It's never too early to start planning your Study Abroad experience, whether for this year or next. What opportunities are out there? Well, let's visit the Study Abroad Fair Jan. 14 from noon-5 p.m. in the Tate Student Center and find out:

Very Happy 2015 from the Franklin College, with campus set to begin moving again quickly Monday, Jan. 5. Classes! Drop/Add. Bookstore. Tate Center. MLC. Welcome Back!

Also, we have several things set to be unveiled on the Franklin College web side of things - more announcements upcoming very soon.

Image: students near Memorial Hall on the first day of fall semester 2014, courtesy of UGA photo services. 

The university's Fall Semester 2014 graduate Commencement featured self-proclaimed "proud and fortunate son of the South" Gregory H. Robinson, the UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. A truly inspiring address that resonates with the realities of our past and our best hopes for the future. Dr. Robinson personifies the best of us in every way. Great words to take into the New Year.

Warm wishes for the holidays from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and all the best in the New Year to come. 2014 has been a great year on campus and we will rest and replenish over the holiday break with friends and family, looking forward to the opportunities of 2015.

As for the snowy arch, well, one can hope.

Somewhat counter-intuitive findings from a new study led by psychologist Justin Lavner, though they also remind us what is probably most obvious about relationships:

the severity and number of couples' overall problems stay stable over time, even as their relationship dissatisfaction grows.

Congratulations to LDSOA alum Jason Yi (M.F.A. 1995) who selected as one of 25 reciptients of the Joan Mitchell Foundation 2014 Painters & Sculptors Grant Program in the amount of $25,000 each.

Yi:

At the turn of the millennium, the cost to sequence a single human genome exceeded $50 million and the process took several years. Today, researchers can sequence a genome in a single afternoon for just few thousand dollars. Technological advances have ushered in the era of “Big Data,” where biologists collect immense datasets, seeking patterns that may explain important diseases or identify drug and vaccine targets. But what to do with it? Making data easy to find, use, access and organize for researchers has become one of the biggest challenges for science.

Long long ago in a land far far away not so far from here at all, crocodiles, dinosaurs, and birds all arose from early reptiles called thecodonts.

Using new computational methods developed by assistant professor of statistics Liang Liu, Travis Glenn of the College of Public health and others, an international team of scientists has shed more light on an obscure period of avian evolution and further untangle the bird family tree.

Kudos to the Georgia Magazine and writer Mary Jessica Hammes on her outstanding feature on history instructor Christopher Lawton and the Georgia Virtual History Project.

Read the article and the rest of the magazine here.

The Provost's Office highlighted some research collaborations in the state of Georgia among our premier institutions, the cummulative extramural support awarded these efforts and its effects. The summary included work by Franklin College professor of genetics, Jessica Kissinger: