A native French speaker from Quebec wasn’t responding well to care at a medical center in Madison, Georgia, this fall.

She was confused, unreceptive to treatment and not receiving the best care she could. But when graduating nursing senior, Claire Halloran, entered the room with a cheerful, “bonjour madame,” everything changed.

“She just lit up,” Halloran said, “it was like night and day. I figured it would help, but I just had no idea how big of an impact it would make.”

Immediately Halloran’s patient relaxed with a much softer, receptive disposition.

You can’t get there by GPS. There are no signs to direct you. But just yards from Hwy 49 in Milledgeville, a little hillside with a great view is abuzz with the sounds and smells of rotating and baking leftover food.

Imagine a Georgia—60,000 years ago—where the coastal city of Brunswick was 70 miles from the ocean and most of the state was a great, grassy plain where the bison and mammoths roamed.

The love of dance runs deep for Dr. Carla Walter. It’s not only the aesthetic value of it she enjoys but how it allows people to express their feelings and emotions and connects them to the world around them.

“I have always loved dance,” said Walter. “From the time I was a young child, but also now, I love the spirituality of it.”

As the Martha Daniel Newell Visiting Scholar for the Spring 2022 semester, Walter will teach Global Perspectives of Indigenous Dance and Religious Histories.

Ludwig van Beethoven believed “music can change the world.”

Two Georgia College students are taking that to heart, lifting the spirits of elderly residents in Milledgeville one song at a time.

“I believe music has the power to open real connection between humans, and I want to use music as a tool to heal,” said graduate student Matthew Seymour of Augusta, who’s getting his master’s in music therapy.

Dec. 15, 2020 — The University System of Georgia (USG) awarded its “2021 Regents’ Momentum Year Award for Excellence in Teaching and Curricular Innovation” to GC Journeys—a program where every Georgia College student participates in at least five transformative experiences in their college years.