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(04/04/14 8:15pm)
If you are looking for great Thai food with a great atmosphere, look no further than Lemongrass Thai Bistro in downtown Macon.
Located at 442 Cherry St., Lemongrass offers a variety of options, including traditional Thai food with a modern twist, both everyday and unusual types of sushi, and handmade signature cocktails alongside an extensive selection of wines and craft brews. Additionally, Lemongrass specializes in making food vegetarian and vegan-friendly and can easily alter menu items to accommodate patrons with food allergies.
Upon entering Lemongrass, I immediately took in the cozy surroundings of the place. A limited number of tables gives the place an air of closeness, unlike many other restaurants found downtown.
Walking in the door I was greeted by Sarah, one of the servers. She quickly sat The Cluster photography editor, Elizabeth Tate, and I at one of the tables.
Our meal began with a teriyaki filet sushi roll featuring seared beef filet and asparagus. Served alongside was one of the restaurant’s more popular appetizers -- pork cigars. This delightful appetizer consisted of pork sausage wrapped in a wonton wrapper and deep-fried to give an added crunchy texture. To finish up the first course, we were served a chicken satay that came with a sweet and spicy cucumber salad.
For my entree, I enjoyed the green curry with shrimp and a red pepper based spicy chicken and bell pepper stir-fry. As someone very familiar with Thai food and a personal fan of green curry, I can happily recommend either one of these delicious entrees. Green curry with shrimp was definitely an enjoyable twist on what I am used to, having normally enjoyed it with chicken or beef.
Finally, just as I thought I could not eat another bite, I was served Lemongrass’ signature Thai fried ice cream wrapped in a dough made from a secret recipe and fried just long enough to give it a warm, crunchy texture. This was the first time I had tried fried ice cream, and I can say it certainly won’t be the last. The ice cream was delicious, but it was the strange conflicting textures that brought a smile to my face with every bite.
Lemongrass Thai Bistro is open from 11 a.m to 9:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. on Fridays, and from noon to 1 a.m. on Saturdays.
Those looking to save money can take advantage of Lemongrass’ many specials throughout the week. During happy hour, the restaurant features $5 sushi and $3 sliders for dine-in patrons. On Monday nights, select beers are only $2. On Wednesday nights, bottles of wine are half off. Thursdays feature a date night special for $45 that includes a bottle of wine and a three-course dinner for two. Finally, a “Southern Brunch” is held every Saturday afternoon until 3 p.m.
(04/04/14 8:04pm)
It’s a rarity to find an artist who also spends their days helping design life-changing devices as a biomedical engineer. Yet that is exactly how third-year biomedical engineering student and art minor Monique Demers spends her time.
Demers, who came to Mercer from Barre, Vt., is a rare type of student. The average engineering student does not have the mindset to also study art, and due to time commitment, would not try to study both simultaneously. This is because an art minor is not the easy undertaking many seem to think it is.
“In a lot of ways, art is more challenging than engineering,” said Demers, “especially if you’re in an art class because you have to be constantly inspired and be producing art that is of excellent quality. It really takes its toll on you.”
As an artist, Demers specializes in graphic and charcoal works, though she has studied acrylic, oil and water based painting, as well as sculpture and photography.
“I like the simplicity of charcoal,” said Demers, “I like how it’s possible to create wonderful art without traditional colors.”
Demers went on to explain what art meant to her as an engineering student. “It’s an escape. Art to me is really fun and relaxing…when you’re in an art class it’s like having several hours of forced meditation per week. You’re not stressing over your other classes, you’re not worried about the other work you have to do, you are simply focused on whatever piece of art you are creating,” said Demers.
She first discovered her passion for art in the second grade, when the son of her school’s principal complimented a work she had completed in art class. By fourth grade, Demers had her very own art tutor and by the end of high school had taken every art class available.
As a student at Mercer, Demers has succeeded both as an engineer and as an art student. During her freshman year, she received an honorable mention in the university’s annual student art show.
During her second year, she was awarded first place for a sculpture she submitted to the show. Meanwhile, as an engineer, Demers traveled to Vietnam through Mercer on Mission and helped fit prosthetics to many of the local amputees. She described the trip as a “life-changing experience.”
