rialto theatre - neuliongarland sang “over the rainbow” from the wizard of oz there in 1961....

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The Rialto Theatre on campus was the largest movie house in the Southeast when it opened in 1916 with its 925 seats. At one point, it boasted the largest electric sign above the marquee south of New York City. Today, it has been refurbished and is used by Georgia State students as the Rialto Center for the Arts and hosts the national and inter-national concerts, including the Atlanta Film Festival.

Georgia State is the largest of the 30 col-leges and universities in the University System of Georgia with an enrollment of more than 50,000 students. The uni-versity offers 100 fields of study with 250 degree programs and has more than 1,200 faculty members.

Georgia State, a research university, consolidated with Georgia Perimeter in January 2016 to create the state’s largest.

Georgia State’s campus now occupies nearly 72 acres of downtown Atlanta with 65 buildings and more than 10 million square feet of downtown owned. A multi-million dollar Parker H. Petit Science Center with laboratories and classrooms opened in 2010, next to the Sports Arena. A second tower was added in 2016 as part of the Petit Science Park. New fraternity and sorority townhouses opened for the 2010 fall semester. Another new dorm and dining hall opened in 2011. Renovations and the move into 25 Park Place, the 28-story tower formerly known as the SunTrust Bank building are underway. A new Welcome Center and Honors College opened at 100 Auburn Avenue in 2013. The Law School got its new home at the corner of Park Place and Dobbs Avenue

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Georgia State University traces its beginnings 103 years ago to 1913. It started as a business school called the Georgia Institute of Technology Evening School of Commerce. Wayne Kell, who started the Evening School of Commerce, initially intended it to be a mining engineering program, but lack of interest led him to change to a business-based curriculum. That first year, Georgia State was one room in one building on a site that is now Centennial Olympic Park. Enjoy these 103 Fun Facts about GSU.

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The Baptist Student Center (photo left) at the corner of Courtland and Edgewood, is designated as a national his-toric landmark. The former commercial building, erected over 125 years ago in 1890, was Georgia’s first Coca-Cola bottling plant. It was called the Dixie Coca-Cola Bottling Company, the parent of Coca-Cola. The Victorian building with Dutch gable sits at 125 Edgewood Avenue, right beside the University Lofts where student-athletes are housed. The GSU Baptist Student Center has been there since 1966.

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7It was Ladies First in 1919 when Annie Teitelbaum Wise became the first female graduate of Georgia State and was also the first female graduate of any state-supported school in Georgia. With her bachelor’s degree in commerce, she added to her distinction by becoming the school’s first female faculty member.

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Law School Completed 2015: Georgia State’s new Law School building opened in the summer of 2015 at 85 Park Place. The impressive facil-ity will include a 230-seat moot courtroom and auditorium, along with 21 classrooms for the law students.The $82.5 million facility has more than 70,000 square feet. Georgia State’s School of Law opened in 1982 and has grown to more than 650

Strike Up The Band: Georgia State has a 200-plus member marching band, as well as pep bands for basketball games. The GSU Marching Band was selected to perform in the Presidential Inauguration Parade in January of 2013 in Washington, D.C. and seen on live television. Next, the GSU Marching Band was selected to march and perform in the 2014 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. That parade is also shown on live TV. The GSU Marching Band performs at all home football games and has traveled to select road games, in-cluding Alabama. The basketball pep band traveled to New Orleans for the conference tournament and Jacksonville for the NCAA tournament in 2015.

GEORGIA STATEGEORGIA STATEEthnicity: Georgia State is the most ethnically diverse institution in the University System of Georgia and 12th most diverse university in the United States in the 2015 U.S. News and World Report rankings.

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Georgia State’s Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) has one of the world’s most powerful optical stellar interfermoters, more powerful than the Hubble Telescope. This is one of the most important projects in this field since the launch of the Hubble Telescope in 1990. The collection of six telescopes are run from Mt. Wilson, Calif. The telescope can see a nickel from 10,000 miles away. Georgia State also operates an observatory just outside Atlanta at Hard Labor Creek State Park.

Georgia State’s President Mark P. Becker began at Georgia State in January, 2009. He came to GSU from the University of South Carolina and has previously been at Minnesota, Michigan, Washington, Florida and Cornell. He graduated from Towson and earned his doctorate from Penn State. Becker is an avid sports fan and considers athletics important to a school. His vision for GSU as a major research institution is increasing the school’s stature worldwide.

Georgia State is just a few blocks from The Carter Center. It is named for former President Jimmy Carter, who has spoken multiple times on campus and worked with the basketball team on Habitat for Humanity home builds.

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Georgia State has a laboratory designated Biosafety Level 4, which is the highest level of containment. In level 4 facilities, researchers can safely work with deadly agents such as Ebola, hantavirus, or, in the case of Georgia State scientists, the herpes B virus. It is one of just two university-based level 4 labs in the country, both based in Atlanta.

Georgia State Master of Science School of Nursing graduate Laura Mitchell is a critical-care nurse who attended to the first American Ebola patients at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. She was part of the highly-trained and specialized team that cared for Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Whitebot. They were treated Aug. 2-21, 2014 after contacting the Ebola virus while treating patients in Liberia.

GEORGIA STATE PANTHERSPANTHERSThe first African-American student enrolled at Georgia State 54 years ago in 1962. Annette Lucille Hall was a Lithonia social studies teacher who enrolled in the course of the Institute on Americanism and Communism, a course required for all Georgia social studies teachers.

