The Georgia Environmental Protection Division has awarded Atlanta Pubic Schools the Georgia Diesel Emissions Reduction’s Blue Sky Award for environmental achievement. This is the highest honor awarded to school systems that reduced diesel emission pollution from their school bus fleet. APS’ fleet of 400 buses transports 22,000 students every school day. APS has used a combinations of measures, including grants and capital investments, to reach its level compliance for its bus fleet. The district has purchased new buses with improved emissions controls, removed older buses from its fleet and installed emission control devises on others. This school year, APS also added 10 new buses that operate on green diesel technology to its fleet. This new technology represents an extensive reduction of emissions.
Communities In Schools of Atlanta, an organization dedicated to keeping kids in school with community support, is under the guidance of a new executive director, Frank Brown. Brown succeeds Patty Pflum, who in addition to serving the past 18 years as executive director, was affiliated with CIS since its founding in 1972. Most recently, Brown served as the first executive director of the Butler Street Community Development Corporation (formerly known as the historic Butler Street YMCA). In that position, he established year-round youth programming, launched the March on Washington Film Festival in Atlanta, reestablished the Hungry Club Forum, and secured partnerships with other nonprofits and governmental agencies that enhanced the organization’s healthy living and social awareness programming.
Georgia Tech has been awarded a Walmart U.S. Manufacturing Innovation Fund from Walmart, the Walmart Foundation and the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM). The announcement came at the 2014 U.S. Manufacturing Summit in Denver, where a total of seven leading research and development institutions were awarded $4 million in grants to create new processes, ideas and jobs that will foster America’s growing manufacturing footprint. Georgia Tech’s collaborative will receive nearly $2 million in funding to further develop the project “CRAFTed With Pride in the USA.” Researchers from Georgia Tech’s CRAFT (Center for Research in Apparel Fabrication Technologies) are collaborating on an automated manufacturing process to create apparel, from blue jeans to T-shirts, without a seamstress. The innovative technology plan is to use robotics, high-speed machine vision systems and materials-handling machines to create garments of a higher quality and at a lower cost than what is currently realized through offshore manufacturing.
Students Precious Gibson and Melissa Moyer have received Buick Achievers Scholarships. Each student will receive up to $25,000 that is renewable for up to four years, and one additional year for those entering a qualified, five-year engineering program. Gibson is attending Spelman College this fall, while Moyer is attending Georgia Tech.
Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice has been inaugurated as the sixth president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, culminating a Presidential Scholarship drive that is projected to provide $1.5 million to support the next generation of health care professionals. The Presidential Scholarship Fund received an extraordinary boost in August during a pre-inaugural gala luncheon that was attended by more than 850 exceptional women in metro Atlanta. The “Phenomenal Women” luncheon, led by Billye Aaron, the wife of famed baseball slugger and Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, raised $500,000 in scholarships for MSM students.
