Greetings!

Similar to the old adage, CLASS is entering March like a lion. Almost every department in the College is roaring with events this month!

A special production this month gives the community the opportunity to say farewell to a beloved professor and actor. Dr. James Harbour will retire this year from the Department of Communication Arts, but before he leaves us, he will bring his talents to our stage for a final time by playing the role of Willy Loman in the theatre and performance program's production of the Arthur Miller classic, Death of a Salesman. The production is running now, and the curtain closes on March 9, so catch this marvelous performance while there's still time. 

Evening of the Arts - our annual showcase of student talent in art, music, and theater - returns to the Center for Art and Theatre on March 15. From 7 to 8:30 p.m., gala attendees will have the opportunity to tour the galleries, eat delicious food, partake in various libations, listen to live jazz and guitar music, and bid on works of art that will be created during the event. Guests will then enter the Black Box Theatre for productions of one-act plays, opera, a brass quintet performance, and the presentation of the Betty Foy Sanders Patron of the Arts award to Roxie Remley. The College has already received outstanding community support for the event: The Flowergirl Fresh Flowers is donating our centerpieces for the evening, Dr. Richard Marz has donated several bottles of wine, and Eagle Catering is on board again as our dining sponsor. All proceeds from Evening of the Arts directly benefit students, contributing to scholarships in art, music, and theater. Seating for the gala is limited, so please contact Andrea Bennett to purchase your ticket. 

The Women's and Gender Studies program has several events lined up for its annual celebration of Women's History Month. The program has partnered with the University's Center for Sustainability to present Solar Mamas on March 5 as part of the Environmental Community Cinema Series and is collecting donations throughout the month for the international Free The Girls project. 

Another favorite event that returns to campus this spring is ArtsFest. Though the annual community celebration of all things art doesn't come to Sweetheart Circle until April 6 at 11 a.m., Statesboro residents and visitors can begin showing their support for the event by participating in the ongoing Wednesday night fund raisers at area Pizza Hut restaurants. Now in its 31st year, ArtsFest has something for everyone - from face-painting to handmade jewelry to live performances - and its free to enjoy.

This month also sees the introduction of two new events: 

Dr. Sarah Domet of the Department of Writing and Linguistics will begin offering a six-week workshop at the Statesboro Regional Library on March 26 for those interested in writing an original novel. Domet is offering this service free-of-charge, so if you are in the area and have a story to tell, please participate.

The Department of Music introduces its new Contemporary Expressions Series, funded in part by the CLASS Dean's Office, through which guest artists come to Georgia Southern to perform a concert and hold a masterclass. The Department anticipates that this will be an ongoing series, so we invite you to get in on the ground-floor when clarinetist Jorge Variego performs on March 25. 

Last, but certainly not least, three other departments are coordinating lecture events this month.

On March 6 at 6 p.m., our new Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology presents Dr. Thomas J. Holt of Michigan State University, who will speak on "The Social Structure of the Market for Stolen Data." During this lecture, Holt will examine the relationships among people who use the Internet to buy and sell personal information that was stolen from other sites. Holt will also discuss how police officers, sociologists, and others can directly apply this information to their work, and there will be time for audience questions at the end of the presentation.

The Departments of History and Sociology and Anthropology have teamed up with the Georgia Southern Museum to coordinate a mini-conference, "Captive Warriors: The History and Archeology of POWs," on March 12 from 3:30 to 8 p.m. This cross-campus event begins with speaker presentations at the Nessmith-Lane Auditorium. During the intermission, guests will have the opportunity to purchase (cash or check) the lecturers' books, which they can then take to the culminating reception at the Museum for signing and to chat with the authors.  

We hope that your March is off to a wonderful start, as well! Please keep the College informed of your life events (honors, awards, promotions, and successes) through the online alumni survey or by sending an email to class@georgiasouthern.edu.