The J. Mack Robinson College of Business has more than 80,000 alumni. Among their number are: Sandra E. Bergeron, one of the most highly respected women of technology and Chairman of the Board, TraceSecurity; Frank H. Boykin, CFO, Mohawk Industries; Ahmet C. Bozer, president, Eurasia and Africa Group, The Coca-Cola Company; Jim Copeland, CEO (retired), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; Bradford W. Ferrer, executive VP, finance and administration., CNN Worldwide; Tony Holcombe, Chairman of the Board, Syniverse Technologies; Richard H. Lenny, chairman, president and CEO (retired), The Hershey Company; Mackey J. McDonald, chairman (retired) of VF Corp., whose 25 brands include Lee, Wrangler, North Face, JanSport and Nautica; and Kat Cole, president of Cinnabon. More are included later in this list of numbers.

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Dahlberg Hall (above) on Courtland Street was once known as Municipal Auditorium, an epicenter of Atlanta events. That building had attracted major performers like the Jackson Five (Jan. 12, 1972) and Elvis Presley, as well as a 1970 title boxing match when Muhammad Ali knocked out Jerry Quarry in what was billed as the “Return of the Champ.” Judy Garland sang “Over The Rainbow” from the Wizard of Oz there in 1961. President Franklin Roosevelt had a campaign rally there in 1932. Performers like The Grateful Dead, The Who, The Allman Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath were among the shows at the Auditorium. That facility used to occupy the full city block.

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Rap superstar Ludacris was Georgia State student Chris Bridges in 1998 and 1999. The perform-er, a three-time Grammy winner, is also the rapper with the most Top 25 hits of all time. He was in the School of Music’s music management program. He is a graduate of Banneker High in Atlanta.

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AMC’s The Walking Dead (below left) films in Atlanta and has used many of the streets and buildings near GSU. Current students have participated as extras.Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (below right) filmed in the spring of 2013 around Woodruff Park and side streets with Will Ferrell, Steve Carell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Will Smith, Nicole Kidman and Liam Neeson. Three old movies have filmed scenes on the Georgia State campus. Gary Busey, starring in “The Buddy Holly Story” in 1978, had Alumni Hall as a backdrop scene. “Kalifornia,” a 1993 movie with Brad Pitt, David Duchovny and Ju-liette Lewis, filmed a scene in the lobby of Sparks Hall. “The Real McCoy,” starring Kim Basinger and Val Kilmer, used the Robinson College of Business in 1993.

Safety first: Georgia State has the largest campus police department of any school in Georgia with more than 100 employees who secure student safety 365 days a year. The force is the only nationally and state certified police force among the universities in Georgia. With video surveillance, call stations and escort systems in place, student safety comes first.

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The school’s coat of arms (right) is registered in the College of Arms in Lon-don. The Latin motto means “Truth is strong and will conquer.” The panther holds the symbol of education, with the quill in red to symbolize the fire in Atlanta’s city emblem. The gold coin indicates the university’s beginnings as a business school. The crown is a representation of the Stone Mountain gran-ite. The center flame is an eternal flame in honor of the first president, George Sparks, and represents flames of scholarship and the burning of Atlanta.

The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies is so well known worldwide that its 3,700 students come from 49 different countries to attend. Young is a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, a former United Nations Ambassador, co-chairman of the Atlanta Olympic Games, a former Atlanta mayor and a top aide to Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1960s. The school is the highest rated in Georgia and is 4th in the nation in public finance and budgeting, 12th in city management and urban policy, 12th in nonprofit management 23rd in public policy analysis and 26th in public management administration.The school has nine research units and more than $31 million in active grants. It operates the largest experimental economics lab (ExCen) in the Southeast.

Georgia State alum Ann-Marie Campbell (photo right) earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree, while beginning as a cashier at Atlanta-based Home De-pot. Campbell rose through the ranks to become the President of the Southern Division. In 2016, she is executive vice-president, U.S. Stores. She leads the company’s three operating divisions comprised of nearly 2,000 U.S. Stores and the bulk of the company’s nearly 400,000 associated. It all began with that $4 an hour job.


METIman, a robot on campus, breathes, blinks and speaks. He is a computer-driven, life-sized mannequin with a pulse that nursing students practice procedures with. The robot mirrors human responses to medical procedures and will even “die” if a student does something wrong.

Georgia State is in the heart of activity of downtown Atlan-ta. The Sports Arena and center campus are less than a half-mile from CNN Center, Centennial Olympic Park, Philips Arena and the Georgia Dome (photo left). The campus

intersects Peachtree Street, the main street of Atlanta. Students have 1,800 extra park-ing spots at Turner Field, less than a mile from the Sports Arena. The Panthers began playing football in 2010 in The Dome, just blocks from the campus center. The Col-lege Football Hall of Fame (above) opened in 2014 and is a short walk from the GSU campus.

The first female chairman, president and CEO to ever ring the New York Stock Exchange’s opening bell when she did so in 1998, was Georgia State’s M. Christine Jacobs of Georgia-based Theragenics Corp.

Georgia State has graduated 225,000 alumni since the first class was taught in 1913.Currently, it is estimated there are 90,000 alumni living in the metro Atlanta area.More than 6,000 students earned degrees in spring 2016 (undergraduate, master’s, doctor-ate, law).

