Contact by email:
Director (or send email to emeriti@emory.edu) Letters to the Editor Click on the above link to let us know what you think (or send email to emeriti@emory.edu)! |
Upcoming Events
January 25 Lunch Colloquium
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Contact Other Members
Activities
Find other members to get together for shared interests, whether it is forming a book club or a photography club, or getting together to take a hike. Send email to the following link to contact member who would like the same activity! If you would like to find out about a travel destination or find other EUEC members who would like to travel with you, send an email to:
Courses
If you would like to find other EUEC members interested in taking a MOOC together, an OLLI course together, or possibly teaching together in an OLLI course, click on the following link to send an email: |
|  | | This issue of our newsletter is sent to members and friends of the Emory University Emeritus College (EUEC). I hope the newsletter will help keep you informed about our activities and help you feel connected with our members throughout the U.S. On the left are links to our website and links to contact either me or the EUEC office.
With best wishes, Gray Gray F. Crouse Director, EUEC |
 Message from the DirectorWith this first issue of 2016, I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year!
There is a lot in this issue, and I hope you will be able to take time to read through it. There is a report on the Interdisciplinary Seminar led last fall by John Bugge; these seminars represent one of the best parts of EUEC and I encourage those of you who can to participate in, or even lead, a seminar and discover how stimulating they can be. Our Lunch Colloquiums begin again next Monday, and our lead-off speaker is one of our founding members, Don McCormick, who has also been a participant in several of our recent Interdisciplinary Seminars!
In terms of "new" for the New Year, I am hoping to start a "What I've Been Reading" feature for the newsletter. For this to work, we need recommendations from you about books you have read that you think other members will also enjoy, and I am hoping one of you will volunteer to edit this feature. See below for details. Also new is a Retirement Mentoring program for which we have our first trained EUEC members.
I really enjoy hearing from members about the various ways in which they are engaged in scholarly pursuits. We have a wide range of such activities in this issue, illustrating the many new paths that can open up in retirement. There is also some information on OLLI, a walk with Dianne, and a welcome to new members. We also have a Letter to the Editor--it would be great to hear from more of you!
I am very grateful to John Bugge, Herb Benario, and Gretchen Schulz for help with proofing and editing. |
 Lunch Colloquium January 25
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What I've Been Reading We hope to start a new feature in the newsletter. |
| | Faculty Activities
Our faculty continue to be active. Sam Carlton and George Jones illustrate the fun part of retirement, a group of EUEC members get high praise for their work, and an EUEC member (now at another university) has a new edition of his textbook. |
Responses about newsletter articles or news items or suggestions or comments are always welcome! |
Report on Fall 2015 Interdisciplinary SeminarJohn Bugge led an Interdisciplinary Seminar this past fall on Sapiens.
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The Retirement Mentoring program announced last June (see Volume 1, Issue 21) has now taken a major step forward. |
Teaching at OLLI OLLI is seeking more great teachers. |
New Members |
Walking the Campus with Dianne
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Lunch Colloquium January 25   Vitamin and Trace Mineral Supplements: The Good, the Bad, and the Uncertain
Donald B. McCormick, Callaway Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry, School of Medicine
It's that time of year when most of us have made some resolutions to do more, more, more to promote our health. But sometimes less is more, even, and maybe especially, where supposedly health-promoting dietary supplements are concerned. And no one (literally, no one in the world) is better equipped to explain this paradoxical phenomenon to us than Don McCormick, whose decades of work in this area have made him the go-to-man for academic and government and industry bodies seeking expertise of this special sort. Yes, as Don will tell us, there is a need for vitamin/mineral supplements for the few where birth defects affect absorption or metabolism or where a pathologic or accident-related onset has occurred. Some modest increases in intakes also may be warranted for the elderly where there are frequent decreases in B12 absorption and extra need for D with calcium to maintain bone mineralization. HOWEVER, there is no need for supplements in the majority of adults who obtain their micronutrients from a mixed diet that provides RDA levels, in whom there is no proven need for treatment for non-deficiencies diseases. Well we might say "Who knew?" At least we'll all know-once we're done hearing Don present, in this, the first of our Lunch Colloquiums for the Happy New Year. About EUEC Founding Member Don McCormick: Don earned his bachelor's (chemistry and math, 1953) and doctorate (biochemistry, 1958) at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. His dissertation research was on pentose and pentitol metabolism. He was then an N.I.H. postdoctoral fellow (1958-1960) at the University of California-Berkeley