March 2003: Vol. 82, No. 2

"Good Eats!"

Alton Brown's cooking show landed him a huge billboard in Times Square

by John English

lton Brown calls himself a "television chef." Yet he's clearly more than that because he writes, directs, edits, and stars in his own show, "Good Eats," on the Food Network.

The former UGA drama major just finished his 87th episode and fifth season on the Food Network.

Brown (M '83), whose show airs seven times a week on cable, has just finished his 87th episode in his fifth season. He's also written a new cookbook, I'm Just Here For The Food (Stewart, Tabori and Chang). The former UGA drama major re-traced his career path for students during a recent visit to campus. "I was a freelance director of television commercials for 10 years," he said, sitting atop a table in the Fine Arts Building. "Cooking was a huge hobby of mine, so I watched a lot of cooking shows—and thought they all sucked!"

He was convinced he could re-package cooking information in a more entertaining and informative way. He studied at the New England Culinary School, then developed his concept for the show. He wanted to appeal to whole families, both kids and adults, with a focus on "regular people food—hamburgers, coffee, waffles."

"Telling a story is the most important skill," he said. "'Good Eats' is a sitcom in which food is a character." Brown's playful personality influences his creations. One show about dips was called "Dip Madness" and was set in an insane asylum. An episode about garlic was seen through the eyes of a vampire. Always the pun-ster, another show was called "Squid Vicious."

Brown and his wife DeAnna, the original producer of "Good Eats," raised the funds to make two pilot episodes. They offered the pilots to a public television station to air for free in return for generating ratings, which they used to help sell the series. In 1998, they signed on with the Food Network.

Brown admits he'd never been in front of a camera before and, as a director, considered actors "troublesome meat puppets." His trademark Hawaiian shirts are eye-catching and his offbeat antics and manic enthusiasm ("I've always been a genetic performer . . . my heart rate goes down in front of an audience") pack as much information and factoids into each show as possible.

"People are smart, so I don't dumb the show down," he said. "I try to write good dialogue that doesn't make me look like a know-it-all—which I am!"

To keep "Good Eats" from being an extended monologue, Brown has worked stock characters into the shows, including his sister and nephew. While the cooking portion is done in a kitchen studio in Atlanta, he also films in other locations, such as local supermarkets or appliance stores. His show's popularity has made him something of a celebrity, and he confesses that he did go to New York when the Food Network put his face on a billboard in Times Square.

"I never thought about being a celebrity," he said, "until someone screamed out my name at the Atlanta airport and I turned and ran into a wall. I've had to get an unlisted phone number, but generally I'm not burdened by it. Sometimes restaurants want to please me by trying to get me to taste all 20 courses on their menu. On my book tour, 750 fans showed up for my first signing and I was humbled by it. It's my good fortune to have the job I have, so I try to be nice to fans."

Law school benefits from ex-governor's gift

Carl Sanders (JD '48) endows faculty chair in political leadership

by Larry Dendy (ABJ '65)

arl E. Sanders (JD '48) has given $1 million to the UGA School of Law, bolstering a vow he made nearly 40 years ago to make it one of the nation's best. The gift, which is part of UGA's capital campaign, will create the Carl E. Sanders Chair in Political Leadership in the school where Sanders earned his law degree more than a half-century ago. Also, the main reading room in the law school's library will be named for Sanders.

Presiding over groundbreaking ceremonies for the law library in 1964, then-Gov. Sanders made a statement that is carved into the building's wall: "The people of Georgia want and deserve nothing but the best. The University of Georgia School of Law is, therefore, to be one of such excellence that no citizen of Georgia need ever leave the state because a superior legal education is afforded elsewhere."

Prior to careers in law and politics, Sanders was a football player at UGA.

Sanders, now chairman of Troutman Sanders, earned the title of "Georgia's Education Governor" for his strong support of education while serving as the state's chief executive from 1963-67. More than $2 billion was invested in educational and training programs during his administration, including more than $552 million spent on the state's public colleges and universities. Expenditures for buildings in the University System topped $176.5 million—more than had been spent in the previous 31 years. UGA received more than $40 million in construction funds, launching the largest building program in school history with the start or completion of more than a dozen buildings. Salaries for the University System rose by 32.5 percent, and UGA's faculty doubled in size.

Sanders was also instrumental in providing state funding for an expansion of the law school that included a new building for the law school library, which opened in 1967. He also secured $1 million in state funds to buy books for the library, and in 1987 he made a personal gift to create the Carl Sanders Law Library Fund.

In 1995, Sanders donated $125,000 to the law library, and Troutman Sanders matched the gift in honor of his 70th birthday. Sanders has also donated his gubernatorial papers, photographs, and other memorabilia to the library.

An outstanding high school athlete in his native Augusta, Sanders enrolled at UGA in 1942 on a football scholarship. The next year he withdrew, joined the U.S. Air Force and piloted bombers during World War II. He returned to UGA after the war with enough college credits earned through examinations available to war veterans to enter law school. He also rejoined the football team and played on the 1945 team that beat Tulsa in the Oil Bowl.

After receiving his law degree, Sanders practiced law in Augusta and in 1954 was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives. He later served three terms in the Georgia Senate before winning election as governor. In 1967, Sanders and two associates founded Troutman Sanders. The firm has more than 500 attorneys and offices in eight cities including London and Hong Kong.

Sanders has remained active in public life, serving on corporate boards and leading civic and philanthropic causes. A past chairman of the Japan-America Society of Georgia, he was on the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and was an Olympic Torch Bearer in Augusta.