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27The Peachtree Road Race, the world’s most famous 10k run, was started by Georgia State cross country coach and dean of men Tim Singleton. The “father of the Peachtree” headed it the first six years before turning it over to the Atlanta Track Club by using vol-unteers from Georgia State’s fraternities and sororities. He marked the first race with cooking flour to indicate mileage and charged a $2 entry fee. In the second year, Singleton created the first valuable collectible T-shirt. Many Georgia State faculty and students assisted in the early races, and several Georgia State runners have won or finished in the Top 10. In 2016, there were 60,000 entrants in the July 4 event.

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What Is Show Me The Money?: A Georgia State alum won $250,000 as the top prize on the TV show “Jeopardy.” Mark Dawson made his winnings in 2001 and 2003 and finished with $344,599 as the Tour-nament of Champions final winner. Dawson earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and master’s degree in international business. While a GSU student, he participated on a Georgia State Academic team and placed fifth in the 1992 national competition.

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Follow The Leaders: In a study of the top 1,600 executives with Georgia companies by Standard & Poor’s, Georgia State had more master’s degree executives in that elite group than any other college in Georgia or the nation. Obviously, GSU produces leaders of today and is producing more for tomorrow.

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Campus was never dull when comic country star Ray Stevens was around. The former student, whose real name is Ray Ragsdale, has gone on to record “Ahab the Arab,” “The Streak,” and “Everything Is Beauti-ful” over the past 40 years, while hosting a TV variety show. His 100 albums may have gotten their start when he studied music theory, composition and classi-cal piano here at Georgia State.

Hollywood icons Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh (above right) were on campus back in 1939 on the eve of the world premiere of “Gone With the Wind” when the Junior League hosted a gala on Dec. 14 in what is now Dahlberg Hall. The boys choir from Ebenezer Baptist Church who performed that night in Municipal Auditorium, now Dahlberg Hall, had a young singer named Martin Luther King Jr. The movie premier was at the Loew’s Grand Theatre at Peachtree Street and Pryor Street, where the Georgia Pacific Building stands, about one block from Woodruff Park. An estimated 300,000 fans jammed downtown Atlanta on that Dec. 15 premiere (AJC above).

Future Housing: Georgia State broke ground in the spring of 2015 for a 1,100 bed housing unit and dining hall at the corner of Piedmont Avenue and John Wesley Dobbs Aveune. The Piedmont Central facility, also with a dining hall, opened in the fall 2016. It is situated between all the existing housing units already on campus.

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Georgia State is the ONLY university to have ever had an Olympic marathon run through its campus when the 1996 Olympic runners passed through the campus twice on its route to and from Olympic Stadium. The Georgia State Sports Arena was also used as a 1996 Olympics (badminton) competition venue. Many Georgia State staff members participated on the Olympic support team.

The Black Holes: Physics and Astronomy associate professor Misty Bentz received a 2013 grant from the National Science Foundation to research one of the most powerful and destructive object in space, black holes. She and students will study to understand black holes and then predict the mass of the black holes of the universe.

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The King Center Memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. is located blocks from campus. King’s library, burial place, birthplace and Ebenezer Baptist Church are all on historic Auburn Avenue. King (photo left) spoke to Georgia State’s student body in the fall of 1967 with this photo taken from the Rampway school yearbook. This Georgia State speech was less than six months before King was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tenn.

36 37Two Oscar statues are on display in the Georgia State Library. Johnny Mercer’s pair of Oscar statues, along with one of Mercer’s pianos, are on display. He wrote or co-wrote more than 1,100 songs, including “Moon River.”

38Georgia State’s Cecil B. Day School of Hospitality sent 16 students to London for three weeks in May, 2012, to analyze and study the Olympics event management. The intense study, with Olympic leaders past and present, detailed the goals and plans set out by the 1996 Atlanta Committee and the 2012 London Com-mittee. The event planning and the destination marketing allowed for comparative analysis by the students.

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The Haas-Howell Building (now the School of Music) that sits beside the Rialto Theatre on For-syth Street was originally the home of law firm, Alston & Bird, where golfing legend Bobby Jones worked and practiced his law trade.

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That’s Greek To Me: The thriving Greek life of sororities and fraternities is alive and well on the Geor-gia State campus. There are 31 nationally recognized Greek organizations on the GSU campus. There are 16 sororities and 15 fraternities. Some have housing on campus, some just have private rooms in the Student Center to meet in on campus. They work together through governing councils and close the year with their Greek Week.


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The master’s degree offered in Sports Administration through the College of Education and Kinesiology and Health is one of just two in Georgia and 15 in the entire Southeast. It was also one of the first and is one of the few in a major city to help with internships and the job opportunities at all levels of sports. The founder of the master’s program, Rankin Cooter, has been a long-time Athletics board of trustees member.

“American Idol” 2002 finalist Tamyra Gray, who has since appeared in seven epi-sodes of FOX television network’s “Boston Public.” She filmed Coca-Cola commercials while in Atlanta. Gray also was first runner-up and talent winner in the Miss Georgia State University pagaent in 1998 and Miss Atlanta. Gray has performed in two Broadway plays, including Rent. She produced an album in 2004 that sold 125,000 copies. Gray majored in business law at Georgia State.

43Build It and They Will Come: John Cowart (‘59) has been a builder and real estate developer for more than 50 years. His Cow-art Properties has built more than 3,500 homes for Atlanta’s families as the city grew.

