GC Journeys Newsletter

This fall Georgia College launched our new office for the First-Year Experience (FYE). The First-Year Experience program is designed to support first-year students’ successful transition to the Georgia College community. The focus areas include: building connections to GC for first-year students, developing greater understanding of GC Journeys, helping students engage in transformative experiences during the first-year, and creating pathways to transformative experiences. FYE works collaboratively with departments across campus to develop year-round initiatives and thoughtful programming. Key campus partner include Academic Advising, University Housing, and Campus Life.

FYE also facilitates our campus common reader experience GCReads. In 2018, GCReads shifted from a book to a series of essays. This update to the program increased participation to 97% of first-year students.

In Fall 2019, FYE introduced the First-Year Guide program. First-Year Guides are student leaders who help support student in and outside the classroom, these students were embedded in 75% of first-year seminar courses. The First-Year Guides also implement the First-Year Fridays events in collaboration with Student Affairs.

The February First-Year Friday event allowed students to make their own stuffed animal while learning about the GC Journeys program. The March First-Year Friday will highlight Leadership Programs, and our April event will focus on Undergraduate Research.

On January 28th & 29th, the University System of Georgia invited an institutional team from all 26 institutions to attend a 2 day workshop called the Momentum Summit. During this time, the USG asked Georgia College to give two different presentations about GC Journeys.

This summit not only gave Georgia College a change to showcase the GC Journeys initiative, but it also gave the GC team an opportunity to work on plans to continue supporting GC Journeys into the future.

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• February 13th, 2020 12:30-1:00 (Museum Education Room)
• March 25th, 2020 3:15-3:45 (Museum Education Room)
• April 16th, 2020 3:30-4:00 (Museum Education Room)

Georgia College participated in the AAC&U's VALUE Institute's assessment of critical thinking, submitting 112 artifacts from across GC1Y sections. These artifacts were assessed by anonymous peer reviewers trained on the AAC&U Critical Thinking VALUE Rubric.

The results point to the success of GC1Y. The majority of GC1Y students scored at the 2nd & 3rd year mark. See the below table.

The 23rd Annual Student research conference will feature winners of the Oral Presentations (GC Talks). These winners will give their presentations at 9:00-10:00 AM in the A&S Auditorium to kick off the conference. To submit, students will need to videotape their presentations and submit them. They are free to use the library's recording studio. More information here.

Whether it is poster sessions or research talks, the submissions are due on March 13th. Please encourage your students to submit for the 23rd Annual Student Research Conference. For more info, please visit: https://www.gcsu.edu/murace/student-research-conference

Contact Dr. Kelly Massey with questions.

The School of Health and Human Performance (SHHP) prepared four Exercise Science students to compete against 35 other schools in the Southeast American College of Sports Medicine (SEACSM) Student Academic Bowl. The team consisted of Rosanna Baker, Oliver Carnazzo, Cole Moye, and Daniel Torres and were led by Dr. Kelly P. Massey and Dr. Jinkyung Park. They missed first place by 1 point!

Georgia College’s Theatre Department was nominated in four categories during the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in South Carolina. Georgia College made it to the finals in three of the four categories with two students taking first place. The three students were, Laura Swarner, Sachen Pillay, and Tiffany Hawkins.

Back in 2014, Professor Arash Bodaghee and alumna Ms. Keri Spetzer began their research on the relationship between massive stars and their fuel sources of black holes and neutron stars. They received $20,000 from NASA in order to complete their research, and they were allowed access to data that was collected from The Hubble Space Telescope.

Their peer-reviewed article has now been published at Cornell University under the title, "The stellar ad wind parameters of six prototypical HMXBs and their evolutionary status." You can find it at https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02420

Students from Psychology, Physics, Chemistry, and Music Therapy presented their research for state legislators on February 25th

Email: journeys@gcsu.edu
Website: https://www.gcsu.edu/gcjourneys
Location: Carl Vinson House