March 2004: Vol. 83, No. 2March 2004: Vol. 83, No. 2
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The New Georgia Encyclopedia, a Web-only reference about all things Georgian, was publicly launched by Gov. Sonny Perdue (DVM ’71) at a ceremony at the State Capitol in February. The material is available on the NGE Web site (www.georgiaencyclopedia.org), and it will continue to grow and develop for many years to come.
The staff of The New Georgia Encyclopedia assembled 700 articles for the start-up version. They expect to add 1,300 more in the next two years. |
“The partnership of so many individuals and groups—including many talented faculty and staff within our University System—truly has resulted in an outstanding online resource on Georgia,” says Chancellor Thomas C. Meredith.
With funding support from a large number of public and private organizations, the encyclopedia will be accessible free to anyone with an Internet connection.
“For researchers and educators—and anyone interested in Georgia—the New Georgia Encyclopedia will be invaluable,” says Steve Wrigley, senior vice president for external affairs at UGA and chair of the Georgia Humanities Council.
Digital technology has made it possible to expand the encyclopedia’s content beyond traditional words and illustrations. Audio and video clips are incorporated, some previously recorded, some produced by NGE staff. The article on Georgia pottery, for example, includes three-dimensional images. The article on writer James Dickey offers a filmed interview with Dickey.
The encyclopedia grew out of the partnership between the Georgia Humanities Council and the UGA Press that produced the New Georgia Guide in the 1990s. A monumental effort that had involved hundreds of people throughout the state in planning, fund raising, researching and writing, that project gave birth to the idea of an even more monumental encyclopedia about Georgia that would take advantage of Internet technology. The project began in earnest early in 2000.
The Feb. 12 launch marked the public introduction of the NGE, but it will continue to expand. Approximately 700 articles were on the site by the launch date, says Kelly Caudle. She expects another 1,300 articles to be added in the next two years. Articles will be added and updated as needed.
— Beth Roberts
Prevailing sentiment positive following conference to discuss nuclear threat
North Korea forum
In the aftermath of a nuclear weapons conference held at UGA in November, policy framers from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and leading U.S. experts and policy advisors say the prevailing sentiment among the participants was positive in regard to the future of relations between the two countries.
UGA political science professor Han Park (center), who moderated the forum, is respected and trusted by both the North and South Korean governments. |
Han Park, director of UGA’s Center for Global Issues (GLOBIS) and forum moderator, made these observations at the conclusion of the conference, saying “this is not an agreement but a prevailing sentiment that I can summarize as follows:
The forum a.) facilitated the exchange of views and analyses from all participants; b.) focused on developing ideas in designing an architecture that might be useful as a recommendation for subsequent meetings in Beijing; c.) recommended that a comprehensive package deal be based on the principles of simultaneous actions and incrementalism or block-building; d.) recommended that essential steps be taken in providing security assurance to North Korea in consonance with them elim- inating nuclear programs; e.) recommended that framing security assurances multilateral must be considered, but that bilateral concerns involving the U.S. and the DPRK must be addressed first; and f.) saw value in direct dialogue and communications between the DPRK and the U.S. at all levels in both government and nongovernment sectors.”
— Kim Cretors (AB ’89)
Original site of city, university will be redeveloped and creek “daylighted”
UGA buys Thornton Brothers building
The University acquired the Thornton Brothers Paper Co. building and has announced plans to redevelop the area, which is believed to be the original site of the university and Athens.
The 22,000-square-foot building, which occupied six-tenths of an acre at 130 Fulton St., sold for $580,000. It was bounded on three sides by UGA facilities, including the North Campus parking deck, the Central Duplicating plant, and the Business Services building.
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Jo Ann Chitty, president of the UGA Real Estate Foundation, emphasizes that the property will remain on the local tax digest, as do most parcels owned by the foundation. The site contains a spring and a creek—capped by buildings for decades—which are believed to have been important factors in the decision to locate the university and the city nearby.
“Our intention is to ‘daylight’ the spring and creek and restore the immediate area to its more natural setting,” says Henry M. Huckaby, UGA senior vice president for finance and administration. The campus master plan projects the “northeast precinct” will extend the ambience of the existing North Campus quadrangle eastward, with additional offices and classroom buildings around a new quadrangle. Until those plans are ready to move forward, the site will be used for parking.
— Tom Jackson (AB ’73)
TAKING A ROBOT FOR A SPIN
Developed by computer science professor Don Potter, UGA’s “Introduction to Robotics” class is so popular that art professor Laleh Mehran sat in on it this fall. That’s Mehran (far left) working with graduate student Julian Bishop, who is getting his master’s in artificial intelligence. Their class project called for them to design and build a robot capable of recognizing certain colored blocks, picking up the blocks, and then placing them in the appropriate corner of a test field. “Both graduate students and undergraduates can enroll in the course,” says Potter, who is director of UGA’s Artificial Intelligence Center. “Students usually major in computer science or artificial intelligence, but engineering and geology students have also taken the class.”
 The record enrollment was due to a larger-than-anticipated freshman class, stepped-up recruiting of grad students, and a jump in enrollment at the Gwinnett University Center. |
UGA’s final fall enrollment numbers were the highest in history with 33,878 students registered for classes. That total is 2.8 percent (937 students) higher than fall 2002, and it marks the seventh straight year fall enrollment has set a new record.
