We have a new website!

The Emory University Emeritus College website has been updated and completely redesigned to make it more user friendly. We hope you will visit the new website and take a few minutes to explore the site. It will take two clicks or fewer to access our video collection and newsletters (via the Resources menu at the top of the page) or register for a Lunch Colloquium if you’re not on the permanent list (via the Events menu at the top of the page).

Like any website, our new website is a work in progress. Dianne Becht will be learning how to keep it updated and Stacey Jones from the Communications and Marketing Department, who developed our website, will help us add a couple of new sections over the summer.

Please continue to send us news of your recent activities so that we can include them in the newsletter and add the information to our website.



One Last Reminder!

Call for Emeritus College Distinguished Awards Nominations

Each year, the Emory University Emeritus College (EUEC) offers two categories of awards – EUEC Faculty Awards of Distinction and the Distinguished Service Award. It is now time for nominations for this year’s awards. I would like to emphasize that self-nominations are not only permitted, they are encouraged. Too often, retired faculty are not fully aware of the achievements of their colleagues, and we must rely on self-disclosure. Please submit your nominations no later than April 29, 2022. The selection committee, composed of a chair and several former recipients of the awards, cannot accept late nominations.

You may submit your nomination by email to the EUEC office -- Dianne Becht Dianne.becht@emory.edu

The eligibility requirements are as follows:

EUEC Faculty Award of Distinction (formerly Distinguished Emeritus/Emerita Award):

• All retired Emory faculty who have been members of EUEC for at least two years.   
• Significant professional contributions since retirement to Emory University or its affiliated institutions as well as contributions to local, state, regional, national, or international communities or professional organizations that reflect the “spirit of Emory.”  
• A maximum of four awards given annually.
• This award may be conferred only once.

Distinguished Service Award: 

• All members of the EUEC, including those who have received the Distinguished Faculty Award of Distinction.
• Membership in the EUEC for at least two years.
• Significant service to Emory University or its affiliated institutions as well as to local, state, regional, national or international communities or other organizations that reflect the “spirit of Emory.” These contributions must have been made since retirement and are beyond those used to support a previous Distinguished Faculty Award.
• Limited to one award annually. No requirement that an award be given.

When you make your nomination, please include the following:

• Name of nominee
• Department or unit with which the nominee is associated
• Contact information (email, phone number, and mailing address)
• Name of nominator
• Department or unit with which the nominator is associated
• Contact information (email, phone number and mailing address)
• Description of why the nominee should receive this honor, in no more than two pages. Please do not exceed this limit but be certain to include enough information for the selection committee to make an informed decision. Please include a curriculum vitae if possible.

Previous recipients of these awards are shown on our website (http://www.emory.edu/emeritus/programs/distinguished-emeriti/index.html). Please let us know if you have questions about this process. Thank you in advance for your participation.

If recent recipients are not listed on our website, please inquire of Dianne Becht (dianne.becht@emory.edu) whether they include the person you plan to nominate. 

--Ron Gould                                                                                                           

Goodrich C. White Professor of Mathematics Emeritus

Chair, EUEC Honors and Awards Committee                               

And yet another Zoom update!

The most recent, as of this writing, is 5.10.4

If you have any problems getting the update, please contact Dianne at dianne.becht@emory.edu for more information.



STILL TIME: JOIN EMERITI TO SEE THE COUNTRY WIFE

This coming weekend, the Atlanta Shakespeare Company will be presenting the final four performances of its production of The Country Wife, the Restoration Comedy by William Wycherley, with a top-notch cast, directed by Jon Ammerman, whom Atlantans (and Emory folk) know well as actor, director, and playwright.

A satirical and bawdy comedy focused on the vices and hypocrisies of Restoration London, The Country Wife has been admired as a farce, condemned as immoral or frivolous, and praised as a sharp and sophisticated drama. Wycherley satirizes female hypocrisy, true and false masculinity and human folly through three neatly linked plots. His racy prose dialogue creates an energetic and complex comedy of sex that combines cynicism, satire and farce.

The play is running through Sunday, May 1. Tickets are still available  for all performances:

The show begins at 7:30 pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. (Lobby opens at 5:45 pm. Seating begins at 6:15 pm.) The show begins at 2:30 pm Sunday. (Lobby opens at 12:45 pm. Seating begins at 1:15 pm.)

Food and drink are available as always—including some tasty new additions to the menu.

Gretchen Schulz is not reserving a set of tickets for Emeritus College members (and their families and friends) for this production as she has done in the past. But she recommends attendance highly, and would love to have emeriti (and their families and friends) join her and other members at the final performance on Sunday afternoon,

May 1.

