UGA seeking nominations for annual Footsteps Award
Award recognizes alumni who embody spirit of university pioneers
The University of Georgia is accepting nominations for its Footsteps Award. This annual award recognizes a UGA graduate each year who is following in the pioneering footsteps of Charlayne Hunter-Gault (ABJ ’63), Hamilton Holmes (BS ’63) and Mary Frances Early (MMED ’63, EDS ’67).
Members of the UGA community are invited to submit nominations for the Footsteps Award by completing a short form available online at alumni.uga.edu/footstepsnomination. The nomination period ends April 15, and the recipient will be announced mid-May.
The honoree must be a UGA graduate who has made a significant positive impact in a variety of areas in their community. Selected by a committee of UGA faculty, staff and students, the recipient will be presented with the award during the 1961 Club Celebration in June.
“We are immensely proud of our alumni for their commitment to improving their communities, both in their personal and professional lives,” said Jill Walton, vice president for development and alumni relations. “These alumni are exceptional representations of a University of Georgia education, and the Footsteps Award is just one way for us to honor their dedication.”
Questions about the award can be emailed to alumni@uga.edu.
About, Behind and Between the Hedges
As generations of Bulldogs would tell you, there’s no line of shrubbery as iconic to sports as the hedges of the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium. The Chinese privet bushes – Ligustrum sinense, taxonomically speaking – that frame Dooley Field have seen every Georgia home game since 1929.
For the third time in UGA history, the hedges were removed this February. They’ll be revitalized off-site ahead of the 2024 football season, including a full soil replacement, irrigation, and drainage work. The hedges will be replanted with plants of the same lineage in time for the 2024 G-Day game.
IN THE BEGINNING
The hedges’ storied history began in 1926 at the Rose Bowl, when a UGA Athletic Department employee noticed the red rosebushes surrounding the field. Meanwhile, back in Athens, UGA’s president at the time, Steadman V. Sanford, had started construction on what he hoped would become the best college football stadium in the South.
The employee suggested that rosebushes be planted around the field, and the idea was received well – with one caveat. Rosebushes wouldn’t thrive in Athens’s climate. Fast-growing, hardy Chinese privet given to the university by an Atlanta donor would be planted instead.
In 1929, the university sent the governor’s son, who was a UGA student, and his ROTC instructor to Atlanta in a khaki-green military truck to pick up the bushes. The truck, owned by the ROTC department, was the only vehicle in the university fleet large enough for the job. As the legend has it, the truck’s headlights went out on the way back and the ROTC instructor crawled onto the hood of the truck to light the way, clinging on with one hand and holding a flashlight with the other while the governor’s son drove.
Once the truck arrived at the stadium, workers planted the hedges overnight with hours to spare until the next day’s game against Yale. The 1929 Georgia-Yale game was the first one played in newly dedicated Sanford Stadium. It was the largest athletic event ever held in the South at that time, with 30,000 fans and the governors of nine southern states in attendance – a fitting crowd for Georgia’s first victory Between the Hedges.
THE 1996 OLYMPIC GAMES
Covering about 5,000 square feet around the playing field, the hedges take up a significant amount of sideline. This became an issue when Sanford Stadium was used to host soccer games for the 1996 Olympic Games held in Atlanta. Soccer fields are about 25 percent larger than football fields, so the hedges and a concrete walkway had to be briefly removed to create extra space.
Healthy clippings from the hedges were taken to nurseries in Georgia and Florida run by UGA alumni, propagated into full plants and replanted after the Games in a ceremony featuring Georgia football legends and state politicians.
“They’re the sons and daughters of the original hedges,” said the late coach Vince Dooley.
The hedges were removed for a second time in 2017 for the construction of a new locker room and scoreboard on the West endzone. Each bush was numbered so it could be replanted exactly where it had been dug up.
WHAT’S GROWING ON
Five feet tall and five feet wide, the hedges – and the chain-link fence they conceal – have also served to protect the safety of fans, athletes and coaches over the years. Dooley Field has been stormed by fans only once, after a victory against the University of Tennessee in 2000. The hedges’ crowd control success has led to the installation of similar plantings at other stadiums around the country.
Today, maintaining the hedges is a labor of love. Chinese privet, considered an invasive weed in other parts of the country, grows at a rate of about three feet per year. A dedicated maintenance team, including students from the university’s turf program, work tirelessly throughout the football season to trim the hedges into their signature boxy shape. Armed with gas-powered trimmers, weed eaters and hand-held clippers, the job takes about two hours each time.
When the hedges return to grace the sidelines of Sanford Stadium this spring, they’ll have been a Georgia football tradition for 95 years – you could say they’re some of the Bulldogs’ oldest supporters.
Alumna joins trailblazing collective to make an impact
Danelle Faust (BBA ’95) draws on her own UGA experiences to support future generations through a new, women-led initiative.
