Georgia Southern History Department receives Georgia honors
Georgia Southern University History Department has created two projects related to the local history of Savannah. These projects are being honored by the Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council and the USG Chancellor’s Office.
History professor Robert Batchelor, Ph.D., alongside local authors Susan Earl and Tom Kohler, have received the 2019 Award for Excellence in Local History Advocacy for the “Waddie Welcome Archive — Savannah Signs Project.”
The archive contains more than 700 pictures of hand-painted African American signs from Savannah dating from the 1970s to the present time. Georgia Southern special collection librarian Autumn Johnson and Sulfur Studios photographer Emily Earl helped to enable these recent public exhibitions.
Retired professor of history John Duncan, Ph.D., will also receive an award for his book, The Showy Town of Savannah: The Story of the Architect William Jay.
Georgia Southern welcomes back Raku Pizza Night
The Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University will host Raku Pizza Night on Oct. 30, from 6 to 8 p.m. on the Armstrong Campus in the Annex II Courtyard. Raku firing is an ancient Japanese ceramics technique in which pottery is removed from a kiln while it’s red hot and placed into a container with combustible materials to create colorful glazes. There will be free refreshments and door prizes.
The night will feature students presenting their work, viewing of a Raku firing technique and a demonstration by ceramics professor John Jenson throwing a large pot.
“I started doing Raku Pizza night when I first started teaching here,” said Jenson. “This is like an open house that gives our students an evening to learn about different types of pottery, working on the wheel, firing and finished pieces. It is educational and entertaining.”
Graduate students present on age-related hearing loss
Georgia Southern University graduate students in the Communication Sciences and Disorders program recently partnered with Georgia Relay and Georgia Center of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing for a Bingo Bash Hearing Loss Lunch and Learn in Port Wentworth, Georgia, to address hearing loss in the aging population.
Graduate students provided attendees with hearing screenings, discussed hearing loss prevention and provided a presentation on age-related hearing loss. Participants of this event enjoyed bingo, prizes and lunch while learning about the many services Georgia Relay, Georgia Center of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and Georgia Southern University have to offer.
Georgia Southern History Department displays traditional style birch-bark canoe
Georgia Southern University’s History Department has a traditional style birch-bark canoe on display on the Armstrong Campus through Spring 2020 in Hawes Hall. The canoe, named Muskeego, was built in 1998 and has been used to travel between Minnesota and Canada the same way that Ojibwa Natives have done for hundreds of years. After a long career of being used, it was placed on display in Ely, Minn.
The Museum of Underwater Archaeology (MUA) in Savannah acquired Muskeego as part of its small boat collection. MUA Board member and Assistant Professor of History Kurt Knoerl, Ph.D., has gained access to use the canoe at Georgia Southern. This will provide students and the public an opportunity to see an artifact that played an important role in North American history.
“The collection is being used to educate Georgia Southern students about maritime history in the United States and the world,” said Knoerl. “Our position here in Savannah, as a port city, makes Georgia Southern the perfect place to teach maritime history, archeology and material culture.”
Muskeego is being used this semester in Knoerl’s class, Introduction to United States History, to teach about Native American history as well as the fur trade. Students in the graduate program in public history will also have the opportunity to benefit from studying small boat documentation and preservation.
Parker College of Business to host IANA Applied Research Competition
The Department of Logistics and Supply Chain Management in Georgia Southern University’s Parker College of Business has partnered with the Georgia Ports Authority and TCW Inc., to host the first-ever GS-IANA Logistics Applied Research Challenge. The competition is made possible through support and funding from the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA).
The GS-IANA Logistics Applied Research Challenge will allow junior and senior undergraduate logistics students to gain professional development experience and a deeper understanding of the intermodal freight transportation industry.
The Fall 2019 business case for which students will create solutions will be developed by the Georgia Ports Authority and TCW Inc. leadership teams, along with faculty from the Department of Logistics and Supply Chain Management. Students will earn valuable exposure to highly relevant, important and complex business challenges faced in intermodal supply chains, and it will offer an opportunity for student teams to research, solve and present solutions to a panel of judges comprised of industry executives, government officials and logistics faculty members.
