In Georgia Tech Commencement ceremonies May 1st and 2nd at the Georgia Dome, Ivan Allen College conferred 153 degrees – 110 Bachelors and 43 Master's and PhDs. The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs awarded the largest number of degrees - 65, the School of Literature, Communication, and Culture - 36, the School of Economics - 27, the School of History, Technology, and Society – 13, and the School of Public Policy - 12.
The Board of Regents (BOR) has approved a new undergraduate curriculum for IAC's School of Public Policy (SPP). The new curriculum represents a significant revision that is designed to build professional competency among SPP graduates.
School of Public Policy Associate Professor Richard Barke explained that the new core curriculum provides more structure and stronger analytical emphases. Several previous core courses have been replaced with new courses in Political Processes, Applied Political Economy, and Policy Analysis. Students will develop breadth and depth in particular policy realms through two, three-course policy elective clusters in Energy/Environmental Policy, Science and Technology Policy, Social and Urban Policy, Philosophy, or Politics. Majors will be required to complete a policy internship. The knowledge and skills of the new curriculum will build toward a penultimate two-semester senior task force project (replacing the current one semester project) that will be developed and taught in cooperation with clients in government, business, and the not-for-profit sector.
Barke commented, "Enrollments in the public policy major were already growing in the past year or two. We expect the new curriculum to be particularly attractive to students with an interest both practical problem-solving skills and a broad liberal arts perspective on ethical and social issues." Several new faculty members have been hired to contribute to this new curriculum. The new program begins in Fall 2009.
The Ivan Allen College website has undergone a comprehensive redesign. The new site presents a contemporary design that aligns with the Georgia Tech brand and highlights the College's structure, mission, and current news and research. Future plans include more 2.0 features. Faculty and staff should check out the updated Resources page under the Faculty & Staff tab – a quick reference to GT and IAC sites for administrative procedures and forms, computer resources, faculty guidelines, and other useful links. Your comments on the new site are welcomed as is notice of any corrections or oversights. Please direct feedback to rebecca.keane@iac.gatech.edu.
School of History, Technology, and Society Chair, Ron Bayor, has completed a three-year term as president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society (IEHS). Bayor delivered his closing address at the Society's March meeting in Seattle discussing his paper Another Look at 'Whiteness': The Persistence of Ethnicity in American Life. The paper is a study of ethnic behaviors that have persisted into the fifth generation after immigration. Bayor used psychiatric studies, cultural and medical anthropology, and family therapy to substantiate his points combining traditional historical sources with those from science and medicine.
Seymour (Sy) Goodman, Professor in International Affairs and the College of Computing and co-Director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center, was elected Vice Chair of the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P) for 2009-2010. The I3P is a consortium of about 25 leading universities, national laboratories, and nonprofit institutions dedicated to strengthening the cyber infrastructure of the United States. Professor Goodman has been the Georgia Tech/INTA representative to this consortium since its inception. The I3P is hosted by Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.
On April 16, Goodman lectured about cyber security in Africa at the Symposium of the Marconi Society, Columbia University, New York. In his talk, New Light for the Dark Continent: the Internet, Mobile Telephony and Security in Africa, Goodman discussed the continent's growing reliance on cell phones and the potential security cost due to generally poor cyber security. Goodman noted that many African countries depend on mobile phones as their primary means of communication (more so than landline telephones or computers) and that that dependence will grow. About 300 million of the world's nearly 3.5 billion cell phones are in Africa (which has a population of roughly one billion). "The people of Africa will appreciate that a $300 iPhone will do a lot more for their family than a $100 laptop," said Goodman.
On May 5, School of Economics Assistant Professor Ruth Uwaifo presented a paper at the highly selective World Bank/ Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) Conference in Bonn, Germany.
In her paper, Understanding Low Average Returns to Education in Africa: the Role of Heterogeneity Across Education Levels and the Importance of Political and Economic Reforms, Uwaifo used the case of Nigeria to examine the hypothesis that economic and political reforms can lead to increased returns to schooling - the income benefits derived from an extra year or an extra level of education.
Conventional wisdom has held that the return to education was very high in Africa. However, some recent analysis pointed to low average returns to education in some African countries including Nigeria. Nigeria moved to democracy in 1999 after more than 15 years of military rule. Subsequent significant institutional and economic reforms provided an opportunity to examine the short term impact of reforms on returns to education.
