IN THIS ISSUE Staff Appreciation Day Photos • Finance Appreciation • Back to School
Storm Research • Service Anniversaries • Pumpkin Carving Contest
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Staff Appreciation Day 2024
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Relive the fun! See the memorable moments, smiling faces, and intense Jenga concentration at this year’s Staff Appreciation Day.
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Congratulations to our outstanding 2024 staff honorees, who were recognized at Staff Appreciation:
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Back row: Monike Welch, Shauna Bennett-Boyd, DeMarlo West, Chirag Patel
Front row: Dante Christmas, Dean Raheem Beyah, Nisha Kukreja, Coco Ke
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STAFF INNOVATION & PROCESS IMPROVEMENT AWARD
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Scott Jacobson, Application Developer Senior, Industrial and Systems Engineering
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Celebrating Our Finance and Accounting Stars 🌟
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Next week (Sept. 23-27) is Finance & Accounting Appreciation Week, an opportunity to celebrate the people who help us all navigate the complexities of budgets, grants, and paying the bills at a public institution. Meet some of the shining stars across the College making a difference with their work every day.
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Dean's Office Finance Team – Supporting the College
The finance team in the Dean's Office plays a vital role in supporting CoE by overseeing and managing a significant portion of the College’s financial operations. In FY24 alone, the team managed $25.9 million in expenses and processed 2,676 Workday transactions. They tracked and managed the budget and expenses across 174 CoE Worktags, ensuring the smooth processing of 570 budget transfers totaling $68.9 million. They also supported the hiring of 65 students.
Sheri Calhoun, Assistant Director – With 19 years of experience in higher education, 16 at Georgia Tech, Sheri brings a wealth of knowledge to our team. Outside of work, she loves spending time with her family and going on vacations.
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| Nichol DaCosta, Chance Brown, and Sheri Calhoun
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Nichol DaCosta, Finance Administrative Lead – Nichol has been a part of the Georgia Tech community for four years. She enjoys cooking, traveling, and practicing yoga in her free time.
Chance Brown, Finance Director – Chance has spent 11 years in higher education, with almost four years at Georgia Tech. When not managing the financial operations of the College, Chance enjoys cooking, playing board games, and traveling.
Our finance team is indispensable, and we are incredibly grateful for everything they do (often behind the scenes) to help us realize our mission. Nichol, Sheri, Chance: Thank you!
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| BME Financial Admin Extraordinaire
Chordae Lauderdale is one of Coulter BME’s outstanding financial administrators. She plays a crucial role in managing the financial aspects of our cutting-edge research initiatives. She currently coordinates the financial activities of an 11-person faculty portfolio valued at more than $44 million, handling processing of new awards and managing startup funds, gifts, and fellowships. Her responsibilities include initiating sub-agreements with other universities, managing salary allocations, reviewing and approving expense transactions, student hiring, expense projections, journal entries, and budget revisions.
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Beyond the Numbers – While Chordae's financial acumen is impressive, her impact extends far beyond spreadsheets and budgets. She is known for her proactive approach to problem-solving and her ability to explain complex financial processes in accessible terms. Faculty often praise her for streamlining administrative tasks, allowing them to dedicate more time to their research and teaching.
Engagement in the GT Community – Chordae's commitment to Georgia Tech doesn't end when she leaves her office. She's an active participant in the campus community, including volunteering for the annual Georgia Tech Day events and serving on the COESCAC Committee.
Outside Interests – When she’s not crunching numbers or volunteering, Chordae loves quality time with her family, growing her own veggies in her garden, and singing.
Chordae's dedication, expertise, and vibrant personality make her an invaluable asset to our Coulter BME team. We're grateful for her contributions and excited to see what heights she'll reach next, both professionally and on the climbing wall!
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ChBE’s Go-To Person for Anything Finances
Nicholas Morgan — aka “Nick” — joined ChBE as a financial administrator in 2016, became finance manager in 2017, finance manager II in 2021, and has been in his current position of assistant director, financial operations, since 2021. Nick managed about $48 million in FY24, supporting more than 40 faculty members. He is really a numbers guy who loves crunching numbers all day.
Nick says the most enjoyable part of his job is helping others and collaborating with people. He enjoys working with his colleagues in ChBE — and we all love you, Nick! Nick received the ChBE Soaring Jacket Award in 2023 in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the School. Outside of work, Nick loves spending time with his family (especially at the beach), golf, and traveling.
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| Nick Morgan and his family
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Kenya Manchester, left, with her teammates at the Woodruff Games.
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| ME’s Finance Dynamo
Kenya Manchester’s dedication to her faculty, quest to learn all about portfolio management, and willingness to assist team members when called upon have not gone unnoticed. She has had significant impact in support of the finance team and the Woodruff School as a whole.
Kenya is a financial administrator II who has managed a portfolio of 11 faculty members over the last year, managing more than 56 grants with expenses totaling a little over $2.5 million. Kenya has ensured timely and accurate financial reporting, expense approvals, account reconciliations, and project closeouts. Her attention to detail, analytical skills, and commitment to excellence have helped us improve our financial stability and supported our team and School financial management goals.
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Beyond Kenya’s technical skills, she has a positive attitude and collaborative spirit. Since starting her career in ME in November 2022, not only has she been promoted, but she has also participated in and volunteered for several events, including the Woodruff Games; Capstone Expo; the ME Career Fair; the MLK volunteer event; Midnight Breakfast; and an MSE golf clinic with her son, an avid golfer.
