 |
|
|
|
In 1878, W.F. Crusselle was part of North Georgia's first graduating class and,
at age 17, the youngest. He went on to become editor of the Atlanta
Constitution and co-founded the now nationally known Crusselle Freeman
Church of the Deaf. Crusselle's speech now rests neatly cataloged in the library, 106 years later, inside a piece of technology that may have equally impressed the news editor if he were alive today. The 25-page document lies hidden inside giant compact bookshelves, which almost reach the ceiling and conceal their contents inside a massive casing. With the push of a single button, the shelves expand along sliding rails to reveal rows of hidden books and research material. Within these guarded shelves are the newly cataloged North Georgia archives, which include documents that reveal details of a young agricultural college and how it grew into the state university it is today. A separate repository, called Special Collections, is co-located with the archives, as well as in a separate Special Collections room. It houses rare books of scholarly interest that are available to researchers around the world.
The Library Technology Center, which opened in August, has created the capacity needed to properly catalog more than a century of the school's history. With the new space, members of the library services staff are now meticulously archiving photos, artifacts, letters, manuscripts, books, and a myriad of other treasures related to North Georgia and the region. "Certainly the archives are about the preservation of our past, but just as important, they are about creating pathways and access to the past in order to create new knowledge and understanding," Shawn Tonner, director of library services, said. A particularly important part of North Georgia's history was found in the Vickery House, once owned by longtime Latin professor Elias B. Vickery, after the house was donated to the university last year. A collection of Vickery's books was mixed among other volumes in the home. The primarily Greek and Latin scholarly texts are now cataloged and on display in the Special Collections room. "The collection can give scholars an understanding of what 19th and early 20th century education was like and a glimpse of the educational experience for a North Georgia student at the turn of the century," Tonner said. The 700-volume collection includes many rare books, ones that may exist only at North Georgia and Harvard University, Tonner gave as an example. A book's circulation can be determined through WorldCat, a universally used online library cataloging system that is an invaluable resource for researchers, she said. Preserving North Georgia's history has become very important for Cynthia Horne, the university's resident archiving expert. She became very familiar with Crusselle in January, when the library came into possession of his speech through a donor who mailed it to the university. She and a small team carefully transcribed his historical oration, preserved the original document in acid-free plastic sleeves and cataloged it in its new home so that others could have access to it. Rare items, like an Army Air Corps Hell's Angel flag from the WWII era, are being stored with acid-free archiving material that the library has already procured. The flag is on loan to the Pennington Military Leadership Center, where it is displayed with other military memorabilia. Through the cataloging system, the library has been able to determine what it has in its collection and match the university archives with the needs of researchers. Tonner said grants and private donations will be necessary to continue what her small dedicated staff has started. A major step in the archiving process that Tonner wants to accomplish is to digitize the archives for electronic viewing. It will allow widely increased access to the archives but will require substantial resources. "Right now, if a wonderful collection is dropped in our laps, it's kind of like triage," Tonner said. "I give it to Cynthia to see what kind of condition it's in, if it needs transcribing and then to determine how to best preserve it." Horne, who was part of the library's only digitization project to date — a 2007 grant-supported digitization of 19th century glass-plate photos by local photographer Lon Bruce — recognizes the need for a university archivist who can manage the records that are deposited into the archives. "We already have a records management system — we know what we have to keep and we know what we can throw away, and that's half the battle," Horne said. "We're depending on people to realize what they have and to donate it here, where we can properly preserve it and make it accessible." Despite budget cuts and limited resources, the library staff is moving forward to manage a system that will allow researchers to access its special collections and to preserve North Georgia's rich history. "There's something to be discovered here," Tonner said. For more information on the university's archives and
special collections, contact Cynthia Horne at
crhorne@ngcsu.edu or 706-864-1522.
The 14th annual North Georgia Honors Academic Conference, formerly "Honors Day", is fast-approaching. The conference, planned for April 7 and 8, will feature a diverse and accomplished group of students, faculty and guest speakers. The conference is scheduled for 3 to 7 p.m. each day and covers the entire campus.
In addition to individual student presentations, the university's honor societies and other relevant academic or professional groups will stage activities. Among others this year, Mountain Laurels, the university's literary magazine, will present select readings from this year's edition; Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, will bring the drill field to life with military re-enactors; and the Criminal Justice Association will conduct a mock crime scene investigation (make sure you have a solid alibi!). The Honors Conference is a showcase of student excellence and achievement. Each school is allotted one or more 90-minute panels over the two days of the conference. There are two sessions at 3 and 4:30 p.m. on April 7, and one session at 3 p.m. on April 8. Each department selects student papers or projects to present at their appropriate panel. If your students wrote a paper or worked on a project that you feel should be presented at the Honors Conference, please contact the appropriate committee member, noted below, by the Feb. 27 deadline.
School
of Arts & Letters
Mike
Cottrell School of Business
School
of Education
School
of Science & Health Professions The panels will take place
on campus, in Hoag Auditorium, the Newton Oakes Center, Dunlap Hall, the Library
and Technology Center, and the Health and Natural Sciences Building, among
other locations. An updated schedule and details are available through the
conference Web site. For
more information, contact Dr. Carl Cavalli, conference organizer, at ext.
1872, or visit the
conference
Facebook group.
