O'Quinn named director of Coverdell Institute
O'Quinn named director of Coverdell Institute
Dr. Nancy K. O'Quinn has been named director the Paul Coverdell Institute and Archives at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, effective Jan. 1.
In collaboration with various departments at GC&SU, O'Quinn will be involved in developing the institute's mission statement, values, goals and objectives. She will function as coordinator for activities related to The American Democracy Project and will plan and coordinate symposia for policy issues.
Responsibilities include working collaboratively with other departments in planning and coordinating leadership activities for students, working with a professional archivist in creating the archives for the Coverdell papers and supervising the work of graduate assistants assigned to the institute. Additionally, she will seek funding for the institute so that it can continue past the three-year grant period.
The institute, which would also include leadership and internship programs, will allow experts in various areas of public policy to work together and with regular faculty and students at the undergraduate and graduate level to study and propose solutions to major public affairs problems confronting the American and international communities, said Dr. Michael Digby, chairman of the Department of Government and Sociology, who was involved in the initial planning for the establishment of the institute.
It will also provide opportunities for visiting scholars and regular faculty and students from various liberal arts-related fields to interact, share their experiences and perspectives, and work together towards deriving interdisciplinary solutions to major public problems, he said.
Georgia College & State University received $794,000 in federal money in April 2003 to begin the Paul Coverdell Institute and Archives honoring U.S. Sen. Paul Coverdell who died in July 2000.
A relationship between GC&SU and Coverdell began in the 1990 when GC&SU launched its Peace Corps USA/Fellows program in which the university trained former Peace Corps volunteers to become teachers in rural Georgia school systems. In 1993 Coverdell helped GC&SU obtain a grant that enabled the university to expand the program.
- The Union-Recorder