With warmest regards, 

The Department of Sociology and Anthropology has much to crow about - active faculty, inspired teaching, engaged students, and amazing alumni. During the past year, the Department's faculty collectively published 16 journal articles/chapters and two edited books on a variety of topics - from criminals to citizenship and bonobos to social class in the American South. The Department now offers several service-learning courses, where students become involved in hands-on community projects, such as assisting the elderly or working with children, and faculty members are especially pleased by the opportunity to work side-by-side with undergraduate and graduate students. In addition, the Department strives to create opportunities for undergraduates to become involved in research and to collaborate with faculty members, and six graduate students will travel to present original research at conferences in the spring.

Dr. Larry J. Griffin was awarded the Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair position at the Roosevelt Study Center. The RSC - which is named after Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt - is located at the 12th Century Abby of Middleburg, the Netherlands. Griffin will be in residence at the Center during the fall semester and will study American national identity in comparative perspective. 

The Department's archeology program is quite visible and continues to make news. During Fall 2012, Drs. Sue Moore, Lance Greene, and Jared Wood and archeology students coupled with PBS' Time Team America to film at Camp Lawton. The program will air on PBS in the spring. In addition, the Department's team of talented students and faculty was hired by the City of Savannah to explore the Cluskey Vaults along Factor's Walk near City Hall. The public is invited to join the team at the dig on Saturday, March 2, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

The Department is also excited to announce that one of its own was selected as the College's Alumni of the Year for 2013. Margaret Daly Heap graduated with honors from the sociology program in 1986 and now serves as the district attorney for Chatham County. Congratulations, Meg!

Music

Four drummers from the Georgia Southern University Southern Pride Marching Band will accompany country music singer, songwriter, and Georgia Southern alumnae Elizabeth Cook when she performs on The Late Show with David Letterman on March 14. The show will air at 11:35 p.m. ET on CBS.

Dr. David Murray's CPE Bach CD is slated for international release in April. In conjunction with the release, Murray will have an article in the March/April edition of International Piano magazine about the sonatas he has recorded. International Piano has also requested a copy of the CD in order to print a review of it. Murray has been issued advanced copies of the CD that he is already selling in order to fund a follow-up CD of the remaining sonatas.

Psychology

Six of the Department's seven applicants for clinical internships "matched" during the first round. The internship matching service is similar to the system for medical school residency - applicants interview at several internship sites, and the students and sites rank their preferences. The highest matches are selected for the yearlong internship that is required for the Psy.D. degree and professional licensure. The process is highly competitive - about one-fourth of students nationwide do not find a match each year. Two of the Department's six students matched at APA-accredited sites, by far the most sought after internships.

Undergraduate students are now receiving news of acceptance for graduate study. Programs thus far include the University of Louisville (clinical psychology) and Mercer University (marriage and family therapy). We expect more in the coming months.

Graduate student Taunia Locker is working with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to educate state sheriffs, police officers, and GBI agents about mental illness and how to work with the mentally ill. In the program, which is considered a "best practices" model, officers spend a week learning about mental illness, resources and deescalation techniques.

Dr. Amy Hackney's research "Are Celebrities Charged with Murder Likely to be Acquitted?," the focus of a Huffington Post article, was mentioned in the press as relevant to the Oscar Pistorius case.

Professors Kent Bodily and Brad Sturz, along with several students, co-published "Beacons and Surface Features Differentially Influence Human Reliance on Global and Local Geometric Cues when Reorienting in a Virtual Environment" in Behavioural Processes. Sturz and a colleague outside of the University published "Environment Size and the Use of Feature and Geometric Cues for Reorientation" in Acta Psychologica.

History

Professor Brian K. Feltman won The Society for Military History's Edward M. Coffman First Manuscript Prize for "Confronting the Stigma of Surrender: German Prisoners, British Captors, and Manhood in the Great War and Beyond." The competition is open to scholars whose work blends military history with social, political, economic, and diplomatic history and to authors of studies centering on campaigns, leaders, technology, and doctrine. The prize is awarded annually to an author who has not previously published a book-length manuscript and includes a cash award, a plaque, and - after successful editorial review - a publication contract with University of North Carolina Press. Feltman also will be recognized at the awards luncheon during the Society's annual meeting.

Professor Michael Van Wagenen's Remembering the Forgotten War: The Enduring Legacies of the U.S.-Mexican War received honorable mention in the National Council on Public History's annual book competition. 