Asked what she rates as her favorite work she has completed, Demers described the current favorite completed work, the charcoal piece that earned her an honorable mention in her freshman year.
“It’s a pair of hands that are held up to the sky, with one hand grasping the other forearm. They are placed on a black background. I really like the contrast,” said Demers.
However, Demers claims that the idea for the piece came to her at the last minute and shortly before the project’s deadline.
It would seem that inspiration is not something one can expect to happen with any regularity, but is one of those things one must trust when it comes along. Hopefully, Demers’ sense of inspiration will continue to serve her well in the future, both as an artist and an engineer.
(03/06/14 9:03pm)
This past Friday, the Grand Opera House in downtown Macon played host to “Combustible/Burn,” a play documenting the story of desegregation at Mercer University. Originally written by Page Morton Hunter professor of English Dr. Andrew Silver in 2002, the play was brought back as part of the yearlong celebration of integration at Mercer.
“Combustible/Burn” tells the stories of the people who brought desegregation to Mercer, spanning from 1948 to the late 60s. The play’s dialogue comes almost entirely from firsthand accounts of actual Mercer students and Macon community members present during the years of desegregation at Mercer. In its entirety the play has three different yet related storylines, each of which has its own set of characters.
The first arc of the play tells the story of the Bryanites, a group of radical and progressive white Baptist students who were children of the Great Depression and attended Mercer from 1948-1956 who were inspired by Mercer professor G McLeod “Mac” Bryan to fight against segregation laws in support of equal civil rights for African Americans in their community. Their pro-desegregation newsletter “Combustible/Burn” is the inspiration for the play’s title and was so named because readers were told to burn it after reading, lest they be caught with such radical materials.
The plays second and third arcs tell the story of Sam Oni, Mercer’s first black student, as well as the first generation of African-American students at Mercer, and spans from the early to late 1960s. For Oni, who recently spoke at the Beloved Community Symposium last month, coming to America was a shock. He left his country of Ghana, where a vast independence movement was sweeping across the African continent, confident with the idea that he would come to America and show segregationists that what they believed in was wrong. Unfortunately, the opposition he met was too strong; “It was a terrible experience for him,” Silver said.
To gather source material for the play, Silver conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with over 125 students, professors and community members, listening to their tales of struggle, hardship and eventual success and compiled them into three cohesive interlacing stories. “The technique I used is called documentary theater,” said Silver. “The idea of it is to allow a community to listen to each other, to try and animate voices in interviews and put them together to form something that is like a living story.”
Silver said he was inspired by music as a way to make his story come alive on stage. The dialogue in the play is written in such a way as to flow like music, with certain rhythms and cadences so as to provide a sort of imagery and engage the audience. “If you hear people speaking in waves…if there’s a rhythm to the way that you’re weaving peoples’ voices together, I think the play becomes more akin to music than your normal plot-driven play.
But the true message of the play is not just to teach audience members about the history of Mercer’s efforts of desegregation. The same Bryanites who attended Mercer from 1948 to 1956 later came back as professors and faculty members to really bring change and desegregation to Mercer. Thanks to Mercer professors like Mac Bryan, they had been set with a fiery passion, a burning desire to end segregation and inequality. For Silver, “Combustible/Burn” serves the one purpose of telling the story of the brave men and women who stood up for what they believed in, but it also serves another. According to Silver, the moment when Mercer began to embrace desegregation and equality was really the moment when the school came into its own as a place of acceptance for all. “To me,” he said “the play serves as a reminder of the work we have to do yet…it is a call to action, to resist the status quo, to resist mindless materialism, to embrace justice, to fight injustice wherever you see it…and to serve others, even if it puts you at risk.” It’s tough, Silver admitted, but he believes that’s what being a Mercer Bear is all about.
(02/21/14 1:25am)
A new machine is arriving Mercer’s School of Engineering this week - one that will play an important role in more than just education. Called a Material Testing System, an MTS is a machine that allows engineers to test many of the structural properties of different materials. Examples of these properties might include things like the amount of stress, strain or twisting forces that a material can endure before breaking. Knowing these values is essential to the engineering design process because it allows engineers to ensure that a product’s components will hold up to the forces it may encounter during use. What makes this new MTS special, however, is its specific applications for biomedical engineering.
