USG VALUE:
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/state-regional-govt-politics/georgia-state-receives-national-attention-for-acad/nXyJx/
Georgia State receives national attention for academic success
By Laura Diamond
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia State University was one of six public colleges honored Tuesday for improving student achievement and conducting strong research while dealing with state budget cuts. …Georgia State was recognized for several programs including Keep HOPE Alive, which helps students regain the popular scholarship if they lose it, and the Panther Retention Grants, which provide students with small grants to cover their bills so that they don’t have to drop out.

USG NEWS:
www.redandblack.com
http://www.redandblack.com/variety/georgia-museum-of-art-to-participate-in-military-discount-program/article_bee9ef5e-c271-11e2-b4ff-001a4bcf6878.html
Georgia Museum of Art to participate in military discount program
UGA News Service
The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will participate this summer in Blue Star Museums, a program that offers free admission and special discounts to all active-duty military personnel and their families from Memorial Day through Labor Day. Although admission is always free, the museum is offering a 10 percent discount in its shop for all active-duty military personnel and their families. The museum has signed on to the program in an effort to connect the arts and military communities and as a way to thank military families for their service and sacrifice.

Related article:
www.onlineathens.com
Georgia Museum of Art to participate in military discount program
http://onlineathens.com/uga/2013-05-21/georgia-museum-art-participate-military-discount-program

www.nationofchange.org
http://www.nationofchange.org/georgia-professors-teach-undocumented-students-free-1369147188
Georgia Professors Teach Undocumented Students – for Free
Chris Francis
Undocumented young people in Georgia are fighting for access to higher education with support from the ACLU and a group of professors who have volunteered to teach college-level courses for free. Georgia’s Board of Regents adopted a policy in 2010 that prevents undocumented ¬students from attending the state’s top five public universities. The policy “is based on a misunderstanding of federal immigration law,” according to a letter from the ACLU to the Board of Regents. Georgia is one of three states that exclude undocumented students from full access to higher education, even when the federal government recognizes the student’s right to be in the United States under Department of Homeland Security regulations. The other 47 states either apply no exclusion policies to such students or require them to pay out-of-state tuition.

GOOD NEWS:
www.northfulton.com
http://www.northfulton.com/Articles-EDUCATION-c-2013-05-21-198928.114126-sub-Mother-daughter-made-college-graduates.html
Mother, daughter made college graduates
Gain degrees on same day
by Shauyan Saki
ALPHARETTA, Ga. –– Gina Daunt and Kathryn Elliot share a special bond. Not only are they mother and daughter, but they happened to graduate from college on the same day. Daunt, an honors graduate from Eastern Kentucky University, juggled being a mom, assistant fire marshal for the city of Roswell and college student from 2011-13. She received her associate’s degree from Georgia Perimeter College 17 years ago, but she recently decided to go back to school for her bachelor’s degree in general studies. …Daunt finally was able to take the monkey off her back by earning her degree, and she said it was only sweeter that she was able to graduate with her daughter. Elliot, who graduated with a double major in writing and linguistics from Georgia Southern University, said she felt relieved to receive her degree. She took extra classes on top of a full load to graduate in the spring. …On May 11, both Daunt and Elliot finally received the fruits of their labor: their diplomas.

www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/uga/2013-05-21/state-historic-preservation-officials-check-out-uga-health-sciences-campus
State historic preservation officials check out UGA health sciences campus
By LEE SHEARER
State historic preservation officials seemed to like what they saw Tuesday as they toured ongoing renovation work on the University of Georgia’s health Sciences campus, including a building that will become the university’s next residence hall when it opens this fall. Brown Hall was used as a kind of hotel when the U.S. Navy used the Normaltown campus for its Navy Supply Corps School. But after renovations, it will provide beds for up to about 200 students, said Krista Coleman-Sliver, a project manager with the UGA Office of University Architects.

