a Nuci’s Space volunteer, a UGA representative to National Arts Advocacy Day, the SGA arts senator, and a student representative on the University Arts Council.

In her professional career, Maggie hopes to continue to advocate for the arts so that all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, may be exposed to arts education.

Monisha Narayanan Hometown: Alpharetta Major: Biochemistry and molecular biology

Monisha served as tournament director for UGA Science Olympiad, the state’s only undergraduate-run Science Olympiad program, coordinating invitational and regional tournaments for hundreds of high school students.

As president of UGA’s chapter of the Foundation for the International Medical Relief of Children, she implemented the HealthyKidz After School Program at local elementary schools. She served as director of organizational consulting for Volunteer UGA and has volunteered locally and abroad through IMPACT and MEDLIFE. Monisha continues to plan service opportunities as the Biochemistry Undergraduate Society’s chair of service.

With CURO Research Assistantship support, she works with assistant professor Amy Medlock in biochemistry and molecular biology and presented her findings at the CURO and BMB symposiums.

After graduation, Monisha intends to go to medical school and pursue a career as a pediatric cardiologist.

Nanma Okeani Hometown: Marietta Majors: International affairs, economics

Nanma is a fall 2016 Policy Scholar through the Honors Program and a member of the 2015-2016 cohort of the Atlas Business Society.

Global connections are important to her. In her roles as exchange participant manager and international relations manager for AIESEC at UGA, Nanma helps bring about value-driven cultural exchanges for UGA students and connects them with AIESEC committees in foreign countries.

She also has been an active member of UGA’s African Student Union since her freshman year, pursuing her interest in theatre by performing as a cast member in ASU’s Africa Night production for the past two years.

Last summer, Nanma interned at the Superior Court of Cobb County. She plans to complete law school and, in her law practice, specialize in public interest in either a domestic or international capacity.

Hunter Smith

Nicholas Twiner

Hometown: Jesup Major: Political science Minors: Sociology, leadership in student affairs, certificate in applied politics

Hometown: Atlanta Majors: Linguistics, classical languages, classical culture

Hunter has a deep love for giving back to the UGA community. During his freshman year, he served as president of his residence hall and was selected for the Dean William Tate Honor Society. He is currently in his second year as a resident assistant and co-advisor of the Mell/Lipscomb Community Council, where he mentors freshmen in leadership development.

He serves as an advisor/advocate for University Judiciary and is a member of the Arch Society.

Hunter is interested in politics and issue advocacy and is continuing his independent research on congressional social media use. After earning his dual Juris Doctor and Master of Public Administration degrees, he aspires to become an elected official and serve the people of Georgia with policy expertise in agriculture, higher education, and governmental ethics.

An Honors Teaching Assistant, Nicholas has served as a peer educator and is the vice president of event planning for the UGA Health Center’s Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention student group.

For the Demosthenian Literary Society, Nicholas served as the Demosthenian Hall administrator and worked with the society’s preservationist to help maintain the historic building. He is president of the classics honors society Eta Sigma Phi and a member of Omicron Delta Kappa.

With the support of the Honors International Scholars Program, he traveled to Rome in summer 2016.

Under the guidance of associate professor of linguistics Vera Lee-Schoenfeld, he has been involved with CURO research focused on the generative syntax of verb voicing. He plans to attend graduate school to further his studies and research in linguistics.

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Stephanie Schupska

Madison Miracle:

Pre-med student finds guidance in Honors

by Stephanie Schupska

M

adison Miracle’s countless visits to Moore College have included quite a few to the ground floor and Honors career development specialist Elizabeth Hughes’ office.

A pre-med Honors student studying biology and psychology, Madison is in the middle of her final semester and will go to medical school this fall.

Elizabeth, a student affairs professional in Honors, specializes in guiding students through the medical school application and interview process. She also works with any Honors student on resumes and applications. She formerly taught language arts and English to seventh through eleventh graders.

Madison and Elizabeth spent a lot of time together in 2016.

“I’ve gone to Elizabeth’s resume workshops and her interview workshops and met with her one-on-one,” Madison said.

“She gets to know you personally and can let you see your own strengths and weaknesses and how you can improve. She is very intentional about helping students.”

“The greatest perk of my job is being able to talk to students and hear about what they are doing and where they are going,” said Elizabeth, who also oversees UGA’s Boren Awards competition and works with Fulbright English teaching

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assistantship applicants. “It gives me great hope for the future of our world to know that they want to do great things in it. That’s what wakes me up excited to come to work every day.”

Madison, originally from Woodstock, radiates delight about her future. As a certified nursing assistant, she has experienced health care from the inside as she volunteers at Mercy Health Center, a free clinic in Athens for the uninsured. She takes patient vitals and talks with them about their conditions and medications.

“I see the role medicine can have in changing peoples’ lives and how you can serve people through the art of healing,” she said.

She has developed a holistic view of medicine, specifically, preventative medicine, from her work in the clinic and from days spent swimming, running, biking, and weightlifting as a member of the UGA triathlon team.

“I don’t want to just be the doctor who gives all of these different medications,” Madison said. “I want to help patients work through their problems and change their lifestyle habits so that they can improve their lives in a sustainable way.”

