Fall 2011 - Family Home

a newsletter for Emory parents, grandparents, and other family members
fall 2011
family
Oxford students tackle hunger
I
n an effort to address childhood hunger, Oxford
received a grant this year for $2,000 to engage
1,000 young people in projects aiming to
increase awareness of the issue in the community.
The grant from Youth Service America,
which Oxford received in partnership with Hands
On Newton, will support projects from Hunger and
Homelessness Awareness Week in November 2011
through Global Youth Service Day in April 2012.
Oxford students will organize projects to engage
youth in the Newton County area in learning about
and addressing the issue of childhood hunger in their
communities.
Kim David, assistant director of student development at Oxford who oversees the hunger projects, is
grateful for the perspective the grant is giving students
at Oxford. “This grant has allowed them to look
beyond themselves and the concerns they have as college students to see a bigger issue that faces our community,” she said. “They have served with local food
pantries and have found that the people visiting these
places are not much different from them or people
they know at home, but who are victims of company
layoffs. We are thankful that this grant, in partnership with Hands On Newton, has provided the support and funding to allow our students to have these
opportunities.”
Oxford students plan and serve in projects including Poverty Dinners, where attendees learn poverty
statistics, such as how much money families living
under the poverty line have to spend on food each day;
Hunger Banquets that allow students to experience
how decisions and situations can impact their community and the world; and the Cut out Hunger Coupon
Drive, where students collect unused coupons to help
purchase food and toiletry items for distribution to
families in local communities. Students also work at
and support three community gardens, and bag and
distribute potatoes for local nonprofits through the
Milledgeville Potato Drop.
Whitney Hadden 13OX served on a planning
committee that organized Hunger and Homelessness
Awareness Week, and she was glad for the opportunity. “I think it will help bring awareness to the student
body about the problems that exist within the communities of Oxford and Covington with hunger and
homelessness,” she said. “I am also excited because
there will be fund-raisers throughout the week to help
some of the local organizations that are working to
relieve this problem.”
David reports Oxford received an additional
$1,000 grant to continue the childhood hunger
awareness programs in the spring.
“Our students come away from each experience
with a desire to do more and not to find a quick fix
but to look at the bigger issues of economy and policy
that allow childhood hunger to exist,” she said. “The
community partners we work with through this grant
are not the only recipients. I have found that our students learn and benefit from their experience.”
Click here to learn more about service at Oxford.
Salima Makhani 12OX (left) and Catherine Bioc 11OX 13C (right) share a meal with two youth participants during Global Youth Service Day.
a newsletter for Emory parents, grandparents, and other family members
fall 2011
Water, water, everywhere:
Arts programs abound
Student volunteers assist environmental artist John Grade in his installation on the Quad. Grade is working on a sculptural installation, Piedmont Divide, in the Quad and
Lullwater as part of the Water project on campus.
W
hat do a discussion about the
fastest, carbon-free molecular
water oxidation catalyst, a dance
in Baker Woodland, and a temporary work of outdoor art have
in common?
They are all part of Water, a yearlong project
of Arts at Emory that explores the ways water and
human behavior intersect and interact through creative projects across the university.
Sponsored by the Emory College Center for
Creativity & Arts, Water enriches the Emory community through projects across disciplines and departments during the 2011–2012 year. In the Department
of Chemistry, Goodrich C. White Professor of
Chemistry Craig Hill participated in a conversation
about the carbon-free molecular water oxidation catalyst developed his lab. In the Department of Dance,
Emory Dance alumnus and artistic director of Beacon
Dance, D. Patton White 83C, took audiences through
Baker Woodland in a new dance called Water Study
featuring Emory students and Beacon Dance.
The Department of Visual Arts is participating in
Water through a project by Seattle-based environmental artist John Grade, who is serving as artist in
residence at Emory this fall. While he’s on campus,
Grade will design and build a sculptural installation,
Piedmont Divide, that visually and conceptually links
the Quad and Lullwater Preserve. One part will be
suspended in the tree canopy over the Quad, while
the other part will be staked to the Candler lake bed
in Lullwater, hovering just above the surface of the
water. Using recycled and biodegradable materials
derived from indigenous plants and trees, Grade will
relate the form and construction method of the two
installations to Emory’s research on West Nile Virus
and global water sustainability.
Senior lecturer Linda Armstrong suggested Grade
for participation in Water and will be working with
him during both his residence and his return to campus to dismantle the piece in the spring.