RESEARCH:
www.online.wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323463704578497001550259128.html
Scientists’ Goal: Even Earlier Early Warnings
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ
The recent outburst of deadly tornadoes highlights the scientific scramble to detect these violent seasonal storms more quickly to add precious minutes to warnings. An alert from the National Weather Service on Monday gave people in Moore, Okla., 16 minutes to take shelter before the tornado touched down and swept much of city off the map with its 200-miles-per-hour winds—about two minutes more than average, experts said. An advanced weather-service radar, called Nexrad, is located just a few miles away from the town. To give people more time to seek safety, scientists at the Severe Storm Research Center at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and other laboratories are scouring storm systems this spring for reliable signals that can be used to predict a twister taking form inside the tumult of a fast-moving storm front.

www.bbc.co.uk
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22598821
Ant studies to aid design of search and rescue robots
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News
A study showing how ants tunnel their way through confined spaces could aid the design of search-and-rescue robots, according to US scientists. A team from the Georgia Institute of Technology found fire ants can use their antennae as “extra limbs” to catch themselves when they fall, and can build stable tunnels in loose sand. Researchers used high speed cameras to record in detail this behaviour. The findings are published in the journal PNAS. Dr Nick Gravish, who led the research, designed “scientific grade ant farms” – allowing the ants to dig through sand trapped between two plates of glass, so every tunnel and every movement could be viewed and filmed.”These ants would move at very high speeds,” he explained, “and if you slowed down the motion, (you could see) it wasn’t graceful movement – they have many slips and falls.”

Related article:
www.science.nbcnews.com
Swarming fire ants could be models for rescue robots
http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/21/18400405-swarming-fire-ants-could-be-models-for-rescue-robots?lite

STATE NEEDS/ISSUES:
www.bizjournals.com
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2013/05/21/georgia-ports-curtis-foltz-hopeful.html
Georgia Ports’ Curtis Foltz hopeful Savannah will receive federal funds
Maria Saporta
Contributing Writer-Atlanta Business Chronicle
The Georgia Ports Authority’s executive director is optimistic that federal funding to deepen the Savannah Port will be in place in the next couple of years. …“We strongly believe that the federal government will step up to the plate in a big way in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget,” Foltz said in response to a question. “We believe it will bubble up to the top.” The deepening of the Savannah Port’s channel from 42 feet to 47 feet has become a top economic development priority for the State of Georgia.

www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-05-21/poll-georgians-oppose-campus-guns
Poll: Georgians oppose campus guns
By WALTER C. JONESMORRIS NEWS SERVICE
ATLANTA – A majority of Georgians oppose allowing students who have concealed-weapons permits to carry guns on college campuses, according to a survey released Tuesday. InsiderAdvantage conducted the survey Thursday for Fox 5 Atlanta and Morris News among 502 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 4 percent. When asked about allowing guns at school, 57 percent are opposed while just 34 percent favor it. Another 10 percent are undecided.

Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/get-schooled/2013/may/22/georgia-sees-rise-high-school-grads/
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Georgia sees rise in high school grads
Some good news from DOE:
Georgia’s most recent public high school graduation rate rose more than two percentage points over the previous year – from 67.4 percent in 2011 to 69.7 percent in 2012. This is the second year Georgia has calculated the graduation rate using a new formula – known as the adjusted cohort rate – as required by the U.S. Department of Education.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/education-dept-releases-new-data-on-college-tuition-across-sectors/60735
Education Dept. Releases New Data on College Tuition Across Sectors
The National Center for Education Statistics, the Education Department’s statistical arm, on Tuesday released a “first look” report at new data on college pricing across sectors, finding that tuition and required fees for in-state students at four-year, public institutions rose by 6.7 percent from 2010-11 to 2012-13.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/How-a-Little-Data-Can-Solve/139347/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
How a Little Data Can Solve One of Higher Education’s Biggest Problems
By Jeffrey Selingo
Last fall, Shaun Fowler started his sophomore year at Georgia State University still owing $500 on his tuition bill. The finance major from Atlanta had only a few days of classes before the university would be forced to kick him out for nonpayment. Then Fowler would become yet another stain on the reputation of large urban public colleges with stubbornly low graduation rates. Only about half the students at Georgia State graduate within six years. Fowler couldn’t come up with the money, so he was dropped from the class rolls. But within hours, he received a call from Georgia State’s financial-aid office with an offer of a $500 grant. “I jumped at the chance,” Fowler told me. Instead of shrinking his course load to lower his tuition bill, as he had planned, Fowler was back as a full-time student. “Without that money, I had no way to pay for school,” he said.

