February 2023 Newsletter

Honorary Degrees Conferred to GSU's "Ground Crew"

The university recently conferred honorary degrees to three brave women - Myra Payne Elliott, Barbara Pace Hunt and Iris Mae Welch - who sued to desegregate Georgia State in the 1950s.

Ms. Elliott, 90, and her family, and the families of the late Ms. Hunt and Ms. Welch, were honored at commencement ceremonies in December 2022, earning the degrees from Georgia State that were once denied to them.

In 1956, the predecessor of Georgia State University denied admission to nine black applicants, including Ms. Hunt, Ms. Welch and Ms. Elliott. The three women coordinated with the NAACP and local activists to file a suit against the state of Georgia and the Board of Regents and won in the groundbreaking decision known as Hunt v. Arnold in 1959. The case became the NAACP’s first federal court victory against segregated education in Georgia.

Despite the legal victory, the women were still blocked from enrolling at Georgia State by the legislature and the Board of Regents. Further, the women faced bigotry from high-profile political leaders and personal threats from the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists.

Their case helped establish key legal precedents for subsequent litigation against racial discrimination in higher education across the United States. Today, Georgia State confers more bachelor’s degrees to African American students than any other non-profit university in the country.

The subjects of the book Ground Crew: The Fight to End Segregation at Georgia State by Maurice C. Daniels, the Provost's Office Groundbreaker Lecture was established in their honor. (You can watch a mini-documentary and the inaugural lecture on the Provost's Office website at this link.)

Nicolle Parsons-Pollard Appointed Provost & Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs

Georgia State President M. Brian Blake has named Nicolle Parsons-Pollard as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs effective Feb. 1, having served in an interim role since January 2022.

Since arriving at Georgia State in January 2020 as associate provost for faculty affairs, Dr. Parsons-Pollard has created, implemented and championed a variety of faculty development programs to support and strengthen faculty in teaching and research, as well as leadership programming for department chairs and other administrators.

“Dr. Parsons-Pollard is a trusted colleague and a visionary, forward-thinking leader who will help take Georgia State into our next chapter,” said Georgia State President M. Brian Blake. “This past year alone, she has led in several major initiatives and activities that are taking us there.”

As interim provost, during this past year alone, she has led in several major initiatives and activities. Just a few of her contributions include co-leadership of the RISE Challenge to spur innovative, interdisciplinary research across campus; assistance with the leadership of the university’s strategic planning committee; support for the university’s continuing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and support for a new leadership program to support women in higher education.

Dr. Parsons-Pollard has been responsible for developing and implementing faculty policies and procedures, managing university awards and recognition for faculty, and assisting with the promotion and tenure process. She continues to provide leadership and direction in support for the Next Generation of Faculty initiative and the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) process, which is now going into its second round.

With this move, Dr. Parsons-Pollard is the first Black woman appointed as Provost in the university's history. She also is the first Black person in Georgia State's history to hold the role in a permanent capacity. (The late Dr. Cleon Arrington held the interim position from 1992 to 1994.)

Dr. Parsons-Pollard began her career as a part-time instructor and then an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. She later went to work at Virginia State University, a Historically Black College/University (HBCU), where she was tenured and began her administrative career.

Over the past decade, Dr. Parsons-Pollard has served in five Provost’s Office-level administrative roles. Prior to her role at Georgia State, she was the vice provost for academic and faculty affairs at Monmouth University (New Jersey). At Monmouth, she was the state academic affairs representative and the regional accrediting body liaison officer. She also oversaw faculty affairs responsibilities, including interpreting the union contract and professional development for faculty, department chairs and deans. Under her leadership focusing on equitable hiring practices, Monmouth also increased under-represented faculty by 26.8% and women faculty by 15.23%. Dr. Parsons-Pollard has also held other administrative roles in higher education, including at Virginia State, where she served as assistant vice provost for academic operations, among other roles.

Dr. Parsons-Pollard also completed the American Council on Education (ACE) Fellows Program in 2014-15, where she spent much of her time exploring budget and finance in higher education. Dr. Parsons-Pollard’s research focuses on disproportionate minority contact (DMC) and program evaluation. The second edition of “Disproportionate Minority Contact Current Issues and Policies“ was released in 2017. Most recently, her research has expanded to issues related to faculty workload in higher education.