Professor Bill Allison was named the 2013 Alumni Ambassador for the Department of History at Texas A&M University, Commerce. Allison, a graduate of TAMU Commerce, will speak to several classes at the university on Feb. 26 and 27, will give a talk on his current book project, On Nostalgia's Altar: 1968 in America, and will attend an awards luncheon with other Alumni Ambassadors, during which TAMU Commerce President Dr. Dan R. Jones will present the ambassadors awards. Allison has recently published two books My Lai with Johns Hopkins University Press and The Gulf War with Palgrave Macmillian. He lectured at Bucknell University on My Lai and at the United States Air Force Air Command and Staff College on strategic bombing in the Vietnam War. Allison is the Gen. Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the U.S. Army War College for 2012-2014, and will soon present at Shippensburg University, Lordes College in Ohio, the Pennsylvania Military Museum, and the Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Ga.

Professor Robert Batchelor's article "The Selden Map Rediscovered: A Chinese Map of East Asian Shipping Routes, c.1619," the first comprehensive account of the Selden Map, appeared in the January edition of Imago Mundi. His boardgame, Fujan Trader, and a prototype iPad application based on the map was included in the Jepson Center for the Arts' PULSE Festival in February, and he was invited by Yale University's Lewis Walpole Library to speak about East/West issues during the 18th Century. Batchelor's review of Chi-Ming Yang's "Performing China: Virtue, Commerce and Orientalism in Eighteenth Century England, 1660-1760" appeared in the January addition of the Journal of British Studies.

Political Science

The Georgia Southern University Model United Nations delegation hosted the 42nd annual High School Model United Nations Conference in the Nessmith-Lane Building on Feb. 14-16. There were more than 300 high school students from 15 schools in Georgia and South Carolina in attendance. The University's Model UN delegation will host the 15th annual Coastal Georgia Middle School Model United Nations Conference in Savannah at the Coastal Georgia Center on Thursday, March 7. Nearly 400 pupils from 20 middle schools in Georgia and South Carolina will attend. The University's Model UN delegation will also travel to the National Model United Nations Conference in New York City on March 22-29. This NMUN conference is the largest in the world with more than 3,000 students from four continents in attendance.

Women's and Gender Studies

March is Women's History Month, and the Program is hosting several events to celebrate women's accomplishments: 

On March 5, the Program is partnering with the Georgia Southern's Center for Sustainability to present the first film in the University's Environmental Community Cinema Series. Solar Mamas tells the story of a Jordanian mother of four who ventures outside her village for the first time to attend India's Barefoot College. She joins poor women like herself from Guatemala, Colombia, Burkina Faso, and Kenya to learn concrete skills that will transform their communities. The film screening will begin at 6:30 p.m. in the Biology Building, Room 1119. The series is also sponsored by Hands on Southeast Georgia, the School of Human Ecology, and the Recreation and Tourism Management Program.

The Program is also happy to announce that Joan C. Browning will deliver the Women's History Month keynote lecture, "From Telfair to Toulouse: Travels Outside the Cage of Race." Browning was born in a small rural Georgia town. She was asked to leave Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville after attending services at a black church and, from there, she headed to Atlanta where she joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Albany Freedom Riders and later helped lead antipoverty programs. Browning is the coauthor of Deep in Our Hearts: Nine White Women in the Freedom Movement and now lives in West Virginia where she is a freelance journalist and activist for public schools and libraries.  

Foreign Languages

Associate Professor Horst Kurz spent Feb. 1 and 2 at Camp Jackson near Stewart, Ga., helping out at the annual State German Convention, a popular event that attracts hundreds of high-school students and educators from across Georgia. This was Kurz's 20th consecutive year of participation, during the event a general session of the Georgia Chapter of the Association of Teachers of German, whose listserv Kurz maintains, is held.

Writing and Linguistics

Visiting Assistant Professor Rachel Schwartz will teach scientific writing for professionals and upper-level graduate students during summer school at the International Scientific Educational Laboratory for Socio-Cultural Research at the National Research Higher School of Economics in Moscow in June.

