President David Potter cuts the ribbon at the grand opening ceremony for the Student Recreation Center on Nov. 7.

In today’s ceremonial openings of the facilities, alumni, state officials and members of the campus and local communities heard from student leaders about the excitement the two new facilities have created on campus.

Dr. David Potter, North Georgia president, and Regent James R. Jolly of the Board of Regents spoke about the significance of the buildings and their places in the larger community.

The Library Technology Center, an 88,600-square-foot, three-story building, has become an intellectual student center that invites students to study, collaborate and learn. The facility’s design has expanded the academic resources and technology available to students and faculty by bringing together print and electronic media, computer labs, distance learning classrooms, group study spaces and more. Additionally, a coffee shop welcomes visitors as they enter the Library Technology Center, which receives 26,000 -27,000 visits a month — about twice as many as the university’s former library during the same time in 2007. Total cost of the project was approximately $22 million.

The Student Recreation Center, funded through student recreation fees, provides a modern facility for students to stay fit and be active at the university. The 54,000-square-foot two-story facility houses the university's recreational sports programs and is situated upon the university’s new parking deck, which added more than 600 parking spaces to the main campus. The Recreation Center features three basketball courts, an indoor track, a climbing wall, exercise rooms and state-of-the-art fitness equipment. The total cost of the Student Recreation Center and parking deck was approximately $26 million. need."

North Georgia faculty and students are leading several initiatives this semester to make the university one of those communities.

A recycling bin from the Away-From-Home mobile trailer.

Stephanie Songer, an assistant professor of biology, quickly got commitments from employees across campus to set up 40 new recycling bins from the Coca-Cola Company and the National Recycling Coalition, which jointly sponsor a bin grant program.

The recycling bins, to be placed at 20 campus locations by Sept. 12, represent North Georgia’s first large-scale recycling effort in several years. The 23-gallon bins are being used in pairs, each pair designated for aluminum and plastic.

“If we could be leaders in the community for recycling, that would be a really positive example of our leadership initiative,” Songer said. “We just need to get the ball rolling.”

Songer believes that the university should mirror communities where local trash and recycling services are the norm. While in grad school at Emory University, Songer became accustomed to the recycling on campus. “I got into the habit of not throwing things away, and I want to see that same conservation ethic here,” she said.

Creating a critical mass for an energized recycling effort is constantly on Chuck Robertson’s mind. The assistant professor of psychology and co-advisor to the Community Leadership Connection, a student service group, wants to build such an effort so that Lumpkin County residents will be able to see the institution’s commitment to recycling.

Ryan Arnold, who graduated with a Master of Publication Administration degree in May, secured a grant while interning at the Dahlonega Downtown Development Authority to fund the Away-from-Home trailer that is being used around the county at large-scale community events.  

Robertson hooked the trailer to the back of his truck and “deployed” 56 of the trailer’s 100 individual recycling bins next to trash cans during the local Fourth of July fireworks on campus with the aid of students and faculty. The CLC helped collect the bins and take them to the local recycling station, funded as part of a tri-county recycling coalition.

Robertson and Michele Hill, a psychology professor, are advancing the cause further this semester, helping student “recycling leaders” to develop educational videos to teach community members how to recycle in the county. The 30-second videos are scaled to the local infrastructure, so they will focus, for example, on recycling #1 and #2 plastics, which are the only plastics accepted locally for recycling, Robertson said.

Collecting research to develop the videos took the form of CLC members placing recycling bins in campus buildings and then sifting through the contents. The success rate was mixed – some bins, for example, were labeled “paper” and accumulated paper along with the leftover lunches inside paper containers.

Robertson also learned that local authorities often use inmates to take bottle caps off of plastic bottles placed in recycle bins. The caps are a different type of plastic and can’t be recycled locally.

“We have to figure out what people are doing wrong and then encourage what they are doing right,” Robertson said.

The Community Leadership Connection will make the videos available through the Web and on NG-TV by the end of the semester and circulate DVDs to the local community.

By Joshua Preston
Published: Sept. 4, 2008

	"Frogs" Andrew Ring and Zachary Keith jump over obstacle course hurdles on Aug. 15. Jennifer Roy and Cassandra Burt traverse the monkey bars on the same course. The freshmen are part of the 240-member cadet class that graduated FROG Week on Sunday.

Lainey Head made an abrupt change in her college routine just a few credits shy of a biology degree to start her career path for medical school. The 28-year-old mother of two has taken on a new challenge by joining the Corps of Cadets while she finishes her degree and starts her post-baccalaureate requirements at North Georgia College & State University.

"I'm trying to go to medical school and be a surgeon, and I've always wanted to fly, so I'm going to commission in the Army and do both," the biology major said after muscling her way through an obstacle course during FROG Week.

The second week of August, designed as an orientation for new military students, tested the endurance of 240 new cadets, who graduated Sunday after the traditional 5K run up Crown Mountain.