She is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and has a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration.

— Andrea Jones, Vice President for Public Relations & Marketing Communications
Additional information from Jeremy Craig, Communications Manager for the Office of the Provost

Originally published at the University News Hub at https://news.gsu.edu.

Corrie Fountain Appointed Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs

Corrie Fountain has been appointed as Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs effective Feb. 1.

Prior to serving her leadership role in an interim capacity in 2022, she served as the Director of Faculty Development, also within the Office of Faculty Affairs (OFA) at Georgia State. In her time as interim associate provost, she expanded professional development and leadership opportunities for faculty and staff.

In addition to leading the office, she enhanced Georgia State’s efforts to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in faculty recruitment, retention, engagement, and belonging. Dr. Fountain and her team have created programming to include workshops on best practices in faculty hiring and equity-minded workload, faculty writing networks, and introduced new awards to recognize faculty excellence, such as the Outstanding Non-Tenure Track Faculty Award and the Mentoring Excellence Award.

Under her leadership, the Office of Faculty Affairs has conducted two cohorts of the newly established Leadership Academy for Women Faculty, reintroduced the Executive Leadership Academy for Women, and serves as a co-principal investigator on the ADVANCE-IMPACT grant. Funded by the National Science Foundation, ADVANCE-IMPACT will adapt and implement practices at the university to increase the number of women, particularly women from underrepresented minority (URM) backgrounds, who are recruited, promoted, and retained in STEM tenure track positions and Georgia State leadership.

Dr. Fountain has also played a key role in implementing the activities resulting from the COACHE (Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education) faculty satisfaction survey. She has represented Georgia State at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in showcasing the university as a model of best practices. She continues to be an essential leader in the next cycle of COACHE.

She earned her doctoral degree from Georgia State in Educational Policy Studies with a concentration in Research Measurement and Statistics. She served as chair of the Inclusive Education Department and professor of educational research at Kennesaw State University before returning to Georgia State as Director of Faculty Development in August 2021.

Work Around the University

The team is continuing to build the relationships across campus to inform, share and collaborate. Co-principal investigators have been meeting with other diversity, equity and inclusion groups or councils at the university about ADVANCE-IMPACT’s mission and aims. (You can learn more about these aims here.) ADVANCE-IMPACT has also begun to pilot Launch Committees to support newly hired faculty.

Co-PI Megan Connors and the sPHENIX Experiment

ADVANCE-IMPACT co-PI Megan Connors, her post-doc Virginia Bailey and former Georgia State graduate student Anthony Hodges attended a ribbon cutting celebration at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory for sPHENIX, a major experiment she helped to build.

sPHENIX is a state-of-the-art particle detector that stands to provide physicists with further insights about the origins of matter, and how nature’s strongest force binds quarks and gluons into protons and neutrons, the particles that make up ordinary atomic nuclei.

With the closure of the major installation process of the sPHENIX experiment – more eight years in the making - Dr. Connors and her colleagues are looking forward to data received from the experiment, anticipated for April 2023.

For more about sPHENIX and the ribbon-cutting event, visit the Brookhaven National Laboratory website at this link. You can also watch a YouTube video showing sPHENIX coming together at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYxZCMknuNQ.

It is important to note that women are significantly underrepresented in the field. Women in Physics of the American Physics Society reports that 25 percent of physics Ph.D.s were earned by women in 2020 (the year for which the most recent statistics are available).

Work with FIU

This fall team members attended Bystander Leadership Program training offered by the university’s ADVANCE-IMPACT partners at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami, Florida. These workshops use live theater to teach faculty how to practice behaviors that allow them to confidently intervene to reduce bias and promote faculty belongingness.

Other members who attended the training this fall included Jennie Burnet, Suri Iyer, Marise Parent, and Sergey Plis. ADVANCE-IMPACT will return to FIU in the spring to learn how to become Bystander Leadership Program trainers and will launch Bystander Leadership Program workshops with the FIU theater group at Georgia State in fall 2023.