www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/22/the-college-preparation-gap-in-a-single-graphic/?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads
The Answer Sheet By Valerie Strauss
The college ‘preparation gap’ in a single graphic
An annual national survey of school curriculum concludes that there is a “large gap” between how high school teachers perceive their graduating students’ readiness for college and what professors expect freshmen to know.
While a vast majority of high school teachers believe their students are ready for college work, most postsecondary teachers don’t, as shown in the following graphic from the report called “ACT National Curriculum Survey® 2012: Policy Implications on Preparing for Higher Standards.”

www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-judson/imminent-chaos_b_3312708.html
Imminent Chaos
Bruce Judson Author, Former Senior Faculty Fellow, Yale School of Management, President, Judson Mobile
Last week, in an article for the Huffington Post, titled Commencement 2.0, I discussed the need for higher education officials to begin substantive planning for digital disruption. The article argued that low-cost high quality online courses combined with sophisticated exam tools and online teaching assistance would inevitably lead to massive dislocation in higher education. To my surprise, on the same day this article appeared Georgia Tech, one of the nation’s leading engineering and computer science schools announced that it would begin offering a low-cost Online Master of Computer Science degree. The next phase of digital disruption is now here, and I suspect higher education officials are, with few exceptions, not ready.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/mooc-provider-edx-more-than-doubles-its-university-partners/43917?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
MOOC Provider edX More Than Doubles Its University Partners
By Jeffrey R. Young
Fifteen more universities have agreed to offer free massive open online courses through edX, a nonprofit provider of MOOCs founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, more than doubling its membership, from 12 to 27. Tuesday’s announcement came as the group celebrated its first anniversary and as its leaders said it was bringing in revenue and was on track to financial sustainability. The new partners are five institutions in the United States, including Cornell University and Davidson College, as well as six in Asia, three in Europe, and one in Australia.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/can-moocs-solve-stem-problem
Can MOOCs solve the STEM problem?
Source: ThomasNetNews
In 2016, a group of students will receive master’s degrees in computer science from Georgia Institute of Technology. These students will pay $7,000 for the degree – about one-sixth of the traditional cost – and may never set foot on campus. Thanks to an agreement between Georgia Tech, AT&T, and Udacity, a venture-capital funded online education startup, students will learn virtually via a “massive open online course,” or MOOC.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/conversation/2013/05/21/can-venture-capital-deliver-on-the-promise-of-the-public-university/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Can Venture Capital Deliver on the Promise of the Public University?
By Robert Meister
An Open Letter to Daphne Koller
Co-Founder and Co-President of Coursera and
Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University
Dear Professor Koller,
Because I share your vision of creating a world in which all have access to an excellent and empowering education, I would like to propose a new online course for you to make freely available through the Coursera platform. Its title is “The Implications of Coursera’s For-Profit Business Model for Global Public Education.”

www.rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com

Does U.S. Violence Scare Students Away?
By JOYCE LAU
HONG KONG — The Boston Marathon bombings last month hit America’s education and research hub, a city that draws the best and the brightest from across the globe. Its campuses were particularly affected by the violence. …Worries about safety on American campuses long predate the Boston attack, because of numerous school shootings and other gun violence. D.D. Guttenplan, Lara Farrar and I reported from London, Shanghai and Hong Kong on whether that violence has actually had an impact on the decisions of foreign students shopping for schools.

Education News
www.accessnorthga.com
http://www.accessnorthga.com/detail.php?n=261726
Ga.’s grad rate inches toward 70%; Gville area average 78.89%
By The Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s high school graduation rate for the class of 2012 has increased to nearly 70 percent, a slight increase under a new formula that saw the rate drop considerably in recent years. State officials on Tuesday released the statewide rate of 69.7 percent for 2012, up roughly two points from 2011 – which was the first year of the new calculation and well below the 80 percent the state had under the old system.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/05/22/enrollments-down-degrees-new-us-data-show
Enrollments Down But Degrees Up, New U.S. Data Show
The number of students enrolled in American colleges and universities was 1.6 percent lower in 2011-12 than it was the year before, but the number of degrees conferred by those institutions was up 5.1 percent, new data from the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics shows.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/22/education-department-hears-comments-plus-loans-gainful-employment-and-profit
Concerns on Loan Denials
By Libby A. Nelson
WASHINGTON — Since the Education Department changed its underwriting standards for loans to students’ parents in 2011, 400,000 parents have been denied the loans. The denials have fallen disproportionately on historically black colleges and universities, whose leaders pleaded with the Obama administration Tuesday to reconsider the policy.