Acquisition of the new machine was overseen by Dean Wade Shaw and Dr. Ha Vo of the Biomedical Engineering department. The new MTS will be replacing an older model currently used in the department to train students in some of the design aspects of biomedical engineering. While the older machine still functions, a lack of an integrated computer system makes operating it difficult, and its inability to measure torsion (twisting forces) prevents engineering students from analyzing certain motions in the human body, such as rotating a wrist or ankle. The new machine uses a fully integrated computer system that can simulate complex actions that may take place in the human body over a period of years in a matter of hours.
Unlike a conventional MTS that might be used to measure something like the breaking point of a steel beam, a MTS used in biomedical engineering is specifically calibrated to measure material aspects of the human anatomy, such as the force required to break bone, or tear tissue. At the same time, it also allows engineers to test components like the screws, joints, and adhesives used in prosthetics to determine how quickly they might wear out or break.
“It’s truly an enabling system for engineers,” said Shaw. “It allows us to simulate something like the stress and wear on a knee bending for a whole lifetime in just two days. It’s necessary to know things like that, because before we can even build a prosthetic, we need to understand what the physical body actually does…and [an MTS] allows us to do that.”
Apart from serving as a brilliant tool for education, Mercer’s MTS plays a pivotal role in designing the actual prosthetics used to improve the lives of hundreds of people in Vietnam through the Mercer on Mission trip. It is estimated that at least 100,000 amputees currently live in Vietnam and more than 2,000 Vietnamese are injured each year by unexploded land mines left over from the Vietnam War. Unable to afford treatment, many of these people often go without any form of prosthetic, limiting their ability to retain a steady job and support a family.
To combat this problem, Dr. Vo, also a practicing medical doctor and native of Vietnam, developed an inexpensive yet durable and universal-fit prosthetic that can be adjusted by the wearer for both changes in height and size. Thanks to grants from sponsors, the prosthetics are able to be designed using Mercer’s MTS in the U. S., manufactured in a factory in Vietnam and fitted free-of-charge to the patients who so desperately need them. This summer’s Mercer on Mission group of 18 students will travel to the country at the end of May and stay until the third week of June, and will likely fit more patients than ever before.
Although it may seem impossible to think a machine like an MTS could have such an impact on someone living over 9,000 miles away, it does have an impact – a very strong one.
“Since we began the program in 2009, we’ve fit almost 1,000 patients with prosthetics, and that number grows more each year.” said Vo, adding that none of the program’s success would have been possible without the MTS machine.
While the patients receiving the prosthetics “don’t know what an MTS machine is and likely never will,” according to Shaw, “the change they experience and their thankfulness is mirrored in Dr. Vo and his students, who have an equal appreciation for the technology that allowed them to bring about that change.” Shaw added that the new machine will allow for improvements to the prosthetics’ design and fit. Rarely is it possible to look at a piece of equipment in such a light. Almost by definition, an MTS is a machine used to break things, and yet, for Dr. Vo and his students, it helps them make people whole
When comparing biomedical engineering to the other engineering disciplines, it stands out as one of the few engineering sciences that can directly impact someone on a personal and emotional level. Giving someone a prosthetic limb is not the same as giving them a new computer, a new road or a new electronic gadget. It is giving them a new lease on life. It is giving them the ability to walk again - to be independent and to stand alongside their loved ones.
“It is rewarding in so many ways...we are truly changing people’s lives through the use of technology like the MTS,” Vo said. He also shared the words one patient told him: “You’ve changed my life…I almost took my life away because I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t work, I couldn’t do anything for my family…I wanted to take my own life. But you’ve brought my life back.”
This week the U.S. celebrates Engineering Week, and this year’s theme is “Make a Difference”. The new MTS was delivered on Tuesday, and should be operational by the end of the week. Thanks to its numerous improvements, Mercer engineering students and faculty will continue to make an even bigger difference in the lives of the people of Vietnam.
