Student-directed black box show, ‘No Exit,’ opens on Georgia Southern Armstrong Campus on Oct. 3
Georgia Southern University Armstrong Campus’ student-run theater group, The Masquers, will present “No Exit,” its first black box show of the season. The show will run Oct. 3 through Oct. 5 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 6 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $12 for general admission and discounts are available for military, seniors and children. Georgia Southern students, faculty and staff attend for free.
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.
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 biology graduate students awarded sea grants for research
Two graduate students from Georgia Southern University’s Department of Biology have been awarded major grants for their research in marine biology.
Georgia Southern professor teams up to lead workshop on plastic pollution in Vietnam
Georgia Southern University Professor of Biology Lissa Leege, Ph.D., was part of a team that recently led a workshop in Vietnam on the negative effects plastic pollution has on the ocean. Leege said she expects the workshop will indirectly reach the 2,300 high school teachers and 40,000 high school students of the Binh Dinh Province through the 100 educators who attended.
“It was a privilege to be a part of this effort, and I am hopeful that this will be the start of a broader, country-wide initiative,” she said. “The conference highlighted the global nature of the plastic problem. Because Western nations often export plastic recycling to Southeastern Asian nations, the plastic that we use here often ends up becoming their problem. But that comes back to us in contaminated seafood and unhealthy marine ecosystems.”
Numerous high level government officials from Vietnam attended the workshop in a show of support for the conference. Vietnam is the fourth-largest source of plastic waste discharge into the oceans, which affects the province of Binh Dinh’s primarily fishing-based economy.
The workshop was a part of a National Geographic Society Education Grant focused on educating high school teachers about reducing plastic pollution in the ocean. Leege partnered with faculty from Loyola University Chicago, Baylor University and University of California, Riverside during the workshop.
Georgia Southern professors mentor students at Boys and Girls Club of Statesboro, enhance STEM literacy with weeklong study
College of Education faculty members Shelli Casler-Failing, Ph.D., and Alma Stevenson, Ph.D., worked with students at the Boys and Girls Club of Statesboro this summer to enhance their STEM literacy skills.
Georgia Southern’s annual economic impact continues to grow, topping more than $1 billion
A new report shows Georgia Southern University has increased its annual economic impact of more than $1 billion on the region it serves. The report, released by the University System of Georgia, says Georgia Southern is a significant part of the system’s $17.7 billion economic impact on the state of Georgia in FY 2018.
Georgia Southern school psychology students work with special needs children in Ecuador, experience is life-changing
Over the summer, three Georgia Southern students traveled to Quito, Ecuador, to participate in the Ecuador Professional Preparation Program, an 18-day cultural immersion program for psychology graduate students and mental health professionals.
Georgia Southern graduate student conducts research as snake specialist in Honduras
Lauren Wilson, a graduate student in the Georgia Southern University Department of Biology, spent the summer working as a snake specialist in Central America. Wilson joined a research team tasked with quantifying and protecting biodiversity in the forests of Cusuco National Park, Honduras.
Georgia Southern helping rural teachers introduce renewable energy into classrooms
This year marks the third summer that 10 teachers from rural areas in Georgia have come to Georgia Southern University to learn more about renewable energy. Faculty from the Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and the College of Education helped the teachers bring renewable energy projects and practices into their classrooms.