41Georgia State University created a media produc-tion center for education, research and entrepre-neurship and partnerships with the Georgia film, music, games and arts industries.

The media center that opened in 2016 houses the university’s new Creative Media Industries Insti-tute, an interdisciplinary institute introduced this fall to build on the university’s strengths in media production, research, design, the arts, music man-agement and digital publishing by preparing stu-dents for careers that transcend traditional degree programs.

A $22.8 million gift from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation—the largest in the university’s his-tory— will fund, in part, the renovation of three-story structure formerly owned by SunTrust Bank at the corner of Edgewood Avenue and Park Place and major facility and streetscape improvements to

42 Sharing Our Leaders: Jere W. Morehead, who earned a bachelor’s degree in 1977 from Geor-gia State, was named the 22nd president of the University of Georgia in July 2013. Morehead enrolled at Georgia State when he was 16 years old in 1973.


Up and Coming University: Georgia State was No. 6 on the 2015 U.S. News and World Report’s list of the top Up and Coming universities. That was a second consecutive year that GSU made that list after being No. 14 on the 2014 list. U.S. News and World Report also lists GSU as the 14th most diverse university.

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50Being downtown, public transportation is available to Georgia State students with multiple stops and methods of transporta-tion. As a matter of fact, Georgia State has its own MARTA train stop right beside the Sports Arena. Even the Atlanta Braves don’t have that luxury for events. Sleek new streetcars were added to downtown in 2015 and run through the GSU campus as well.

Georgia State has had a student, or former student, compet-ing in each of the past four summer Olympics in kayaking. Rebecca Giddens won a silver medal in 2004 and competed in 2000. The 2008 competition in Beijing, China, saw Benn Fraker finish sixth. Jeff Larimer competed in the 2012 Olympics in London. Some tried to qualify for 2016 in Rio de Janeiro.

What’s in a name? Georgia State, founded 103 years ago in 1913 as the Georgia Institute of Tech-nology’s Evening School of Commerce, became known as The Atlanta Division of the University of Georgia (1947-54). Next, the named changed to Georgia College of Business Administration (1955-60). The school became Georgia State College (1961-68). The school gained its current name, Georgia State University, 46 years ago (1969).

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51In a city that has played host to every major sporting event in the world and almost every type of convention in the world, it was only natural to have a School of Hospitality Administration. Geor-gia State’s program is one of the top 20 in the nation and the oldest in the state. The Cecil B. Day School is named for the founder of Days Inn. It is the only program in the nation to have a classroom in a convention center (the Georgia World Congress Center), and all students must complete practical experience time within the industry.

The Army of Health Care Professionals: In the past 45 years, the Byrdine F. Lewis School of Nursing and Health Professionals has pre-pared more than 6,000 people to serve in this much-needed field. The bachelor’s program begin in 1968, the master’s in 1973 and the gradu-ate in 1986. The respiratory therapy program is the largest in Georgia. In October 2014, the school received a three-year $1,146,189 grant to develop an interprofesional model for graduate nursing education to improve coordination of patient care for individuals with multiple chronic conditions.

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Star Wars: In June of 2016, GSU alum Noel Braham had his 15-minute film Star Wars: Exile-Episode 1 advance to the final round in Disney’s International Competition. In the first three months, more than 325,000 had watched in on YouTube alone. A 2011 GSU alum, Braham was an R.A. in GSU Housing, in the 1913 Society and multiple honors organiza-tions. Braham has lived in Los Angeles since 2012 and been in commercials for McDonald’s, Ford and Hewlett-Packard. He was going to London in 2016 for the 2016 Audience Choice Awards. He also made a short comedy film, “The Side Chick,” which won four awards at Warner Bros. Studio’s LA Web Fest and was selected for the Rome Web Fest in Italy, where

The Economic Forecasting Center in the J. Mack Robinson College of Business was ranked “the most accurate university-based center in the United States” by the Federal Reserve Bank. Rajeev Dhawan (photo left), Ph. D. and Director of the Center, has been honored as the “most accurate forecaster” individually.

H. J. Russell & Co., founded in 1962, is one of the 10 largest minority-owned firms of any kind in the United States. The construction and real estate giant has had a hand in building most of At-lanta’s landmarks including the Georgia Dome, the Olympic Stadium (Turner Field), Philips Arena and Coca-Cola headquaters. CEO Michael Russell earned his master’s from GSU, President Jerome Russell, his bachelor’s.

55As fans watch the NFL this season, keep an eye out for these former Panthers on TV. Former GSU Panther women’s soccer player, Tiffany Blackmon (left), works for the NFL Network and will be interviewing all year long. Left, she interviews new Atlanta Falcon top pick Vic Beasley.

In 2012, Christo Bilukidi became the first Georgia State foot-ball player taken in the NFL draft when he was selected in the sixth-round by the Oakland Raiders. He then played with the Cincinnati Bengals and Baltimore Ravens. In 2014, Ulrick John was a seventh-round pick by the Indianapolis Colts and is with the Miami Dolphins in 2016. In 2014, Albert Wilson (right) signed as a free agent with the Kansas City Chiefs and became a starting WR for that playoff team. Kicker Wil Lutz signed as a free agent with Baltimore in 2016.