Kenya consistently demonstrates professionalism and a strong work ethic, which contributes significantly to our team's success. Her efforts are truly appreciated, and she will undoubtedly continue to have a positive impact on our team and the Woodruff School.
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It’s a time of excitement and promise as school gets underway each fall. Join our colleagues across the College celebrating special back-to-school moments with their families.
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From Cary Ogletree, ME
My granddaughter’s first day of kindergarten. Seems just like the other day she was born! So proud of the little girl she is and wish she would stop growing. She was so excited to go to big kids’ school!
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| From Scott Elliott, ME
Some pictures of my granddaughters going to school.
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More than 5,000 new undergraduate students joined the Georgia Tech community this summer and fall. That includes more than 1,400 transfer students and nearly 3,900 first-year students, taking Tech’s total undergraduate population above 20,000 students for the first time.
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ChBE hosted “First Year Friday” on Aug. 23 to welcome new students.
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Associate Chair Jonathan Gaines and Courtney Sykes.
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Woodruff Connect launched with an Ice Cream Social Aug. 22. Courtney Sykes volunteered at the event, noting “it was a fantastic opportunity to engage with Woodruff School students during the first week of classes.”
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Research Spotlight: Storms
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Coastal Flood Mitigation
Williams Family Associate Professor Iris Tien is helping coastal communities improve their resilience with the right flood-control infrastructure in the right places.
Cities and counties largely decide between building “gray” or “green” solutions, each with their own benefits and costs. Gray infrastructure includes more traditional drainage systems and stormwater sewers. Green solutions could be ponds or basins, even parkland, that harness nature’s processes for collecting, managing, and slowly releasing floodwaters.
Using a spatial mapping approach, Tien and her team in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering are building a tool that balances all of the tradeoffs for communities subject to flooding. They’re using data such as the distances from existing infrastructure systems, maps of flood zones, locations of other community assets, and more. The spatial approach means it’s easy for the team to create visualizations for community stakeholders that help them see the recommendations.
In a pilot project with Savannah-Chatham County, Tien’s team had conversations with a variety of stakeholders with different roles in making infrastructure decisions to inform their work. Planning and zoning staffers, stormwater engineers, and politicians or policymakers all brought different needs and perspectives to the table.
Read more about this effort in the fall issue of Helluva Engineer magazine, due out in November.
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In the Dark
Engineers and policy researchers have found people in lower socioeconomic tiers wait nearly three hours longer, on average, for power restoration after a major storm. In a study published in the journal PNAS Nexus, a team led by Chuanyi Ji in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering quantified the impact of socioeconomic status using data from the top eight major Atlantic hurricanes between 2017 and 2020. Those storms knocked out power for more than 15 million customers in nine states across the southeastern U.S.
The researchers found that a one-decile drop in socioeconomic status is associated with a 6.1% longer outage duration. Their results indicate a statistically significant relationship between socioeconomic vulnerability and the duration of time that elapses before power is restored.
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| Measuring Hurricanes
Did you know that a Georgia Tech alumnus created the Category 1-5 system we use to classify hurricanes?
Herbert Saffir first drafted the well-known scale that’s part of our summer and fall vernacular, realizing only calling a storm “minor” or “major” wasn’t enough to help forecasters and the public understand potential impacts.
Originally, he created the five categories based on the speed of a hurricane’s winds. He shared it with a friend at the National Hurricane Center who liked what he saw. That friend, Robert Simpson, also happened to be director of the Center. He added storm surge impacts to Saffir’s wind scale, and thus was born what’s officially known as the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
Initially, National Hurricane Center forecasters used the scale only internally. But before long, they started including it in guidance meant for government agencies and emergency managers. By 1975, because it made communicating the dangers of a storm so much easier, the scale had gone public.
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| Hermann Fritz makes final preparations with a volcanic tsunami generator.
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designed to withstand hurricane storm surges or tsunami heights, but their effective protection is likely reduced as climate change leads to these significant coastal changes.
Fritz’s project is working to determine the level of risk reduction caused by sea-level rise and the performance of existing barriers under loading conditions beyond their original design. The goal is to propose and evaluate potential adaptations or upgrades for existing coastal defense barriers to better protect these communities.
Fritz regularly travels around the world to collect post-disaster research data after tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, and earthquakes to help scientists better mitigate their effects and protect coastal areas.
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Congratulations to our colleagues celebrating service anniversaries in July, August, and September.
We have an amazing 177 employees who’ve served with us from one to 40 years! Thanks for all each of you brings to our community. 💛
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Pumpkin Carving Contest – Submit by Nov. 4
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Just like the early arrival of pumpkin spice season this year, we’re giving you early notice of the CoE Cares Pumpkin Carving Contest.
Snap a photo of those cute, scary, classic, crazy pumpkin designs and send to coe-cares@gatech.edu by Nov. 4. As always, the winner will enjoy lunch with Dean Raheem Beyah.
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Alexis Brown, BME
Sudie Davis, ISyE
LaJauna Ellis, Dean’s Office
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| Melody Foster, ME
Dawn Franklin, Dean’s Office
Michael Gooden, CEE
Nisha Kukreja, ChBE
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| Cassandra Trawick, MSE
Marva White, AE
Shalonda Williams, ECE
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