|
|
 |
Columns::August 12, 2002
Digest
Rural Development Center breaks ground for planned 83,000-square-foot expansion
The groundbreaking for a planned 83,000-square-foot expansion to the university’s Rural Development Center was held late last month. The expansion promises to bring better educational opportunities and economic stimulus to the Tifton area and south Georgia.
Slated to open in January 2004, the $9.8-million expansion will be an addition to the current UGA Tifton Campus Conference Center.
The expansion will include a 3,000-seat auditorium with multi-purpose space for exhibits; a greatly expanded conference center, anchored by a ballroom with capacity for 1,000-person seated dinners (the current center can feed only 70 people in one room). The conference center can also be divided into four smaller conference spaces, a catering kitchen and other associated conference support spaces.
The cost of the new expansion will be divided between the University System of Georgia and Tift County. A special purpose local option sales tax referendum passed in the mid-1990s provided $4.9 million for the project.
“This was done in the spirit of partnership and cooperation,” says Michael F. Adams, UGA president, who praised the efforts of the local delegation to the General Assembly. “This facility will help us raise to the next level the economic prosperity of this state.”
“One of the strongest economic engines for Georgia is research, especially when that research can be applied to develop new opportunities and nurture new companies and jobs for the state,” Adams also says.
CCRC wins grant to build NMR magnet
UGA is one of four institutions to receive a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to support construction of new custom-built 900 MHz nuclear magnetic resonance magnets--the largest size available. Principal investigator for the project at UGA is James Prestegard, a distinguished professor in UGA’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center.
Bigger magnets enable researchers who use nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to have faster, more accurate glimpses of the inner workings of molecules and to study ever-larger molecules, rolling back a major limitation of the technology. Currently, there are only six NMR magnets of this size in the world.
In addition to UGA, other institutions receiving a grant are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the New York Structural Biology Center and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. NIGMS awarded an average of $4 million this year to each of the institutions.
The scientists will use their new NMR magnets to study the structure and behavior of biological molecules. Such studies reveal insights about normal cellular processes and shed light on diseases that develop when these processes go awry.
Professor named Fulbright Senior Scholar
Terence J. Centner, a professor in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, is a Fulbright Senior Scholar for the 2002-2003 academic year.
As a member of the faculty of law at the University of Mannheim in Germany for fall semester, Centner will teach two courses. One will focus on American environmental law and the second on liability for pollution. This will be Centner’s second fellowship to Germany. In 1990-91, he was an Alexander von Humboldt research fellow at the University of Göttingen.
“The current efforts against terrorism, health concerns about mad cow disease and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and food labeling issues present wonderful topics for discussion,” Centner says. “I expect to be challenged when explaining American positions on these issues.”
At UGA, Centner teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental and public health law and serves as the pre-law adviser for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
|
|
|
|
|