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GEORGIA STATE PANTHERSPANTHERSHome sweet Home. All of Georgia State’s on-campus housing units have been opened in the past 14 years. The Commons (photo right) opened its 2,000-bed four-tower facility in 2007 with state-of-the-art convenience and was named the best overall dorm in 2011 by Cam-pusSplash.com. A new freshman hall for 350 students opened in August, 2009. Townhomes for fraternities and sororities had groundbreaking ceremonies in 2009. They followed the Lofts Apartments, a 431-bed, 13-story facility that opened on campus in 2002. Piedmont North opened one building in 2010 and a second in 2011 for 900 more beds, along with a dining hall. GSU has more than 4,100 beds in campus housing for students.Piedmont Central, a 1,100-bed housing unit and dining hall, open in the fall of 2016 to up the campus housing to more than 5,000 beds.New apartments and lofts are also being built and geared to student living in the downtown ampus area.

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Computers Rule The World?: Georgia State’s Computer Information Systems (CIS) programs in the Robinson College of Business are highly-regarded. The graduate program is ranked No. 9 in the country by the U.S. News and World Report in March 2015 with the undergard program at No. 8.

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Location, location, location. Georgia State’s Real Estate program in the Robinson College of Business knows that fact and a whole lot more in that field to rank 11th best in the nation in graduate programs by U.S. News and World Report in March 2016. GSU’s professors will teach you how to calculate the details of life with a risk management and insurance program that ranks 5th best in the country.

I Shall Not Tell A Lie. How rare. Georgia State’s Pullen Library has one of only three known copies of the book, “The Life of Washington the Great.” The book on President George Washington was published more than 200 years ago (1806) in Augusta, Ga. The most famous part of the book is the story of Washington cutting down the family cherry tree and confessing to it because he said he could not tell a lie. The author, however, later admitted that he had made up that story in the book.

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60On the rise: Georgia State purchased the Sun Trust Bank Building (photo right) in the heart of campus in 2006 and began rennovations. The 28-story high rise has become the tallest structure on campus. The bulding is home to the University Advisement Center and much of the College of Arts and Sciences. GSU has more than a half million square feet of spacce in this downtown high rise.

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62An aquarium without fish: Georgia State offers its students the Digital Aquarium in the University Student Center. The multimedia lab has resources that include 3D, video, audio, graphic design and animation tools that allow students to develop music, movies, interactive media, web sites and virtual worlds.

63Geoscience Lab: The Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICPMS) Lab has as its centerpiece a Thermoelectron Element2 mass spectrometer, a high-resolution instrument capable of trace element analyses down to the sub-parts per billion level. Samples in solution are introduced either through a spray chamber or an Apex desolvating nebulizer. The lab also has a New Wave UP-213 laser ablation system for solid samples. The ICPMS lab does trace element analysis for the Department of Geosciences as well as outside users. They can do any of the standard analysis procedures (isotope dilution, standard addition, external standard, semiquantitative), depending on the needs of the user.

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And the Grammy Goes To: On Jan. 31, 2010, Georgia State had three ties to winners in that single day. Alum Coy Bowles, photo left, (‘04) won for “Best New Artist” with the Zac Brown Band. Current student, Dru Castro, who is a producer and engineer, won for best urban or alternative performance with Pearls. Faculty instructor Mace Hibbard won for Best Contemporary Blues Album as a jazzman with Derek Trucks Band. William DuVall (‘92) has been lead singer since 2006 for Alice In Chains band, a nine-time Grammy nominee.

Nutrition Guru: Marisa Moore (left) managed the nutrition worksite well-ness program for the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Previously, Marisa was the corporate nutritionist for Atlanta Bread Company where she worked in research and development and marketing. As a Spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Marisa has participated in over 500 interviews in national print, TV and radio media outlets, including HLN, CNN, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Atlanta Journal Consitu-tion. In addition to her work as an Academy Spokesperson, she serves a Past President of the Georgia Dietetic Association (GDA) and is an active member of the Robinson College Council of Business Young Leaders. Marisa holds a bachelor of science degree in nutrition and dietetics (‘01) and an MBA (marketing, ‘09) from GSU.


TV pioneer Douglas Edwards (1917-1990) was a Georgia State student.Edwards was the forerunner of TV news anchoring when, in 1948, he aired 15-minute reports on CBS-TV News five nights a week. He had the highest-rated national news broadcast in the mid-1950s. The man who followed in Edwards’ footsteps was Walter Cronkite. Edwards is a legend in broadcast news history and a Peabody winner. Edwards, then 20, was a student here in 1937 and 1938 when he took evening journalism classes while he worked at WSB Radio. His radio broadcasts in 1944 of the D-Day are historic.

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Georgia State had two Ambassadors to the United States. Vladimir Petrovic, right, (BA, ‘00 in International Relations) was ambassador from the Republic of Serbia to the U.S. from 2009-13. Petrovic pre-sented his official papers as a diplomat at The White House to President Barack Obama. President Obama also nominated David Adelman (MPA ‘95) as United States Ambassador to Singapore from 2010-13. The DeKalb lawmaker, who graduated from the Andrew Young School, was confirmed on March 19, 2010. Petrovic works at Roberti + White government relations in Washington, D.C.

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Teaching Them To Teach: The College of Education received a grant of $13.5 million to increase the number of highly-qualified teachers being prepared for the high-need schools across the country. GSU has produced 36,000 College of Education alum, many serving as teachers and administrators around the world.