"The results provide evidence that reforms implemented post democracy in Nigeria led to a 2.6% increase in average returns to education. However, the main short-term beneficiaries of this changing return are to those with tertiary education and those who work for the government." Uwaifo's research showed that "the selectivity in beneficiaries is linked with the choice of reforms implemented post democracy. The results suggest that returns to education can be affected by institutions and policy choices and low returns to education in some parts of Africa might be partly due to these factors."
School of Modern Languages Professor Vicki Galloway and students would have been in Mexico City this week beginning the six week, 9 credit Mexico Language for Business and Technologies (LBAT) Spanish study program. Instead, they are here on campus. "Due to the implications of the H1N1 flu virus and the CDC Travel Health Warning against undertaking non-essential travel to Mexico," Georgia Tech canceled the program's travel to Mexico City. The other Spanish LBAT option – 6 credit hour / four weeks of study in Madrid June 28 – July 29 - will go forward as will the programs in China, France, Germany, Japan, and Russia.
The School of Modern Languages' intensive summer LBAT programs offer immersion in a country where the language is spoken, greatly accelerating progress in language acquisition and cross-cultural understanding. Sessions consist of four to ten weeks of study abroad in which classroom lessons in business, culture, history, economy, and technology are combined with field work, cultural events, excursions, and visits to area businesses - all conducted in the target language. Students are exposed to an "applied" language perspective developing the ability to communicate effectively in daily living situations and specific professional settings, learning about basic aspects of business culture, technology, and society and issues of local economies and global interdependence. The Mexico LBAT is unique in offering homestay and a community-service component.
LBAT programs are 3000 level classes which provide 6-18 semester credit hours and a certificate in the language for Business and Technology. The credit hours can apply toward a Minor in the language, or toward the International Affairs and Modern Languages or Global Economics and Modern Languages majors, or toward partial fulfillment of the International Plan study-abroad requirement.
Visit the School of Modern Languages to learn more about the LBAT program.
The School of Literature, Communication, and Culture demonstrated 43 projects in its April 29th Demo Day. These included extraordinary student and faculty projects in Interactive Narrative, Tangible Media, Experimental Games, Interactive Television, and Digital Film, and from project groups including the eTV Prototyping Group, the Synaesthetic Media Lab, the Imagination, Computation, and Expression Lab, the Adaptive Digital Media Lab, the Public Design Workshop, the Emergent Game Group, and the Digital World and Image Group.
Graduating master's student, Daniel Upton, presented The Identity Share Project which "approaches the online social network from a new angle." The project is a web-based system that allows users to create and share a profile, to browse others' profiles, and to follow their online experiences. "Users essentially gain a window in to the world through another person and are encouraged to connect with others based upon both similarities and differences." Upton was mentored by Assistant Professor Carl DiSalvo.
"car sales waiting shouting talking exercising driving eating blasting hooky yoga scootering…" For an absolutely fresh and unique view of something absolutely fundamental to American life, check out the project Strip Mall Ethnography by Adam Rice. Rice, another of DiSalvo's master's students, offers a "web-based platform for documenting, investigating, and engaging subjective, experiential and unconventional aspects of urban spaces with a focus on - Strip Malls."
Assistant Professor Celia Pearce's students including PhD candidate Calvin Ashmore created the massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) Mermaids. The game takes place in an underwater fantasy world in which players must rebuild a lost mermaid culture and help restore the environment, while at the same time avoiding the fate met by their ancestors- extinction. Visit the site to see the game project team's 3-D modeling, animations, and more.
The European Union Center of Excellence (EUCE) within the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs hosted a public forum titled The European Union and Its Relevance for Atlanta as a Global City. Co-hosted by the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the May 11 forum brought together Georgia Commissioner Ken Stewart and the European Consular Corps including representatives from Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Czech Republic and other entities.
Anthony Smallwood, Head of Press and Public Diplomacy for the European Union Delegation to Washington, D.C. was the keynote speaker. The forum was attended by other foreign diplomats and state and private business representatives from Atlanta and Georgia. Associate Professor Vicki Birchfield who is Director of EUCE, explained that the goal of the forum was to discuss the meaning of European integration, to highlight European diplomatic and cultural activity in Atlanta, and to advance the $25.7 billion economic trade connection between Georgia and the European Union (EU) and Georgia Tech's role in that. The EU accounts for two thirds of foreign investment in Georgia.
