Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business Announces 2010 Bergeron Scholarship Recipients

(BUSINESS WIRE)--Georgia State University's J. Mack Robinson College of Business today announced the recipients of the 2010 Bergeron Women in Technology Leadership Scholarship:

“The fund established by Sandra and Doug Bergeron enables us to make awards that will help these future leaders take full advantage of the resources available through Robinson College”

* Gayathri Kunapuli—a graduate student from Hyderabad, India, pursuing a Master of Science in Information Systems
* Natalia Long—a senior from Sao Paulo, Brazil, majoring in Computer Information Systems and Finance
* Lubna A. R. Memon—a graduate student from Mumbai, India, pursuing a Master of Science in Information Systems
* Rossita Presley—a rising senior from Riga, Latvia, majoring in Computer Information Systems and Business Economics
* Shavonne Verdree—a rising junior from Decatur, GA, majoring in Computer Information Systems
* Catherine Waquespack—a rising senior from Atlanta, GA, majoring in Computer Information Systems

The Bergeron Women in Technology Leadership Fund was funded with a $1 million endowment from Sandra and Douglas Bergeron and is awarded annually to female undergraduate or graduate students who have expressed or demonstrated high potential for leadership careers in technology. Since 2006, 21 women have been named Bergeron Scholars.

“These young women have great potential to advance into leadership positions in technology and we’re delighted to provide them with professional mentors and financial assistance to help them achieve their aspirations,” said Sandra Bergeron, a graduate of Georgia State University and chair of the mentorship committee.

The college’s Computer Information Systems Department is ranked in the top 10 for both undergraduate and graduate offerings by US News & World Report’s annual listings of best colleges and best graduate schools. This past year, the department partnered with the Atlanta-based Women in Technology (WIT) organization to recruit information technology executives to mentor Bergeron Scholars.

“If there is one consistent theme among our most successful women in technology, it is the impact of mentoring,” said WIT Executive Director Heather Rocker. “WIT is pleased to support the Bergeron Scholars program by connecting these students with the female technology leaders in our community - providing both a powerful mentoring experience and meaningful volunteer opportunity.”

The Bergeron Scholarship program rewards significant academic achievement and is the largest dollar award available to students in the Robinson College of Business.

“The fund established by Sandra and Doug Bergeron enables us to make awards that will help these future leaders take full advantage of the resources available through Robinson College,” said Robinson College Dean H. Fenwick Huss. “The mentoring program promotes diversity in the technology industry and will help the students prepare to exploit their leadership qualities in the professional world.”

Sandra Bergeron is one of the most highly regarded female technology leaders in Silicon Valley. She is a Venture Partner with Trident Capital. She is also chairman of the board of TraceSecurity Inc. and serves on the boards of ArcSight Inc. (NASDAQ: ARST), Qualys Inc. and TriCipher Inc.

Douglas Bergeron is CEO and largest individual shareholder of VeriFone Systems, Inc. (NYSE: PAY). He also is a member of the Listed Company Advisory Committee of NYSE Euronext. VeriFone, based in San Jose, California, is the world's largest provider of electronic payments systems and employs more than 300 high-technology professionals in Georgia.

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Georgia State professor to chair Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau

Professor Ken Bernhardt of Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business was named chairman of the board of directors for the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB) for 2010.

Bernhardt, the Taylor E. Little Jr. professor of marketing and special assistant to the dean for corporate and community relations in the Robinson College, has served on the ACVB board of directors since 1991. He is a past chair of ACVB’s marketing, strategic planning, and research committees and has been heavily involved in the organization’s cultural tourism initiative. In 2000, Bernhardt received the ACVB President’s Award for outstanding service to the marketing of Atlanta.

“Ken’s experience in marketing research and measurement will optimize ACVB’s marketing programs in an environment where every dollar counts,” said William Pate, ACVB president and chief executive officer. “Under his leadership, we will continue to position Atlanta as a top destination for business and leisure travel.”

Former chair of Robinson’s department of marketing, Bernhardt has served as chairman of the board of the American Marketing Association, president of the Association for Consumer Research and chairman of the board of trustees of the American Marketing Association Foundation. He is a former chair of the U.S. Census Bureau Marketing Advisory Committee.

