Griffin Campus

More than 40 years ago, a young man from Arkansas decided to become an agriculture major because "it was the beginning of the Green Revolution, and agriculture had a bright future." Today that man, University of Georgia professor Paul Raymer, has served Georgia agriculture as a variety tester, a soybean specialist, a canola breeder and a turfgrass breeder.  Read the full article here.

The UGA FoodPIC team (Dr. Kirk Kealey, Dr. Dick Phillips, Lauren Hatcher, Bobby Goss, and Gana Otgonbayar) were heavily involved in the 2018 Flavor of Georgia Contest in Atlanta on March 20. This UGA sponsored contest solicits product submissions from food entrepreneurs and companies across Georgia. This year's event had 125 submissions.

The University of Georgia Griffin Campus recently named Adam Gregory, Sue Thomas and Lewayne White as the 2018 Classified Employees of the Year. The designation was made at the 29^th Annual Employee Recognition Ceremony held on Friday, March 16.

Ten employees were nominated for the Classified Employee of the Year award: Brett Byous (Entomology); Ben Fields (Field Research Services); Anthony Flint (Facilities Management Division); Malgorzata Florkowska (Horticulture); Adam Gregory (Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit); Kimberly Hayes (Finance and Administration); Lee Taylor (Office of the Assistant Provost and Campus Director); Sue Thomas (Center for Food Safety); Brian Vermeer (Plant Pathology); and Lewayne White (Crop and Soil Sciences).

The University of Georgia Griffin Campus was named the Good Corporate Citizen of the Year at the 105^th Annual Dinner of the Griffin-Spalding Chamber of Commerce held on January 25, 2018. The award, sponsored by BB&T, recognizes an organization that has made a commitment to improving the quality of life for all in Griffin-Spalding County.  Cindi Shaddix, of BB&T, presented the award and praised the local university for its support of the community over the years.

“This organization has supported the Griffin-Spalding Chamber of Commerce and the Griffin Spalding County United Way for many years. They are consistently recognized by United Way as a Pacesetter organization for their significant economic contribution to our community. As we all know, money raised in our country by United Way is reinvested in our county which provide services to our citizens of greatest need,” said Shaddix.

She also noted employees of UGA Griffin can always be counted on to serve in volunteer positions on various community boards and organizations within our community.

Former UGA Griffin Campus Young Scholar, Natalie Morean, was recently recognized by the UGA Office of Institutional Diversity for her work in advancing issues of human rights and race relations. She was presented the President’s Fulfilling the Dream Award at the Freedom Breakfast sponsored by UGA, the Athens-Clarke Unified Government and the Clarke County School District (see article here).

Morean worked locally with Dr. Paul Raymer during the summers of 2013 and 2014 as a part of the Young Scholars Program, and again in 2015 as a research intern. She currently serves as the president of the National Council of Negro Women, a member of the Black Affairs Council and a fellow in the Leaders Engaged in Affirming Diversity program at UGA. One of her greatest passions is serving the less fortunate and she works diligently to organize ways to provide food and blankets to the homeless in Athens-Clarke County.

The University of Georgia Griffin Campus held the Fall Graduation Celebration and Brick Ceremony for the class of 2017 on Thursday, December 14, 2017 in the Stuckey Auditorium. In total, 24 students received their degrees and became alumni of the oldest state-supported university in the nation. This was the 22^nd graduation ceremony held on the Griffin Campus.  

Dr. Lew Hunnicutt, Assistant Provost and Campus Director, welcomed students, along with their families and friends, before introducing Keynote Speaker Dr. Russell Mumper, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs for UGA.

Dr. Mumper challenged the graduates to never become stagnant. Instead to keep challenging themselves, building upon their skills and accomplishments as well as being open to the possibility of change.

$1 Million gift enables UGA to transform historic barn on Griffin campus into Dundee Cafe

Full Story

http://news.uga.edu/releases/article/griffin-campus-barn-dundee-cafe/

Food safety research usually involves analyzing live populations of foodborne pathogens like Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli, but University of Georgia food scientist Henk den Bakker fights pathogens by developing computer software. 

Thirty-two UGA employees retired April 1. Retirees, their job classification, department and years of service are:

Daniel Mwalwayo has spent most of his professional career working to ensure a safe food supply in his home country of Malawi.

This spring, he’s spending three months focused on that goal while training at the University of Georgia through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship Program. The program, which is administered at UGA by the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Office of Global Programs, promotes food security and economic growth by providing training and collaborative research opportunities to researchers and policymakers from developing or middle-income countries.

After nearly a decade working for the national food inspection program in Malawi, Mwalwayo wanted to study how to minimize aflatoxin in processed peanuts, a problem he sees firsthand at home. The Borlaug program matched him with Koushik Adhikari, a UGA food science professor who is an expert in sensory analysis and is working with Mwalwayo on how to survey consumers on peanut consumption and aflatoxin-related issues. Mwalwayo also spent time in the lab of Jia-Sheng Wang, the head of the Environmental Health Science Department at UGA, to learn more about aflatoxin testing techniques.