Zoom update!

The most recent, as of this writing, is 5.11.1

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





Lunch Colloquium - Monday, July 18, 2022

“Demystifying and Meeting the Affordable Housing Challenge”

Terri Montague

McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow and Senior Lecturer,

School of Law, The Center for the Study of Law and Religion

Zoom Lunch Colloquium

11:30 - 1:00 pm

As the US economy continues to recover from the global pandemic, the housing affordability crisis worsens, leaving public agencies, private developers, and community advocates scrambling to meet a growing demand and unmet housing needs. Meanwhile, millions of cost-burdened households daily live threatened with eviction or foreclosure and facing persistent inequality in housing opportunities. This presentation discusses the leading factors and conditions that contribute to the worsening housing affordability challenges facing American families and communities. It will highlight the significance and nature of the affordable housing challenge; overview the key housing system dynamics, drivers, and conventional approaches; foreground evolving market dynamics and emerging strategies that can help to overcome current barriers and limitations of conventional approaches; and explore what current calls for “racial equity” may mean for future affordable housing policy and practices.

About Terri Montague:

Terri Montague is the McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow and Senior Lecturer in Law in the Emory University School of Law and the Center for the Study of Law and Religion.

She received her BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and holds a Master’s degree in both City Planning and Real Estate Development from MIT, another Master’s in Religion from the Gordon-Conwell Seminary, another Master’s in Theological Studies from the Candler School of Theology, and a JD from Emory Law School.

Dr. Montague is a multi-disciplinary scholar, attorney, and leader.  She comes to Emory after seven years in the Office of the General Counsel at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in Washington.  She was Program Services Attorney, providing legal interpretation, advice, and services to program clients in the office(s) of Housing, Community Planning and Development, Public Housing, and the Departmental Enforcement Center on legal, program, and regulatory questions. In the Office of Deputy General Counsel for Housing Programs, she developed guidance, principles, and tools to systematically embed equity and redress inequities in HUD policies and programs. In the Office of Legislation and Regulations, she crafted the Department’s strategy and initial draft regulation to implement Executive Order 13891, “Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents.”

Prior to this recent work with HUD, she was the founding President and Chief Executive Officer of ATLANTA BELTLINE, INC., Atlanta, GA, from 2006 – 2009. She was also the President and Chief Operating Office for Enterprise Community Partners, INC., in Columbia, MD, from 2001 – 2006.

Such a remarkable combination of wide-ranging academic expertise and real-world experience has prepared Dr. Montague well for the work she is undertaking in her new position at Emory—work that will allow her to pursue her passion for thriving, sustainable communities, economic justice, and public theology.



Lunch Colloquium -- Monday, August 1, 2022

“Screening and Discussion of Common Good Atlanta:

Breaking Down the Walls of Mass Incarceration”

Hal Jacobs

Independent Documentary Filmmaker

Sarah Higinbotham

Assistant Professor of English, Oxford College,

and co-founder, Common Good Atlanta

In 2008, Sarah Higinbotham, while a PhD student at Georgia State University, wanted to teach a literature class in a Georgia prison. But she soon discovered that no college programs existed in Georgia prisons at the time. So, she started one. Today, an all-volunteer group of over 70 faculty from six universities has reached over 700 incarcerated students in four prisons, plus a downtown course for prison-impacted people. At the heart of the program’s mission is the belief that broad, democratic access to higher education for people affected by incarceration strengthens the common good of our communities.

Common Good Atlanta: Breaking Down the Walls of Mass Incarceration (2022, 57 min.), directed by Hal Jacobs, looks at the evolution of the program and its impact on both students and instructors. Incarcerated students find an intellectual freedom that encourages growth and dignity, while instructors find a stimulating and transformative environment for the liberal arts. This upbeat, uplifting film conveys the excitement and creativity of the program while also serving as a call to action to community and policy leaders.

