UGA faculty members and Georgia Sea Grant are doing important work along the Georgia coast, helping communities plan for a major expansion of the Savannah Harbor:

There are a multitude of scholarly books and monographs written by Franklin College faculty each year and one of the things we’d like to do on the blog is talk with some of these scholar/authors and learn a little more about their new works, which are such a big part of their research.

In just a few more days the empty campus will begin to give way to thousands of new and returning students as they take up residence in our dorm communities and around town. Classes begin August 18. Other important upcoming dates:

Dropp/Add begins August 18

Student Emplyment Fair on Wedneday August 20

Study Abroad Open House on Saturday, August 23

The richness of cultural choices - programming, in the common parlance - in our campus community instills a great sense of contact, exploration and inspiration. The new University Theatre season is an extraordinarily thoughtful repertoire of new and old that promises many great nights on its venerable stages:

It's the lull just before fall semester, but around campus, progress marches on. Though they have been a political hot potato locally, smart streets are a safety innovation the university can and has embraced. Note the new pedestrian islands on Carlton Street in front of Stegeman Coliseum. The university has added painted bike lanes around campus as well, all in the service of safer transit in what is a very densely populated area.

Congratulations to Rachel Dubuque (MFA '13) and Justin Plakas (MFA '12) who were selected to live and work at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NB this summer:

The two are part of an international group of 18 artists who were selected out of a pool of 800, working on individual projects for a funded cycle of three months.

"It has been an amazingly transformative experience," Plakas said.

Athletic Association Professor of Social Sciences and director of our atmospheric sciences program Marshall Shepherd was a guest of Raphael Miranda on MSNBC this week, talking about extreme weather, new satellite technology for forecasting and the polar vortex, among other subjects. Great job, Dr. Shepherd.

Creative writing professor and poet Ed Pavlić just returned from the West Bank, where he toured the region with other writers as well as government and NGO officials. He offers some poignant observations about the current conflict in this piece for Africa Is A Country:

213 years ago, by just a few days (July 25, 1801), there appeared a classified ad in the Augusta Chronicle (alas, no link from that year) announcing that:

The Senaticus Academicus had chosen a site for the university, "an institution deeply interesting to the present age, and still more to an encreasing posterity."