A University of Georgia program is helping equip current and emerging nonprofit leaders to strengthen their organizations and make a difference in their communities.

Through the Executive Leadership Program for Nonprofit Organizations at the UGA J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, nonprofit leaders from Georgia and around the nation receive leadership and professional development.

“We all left with tools to address challenges in the nonprofit sector,” said Bonnie Holliday, chief strategy officer for the Georgia Charter Schools Association. “The program provided relevant content on topical issues. I have colleagues who attended previously and recommended the program in glowing terms. It lived up to the hype.”

Since 2007, the UGA Fanning Institute has led the program in partnership with the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.

For one week each year, UGA Fanning Institute faculty along with experts from around the country cover all facets of leading a nonprofit organization from learning about one’s personal leadership style to nonprofit finance and problem-solving.

For the third year in a row, the Boren Awards named the University of Georgia a top-performing institution for Boren Scholarships. With five UGA undergraduates selected as Boren Scholars this spring, UGA is ranked in the top five of institutions nationwide.

The UGA students named as Boren Scholars for 2023 will study three different languages—Arabic, Swahili and Russian—in three distinct regions of the world.

UGA has had 94 Boren Scholarship and Fellowship offers to date, and 57 in the last 10 years. The university was also named a top-performing institution for Boren Scholarships in 2021 and 2022.

“Our students are excelling at critical language studies, and we are proud to be among the top institutions for Boren Scholarships,” said Meg Amstutz, dean of the Morehead Honors College. “I am grateful for the support of their faculty and the Office of Global Engagement. The university continues to develop global citizens through its strong commitment to the study of critical languages.”

The University of Georgia Hodgson Singers took second place at the prestigious 18th Marktoberdorf International Chamber Choir Competition in Marktoberdorf, Germany, May 26-30.

Twelve choirs from around the world faced four days of competitive rounds, master classes, concerts and cultural exchange, and the Hodgson Singers were awarded the highest level of achievement—Excellence at an International Level. They won the second-place prize alongside St. Nicholas Choir Litija from Slovenia.

From the stage of their UGA concert in March 2023, the Hodgson Singers conductor Daniel Bara announced that they had been invited to participate in this international competition following a rigorous audition process. In addition to being one of 12 choirs accepted, and only nine mixed voice choirs, the Hodgson Singers were also the only choir from the United States to participate.

“It was already an honor for us to be invited to this prestigious opportunity, but it was truly a joy to see and hear our singers move the audiences in the way they did while abroad,” said Bara, John D. Boyd UGA Foundation Professor of Choral Music and the director of choral activities in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music. “I am so proud of our students and so very grateful for the support we received to make all of this possible.”

A $1.5 million USDA grant will allow the University of Georgia to help advance agricultural initiatives and innovative food production in Georgia as part of the USDA’s Food System Transformation framework.

The UGA Archway Partnership will administer the grant using its nationally recognized and award-winning model of community engagement and facilitation to support agriculture in Georgia. Archway will connect UGA experts with farmers and agricultural producers to determine the underlying needs of Georgia’s agricultural community and to help them connect to resources that can help them access new markets and increase sustainability and long-term viability of farming operations.

The goal is to increase supply chain resiliency in urban and rural community food systems and strengthen the food supply chain to create fairer, more competitive, more resilient markets.

“This grant is an opportunity for UGA to put its strengths in community engagement and agricultural innovation to use in important ways for our home state,” said University of Georgia President Jere W. Morehead. “We are very grateful to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their support of UGA’s Archway Partnership and Georgia communities.”

The Office of Research and the Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach are now accepting proposals for the 2023 Presidential Interdisciplinary Seed Grant Program.

This year’s program has two tracks: the New Frontiers Track and the Cluster Engagement Track. The New Frontiers Track will consist of interdisciplinary team proposals that feature early-stage exploration addressing grand challenges at the community, state, national or global level. The awards may provide up to $60,000 in funding.

Successful proposals will include compelling evidence of transformative potential and plans for early engagement with user communities.

The Cluster Engagement Track will address one or more themes from the 10 interdisciplinary clusters of the Presidential Interdisciplinary Faculty Hiring Initiative in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. Awards for this track will range from $60,000 to $150,000 per grant proposal.

Successful seed projects will lay the foundation for creation of an ecosystem connecting research, innovation, entrepreneurship and partnerships with communities. Proposals will be measured based on their fusion of data science and AI in crosscutting areas to address a significant challenge.

The University of Georgia has appointed Gagan Agrawal, professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies in the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences at Augusta University, as the director of the UGA School of Computing. Agrawal was selected after a national search and will begin as director July 1.