Given improvements in the pandemic situation, it has been possible for Hal to schedule public screenings of the film (like that at the Plaza Theater on May 18). Some emeriti may have been able to attend one of those. But now Hal has arranged a virtual screening for Emeritus College members. Here is the link to the film that will go live on July 26 and stay live through August 3:

https://www.commongoodatldoc.com/private-screening-cgaemeritus

The August 1 Lunch Colloquium will take the form of a “Zoom talkback” with Hal himself, Sarah Higinbotham, and both alumni and instructors from the Common Good Atlanta program.

About Hal Jacobs:

Hal Jacobs has an MS in Communications from Georgia State University. He worked at Georgia State for 16 years, managing publications and also the website for the Decision Sciences Institute, a professional association of business school professors at the university. In 2002, he began 12-plus years of work at Emory, first as a freelance editor working on several university-wide commission reports and then as a writer/content producer in Emory College. In 2014, he left Emory to become an independent documentary filmmaker, forming the company HJacobs Creative with his son, Henry, whose skills in film/photography, music, and editing complement his father’s skills in writing and developing written/video resources for higher education.

Their work focuses on arts, social justice, and the environment, and telling the stories of people whose voices [in those areas] need to be heard. The Lillian Smith documentary, Breaking the Silence, was their first full-length project. And many members of the Emeritus College will remember the Lunch Colloquium from the summer of 2020 when Hal (and Brenda Bynum, who was integral to the project) discussed this film that he had made available to EC members via a virtual screening. The film has since received the 2021 Jack Spadero Documentary Award from the Appalachian Studies Association.

As noted above, this summer Hal is offering us another virtual screening and follow-up discussion, this time of his newest film, Common Good Atlanta: Breaking Down the Walls of Mass Incarceration. In our Colloquium, he and Sarah Higinbotham, will talk about the program and the film. She is the assistant professor of English on the Oxford College campus of Emory who launched the amazing prison education program that brings an accredited liberal arts curriculum to students behind bars.

We might finally mention that Hal and his team at HJCreativeare are now working on a full-length documentary about Atlanta’s Northside Tavern and blues matriarch Ellyn Webb. As he says, “It’s a great story — a slice of Atlanta history — about how she transformed her family’s little Westside neighborhood working-class bar in the early 1990s to one of the Southeast’s premiere blues dives before her death in 2017.” You may learn more about this project (and opportunities to support it) at https://tinyurl.com/2p95b474. The film will debut in 2023.

About Sarah Higinbotham:

Sarah Higinbotham received her BA from the University of Richmond, her MA from the University of Hawaii, and her PhD (in English) from Georgia State University. While earning her PhD, she taught college courses inside a Georgia State Prison. Soon, with colleague Bill Taft, she co-founded a nonprofit (Common Good Atlanta) that connects universities with prisons, work that is rooted in the belief that human dignity flourishes, and communities become stronger, when access to higher education is equitable. Common Good Atlanta now offers accredited college courses in four Georgia prisons, plus a downtown course for prison-impacted people. To date, an all-volunteer group of over 70 faculty from six universities has reached over 700 incarcerated students.

Sarah has collaborated with Hal Jacobs in making the documentary about the program that premiered this past fall: Common Good Atlanta: Breaking Down the Walls of Mass Incarceration. The two of them (and others involved, including CGA alums) will be discussing the program and the film in the Lunch Colloquium described just above.

Before joining the Oxford College faculty in 2017, Sarah taught Shakespeare and Milton at Georgia Tech for three years as a Marion L. Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow. She also was a Folger Shakespeare Library Residential Fellow in 2017 researching early modern juries, assize sermons, sentencing rubrics, judges’ notebooks, and legal records. She studied paleography at the Folger in 2018 and rare book bindings at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School in 2019.

