Creativity and collaboration are fundamental to addressing today’s socio-environmental challenges. This seminar will include arts-based, STEM-friendly activities developed by UGA researchers from the arts, humanities, and sciences designed to help students to think creatively, to collaborate across disciplines, and to work with people with different perspectives, knowledge, and values. It will be an engaging and fun way to enhance the creativity that you bring to your own graduate work and your capacity to effectively participate in collaborative teams.
Facilitator: Mark Callahan (UGA Arts Collaborative)
In 2024, University of Georgia Associate Professor Nadja Zeltner received a grant to advance research in human cell generation, including adrenal gland organoids used to study disease.
Adrenal gland organoids are tiny, lab-grown versions of your body’s stress response control center—adrenal glands release hormones in response to stress or excitement, regulate energy and metabolism, manage blood pressure, support immune response, and more.
Supported by a subsequent seed grand and the UGA Arts Collaborative, this project expanded to explore how art and science intersect to create new perspectives across disciplines.
Listen Athens Monday, May 4 at 1 PM Lamar Dodd Building Room N140
What would Athens tell you if you truly listened?
Listen Athens is a project developed through recording, mapping, and archiving the soundscapes of Athens-Clarke County. The project takes shape as an interactive website that invites visitors to explore Athens through sound. Join us to meet the team behind the project and listen in.
Arts Collaborative Conversation: Art-Science Integration Friday, April 17 at noon Lamar Dodd Building Room S360
How are university research programs supporting the integration of art and science?
Mary Beth Leigh, Lissy Goralnik, and Megan Halpern will virtually join the Arts Collaborative for an informal conversation about convergent research and collaboration.
Leigh (University of Alaska Fairbanks) and Goralnik (Michigan State University) direct the In a Time of Change (ITOC) project, an incubator for advancing environmentally focused art-science integration in Alaska. ITOC is supported by the National Science Foundation, USDA Forest Service, and the Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research Program in Alaska.
Halpern and Goralnik are leaders of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Collaboration, Learning, and Engagement (CIRCLE) program at Michigan State University. CIRCLE launched in the fall of 2023 to build community, provide training and support for interdisciplinary activities, and conduct research on interdisciplinarity.
The Digital Diaspora project, supported by the Arts Collaborative Mini Grant program, explores the intersection of technology and live performance through a new piece for the UGA Wind Symphony in collaboration with composer Dr. Marie A. Douglas.
Project participants
Jack Eaddy, Music Alvin Crews, Enterprise Information Technology Services Marie Douglas, composer
Dr. Marie A. Douglas discussion and Q&A 5:30 PM Music room 412
Dr. Douglas will speak about her new composition and provide perspectives on music education and performance of new band music.
UGA Wind Symphony 7:30 PM UGA Performing Arts Center
Co-hosted by the UGA Collegiate National Association for Music Education and the Arts Collaborative.
UGA Entomology Live Insect Zoo Grand Reopening Reception Wednesday, April 15 from 3:30-5 PM Cedar St. Building B, Room 453 https://www.instagram.com/uga.ento.dept/
Meet our amazing critters in their habitats! Ask the experts all about terrestrial arthropods!
The UGA Insect Zoo houses a variety of arthropods from around the world. The UGA Entomology department teamed up with students from the Scientific Illustrationprogram in the School of Art to create installations as part of the newly renovated Insect Zoo. The dynamic space helps to educate and inspire visitors from as diverse of backgrounds as the bugs that are modeled.
Session 1: Authentic Interaction (the original AI!) 9:30-11:00, 411 Aderhold Hall
Session 2: Creative Problem solving–Exercising and Motivating Creativity 2:45-4:15, 501 Journalism Building
Session 3: Improv is the Gym–Exercising your Leadership, Communication, Creativity, and Collaboration 7:00-8:30pm, 607 Aderhold Hall
With the rise of AI, what do humans still have to offer — in the classroom, the office, in general? Connection, collaboration, communication and creativity. Human-human interactions are still important and will become more so as some tasks get offloaded to AI. This three-session event is aimed at capturing the value of being human despite increasing AI adoption and the threat of being replaced by AI.
Facilitator Kat Koppett is the eponymous founder of Koppett, a global consultancy that blends organizational development with improvisation and storytelling to help leaders and teams perform at their best. She is the author of Training to Imagine: Practical Improvisational Theatre Techniques to Enhance Creativity, Teamwork, Leadership, and Learning, considered a seminal work in applied improvisation (now in its 3rd edition!).
Major corporations, foundations and organizations looking to improve workplace culture and collaboration have embraced the tools she has developed, and Koppett clients that have benefitted from her methods include Meta, Apple, NASA, PwC and the Clinton Global Initiative.
Kat holds a B.F.A. in Drama from NYU and an M.A. in Organizational Psychology from Columbia University. She is co‑director of the Mopco Improv Theatre, and in 2024 served as vice president of the Applied Improvisation Network, In 2019 she received a Women of Excellence award as well as NASAGA’s Ifill-Raynolds Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the field of experiential learning. Additionally, TheatreWeek Magazine recognized her as one of its “Unsung Heroes” for creating Spontaneous Broadway, the world’s first fully-improvised musical format.