Associate Professor Dr. Lori Amy was awarded an Advanced Research Fellowship funded by the U.S. Department of State Title VIII Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Independent States of the Former Soviet Union) bly the American Councils Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Program. The fellowship - from Sept. 1, 2013 to Jan. 15, 2014 - will support her research in Albania. Amy also coordinated the Winter 2013 Academic Research and Writing Study Trip, Feb. 18 to March 1. Georgia Southern partnered with the Albanian Center for Political Science, Public Policy, and Law to host a delegation of Albanian graduate students of law, political and social sciences for the two-week academic and cultural exchange. The trip is part of a longterm plan to build a sustainable partnership with Georgia universities and Albanian academic, civil society, and business partners.

Lecturer Dr. Sarah Domet's story "The Shape of a Heart" was selected for New Delta Review's Best of the Web anthology, due out in early March.

Lecturer June Joyner and Visiting Instructor Drew Keane's proposal "A New Pair of Glasses: Critical Thinking to Challenge Students' Beliefs about Research, Writing, and their Majors" was accepted by the University of Georgia Teaching and Learning Conference. Two of their former students - Greer Wright (math education) and Chase Lakhani (engineering) - will present with them at the conference.

Professor Eric Nelson's poems "December 19th" and "Old Glasses" will appear in the next edition of Southern Poetry Review. Another of Nelson's poems "Twenty-five O'clock" was recently accepted by The Sun magazine and is scheduled to appear in the April issue.

Professor Dr. Janice Walker and Visiting Assistant Professor Dr. Katt Blackwell-Starnes were awarded a $6,600 Research Initiative grant by The Conference on College Composition and Communication. Their LILAC (Learning Information Literacy Across the Curriculum) Project studies student information-seeking behaviors. With the aid of the grant, the researchers hope to understand better what students are gleaning from information-literacy instruction and provide this information to other educators to help design instruction to enhance student learning. 

Dr. Michael Pemberton was named series editor for a new line of scholarly texts under the imprint of ATD Books, a series closely tied to published themed issues of the online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal Across the Disciplines. Most volumes in the series will be edited collections containing articles from ATD's themed issues and several other chapters that will provide an expanded, richer, and more comprehensive treatment of the topics being addressed. In keeping with the editorial mission of ATD, these volumes will be devoted to language, learning, academic writing, and writing pedagogy.

University President Dr. Brooks Keel approved Dr. Lori Amy's promotion to full professor and Dr. Lisa Costello's promotion to associate professor and award of tenure. The personnel actions become effective August 1.

Art

University Provost Dr. Jean Bartels recently held a reception for students whose artwork is currently on display in her office in the University's Marvin Pittman Building. Recognized artists were undergraduate 2D students (photographed at right, listed left to right) Brandon Warlock, Zach Blount, Amanda Moersch, and Matt Saab.

Master of Fine Arts candidate Scott Foxx has received a grant to create a second puppet show for the Bulloch County Historical Society. Foxx's first production, Ol' Scarecrow Statesboro Medicine Show, premiered at the Averitt Center for the Arts in fall 2012. Foxx will begin work on the second production over the summer. Foxx has also been selected to design the "Bulloch County Family Tree" Eagle Nation on Parade eagle for the BCHS.

Ceramics Professor Jeff Schmuki's artwork will be featured on the cover of the University's 2013-2014 Faculty Handbook. Schmuki's art was selected by University Provost Dr. Jean Bartels.

Photography Professor Jessica Hines received a 2012 Kolga Photo Award. Hines was among five photographers to receive recognition out of more than 5,500 submissions to the Kolga Tbilisi Photo Contest Exhibition last summer.

 4D Professor Derek Larson presented a lecture to the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the Art Institute of Chicago on Feb. 18.

Jewelry Professor Christina Lemon's "Discard Dog" brooch series is featured on page 46 of the March edition of Art Jewelry magazine.

Communication Arts

Students traveled to Darton College in Albany, Ga., on Feb. 5-9 for the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. During the festival, students had the opportunity to see one another's work, attend theater workshops, and compete for the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship.