OASIS access will transition on May 20
An upcoming transition from OASIS to MyID means students will no longer be required to use their Social Security number to access OASIS via the Web. Access switches from SSN and PIN to MyID and a password May 20, according to UGA Registrar Rebecca Macon and Rehan Khan, associate CIO for the EITS Application Development and Database Management division. The MyID is the sign-on name that students already use to access a wide range of online services including the UGA portal (MyUGA), UGAMail, WebCT, parking services and many more.

“We are very pleased that the EITS OASIS technical team was able to modify OASIS to no longer require the SSN and PIN to access OASIS,” said Macon, who also serves as chair of the Identity Management Functional Committee.

“Students will have the convenience of single sign-on to OASIS via the UGA portal, MyUGA (my.uga.edu) using their MyID and password,” said Khan. “Once logged on to MyUGA, OASIS is a click away, just like WebCT, UGAMail and the other services that use the MyID for access.”

State Farm gift funds creation of new sales lab in Terry College of Business
State Farm has committed $96,000 to establish a sales lab at the Terry College of Business. The donation will benefit Terry’s marketing department, which will use the gift to renovate and outfit space in Sanford Hall to house the State Farm Sales Lab. The lab will consist of six small break-out rooms, a small conference room and a video control room. All of the rooms will have video-recording capability.

“A high percentage of business graduates, including about 70 percent of marketing majors, start their careers in sales,” said Robert T. Sumichrast, dean of the Terry College of Business. “The addition of this dedicated lab space will strengthen the marketing department’s program in professional selling, and it will help the Terry College better prepare graduates for job opportunities right out of college.”

The marketing department has made sales management a key focus, including the faculty’s recent approval of professional selling as an area of academic emphasis.

“State Farm is proud to present this gift to the Terry College and honored to be a partner in the UGA community,” said Jim Kinkade, a State Farm vice president of agency. “This is a win-win for everyone as we help prepare these young adults for life and careers.”

UGA renews international cooperative agreement with Egyptian university
UGA renewed its International Cooperative Agreement with Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt, on March 2.

At present, a major focus of the 15-year partnership is conducting research to better understand the environmental changes that have affected Egypt and that have shaped the landforms of the country, particularly during the past 150,000 years. By dating ancient lake sediments and sand dunes using optically stimulated luminescence techniques—UGA’s geography department has one of perhaps 10 such labs in the U.S.—researchers hope to understand the geologic history of the Egyptian sand seas and seek to anticipate the potential dangers to settlements in the surrounding oasis towns due to shifting sand dunes. Geography researchers plan to submit joint research proposals to National Geographic and the National Science Foundation to secure funds to support the collaborative research effort in Egypt.

The partnership began in 1996 when George Brook, UGA geography professor, was asked to join scientists from the University of Helsinki, Ain Shams University and the Egyptian Geological Survey to study Quaternary environmental change in the Western Desert of Egypt. The team took samples from the remote Djara Cave south of Bahariya Oasis, which is one of the few caves in Egypt with large stalagmites and stalactites and also decorated with Neolithic cave art.

The work resulted in a published co-authored paper with the record of wetter periods of climate going back to 500,000 years ago.

Archway Partnership wins award
UGA recently was awarded the 2009 Outreach Scholarship W.K. Kellogg Foundation Engagement Award for its Archway Partnership program. The Archway Partnership is now one of four regional programs invited to compete for the national 2009 C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award.

The Archway Partnership is an initiative to strengthen UGA’s land-grant mission by taking a grassroots approach to meet locally identified community and economic development needs by creating “portal” communities through which the university’s teaching, research and service missions can address community-driven issues.

Six such “portal” communities already exist: Moultrie/Colquitt County; Sandersville,
Tennille/Washington County; Brunswick/Glynn County; Clayton County; Hartwell/Hart County; and Americus/Sumter County. A seventh, The Hawkinsville/Pulaski County community, is set to begin operations July 1.

The Archway Partnership and the other three regional award programs will be showcased during the National Outreach Scholarship Conference Sept. 28-30 at UGA, and the Magrath Award winner will be selected during the conference, with the winner being announced in November.

‘Georgia Review’ wins 13 awards
The Georgia Review, UGA’s quarterly journal of arts and letters, recently earned six gold honors and a total of 13 citations at the Magazine Association of the Southeast’s 2009 GAMMA Awards ceremony. The awards, judged by editors and journalists from across America, were for work published in the Review’s 2008 issues.

For the third consecutive year, the Review won the general excellence award in its category—consumer paid with revenue of less than $1 million dollars. The other gold awards were for best essay (“Forms and Structures” by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn); best feature (“My Franziska, Charlotte Salomon and the Decision Not to Be: Suicide Before, During and After the Holocaust” by Susan Gubar); best photography (“The Course of History” by Bart Michiels); best profile (“Dreaming Richard Hugo” by Frances McCue); and best series (“Richard Hugo: ‘We Are Called Human,’” which included McCue’s essay, essays on Hugo by five other writers and poems by Hugo himself). The Review also took silver awards for best single issue, best essay, best profile and best feature; a bronze award for best series; and honorable mentions for best design and best single cover.

GMOA launches virtual museum
The Georgia Museum of Art recently launched a virtual museum in Second Life featuring paintings and drawings from its permanent collection. The virtual museum contains an almost exact replica of the galleries at the museum and is available to all residents of Second Life.

Second Life is a free online world that is imagined, created and maintained by its residents. Since its inception in 2003, Second Life has provided a world that supports all forms of expression and offers educational, business and entertainment opportunities to millions of users.

The Georgia Museum of Art plans to utilize Second Life as an educational tool for its current audience as well as a new online audience. The virtual museum offers users worldwide the ability to roam its galleries from the comfort of their homes.

The museum’s Carlton Street location is temporarily closed for the addition of a new wing and renovation of the existing space. “GMOA on the Move,” a two-year series of off-site events and exhibitions, also will allow the museum to remain visible despite its temporary lack of a physical building.