Lisa Sarajian is living la vie en rose
A passion for the arts led Lisa to study abroad. Now, she helps Bulldogs who want to do the same.
When Lisa Sarajian (BBA ’82) was a student, Athens felt imbued with a certain kind of magic. The city’s music scene was reaching its peak with the emergence of beloved bands like R.E.M., Pylon and the B-52s. As a freshman, Lisa spent her time after classes listening to bands play on Legion Field, exploring the growing downtown area and taking walks through UGA’s beautiful historic North Campus.
An international business major with a passion for the arts, Lisa loved immersing herself in Athens’ cultural scene. She could frequently be found wandering the galleries of the Georgia Museum of Art and attending free classical music concerts on North Campus. Music was at the center of life in Athens and the sound of live concerts spilled out onto sidewalks everywhere… on campus, downtown and in public parks.
“I just found there was always something fun to do,” Lisa said.
Lisa’s favorite Saturday afternoon activity was going to film screenings. A native of Marietta, Georgia, she hadn’t had as much access to the arts as she had wanted to growing up, and the thriving cultural scene she had become a part of was absolutely invigorating for her. Moving out of the suburbs to live in Athens opened up her world.
“It was my first introduction to foreign and independent films,” she said. “I would take some French classes and go to a French film festival.”
When Lisa learned about an opportunity to study abroad in France for the summer of 1979, she was thrilled. The trip, which focused on the arts, led her to Normandy, Paris and the Loire Valley.
“It was such a transformative experience for me,” she said. “I knew that I wanted to bust out at some point and see the world and broaden my horizons and I would not have had that opportunity otherwise.”
After graduating from UGA, Lisa went on to her first job, a role in finance she gained with the help of UGA’s career services department, now centralized in the Career Center. She worked in a few different jobs in the finance and advertising industry before moving to New York City to start her job at Standard & Poor’s, where she worked for almost three decades.
Lisa remembers her study abroad trip as one of the most meaningful experiences of her time at UGA, but she also understood firsthand how finances could be an obstacle for students hoping to study abroad. She had been unable to work a summer job that year, which was an important source of support through her time at UGA.
Lisa wanted to make it possible for more students to have a life-changing experience abroad like she did, so she created a study abroad scholarship.
“I was drawn to this opportunity as a way to give back and to give other people that opportunity as well, particularly kids who would not otherwise have the means to travel,” she said.
After her retirement in 2015, Lisa went back to school, earning certificates in gardening through the New York Botanical Garden and studying French. Today, she lives on the Upper West Side of New York City. She is a board member and consultant for various nonprofits in her area, including The Trust for Public Land, and an active member of the West Side Community Garden, where she maintains a plot. She stays connected to her friends from UGA with regular lunch dates, and she returns to France as often as she can.
Project Red grows campus impact thanks to student donors
Period poverty, or a lack of access to proper menstrual products and the education needed to use them effectively, has affected billions of people around the world. Project Red hopes to change that, one free biodegradable menstrual product at a time – and with the support of thousands of Senior Signature donors, the student organization is ready for the challenge.
Project Red, a UGA student organization formed in May 2020, works with UGA’s Facilities Management Division to place free biodegradable menstrual products in all-gender restrooms in 11 central locations on the UGA campus. The group also fosters discussions about menstrual health and period poverty, conducts research to identify needs and menstrual equity concerns among the student body and serves as a model for other organizations throughout the Southeast.
Project Red was initially supported by a grant from Aunt Flow, a menstrual product provider, and a 2020 Campus Sustainability Grant from UGA’s Office of Sustainability. As the organization grew and awareness of its work increased, Project Red’s resources struggled to meet demand. It needed financial support to continue to make an impact.
That support came in 2023, when Project Red was chosen to receive the 2022-2023 Class Gift. The group used the $6,000 donation to purchase two new dispensers, 15,000 menstrual products, and a series of promotional materials. It also reserved funding for future expenses to expand their reach on campus and continue to combat period poverty at UGA.
Senior Signature
The Class Gift is coordinated by the Student Alumni Council and funded by Senior Signature, an annual giving campaign for graduating students to give back to campus by contributing to areas that were significant to their UGA experience. Each student’s minimum contribution is $30, with $10 supporting the Class Gift initiative and the other $20 being directed to a fund of the student’s choosing. UGA student organizations are eligible to apply for the Class Gift each spring to receive funds for the following academic year. Senior Signature donors vote on the final Class Gift recipient.
“By being able to select the class gift, students are making their mark on UGA,” said Emily Neece ’25, the Student Alumni Council’s vice president of philanthropy. “The graduating class gets to support something that will help other students and leave a legacy.”