where his research was on enzymes that convert vitamin B6 to the coenzyme pyridoxal phosphate. He has had sabbaticals in the chemistry departments in Basel University (Switzerland), in the University of Arizona, and in the Biochemistry Department in Wageningen (Netherlands). His academic appointments have been at Cornell University (1960-1978) in Ithaca, NY, where he became the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry and at Emory University (1979-present) in Atlanta, GA, where he served as the Fuller E. Callaway Professor and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and the Executive Associate Dean for Basic Sciences in the School of Medicine. There are annual Lectures and a Graduate Award in his name at Emory. His research has been on cofactors and enzymes with emphases on chemistry, biochemistry, and nutrition of vitamins (esp. B6, riboflavin, biotin, and lipoate), coenzymes, and metal ions. He has been a consultant and served on numerous committees that include service for N.I.H., N.C.I., F.A.S.E.B., I.O.M./N.A.S., N.A.S.A., F.A.O./W.H.O., and groups for international symposia on cofactors. He continues to consult and advise on vitamin and trace mineral subjects. He has over 500 publications, has been on the editorial boards of several journals of biochemistry and nutrition, and has served as editor of volumes on Vitamins and Coenzymes in the Methods in Enzymology series, Vitamins and Hormones, the Handbook of Vitamins, and the Annual Review of Nutrition. He is a member of numerous scientific societies, including those in biochemistry, biophysics, chemistry, and nutrition, and has received such honors as a Bausch & Lomb Award, Westinghouse Science Scholarship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Wellcome Visiting Professorships (Univ. of Florida, Medical College of Pennsylvania), and named visiting professorships (Univ. of California-Davis, Univ. of Missouri). He has received awards from the American Institute of Nutrition (Mead Johnson, Osborne and Mendel) and Bristol-Myers Squibb/Mead Johnson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Nutrition Research. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Nutritional Sciences, and the American Institute of Chemistry. You can find out more about Don's activities by visiting his website. Click here to return to top |
New Members RetiredLucas Carpenter, PhD, Charles Howard Candler Professor Emeritus of English, Oxford College F. Brown Whittington, Jr., PhD, Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus Welcome to our newest members! |
What I've Been Reading EUEC members are voracious readers and interested in many areas outside their own academic specialties. Even in retirement there is never enough time to read all that we might want to, so how do we decide what is worth reading? Usually the process is a bit random, perhaps relying on a friend's recommendations or a review in a newspaper or magazine. How about a recommendation from a colleague in EUEC? In this new section of the newsletter, What I've Been Reading, we are requesting that members send in recommendations for books that they think other EUEC members would enjoy reading. The recommendation should be in the form of several paragraphs with a total of 300-500 words. The text should describe something about the book with a focus on why it would be of interest to other EUEC members. A bit of wit and humor in the recommendation would be a plus-this is not the place for a repeat of the back cover! We are looking for a member who would volunteer to be the editor for this new feature. The duties of the editor would be to select recommendations for each issue, hoping for a balance of topics, and do some light editing of the responses. Many of you have lots of editing expertise. Helping to edit this section would be a way of contributing to the ongoing intellectual exchange of EUEC members, even if you aren't able to attend EUEC programs. Send your book recommendations to emeriti@emory.edu. If you are willing to volunteer to be the features editor (or volunteer someone else!), please send a brief description of your interest and background to emeriti@emory.edu. Click here to return to top |
Fall 2015 Interdisciplinary Seminar During the just-completed fall semester of 2015, from September until a few weeks before Christmas, eleven members of the Emeritus College took part in weekly seminar meetings that focused initially on just one book, Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harper Collins, 2015). As a kind of old-fashioned "universal history," the book in fact raises some of the biggest questions we now face about ourselves as a species, and along the way it manages to invoke almost all the research disciplines and fields of study to be found in a modern university - from history to biogenetics, from economics to linguistics, from anthropology to literature. For that reason it promised to serve well as a jumping-off point for a thoroughly interdisciplinary series of discussions in what came to be called "The Sapiens Seminar." Members first read Harari's book, then chose a prominent theme from it that seemed most pertinent to their own particular scholarly or personal interests. They also chose supporting materials from their own fields that related to that topic; these readings then became the foundation of each person's seminar presentation of that topic and of the lively discussion that ensued. The resulting "syllabus" for the course was an unruly but exciting grab-bag of intellectual explorations that continually inspired anticipation about what the next week's meeting would bring. There was never any disappointment! Here are the topics we covered with their presenters, all of them ultimately inspired by our foundational text, Sapiens: - Fiction-making as the source of our unrivaled success as a species (John Bugge)
