LMC Announces Inaugural Advisory Board Members

Posted December 20, 2016

The School of Literature, Media, and Communication established an Advisory Board this fall announcing inaugural board members Lester Tate, an attorney and Georgia Tech alumnus (Industrial Management 1982), and Kathleen Goonan, the acclaimed science fiction author who has served as a professor of the practice in LMC.

LMC Chair Richard Utz said that the board will include distinguished alumni, community and industry leaders, and friends and supporters of the School. Board members will be appointed by the School chair based upon a recommendation by the faculty.

“Advisory in nature, the board members play an essential role in bringing an independent and external perspective on various LMC programs, initiatives, and strategies,” said Utz. “They also provide leadership for the School’s philanthropic events and activities, serve as ambassadors in their own networks and communities, and share a passionate commitment to inclusive excellence and to the value of an educational experience at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences, and science/technology. Board members may also advise LMC in the areas of social justice and careers in jurisprudence and help us connect with thought leaders in the Atlanta metropolitan area.”

Tate and Goonan are the first members of what will ultimately be a 12-member board. Members will ideally serve three-year terms (once renewable). The Board will meet in Atlanta at least once a year.

 

About Lester Tate

Lester Tate is a trial lawyer who served as the 48th President of the State Bar of Georgia. Since 1996, he has practiced as a shareholder in Akin & Tate, P.C., Georgia’s oldest continuing law firm. He has won numerous million dollar plus verdicts and settlements for his clients and has been widely recognized as one of the state’s top lawyers by various publications, including Georgia Trend Magazine, which named him to its list of “Georgia’s Legal Elite,” and Atlanta Magazine, which has repeatedly named him as a “Super Lawyer.”

 When invited to serve on our LMC Advisory Board, he responded, “I’m not sure I would have made it out of Tech without the classes in the then English Department’s Business and Technical Communications Certificate program, given my deficiencies in Math and Science. More importantly, though, I feel very strongly that the classes I took in that program paved the way for me to be a Congressional Press Secretary and later a trial lawyer. So, I am indeed very honored and appreciative for the opportunity to give back.”

Tate is the current president of the Georgia Chapter of American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), the former chairman of the Judicial Qualifications Commission, and a member of the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates. Because of his extensive courtroom experience, he was inducted into the American Board of Trial Advocates, one of the nation’s most prestigious groups of trial lawyers, with the rank of “advocate.” He is also a fellow of the Litigation Counsel of America, a trial lawyer honorary society comprised of less than 1% of American lawyers. Lester has also appeared over 30 times in Georgia’s state and federal appellate courts. While devoting most of his time to serious personal injury and wrongful death cases, his practice is unusually broad and has included such diverse matters as federal criminal cases, complex commercial disputes, workers compensation cases, and murder trials.  

Tate received his J.D. at the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1987 and his B.S. in Industrial Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1982.

For more information, see: http://www.akintate.com/lestertate/

 

About Kathleen Goonan

As a member of the LMC Advisory Board, Kathleen Goonan will serve as an active ambassador and connector of creative writing, science fiction, and science, technology, and culture scholars within the LMC community.

Goonan is an award-winning science fiction author with seven critically acclaimed novels. She was a professor of the practice in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication and has taught classes at Georgia Tech that foregrounded the confluence of science, technology, and culture. She also worked to forward LMC’s Mission “to lead the region, the nation, and the world in researching and teaching the ways the humanities shape and are shaped by science and technology.”

“It is an honor to be invited to serve on LMC’s Advisory Board,” Goonan said. “LMC is the humanitarian voice of Georgia Tech, and I aim to forge more formal and concrete links between LMC and the groundbreaking scientific research and technological innovation that takes place at Georgia Tech.”

Goonan also said she envisions a strong narrative fiction program in LMC that has the potential to influence many kinds of discourse.

“LMC has the potential to have a world-class narrative fiction program that will attract and serve students whose fictional concepts will be among the most cutting-edge put forward in the 21st century,” she said. “I look forward to discussing these and other visions while on the Advisory Board and generating practical ways to move toward these and other LMC goals.”

Goonan’s most recent novel is This Shared Dream. Her most recent academic work appeared in Lisa Yaszek’s Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women in Science Fiction and in Intelligence Unbound: The Future of Uploaded and Machine Minds, edited by Broderick and Blackwell. 

Described as a “Shaman of the Small” by Scientific American in their special Nanotechnology issue, and named “One of the Best Minds in Science Fiction” by Popular Science Magazine, she has remained at the cutting edge of conversation about the future for over twenty years. As a member of SIGMA, a science fiction think-tank offering futurism consulting to the U.S. Government and NGOs, Goonan has presented at the Joint Services Small Arms Program and at the Global Competitiveness Forum. As a key science fiction visionary at the intersection of nanotechnology research, government, culture, and society, Goonan has been a speaker at international literary festivals Utopiales and Kosmopolis as well as at universities and think tanks. Goonan’s first career as an AMI Montessori director, during which she taught in her own hundred-student school, generated her passion for forwarding the cause of international literacy. As part of the Hieroglyph Project, in which science fiction writers intersect with government, universities and NGOs to forward “Positive Visions for a Better Tomorrow,” Goonan and other Hieroglyph Anthology authors met with White House Office of Science and Technology staff members. While there, she presented her ideas of how international literacy, enhanced universal preschool, and neuroplasticity research might lead to increased worldwide literacy. Her present work with the World Bank and World Vision brings her into intersection with the visionary EVOKE online game, where she forwards those same goals.

For more information, see http://www.goonan.com