Guest Columns
By Guest Columnist RUTHIE YOW, Service Learning and Partnerships specialist at Georgia Tech’s Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain
This summer, 44 Georgia Tech undergraduate and graduate students fanned out across the city and state as part of their engagement with the Summer Internship Program at Georgia Tech’s Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain (SLS). This year’s program had a twist: It incorporated the nationwide protests for social justice and the public health catastrophe of COVID-19.
By Guest Columnists TYLER S. THIGPEN and CALEB COLLIER, academic leaders at The Forest School and Institute for Self-directed Learning
A parent at our school has three kids at home. Last school year, two of them were learners at our school, The Forest School, a self-directed learning environment in Pinewood Forest, in Fayetteville. The third attended a nearby traditional middle school.
By Guest Columnist SANTIAGO MARQUEZ, CEO of the Latin American Association
At the beginning of 2020, our state Legislature hit the ground running to accomplish the ample priorities on its plate for the year. In the midst of the annual kick-off, however, Georgia and the rest of the nation was forced to turn its attention to tackling the public health threat created by COVID-19.
By QUYNH PHAM, master’s student of Architecture and City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech
To say that the last several months have been distressingly surreal would be an understatement. For students, it began with an unusual end to the spring semester, one marked by sudden shifts to online learning, early prompts to move out of campus housing, virtual graduations, and understandably high levels of anxiety due to the uncertainties that laid ahead.
By Guest Columnist FRANK FERNANDEZ, president/CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
The world has changed. Twice. I’ve heard dozens of variations on this theme over the last five months since the pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice began.
By Guest Columnist DAVID L. SJOQUIST, professor of economics at Georgia State University
The death of George Floyd and others at the hands of the police led to widespread demonstrations demanding police reform. But, more generally, there is a loud, pervasive, and persistent call for true equal rights and equal treatment of people of color. The scope of the treatment is multi-dimensional. But if we are to create a more just society we need to address economic inequality across races. This is an enormous challenge, and to see how large it is, consider the city of Atlanta.
By Guest Columnist BRANDON SUTTON, a member of the Hulsey Yard Study Committee
2020 will no doubt be remembered as a time of unprecedented disruption to the lives and businesses of countless people throughout the country, including right here in Atlanta. In a macro sense, the world has changed dramatically. In a micro sense, the lives and daily choices of people everywhere are in a state of suspended animation.
By Guest Columnist JASON MARSHALL, executive director at Wesley International Academy
In recent months, international fear and caution have escalated, and we have watched national borders close while ideological isolationism rose. It may feel like this global disconnection is here to stay, but in many ways, the world has never felt smaller. … As an educator, I believe recent events have revealed that a global education is just as – if not more – important now than ever before.
Sheltering at home should provide comfort for people, but for our most vulnerable children it becomes a potential danger zone, and it disproportionately effects our children of color. For children who have been abused or trafficked, sheltering in place could be putting them back in the environments that caused them harm and trauma – back with their abusers or traffickers.
By Guest Columnist BOB WILLIS, CEO, Willis Investment Counsel
For decades, I have maintained a professional diary of my thinking as chief investment officer for an investment management firm located north of Atlanta. Earlier this spring, when the pandemic led to safety precautions at our office, I headed to my mountain cabin to work remotely – which stimulated more thought and reflection, and a lot of writing. Bear with me as I reveal a few excerpts from back then, and now.
By Guest Columnist FELICIA A. MOORE, president of the Atlanta City Council
Like many people excited to ring in the new year, I also referred to the year 2020 as the year of “perfect vision.” This year we would see clearly, with a perfect line of sight toward our expected outcomes. The elders of my generation often say, “Be careful what you wish for … you just might get it.”
St. Simons is one of only four Georgia barrier islands accessible by car. The others include Sea Island, Jekyll and Tybee islands. For many years I believed that these sanctuaries of nature were somewhat undiscovered. But clearly, that’s no longer the case and that is where my story begins.
By Guest Columnist MARK ALDREN, a member of the team that launched CNN and past president/board member, Atlanta Press Club
Skeptics, and there were plenty of them at the time, called it the “Chicken Noodle Network.” But 40 years ago, Atlanta was the birthplace of a revolution in news reporting. On June 1st, 1980, Ted Turner launched the Cable News Network, CNN. It was a bold experiment no one had dared try before – 24- hour news, seven days a week, beamed skyward to orbiting satellites.
By Guest Columnists ANNA WESTERSTAHL STENPORT and SEBNEM OZKAN, of the Atlanta Global Studies Center at Georgia Institute of Technology
Universities and colleges, as local and global anchor institutions, are poised to educate the next generation of global citizens and empower metro Atlanta’s ‘new’ global agenda through the common international language of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
These days are emotional for parents like me. My daughter is a high school senior and like many students across the country, she won’t get to experience her last day of school with her classmates and teachers. … Neither my mother nor I ever got the chance to graduate, so my daughter will be the first in our family. But we won’t be able to see her walk across that stage, and that’s something I have dreamed about since she was born.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the best way for us to restart the economy. … We need a new strategy for investing in America to recover from record unemployment and shattered business dreams. Here’s the way we can do it.
Sir Winston Churchill once famously said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Going through hell is exactly what the city of Atlanta has experienced of late. That’s why in scary times like this, it is comforting to know we’ve “been there, done that” before – and survived.
By SETH KALLER, president, Seth Kaller, Inc. (Historic Documents and Legacy Collections) “The preliminary observation that a free government ought to be built on the information and virtue of the people will here find its proper place.” On April 30, 1789 George Washington solemnly swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United […]
By Guest Columnists BILL TUNNELL, JERRY SPANGLER and TOM WALSH, leaders of TSW, a planning, architecture and landscape architecture firm
Recently we had the pleasure of celebrating our firm’s 30th anniversary. It was both gratifying and humbling to look back on three decades of designing buildings, communities and green spaces, and reflect on how fortunate we have been to participate in what has arguably been a revolutionary time period in building design and placemaking.
By Guest Columnist LARA SMITH, managing director of Dad’s Garage Theatre
I work as the managing director of Dad’s Garage Theatre (we specialize in improv and scripted comedy), and even with our very robust financial protections we are still facing financial challenges in this crisis.