Joel Wettstone, 18, has traveled overseas most of his life with parents who work in reconstruction and has been to Afghanistan six times and lived in Uzbekistan. He expected the week to be an intense experience and absorbed every minute of it as he hurdled himself over walls, clung to wooden beams 30 feet off the ground and low-crawled his way through mud pits during five days of non-stop action.

Developing a challenging test in FROG Week was a priority for this year's upperclassmen. The action was amped up to include an adrenaline-filled relay and water survival training. In the relay, cadets competed against each other to see who could flip tires the fastest, run with sandbags in record time, push a Humvee the farthest and endure through a host of other events.

By Joshua Preston
Published: Aug. 19, 2008

	New Library Technology Center

The design of the new 88,600-square-foot library was intentional, meant to inspire with its grand architecture and to become a lasting presence in the community, in the same vein as the Carnegie libraries built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Just as those libraries catered to book lovers and knowledge seekers of that age, so too is NGCSU’s new library prepared to meet the needs of today’s users in a new era of information exchange.

“There are two libraries in this one place,” Shawn Tonner, director of library services, said. “We have a brick-and-mortar library and an electronic library. Both are very dynamic and always expanding.”

The library will house the campus’s largest computer lab, which will cater to students’ needs by staying open for 16 hours daily, Monday through Thursday, with additional hours on Fridays and weekends. More than 200 public-access computers will populate the library, including 30 laptops that users can sign out and use around the building. All PC and Macintosh computers will be equipped with access to the Internet, the library’s databases and more than 50,000 electronic books as well as specialized software for graphics and media editing. 

Books of the printed variety, totaling around 200,000 titles, will fill the second floor and be available to the university and Lumpkin County communities starting in mid-September when the entire collection is moved from the former Stewart library. During the first month of school students may requests books, which will be delivered to the Library Technology Center within 24 hours.

But should passersby mistake the new campus landmark as merely a library, they need only enter at the ground level and witness the flurry of activity, interaction and energy that the staff anticipates will mark a new learning experience for students.

“The new building works in ways that the old one simply couldn’t,” Tonner, a librarian of 30 years, said. “You have at your fingertips technology, library content, the scholarly atmosphere, staff expertise from IIT, the Writing Center, and the Center of Teaching and Learning Excellence.”

The library will bring under one roof several well-established campus resources. Information & Instructional Technology will house its Help Desk, client support and instructional technology offices in the library, providing campuswide support from an easily accessible location. The Center of Teaching and Learning Excellence or CTLE will focus on supporting faculty and students with research and experimental learning opportunities. Also relocating, the Student Writing Center will enjoy greater visibility in a prominent spot on the first floor.

“Students will come here to use leading-edge technology, work with each other to develop multimedia projects, take distance learning classes and conduct research. The facility has new purposes and will be a new drawing force on campus,” Tonner said.

The library boasts 25 dedicated group-study rooms designed to allow students to work together on projects without distraction.

“The library is an extension of the classroom,” Tonner said. “Faculty can assign a project, and the library –  by its design and intent – allows student groups to meet, learn and relate that learning back to what’s going on in the classroom.”

“The library is the best place to study and the coolest place to be seen,” Tonner said. “That type of thinking is associated with good libraries, ones that ultimately focus on users and their needs.”

Skeptics of the library’s “cool” factor need only step inside. At the entrance, a storefront coffee bistro, a la Starbucks, will greet library users and be just one more reason that the Library Technology Center is likely to become a premier resource for students and others far beyond campus.

“It’s necessary to be dynamic in any environment to keep users coming back. Our aim is to create an atmosphere that students will come back to again and again,” Tonner said.

By Joshua Preston
Published: Aug. 11, 2008

Freshman Travis Hamner sets the standard for calligraphy at the Chinese Summer Language Institute at NGCSU. Hamner, from Dahlonega, Ga., took Chinese in high school and plans to minor in the language.

On Aug. 1, a week before the Olympics’ opening ceremony, the new Chinese Summer Language Institute at North Georgia College & State University will graduate its first 16 students, diverse in their interests and backgrounds but all with one goal in mind – to learn Mandarin Chinese.

The demanding six-week program is introducing the students to the fundamentals of listening, speaking, reading and writing Mandarin Chinese, while emphasizing students’ conversational skills.

The language institute is the first college experience for virtually the entire class – 14 of the 16 students are freshmen. The institute offers nine credit hours in Chinese language, and by the end of the six weeks, the undergraduates will have earned every one of them.

With a 14-hour daily schedule every weekday, Saturday field trips, and more classes on Sundays, the students are experiencing almost complete immersion in the Chinese language and culture.

“When I’m walking from my apartment to class, I get some pretty funny looks from people when I’m practicing Chinese words out loud,” Adam Fisk, an 18-year-old freshman from Dacula, Ga., said. “From the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep, I’m studying Chinese.”