- Progress in our understanding the role of DNA and genes in human evolution (Don McCormick)
- The role of imperial visions in North America (John Juricek)
- Nature/Nurture: What's really behind being the "Second Sex" (Linda Hubert)
- Climate and human evolution (Woody Hickcox)
- The history of white people (and the myth of race) (Marilynne McKay)
- The Hanseatic League and the growth of mercantile capitalism (Viola Westbrook)
- Othello - racial, sexual, cultural conflict (Gretchen Schulz)
- "Outsider" archeology and prehistoric civilization (Linda Gooding)
- Schiller's Aesthetic Education as an antidote to contemporary scientific materialism (Delia Nisbet)
- The artist as maker - and victim - of myth (Katherine Mitchell)
A mere list of topics cannot do justice to the richness and complexity of the discussions the seminar actually germinated week after week, nor can it convey anything of the spirit of infectious collegiality that seemed to grow more cordial as the semester went on. We all learned a great deal from each other, and most of us were inspired to follow up on lines of inquiry that each seminar raised but could not fully satisfy in the brief space of two hours. We concluded the semester by asking each other for suggestions about topics for future interdisciplinary seminars. If you have an idea for such a seminar, please don't hesitate to submit it to the Emeritus College at emeriti@emory.edu. |
Teaching at OLLI As last announced in the November 9 issue, our Teaching and Mentoring Committee is seeking EUEC members willing to teach in OLLI. (For information about OLLI, click here.) OLLI courses are usually 8 sessions in length, and many of our members have taught entire courses by themselves. Many of our members might not be able to commit to a course of that length, or might feel they would not have enough material to last for 8 sessions. EUEC member Jim Keller has created a course, currently being offered for the second time, that has an overarching theme, but uses 8 different faculty, mostly EUEC members, each teaching one session. To see the syllabus for his course, The Emory 2016 Emeritus College Presents: Eight Physicians Share Their Expertise on Timely Medical Topics, click here. The course started on January 13, but you might still be able to enroll for the remainder of the sessions--you would need to contact OLLI to see if that were possible. You can click here to read a recent article in the New York Times that describes the type of courses offered at OLLI and how rewarding they are. If you are interested in teaching, or organizing, an OLLI course, you can contact EUEC for more details. Mary Ellen Nessmith is a Work-Life Specialist in the Emory Caregiver Support Program and has been very helpful to EUEC in sending us information about her programs and making them available to EUEC members. She attended the training workshop for Retirement Mentoring (see elsewhere in this newsletter) in order to learn about our program. She highly recommended one of the current OLLI courses given by Paul Black. "I have been partnering with Paul Black since the inception of his law firm. He has a unique perspective from both the professional and personal point of view. This will be an incredible planning tool for anyone considering retirement, currently in retirement or managing the care of family members." To learn more about his course and to register (late) for it, you can click here. Click here to return to top. |
Faculty Activities  Carlton R. "Sam" Young
Professor Emeritus of Church Music
EUEC member Sam Young is an internationally known composer, having written much music for the United Methodist Church and global Christianity; he received an honorary degree from Emory in 2003. That, however, does not mean he can't have any fun as a composer! As proof, he sent in his composition "Let us synergy together" that he says can be used "For ecclesial and temporal sales conferences, assemblies, board meetings, and political rallies" (and probably for all-too-many University functions!). You can open a copy of the printed music and words by clicking here. You can then listen to the music being played by clicking here. (Note that the music file plays through the music only once. If you want accompaniment for all of the verses, you will need to replay the music file!). George H. Jones
Goodrich C. White Professor of Biology, Emeritus
EUEC Member George Jones, in the process of his retirement, wrote Becoming SNAF-U, his first work of fiction, published in 2013. On the back cover, one reads the following: Becoming SNAF-U takes place at Small but National, Aspiring to be Famous, University, abbreviated as SNAF-U, an obvious play on the well-known acronym which means "Situation Normal, All F***** Up." It tells the hilarious tale of the lengths to which an American university will go to get back into the top twenty-five rankings of a national news magazine. This quest for academic prestige, excellence and fame ends up leading the University and its staff down a slippery slope. Along the way, the reader will encounter a raft of colorful characters including Dean Ty McTavish, the book's protagonist, the curmudgeon Leo Da Vinci and the alluring Jamais Dimanche. Although Becoming SNAF-U is a work of fiction, recent reports of US universities manipulating data in order to look better to national news media suggest that it may not be all that far from the truth.
