Mike Cottrell, owner of Gainesville-based Cottrell Inc., the world leader in automobile-transport equipment manufacturing, received an honorary Doctorate in Business Administration from North Georgia College & State University on May 3.

The Mike Cottrell School of Business, named in honor of the university’s largest benefactor, held its commencement ceremony on Saturday in Dahlonega. The 55-year-old Cottrell was conferred the honorary doctorate during the ceremony, where 90 business students also received their degrees in front of an audience of more than 500. Former U.S. Sen. and Georgia Gov. Zell Miller was in attendance with U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson delivering the commencement address.

The honorary degree was conferred in recognition of the entrepreneur’s significant contributions to the university and North Georgia region. Cottrell made the first part of a $10 million gift to the North Georgia business school in 2006. The money will be used to develop a regional economic development center at NGCSU and support curricular programming, including the new Master of Business Administration degree program starting in Forsyth County in August.

Cottrell, a Dahlonega resident, is chairman of the Lumpkin County Development Authority, a member of the Lumpkin County Water & Sewerage Authority, a trustee of the NGCSU Foundation and vice-chair of the university’s Business Advisory Council. He recently was appointed as an at-large member to the board of directors of the Georgia Department of Economic Development by Gov. Sonny Perdue.     

Environmental sustainability demonstrated through student action

Carbon footprints, renewable energy sources, going green, composting – these topics may not be familiar to the average student, but junior Duane Kelley clearly understands their relevance to humankind’s survival.

Kelley, a transfer student from Young Harris College, was part of a group called Common Ground on that campus that taught environmental sustainability. The 20-year-old’s efforts helped garner a $10,000 grant to build learning and enrichment programs that involved the campus in environment-friendly practices. He plans to do the same thing at North Georgia within one year.

Kelley started small on Earth Day, April 22, by taking 13 trash bags from buildings across campus and separating the recyclable content.

“I want to combat waste management ignorance on campus and show how much we save by reusing, reducing and recycling,” says Kelley, who will graduate next May.

A group of students – five Charlie Company cadets and Kelley’s fiancé Ashley Crunkleton – sifted through more than 100 lbs. of trash for an hour, retrieving aluminum cans, plastic containers, paper and cardboard. Kelley weighed the trash bags before and after the recyclables were taken out, calculating that approximately 20 percent of the total trash was salvaged for recycling.

“When we were digging through the trash, certain recyclable materials were contaminated. I bet about 65 percent would have been recyclable,” says Kelley.

That telling figure is one of the reasons Kelley knows some action must be taken on campus. “Our imprint on this planet will be much less noticeable if we do,” says Kelley.

The political science major is on a new Student Government Association committee to study recycling, but he says that reducing the use of natural resources and reusing resources is a key part of the solution for sustainability.

Pet-Enabled Therapy Services, or PETS in Action, a service project of the NGCSU School of Science & Health Professions, received $1,000 in funding from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to continue the project into 2009. The project received funding from HNS & staff development in 2007 and Wal-Mart’s donation marks the first external contribution to the project. Pictured is Mary Kay Crowell and Wal-Mart employee Debbie Lowe at the April 18 check presentation.

“PETS is designed to educate citizens, university faculty and staff and students in this rural community to use animal-assisted therapy, or AAT, in both an educational and volunteer capacity to improve the quality of life of disadvantaged persons,” said nursing media support specialist Mary Kay Crowell, who wrote the grant proposal.

The program teaches citizens to perform animal-assisted therapy with trained dogs in a volunteer capacity and trains the animals for that purpose. Crowell said the university community benefits from the program by teaching members of the campus community in the health and education fields to utilize the motivational and healing qualities of dogs.

Disadvantaged individuals are given the chance for enhanced emotional and physical health through AAT. This currently includes the elderly in nursing homes, children in shelters and persons in rehabilitation said Crowell. A future project, "Reading to Rover", will benefit children who are self-conscious about reading aloud.

“The children look forward to reading to the dogs, which provide live, non-judgmental audiences,” said Crowell.

-From Staff Reports

The next Vickery House bluegrass jam will be May 9, noon. We'll have tables and chairs under the trees in the back yard. Players at any skill level and listeners are welcome. For more information, contact the Appalachian Studies Center, 706.864.1540.

Vet witnessed the ‘comical and horrendous’ in Iraq

Two days before students carried their resumés into Memorial Hall Gym for the annual career fair, cadets sat in silence in the open arena receiving a different kind of career counseling from a young lieutenant who almost died in Iraq saving the lives of fellow soldiers.

“When you’re in combat, it’s really hard to make sense of everything, because everything is so chaotic,” said 1st Lt. Walter B. Jackson, a West Point graduate, on March 10. “There are a lot of things you really can’t prepare for – it’s a lot of on-the-job training.”

Jackson became the seventh soldier since the Vietnam War to receive the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest military honor, for his actions in combat in Anbar, Iraq in 2006.

Jackson, visiting campus as a guest speaker for the corps, told the future Army leaders that they would have to learn to be “instinctive” when reacting in warfare.

During the insurgent attack that left him hospitalized for a year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Jackson’s company commander and first sergeant – the key leaders in his unit – were the first casualties wounded by machine gunfire. Two machine gun positions pinned down the U.S. soldiers who were investigating a suspected insurgent location. While Jackson treated his first sergeant’s injuries, the lieutenant was shot in the hand and leg and lost consciousness briefly. When he came to, he switched between administering first aid to his fellow soldier and returning gun fire on the enemy.

“I was loosing blood, and I knew that if laid there and waited for someone to pick me up, it just might cause more casualties.”