Faculty who wish to learn more about ADVANCE-IMPACT or who want to join the team can visit the ADVANCE-IMPACT website at https://www.gsu.edu/advance, or email [email protected].

Information from Marise Parent, Director and Co-PI, ADVANCE-IMPACT

ADVANCE-IMPACT at Georgia State is supported through a generous grant by the National Science Foundation (Award #2204559). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Perimeter Chemistry Professor Selected for Carnegie African Fellowship

Professor of Chemistry Paulos Yohannes, associate dean for STEM/research at Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, has been selected for the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship (CADF).

Through the CADF, Yohannes will work with chemistry faculty at both Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and at Georgia State to help identify and analyze key healing ingredients in medicinal plants native to Ethiopia.

The Carnegie fellowship, a first for Georgia State, matches an African-born professor with an African university to collaborate on projects that will enhance research and teaching in Africa.

As part of the fellowship, Addis Ababa University will be sending medicinal plants with active ingredients of less than 500 milligrams to Georgia State’s Chemistry Department for spectroscopic analysis and toxicity testing. Yohannes will work with Binghe Wang, a Regents’ Professor of Chemistry at Georgia State and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Drug Discovery, on the spectroscopic analysis of plants sent to the university.

Read more at the link below.

GSU Expands Access to Global Experiences through SAVE Grant Program

The Office of International Initiatives and the Atlanta Global Studies Center recently launched the Scaling Access to Virtual Exchange (SAVE) Grant Program to integrate Virtual Exchange into the curriculum of a required course in an identified major or pathway and to ensure that all graduates in that degree program participate in at least one International Virtual Exchange experience.

Funding was awarded to Hongmei Zhang and Jonathan Sylvester (Biology), Courtney Strosneider (Kinesiology & Health), and Veronica Rowe and Kinsuk Maitra (Occupational Therapy) for their excellent proposals. Combined, their Virtual Exchange projects will provide global learning experiences to approximately 800 students during 2023.

Awarded faculty will create VE templates that may be adapted to the content of the required course and the teaching style of the instructor. The VE templates will allow any GSU faculty teaching the course in future semesters to customize projects, deliverables, and timelines based on student learning outcomes and the needs of the international partners. Most importantly, the newly developed VE templates will enhance student knowledge and provide learning experiences that translate into the development of global fluency and 21st-century professional skills.

VE templates will be piloted in Spring 2023, refined and revised during Summer 2023, and fully integrated into all sections of the required course during Fall 2023.

Learn more about Virtual Exchange at the link below.

From the Office of International Initiatives

In Case You Missed It: MLK Commemoration Event with India.Arie

If you missed the 2023 MLK Commemoration event this January with keynote speaker India.Arie, Artist-in-Residence at the Creative Media Industries Institute, a recording is now available with your GSU campus ID and password at the links below.

From the GSU Magazine: When It Comes to Building a Hotel Empire, Davonne Reaves Has No Reservations

PepsiCo Foundation Awards Grant to Georgia State's Digital Learners to Leaders Program to Promote Digital Literacy

Georgia State University’s Digital Learners to Leaders (DLL) program has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the PepsiCo Foundation to expand events and programming promoting digital literacy.

The award will support a series of workshops introducing students to digital skills such as web development, communication, financial literacy and project management. Workshops will be available to students seeking both two- and four-year degrees and at a summer camp directed at high school students.

The DLL program was developed to inspire students, particularly students from backgrounds underrepresented in the technology industry, to explore their interests in technology while learning from professionals across Atlanta’s education, business, government and nonprofit organizations and focusing on creating digital solutions. The program teaches technology and professional skills to university students through a series of co-curricular workshops and a for-credit internship course and to secondary school students at a summer camp.

Read more at the link below.

Georgia State Receives American Economic Association's Top Award for Diversity & Inclusion

The American Economic Association (AEA) has selected Georgia State University’s Department of Economics as a 2022 winner of its Award for Outstanding Achievement in Diversity and Inclusion. The award was presented at an AEA reception on Jan. 7.