(02/21/14 1:16am)
The second Saturday of February saw the highlighting of an important issue in the Macon community—homelessness. According to Maconrescuemission.com, experts estimate there are over 500 homeless people in the Macon-Bibb County, many of which suffer from addictions.
Local community members belonging to the Loaves & Fishes Ministry of Macon organized a benefit raising money to further the Ministry’s mission to “serve and improve the quality of life of the poor and homeless in Macon and Middle Georgia.”
The benefit called Tea & Tunes: A Heart for the Homeless featured performances by Mercer’s professor of music, Dr. Martha Malone, accompanied by several students from the Townsend School of Music.
The fundraiser began at 3 p.m. with McKinley Starks performing “Leaning on a Lamppost” and ending shortly before 5 p.m. after Clay Mote’s rousing and humorous performance of “Me” from Beauty and the Beast.
Along with wonderful music, guests at the event were also served a colorful assortment of teas, pastries and cookies that reflected a love-filled atmosphere.
This was the first year the Ministry had attempted an event like Tea & Tunes, and it was an overwhelming success. “I would estimate we have over 150 people here, I think we’ve had an amazing turnout”, said Sharon Bailey, chairwoman of the organization’s marketing committee and a primary organizer of the event.
Donations made by attendees to the event will go to the operating costs and expenses of Loaves & Fishes.
For 45 years, Loaves & Fishes Ministry has served the Macon and middle Georgia community, helping “assist individuals and families as they transition from learned helplessness to learned resourcefulness.”
Though it now serves the community from the home base of Northminster Presbyterian Church, the organization was founded barely a block from Mercer in the basement of the former Tattnall Square Presbyterian Church. In the beginning, the ministry was able to provide only food and clothing; 15 years after its founding, the organization acquired its first house and began providing shelter to homeless men.
Today with the help of around a dozen different churches in Macon and middle Georgia, Loaves and Fishes Ministry provides essential services and items such as groceries, sack lunches, clothing, a free laundry and shower facility, personal hygiene kits, birth certificates and emergency prescription assistance.
“It’s important to me to be part of an organization that is offering real help in both material and spiritual ways to families and individuals that are struggling with homelessness and poverty” said Bailey.
(02/09/14 9:28pm)
Mercer University has a long-standing reputation of being a community of respect and acceptance. Students at Mercer are encouraged to be themselves without fear of judgment or backlash.
One organization in which Mercer students can be open about who they are is Common Ground, Mercer’s on-campus gay-straight alliance (GSA). At Common Ground, students can discuss topics related to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community in an open forum with the goal of “building awareness and encouraging discussion of sexual and gender diversity.”
“It’s called Common Ground because it is a place where anyone can express his or her ideas freely. Anyone is welcome,” said Josh Kirven, the organization’s president.
Common Ground is not the first GSA group to exist at Mercer, however. The school’s first LGBTQ organization, known as the Mercer Triangle Symposium, was formed in 2002 and disbanded in the fall of 2005 after its sponsorship of a “National Coming Out Day” played a role in the Georgia Baptist Convention’s decision to sever ties with Mercer University. A year later, in 2006, Common Ground was founded to once again give LGBTQ students a safe place to discuss topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Common Ground meets every Thursday at 6 p.m. in Conference Room II of Connell Student Center. Meeting topics can range widely, from members’ experiences during the week to planning social events for the organization.
“We currently have around 20-25 active members. The number of members that attend each meeting depends on the week,” said Kirven.
This year alone, Common Ground gained approximately 10 new freshmen, including engineering student Chas Bronstein and creative writing and psychology major Bryce Wilborn, who now serves as the group’s secretary.
For many of its members, Common Ground is the community they turn to because it is where they feel most at home.
“For me, Common Ground is pretty much the highlight of my week,” said Wilborn. “When I found out that it even existed, it made me a lot happier to be here at Mercer. It’s the place where I feel most comfortable.”
Bronstein held a similar opinion, referring to Common Ground as “a place where I can really be myself, where I can interact with like-minded people who really ‘get’ me.”
“There are just things that my friends in Common Ground are able to appreciate a lot more than my other friends because they can relate to my life a lot more,” said Sam Tarleton, the group’s event coordinator.