The total includes 32,808 students attending classes on the UGA campus, 820 students attending the Gwinnett University Center, and 21 students enrolled in UGA’s new Tifton center. An additional 229 students are enrolled in independent study courses.
The 32,808 attending regular classes in Athens falls within the two percent variance of UGA’s on-campus enrollment target of 32,500 set by the University System Board of Regents. UGA officials expected a record enrollment due to a larger-than-anticipated freshman class, stepped-up recruitment of graduate students, and a big jump in enrollment at the Gwinnett University Center.
The total enrollment includes 5,236 students classified as new freshmen, the largest number of new first-year students ever enrolled in one semester. UGA had an unusually high enrollment rate for accepted freshmen this year, plus twice as many transient freshmen as last year, resulting in an increase of 404 students over freshman enrollment in fall 2002.
Total enrollment at the undergraduate level this fall is 24,977, up only one percent (253 students) from last year. However, graduate enrollment climbed 5.5 percent to 6,290. Officials said these totals reflect progress in the university’s goal of increasing graduate enrollment as part of an overall enrollment management strategy. Enrollment in the professional schools of law, pharmacy and veterinary medicine totals 1,541, a 2.9 percent increase.
The number of students attending UGA classes at the Gwinnett University Center leaped 48.3 percent to 820, up 267 from last fall. The total includes 632 graduate students and 188 undergraduates. UGA offers graduate programs at the center in education, business, social work, food science and technology, and public administration. UGA offers seven bachelor’s degrees through the center including programs in business, science and education. An undergraduate degree in social work was recently added.
Twenty-one students are enrolled in classes at the Tifton center, a joint program started this year by UGA and Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College located in Tifton. The four-year degree program in agriscience and environmental systems leads to a bachelor’s degree in agriculture.
The 33,878 is a “head count”—the number of people who registered for one or more classes for this semester. Many of these students are not taking a full course load of 15 credit hours. The equivalent full-time (EFT) enrollment for fall is 31,688. EFT converts the head-count number into a figure that indicates what enrollment would be if the entire head count were taking full-course loads. UGA and all institutions in the University System of Georgia receive state funding based on a formula calculated on EFT. The EFT for fall last year was 30,762.
— Larry Dendy (ABJ ’65)
Popular photos now available through Digital Library of Georgia
Vanishing Georgia
Beginning in the mid-1970s, employees of the Georgia Archives traveled the state in a converted school bus in an effort to save Georgia’s photographic history. They located, selected, and duplicated historically significant images held by individuals and organizations across the state.
 This photo of Tatum Grover Stephens farming in Franklin County in July 1929 is one of 18,000 Vanishing Georgia images, which are available through the DLG unit of the UGA Libraries. |
Vanishing Georgia covers topics ranging from rural life to railroads and industry. It includes family and business life, street scenes and architecture, school and civic activities, landscapes, and important individuals and events in Georgia history.
“There are nearly 1,000 images documenting African-American life and photos from Georgia’s Asian community in the early 20th century,” says Toby Graham, who is director of the Digital Library of Georgia. “Vanishing Georgia is where you can go to find images of the airships stationed in Glynn County during World War II or a large likeness of Jimmy Carter’s face made entirely of camellia blossoms.
“Visiting Vanishing Georgia is like viewing a giant photograph album for the state. Visitors should be aware that the database also includes historically significant images on some of the state’s darker periods, but taken as a whole Vanishing Georgia is an engaging and educational cross-section of Georgia history and life.”
Through a partnership among the Georgia Archives, Georgia Public Library Service, and GALILEO, the 18,000 photos have been digitized and are accessible via the Internet as a part of the Digital Library of Georgia at: http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu.
“With both documentary and artistic value,” says Graham, “these photographs are a testament to the hard work and the vision of the archivists who sought to save them for posterity.”
In 1982, selected photographs from the collection appeared in a Vanishing Georgia book published by the University of Georgia Press. There was a renewed emphasis on the Vanishing Georgia photographs in 2001 when the Georgia Public Library Service (part of the University System of Georgia), the Georgia Archives, and the University System’s GALILEO decided to combine their efforts in a new program called Georgia HomePLACE (Providing Library and Archives Collections Electronically). They selected Vanishing Georgia as the first major project and were awarded a federal grant through the Library Services and Technology Act to support the digitization of the photographs.
“Vanishing Georgia is an example of what can be achieved when organizations and agencies combine their efforts and resources,” says Thomas Meredith, chancellor of the University System of Georgia. “Through the window of GALILEO, Georgians now have an electronic view of the state’s history.”
Visitors to Vanishing Georgia may search for images by topic, city, county, date, by the descriptions provided by the donors and by other characteristics of the photographs. They may browse through a list of all of the images from a given county or city or on a specific topic. There also are advanced viewing features, such as the ability to enlarge portions of an image for close-in examination.
The Vanishing Georgia Web site includes links and suggested readings on Georgia history, photography and other related sites, information on how the collection was digitized and an essay on issues of cultural sensitivity.
“Visitors should be aware that the images and even the descriptions provided by the donors reflect the time in which they were created,” says Graham. “Some may contain outdated language, prejudice, or stereotypes.” ©2004 by the University of Georgia.
