Geography faculty member receives Award for Excellence in Research/Creative Scholarly Activity for 2019-2020
Department of Geology and Geography’ Associate Professor John Van Stan, Ph.D., is one of two scholars selected to receive the Georgia Southern University Award for Excellence in Research/Creative Scholarly Activity for 2019-20.
Van Stan is a physical geographer with expertise in forest hydrology and ecohydrology. Since coming to Georgia Southern in 2012, he has established a highly collaborative research program and is now recognized as an international expert in his field.
Van Stan’s publication record includes 44 peer-reviewed papers in journals. In addition, he received a total of $1.2 million in external funding, including a prestigious National Science Foundation grant.
Van Stan is also noted for having a strong interest in mentoring undergraduate research students, which he includes in both his field and laboratory work and publication efforts.
Georgia Southern grad named Student Anaplanner of the Year
Jaymin Patel, a recent finance and information systems graduate from the Parker College of Business at Georgia Southern University, was named Student Anaplanner of the Year by Anaplan Inc., a pioneer in Connected Planning. He will be recognized in San Francisco at the company’s Connected Planning Xperience (CPX) conference June 10 through 12.
Patel earned the achievement through Anaplan University Connect, a program launched by the company that equips university students with competitive analytical and decision-making skills to address the needs of today’s global marketplace. The courses Patel took through this program helped him land a data analyst role at Equifax, a global data analytics and technology company.
The Anaplan University Connect program works closely with leading universities around the globe to develop and deliver a model building curriculum that incorporates the latest data science methods to modern business planning practices. With valuable and real-world data analysis skills, students from the program are hired to quickly contribute to the digital transformation efforts of enterprise companies.
Georgia Southern professor receives Outstanding Engineering Educator Award
Georgia Southern University Associate Professor Rami J. Haddad, Ph.D., was awarded the 2019 Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Region 3 Joseph M. Biedenbach Outstanding Engineering Educator Award.
This prestigious award is given in recognition of an IEEE member in Region 3 who, through technical and professional abilities, has made an outstanding contribution to the electro-technology profession.
“Teaching is something I am very passionate about, so to be recognized in this area is a commendation of all the effort invested in the students’ success at Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Georgia Southern University,” said Haddad.
Haddad joined the faculty in the Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing in 2011 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been the Computer Engineering Program coordinator since fall 2018.
Public history alumna wins Telly Award for work on film
Georgia Southern public history alumna Katherine Conner has been selected as a winner in the 40th Annual Telly Awards for her work on the film “Our Citizen-Soldiers.”
Conner was the scriptwriter, historian and digital producer on the film. “Our Citizen-Soldiers” is one of a six-part series that highlights the history of citizen soldiers in the World War I era throughout Georgia’s history.
Founded in 1979, the Telly Awards honors video and television made for all screens and is judged by The Telly Award Judging Council, which is a group of leading video and television experts from some of the most prestigious companies in entertainment, publishing, advertising and emerging technology.
Georgia Southern receives provisional accreditation for B.S. in Biochemistry
Georgia Southern has been selected for provisional accreditation through December 2021 by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) for the Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry program.
It is within the ASBMB policy to grant provisional accreditation, rather than full, to all new programs. While the program on the Armstrong Campus for four years now, it is new to the Statesboro Campus. With this, the ASBMB considers it a new program.
This accreditation gives the ASBMB room to actively and visibly promote excellence and innovation in undergraduate biochemistry and molecular biology (BMB) education, raise the profile and enhance the relevance of the ASBMB society among STEM educators and in the private sector. It also helps to connect with and recruit aspiring young biochemists and molecular biologists on a nationwide scale.
Georgia Southern hosts annual tick workshop
For the second year in a row, the James H. Oliver, Jr. Institute for Coastal Plain Science at Georgia Southern University is hosting the Gateway Program Tick Identification and Techniques Workshop on the Statesboro Campus.