In terms of upcoming events, Common Ground will soon be hosting “Straight Questions, Gay Answers,” an event where individuals who identify as heterosexual can ask questions related to the LGBTQ community and have those questions answered by individuals who identify as gay or bisexual.
Additionally, the organization will be sponsoring an event called “Religion and Homosexuality” in which a panel of four active clergymen addresses topics and answers questions regarding homosexuality from the biblical perspective.
An important aspect to remember about Common Ground is its status as a gay-straight alliance. The group is open to any student (regardless of his or her sexual orientation, gender, or religion) who is willing to further the community of respect and acceptance that has come to define Mercer University.
(02/06/14 9:24pm)
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “the most segregated hour of the week in our communities was 11:00 a.m. on Sundays.” According to Dr. John Dunaway, Professor of French and Interdisciplinary Studies, “this fact has not changed much over the last 46 years.” In an effort to fight this form of modern segregation, Dunaway has spent the last 10 years organizing the annual Beloved Community Symposium.
Each year’s symposium has featured different keynote speakers. This year, the symposium’s theme reflects Mercer’s yearlong celebration, “Looking Back and Moving Forward: 50 Years of Integration at Mercer” and will feature Sam Oni, Mercer’s first black student, who graduated from the College of Liberal Arts in 1967.
Oni was born in Nigeria and lived in Ghana until he met Mercer graduate and missionary Harris Mobley who had connections with the Mercer administration. Through his connections, Mobley contacted Mercer president Rufus Harris and suggested Oni be admitted as Mercer’s first black student. Soon afterward, Oni arrived at Mercer in the fall of 1963.
As a student, Oni faced many challenges. His first night on campus, he was visited by the pastor of Tattnall Square Baptist Church, now Newton Chapel, who told Oni that the church’s congregation had voted to bar him from attending the church. While Oni was later able to attend services at Vineville Baptist Church, it was in his senior year that he decided to try attending Tattnall Square Baptist for a service. He was quickly arrested on the church steps.
While the symposium is an annual event, Dunaway and other organizers spend much of the year working with churches in the local community. “We want to create a community where members of historically white churches cooperate with those of historically black churches to better the community as a whole,” Dunaway said.
To do this, Dunaway helps coordinate with the local clergy to organize large “unity services” where members from nearby churches attend a service that incorporates choirs and pastors from both black churches and white churches. At the last unity service in September, over 300 people attended.
Furthering the spirit of cooperation between the churches, Dunaway has also helped organize different volunteer activities that incorporate the different churches. Ultimately, the goal of these activities is to build what Dunaway calls a “beloved community.” According to him, a beloved community “is a community that is suffused with love. It’s only love and forgiveness that can overcome the kind of racial barriers that separate us. To remove these barriers, we must recognize the things that unite us as fellow human beings.”
The symposium will take place Tuesday, Feb. 18, and Wednesday, Feb. 19, and is open to all students and members of the public. Activities kick off Tuesday night with a banquet in the President’s Dining Room where Oni will make his first speech. The following morning will feature a breakfast in the Fellowship Hall of Centenary United Methodist Church where magistrate court Judge William C Randall, the son of the Macon civil rights leader William P Randall, will speak. Wednesday morning will also include a second speech from Oni and a panel discussion, both held in Newton Chapel Sanctuary. The Symposium ends Wednesday at noon with a closing luncheon in the Sanctuary, presided by Mercer University Professor of Christian Ethics, Rev. Dr. David P. Gushee. Admission to all symposium sessions is free, though reservations are required for meals and can be made by contacting Trish Dunaway at (478) 475-9506 or trishdunaway3@gmail.com by Feb. 14.
(02/06/14 9:13pm)
This weekend I, like many students, had laundry to do. And once again, I was faced with the issue of not having enough money on my Bear Card. As most on-campus students will know, the laundry machines take either quarters or Bear Bucks, but nothing else. But I am not writing this opinions article to comment on the lack of change machines, or even the cost of doing laundry on campus; my issue lies with the Bear Bucks system itself.