69 70First Female Doctorate Grad Serves Community: Georgia State’s first female ph. D. in economics, Eva Gallambos, was instrumental in incorporating the city of Sandy Springs in 2005 and serving as its first mayor for nine years. Sandy Springs in the sixth largest city in Georgia.

The White House. Among the Georgia State alum to have ever worked in the White House was former political sci-ence student Jody Powell, below, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary from 1977-80.

Georgia State’s Student Recreation Center was opened in 2001 and is a full city block long and four stories high. The facility includes weight rooms, cardiovascular fitness rooms, game rooms with pool tables, a swimming pool, a climbing wall, aerobic and martial arts classes, racquetball courts, a jogging track, whirlpools, basketball courts and the Touch The Earth outdoor activities program. The Recreation Department operates three facilities for GSU students and staff.


CIBER Opens: GSU’s $1.6 million federal grant enabled the school to launch a Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER) in 2010. Then, it was one of just 33 CIBERs in the United States and put the business school among the leaders of tomorrow. In 2014, Georgia State’s CIBER grant was one of only 17 renewed for 2014-18, showing GSU’s leadership in international education.

Song of the Year writer. Music school alum Doug Johnson, photo, (Class of ‘79) co-wrote “Three Wooden Crosses” for Randy Travis to win the Coun-try Music Association Song of the Year award in 2003. The Swainsboro, Ga. native has written more than 40 songs, including “Love Crazy” for Lee Brice that was the 2010 Billboard Song of the Year. His prolific producing and engineering for many stars of country music enabled him to move into music management. He was senior V-P of Epic Records and later President of Giant Records, then V-P with Black River Entertainment.

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71Young Here, Now Young and Restless In LA: Former GSU student Melissa Ordway has played the role of Abby Newman on The Young & The Restless TV show since 2013. The Shiloh High School grad from Snellville started out a business major, considered elementary education and then settled on journalsm/P.R. at GSU. She is a member of Delta Zeta sorority. Ordway has done modeling for Old Navy, JC Penney, Sketchers and Verizon Wireless. She has been in commercials for Geico, Payless and Carl Jr restaurants. From her start on MTV’s The Assistant in 2004, she has been on 90201, Melrose Place, Privileged and How I Met Your Mother.

74The Visualization Wall on the fourth floor in the Petit Science Center is a large-scale, high-resolution display environment for research and teaching. Faculty specializing in computer science, geosciences, biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, mathemat-ics, statistics, public health, criminal justice, education, library work, and liberal arts use the wall to understand complex data or to examine highly visual systems side by side. Boasting over 200 million pixels, the Petit Science Center Visualization Wall is one of the largest tiled display walls in the world. It consists of 48 30-inch panels.

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76Movie Theatre. Georgia State students run their own movie the-atre. It is called Cinefest Film Theatre and it is located on the second floor in the University Center across the street from the Sports Arena. Cinefest began in 1970, marking 45 years of the student-operated movie house.

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African-American Studies. Georgia State has had a Department of African-American Studies for more than 20 years (since 1994) and offers both under-graduate and master’s degrees. The well-respected department has been the home for the National Council for Black Studies since 2002. The 33rd annual conference was held in Atlanta in March 2009. GSU’s Sankofa Society was formed in 1998 to promote academic excellence and social responsibility. Published author and African-American scholar Akinyele Umoja, Ph. D., right, chairs the department.

79 The wheels on the bus go round and round. Georgia State has a 30-foot-long mobile teaching labora-tory for the biology department. The massive bus, called “The Bio Bus,” has logged more than 1,000 visits to Georgia schools and organizations since its founding in 1999. Run by the faculty and students, the bus provides hands-on demonstrations and activity projects for students in grades four through 12. The concept spread to other universities around the country.

Helen M. Aderhold Learning Center: The state-of-the-art facility (photo right) opened in 2002 and includes a Cyber Cafe for students, a 200-seat lecture hall and computer-wired class-rooms, and it is in the historic Fairlie-Poplar Dis-trict of campus.

Center of town, zero mile post. Through G Deck parking and just across the railroad tracks behind the Sports Arena is the Georgia Freight Depot. The remaining one-story building of the Freight Depot, built in the 1870s, still stands and is the oldest building in central Atlanta. In the area at the base of the Freight Depot is the Zero Mile Post of the train line, marking the beginning point of Atlanta in 1837. The area was first nicknamed Thrasherville for a local merchant, John Thrasher. In 1842, this marker labeled the new town of Terminus for the railroads. One year later in 1843, the name became Marthasville for Governor Lumpkin’s daughter and in 1845, the name Atlanta began. Originally, for the railroads it was called Atlantica-Pacifica to connect the route from Savannah to the west. That was shortened quickly to Atlanta.Georgia State is, indeed, in the “heart” of Atlanta.


82Catch me if you can. Former Georgia State distance runner Andrew Letherby has gone on the past decade to run for success. He won a bronze medal while competing for his native Australia in the Commonwealth Games. Letherby has finished in the Top 10 of the Boston Marathon and has run marathons around the world, finishing in the Top 20 in Japan, Italy and Germany. He has a pair of Top 10 finishes in his last two runs in the Peachtree Road Race. Former distance runner Jenn Feenstra finished among the top 20 females in the 2009 Boston Marathon. Alum Rachel Hannah finished fourth in the marathon in the 2015 Pan-Am Games in Toronto and had a goal of representing her native Canada in the 2016 Olympics in the marathon.