www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/53426/
University Presidents Say Elitism Can’t Be Part of Plans for Future
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON — In order to graduate larger portions of the nation’s increasingly diverse and economically challenged students, universities must shun the elitism of the past and adopt new practices that smoothen and enrich the college experience. Those were some of the key points several university presidents made Tuesday at the New America Foundation during a daylong higher education forum titled “The Next Generation University.” The presidents said it is paramount for institutional leaders to approach their jobs with the premise that the students admitted to their institutions will graduate.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/22/controversial-two-tier-tuition-proposal-back-california
Capacity Fix That Rankles
By Paul Fain
The idea of creating a second tier of tuition for California’s community colleges is as resilient as it is controversial.
For the third time in recent years, a state lawmaker has introduced a bill to allow over-enrolled community colleges to charge more for certain courses. This time one chamber of the state’s legislature passed the bill.
However, many faculty members and students remain steadfast in their opposition to what they see as a challenge to the open-access mission of the 112 two-year colleges. And the system’s chancellor, Brice Harris, is joining them in the fight.

Related article:
www.diverseeducation.com
California Bill Proposes Adding Community College Classes at Higher Cost
http://diverseeducation.com/article/53438/

www.bostonglobe.com
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/05/21/swiss-entrepreneur-gives-harvard-million-for-bioengineering-research-inspired-nature/tW0LzEvd8zTrV4mhov1PJO/story.html
Entrepreneur gives $125m to Harvard
By Carolyn Y. Johnson | GLOBE STAFF
A Swiss entrepreneur has given Harvard University $125 million for the second time in five years, to support a multidisciplinary bioengineering ¬research institute that bears his name. The first $125 million, provided to found the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering in 2009, was the largest single gift the university had ever received. Now ¬Hansjörg Wyss has doubled the amount, which will be used to continue funding the center.

www.seattletimes.com
http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2021024256_uwedxxml.html
UW expands online courses, this time from Harvard, MIT
The University of Washington is growing its presence in the world of online course offerings by joining with edX, a course platform pioneered by Harvard and MIT.
By Katherine Long
Seattle Times higher education reporter
Adding to its growing catalog of free online-course offerings, the University of Washington announced Tuesday it is joining another free course provider — this one run by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Beginning in January, the UW will offer four new courses through edX, a not-for-profit Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) provider pioneered by Harvard and MIT. The UW already offers 14 courses through Coursera, a for-profit started more than a year ago by two Stanford University professors.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/22/adobe-pricing-plan-raises-concerns#ixzz2U19uWBFB
Confusion in the Cloud
By Ry Rivard
College officials are concerned and confused by new licensing terms from Adobe they fear will dramatically raise costs.
While colleges have not yet sorted out some of the major issues, the changes by Adobe are already prompting at least a few college officials to say new versions of company’s popular creative software will be unaffordable.
Adobe, the maker of Photoshop, InDesign, Acrobat and more than a dozen other products, recently changed the way it sells its software.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/22/college-offers-health-insurance-coverage-some-adjuncts-ahead-new-regulations
Bucking the Trend
By Colleen Flaherty
Although the Affordable Care Act is intended to increase access to health insurance, a growing number of community colleges have been moving in the opposite direction by cutting adjuncts’ hours and, consequently, their eligibility for coverage. But one college is bucking the trend in part, offering insurance to a limited number of non-tenure-track faculty.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/US-Appeals-Court-Allows/139427/
U.S. Appeals Court Allows Sex-Bias Case Against LSU to Proceed
By Eric Kelderman
[Updated (5/22/2013, 11:59 a.m.) with LSU’s response to the ruling.] A federal appeals court has overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss a case of alleged gender discrimination and retaliation against Louisiana State University for failing to consider a woman for the position of chief of police at the Baton Rouge university.