Griffin Campus

It is hard to believe that Young Scholars is in the home stretch already! Our students have been finishing up their research and projects which they will present on July 10th. On Tuesday they were able to attend the campus wide Watermelon Social and on Thursday we featured students Lauren Moyer and Meghan Rogers on the radio with their mentor Dr. Kirk Kealey and Lauren Hatcher. Then on Friday, we held our final Fun Friday with the Young Scholars and what a fun day it was! The students started the day by touring FoodPIC with Dr. Kealey and his crew where they had a chocolate tasting and toured the facility. Then had a Business Etiquette workshop with Dawn Tyus, Project Director of the Southeast Addiction Technology Transfer Center (SATTC) at Morehouse School of Medicine before having a Meet-N-Eat lunch networking social with the programs mentors where they could practice the skills they had just learned. After lunch, former Young Scholar Breanna Coursey who is now the Director of Student and Employer Engagement for CAES UGA/Athens, spoke to the group about the transition from high school to college. It was a great week!

It is hard to believe that Young Scholars is in the home stretch already! Our students have been finishing up their research and projects which they will present on July 10th. On Tuesday they were able to attend the campus wide Watermelon Social and on Thursday we featured students Lauren Moyer and Meghan Rogers on the radio with their mentor Dr. Kirk Kealey and Lauren Hatcher. Then on Friday, we held our final Fun Friday with the Young Scholars and what a fun day it was! The students started the day by touring FoodPIC with Dr. Kealey and his crew where they had a chocolate tasting and toured the facility. Then had a Business Etiquette workshop with Dawn Tyus, Project Director of the Southeast Addiction Technology Transfer Center (SATTC) at Morehouse School of Medicine before having a Meet-N-Eat lunch networking social with the programs mentors where they could practice the skills they had just learned. After lunch, former Young Scholar Breanna Coursey who is now the Director of Student and Employer Engagement for CAES UGA/Athens, spoke to the group about the transition from high school to college. It was a great week!

The 2018 Young Scholars Program kicked off on Monday, June 4^th at the University of Georgia Griffin Campus with 20 students participating in the six-week internship program. High school students from the region were selected from a pool of 86 applicants to participate in YSP where they will spend the summer working alongside world-renowned research scientists at UGA Griffin.

This year we have eight returning young scholars: Austin Duncan, Tamara English, Mary Grace Johnson, Maddox Jordan, Sheilendria Rawls, Jolie Ryff, Martha Sikora and Sarah Smyly. Joining YSP for the first time are: William Anong, Samuel Cross, Joshua Duffey, Taaseen Khan, Yuheon Lee, Lauren Moyer, Meghan Rogers, Emily Shi, Melanie Wagner, Robert “Lee” Wall, Dean Watson and Caroline Zhang. The students will spend Monday through Thursday working with their mentors and on Fridays they will have exploratory site visits to various areas on campus and work-shops from insightful presenters about college/life skills.

University of Georgia horticulturists Rachel Itle and Dario Chavez recently traveled to Australia to collect seeds from wild raspberries and peaches to bring back to the UGA Griffin campus. As scientists in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Itle and Chavez research Georgia-grown fruit.

It is not often that students get to work with world-renowned research scientists before they enter college, however for six seniors from Pike County High School that is exactly what happened for the 2017-2018 school year. The students are the second class of Pike County High School’s STEM Academy to complete the STEM Internship Program on the University of Georgia Griffin Campus.

Through the program, the students worked alongside UGA research scientists to become better prepared for post-secondary education and future careers in STEM fields.

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.