President Obama's executive order to reverse embryonic stem cell research policy prompted extensive press coverage in March. School of Public Policy Assistant Professor Aaron D. Levine was widely quoted on the issue in newspapers including the AJC, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, USA Today, and Wired.com.
In an interview with the LA Times, Levine said that former President Bush's policy was partly to blame, and that the elimination of Bush's limits on stem cell research would help reverse the trend. "It's not going to be a short-term fix, necessarily," Levine told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, "but some new lines of research may open up." Most important, he noted, lifting the funding restriction will allow scientists to "push their research toward the most promising technologies rather than the most politically expedient technologies."
Read more at LA Times, AJC, USA Today, WIRED.com, Chicago Tribune
School of Economics Assistant Professor Volodymr Lugovskyy will present papers at two international conferences this summer. At the Public Economic Theory 10th Annual Conference in Galway, Ireland (June) Lugovskyy will present An Experimental Study of Bubble Formation in Asset Markets Using the Tatonnement Pricing Mechanism (with Daniela Puzzello and Steven Tucker). Read more about Lugovskyy’s research on this subject in the April 2009 Newsletter Faculty Profile. At the Empirical Investigations in Trade and Geography Conference in Melbourne, Australia (July), Lugovskyy will present Quality Choice: Effects of Trade, Transportation Cost, and Relative Country Size (with Alexandre Skiba).
Additionally, Lugovskyy has received a 2009 CIBER Research Grant for the project entitled An Experimental Investigation of the Persistence of Comparative Advantage.
The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy (Cambridge University Press) deals with an important and timely issue - the political and economic forces that have shaped agricultural policies in the United States during the past eighty years. In his new book, Bill Winders, Associate Professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society, explores the complex interactions of class, market, and state as they have affected the formulation and application of agricultural policy decisions since the New Deal. Winders shows how divisions and coalitions within Southern, Corn Belt, and Wheat Belt agriculture were central to the ebb and flow of price supports and production controls. In addition, he provides analysis of past and recent trends in supply management policy highlighting the roles of the world economy, the civil rights movement, and existing national policy.
Cambridge University Press has published Swift's Travel: Eighteenth-Century Satire and its Legacy edited by School of Literature, Communication, and Culture Assistant Professor Aaron Santesso and Nicholas Hudson (University of British Columbia, Vancouver). As the greatest satirist in the English language, Jonathan Swift was both admired and feared in his own time for the power of his writing and hugely influential on writers who followed him. This collection of essays, with its distinguished list of international contributors, centers on Swift, the genres and authors who influenced him, and his impact on satire and satirists from his own time to the twentieth century. Swift transformed models such as utopian writing, political pamphleteering, and social critique with his dark and uncompromising vision of the human condition, deepening the outlook of contemporaries such as Alexander Pope, and leaving a legacy of Swiftian satire in the work of Hogarth, Fielding, Austen and Beckett, among others.
Red Hat Inc. has released the Open Source Index, a study undertaken by Douglas Noonan, Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy and Paul Baker, Director of Research for the Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP).
The index compares and contrasts open source software activity and environment across 75 countries. Open source software is free and not associated with proprietary licensing. It is also highly customizable. The study demonstrates the continuing increase in use of open source across the private sector, government and individuals. Red Hat presents the Baker-Noonan study as a framework and tool for furthering the interest and understanding of open source adoption. Professor Noonan noted that open source is spreading both as a product and a process.
View an interactive map highlighting open source country rankings.
John Krige, Professor, History, Technology, and Society
The International Academy of the History of Science History has bestowed the prestigious Alexandre Koyré Medal on the European Space Agency Project (ESA). Professor John Krige was the lead historian for the project which "traces the history of the European collaborative space programme from its beginnings in the late 1950s to the creation of a single space agency in the early 1970s and up to recent developments, in the light of its main actors and policies." Krige will attend a ceremony in September in Paris where the 2009 medal will be presented to the Director General of the ESA.