You can order tickets online by clicking here.

Or you may just go to the website of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company or call the Box Office at 404-874-5299. Gretchen recommends main floor or box seat tickets—though anyone who can handle stairs will be fine in the balcony, too.

Directions to the Shakespeare Tavern and information on parking (in the parking deck of Midtown Hospital across the street from the Tavern) are available on the website. So is the most up-to-date information on COVID-related policies. The statement online at the moment is this:

Mask wearing is now optional for vaccinated patrons, staff and volunteers. Mask wearing is strongly encouraged and we request masks be worn at all times for those who are unvaccinated. 

Of course, the site also says that things can change. We will continue to adapt and update our protocols and procedures in response to the coronavirus pandemic to keep everyone safe.

It would be lovely to have multiple members of our congenial group attending on Sunday, May 1. Do make arrangements to come if you can. Gretchen promises a good time will be had by all . . .

“Maria, 1681: Historical Legacies of Race, Gender, and Disposability”

Kali Gross

National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies

Zoom Lunch Colloquium

11:30 - 1:00 pm

PLEASE NOTE THIS MEETING IS ON A TUESDAY

Dr. Kali Gross, recently named a Carnegie Fellow for 2021-2022, will discuss her historical research and current book project on Black women and capital punishment.  She will map historical disparities, touch upon research challenges, and explore the need for histories on difficult subjects through the case of Maria, an enslaved woman burned at the stake in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1681. Convicted of arson for burning down her owner’s home and that of a local doctor, Maria exists in history as both an ominous omen of the nexus of race, gender, and justice, and an enigma that highlights the gaps in historical archives.  

About Kali Gross:

Kali Nicole Gross earned her BA from Cornell University in Africana Studies and her PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania. She is National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies here at Emory and also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

Her primary research explores Black women’s experiences in the U.S. criminal justice system and her expertise and opinion pieces have been featured in press outlets such as Vanity Fair, TIME, The Root, BBC News, Ebony, HuffPo, Warscapes, The Washington Post, and Jet. She has appeared on venues such as ABC, C-Span, NBC, and NPR.

Her award-winning books include Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910, winner of the 2006 Leticia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize, and Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America, winner of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. Her latest book, co-authored with Daina Ramey Berry, is A Black Women’s History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2020).

Her numerous grants and fellowships include the prestigious Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture appointment as Scholar-in-Residence, in both 2000 and 2007, a Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, hosted at Princeton University, in 2001-2002, and selection as a Public Voices Fellow for The Op-Ed Project, 2014-2015. In 2019-2021 she served as the National Publications Director of the Association of Black Women Historians.

In 2021, Dr. Gross was named one of 26 recipients of the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. Each fellow receives $200,000 to fund significant research in the social sciences and the humanities that addresses important and enduring issues confronting society.

Dr. Gross’s Carnegie project will shed new light on capital punishment in the United States through the histories of Black women disproportionately condemned. She aims “to better understand how it is that Black women became so grossly overrepresented among those put to death in the United States, especially by means of the electric chair.”

The fellowship is supporting Gross’s work at archives across the country to examine capital cases involving Black women. “This history is essential for ongoing efforts to eradicate structural racism in our nation’s criminal justice system,” says Dr. Gross, “and it will fill a crucial gap in historical studies of lethal punishment in America.”

We are most appreciative of Dr. Gross’s willingness to take time from the Carnegie-funded work that is keeping her so busy this year to speak to us on the subject of that work, work that Emory President Greg Fenves has described as “telling vital stories and deepening our understanding of our nation’s past and present.”



Lunch Colloquium - Monday, May 23, 2022

"BingeFest 2022: Seen Any Good Shows Lately?"

Voracious Viewers Anonymous, Assorted Members of the Emeritus College

Zoom Lunch Colloquium

11:30 - 1:00 pm

For this participatory Colloquium, we’ve decided to schedule a “BingeFest” instead of a “BookFest”—and ask for volunteers to recommend the shows through which they have sought to escape the realities of these trying times. If YOU have found some movies marvelous, some series irresistible, please let Gretchen know if you’d like to describe them to others who might enjoy them, too. Write her at gschulz@emory.edu, identifying the material you’d present, requesting five or (at most) ten minutes of time to do so. First come, first scheduled, until there’s no time left. And fair warning. If volunteers are lacking, Gretchen may claim leftover time to rave about the six seasons of Vikings she recently binged herself: 100-plus episodes. Just sayin’.  



