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Release date: Feb. 14, 2003 News From Emory: Major New Faculty, Record Applications, Ph.D Job SuccessEmory University's reputation for rigorous academic programs, pioneering research and top-rated professional schools depends on the contributions of many individuals--our students, faculty and staff. This newsletter offers a snapshot of what's going on in the Emory community, and how we fit into and often lead current trends in higher education. We can't begin to cover everything that's happening at Emory within a brief e-mail, given the fact that we're a comprehensive university with more than 11,500 undergraduate and graduate students; professional schools of medicine, business, law, theology, nursing and public health; an extensive health care delivery system; and a partnership with The Carter Center. But through these stories about the university and the people who comprise its community, we aim to give you a sense of Emory's energy and character. For more information, see links below, or contact Nancy Seideman, director of Emory's Office of University Media Relations, 404-727-0640, nseidem@emory.edu. For more news from Emory, our news Web site is www.emory.edu/central/NEWS/. ****** EMORY BECOMING TOP CENTER FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN LITERATURE Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa and noted African-American literature scholar Michael Awkward are joining the faculty of Emory University. These scholars add to the already strong Emory core in African-American literature and research. Komunyakaa, currently at Princeton, will be the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Poetry. Awkward, currently at the University of Pennsylvania, will be the Longstreet Professor of English. These appointments establish Emory's English department as one of the preeminent centers in the country for the study and creation of African-American literature, adding as it does to an English faculty that already includes poet Natasha Trethewey, scholars Lawrence Jackson (named in January by Black Issues in Higher Ed as a rising star among black faculty), Frances Smith Foster and Mark Sanders, augmented by the well-known journalist and author Nathan McCall in journalism and the literary scholar Rudolph Byrd in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts. Emory ranked second among national universities in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education's most recent annual rankings of percentages of black faculty and overall racial diversity. For more on this story, click here. ****** EMORY PH.Ds HOT COMMODITIES IN A TOUGH JOB MARKET The academic job market tends to be tough even in the best of economic times, and in recent years the competition has been especially keen as colleges and universities tighten their own budgets, making prospects bleak for landing the elusive tenure-track job. But at Emory, recent Ph.D. graduates are beating the odds and landing plum positions across the country. The success of Emory's newest crop of doctorates reflects years of intense cultivation by departments in the university's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The departments attribute their success to recruiting top students and providing intensive, broad-based and interdisciplinary programs that make their graduates attractive to liberal arts colleges and universities looking for versatile and prepared faculty. For more, click here. ****** RECORD NUMBER OF APPLICANTS FOR EMORY COLLEGE THIS FALL An all-time high number of students have applied for undergraduate admission to Emory for this fall, breaking a record set in 1996. Approximately 10,300 high school students from around the world are vying for the 1,250 spots in the fall class. Between 35 and 37 percent of the class already has been filled through two rounds of early decision. ****** NIH-FUNDED PROGRAM TRAINS SCIENCE RESEARCHERS AND TEACHERS More than 25 postgraduate science students in Atlanta universities are training to become researchers and college teachers in the biological sciences through the Fellowships in Research and Science Teaching (FIRST) program. The FIRST program has just completed its second year of a five-year grant of nearly $7 million from the National Institutes of Health to Emory and five historically black institutions within the Atlanta University Center. For details, go here. ****** FIRST YEAR SUCCESS FOR KENNETH COLE FELLOWSHIP, SECOND CLASS UNDER WAY Emory's Kenneth Cole Fellowship in Community Building and Social Change--the competitive 12-month undergraduate program that combines research, classroom teaching and community service--just finished its first year and results show the program has effected change in the community and with the students. Working with five different Atlanta community service organizations this summer, 17 Cole Fellows helped to: prepare new policy for affordable housing in the city of Atlanta; inform the way $5 million in funds are programmed for alleviating traffic congestion and reducing pollution; assist residents of a public housing community define the health issues preventing them from achieving self-sufficiency; broker the organization of intown neighborhoods to address issues related to gentrification; and define an effective approach to addressing the needs of women of color affected by and infected with HIV/AIDS. Their work wasn't a one-shot volunteer opportunity either; future Cole fellows will pursue similar issues to effect ongoing change. To learn more about what sets the Cole Fellowship apart, click here. ****** COMPUTER LAB MAKES LEAP INTO SLEEK, MULTIMEDIA FUTURE The typical campus computer lab of cookie-cutter cubicles and tired word-processing machines may go the way of the typewriter as universities meet the new technology needs of today's students and faculty. Emory's recently revamped Cox Computing Center is a vision of the future with a sleek, high-tech space designed specifically for faculty/student interaction and dedicated to collaborative academic activity. The innovative space has created a buzz among students as well as leaders from other universities, according to Donald Harris, Emory's vice provost for information technology. Before constructing the lab, Emory consulted with other schools, such as the University of Chicago, Georgia Institute of Technology and Northwestern University, to see what changes they were making. Emory ultimately created its lab from scratch, incorporating ideas from across the nation, Harris says. For more, go here. ****** IMPORTANT YEATS LETTERS ACQUIRED BY EMORY Emory has augmented its world-class Irish literary archives with the correspondence of Irish actress and activist Maud Gonne and the poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats. Among the 370 letters of Gonne to Yeats and 30 of his to her are several that have never been published. "Yeats' unrequited love for Maud Gonne over 40 years generated many of his greatest poems, and thus the 400 surviving letters that delineate their personal relationship in the midst of Irish politics and culture from 1893 to 1938 make their correspondence among the most important in 20th-century Ireland," says Ronald Schuchard, Goodrich C. White Professor of English and Irish literary scholar. For more, click here ****** ATLANTA BIOTECH NETWORK EXPANDS CAREER OPTIONS FOR SCIENCE PH.Ds For Ph.D. students in the sciences who want a life outside the lab, career options can be limited. At Emory, students took their future job potential into their own hands and founded the Atlanta Biotech Network (ABN) to match their skills and knowledge with Georgia's burgeoning biotechnology field. Similar to programs at Harvard, Stanford, Yale and Johns Hopkins universities, Emory's ABN is a nonprofit, student-run organization that connects students interested in biotechnology with Southeastern biotech and health care-related firms, as well as venture capitalists and patent lawyers. To learn more, click here. ****** EMORY AGAIN RANKS AS TOP 10 PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER PROVIDER Emory ranked eighth in the nation among midsize colleges and universities that produced the most Peace Corps volunteers in 2002. With some 6,300 undergraduates, Emory is smaller than all but one of the top 10 mid-size schools in the Peace Corps ranking, and is half the size of the top two in the category. For more on the Peace Corps rankings, click here.
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