“This is a unique opportunity to work hands on
with an internationally renowned environmental artist on a project that involves deep research about
Emory, its campus, and essentially our place in the
larger world,” she said. “Students will be given the
opportunity to be directly involved in the fabrication
Seattle-based John Grade serves as artist in residence
in the Department of Visual Arts.
and installation of the sculpture, as well as have many
informal and formal interactions with John Grade
in order to develop performances, outreach initiatives, and other projects that are related to Piedmont
Divide. I believe that actually seeing an artist create and implement provides a necessary adjunct to
coursework.”
Thanks to the efforts of faculty in the Department
of Visual Arts, including department chair Julia
Kjelgaard and assistant director Mary Catherine
Johnson, Gage is the first artist in residence to work
in the visual arts department, and his participation in
Water, Armstrong emphasizes, is valuable to the entire
Emory community. “It is critical for students, faculty,
and the larger community to have the opportunity to
engage with the artists, the makers and thinkers in
our culture.”
Click here for a complete list of Water projects and
events.
Emory Family is a publication of Communications and Marketing. For more information,
please call 404.727.6123 or email [email protected].
Editor
Graphic Designer
Contributors
Photography
Jane Howell
Gordon Boice
Stacey Jones,
Brittany Nadler 14C
Bryan Meltz
Photos courtesy of Emory Photo/Video. To see a broad portfolio and
arrange a shoot, or to view the video collection and commission a video,
go to the Emory Photo/Video website.
a newsletter for Emory parents, grandparents, and other family members
fall 2011
Stay informed
with Emory 360
Emory 360 is a new weekly YouTube recap,
which covers “360 degrees of what happened
on Emory’s campus last week in 60 seconds.”
The informative video is produced by Stephen
Beehler 10B and hosted by two Emory students,
Roy Mossy 12B and Roshani Chokshi 13C.
The video summarizes notable campus
events, announcements, and any other exciting
news that has been heard around campus. It is
a great way for parents to be informed about
what is going on at Emory, especially if their
children are not very detailed in their phone
calls and updates about college life.
Examples of what has been covered in the
Emory 360 recaps thus far include guest speakers, sports updates, arts at Emory, homecoming
events, and innovative classes, as well as faculty
and student achievements. The September 19
Emory 360 discussed the 175 Homecoming cel-
When he uses Ride2, Will Hockey never has to guess how much his friends owe him for a ride to the airport.
ebration at Emory, including a winning soccer
game and parade. It also discussed the recent
Goizueta students have
an app for that
W
e all have apps on our phones
that we use for things like directions or banking or news. They’re
so useful that you wonder what
you ever did before you had,
say, a flashlight on your phone for when the power
goes out.
But do you know what goes into designing them
and how these small bits of software are changing service, commerce, and society?
BBA students in Goizueta’s class An App for That,
can tell you.
In the class, which is taught by Benn Konsynski,
George S. Kraft Distinguished University Professor of
Information Systems and Operations Management,
students learn about the ecology of apps—small,
ubiquitous, and mobile software services that can
be created by users and obtained more easily every
day. Apps are changing the landscape of consumer
and enterprise systems, and according to Konsynski,
“there is a growing need to understand the role of
mobility, and social and local technologies.” The
class also considers new patterns of communication
between organizations and their mobile stakeholders.
Students benefit from guest lecturers in class,
including hardware and software designers and developers—from the indie (one who has a few top-ten
apps) to consultancies (that develop for large enterprises like Home Depot)—and vendors and enterprise
customers.
During the semester, Konsynski’s students are
required to create up to three apps—one easy, one
moderate, and one ambitious. Will Hockey 12B, and
his work group developed Ride2, an app that makes it
easier to share a ride.
achievements of Emory University Hospital and
the new orientation program implemented
next fall for the Class of 2016.
Take advantage of this accessible tool that’s
keeping parents informed. Check out Emory
360 on the Emory University YouTube channel
every Friday, or visit Facebook, Twitter, or the
“As college students we carpool all the time, sometimes just to class or on longer road trips, but someone always got the short end of the stick and had to
pay for the gas, insurance, etc. So we built an Android
application that enabled anyone to split the cost of
a ride,” he said. “Using a combination of the available cell towers, GPS, mpg, passengers, and local gas
prices, we could calculate how far a user had driven
and how much each passenger owed. We then used
the Square API (squareup.com), where the passenger
could swipe a credit card or manually enter the number to pay for the ride.”
A computer science and business double major,
Hockey said he appreciated the way An App for
That “enabled us to develop both our creative and
engineering skills, and built them out to a viable and
working product.”
The skills Hockey learned in class will no doubt
add to his expertise in the working world, and that
was part of Konsynski’s strategy when he created
the class. As students gain design experience as well
as knowledge of the mobile ecosystem, they develop
valuable career skills.