New Members

Abdullahi (Abduh) An-Na'im, PhD, Charles Howard Candler Professor, Emory School of Law

Shomu Banerjee, PhD, Professor of Pedagogy in Economics

Kathy Lee Bishop, PT, DPT, FNAP, Assistant Professor, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine

Peter J. Brown, PhD, Professor of Anthropology and Global Health

Steven C. Buchman, MD, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, School of Medicine

Eric Hunter, PhD, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, GA Research Alliance

Eminent Scholar, Emory Vaccine Center

Uriel Kitron, PhD, MPH, Goodrich C. White Professor, Department of Environmental Sciences

S. Byron Milton III, MD, Assistant Professor, CRT Rehabilitation, Emory School of Medicine

Karyl C. Patten, DDS, MPH, Assistant Professor of Dentistry

Kathryn Wood, PhD, RN, Associate Professor, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing



In Memoriam

Donald Bruce McCormick

Fuller E. Callaway Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry

We are saddened to hear about the loss of well-known Professor Emeritus, Don McCormick.

From his daughter, Sue:

Donald Bruce McCormick, PhD, died April 21, 2022 at the age of 89. Don is survived by his wife, Jean, daughter, Sue (Cliff) in FL, sons Don (Kristen) in NH, and Allen in WA.

Things he’d want you to know: 

He won the Westinghouse Science Talent Award in high school – research on goldenrod galls – which paid for him to attend Vanderbilt. Professionally he was a brilliant biochemist who loved science. He devoted his life to the advancement of the role of vitamins in nutrition. In his long and distinguished career at Cornell he was the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor in the School of Nutrition. At Emory University he was Calloway Professor and Department Chair of Biochemistry in the Medical School. Over his lifetime he mentored many who went on to successful careers in research. He collaborated broadly - including the Spanish military and NASA. Upon “retirement,” he was instrumental in assisting with the launching of Emory’s Emeritus College. Don’s credo was curiosity and to never stop learning - he wanted that in others. After his retirement, he and Jean spent most of their time at their home in Scaly Mountain, NC.

What really matters: 

He loved nature (all things non-human, especially dogs and reptiles) and proudly proved he knew the Latin names for all of them. Raccoons and members of the rodent family worshipped him for feeding the birds - and therefore them. Pleasure travel was most often focused on wildlife (Galapagos, Africa, Australia, Asia, etc.). He strongly supported protecting the environment. He loved basketball - both as a participant and cheering on - especially his Vanderbilt team. Don was a lover of history and knew ALL about ancient Egypt. Pharaohs could be worked into any conversation, regardless of the original topic. Pogo and Peanuts could always make him laugh and elevate his mood, especially when shared with his daughter nearly every evening. Don adored his four-legged fuzzy children: Daisy, Wally, and Peppy who will miss him - and his clandestine snack distribution.  

He supported Highlands–Cashiers Land Trust, Highlands-Cashiers Humane Society, and The Emeritus College of Emory. If you are so inclined, you could honor him with donations in his honor. 

Those swings from our last walk can be found at one of Emory's newer facilities -- The Hatchery at Emory Point, located near the Emory Conference Center Hotel.

From the Emory News Center:

The Hatchery opened in February 2020 and is the university's newest space for student ideation and innovation, drawing on the strengths of Emory’s broad array of academic programs to facilitate meaningful connections at the university and across the innovation landscape in Atlanta and beyond.

Custom-built to inspire creativity, The Hatchery is a highly configurable, 15,000-square-foot facility that includes collaboration areas, a makerspace, a presentation and event space, classrooms, online tools, a breakroom, and more.

The university leased the building at Emory Point on 1578 Avenue Place, which previously housed Earth Fare supermarket.

The Hatchery is equipped to facilitate conversation, ideas, and projects early in the innovation process, with the hope that it can become a source of support for those who don’t already have an idea of what they want to work on.

The Hatchery’s occupancy capacity is approximately 300 people, and it includes an open event space that can hold 119 people. The innovation center will be accessible to all university students. The majority of the center’s space will be available for walk-in visitors, but there will also be reservable spaces available.

After two years of connecting people, programs and disciplines in support of innovation, The Hatchery is offering two new programs to support inspiring connections — The Emory Innovation Engine and The Innovation Speaker Fund. “With these new programs, we’re adding more support for students and those who design programs for students,” says Shannon Clute, director of The Hatchery. For more information click here.



I'm in the mood for walking outside....let's get some exercise and climb some stairs! This spot is usually quite busy during the semester but if you visit the campus in summer you may have the staircase to yourself for a challenging, but shaded, climb.