IN THE NEWS: Leap year, electric brain stimulation and an alumnus in the Super Bowl

Several faculty members as well as a College of Education alumnus were recently featured in various media outlets.

On Monday – Leap day – mathematics education associate professor Kevin C. Moore was featured in a front-page story in the Athens Banner-Herald on the day’s relationship to mathematics, and how our calendars are never quite right, despite the additional day.

Can zapping your brain with electricity boost creativity? Professor Mark Runco, who teaches gifted and creative education in the Department of Educational Psychology, recently weighed in on a growing movement as part of a podcast aired on KCUR radio. Runco says the phenomenon is “complicated” and that the “so-called standard deviation of creativity is that creative things are both original, but also in some way effective.”

And kinesiology alumnus Fernando Velasco, an offensive lineman for the Carolina Panthers, was one of four UGA alumni to play in last month’s Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco. Velasco was recently the focus of a column by Loran Smith, which ran in Monday’s Athens Banner-Herald and detailed his life growing up and overcoming poverty in rural Georgia.