With the collective support of Senior Signature donors, Project Red is able to continue to meet student needs across campus — but Senior Signature’s impact does not stop there. The Class of 2024 will select another organization as the recipient of its Class Gift. During the 2024-2025 academic year, this organization will receive up to $6,000 to support their work within our campus community.
Altera Investments named fastest-growing UGA business
The University of Georgia Alumni Association recognized the fastest-growing companies owned or led by UGA alumni during the 15th annual Bulldog 100 Celebration Feb. 9 in the West End Zone of Sanford Stadium.
The 2024 fastest-growing business, Altera Investments, was founded and is led by David Fershteyn, CEO, Carlos Alcala, CFO and Mitch Reiner, Board Member. Fershteyn, Alcala and Reiner all earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from the Terry College of Business – Fershteyn and Alcala received theirs in 2017, while Reiner received his degree in 2005.
Altera Investments is based in Atlanta and is an alternative investment firm focused on the lower middle market. This is the company’s first time on the Bulldog 100 list, although Reiner has represented previous companies that have made the list.
The 2024 No. 1 Bulldog business, Altera Investments, is led by David Fershteyn, CEO (pictured above in foreground), Carlos Alcala, CFO (pictured in background above), and Mitch Reiner, Board Member (not pictured).
Rounding out the Bulldog 100 top ten are:
- Jetset World Travel, Atlanta, Georgia
- Ryals Brothers, LLC, Lula, Georgia
- Neighborly Software, Atlanta, Georgia
- Capital Real Estate Group, Atlanta, Georgia
- SynerGrx, Chamblee, Georgia
- teXga Farms, Clarkesville, Georgia
- Eagle Christian Tours, Rome, Georgia
- Society 54, LLC, Charlotte, North Carolina
- Lighting Pros, Jefferson, Georgia
“It is our privilege to recognize this year’s honorees, who truly embody the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship that is found in every Bulldog,” said Lee Zell, president of the UGA Alumni Association. “Welcoming these Bulldogs back to campus was an honor, and we look forward to continuing to celebrate their impact on their communities and industries.”
The Bulldog 100 companies were ranked solely based on their three-year compounded annual growth rates. The Atlanta office of Warren Averett CPAs and Advisors—a Bulldog 100 partner since the program began in 2009—verifies the information submitted by each company and determines the ranked list. On average, companies in the 2024 Bulldog 100 grew by 67 percent each year from 2020-2022, the highest growth rate in the 15-year history of the program.
This year, businesses are headquartered in a total of 7 states, with 88 of the businesses located in the state of Georgia. In total, 139 alumni representing over a dozen industries, including health care, financial services, agriculture, and real estate are being recognized.
The fifth annual Michael J. Bryan Award was presented during the Feb. 9 event. The award, named for the co-founder and managing partner of Vino Venue and Atlanta Wine School who passed away in 2017 from cancer, recognizes a returning Bulldog 100 honoree who demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to UGA that was Bryan’s hallmark. This year’s recipients are Jim Chasteen, Charlie Thompson, Kelly Chasteen, Justin Manglitz and Chad Ralston, the team behind ASW Distillery.
(L-R) Kelly Chasteen and Jim Chasteen of ASW Distillery, the 2024 Michael J. Bryan Award winner, with Michael’s wife Leila Bryan and UGA Alumni President Lee Zell.
The complete list of 2024 Bulldog 100 businesses can be viewed online at alumni.uga.edu/b100.
Nominations for the 2025 Bulldog 100 will open in late Spring 2024.
Student Alumni Council welcomes 22 new members
The University of Georgia Student Alumni Council is welcoming 22 new members for the 2024-2025 academic year.
The Student Alumni Council cultivates an affinity for UGA among students to help advance the connection of the Bulldog family through facilitating campus events, making professional connections and developing lifelong friendships. Council members lead efforts to plan and promote signature events and programs such as Senior Signature, Founders Day, Freshman Welcome and Beat Week.
The Student Alumni Council is composed of student leaders from across campus who celebrate UGA traditions, cultivate student philanthropy, and connect students to alumni. The organization also offers personal and professional development and networking opportunities to members.
