Media mentions: Associate professor asks for mask mandate; Mary Frances Early discusses new book on WUGA
Associate professor asks for mask mandate
In a guest column for The Red & Black, Usree Bhattacharya, an associate professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education, asked the Board of Regents for a mask mandate.
Bhattacharya’s 5-year-old daughter has Rett syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that affects about one in every 15,000 live births, primarily girls.
“In refusing to support a mask mandate for our campuses, the Board of Regent is staking out an explicitly political position, one that has been widely criticized by health officials, public health experts, as well as by its own faculty and staff (many with expertise in this area),” Bhattacharya said.
Read the full story on The Red & Black’s website.
Early discusses new book on WUGA
Mary Frances Early, UGA’s first African American graduate, recently discussed her new book, “The Quiet Trailblazer: My Journey as the First Black Graduate of the University of Georgia,” on WUGA.
In “The Quiet Trailblazer,” Early recounts her firsthand experience coming to campus in the summer of 1961. She chronicles her career as a music educator, first teaching in segregated schools before blazing trails to lead the Atlanta City Schools music education department and becoming the first African American elected president of the Georgia Music Educators Association.
“My autobiography is really about my growing up and becoming a civil rights activist,” she said. “My parents taught us at an early age that we were as good as anyone—it depended on our potential and how we accepted education.”