Students and alumni lead the kudos as we count down to the end of 2019. Congratulations all:

Herb Girls Athens, a two-woman team, won the 2018-19 FABricate competition with its signature product, a healthy coffee additive called Rally Coffee. The FABricate competition is designed to empower students to turn their great ideas into working businesses. Eileen Schaffer, an agribusiness master’s degree student, and Amy Wright, a recent psychology graduate, formed Herb Girls as a passion-project. Then it turned into a business

Caitlin Amos, Ph.D. student in marine sciences, is lead author on a new study published Oct. 30 in Nature Communications that describes for the first time using large-scale observational analyses how upwelled water is trapped along the coast and then transported offshore, expanding the zone of biological productivity 

Building on the successes of programs that promote diversity among undergraduate and graduate students in STEM fields, the University of Georgia joined a multi-institution alliance that is working to enhance faculty diversity and the use of inclusive teaching practices. The effort is known as Aspire: The National Alliance for Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty. UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry Greg Robinson is the faculty lead on the project

UGA announced the official naming of the College of Education to honor Mary Frances Early – UGA’s first African American graduate and a pioneering educator. Early became the first African American to earn a degree from the University of Georgia when she graduated on Aug. 16, 1962, with a master’s degree in music education

UGA researchers will receive $15.75 million from the U.S. Department of State to expand programming and research to measurably reduce human trafficking. Jody Clay-Warner, Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, serves as co-investigator on the project

The UGA Alumni Association unveiled the 2020 Bulldog 100 list of fastest-growing businesses owned or operated by UGA alumni, Including 29 alumni honorees from the Franklin College

Eight students at UGA chartered the university’s first African American sorority in 1969. Backed by a powerful sisterhood and an alumnae network of over 600 graduates, the women of the Zeta Psi chapter of Delta Sigma Theta celebrated 50 years of sisterhood, service and scholarship by creating the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Fortitude 1969 Scholarship in honor of the anniversary, part of the UGA Foundation’s Georgia Commitment Scholarship Program. The organization’s initial goal was to raise $100,000, which it exceeded before the event. Combined with matching funds from the UGA Foundation, the campaign has raised about $238,000

Four UGA faculty members, including Leslie Gordon Simons and Amy Trauger from the Franklin College, have received a 2019 First-Year Odyssey Teaching Award in recognition of their success as outstanding teachers in the First-Year Odyssey Seminar program. They were honored on Nov. 20 at the First-Year Odyssey Seminar reception

As a part of the annual Spotlight on the Arts festival, 50 members of the University of Georgia Redcoat Marching Band performed a two-and-a-half hour score from a typical football game at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. The rest of the band members performed at the same time in Sanford Stadium via broadcast