I hope you’ll be able to join us this Thursday as we present our Alumni Travel Preview for 2010.  We’ll have our travel partners on hand to answer all your questions about the upcoming travel season.  The first program will be held at our new Atlanta office at One Live Oak from 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. and the second will be in Athens at the Ga. Center for Continuing Education’s Mahler Auditorium from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.  Click here for all the details.  Happy traveling!

2004 grad Alton Brown’s Food Network series “Good Eats” will be celebrating its 10^th anniversary with two live shows Saturday at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta.  Alton’s popular food science show has aired an incredible 220 episodes.  Congratulations, Alton.

Click here for all the details about the Alumni Association’s Family Day at Zoo Atlanta this Saturday.  Hope to see you there. 

UGA senior Alex Hill ‘10 will receive the Joel Eaves Award during the UGA-South Carolina game September 12.  This award is named in honor of former UGA Athletic Director Joel Eaves and given to the student athlete with the highest grade point average.  Alex is a member of the UGA tennis team and is a finance major in the Terry College of Business.  Alex’s father, Gary Hill ‘66, is a former Alumni Association Board member.  I also want to mention that Alex has been a member of our Student Alumni Association during his entire time at UGA and we appreciate his support of SAA.

Dr. John Handy ‘78, an Oregon cardiothoracic surgeon, has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the National Medical Research Institute of Mongolia for mission work he conducted in the East-Central Asian country last spring.  His effort last May included leading a team of medical professionals performing cardiac and thoracic surgery.  A practitioner with The Oregon Clinic, John is director of Thoracic Surgery and co-director of Thoracic Oncology Programs at Providence Health System in Portland.  According to a Providence news release, the doctorate was awarded “on the basis of eight years of selfless contributions to the development of cardiothoracic surgery in Mongolia.”  I want to personally thank John for his efforts.

If you find yourself in the Marietta area this evening, I invite you to join us for a Business After Hours event.  It is sponsored by our Cobb County Alumni Chapter.  Click here for all the details.

It was a pleasure to have dinner and present the good word of the Alumni Association to the Classic City Lions Club in Athens last night.  There was a large UGA connection with this group.  The club’s president, Denise Pesti, works in research at the College of Veterinary Medicine; Bill Segars and J.B. Weaver are retired from the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and retired Army Lt. Col. Adrian Fitzpatrick once served on the Alumni Board.  Like I have said before, I thoroughly enjoy getting out and meeting the Bulldog Nation and oftentimes civic clubs are the best place for that.  I would be happy to speak to your club…just contact Bob Taylor (btaylor@uga.edu) in my office and he’ll make all the arrangements.

I had the pleasure of meeting with UGA’s new men’s basketball coach this morning.  Mark Fox is a charming and unassuming guy and his wife, Cindy, is a real peach.  They haven’t even been in Georgia six months and already the excitement about Bulldog basketball is building all over the state.  Mark is a very serious coach and he’s looking to make some serious headway in the SEC.  I hope you will support Bulldog hoops by filling Stegeman Coliseum this upcoming season.        

UGA President Michael Adams on Thursday dedicated the new Tate Student Center expansion.  The new 96,000 square-foot facility is complete with four new restaurants: Taste of Home Café, Barberitos Southwestern Grill, Larry’s Giant Subs and Hotei’s Asian Grill.

This morning Dr. Adams cut the ribbon on UGA’s new Greek Park sandwiched between  East Campus and River Roads with four fraternities getting new homes: Tau Epsilon Phi, Phi Delta Theta, Pi Kappa Alpha and Sigma Nu. 

This afternoon a renovation to the Ramsey Center will be dedicated.  There are great things going on all over our beautiful campus.

The Bulldog Nation has many reasons to crow.  One of them is Grady College grad Mark Bullock ‘95, who was recently honored with a 2009 Southeast Regional Emmy Award for best news anchor by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.  Mark is an on-air news personality for WSFA-TV in Montgomery, Alabama.  I am told Mark was among five others nominated for the award and even beat out long-established anchors in the Atlanta market.  Congratulations, Mark!