Stories this week include: The Jaguar basketball team is in the Elite Eight, an alum and associate professor returns to discuss social issues, an Emmy nomination could be in the works for some students and a cyber faculty member earns a big honor.

Jaguar basketball is still dancing in March

The Augusta University men’s basketball team will play in the Division II Tournament at 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 22 in Evansville, Indiana against Chico State. The Jaguars are making their first Elite Eight appearance in 12 years. Should Augusta win that game, they would play again on Thursday, March 24.

The championship game is Saturday, March 26. The Jaguars are 31-3 on the season, having won 17 straight games.

Alum and associate professor to give lecture on social issues

Dr. Samuel Perry, Augusta University alumnus and current University of Oklahoma associate professor, will present a lecture titled “A House Dividing: Why Christian Nationalism is Everyone’s Problem” at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 24 in University Hall, Room 170.

“These kind of lectures are important for the university. They bring faculty together to think through important research, but also bring the broader AU and Augusta community into conversations with each other on issues we as a society are facing,” said Dr. Dustin Avent-Holt, associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences.

Four students are hoping for a Southeast Emmy nomination

Creating professional promotional work could lead four students to a possible Southeast Emmy Award nomination. Diana Pacheco, Clayton Richardson, Haley Dowdy and Joseph McElmurray have worked on “My Augusta University Story” video projects. Some of that work has included the Spanish dubbing of the stories and audio and video production.

“Just creating professional opportunity for students through learning of advanced video media and seeing students benefit professionally through career advice is extremely rewarding,” said Art Berger, director of multimedia production in Communications and Marketing. “I can tell you from a student’s perspective, that can sometimes be hard to do, but when it does occur, it’s a win for all involved.”

Cyber faculty member awarded National Science Foundation CAREER Award

Weiming Xiang, assistant professor in the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, has been awarded Augusta University’s first National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The award will support Xiang’s five-year project that focuses on making automation in our daily lives safer through ensuring upgrades to those systems are trustworthy.

“Besides being able to perform my research, there is another part of this proposal, and that’s the educational part,” Xiang said. “I would love to have more students get involved in the project, to get a better understanding of cyber physical systems and how to apply popular machine learning techniques to improve the performance for cyber physical systems.”

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