While I admit that Bear Bucks is a good idea, I believe that the scarcity of Bear Bucks depositing machines on campus is a major inconvenience to many students. These machines, referred to as Value Transfer Stations (VTS) by Auxiliary Services, allow students to directly deposit cash into their Bear Bucks account. They are found in Tarver Library, Connell Student Center and the medical school library. For undergraduates, however, the medical school location is largely unknown and inconveniently far away from any dorms. Meanwhile, the two remaining locations are a depressingly long walk for students living in the Winship and Garden apartments or one of the Greek Row houses.
So when these students find themselves as I did this weekend, with a large pile of wet clothes and not enough money to pay for the dryer, or else craving a late night snack from the vending machine, needless to say, the available options are not exactly ideal. They can either walk to the library (which is closed for large portions of the weekend) or all the way across campus to Connell. A third option, Auxiliary Services will tell you, is to make a deposit online through the Bear Card Office website. While useful as a last resort, this lesser-known option requires that you provide a valid credit or debit card, which is then charged a “convenience fee” for the use of the online deposit system. What’s another downside to the “convenience” of using the online sight? Not everyone has money readily available on his or her cards.
The value of the VTS is its ability to deposit the loose cash you have onto your Bear Card where it can then be used to pay for different goods on and around campus, often without tax. Personally, I try to avoid carrying cash, and since I cannot easily put cash on my debit card, I often deposit it into my Bear Bucks account instead. Considering how many things on campus require Bear Bucks or cash as payment (organizations, events, restaurants, printers and copiers, mail services, etc.) it really only makes sense to make deposits as simple and convenient as possible.
Luckily, I believe many of these problems can be easily solved by the addition of more VTS on campus. Personally, I would advocate installing a machine in both the University Center and Mercer Village. The University Center seems an obvious location to install a machine-- it is open late, is sufficiently close to Greek Row and the Winship and Garden apartments, serves as a major social area for students, and possibly sees more Bear Bucks transactions than anywhere else on campus. Installing a VTS in the University Center would be a welcome addition for students and would prevent the awkwardness of not being able to pay for your meal later in the semester because you’ve used up your Dining Dollars and forgot to add money to your Bear Bucks. Finally, practically every vendor located in Mercer Village accepts Bear Bucks as a payment option. Adding a VTS in the Village would give those students either living at the Lofts or simply spending an afternoon in the Village a convenient method of adding money to their Bear Card.
(01/22/14 9:00pm)
Change is happening at Mercer University, and school administration and faculty have taken notice. Since the 1997-1998 school year, the number of biology and chemistry credit hours taken by Mercer students each year has increased by nearly 100 percent, growing from 4,745 in ’97-’98 to over 9,000 this school year.
This dramatic increase in the number of students enrolling in science classes is perhaps related to the world we live in today. The rapidly advancing technology that has come to define the 21st century means that the number of scientific discoveries made each year is also increasing. This has lead to greater demand in the workforce for young professionals with a background in the sciences.
As it relates to Mercer, the increase in students seeking a degree in science and technology means that the Macon campus is rapidly running out of rooms to accommodate the new students. Currently, the Science Department has had to resort to using other buildings like Stetson and the Engineering Building to teach larger classes that cannot take place in the overcrowded Willet Science Center. For example, both sections of last semester’s microbiology course had to be taught in the Engineering Building because of limited availability of the Science Center’s larger classrooms.
Unfortunately, these problems are affecting more than just the Macon campus, as medical students enrolled at the Savannah branch of the School of Medicine are facing similar issues resulting from having too little space to conduct classes.
These issues have not escaped the attention of the upper administration. When the problems were first noted a little over two years ago, President Underwood, along with key members of the administration, began working with the science faculty to bring a new science building to the Macon campus that would be built to function alongside Willet Science Center and the Science and Engineering Building.
Meanwhile, to address the issues of overcrowding at the School of Medicine in Savannah, a 40,000 square-foot addition will be added on to the current buildings to provide more classroom and lab space for students. Currently, the Savannah branch of the School of Medicine enrolls only about 160 medical students, compared to approximately 240 enrolled at the Macon campus. It is the administration’s hope that by expanding the buildings in Savannah, the satellite campus may begin to equal the number of students found in Macon.