At Oxford, Sarah continues to study and teach Shakespeare and Milton and early modern literature, focusing when she can on the intersections of literature and law. Besides writing about the violence of the law in early modern England and critical prison theory, she also writes about human rights in literature, as in her 2015 book from Oxford University Press, co-authored with Jonathan Todres, Human Rights in Children’s Literature: Imagination and the Narrative of Law.  And it won’t surprise you to learn that Sarah works with students who are interested in criminal justice reform, facilitates undergraduate peer tutoring in Georgia’s prisons, and oversees summer internships involving prison work, as well.



Vanguard Retirement Account Changes

For Faculty Who Have Retirement Funds at Vanguard

In the September 15, 2021 issue of this newsletter, I wrote about the second step (and I thought final step) in the settlement of the 403(b) lawsuit against Emory. There is another change being made this coming September, only for those faculty who have Emory funds that are maintained at Vanguard. If you don’t have any such funds, you can safely skip the rest of this article. Everyone who has such funds was supposed to have been notified with a letter sent on May 16. I did not get such a letter; when I contacted HR, a search was made that apparently revealed an error in the setup for sending out the letter such that I was not included. Therefore, there may be some of you who should have received the letter but did not. You can read the letter and the flyer that were sent out to retirees by clicking on the links at the end of this article.

As I explained previously, the changes in response to the lawsuit settlement were to reduce the number of funds available, thus reducing the fees associated with the funds. It is not clear that the September change is a direct result of the lawsuit, but the change eliminates Vanguard as a recordkeeper, leaving only Fidelity Investments and TIAA as recordkeepers, with a resulting reduction of the yearly fees charged for an account in Fidelity. Emory retirement funds held at Vanguard will be moved to Fidelity Investments. If you have funds at Vanguard, on September 1 those funds will automatically be moved to Fidelity Investments. 

Fidelity has set up a website specifically for this change; you can access that website by clicking here. At the bottom of that website page is a link to what appears to be the same flyer sent out in May. There is another link to an FAQ document that when I last checked was 21 pages long. At the top of the website page are three tabs for additional information; the “Meet with Us” tab has links to webinar recordings explaining the change.

If you are retired and no longer having contributions made to your Vanguard Fund, there are only a few steps you will need to take. These can be done after the funds move to Fidelity (but see below). Everyone affected by this change should receive more information at the end of July. My current understanding of these steps is as follows:

1) Your beneficiary designations will not transfer. Therefore, you will need to designate your beneficiaries for your transferred funds. If no beneficiaries are listed, the remainder of the retirement plan at your death will be distributed according to your will; that will be a longer and more complicated process and may not be the result you would desire.

2) At some point, if you don’t have a Fidelity account, you will need to create one at http://www.netbenefits.com/. There will be instructional webinars on how to use that site in August. However, you can set up an account in Fidelity at any point if you currently don’t have one, and even designate your beneficiaries before transfer of your funds in September. If you do that now, you will not have to be concerned about remembering to do so at a later date.

3) If you are retired, you are presumably having at least your RMD (Required Minimum Distribution) taken out of your Vanguard accounts. Here is what is said in the FAQ about that process:

“I am retired. How will the move to Vanguard impact my distributions (including required minimum distributions)?

Your distribution information will be given to Fidelity by Vanguard; however, if you are expecting a payment during the blackout period, it may be delayed until the transition has been completed and your account fully reconciled. If you have a distribution due during the blackout period, please contact Vanguard before the blackout period begins at 800-523-1188.

If you have distributions set up electronically, you will need to contact Fidelity after the blackout period is lifted to establish banking information with Fidelity. You can do so by calling 800-343-0860 or going online to www.NetBenefits.com/Emory. Until you set up instructions, Fidelity will mail you a check.”

More information about this process should be coming to you in late July and August. In the meantime if you have questions, you can contact the Emory Healthcare Benefits Resource Center at 404.686.6044 or email ehc.hr.benefits@emoryhealthcare.org or the Emory University Benefits and Worklife Department at 404.727.7613 or email hrbenef@emory.edu.

--Gray Crouse

To view a copy of the Retirement Changes Letter please click here.

To view a copy of the Retirement Changes Flyer please click here. 