UGA elevated its longstanding department of computer science to a School of Computing in July 2022 in response to rising student enrollment and the growing role of computing in a range of fields. Created within an interdisciplinary framework, the School of Computing is jointly administered by the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the College of Engineering.

Agrawal served as assistant professor in computer and information sciences at University of Delaware between 1996 and 2001.

Between 2001 and 2019, he served as associate professor, professor, graduate director and interim department chair of computer science at Ohio State University. He has led research in High Performance Computing, Cloud/Grid systems, Scientific Data Management, Data Mining, Social Media Analytics, and most recently, Cybersecurity.  His work in these areas has resulted in more than 300 peer-reviewed publications, more than 9000 citations, and 35 advised or co-advised students finishing their Ph.D.

Hospitality and tourism are a major economic driver in Georgia, and the University of Georgia is working in several key areas to support and expand that industry.

In 2021, nearly 200 million visitors to Georgia produced $34.4 billion in direct visitor spending. Those visits generated more than $4 billion in state and local tax revenues, and created a total economic impact of $64.5 billion, according to state data. The hospitality and tourism industry is Georgia’s second-largest economic contributor (after agriculture) and employs more than 400,000 residents.

“As the tourism division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development continues to help grow visitation to Georgia, industry will need more of the skilled hospitality labor that UGA creates through its talent pipeline and opportunities for career development,” said Mark Jaronski, chief marketing officer for the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

UGA’s Georgia Center for Continuing Education and Hotel collaborates with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences for a bachelor’s degree program in hospitality and food industry management, serving as a working laboratory opportunity for students in the major. The program prepares students for jobs in hotels and resorts, restaurants, meeting and event management, club management, agritourism and other related fields.

The University of Georgia Parents Leadership Council surpassed its 2022-2023 fundraising goal by raising over $1 million, a record for the group.

The PLC is a service-oriented group of highly engaged parents of UGA students who provide funding to the university through their annual gifts. Once a year, the council awards grants to campus organizations that have a commitment to enhancing undergraduate student life.

The PLC Grants Program started with roughly 150 families who awarded nearly $145,000 to 22 organizations. Today, the council has grown to more than 250 families, each contributing $5,000 or more annually and increasing the program’s impact exponentially. Over 11 years, the council has received roughly 670 grant applications and awarded more than $5.7 million.

This year, the PLC raised the bar further, simultaneously surpassing its fundraising goal and awarding a record amount in grants: 137 recipients received a total of more than $1.1 million. Grants went to an array of academic units and organizations focused on student wellness, access to the arts, service-learning and more.

Assaf Oshri, an associate professor in UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences and the director of the Youth Development Institute at UGA, was recently awarded $3.2 million from the National Institutes of Health to study resilience in rural children using neuroimaging technologies.

The BRANCH study, which stands for Building Resiliency and Nurturing Children’s Health, will investigate the development of resilience among low-income children living in rural Georgia areas over five years, starting at age 7. The overarching goal is to determine how children’s communities affect their neurocognitive development and risk for drug use as adolescents.

Oshri’s previous research has shown that low to moderate stress can be good for you, as it forces your body to optimize brain cognition and function. But there is a limit to how much stress is a good thing. Once stress levels go above moderate levels, which is common in households struggling to pay bills or keep a roof over their family, that stress becomes toxic.

Children are particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of stress because their brains are still developing. Oshri hopes the BRANCH study will connect the dots between childhood conditions and brain development not only by interviewing and getting to know the families in the study but also by using MRI scanning technology to assess how stress can affect cognition and neural functioning.

Each fall, a new class of University of Georgia MBA students arrives on campus with energy, curiosity and a desire to sharpen their executive skills. At the same time, many of Athens’ nonprofit organizations are looking for board members to apply various skills in service of the local community.

Andrew Salinas, manager of the MBA Career Management Center, realized the two groups—MBA students and local nonprofits—could make a good pair. In 2017, he created the UGA MBA Nonprofit Board Fellows program, which helps local organizations interview and select MBA students to serve on two-year board terms.

“MBA students are looking to contribute at an executive level, and the nonprofit organizations are looking for skillsets from working professionals and younger people to fill out their board needs,” Salinas said. “It is a win-win.”

More than 20 nonprofits have participated in the program, and most organizations return annually for new board fellows. Last year, Salinas partnered with Victoria Prevatt, owner of Good Works Consulting, to provide the board fellows with board member training. 

“It’s a phenomenal program from two perspectives,” Prevatt said. “One, it’s giving students the experiential learning opportunity of sitting in the board room. Two, the nonprofits get the perspectives of younger board members, giving our nonprofit community the diversity of thought and opinion that it needs and deserves.”