UGA Geography Kudos for December 2014 Undergraduate Sarah Mirza received the Merle Prunty Scholarship at the annual meeting of SEDAAG in Athens last month. Congrats, Sarah! Jenny McGibbon has been awarded a Portuguese graduate Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship for Spring 2015 from the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute (LACSI). A paper by Matt Hauer titled “Projections of the Populations in the United States in 2100 at Risk of Inundation Under Various Sea Level Rise Scenarios” was selected for the 2014 E. Walter Terrie Award for State & Local Demography at the Southern Demographic Association’s annual meeting. Great job, Matt! Castle Williams received an American Meteorological Society graduate fellowship for 2014-15. Amanda Schroeder was selected for the National Weather Service Southern Region Building Leaders for a Solid Tomorrow (BLAST) program. She was also invited to participate in the Hazardous Weather Testbed - Hydrology (HWT-Hydro) experiment. Andrea Presotto received a Foreign Travel Assistance grant from the Office of the Vice President for Research for her work in South Africa. The Digital Globe Foundation provided an image grant for Andrea’s study with the elephants in Kruger National Park. Brad Johnson has been appointed as a student member of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Climate Services. Jiaying He was named the “DEVELOPer of the Term” by the NASA DEVELOP program in Spring 2014. Well done, Jiaying! Alana Shaw was named the SEDAAG student representative for this year. A number of Geography graduate students, led by Michael Husebo, organized the first Geography trivia night in November with 45 participating students across nine teams. Thanks to all involved for their work pulling together this event so quickly. The animated map showing Indian land cessions and treaties in the United States created by Sergio Bernardes, the Center for Virtual History, and the Department of History received a great amount of media attention. The animation received almost 30,000 views in a month and was featured by the Washington Post, Vox and others, can be found at: https://youtube/watch?v=pJxrTzfG2bo. The Georgia World Geography Bowl team, including UGA students Pete Akers, Jake McDonald, Gretchen Sneegas, Chris Strother, and Evan Knox, won the WGB competition at the SEDAAG meeting in Athens. Pete Akers was once again named as MVP with the highest average score of any participant. Suzanne Pilaar Birch and Xiaobai Yao were selected for the Online Learning Faculty Fellowship Program in Spring 2015. In September, Fausto Sarmiento was named Teacher of the Week by the Center for Teaching and Learning. Good work, Fausto! Andy Grundstein was a participant in the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning campaign to reduce vehicle hyperthermia among children in Georgia. Hilda Kurtz received the SEDAAG Outstanding Service Award, and Nik Heynen received the SEDAAG Research Honors Award at the recent meeting in Athens. Congratulations to both Hilda and Nik! Marshall Shepherd has learned that he will receive the AAG Media Award at the upcoming annual meeting in Chicago, which highlighted his work as host of the Weather Channel’s WxGeeks program (weather/tv/shows/wx-geeks), among other accomplishments. Marshall Shepherd served on Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed’s Emergency Management Preparedness Advisory Group in response to the “snowjam” last winter. Josh Barkan has been invited to participate in the Presidential Plenary Session in Chicago organized by AAG President Mona Domosh. Jane Worley was accepted into UGA’s Fiscal Administration Certificate Training Series (FACTS) program. Jane also received a Staff Excellence Award from Franklin College this summer. Outstanding work, Jane! Two achievements were deserving of special editions of kudos in the fall, but I want to mention them again here. John Knox was selected as the 2014 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Georgia Professor of the Year, which he received in late November. Earlier this month, the Captain Planet Foundation named Marshall Shepherd a Protector of the Planet at a gala in Atlanta. Fausto Sarmiento is investigator on UGA’s first National Resource Center and Foreign Language and Area Studies grant, submitted through LACSI. Fausto also received a grant from the Willson Center for his project on Indigenous Foods and Fibers. Josh Barkan was selected for a Spring 2015 fellowship from the Willson Center for the Humanities and Arts. Deepak Mishra is lead investigator of a new project titled “A MODIS biophysical parameters centered framework for monitoring carbon sequestration potential of Gulf Coast salt marshes,” which was funded by NASA. Deepak is also investigator on a new NSF CyberSEES project titled “Meghdoot: A Multi-Cloud Infrastructure for Enhancing Sustainability via Effective Monitoring of Inland Waters and Coastal Wetlands.” Jerry Shannon is investigator on a team with the College of Family and Consumer Science and Department of Sociology titled “The Longitudinal Impact of SNAP Enrollment and Spending on Community Health and Well-being in Rural and Urban Georgia During the Great Recession,” funded by the RIDGE Center. Jerry and this team have also been awarded a SNAP-ED grant by the Georgia Department of Human Resources. Pete Akers received an NSF doctoral dissertation improvement grant for his work titled “High-Resolution, Late Quaternary Climate And Vegetation Record for the American Midwest: Isotope and Pollen Evidence From Stalagmites and Flowstone In Three Caves.” Levi Van Sant received an NSF DDRI grant for his work titled “From Truck Farming to Local Food Systems.” Congratulations to both Levi and Pete! Sergio Bernardes received a grant from Western Carolina University to investigate phenological changes, disturbance and climate related responses of vegetation in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tommy Jordan received a grant to develop methods for accessing harvest yields from forest stands using UAVs and photogrammetry. Finally, please join me in offering hearty congratulations to Tommy Jordan on his retirement effective at the end of 2014! Congratulations, Tommy, and thank you for your years of hard work and dedication to the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Sciences, the Center for Geospatial Research, and the Department of Geography! This is not a farewell, as we will see Tommy regularly in CGR, but it is an opportunity to thank him for all that he has done during his career.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 18:33:47 +0000