The new Student Alumni Council Members for the 2024-2025 academic year are:
Ben Parks ’27, Mechanical Engineering, Fort Worth, Texas
Charlotte Zelley ’27, Accounting, Dallas, Texas
Gabriella Etienne ’26, Political Science and Public Relations, Canton, Georgia
Georgia Nunn ’26, Fashion Merchandising, Athens, Georgia
Hayden Hulsey ’27, Political Science, Clarkesville, Georgia
Jonah Jones ’25, Political Science, Brooklet, Georgia
Joshua James ’25, Management Information Systems, Hampton, Georgia
Logan Dwyer ’26, Finance, Bristow, Virginia
Lotenne Nwokolo ’27, Biomedical Physiology, Alpharetta, Georgia
Luke Snow ’27, Finance and Management Information Systems, Fort Worth, Texas
Max Trinh ’27, Management Information Systems, Norcross, Georgia
Mohnish Mistry ’25, Biology, Alpharetta, Georgia
Nikhilesh Gujjula ’26, Management Information Systems, Cumming, Georgia
Reagan Clarke ’27, Exercise & Sport Science, Cedartown, Georgia
Rebecca Dennis ’27, Biomedical Physiology, Lawrenceville, Georgia
Ryan Tipper ’27, Exercise & Sport Science, Woodstock, Georgia
Sasha Park ’26, Business Management, Seoul, South Korea
Seyanna Castro ’25, Biomedical Physiology, Warner Robins, Georgia
Shivani Srinivasan ’26, Biomedical Physiology, Salt Lake City, Utah
Tara Nguyen ’27, Biomedical Physiology, Kennesaw, Georgia
Thomas Mathisen ’26, Finance and Real Estate, Charleston, South Carolina
Trey Ketchum ’26, History, LaGrange, Georgia
Happy 239th birthday, UGA!
How do you celebrate 239 successful years as the country’s first public institution of higher education? With a 239th birthday party, of course!
More than 1,150 students celebrated the University of Georgia’s 239th birthday in style during this year’s Founders Day event held in the Tate Student Center on January 26. The event, which was organized by the Student Alumni Council with generous support from the Office of the President, brought together 11 of the university’s 18 schools and colleges to celebrate UGA’s academic excellence and the incredible campus we call home.
Student attendees received a “passport” for the event and earned stamps for completing activities organized by those schools and colleges in attendance. Those who filled their passport received a special Founders Day memento.
Attendees also had the opportunity to take home other UGA swag, write thank you notes to UGA faculty and staff, take photos with Hairy Dawg, and enjoy UGA-themed birthday treats.
Three Alumnae and a Dawg
This story was written by Rosalyn Dunn.
When Molly Dunn (BS ’23) signed up for UGA’s Mentor Program, she figured it would be a good way to find out more about careers in her major and a get a head start on making professional contacts.
Looking through the lists of potential mentors, she felt drawn to Tonya Freeman (AB ’86). And it became clear from the first phone call that the choice was a good one.
“I have mentored for over 30 years—all age groups from elementary school to college to peers and friends and family,” Tonya said. She started as a mentor at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, partnering with Tilson Elementary School—which she attended—and went on to develop formal and informal programs for CDC employees. It only seemed natural to get involved with the UGA Mentor Program, where she has mentored multiple young women at UGA who are studying Statistics.
“These young ladies are breaking the glass ceiling in the field and have made their impact known,” she said. “It is the best feeling of giving back.”
For many UGA Mentorship pairs, the program lasts about 4 months. Tonya, however, told Molly that if she wanted to continue working together, they could.
And they did, meeting faithfully over Zoom calls once a month, even on vacation. They scheduled in-person meetings when possible, including an afternoon in Athens when Tonya brought her daughter, Tai, for a tour of UGA. Tonya also helped Molly make connections with the CDC’s surveillance unit for a summer internship.
“There is so much that’s uncertain, so many directions to go and a little fear about what’s coming after school,” Molly said. “Seeing someone as vibrant and confident as Tonya in a competitive field—especially as a woman in STEM—who went through the same program I did and is now leading a happy and successful life was inspiring and encouraging.”
That success is exactly what both the UGA Mentor Program and Tonya seek to achieve.
“In mentoring, I aim to celebrate, connect, educate, and support my mentees,” Tonya said. “It is so rewarding to see others excel.”
Molly’s senior year at UGA paralleled Tonya’s daughter Tai’s senior year of high school and brought about an ironic twist to the mentoring relationship.
“I finally got the chance to do something in return,” said Molly’s mother, Rosalyn Dunn (ABJ ’92), first by giving Tai some writing advice on her application essays, and later, after the fireworks email erupted in Tai’s inbox and announced her acceptance, by helping Tonya navigate tuition payments and sources for campus information.
“I also checked in to see how she was holding up, because it wasn’t that long ago that I knew the feeling of missing a daughter at home and worrying about how she was doing at school,” Rosalyn said.
The mentoring relationship also expanded to the younger generation, with Molly advising Tai on housing choices, dorm essentials and campus navigation tips.
In June, “three alumnae and a Dawg” met at The Battery in Atlanta to share a meal and celebrate Tai’s UGA acceptance and Molly’s graduation. A couple of months later, Tonya and Rosalyn met for a Braves game at Truist Park, where they texted their girls and reveled in an unexpected benefit to the UGA Mentor Program.
“It’s been an amazing relationship turned friendship,” Tonya said. “We are looking forward to more great times.”