In between volunteering, training, and coursework, Madison worked as a CURO undergraduate research assistant in GRA

Above: Madison Miracle, center, assists at a pediatric clinic in Trujillo, Peru, along with Honors student Brinkley Bray, left, and UGA student Jaynie Chandler. Top photo: Madison discusses interview questions with Elizabeth Hughes, a student affairs professional in Honors.

Eminent Scholar Ralph Tripp’s lab in infectious diseases, where she studied microRNAs and their effect on gene expression in the common childhood illness RSV. She presented her findings at the 2016 CURO Symposium.

She is active with the Guide Dog Foundation, Relay for Life, and the Wesley Foundation. Madison has been to Fort Myers, Florida, with UGA IMPACT and in 2015 used a scholarship from the Honors International Scholars Program to study abroad and volunteer in Peru.

“I would not have been able to go to Peru without the funding,” she said. “I had so many unforgettable experiences and encounters there: surfing in the famous waters of Huanchaco Beach, hiking part of the Incan Trail, observing medical exams at a women’s prison, visiting Incan ruins, jumping from a waterfall, learning about Amazonian alternative medicine, befriending the many stray dogs, touring coffee and cocoa bean farms, and getting to know some awesome people from our university.”

Honors commitment: Alumna gives to help change students’ lives

B

ecky Winkler is constantly finding ways to give back—both to her local community in Charlotte, North Carolina, and to her alma mater. The Honors Program alumna, who earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a minor in Chinese, and a certificate in women’s studies from UGA before heading to graduate school to study industrial-organizational psychology, recently established her second endowment with the Honors Program.

“I’m interested in helping people who need the help,” Becky said. A corporate psychologist and partner at Green Peak Partners, she specializes in helping companies put the right people in critical roles. “Education changed my life and enabled me to reach my full potential, and I think everybody should have that opportunity.”

The University of Georgia agrees.

Its recently announced comprehensive capital campaign—dubbed Commit to Georgia—is centered on meeting students’ needs through increased support for merit- and need-based financial aid.

Giving to UGA has set institutional

records over the past several years. In its silent phase, which started in 2012, the Commit to Georgia Campaign garnered more than $680 million. A transformative $30 million gift from the Woodruff Foundation, announced in November, added momentum to the university’s goal of raising $1.2 billion by 2020.

The excitement can be felt on campus, as private giving helped generate more than 6,100 scholarships in 2016.

In Honors, gifts like Becky’s open doors for students. She set up her first endowment for undergraduates who lacked the funds to explore the opportunities an Honors education could provide them. She had her own transformative experience at UGA when she traveled to 23 states through a geology/anthropology summer field program, living in a tent and meeting one of her lifelong friends along the way.

Her second endowment honors her father, who died of Parkinson’s and dementia in 2015. Her gift goes toward students conducting CURO research on ways “to kill that nasty disease,” Becky said. “Giving just feels like the karmic

obligation. It’s an honor and a privilege to give.”

At the annual Honors graduation banquet, Becky will be recognized as the Jere W. Morehead Award recipient for 2017.

The award was established in 2005 to commemorate the leadership of President Morehead when he served as director of the Honors Program and to recognize an exceptional alumna/alumnus or friend of the Honors Program.

For information on how to Commit to Honors, visit give.uga.edu/honors or contact Dorothe Otemann at 706-5422649 or dotemann@uga.edu.

Sydney-Alyce Bourget:

Love of STEM no longer Hidden

Story and photo by Melissa Campbell

T

hird-year ecology major and CURO Honors Scholar Sydney-Alyce Bourget was named a runner up in the Search for Hidden Figures contest. Inspired by the movie Hidden Figures, PepsiCo and 21st Century Fox worked to find the next generation of women leading in STEM by inviting them to tell their stories. From a total of 7,000 applicants, Sydney was one of 10 finalists who received $10,000 to put toward education or research, among other prizes.

“The movie really resonated with me,” Sydney said. “It pushed me to make a mark and prove myself in STEM because there are so many stereotypes not only of women but of African-Americans.”

Sydney researches the environmental effects of climate change, examining cordgrass as an indicator of coastal land health. Last summer, Harvard University selected her as one of 20 students to research the invasive garlic mustard plant in Harvard Forest. She

presented her findings at the CURO Symposium.

She volunteers with the Lunchbox Garden Project, a student organization at UGA that teaches elementary students about the relationship between nature and the food they eat.

With her award, Sydney hopes to establish water infrastructure in her dad’s hometown in Haiti. “I want to develop environmentally safe designs and sustainable innovations that address water-related issues in my local community and communities abroad,” she said.

Sydney and several graduate students are working to start a UGA chapter of Seeds, an organization designed to attract more minority students to ecology.

The Search for Hidden Figures contest “gave me a greater voice to inspire other students to pursue these fields,” she said. “STEM has changed my life. It has improved my life by enabling me to help change the lives of others and ultimately protect the environment for generations to come.”

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Nonprofit Org. U. S. Postage

PAID

Athens, GA Permit No. 165

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

Congratulations to our students who participated in the

2017

CURO Symposium.

Your presentations and posters were extraordinary!

The annual CURO Symposium highlights excellence in undergraduate research at the University of Georgia through students’ oral and poster sessions—and is open to all undergraduates pursuing faculty-mentored research in any discipline, not just those enrolled in CURO coursework.

For more information, visit curo.uga.edu/symposium.