The department was commended for its achievements in multiple programs and practices that reflect AEA guidelines to help build a more diverse, inclusive and productive economics profession. The guidelines present five best practices for economists in each of four areas of professional activity — conducting research, serving as colleagues, working with students and leading departments and workplaces — as well as practical suggestions for implementation and supporting research and resources.

Read more at the link below.

Georgia State Researchers Receive $1 Million Grant to Improve Health Communication for Non-Native English Speakers

team of Georgia State University researchers has received a three-year, $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health to improve health services for non-native English speaking minority communities.

Iris Feinberg, research assistant professor in the College of Education & Human Development’s Department of Learning Sciences and associate director of the college’s Adult Literacy Research Center, will serve as the principal investigator on the grant project entitled, “Improving Cultural and Linguistic Access for Equitable Healthcare.”

She will work on the grant with co-principal investigator Dr. Amy Zeidan, assistant professor in Emory University’s Department of Emergency Medicine. Additional project investigators include Amy Nyman, research associate in Georgia State’s School of Public Health; John Bunting, director of the university’s Intensive English Program; Mary Helen O’Connor, director of the Center for Community Engagement at Perimeter College; and Kippie Lipham, director of Grady Memorial Hospital’s Language Interpretive Services.

The research team will collaborate with Grady Memorial Hospital’s emergency department and eight community-based organizations to increase awareness of and access to interpretive assistance in their language at no cost, a federal right protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Bilingual community members will have an opportunity for scholarships to train to become qualified medical interpreters. The top four languages requested at Grady are Spanish, Amharic, Bengali and French.

The grant project will aim to decrease miscommunication between medical personnel and patients by emphasizing the teach-back method, “a way of checking understanding by asking patients to state in their own words what they need to know or do about their health,” according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Read more at the link below.

Beyond the Culture II and the Viola Desmond Lecture Feb. 8-10: The Role of Black Popular Culture in the Fight for Social Justice

During this year’s Black History Month, join the university and international guests for Beyond the Culture II, a conference discussing the role of Black popular culture in the fight for social justice.

Events will take place at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, 101 Auburn Ave NE, Atlanta, GA, 30303. For a conference schedule and registration, please visit https://sites.gsu.edu/beyondtheculture. (A conference flyer is also available by clicking this link.)

The conference occurs as the university celebrates during this academic year the 30^th anniversary of the student protest that would lead to the founding of the Department of African American Studies, now known as the Department of Africana Studies.

Attendees at this three-day national conference will critically examine the intersections between popular culture and social justice, while also commemorating the 50^th anniversary of hip-hop.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Center for Studies on Africa and Its Diaspora, the Department of Africana Studies, Elizabeth J. West, Professor and Amos Distinguished Chair in English Letters, Amos Chair Endowment, the Department of Political Science, the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, the Consulate General of Canada, and WomenLead.

Viola Desmond Lecture: Feb. 8 at 6 p.m. – “Drake and the New Hip-Hop World”

The Viola Desmond Lecture, co-sponsored by the Consulate General of Canada, kicks off the conference with a talk on Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 6 p.m., with Dalton Higgins, a hip-hop scholar, activist, author and journalist.

Higgins, whose talk is named “Drake and the New Hip-Hop World,” is a publicist, author of six books, National Magazine Award-winning journalist, and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Music-Prof-in-Residence. Higgins teaches the popular university course “Deconstructing Drake and The Weeknd” that has been featured on CNN, New York Times, NPR, and BET among many other media outlets. His best-selling books include Far from Over: The Music and Life of Drake which is carried in the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame & Museum collection in Cleveland, and Hip Hop World which has been carried in Harvard University’s hip hop archive since 2009. Among his numerous achievements and biography of work, Higgins recently co-produced the New York Festivals award-winning “This Is Not A Drake podcast” series which explores the evolution of hip-hop and gender dynamics within the culture.

The lecture is named after Viola Desmond, who was jailed in 1946 for refusing to leave a whites-only area of a movie theater in the Canadian city of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. Her court case inspired the pursuit of racial equality across Canada.

For a full schedule of events and to sign up, please visit https://sites.gsu.edu/beyondtheculture/.

