Piedmont College to host their first Global Handwashing Day event on campus

Demorest, Georgia, Sept. 4, 2020– Piedmont College is hosting a Global Handwashing Day event on Thursday, Oct. 15 in the Commons to promote handwashing during COVID-19. Although hand sanitizing stations have popped up around campus during the pandemic, it is not as beneficial as washing with soap.

“Soap is a mixture of fat or oil, water, and then it has an alkali and that’s a basic salt”, said Julia Schmitz, biology professor at Piedmont College. “It’s the combination of all those and how it works to bind to the oil and grease on your hands as a surfactant and that’s what makes it more effective.”

On Global Handwashing Day, Piedmont will host a TikTok video contest, as well as a handwashing experiment in the Commons. The TikTok video contest will be open to Piedmont students and will encourage students to submit an informative and entertaining video emphasizing the importance of handwashing.

For more information about Piedmont’s Global Handwashing Day event, email Julia Schmitz at jschmitz@piedmont.edu.

About Piedmont College: One of the most dynamic small colleges in the Southeast, Piedmont is an independent liberal arts college of more than 2,260 students. The college’s four schools—Arts & Sciences, Business, Education, and Nursing & Health Sciences—develop tomorrow’s leaders by engaging students in the classroom, in their community, and around the world. Founded in 1897, Piedmont offers bachelor’s, master’s, specialist, and doctoral degree programs at its Demorest residential campus in the foothills of the northeast Georgia mountains and at its Athens campus in the heart of Georgia’s Classic City. Information can be found at www.piedmont.edu.