The plans for both project have not yet been finalized. However, President Underwood states that the goal is to finish and present them to the Board of Trustees this April. Still, while not all the plans are known, Underwood was able to provide some estimation as to what students can expect of the Macon campus’ new building. Expected to be approximately 100,000 square feet, the new building will far exceed the size of Willet at 60,000 square feet. It will be built using the same environmentally friendly standards used in the construction of the football stadium and the new Admissions and Welcome Center, and will feature highly adaptable classrooms and laboratories that will allow the building to accommodate future technological advancements. Underwood said that much of the building’s improvements should be credited to the science faculty, “who have worked tirelessly with design consultants” to ensure the building provides the best possible educational experiences for students.
Many may wonder just where the new building will be placed. With the completion of the football stadium and Cruz Plaza this summer, the amount of available land on campus has become rather scarce. “The most likely location right now,” said Underwood, “would be the front lawn of the Medical School. Were [the new building] to be built there, the Patterson Building, which houses the Student Health Center, would be demolished and its facilities relocated elsewhere on campus.”
Of course, plans to build so many new classrooms and labs inevitably means that some new professors will need to be hired to fill them. Underwood confirmed this, however faculty and students can expect to wait some time to welcome their new colleagues and teachers. Though fundraising is already underway, Underwood expects construction in Savannah won’t begin until August 2014, while Macon students can expect construction to begin sometime in 2015 and continue for up to 18 months.
(09/13/13 3:59am)
Have you ever traveled around Macon, seen something in need of service or repair and wondered if you were the only one wishing someone would come and fix it? Thanks to the designers of the app SeeClickFix, reporting non-emergency issues in your local neighborhood is more simple.
SeeClickFix is an app that allows community members in cities around the country to report local, non-emergency issues that they feel ought to be addressed by the appropriate office in their government. Such issues may vary.
Users can report items ranging from public safety, such as storm debris and broken or missing traffic signs, to public image, such as dilapidated buildings or dirty alleyways.
In addition to a verbal description, users have the option of adding a photo and a GPS location. Once an issue as been submitted, it is visible to all users of the app, who are then able to vote on the issues they consider most important.
For Macon, SeeClickFix is a relatively new undertaking, and one that is still evolving. The app was implemented by the city in April 2012. Since then, there have been 1,759 reports in and around Macon.
Chris Floore, director of public affairs for Mayor Robert Reichert’s office, helps oversee the app alongside Customer Service Representative Denise Mercer. From the city’s perspective, Floore said, SeeClickFix is an ideal platform to actively engage and communicate with community members while simultaneously “increasing and improving transparency in government.”
Users who report issues to the Macon government using SeeClickFix are able to track its progress, vote for other issues to be fixed sooner and comment on nearby issues in the neighborhood around them. All reports submitted to the Public Works and Central Services Departments can be tracked to see how quickly they are being addressed. To that end, Floore said, the city tries to address reports chronologically as they are submitted.
Certain issues however, such as public safety, are often automatically prioritized. “One evening,” he said, “we received a report through SeeClickFix ... that a stop sign had fallen over. It was fixed the next morning.”
In fact, community members can often expect a prompt response to requests made through the platform. “We try to have a fix within 10-15 days. If it looks as if it will take longer, you are to receive a notification with the reason for the delay,” said Floore.
Ultimately, the city hopes spread knowledge and use of the app to as many people as possible. Not only does the app allow for a direct way for locals and students to express their concerns, “it provides another avenue of communication so we can determine how best to use (city) resources and services,” Floore said.
Should a student wish to contribute to community improvement, the SeeClickFix app is a great place to start. Speaking about student involvement through the app, Floore said, “If we can increase the amount of eyes finding issues needing a fix, we can increase the amount of improvements made.”
Students wishing to take a more active role can look into local volunteer organizations, like Keep Macon-Bibb Beautiful and Main Street Macon, for neighborhood cleanups. SeeClickFix is available for free across all major platforms, including Apple’s App Store, Android’s Google Play, Windows Phone Marketplace and the Blackberry World store. In addition, SeeClickFix reports can be made through its Facebook app, SeeClickFix.com or the City of Macon website.