Georgia Southern Child Development Center employee named educator of the year
Jessica DeLaigle, a child development specialist at the Georgia Southern Child Development Center on the Statesboro Campus, has been named the Georgia Association for the Education of Young Children (GAEYC) Educator of the Year for a large center. DeLaigle, who also teaches in some Child and Family Development labs, said she is honored to receive the award.
“I have the best job because I get to teach the little children, and I also get to teach the big children (college students) how to teach the little children,” DeLaigle said. “I am so passionate about teaching, and I work really hard to ensure that children’s first experiences in school are positive ones. It makes me really happy to know that my hard work and dedication to our field is being recognized.”
The GAEYC gives awards to educators who are “outstanding employees at a child care center or school who demonstrate exemplary work with children.” DeLaigle will receive her award at the GAEYC Quality Service Awards Luncheon later this fall.
Georgia Southern faculty edits essays challenging eighteenth century culture
Jeffrey D. Burson, Ph.D., associate professor of French history, co-edited The Skeptical Enlightenment: Doubt and Certainty in the Age of Reason, a recently published collection of essays that examines the process by which skepticism was challenged and gradually tamed to bring about an anxious confidence in the powers of human understanding. This work shows how doubt and anxiety about the limits of human understanding were at the very heart of the early Enlightenment.
Burson is the author of The Rise and Fall of Theological Enlightenment: Jean-Martin de Prades and Ideological Polarization in Eighteenth-Century France and the Culture of Enlightening and the Entangled Life of Abbé Claude Yvon in addition to numerous articles and chapters in edited collections of essays. He is also the co-editor of Enlightenment and Catholicism in Europe: A Transnational History and of The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences.
Georgia Southern faculty present research in Canada
This past July, four Georgia Southern University faculty members presented at the 30th International Nursing Research Congress in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The Conference, presented by Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, is held annually in different countries to provide attendees with the opportunity to learn from and exchange evidence-based research.
Helen Taggart, Ph.D., RN; Pamela Mahan, Ph.D., RN; Trina Embrey, RN, from the School of Nursing and Haresh Rochani, DrPH, from the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, presented research.
Taggart, Mahan and Rochani presented “Changes in Baccalaureate Nursing Students’ Perceptions about Caring for Dying Patients.” Embrey, Taggart and Rochani presented “Stress and Mindfulness in Nursing Students.”
More than 1,200 nurse researchers, students, clinicians and leaders attended this year’s event.
Diagnostic and therapeutic sciences students awarded scholarships
Two students in the Georgia Southern University Department of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Sciences have received the Mary Howden Gibson and Lois Gaddis Hamilton Memorial Scholarships from St. Joseph’s Candler Hospital Auxiliary, a part of the St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System.
Minhthu Huyen, a senior cardiovascular interventional science major, and Danielle Pentecost, senior respiratory therapy major, both received the award, which provides support for promising students who are accepted into a health professions or medical training program in Chatham County, Georgia.
The Department of Diagnostic and Therapeutic Sciences is housed in the Waters College of Health Professions and offers undergraduate degrees in medical laboratory science, radiologic sciences and respiratory therapy.
Two graduate programs in Waters College of Health Professions ranked nationally
Georgia Southern University has received national rankings for two master’s degree programs in the Waters College of Health Professions.
The Master of Science in Sport Management was ranked No. 14 on Sport Management Degree Guide’s list of “25 Best Online Master’s in Sports Management Degree Programs.”
The Master of Science in Kinesiology with an emphasis in sport and exercise psychology was ranked No. 20 on Online Psychology Degrees’ list of “Online Psychology Degrees Top Graduate Degree Programs.”
The 36-credit hour programs are designed to provide a comprehensive and rigorous curriculum and practical experience in the skills and techniques necessary to be successful in their fields. Learn more about the graduate programs offered in the Department of Health Sciences and Kinesiology by visiting chp.georgiasouthern.edu/hk/graduate/.