Although this is a work of fiction, it doesn't take too much imagination to see the relation of this material to George's professional life! You may read more about this book by clicking here. David Cook
Professor of Film Studies, retired
EUEC Member (and currently Professor and Department Head of Media Studies at UNC Greensboro) David Cook is pleased to see the forthcoming publication of the fifth edition of his book, A History of Narrative Film." (See David's letter, below.) More information about the book is available by clicking here. Of interest is the description of this book as "bolder, briefer, and better than ever," although its 864 pages would not count as "brief" in many disciplines! EUEC Members Deborah Ayer, Brenda Bynum, David Hesla, Linda Matthews, John Matthews, Don Saliers, and Holly York
The National Endowment for the Humanities is a significant funder for the Beckett Project. The EUEC members listed above have all made substantial contributions to the editing of the letters of Samuel Beckett and Volume III has just recently been published. In the past year, we have heard in detail about this project in our Lunch Colloquiums from Lois Overbeck, Brenda Bynum, and Martha Fehsenfeld. The Beckett Project recently heard from their Program Analyst at NEH who wrote: Yes, Volume III - as were the other two - is a resounding success, and makes yours a model project. What more can I say? The Emeritus College volunteers sound like a real treasure. What nice support from Emory. And it's also great - though adding more work - to have newly-acquired or discovered letters available to you. Congratulations to our EUEC members who are contributing in such an important way to ongoing Emory research! You can read more about the Beckett Project at their website and Facebook page. Herbert W. Benario
Professor of Classics, Emeritus
Herbert W. Benario Lecture in Roman Studies
Michael Squire Troy Story: Miniaturizing Epic in Roman Art
Thursday, January 21, 2016 | 7:30 p.m.
Michael C. Carlos Museum Reception Hall
The Benario Lecture in Roman Studies was established through a generous donation by Herbert W. Benario, emeritus professor of classics at Emory University and author of numerous books on such Roman authors as Tacitus and Caesar. For this, the fifth annual Benario lecture, the Department of Classics is proud to host Michael Squire, reader in classics and classical art history at King's College London and visiting scholar at Stanford University. Squire is the author of many articles and several books, including The Art of the Body: Antiquity and Its Legacy and Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. |
Dear EUEC, I have been happily receiving the EUEC newsletter by email for a number of years now.
I retired from Emory's FIlm Studies Department in May of 2007 to take a position as Head of the Broadcasting and Cinema Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where I am still teaching as a Professor of Media Studies. (During the 33 years I was at Emory, 1973-2007, I was successively on the faculty of the English Department, the Department of Theater and Film Studies, the ILA, and finally the Film Studies Department, so I have many friends and acquaintances among your members.) I thought you might be interested in the publication this month by W. W. Norton of the Fifth Edition of my HISTORY OF NARRATIVE FILM (1981; 1990; 1996; 2004; 2015). This book was long used as a standard text in Film Studies courses at Emory, as well as many other colleges and universities, so it might have some interest for you readers. Just FYI, I'm also the author of "'If You Build It, [They] Will Come': The BIrth and Growth of Film Studies at Emory," in Gary Hauk's and Sally Wolff King's WHERE COURAGEOUS INQUIRY LEADS: THE EMERGING LIFE OF EMORY UNIVERSITY (2010). Thanks very much for continuing to send me the newsletter, where I have enjoyed reading about the recent work of Ron Schuchard (my first friend in the English Department) and Ted Weber (from whom I bought my first house). With best wishes for the New Year. David Cook
Professor of Media Studies |
Retirement Mentoring
A description of the Retirement Mentoring program as proposed last June can be found by clicking here. In the period since that announcement, Marilyn Lineberger and Paula Gomes of the Faculty Staff Assistance Program and our own Pat Douglass have put a lot of work into devising a mentoring program and, perhaps more importantly, putting together a workshop that would give appropriate training to EUEC members who volunteer to be retirement mentors. The training workshop for the first EUEC volunteers was held on Thursday, January 14. | | John Bugge, Helen O'Shea, Rudi Makkreel, and Howard Rollins |
Our first Retirement Mentors are shown above. Everyone agreed that Marilyn, Paula, and Pat had put together a workshop that was helpful and informative. We hope to advertise this mentoring program in the next few weeks. If you know faculty who are starting to think about retirement, you might suggest to them that this program could be very helpful in developing a successful and fulfilling retirement plan. We have a great set of trained mentors and this program has the potential to be an enormous help to our faculty colleagues. Thanks to our mentors and to Marilyn, Paula, and Pat who have developed this program! |
Walking the campus with Dianne
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Emory University Emeritus College The Luce Center
825 Houston Mill Road NE #206 Atlanta, GA 30329 |
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