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Building Blocks: Georgia State opened a new University Science Park in 2010. One of the facilities in the park is the Parker H. “Pete” Petit Science Center, across the street from the Sports Arena and Rec Center. The facility (photos left and right) is named for the GSU alum who was CEO of Matria Healthcare, now part of Alere Medical, and the founder of the Petit Group, an investment management venue. The Center houses the departments of biology, chemistry, nursing, nutrition, physical and respiratory therapies, public health and GSU’s Neuroscience Institute. About 2,000 students a day use its classrooms, labs and facilities. A second five-story tower is coming in 2016 with 65,000 more square feet of learning space.

Good sports. Georgia State has had graduates in the front offices of the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. The Atlanta Falcons chose GSU 1995 mas-ter’s alum Greg Beadles, left, as Executive VP and Chief Administrative and Financial Officer. Beadles has worked 20 years with the Falcons. GSU alum Drew Baur (deceased) was a co-owner of the St. Louis Cardinals. Michael Gearon, Jr. was a part-owner of the Atlanta Spirit which owned the Atlanta Hawks. Scott Brooks, right, (‘99, cross country runner) was V-P of Broadcasting & Creative with the St. Louis Rams for five years, after working eight years with the NHL Washington Capitals. Many Sports Ad-ministration graduate assistants have jobs with professional or college teams.

Conference Affiliation. GSU became a member of the Sun Belt (FBS) for all its sports programs in July of 2013. Previously, GSU was a member of the Colonial Athletic Association (FCS), having joined in 2005-06. GSU had been members of the Atlantic Sun/Trans America Athletic Conference for more than two decades. Georgia State had been a founding member of the Sun Belt in 1976 and a member for five years. The Sun Belt competes at the highest level for football bowl games and automatic bids for all its sports. The 2013 football season was GSU’s first as an FBS program and they became bowl eligible in 2014. GSU earned its first Bowl bid in 2015 with an invitation to the AutoNation Cure Bowl in Orlando, Fla.

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ROTC. The Army has operated its officer training program at Georgia State since 1951 with 319 original cadets in the Panther Battalion. The program, with benefits to help with the cost of education, has produced military officers for six decades, with its size peaking toward 1,000 during both the Korean and Vietnam wars.

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85Now Pitching To No. 42 Jackie Robinson: Georgia State baseball director of operations and former player Brandon Kersey played the role of pitcher Dave Koslo in the 2013 movie about Jackie Robinson. Koslo was a pro pitcher who gave up Robinson’s first major league home run. GSU’s Kersey spent months in several cities working on his scenes. The movie was also shown on June 21, 2013 with GSU Alumni Night at the historic Fox Theatre on Peachtree Street.

New Additions: Georgia State added an Honors College for 1,200 undergraduates and got a new home for that college with the purchase and remodeling of the five-story Atlanta Life Financial building be-tween Courtland and Piedmont Avenues at 100 Auburn Ave. The building, with a 250-seat auditorium, is also used as the Georgia State Welcome Center. The Alumni Offices moved to 60 Piedmont Avenue.

A slam dunk. The GSU Sports Arena has played host to two ESPN Slam Dunk and 3-Point competitions (photo right) during the weeks of the two NCAA Final Four championships in downtown Atlanta at the Geor-gia Dome. The Slam Dunk TV event is shown live and on replays with celebrities in town judging and cheering the contestants from schools across the country.

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His honor, the mayor. Georgia State alum Sam Massell has served as the mayor of Atlanta, was on the board of MARTA and on the board for the 1996 Olympics. He was the founding president of the Buckhead Coalition, a prestigious association of CEOs which guides the growth of one of Atlanta’s most vibrant business districts. He is in Georgia Trend Magazine’s “Most Influential Georgians Hall of Fame” and was the first Jewish mayor in Atlanta.

Coach Bill Curry Into Hall of Fame: Former football head coach Bill Curry was inducted into the Atlanta Sports Hall of Fame on June 12, 2010, right here on campus at the Rialto Center. Curry was in that year’s class with Atlanta Braves’ Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine, PGA golf star Larry Nelson, and Georgia High School football coaching legend Buck Godfrey. Curry was already in the State of Georgia Sports Hall of Fame that is located in Macon, Ga.

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Chocolate lovers. Georgia State alumni are allowed to be candy and chocolate lovers in support of for-mer Hershey’s President and CEO Richard Lenny. His career, which included positions as president of Nabisco and Pillsbury North America, earned him the rank of one of the 30 “World’s Most Respected CEOs” by a national publication.


Madame Speaker. Finance master’s degree holder Jan Jones (photo right) became the most powerful woman in the history of the Georgia Legislature when she was elected the Speaker Pro Tempore in January, 2010. She was chosen to that position again in January, 2015. Jones (MBA, ‘82) shattered the glass ceiling in a place where more than 80 percent of the Legislature are still males. Former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, a GSU alum as well, served from 2007-2009.

91Talking sports. Turn on a local Atlanta TV station and you’ll get infor-mation from a lot of former Georgia State students. FOX 5 has a pair of sports anchors in Ken Rodriguez and Buck Lanford, left. On WSB 2 (ABC), former Panther Chuck Dowdle served as the Sports Director for decades before retiring in 2010, but still does work with the Atlanta Braves and UGA broadcasts. Matt Stewart has done multiple sports talk shows as well as play-by-play of countless events, including regional games for GSU football and basketball. Or, turn on a radio and you will hear the morning drive host of WSB Radio, Georgia State alum Scott Slade. Area Sports Talk radio hosts include former student Matt Chernoff on 680 The Fan. Georgia State’s own voice, Dave Cohen, has worked in Atlanta sports for decades and is an alum of GSU as well. Multiple others are behind the scenes handling the details of radio and television.