Kirk S. Bowman, Associate Professor, International Affairs
Byung-Cheol Kim, Assistant Professor, Economics (and Jay Pil Choi, Michigan State University) for their paper entitled Net Neutrality and Investment Incentives
John Akin (EIA major) - U.S. Student Grant to teach English in Indonesia
Carrie Freshour (HTS major) - English Teaching Assistantship to Indonesia
Kathryn Stucki (EIA major) - Binational Business Grant to Mexico
Economics and International Affairs major Naihobe Gonzales, who graduated with a 4.0 GPA, was admitted to a PhD in Economics at Columbia University with a fellowship beginning Fall 2009.
Joy Guan (ECON major) - Modeling and Application of Swarm Theory to Economic
Todd Christopher (HTS major) - Technological Innovations in the Origins and Development of the Electric Guitar
Alyssa Crews (INTA major) - Human Trafficking in the European Union
Shehzin Jafar (INTA major) - Terrorism stemming from Islamic Fundamentalism: What are the causes and how can we prevent them?
Adam Weiss (INTA major) - Modeling the Correlations and Relationships between Globalization, Modernization, and Overpopulation and How They Pertain to World Poverty
Bryn Gravitt (STAC major) - Women, Empire and Colonialism in Nineteenth Century Britain
Kyle Koza (STAC major) - The Differences In Online Communication Between Russian and American Students
Gabrielle Sirow (ECON major) - Modeling the Effect of US Farm Policy on Immigration Patterns
Carrie Freshour (HTS major) - Silent Tsunami: How IMF/WB Policies Created and Perpetuate the Global Food Crisis
Naihobe Gonzalez (ECON major) - Geopolitical Differences in Falling Returns to Education in Venezuela: Reform or Oil?
Paul Baker, Center for Advanced Communications Policy and Public Policy
Roberta Berry, Public Policy
Vicki Birchfield, International Affairs
Molly Cochran, International Affairs
Paul Foster, Modern Languages
Janet Murray, Literature, Communication, and Culture
Beverly Paul, Economics
Sue Rosser, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
Lisa Yaszek, Literature, Communication, and Culture
Student Government Association Progress and Service Award - Molly Williams (STAC major)
Dean George C. Griffin Faculty of the Year Award - Carole Moore, HTS Faculty
Auxiliary Services IMPACT Award- Nick Welkamp (Public Policy major)
Order of Omega Greek Woman of the Year - Nicole Thomas (Public Policy major)
Omicron Delta Kappa Joseph Pettit Memorial Award for Outstanding Sophomore - Amira Chouieki (EIA major)
Presidents' Council Governing Board, Burdell's Best Outstanding Faculty/Staff Advisor - Elizabeth Miller, Staff Advisor to the Ivan Allen College Student Advisory Board
Candis Pham (CM major)
Economics Mollie Newton Award for Excellence in Economics– Alex Enger (ECON major)
ODE Award – Dedra Casey (ECON major)
History, Technology, and Society Outstanding Researcher Award - Carrie Freshour (HTS major)
History, Technology, and Society 2009 Bernard Bellon Prize - Carrie Freshour (HTS major) and Clay Karwisch (recent HTS alumnus)
History, Technology, and Society Homer Rice Award – Nathan Moon (HTS graduate student)
Literature, Communication, and Culture William Gilmer Perry Awards - Leah Randall (STAC major) and Jordan Rowley (EnvE major)
Literature, Communication, and Culture James Dean Young Award - Jenny Zhang Morgan (STAC major)
International Affairs 1996 Olympic Envoy Program Legacy Awards - Salma Abdelaziz (INTA major) and Hannah L. Taylor (IAML major)
International Affairs Outstanding Graduate Student Awards - Jonathan Huang and Steven Taylor
International Affairs Michael J. Williams Award for Excellence in Scholarship - Naihobe D. Gonzalez (EIA major)
French - Peter Hylton (IAML major)
German - Joey Shepard (IAML major)
Japanese - Joel Diffenderfer (IAML major)
Spanish - Robert Bradshaw (IAML major)
Public Policy Faculty Member of the year - Juan Rogers
Public Policy Outstanding Alumni - Kamau Bobb
Public Policy William H. Read Award - Luciano Kay
Public Policy - Outstanding Doctoral Policy Student Award - Hsin-I Huang
Public Policy - Outstanding Graduate Policy Student Award - William Cox
Public Policy - Outstanding Undergraduate Policy Student Award - Nicholas Wellkamp (Public Policy major)