In addition to his ACVB duties, Bernhardt also serves on the boards of area organizations including Leadership Atlanta, Junior Achievement of Georgia, Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, Alliance Theatre, and the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition.

The chairman of the ACVB is selected by the board of directors following nominations by the organization’s executive committee. Established in 1913, Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau is a private, nonprofit organization created to favorably impact the Atlanta economy through conventions and tourism.

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Georgia State undergraduates excel at Model U.N. regional conference

Representing the interests of Sudan and Iran, two countries often criticized on world stage, is no easy task.

But Georgia State University students excelled at foreign diplomacy for these and other countries at the Southern Regional Model United Nations conference, held Nov. 19 -22 in Atlanta.

A team of 45 GSU undergraduates represented four counties, including India, Iran, Sudan and Morocco, and competed for their interests against roughly 700 college students from across the country.

In keeping with the university's track record, the GSU teams won a series of awards. Five of the Georgia State delegates were recognized as the "outstanding delegate" in their committee. Two of the Georgia State teams, Iran and Morocco, won the "Distinguished Delegation Award," ranking among the top five percent of teams overall. GSU's team from India also received the "Honorary Delegation Award."

"The students worked very hard to participate as some of the most difficult countries to represent," said Rashid Naim, senior lecturer in GSU's Department of Political Science and program director. "It's quite an exercise, requiring diplomatic skills. It gets young people to think about the world's problems and become problem solvers."

The conference provides participants the opportunity to learn about the U.N. system and important global issues facing the international community today, such as poverty, terrorism and HIV/AIDS. Students learn to conduct in-depth research, express ideas in formal writing and debate such issues within a diplomatic framework. As delegates, Georgia State students were assigned to countries and committees by the event organizers.

"You have to be in the mindset of your country," said James Dutton, president of the Georgia State U.N. Association. "You have to do a lot of research to know that country's point of view and you have to discuss the best way to do things. Sometimes it is a consensus and sometimes it is a battle."

GSU has been participating in the regional conference since 2003 and will head to the National Model U.N. Conference in March, held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, N.Y. Georgia State has taken home the top prize from nationals, "Outstanding Delegation," for the past four years.

"We're hoping to accomplish it for a fifth time," Dutton said. "Nationals is the show. It's not just a weekend; it's an entire week of debate. That's what the entire year is focused on."

Students in Georgia State's Model U.N. Association are enrolled in an elective course that helps them prepare for competition. The undergraduates also help host a Model U.N. conference on campus for high school students, which was held earlier this month and attended by more than 450 Georgia teens.


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Georgia Debate Union reaches quarterfinals in season-opener

The Georgia Debate Union from the University of Georgia reached the quarterfinals of the National Season Opening Tournament held Sept. 18–21 at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

More than 170 teams from 50 colleges and universities traveled to Atlanta for the meet. The UGA team of senior Brittany Cambre and sophomore Mike Lacy won five of seven preliminary debates defeating teams from Trinity University, the University of Florida, Baylor University and Missouri State University. They defeated second seed Michigan State University in the octafinals to reach the quarterfinals.

The team of senior Karen Harrison and freshman Austin Layton also won five of seven preliminary debates and were the thirtieth seed in the tournament. They reached the elimination rounds of the tournament after defeating teams from Northwestern University, Wake Forest University, the University of Michigan and the University of Kentucky.

Also attending the tournament were Dillon Horne, Jordan Edwards, Meredith McKay, Eric Bogart, Adi Sudarshan, Weilan Zhang, Justin Drew and Blaine Drew.

This was the Georgia Debate Union’s first debate tournament using their sustainable Paperless Debate Initiative. Rather than carrying four to eight 50-pound boxes filled with evidence, each team stored evidence on laptop computers. Students built their speeches, shared evidence and took notes on their laptops.

The UGA team is supported by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs.

