ASIST Scholarship

Executive Women International is now accepting applications for its A.S.I.S.T. Scholarship Program.

The $2,500 scholarship targets non-traditional female students and "helps provide financial support to [candidates] in a variety of transitional situations." The main idea of the program is to offer an avenue for individuals for whom it would otherwise be difficult to enroll in trade school, college (undergraduate school) or university (graduate school).

For more information on this opportunity as well as to download the application visit this link.

Career Day 2011

Mark your calendars for Georgia Perimeter College's campus-wide Career Day. This event will be held on Friday, March 25 from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m on the Clarkston campus.

The emphasis of Career Day 2011 will be to inform those interested in particular professions about how to adequately prepare themselves while they are in college. The event will feature an array of small, informative seminars and skills development workshops, all designed to give attendees a glimpse of a day in the life of those already working in the non-profit, corporate and government sectors. To complement the day's events Mark Butler, Labor Commissioner for the State of Georgia, will give the keynote talk. There will also be opportunities for Q&A as well as speed interviewing. Breakfast will be served.

This is a free event, but registration is required. (Note: The registration deadline has been extended from March 4 to Friday, March 18.)

For more information visit the GPC Career Day web page.

Social Networking Do's and Don'ts Personal Enrichment Workshop at GPC Decatur

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Ning and Youtube have become common means of communicating and expanding one's circle of friends and associates. College students, especially, are likely to invest much of their time in these kinds of online forums.

This being true, it is important to consider the ways that divulging information on these sites can affect individuals' social interactions, future job prospects and current finances.

To address this issue, the Advising, Counseling and Retention Services Department of Georgia Perimeter College's Decatur campus will present "Social Networking Do's and Don'ts," a workshop that will help college students "explore ways to maintain personal safety and boundaries and learn strategies to manage [their] image online."

This program will run on February 15 from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. in Building F, Room 2100 and on February 16 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon in the same location. Click here for more details about the event (as well as to learn of other personal enrichment workshops) and here to read a related article recently printed in U.S. News and World Report.

Georgia State University Mounts Black History Month Photography Exhibit on Women in SNCC

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was one of the many Civil Rights organizations that helped initiate change in the 1960s. Dozens of laws and a host of social, educational, agricultural and economic advancement programs that exist today came about, in part, because of their work.

Individuals such as Congressman John Lewis, former NAACP chairman Julian Bond, 1990 MacArthur "Genius" awardee Maria Varela were all involved with SNCC during their youth. Also involved was a twenty-something year old school teacher named Doris Derby.

Derby became a founding member of the New York branch of the SNCC and, upon moving from the Bronx to the Mississippi Delta, became a co-founder of the Free Southern Theatre. Eventually, Derby took it as her mission document the era through the taking of a photographs. Dr. Derby's photographs show not just the luminaries of the day but also "ordinary people doing extraordinary things."


During the month of February, "Reflections of Women Writers in SNCC" a three-part collection of Dr. Derby's photographs, will be on view in the Georgia State University Student Center Gallery. Click on the video below to her Dr. Derby speak about the exhibit:



Derby's images help convey a more holistic view of the '60s in that they depict humble aspects of the Civil Rights movement that could easily be overshadowed by the grand political stances which people now associate with the era. While Derby was involved with sit-ins and freedom rides, she also took care to document things like community arts groups, health clinics, organic food co-ops, youth and adult literacy programs that were formed in rural, Southern communites (often by the residents themselves, often by women) to address the communities' challenges.

Images such as those in "Reflections of Women Writers in SNCC" help bring history to life. When viewing photographs like these, viewers see faces reminiscent of relatives, friends, neighbors, co-workers and even themselves "in full light," as Derby has said. The images allow the viewer to look deeply into how the small gestures of everyday people-- when viewed collectively-- created a monumental moment in U.S. and world history.

Making Connections Film Line Up for Black History Month

Join the LTC during Black History Month as we screen two compelling and inspirational films: Akeela and the Bee and Ten Thousand Black Men Named George.

Vocabulary Building Secrets from Akeela and the Bee will feature the 2006 film that starred Laurence Fishburne, Angela Bassett and Keke Palmer. Akeela and the Bee is a crowd-pleasing film that tells the story of a child from South Los Angeles who must navigate a host of personal obstacles before she can earn a seat in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Akeela's tenacity and ultimate academic victory not only show the strength of the child's character but inspire her classmates and community. Attendees of this first screening in the LTC Making Connections film line up will themselves learn essential vocabulary building strategies and will leave the program with a handout that presents helpful mnemonic techniques. Vocabulary Building Secrets from Akeela and the Bee will be led by LTC supervisor Jerrie Brooks and will run on February 8 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Ten Thousand Black Men Named George is a 2002 dramatic depiction of the work of journalist and labor organizer Asa Philip Randolph's and the key role he played in helping to form the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids.

Incidentally, this Brotherhood focusing as it did on pay equity and better working conditions for blacks in the early 20th century hospitality industry, was a major precursor to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (See below for additional links on Pullman Porters and the Civil Rights Movement). Ten Thousand Black Men Named George stars Andre Braugher, Charles Dutton, Mario Van Peebles. Professor Shawn L. Williams will present an introduction to this film which will run on February 24 from 12:00 noon to 2:00 p.m.

These programs will run in the Learning and Tutoring Center's Reading lab. Both events are free but require pre-registration. To register, visit the lab in Building F, Suite 1200 or call (678) 891-2575.

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

The Last Pullman Porters Are Sought for a Tribute (New York Times article)

Pullman Porters Helped Build Black Middle Class (National Public Radio article)

Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle (documentary film)

Rising from the Rails: The Story of the Pullman Porters (documentary film)

Katyn Exhibit and Film at Clarkston Campus February 10 through 28

In the spring of 1943, a mass grave containing thousands of bodies was discovered in a forest in western Russia. This alarming discovery prompted an international investigation which revealed that the remains were those of Polish military prisoners of war. Also discovered were some civilians from various walks of life-- clergymen, doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers and others-- who had been forcibly removed from their homeland at the order of the Soviet Union.

This event has come to be known as the Katyn Massacre. For decades Katyn was a censored aspect of the official Polish-Russian history. Still, the memory and effect were retained within Polish communities worldwide.

Kaytn: Massacre, Politics, Morality, an exhibit commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Forest Massacre that has traveled to a host of prominent North American venues, will be on view at the Georgia Perimeter College Clarkston Campus from February 10-26. Through this installation which features documents, letters, photographs, three-dimensional artifacts and text viewers will be able to better understand this little-known example of genocide that occurred at the beginning of World War II.

In conjunction with the installation will be a screening of the 2007 Oscar-nominated film Katyn, directed by Andrzej Wajda. A reception and informal discussion will follow.

This duo of events, co-hosted by Georgia Perimeter College and the Polish Club of Atlanta, is free and open to the public.

Ryan Anthony Mahan, GPC Student and Science Fiction Author

Congratulations to Ryan Anthony Mahan on the publication of his science fiction novel, Whether Men Do. The book's title is taken from the B.F. Skinner quote "The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do."

Support this emerging young author by visiting a traditional or online bookstore to buy a copy of his probing exploration of the place of artificial intelligence in the modern world. Also, visit Ryan Anthony Mahan's blog by clicking here.