As part of the university's three-year National Science Foundation grant for statistical research, a "Make it Real" workshop for high school statistics teachers took place on Jan. 30 to help the educators integrate real-world survey projects into their statistics classes. Participants included 18 metro Atlanta and north Georgia high school math teachers who teach AP statistics or its equivalent. "The workshop demonstrated our 'authentic discovery' curriculum for helping students understand the statistical topics of linear regression and t-tests better," said Dr. Robb Sinn, one of the NSF grant co-investigators and workshop coordinator. Through the grant, which Sinn said is designed to sponsor research on how to teach statistics well, more than 150 pages of teacher guides, student help guides and project information have become available online. Creating widespread access to the material has become a priority so that secondary education math teachers can more easily introduce statistics into the classroom. The vast amount of online curriculum material was developed during the past year through on-site studies at North Georgia, Georgia Perimeter College and North Forsyth Central High School. The January event gave teachers hands-on experience that allowed them to analyze real-time data through the "Make it Real" workshop. The teachers formed teams during two morning sessions and created survey questions and variables to research. Six North Georgia students then created a composite survey with the research questions the teachers developed and then distributed them to 100 North Georgia students in four classes. The teacher teams then analyzed the data from the 25-question survey to get a taste of the "authentic discovery" that engaged the students and presented their findings. Examples of the topics that students were surveyed on included how many songs they had in their digital library and how many of those songs they had paid for — results indicated only one in 10 songs were purchased. The survey also sought to determine the correlation between those who watched the Super Bowl and played sports. Little correlation seemed to exist, but an interesting fact among respondents was discovered — the ratio of male to female students who played sports in high school was almost 1-to-1. The year-long pilot phase of the NSF grant is nearing completion, and data collection for the project will be concluded in May with research findings published this summer. Pilot phase projects included instrumentation to measure student success in and attitudes toward statistics and the instructional materials teachers used. Project participation has included North Georgia co-investigators Drs. Robb Sinn and Dianna Spence, co-investigator Dr. Todd Hendricks from Georgia Perimeter College, North Georgia math and computer science faculty participants Drs. Brad Bailey, Karen Briggs, and John Holliday, and Debra Barrineau from Forsyth Central High School.
Paul Dunlap came to North Georgia in 2004 as an adjunct professor and, in 2007, joined the faculty full-time. He teaches photography, color theory, and visual communication and literacy. A 2001 North Georgia graduate in studio art, he takes special pride in helping today's students gain experience beyond the classroom through a new student art club, spectrum.
What is
spectrum?
What are
some of the club's activities?
What's ahead
for spectrum? Club members will be participating in Dahlonega's annual Bear on the Square festival, April 17-19. One of the club officers is doing an internship with Bear on the Square, and this is a huge opportunity to present and offer student art work in a local festival. This is also a great occasion for the club and the university to connect to the community.
What do you
enjoy most about working with spectrum?
The
Saint Job Board All positions previously held in the "job books" will now be posted on The Saint Job Board. Current students have been pre-registered to access site and should contact Career Services if they did not receive a message to their North Georgia e-mail account with their initial password.
Classes available to sharpen your computer skills
While the classes are free, a deposit check of $25 per class is needed to hold your seat. Your check will be returned to you at the beginning of class or if you cancel at least 24 hours in advance of the class. You will forfeit your deposit if you are a no-show for the class. Choose the class that meets your needs and call Continuing Education at ext. 1918 to register.
Student represents North Georgia on state advisory council SAC is an advisory group to the Board of Regents and is composed of the SGA president, or designee, from each of the 35 system schools. North Georgia provides further leadership to SAC through Wes Thomas, the university's student center and activities director and SGA adviser, who meets with SAC to assist the group. In addition to hearing from Chancellor Davis, SAC also heard presentations from several other USG administrators. Ables is a sophomore from Gainesville and is majoring in computer science. His sister, Lauren, also serves on SGA as a freshman representative. Their parents, Robert and Mary Jane Ables, are both North Georgia alumni.
North
Georgia presents hemlock symposium The HWA is the insect wreaking havoc on Georgia's hemlock trees, with the potential to eliminate hemlocks from our state and eastern North America. More than 100 attended the symposium at the university's Stewart Center for Continuing Education, and speakers included Rusty Rhea, US Forestry Service entomologist, a leading expert on HWA with many years experience working with this problem, and Sarah Osicka of the Predator Beetle Lab at North Georgia, and several other experts in forestry and research on the HWA.
Campus Post Office changes procedures
Departments in outlying buildings may elect to pickup and deliver mail at the Campus Post Office or use a specified satellite location. For further details, contact Wes Thomas by phone at ext. 1643.
USG
publications available
Dr. Richard Oates, associate dean of the School of Education, has been elected the 2009 vice president-elect of the National Association of Kinesiology and Physical Education in Higher Education (NAKPEHE). After serving as vice president-elect for a year, Oates will assume the association's office of vice president. In these positions, he will serve on the association's Executive Board, Future Directions Committee and Publications Committee. He also will coordinate the association's 2011 conference. NAKPEHE is an organization for professionals in higher education to foster leadership in teaching, administration, policy, preparation for the professions and scholarship.
North Georgia faculty and staff are invited
to submit news of professional accomplishments for the Campus in
Action section to
digest@ngcsu.edu. |
||||||||||||||||||||
|
Back to The Digest University Relations | NGCSU Home
North Georgia College & State University, 82 College Circle, Dahlonega, Ga.,
30597 |
Paul
Dunlap
On Feb. 4, North Georgia Professor
Robert Fuller and the Office of Continuing Education presented a
symposium, in conjunction with the Georgia Forestry
Commission, to relay the latest information concerning the
hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA).