In Brief: campus news

December 15, 2003

Dean of Students reorganization

The Dean of Students’ Office is reorganizing by establishing the Office of Student Involvement and the Office of Student Integrity. Danielle McDonald was promoted to the new position of assistant dean for and director of student involvement. She will continue her role overseeing student organizations while adding Greek affairs and the Office of Community Service to her purview.

The office eliminated the assistant dean for non-academic discipline position, assigning many of those duties to former Ethics Education Specialist Ericka McGarity. Some of each position’s duties were redistributed to graduate positions, adding budget flexibility. Now holding the title of judicial coordinator, McGarity reports to Andrea Goldblum, assistant dean for academic integrity and director of student integrity. Goldblum will continue to investigate the most serious allegations of student misconduct, while McGarity will investigate lesser offenses. Both new offices will report to Senior Associate Dean for Student Life Karen Boyd.

The reorganization, said Boyd, will allow her office to have a balanced focus on its core values of cultivating student involvement and responding to student misconduct.

Top prize for research in Europe goes to Tech professor

Flexible video screens that can be rolled up and carried away like a newspaper? Wallpaper that can be turned on like a television to display images? It sounds like science fiction, but it’s the eventual goal of Professor Jean-Luc Bredas, a Georgia Tech researcher studying polymeric light-emitting diodes for displays, or PLEDDs.

Last month, the work earned his research team the most prestigious research prize given by the European Union.

Bredas, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is one of a group of researchers — some based in Europe, others here in Atlanta — who have earned the 2003 Descartes Prize, an award for outstanding scientific and technological achievements resulting from collaborative research conducted in Europe.

The award nomination is based upon these various research groups and their investigation of the revolutionary potential of PLEDDs for light and image display screens.

Bredas, a native of Belgium, joined Georgia Tech’s faculty this fall.

Students donate textbooks

Just because those used textbooks aren’t worth much to the college bookstore doesn’t mean they’re worthless. From December 8-12, students at Georgia Tech and other Georgia universities sent used textbooks to schools and libraries in Africa as part of a book drive for the non-profit organization Books for Africa.

Many students who try to sell their textbooks back to the college bookstore at the end of the semester find that the store either won’t buy it back because it’s not being used in class anymore, or get a fraction of the cost in resale. Putting the Books for Africa bins at all campus resale locations gives students a chance to put the books to good use rather than throwing them in the trash, said Jennifer Wu, the student organizer of the book drive at Tech.

During fiscal 2003, Books for Africa sent $17 million worth of books to the continent. Since the organization’s founding in 1988, Books for Africa has distributed more than 9 million books.