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Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business Announces 2009 Bergeron Scholarship Recipients

/PRNewswirel/ -- Georgia State University's J. Mack Robinson College of Business today announced the recipients of the 2009 Bergeron Women in Technology Leadership Scholarship:

-- Catherine Mickle--a rising junior from Decatur, Georgia as well as a
2008 Bergeron Scholarship recipient.
-- Breonna DeLoach--a rising sophomore, from Jonesboro, Georgia
-- Roxxana Manzanarez--a rising sophomore from Atlanta, Georgia
-- Monica Bull--a rising sophomore from Columbia, South Carolina
-- Shilpa Chakravarathy--a rising junior, from Atlanta, Georgia

"Financial assistance and mentorship helps these young women achieve their potential, advance into leadership positions in technology and enhance diversity within our industry," said Sandra Bergeron, a graduate of Georgia State University and chair of the mentorship committee. By way of example, Sandra Bergeron cites the success of Kia Rainey, a 2007 Bergeron Scholar who now is with HP. "We congratulate this year's recipients on their academic performance and wish them well in their continuing studies."

The Bergeron Women in Technology Leadership Fund is awarded annually to five female undergraduate or graduate students who have expressed or demonstrated high potential for leadership careers in technology. It was funded with a $1 million endowment from Sandra and Douglas Bergeron.

"The Bergeron Scholarship recognizes significant academic achievement and creates a unique opportunity for the winners. This is the largest dollar award available to students in the Robinson College of Business. The mentoring aspect of this scholarship is also very beneficial to the recipients," said Robinson College Dean H. Fenwick Huss. "We are grateful to Sandra and Doug for establishing the fund that makes the award possible."

Laurie Johnson, vice president and CIO of UPS Supply Chain Solutions, is one of several technology industry mentors involved in the program. She said, "The young woman I am mentoring has leveraged my experience and connections to expand her horizons in the business and technology worlds. The Bergeron Women in Technology Leadership Scholarship is a wonderful opportunity and it is a pleasure to participate in the career development of aspiring students."

U.S. News & World Report ranks Robinson's undergraduate and graduate computer information systems programs in the top ten in the nation. The winner of the 2009 Microsoft Imagine Cup U.S. championship for software design was led by a Robinson CIS graduate student.

Sandra Bergeron is one of the most highly regarded female technology leaders in Silicon Valley. She is chairman of the board of TraceSecurity Inc. and serves on the boards of ArcSight Inc. (NASDAQ:ARST) , Qualys Inc. and TriCipher Inc. She also is a venture advisor to Trident Capital.

Douglas Bergeron is CEO and largest individual shareholder of VeriFone Holdings Inc. (NYSE:PAY) . He also is a member of the Listed Company Advisory Committee of NYSE Euronext. VeriFone, based in San Jose, California, is the world's largest provider of electronic payments systems and employs more than 300 high-technology professionals in Georgia.

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Paul Lombardo awarded Georgia Author of the Year Award

Georgia State University College of Law Professor Paul Lombardo has been named a 2009 Georgia Author of the Year for his book, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell.

The legal historian was among 90 first-time and veteran authors honored this week by the Georgia Writers Association. He was recognized in the creative nonfiction history category for his book, which is the only fully documented account ever written of Buck v. Bell, a notorious U.S. Supreme Court decision that led to more than 60,000 involuntary sterilizations of people described as “feebleminded and socially inadequate.”

“I’ve only been here for three years so it has been great to be honored among Georgia authors in a very short time,” Lombardo said. “The private attention among scholars to the kind of things I’ve been writing has been around for a long time, but this is the first time I’ve gotten a great deal of public attention and that’s very gratifying.”

Lombardo was also featured in a June 24 USA Today article titled “U.S. eugenics legacy: Ruling on Buck sterilization still stands.” The article tracks Lombardo’s 30 years of research of eugenics programs in the United States, including the infamous case of Carrie Buck, who was the first victim of the 1924 sterilization law.

"This woman got railroaded. And one of the giants of the Supreme Court was driving the train,” Lombardo says in the USA Today article, referring to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. who wrote the 1927 ruling in favor of Buck’s sterilization. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough," Holmes wrote in the ruling.