The two-week workshop began on May 20 and drew a crowd of 20 participants from around the globe. The workshop offers tick identification techniques, tick physiology, tick control and management, tick-borne diseases, distribution modeling, and surveillance techniques and tools.
Lorenza Beati, Ph.D., curator of the U.S. National Tick Collection at Georgia Southern, is leading the workshop, along with 15 instructors from the Centers for Disease Control and universities across the United States and abroad.
With more than 1 million specimens, the U.S. National Tick collection is one of the largest curated tick collections in the World, if not the largest. It belongs to the U.S. National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution) and has been housed at Georgia Southern University since 1990.
Georgia Southern English professor wins Agnes Strickland Prize
Renaissance literature professor Mary Villeponteaux, Ph.D., was awarded the 2019 Agnes Strickland Prize for her presentation of “The Poet and the Queen: Spenser’s Last Elizabeths” by the Queen Elizabeth I Society. Villeponteaux gave the presentation at the South Central Renaissance Conference in Lubbock, Texas, in April.
Villeponteaux, who has been at Georgia Southern since 2006, provides leadership on numerous university, college and departmental committees and serves as advisor of the English Honor Society, Sigma Tau Delta. She is the author of The Queen’s Mercy: Gender and Judgement in Representations of Elizabeth I, among other respected articles and reviews.
Hines honored with Southern Talon Award
Janna Hines, senior communication sciences and disorders major from Columbia, South Carolina, has been honored with the Southern Talon Award.
The award is presented annually to students with more than 60 credit hours who have demonstrated a significant commitment to enhancing campus life at Georgia Southern University.
“Receiving the Southern Talon Award means that I made an impact on the Armstrong Campus during my time here as a student,” said Hines. “Being chosen to receive the award is something that my family and I are very proud of. I am thankful for the committee who chose me and the organizations that I am apart of for allowing me the opportunities to serve them and the student body.”
Currently, Hines serves as a Southern Ambassador, co-event coordinator for the International Student Organization and was recently elected treasurer for the Rotaract Club. She is also involved with the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association, and she has been awarded Facility Attendant of the Year for the Student Recreation Center (SRC). She also has accepted a supervisor position at the SRC and the public relations and social media lead team position for the Southern Ambassador team.
Georgia Southern mental health counselor invited to speak at Caribbean Well-being Conference
Georgia Southern University Counseling Center mental health counselor Angela Landers has been invited to speak at the 2019 Caribbean Well-Being Conference, which will be held in August in St. Maarten.
Landers was asked to present the applications of a therapeutic program, Mindful Yoga, which she developed for Georgia Southern’s Counseling Center. Her presentation is titled, “Building Resiliency with Mindfulness.”
Landers developed Mindful Yoga as a means to reach a broad number of students who are looking to create proactive, healthy lifestyles, as well as students looking for a non-traditional, non-talk therapy model. Mindful Yoga incorporates empirically supported breathing exercises, yoga postures and psychoeducation for the treatment of depression, anxiety, body image concerns and trauma.
Georgia Southern student awarded Dow Jones News Fund Internship
Georgia Southern journalism student Brendan Ward will take part in the American City Business Journals Business Reporting Program at New York University as a part of a Dow Jones News Fund Internship.
“I’m honored to have been selected as a a Dow Jones intern this summer,” Ward said. “This is a huge opportunity, and I’m excited to represent Georgia Southern University. I want to thank the amazing journalists at The George-Anne and the Georgia Southern journalism professors for helping me grow as a journalist.”
Ward is one of only 79 students nationwide who will work this summer in a paid internship at one of the nation’s 65 leading news organizations through the Dow Jones News Fund. The Dow Jones News Fund arranges summer internships for college juniors, seniors and graduate students in newsrooms across the country in data journalism, digital media, business reporting and multiplatform editing. On average, nearly a third of the fund’s graduating seniors are offered full-time jobs when their internships end.