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Study Plans. The Library (photo right) has undergone a $20 million renovation. The Quiet Study Room on the fifth floor was designed at stu-dents’ request to provide more than 50 carrels with power and wireless Internet for individual study. The Learning Commons integrates technology, writing and English as a second language expert assistance. The CURVE is a 24-foot visualization wall for research and investigation.

Piedmont North Housing (photo left) opened in 2011 with room for 1,200 Georgia State students. The facility, across the street from The Commons, also has a dining hall for students. Each room in Piedmont has its own bath, wireless and internet connec-tions, free laundry and other amenities. Bus service picks up and drops off students to get around campus for classes and events.


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95Patton Hall Freshman Dorm. The Patton Hall Freshman Dorm, with a dining hall, opened on Piedmont Street, just two blocks from the Sports Arena, for the start of school in 2009. The 325-bed facility with suite-style floor plans increased the total number of on-campus school beds to more than 4,000 at that time.

97Shop ‘til you Drop. The remodeled Georgia State Bookstore is stocked and ready with all the textbooks and supplies necessary. They’re ready with Panthers’ officially-licensed merchandise and blue and white school color apparel.

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Panther Express Transit. GSU students have access to free bus transportation called Panther Express. The buses roll from 7 a.m. through midnight, and on special events. The system acquired 15 new buses to lower to street level and provide improved heat and air conditioning.

Producer Extraordinaire: Tom Luse, right, (B.A. ‘74, M.S. ‘81) begins his sixth year as executive producer with the TV apocalyptic series “The Walking Dead.” Among his other credits, Luse was production manager for the Academy-Award winning movie “Glory”, the Denzel Washington football movie “Remember the Titans” and the Atlanta-based move “Drumline.”

On Trial With A Winner: Linley Jones, left, was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1992 after graduating from the Georgia State University School of Law. She served as President of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association in 2014. In addition to practicing with The Linley Jones Firm here in Atlanta, Jones has served as a legal analyst at CNN Headline News. She was the first woman in the United States to be board-certified in legal malpractice by the American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys, the ABA’s certifying body. Jones has an AV rating, the high-est professional rating available from the Martindale-Hubbell Lawyers Directory. She interned at Atlanta Magazine, but when she couldn’t get a job in journalism, she decided to go to law school at GSU where she was named a Fuller Callaway Scholar.


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Green Space for the GSU Campus: President Becker unveiled a plan that calls for tearing down Kell Hall and opening that area up with green space and walk through to help open up the campus sightlines. Kell Hall was already an old parking facility when Georgia State purchased it in 1946 to re-configure into its first permanent classroom building. It will be a start in connecting the current Plaza between buildings with the Woodruff Park corridor when GSU has been expanding. The plan may still be several years away, but the visual concept is taking shape.

The First, First Round Pick, in Georgia State History: Panther guard R.J. Hunter became GSU’s third NBA draft pick on June 25, 2015, but he became the first to be picked in Round 1 in any sport when the Boston Celtics called his name on national TV.George Pendleton was drafted in the fourth round (73rd) in 1977 by the Indiana Pacers and Joe Brown in the ninth round (187th) in 1983 by the Cleveland Cavaliers. Neither made the roster.The lone GSU player to play in the NBA has been Lanard Copeland in 1989-90 with the Philadelphia 76ers and 1991-92 with the L.A. Clippers.GSU has had players drafted by the NBA, NFL, MLB and MLS, but none in the first round before.

The King of Pops: Nick Carse, left, was a GSU School of Law student from 2005-08 and was working as a Gwinnett County Prosecutor when his brothers and he had a entrepreneurial idea.They formed their Gourment Ice Pop “King of Pops” business with carts, a pair of trucks and now have product sold with 20 retailers, including Kroger and Whole Foods. They roll their carts in Atlanta, Charlotte N.C., Charles-ton, S.C., Chattanooga, Tenn., Greenville, S.C., Savannah and Athens. At $2.50 a Pop, they’ve already sold their first million pops and are still expanding. Carse was named by Georgia Trend magazine as a top 40 under 40 entrepreuneur.


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Future Plans: The Atlanta Braves will be moving to Cobb County to start play in 2017. On Dec. 21, 2015, Georgia State was the winning bidder for Turner Field and the land in a major partnership with Carter, a real estate development and advising firm. GSU and Carter see the potential for a mixed-use commu-nity with housing, retail and an athletics complex to transform the 70-plus acres within a mile of the GSU campus into a $300 million proposal. Georgia State students have long used the parking lots at Turner Field to attend classes and ride the GSU shuttle buses or walk to campus.

Opened on May 18, 1996, the Centen-nial Olympic Stadium had a capacity of 85,000 when it played host to the 1996 Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremo-nies on July 19, 1996. The Track & Field competition was held there through the Aug. 4 games. The Atlanta Braves then did a reconstruction to reduce the size to 49,000 seats and began play on April 4, 1997 with a win over the Chicago Cubs. Next, it will be Georgia State’s turn to renovate the stadium.

rialto theatre - neuliongarland sang “over the rainbow” from the wizard of oz there in 1961....

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