Program / Event of Interest

Amy Aidman, Senior Lecturer Emerita from the Emory Film and Media Department and fellow EUEC member, is currently involved with the Atlanta Children's Film Festival and would like to share information on an upcoming event. 

Amy studied Broadcasting at the University of Florida, got an MA in Film and Video Production at the University of Michigan, and a PhD in Communications Research at the University of Illinois. Her dissertation looked at preschoolers’ learning from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. At the University of Illinois and at Emory she taught courses on children and media. Media education and media literacy have been at the heart of what she's done professionally and are still a strong motivation.

At Emory she collaborated with Kids Video Connection, an Atlanta non-profit that teaches video production and media literacy to underserved youth. The Center for Faculty Development and Excellence funded that collaboration benefitting Emory students and the KVC workshop students. KVC also holds the Atlanta Children’s Film Festival. In 2017, Amy began her involvement with the festival as a judge and since then has joined the Board, becoming Board Chair in the spring of 2020, which dovetailed with her retirement from teaching at Emory. This year provides a hybrid festival after the past two years of being totally virtual, and the culminating event will be a film festival Family Day at Emory, July 23, Saturday, with workshops and screenings.

According to Amy, "Members of the Emeritus College are invited to participate in the festival, whether through viewing some of our wonderful films online—we have films made by youth, as well as films made by adult filmmakers for children and youth—or if local, by attending the festival Family Day, July 23. This is an opportunity to see films by independent filmmakers from 15 different countries.  And, it would make for a wonderful way to share unique content with grandchildren and provide a shared viewing experience, even if separated by geography."  

For information on the film festival, please click here.

In Memoriam

Kenneth L. Brigham, MD

Professor Emeritus of Medicine (Pulmonology)

Posted: 07 Jul 2022 11:23 AM PDT -- Emory Daily Pulse

It is with great sadness that we announce that Ken Brigham, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine and associate vice president of the Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute, has passed away.

Ken was an astute clinician, a distinguished scientist, and an early leader in the field of pulmonary medicine. He trained with founders in the discipline at the University of California San Francisco following his medical degree at Vanderbilt University and his residency at Johns Hopkins.

Ken rapidly established his prowess as an international leader while building the pulmonary division at Vanderbilt University and being inducted into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI). During his tenure at Emory, he created new research collaborations and helped found the innovative Emory/Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute under Emory’s 19^th president, James W. Wagner.

In addition to his roles in the pulmonary division and Predictive Health Institute, Ken also served as the Department of Medicine’s associate vice chair for research, the associate director for research for the Emory McKelvey Lung Transplantation Center, and the director for the School of Medicine’s Center for Translational Research in the Lung.

Outside of medicine, Ken was a prolific author of both medical and non-medical literature. His work ranged from books on the humanity of medicine, gene therapy as a medical treatment and the role of predictive medicine in the future of healthcare, to murder mysteries and short stories. His latest book, Free Dancing: Random Stories from an Accidental Life, was released earlier this year.

Please join the Department of Medicine in sending our sincere condolences to Ken’s wife, Arlene Stecenko, MD, chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy & Immunology, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sleep at Emory’s Department of Pediatrics, his family, friends, and former colleagues on this incredible loss. His contributions to Emory University and to the Department of Medicine will not be forgotten.

An obituary is unavailable at this time

A few members recognized our rest stop from the last walk as one of the meeting rooms in the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) located on the topmost floor of the Robert Woodruff Library. The Woodruff Seminar Room is one of the meeting/conference rooms with absolutely fantastic views of not only the Emory campus but also of the Atlanta skyline.

The Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library is named in honor of university alumnus and literary benefactor Stuart A. Rose of Dayton, Ohio. For more information please click here.

On a recent bike ride through campus, I discovered food. And it wasn't food from one of the campus eateries or the weekly Farmers Market, but food, growing...on campus. Quite a variety and in quite a few different places.

Where will you find this on the Emory campus?