Teach for America

Jennifer Wakefield (AB '01) and Dan Helenius (AB '01) have put their careers on hold to teach disadvantaged students

by Jill Markey (ABJ '02)

t's a quiet Monday morning in Indianola, Miss., and Jennifer Wakefield's drive to Robert L. Merritt Middle School, which is located across from a large cotton field, takes just three minutes. Dan Helenius, meanwhile, is crawling along highway 91, driving from Torrance, Calif., to Compton. While he's stuck in gridlock, he dreams up creative activities to get his students interested in learning.

Helenius tells his middle school students that if they improve their readings levels, they can cut and braid his hair.

Both Jennifer (AB '01) and Dan (AB '01) have chosen to teach in extremely poor communities—and for wages considerably below what they could command teaching in a more affluent area of the country or working in a different field. "I can't say that I want to be a teacher in the future," says Jennifer. "But my experience here has been the most challenging, satisfying, and educational of my life."

Dan, a former UGA cheerleader, describes his first year of teaching as tough because his expectation level was too high. "I was expecting my students to run before they could crawl," he says.

Jennifer and Dan are volunteers for Teach for America, a national corps of outstanding college graduates from all academic majors who commit two years of their life to teach in urban and rural public schools.

Jennifer is in her second year of teaching seventh-grade language arts in Indianola (pop. 11,000). All of her students are African American, and they are the reason she feels so good each morning when the alarm goes off at 5:45 a.m. Many live in poor housing with no parental support, not enough food or clothing, and no quiet place to do homework. Education is their way out.

Teach for America volunteers complete a rigorous five-week summer training Institute held either in Houston, New York City, or Los Angeles, where they learn lesson planning, classroom delivery, and course management. "I call it boot camp for teachers," says Dan, who is a second-year teacher at Bunch Middle School in Compton (pop. 95,000), an area ravished by drugs, gangs, and crime.

Dan teaches seventh-grade English, reading, and computer literacy. His students are 70 percent Latino and 30 percent African American, and they read at a fourth-grade level. To make an impression on them, he is constantly brewing up creative methods of engaging his students, such as acting out a mock cocktail party to introduce the characters from Breakfast At Tiffany's. He even uses his long hair as an incentive to read. If his kids increase their reading ability 1.5 levels in the Accelerated Reading Program, they get to braid and cut his hair.

"You change as a result of your environment," Dan says. "I am a completely different person than when I graduated from UGA."

Looking back on the value of the Teach For America program, Jennifer says it has been worth every minute.

"I can say I've walked into a new town, a new community, and a new job—and made a place for myself," Jennifer says. "I can look at my students' test scores and say I've done something positive for this school district. I can say I've faced the biggest challenge I'll probably ever face. Yes, that is definitely worth it."

A woman with M.o.X.i.e.

Scientist Alissa Salmore (MS '00) wins national Microsoft award for Mac usage in business

by Rachel Lianna Smith

icrosoft Corp. went all over the country looking for a computer-savvy, Mac-user businesswoman to honor, but in the end they found Ms. M.o.X.i.e. (Microsoft® Office v. X Integrated Experience) in a lab. "I got an e-mail from my husband, saying, 'I entered you in a contest,'" says Alissa Salmore (MS '00). "My first thought was, What the hell are you talking about?" Mike Thomas, an evolutionary biologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin, wrote an essay and entered his wife on a whim, forgetting to tell her until a few days later. "I don't think either of us were taking it seriously," he says. "We had a lot of fun with it."

Salmore is a research associate with the Great Lakes Water Institute at UW-Milwaukee.

As a research associate with Great Lakes Water Institute at UW-Milwaukee, Salmore, 32, uses her Mac at home for spreadsheet software and grant writing. She recently won the highly competitive Lindbergh Foundation grant for her work on bacterial contamination in urban storm water. In her project, entitled "Identifying the Source of E.coli in Urban Storm Water Using DNA," Salmore will use bacterial DNA strands to identify pollution sources in a waterway near Lake Michigan. The Metro Milwaukee Sewerage District is matching the $10,580 Lindbergh Foundation award, which equals the cost of Charles Lindbergh's plane built in 1927.

Salmore received another $10,000 and a new iMac from the M.o.X.i.e. contest. She will use the money for charitable contributions, student loans, and new housing costs when she and her husband move to Idaho, where he will take a faculty position at Idaho State. "Hopefully it will provide good opportunities for both of us," he says. Salmore will apply for grants, pursue a research position or a Ph.D.

Inquisitive for as long as she can remember, Salmore says it has always been her plan to help solve environmental problems.

"I enjoy working with plants and animals and bugs—being outside and trying to explain the way the world works," she says. But her goal reaches beyond a simple explanation of nature. "My interest in science is driven by my environmental ethic. The Clean Water Act mandates that we try to reach a certain standard of clean water in our lakes, streams and groundwater, so we measure certain things—nutrients, heavy metals and bacteria, mainly E.coli.

Salmore tries to determine the source of pollution, since a standard water test can only confirm its presence. Cleanup and funds can be targeted more efficiently if the EPA is aware of the pollution's source, says Salmore, who is passionate about her work, but a little uneasy about being in the Microsoft limelight.

"I like to hide in the lab and do my own thing, so the thought of having the Internet world able to click on something and read about me was intimidating."

To win the M.o.X.i.e. award, Salmore had to beat out a quirky handbag creator, a documentary videographer, a concert musician, and an urban revitalization activist.

"It's neat that they're recognizing women in business or academic careers," she says. "People who were picked as finalists were all very talented."

Judges narrowed the entries to 10 semifinalists, and put them up for public vote online. A panel then narrowed the public's top three to a final winner.

"I did a lot of e-mailing of friends to tell them to go look on the Web page," Salmore says. "I was a little aghast, because I'm not much of an extrovert."

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