Lombardo was the last person to interview Carrie Buck before she died, and the book incorporates material he discovered such as Buck’s medical records, the honor roll grade book of her daughter, Vivian, private correspondence of the lawyer who was named to represent her, and the only existing photos of all three generations of the Buck family, which support the conclusion that the Buck case was a fraud.

Lombardo, who traveled to Rome to speak about the danger of eugenics at the Vatican in February, hopes the public attention to his book will help in his efforts to publicize the terrible history of eugenics. He has been instrumental in the movement to solicit apologies and legislative denunciations of past state eugenic laws in seven states.

“Like most scandals in our past we tend to forget them and there are some we should probably remember so that we can make public policy with our eyes open in the future,” Lombardo said.

Lombardo, who has published extensively on topics in health law, medico-legal history, and bioethics, is currently working on a book titled 100 Years of Eugenics: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Project. He teaches courses in Genetics and the Law, the History of Bioethics, Mental Health Law and the Legal Regulation of Human Research.

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Georgia State Law Professor Appointed to CDC Ethics Subcommittee

If a pandemic flu fills hospital beds and ventilators become scarce, who gets first priority? Should individuals with certain kinds of diseases be prevented from traveling, even if their condition is managed by medication and they pose no risk to others?

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seeks answers to these and other ethical questions, it turns to its Advisory Committee to the Director and that committee’s subcommittee on ethics.

Georgia State University Associate Law Professor Leslie Wolf is the subcommittee’s newest member, and says the CDC is trying to think through these scenarios ahead of time so they’re prepared if the need arises.

“The idea is to give helpful guidance to people who are going to have to make these decisions,” Wolf said.

In general, the subcommittee is tasked with exploring ethical dilemmas in public health and making recommendations to the Advisory Committee to the Director, Julie Gerberding.

The subcommittee is made up of 11 members from across the country who serve four-year terms. Its members include well-known philosophers, public health professionals, doctors and medical ethicists who meet three times per year.

Wolf, who joined the College of Law in 2007 as a faculty member of the Center for Law, Health & Society, taught medical ethics and research ethics at the University of California, San Francisco. She served on the UCSF institutional review board and the advisory committee on stem cell research.

She said she hopes to translate her experience with the CDC’s ethics subcommittee to her work in the classroom.

“It’s a remarkable honor,” Wolf said. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to work on some really interesting and challenging issues.”

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Kaufman to be Honored by Labor and Employment Relations Association

Georgia State University Professor of Economics Bruce Kaufman will be honored early next year by the national Labor and Employment Relations Association for his lifetime of work in the field of human resources and industrial relations.

As one of the first five inductees into the group’s Association of Fellows, Kaufman joins leading industrial relations scholars in LERA’s hall of fame. The award will be presented at LERA’s annual conference in San Francisco on Jan. 4.

“The initial award winners were people we thought have made the biggest contribution to the field,” said Morris Kleiner, the AFL-CIO Chair in Labor Policy at the University of Minnesota and the chair of LERA’s award selection committee.

Kaufman, who has been at Georgia State for 31 years and plans to retire in 2009, spent his career studying industrial relations. He is perhaps best known for his work chronicling the history and development of industrial relations practices and human resource management. His most recent book is “Managing the Human Factor: The Early Years of Human Resource Management in American Industry” (Cornell University Press, 2008).

Kaufman is also the recipient of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies’ 2008 Teaching Award.

He says while some aspects of human resource management have changed over the past century, the basic principles are largely the same.

“You’re trying to get the best workers at the lowest cost you can and get more productivity,” said Kaufman, who is also a senior associate at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business’ W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations.

Other inductees into LERA’s Association of Fellows include:

Richard Freeman, the Herbert S. Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard, known for his work on unions.
Thomas Kochan, the George M. Bunker Professor of Management at MIT’s Institute for Work and Employment Research, known for work exploring the changing labor relations environment.
Francine Blau, the Frances Perkins Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Labor Economics at Cornell University. She’s known for work on gender discrimination in the U.S. and abroad.
Arne Kalleberg, the Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Kalleberg is also a past president of the American Sociological Association.

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