Daffodil Festival and Symposium Features Distinguished Novelist and a Host of Activities at Georgia State's Perimeter College Campus in Newton County Feb. 21 & 22

COVINGTON, Ga.—An award-winning author, a thought-provoking roundtable discussion with college educators and state and county administrators, and a visit from a local film studio executive are just a few of the events planned for the 2023 Daffodil Festival and Symposium on Georgia State University’s Newton Campus, Feb. 21 and 22.

The two-day event, which celebrates the Newton Campus’s acres of blooming daffodils, will also highlight the campus’s 15-plus year history, with a special history walk-and-talk on the grounds. In addition to planned speakers, there will be an opportunity for 3D printing, painting, birdhouse-making and yoga demonstrations each day.

“The Daffodil Festival and Symposium is a great opportunity to bring some phenomenal speakers to Newton County,” said Tami Thomas, assistant professor of criminal justice and co-chair of the 2023 Daffodil Festival. “All of the presenters and activities surrounding the event are designed to reflect the growth and diversity of our university and specifically the Newton campus.”

All events are open to the community and are free.

On Tuesday, Feb. 21 the following events are planned:

• 10 a.m. — In conjunction with the college-wide Mario A.J. Bennekin Jr. Black History Symposium, award-winning novelist and Clark Atlanta University African American Studies professor Dr. Daniel Black will speak on “The Will to Thrive: Black People’s Invisible Power.”
• 11:30 a.m. —“African American Males: Journey to Greatness.” A roundtable discussion with panelists Marcello Banes, Newton County Commission Chairman; Dr. Jessie Aldoph, Perimeter College associate professor of English; Dr. Ervin China, Perimeter College assistant professor of mathematics; Enrique Denson, Georgia State alumni and Tyrone Oliver, commissioner for the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. The program will be moderated by Scott Ross, Perimeter College assistant business professor.
• 1 p.m. — Patrick Rodriguez, Georgia State’s Prison Education project interim director, will speak on “Re-imagining Success—The State Way.”
• 6 p.m. —“An Evening Community Chat with Dr. Anyee’ Payne of Perimeter College’s Center for Community Outreach and Research (CORE) program about the book, “The Black Family’s Guide to College Admissions.” A question-and-answer session about college admissions will follow.

On Wednesday, Feb. 22

• 10 a.m. — Robert Faulkner, Cinelease Studios operations coordinator, will speak about college-to-career opportunities in film.
• 11:30 a.m. —The annual “Poetry and Prose in the Pines” features Spoken Word poet Journee with Honors College student Collin Alexander and faculty with poetry and prose readings and musical performances
• 1 p.m.—The annual Daffodil Scholarship presentation and campus history walk presented by former college administrator Dr. Sallie Paschal.
• 6 p.m. —“Evening at Perimeter” featuring the premiere of a student film by Codie Harbin

For more information, please contact Daffodil Festival chairs Sarah Harrell  [email protected] or Tami Thomas, [email protected]

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS

February

Later this Semester

Access the DEI Calendar & Submit Events

For more DEI events visit the events calendar on the DEI website here. For other events visits the Georgia State main calendar here.

If you have suggestions for additional diversity, equity, and inclusion related news stories, events, or observances to share with the Georgia State community, please complete the DEI events/news submission form here.

SPRING SEMESTER HOLIDAYS

Members of Georgia State's diverse university population celebrate holidays of different communities and faith traditions over the next few months, including but definitely not limited to Ash Wednesday (Feb. 22), Orthodox & Coptic Lent (Feb. 27-April 15), Ramadan (March 22-April 21), Passover (April 5-6), Good Friday (April 7), Easter (April 9, Western calendar; April 16, Orthodox & Coptic), and Eid al-Fitr (April 21-22).

For more information about the wide range of religious and other holidays, click here to visit the DEI Resource Library, where you can find the Dean of Students' Cultures, Communities & Inclusion initiative's Cultural Awareness Guide. It has a very comprehensive list of holidays, celebrations, and observances.

Additional Interfaith & Holiday Calendars

•  Diversity Holidays
•  External Interfaith Calendars
  •  National Conference for Community and Justice
  •  Interfaith-Calendar.org
  •  Interfaith Network