Theme: DISCOVER

Our theme for this year’s event is “Discover” and we have carefully curated talks that will encourage you to discover new things about yourself and the world around you. Our speakers will be sharing their expertise and experiences on topics that range from prison recidivism to black holes. We believe the ideas that they have are worth sharing and talking about in our community.

Centennial Hall
100 Auburn Avenue
Georgia State University
Atlanta, Georgia, 30303
United States

Alex Basinger

Student Researcher

Alex Basinger is pursuing a Masters of Arts in Economics with a concentration in labor economics at Georgia State University. His research focuses on the deliberate efforts of the for-profit prison industry to increase criminal recidivism. By allowing private prisons to determine the living and working conditions of prisoners, who are legal property of their state, nations open prisoners to two major issues: maltreatment while under prison care and poor reintegration into the civilian world after incarceration. He plans to pursue a career in the fields of data analysis and educational policy, using his degree and personal experiences with poverty to teach underprivileged youth and adults how to avoid a life of debt and hardship. He believes diminishing the information gap between prosperity and poverty, particularly early on, will stop the problem before it starts and give more people the opportunity to succeed.

Andrea Rogers

Writing Instructor and Consultant

Andrea Rogers is a musician and Ph.D. Poetry student at Georgia State University, where she is an Advanced Teaching Fellow. Rogers is currently a writing instructor at GSU and Agnes Scott College, and works as a Writing Consultant at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. Outside of teaching and tutoring, she has also worked for literary journals (Five Points, Odradek) and the South Atlantic Modern Language Association. Rogers's professional and personal interests directly overlap; as such, she has continually explored the intersections of the written and spoken word in her research, writing, and in a variety of poetry and music performances across the southeast. Rogers’s research areas are varied, and include women’s confessional poetry and the complex relationship between American popular music and contemporary American poetry. She is the recipient of the 2015 Agnes Scott Writers’ Festival Poetry Prize, judged by Tracy K. Smith, and two Academy of American Poets awards.

Francisco Martinez

Student Researcher

Francisco Martinez is a freshman at Georgia State University obtaining his Bachelor of Science in Physics with a concentration in Astronomy. He currently works as a Student Assistant under Dr. Misty Bentz in the Physics and Astronomy Department investigating gravitationally lensed Quazi-stellar objects. This research is connected with the Master Lens Data Base and The Orphan Lenses Project, which is facilitated by the University of Utah by the Physics and Astronomy Department. Also, Francisco leads workshops as part of the Technology Training Department of the Center for Instructional Innovation at Georgia State University. Workshops include Microsoft PowerPoint, Final Cut Pro, and most notably, Python, a computing language used in the science fields. Francisco represented Georgia State University in December 2015 as part of the Grad-Map Winter Workshop at the University of Maryland, and will be speaking at TedxGeorgiaStateU in April 2015 for his studies in black hole data analysis usi

Greg Hodgin

Executive Director, Peacebuilding Solutions

Greg Hodgin is the Executive Director of Peacebuilding Solutions and a Doctoral Candidate of Political Science at Georgia State University. Peacebuilding Solutions is a revolutionary non-profit organization dedicated to empowering displaced communities. Through this organization, Mr. Hodgin has seen first-hand the debilitating effects of international humanitarian work that fails to take into account the very communities they are attempting to help. At times, their work makes the situation worse than if they had never intervened at all. Mr. Hodgin’s research interest in international institutions has pushed him to re-examine the world of international aid as it exists today. The ground-up, community-based work that Peacebuilding Solutions has begun in Haiti, as well as the extensive dissertation research on development and humanitarian aid, provide unique insight into the problems that today’s non-profit world face.

Krisna Patel

Student Researcher

Krisna Patel is a senior undergraduate student majoring in Marketing and Computer Information Systems at GSU with dreams of traveling the world and helping build homes with charities, such as Habitat for Humanity. She wants to have a career in social media marketing, and perhaps dip her feet into application programming. During her spare time, she likes to watch soccer, write music, and binge watch a good TV show. She hopes to learn more of how technology is advancing and more ways of how it can help us on a daily basis, especially at GSU. She will be talking about a research project she is working on with the Student Innovation Fellowship program called 3D Atlanta. And she will show us how to rediscover the history of Atlanta from back in the 1920s via a 3D interactive virtual model.

Lauren Stites

Developmental Psychologist

Lauren J. Stites, M.A., is a Ph.D. candidate in Developmental Psychology at Georgia State University. For the past 10 years, her research has focused on language acquisition in children with a variety of different developmental profiles. Lauren completed her MA in 2010, based on her work on young children’s understanding of different metaphors for time. Her current work examines the effect of literacy on the development of metaphorical abilities in speech and in gesture. Specifically, she is interested in how children use metaphors to organize abstract concepts in thought, and how language, culture, and cognitive factors influence children’s abstract thought. Further, she examines how children use gesture in later complex language development, such as narration. Lauren’s work was funded by a Challenges in Acquiring Language & Literacy Fellowship.

Monica Cook

Physics Instructor

Monica K. Cook is a PhD student in Physics at Georgia State University and a Student Innovation Fellow. Her academic interests lie in the realm of Physics Education Research (PER), specifically in discursive teaching methods and the formation of science identity in students. Her personal interests include writing, activism, and technology. Monica will be speaking about shifting the aims of science education such that personal or professional failures and setbacks are not seen as shameful but as a normal and necessary part of learning to be a scientist.

Na’Taki Osborne Jelks

Environmental Engineer

Mrs. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks is an environmental health scientist, social change engineer, and educator working for a healthy, just, and sustainable future. She has been advancing equity and social justice at the local level for nearly 20 years---using her expertise and passion to address environmental challenges facing underserved communities in the Atlanta Region. She has made contributions through government, non-profit, and community-based organizations, as both a professional and community leader, to advance environmental justice in low-income and communities of color and to elevate marginalized community voices so that those most affected by changes in the region gain access to the decision-making tables where strategies are being planned and developed. Eighteen years ago, she co-founded the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA), a community-based organization comprised of residents living in Atlanta’s Proctor, Utoy, and Sandy Creek Watersheds.

Robert Andrews

Activist

Recently graduated from GSU in Spring 2015 with a BiS in Middle Eastern Studies. During his time at the University he founded the GSU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, was a decorated member of the Model Arab League team, and presented at the GSURC on LGBT discourses in Palestine-Israel. He is also a former Intern of The Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, as well as the IRC’s youth summer program. He is presently on the steering Committee of Jewish Voice for Peace-Atlanta, JVP being one of the few Jewish centered pro-Palestinian organizations in the country. Current endeavors include working in education, activism, and research. In November 2015, he traveled to Palestine-Israel alongside several Atlanta based grassroots racial justice activists and theologians. It was an extensive and exhaustive trip traversing both the state of Israel as well as all 3 areas (A, B, & C) across the Occupied Palestinian Territory of the West Bank & East Jerusalem.