	The 16 students in North Georgia's new six-week Chinese Summer Language Institute will graduate Aug. 1 with the fundamentals of listening, speaking, reading and writing Mandarin Chinese.

Chi-Hsuan Catterson, the institute’s lead instructor and a native of China, said that because the students are focusing on Chinese and not studying other subjects, the group as a whole already has better conversation skills than classes from previous semesters.

The institute has been designed to create a dynamic learning experience by coupling class instruction with various activities – students eat at Chinese restaurants and order entrees in their new language, trips to oriental marketplaces require students to hone their Chinese conversation skills to complete shopping lists, and the group will translate its whitewater rafting experience into a Chinese skit.

Fisk, an international affairs major, said that the group has developed a unique bond through the shared experience, which requires the students to literally spend all their time together. To keep from becoming overwhelmed by the coursework, the students have fun by incorporating their lessons into the group’s social dynamic.

“Our instructor is teaching us Chinese lullabies and songs to help with our memorization,” Fisk said. “We’ll be walking on campus and randomly challenge each other to sing a song.”

Adam Fisk and Jacob Shireman search the aisles of a Chinese grocery store trying to complete their shopping list. As part of the exercise, students practiced their conversation skills by asking native Chinese speakers in the store for help.

Another antic: When his roommate first wakes up in the morning, Fisk says something in Chinese and waits for the look of bewilderment.

Catterson acknowledges the difficulty level of the language instruction for the recent high school graduates, many of whom have never had to study so hard, she said. To make sure no one falls behind, an assistant instructor helps the students at night and two North Georgia undergraduates who have studied in China provide one-on-one tutoring.

The ultimate goal of the institute is to create an interest in the Chinese language minor and North Georgia’s study-abroad opportunities in China. The university is also considering how the institute, which has helped several students align career goals, may serve as a model to help expand other language programs.

Political science junior Kevin A’Hearn wants to join the U.S. Army Special Forces and will use his language credentials from the institute to set himself apart in the selection process. Freshman Rachael Halm would major in Chinese if she could, but will declare a Spanish major and Chinese minor, eventually using her linguistic skills as a translator.

North Georgia’s Chinese language program has experienced rapid growth since it started less than two years ago with only two courses, subsequently becoming an academic minor. With the new language institute, funded through a federal grant for language studies, faculty members hope to build visibility for the flourishing program. North Georgia expects to make the institute a self-sustaining and permanent part of the Chinese language curriculum and has plans to offer it again next summer.

By Joshua Preston
Published: July 21, 2008

Student affairs executive John Clower is eager to see the day when construction crews finish their work and are replaced by students enjoying a new student center plaza leading to the highly anticipated Recreation Center, which Clower believes will be a "destination spot" for many students.

Beth Denson and Brittany Tatum walk through the new student center plaza. A planned Student Success Center will be inside the Stewart Library building (on right).

The Recreation Center will be situated next to the Hoag Student Center – a magnet for student activity – to create a high-energy environment for North Georgia's students.

Clower and other university officials plan to add to that energy.

Amerson captures the history of Dahlonega in the 1800s through the trials and tribulations of a young bride, Keziah Hamilton Cochran, who travels to North Georgia with her husband Fate in search of their fortune. The journey brings heartache, separation and finally personal fulfillment to the young woman during the years of America’s first major Gold Rush, the Trail of Tears and the Civil War.

“What I have tried to do in ‘Dahlonega’s Gold’ is to show the human experience behind the facts – how people’s lives were impacted by the circumstances of the times and to give readers hints about how their lives might have been affected had they been born in that particular time and place,” Amerson said.

Amerson, a native of Dahlonega, has been collecting oral history and researching Lumpkin County history for almost 20 years. She is the author of four volumes of “I Remember Dahlonega” and “Dahlonega’s Historic Public Square.” She has earned several awards for historic preservation, including the Governor’s Award in the Humanities in 2003.

She and her husband Amos Amerson both graduated from North Georgia College in 1956. Her father, Camillus J. Dismukes, taught foreign languages and music appreciation at the college from 1933 to 1963.

B.J. Robinson, director of the University Press, feels that the subject matter of the historical fiction piece was well-suited for fulfilling the mission of the press.

“Anne Amerson’s novel is the ideal second book for the press to publish because our students strongly supported it; also, it addresses one of the press’s main goals – regional engagement – by modeling the difference that individuals can make to their community, particularly in terms of raising its self-awareness and connecting its past with its present and future,” Robinson said.

North Georgia students have been actively involved throughout the project. Students enrolled in the new “Introduction to Publishing” course taught by Robinson last summer read and critiqued the original manuscript submitted by Amerson and recommended it for publication.

English major James Wolfe designed the page layout and Lyndsy Holmes, an art marketing major, photographed the cover. Students in the publishing class this fall will assist with the book’s marketing and distribution. Robinson and Karen Roop, NG ’07, are the editors of the novel.