“I want them to leave with a portfolio, not just a
certificate. They can communicate with ‘street cred’
on the trends in the market,” Konsynski said. “There
are critical skill sets for the twenty-first-century manager in a global fragments world where roles and
responsibilities frequently change. These students
will be ready to participate in this adaptive
environment.”
Click here to see a video about Ride2.
Emory Mobile App for updates on what is happening at Emory.—Brittany Nadler 14C
Click here to watch Emory 360.
Emory 360 keeps viewers up-to-date on Emory
events and news.
a newsletter for Emory parents, grandparents, and other family members
fall 2011
Kennedy Serves as Keynote for Nursing
Anniversary Celebration
T
he choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as keynote speaker for the 10th
anniversary celebration of the Lillian Carter Center for Global Health
and Social Responsibility at the School of Nursing might seem a
bit incongruous at first. After all, this eldest son of the late Senator
Robert F. Kennedy has made a career out of fighting such environmental hazards as river pollution and strip mining—important, yes, but certainly
not of acute concern to professional nurses or nursing students.
But Kennedy told a story of his connection to the center’s namesake, Lillian
Carter, mother of former president Jimmy Carter and a nurse by profession,
that even the event’s organizers might not have known. A Harvard undergraduate during the Carter
administration,
Kennedy’s roommate
was the son of the
prime minister of
Pakistan, who was
being tried for the
conspiracy murder of
a fellow politician and
would most likely be
put to death if found
guilty.
Unable to see
Carter personally,
Kennedy traveled to
Plains, Georgia, with
his roommate to meet
with the president’s
mother. Knowing that Lillian Carter had served in India in the Peace Corps, and
had a strong interest in South Asia, they asked her to help lobby the Pakistani
government and intervene on the prime minister’s behalf. Kennedy remembers a
gracious and thoughtful host. “Lillian Carter was very kind to me that day, and I
am personally happy to be in an institution that bears her name,” he said.
“Nurses are playing
a critical role in
much of the big
debates about the
future of our country.”
Meeting with Woodruff nursing students at a Wednesday afternoon questionand-answer session hosted by the Fuld Fellows on November 9, Kennedy’s talk
highlighted the ease with which his name has given him access to people—the
influential and the ordinary—as well as a desire to do good. Some 27 years ago
he began his environmental career working with commercial fishermen, factory
workers, and other residents of Croton-on-Hudson, a village north of New York
City. By then a lawyer, he helped the residents successfully bring suit under existing environmental laws to help clean up the Hudson River, whose centuries-old
fisheries were being tainted by industrial waste from nearby companies.
At that time, “The Hudson River was dead water for 20-mile stretches, and
it’s now the richest water body in the North Atlantic,” Kennedy recalled. The
group with whom he worked, the Hudson River Fishermen’s Association, began
the Riverkeeper organization, for which Kennedy now serves as chief prosecuting
attorney. Riverkeeper launched the creation of nearly 230 like-minded, citizenbased advocacy groups throughout North and South America protecting the continents’ rivers, sounds, and bays. During his talk, Kennedy said the locally based
Chattahoochee Riverkeeper recently won a $23 million court verdict, which
forced the city of Atlanta to rebuild its sewer system to prevent ongoing contamination of the river’s watershed.
A passionate speaker with a strong dose of capitalist savvy, Kennedy told the
assembled students, “Nurses are playing a critical role in much of the big debates
about the future of our country. Some of the most effective voices are coming
from nurses, who see firsthand the effects environmental toxins cause.”
When asked later what he thought of Kennedy’s private session with students
and keynote speech later that evening at Glenn Auditorium, nursing student
Brandon Johnson 12N 13MSN said, “I found him very interesting and thoughtprovoking. He definitely comes from the viewpoint of an activist—you can tell
by the way he presented his information—but it definitely made me think about
how we as individuals, not just health care providers, affect the health of future
generations.”—Stacey Jones
Click here to learn more about the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. emphasized the critical role of nurses in his address to faculty, staff, students, and guests as part of the 10th anniversary celebration of the Lillian
Carter Center for Global Health and Social Responsibility.
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a newsletter for Emory parents, grandparents, and other family members
ANNUALGIVING
Emory University
EMORY UNIVERSITY is listed as one of the top 20 national universities
for the 19th consecutive year in U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges
listing. Young scholars come here to study with renowned faculty and work
with leading researchers. Through their academics and involvement, they
elevate Emory even further. Annual gifts from alumni, parents, and friends
support academics, programs, and scholarships, providing our students new
opportunities to excel. Visit www.emory.edu/give to join the community of
annual donors who are making a difference at Emory.
fall 2011