Three UGA faculty members selected as 2016-2017 Public Service and Outreach Fellows are spending the fall conducting research with one of the university’s eight public service and outreach units.
• Marin Talbot Brewer in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is working with the State Botanical Garden to develop materials and programs focused on identifying mushrooms and other fungi located throughout the garden. Brewer, her students and lab staff also will conduct a pilot study on the effects of the removal of the invasive plant Chinese privet that has disturbed parts of the garden.
• Jenna R. Jambeck in the College of Engineering is working with UGA Marine Extension Service and Georgia Sea Grant to continue her research into plastic pollution. She will build a database of information about marine debris collected by the public and reported through a marine debris tracking app. In collaboration with marine extension and Georgia Sea Grant faculty, Jambeck will develop educational materials.
• Rebecca Nesbit in the public administration and policy department at the School of Public and International Affairs is working with the J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership
Development to determine the effectiveness of the institute’s capacity-building efforts with nonprofit organizations in northeast Georgia. Nesbit’s goals include identifying long-term impacts of capacity-building training, developing an online tool to measure impacts for future clients and setting up an electronic repository of key nonprofit management documents.