It’s Saturday in Athens. A time for Southeastern Conference football ... and renewable energy.
The University of Georgia hosts the inaugural SEC Symposium this weekend. The topic is the Southeast’s impact on the future of renewable energy, and the participants are the 14 universities of the SEC — as supported by its new academic initiative, SECU.
“The whole concept behind this is that 14 SEC institutions don’t really talk to each other enough,” said Robert Scott, associate vice president for research and chair of the local organizing committee. “For a given area, it’s always useful to have people come together and share ideas and set up collaborations and it’s going to be an opportunity to do that. The students get involved in that as well. They learn what’s going on, they meet people. It’s a networking opportunity as well as a learning opportunity.”
For some of the students attending the conference, it’s about school pride as well.
“I’ve done research in the microbiology department working with engineering the bacteria that produce biofuels,” said Travis Fetchko, a senior biochemistry major from Stevensville, Mont., and a University Scholar to the symposium. “I’m always first in line to go in every football game so, if I can, I want to represent us amongst other SEC schools on an academic level.”
Fetchko is also a member of the Spike Squad, a group of students who paint up and wear spiked shoulder pads at UGA football games.
The SECU decided each of the 14 member institutions would select two university ambassadors to represent each school — how they were chosen was left to the individual school’s discretion.
Besides the ambassadors, UGA will also be sending 10 University Scholars, who submitted applications and were selected jointly by the OVPR and the Office of Sustainability and are sponsored by the Bioenergy Systems Research Institute.
“We helped to put together those competitions to select bright, talented UGA students to represent the university at the symposium,” said Kevin Kirsche, director of the Office of Sustainability.
Any undergraduate was eligible to apply for both an ambassador and scholar position, Kirsche said, as long as they had a 3.0 GPA and showed they were particularly interested in the symposium’s topic of renewable energy.
Both scholars and ambassadors were asked to submit an essay expressing their reasons for wanting to attend. Ambassador candidates were asked to also submit a video clip.
“We were very pleased with the response, and it confirmed what we already knew — that there are a lot of really impressive, talented and engaged undergraduate students at UGA,” Kirsche said.
The scholars come from a wide variety of backgrounds, said one of the students selected to participate, Cassia Adams, a biochemical engineering major from Adairsville.
“I was actually kind of impressed by the variety of people there,” she said. “Freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, ecology, finance — I thought that was kind of neat, for them to pick people from a wide background, because I kind of think that’s what this whole thing is about.”
The topic was chosen through a competition between all 14 schools — each submitted two, and the presidents of the SEC selected one, Scott said. UGA submitted the topic of bioenergy in the Southeast — and with a little tweaking to include all renewable energy — it was chosen as the winner.
The symposium will be held in Atlanta — and will probably continue to be, even when UGA is not hosting — at the Hyatt Regency. Speakers will include representatives from all 14 SEC universities, government agencies and industry groups.
“This is a big deal for UGA — being the first organizer — and the provost has been very excited and supportive of this,” Scott said. “He’s been helping encourage everyone around campus to get involved.”
Scott estimated around 30 to 40 students from UGA will be at the symposium this weekend, including the ambassadors, scholars, CURO students and others.
“I want to learn more so I can have an impact,” said Kathryn Clark, a biology major from Fayetteville and the only freshman scholar. “I just don’t know enough right now as a freshman to really be able to do what I would like to do.”
