Inquiry, Innovation, Impact.

Connecting the dots between industry and education...

Bryan County landed one of the biggest economic development projects in Georgia history, an auto assembly and battery manufacturing facility for Hyundai Motors. The county covers an area approximately 496 square miles with a population estimated around 44,000 people.

The area has seen tremendous growth over the past decade due to the influx in new housing developments, shopping centers and restaurants that add diversity and economic stability within the region while key industries, such as paper production and agriculture help create job opportunities keeping locals employed.

As the largest institution of higher learning in the region, Georgia Southern University is in a unique position to engage with the new industry partners in the area. Georgia Southern’s Associate Provost of Innovation and Commercialization, Dominique Halaby, Ph.D., shared a few of those plans.

“We as a university must have a strategy that allows us to think through how we can engage in a way that is effective, not just for others, but also for us. There are a lot of amazing things that Georgia Southern has to offer – from our engineering program, to our business program and to our economic engagement units,” he said. “But we need to coordinate how we are engaging with a company the size of Hyundai.”

Apart from having those internal conversations, Georgia Southern has studied its peers, with a focus on industry thought leaders on university corporate engagement.

“We’re trying to craft the Georgia Southern story in a way that makes sense for us to engage with Hyundai,” he said.

Halaby explained that from a general short term perspective, the Corporate Engagement Committee Members want to be able to provide a plan with actionable items to university leadership in order to be clear about what they think is the best path forward in terms of engaging with Hyundai and other tier one suppliers.

“Long term, I’d like this to be much more of a true relationship and partnership with Hyundai, that can put Georgia Southern at the forefront of corporate engagement efforts,” Halaby said. “We must know how we are truly aligning our interests in a way that we’re having maximum impact on our region.”

Welcome to the last mile of what has been a very fast-paced race this academic year. Even if globalization is faltering, time-space compression seems to remain with us. Despite the harried pace, we have accomplished much worth celebrating in research, innovation, and scholarly productivity. Two timely events warrant particular mention.

On March 24-25, the Office of Research and the Water’s College of Health Professions hosted the inaugural Human Performance Optimization Summit for researchers working on issues of tactical performance. The summit featured presentations by university and Army researchers as well as by Physical Therapists, Athletic Trainers, Sports Psychologists, and Dieticians working with professional sports teams, high school athletes, and elite Army combat units. The keynote presentation was delivered by Brigadier General Lance Rainey, the Command Surgeon for the U.S. Army Force Command. General Rainey spoke on the implications for the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) program on the Army and, by extension, on other tactical performance occupations as well. We are already planning and looking forward to hosting it again next year.

In two weeks, the Georgia Southern Student Scholars Symposium (GS4) will be held on the Statesboro Campus on April 18 and on the Armstrong Campus on April 20. The GS4 Symposium (formerly known as the Research Symposium) will showcase the intersections of our teaching and public impact research mission through the faculty-mentored research work of our students. Especially in a world of online - hybrid -synchronous/asynchronous, or ChatGPT-informed classrooms, these showcase events always refresh my spirits and highlight the value of substantive faculty-student engagements. So let’s all shut down the zoom and email, get out of our offices (or even onto campus) and come see what our students are learning.

Tyler Cyronak, Ph.D.

Georgia Southern professor co-authors new paper on hypoxia in coral reefs brought on by global warming

A new faculty member in the Institute for Coastal Plain Science, Tyler Cyronak, Ph.D., an assistant professor teaching Sustainability Research Methods and Biogeography, is a co-author on a manuscript that was created based on extensive studies at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and it has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Read all about it here.

Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd is a leading international weather-climate expert and is the Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Geography and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Georgia. Dr. Shepherd was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS), the nation’s largest and oldest professional/science society in the atmospheric and related sciences. Dr. Shepherd serves as Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program, the Associate Director of Climate and Outreach for the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, and Full Professor in the Department of Geography where he was a previous Associate Department Head.

Supplemental Travel Award Recipients Announced

The Office of Research is pleased to announce thirteen Spring 2023 Supplemental Travel Funding awardees. This funding opportunity supports tenure-track and tenured faculty to disseminate their research at disciplinary conferences. With more than 50 applications received, the selection process was highly competitive, resulting in additional funds allocated to meet the need. Faculty awardees, representing all university colleges, will present at three international and ten national conferences in FY2023.

Awardees included: Drs. Jessica Hines (Art), Dongyu Jia (Biology), Alesia Mickle Moldavan (Elementary and Special Education), Kathryn Haughney (Elementary and Special Education), Virginia Wickline (Psychology), Nicolette Rickert (Psychology), Li Li (Health Sciences and Kinesiology), Gustavo Maldonado (Civil Engineering and Construction), Jing Kersey (Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Environmental Sciences), Rachel Smith (Management), Yuan Li (Marketing), Julie de Chantal (History), Jervais Jackson (Elementary and Special Education), and Jeff Schmuki (Art, Fall 2022 Awardee). The final FY23 awardees (from the March 9 submission deadline) will be announced later this month.