University System News

2014 GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION NEWS:
www.gpb.org
http://www.gpb.org/news/2014/03/10/lots-of-bills-not-a-lot-of-time-at-state-capitol
Lots of Bills, Not A Lot of Time At State Capitol
By Jeanne Bonner
ATLANTA — State lawmakers are in session four days this week and two days next week before they adjourn for the year. So what’s happening with the session’s hot bills? Not much. Ever since Crossover Day last Monday, lawmakers in each chamber have been reviewing the work of their colleagues in the other chamber. But so far, few of the session’s most controversial bills have come up for a final vote. …Business will pick up somewhat Tuesday at the Capitol. …The gun bill is also expected to be in committee. The measure would loosen restrictions on carrying firearms on college campuses, and in bars and government buildings. So lawmakers will be busy. And so will activists.

USG NEWS:
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/bottomline/video-college-presidents-talk-leadership-at-aces-annual-meeting/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Video: College Presidents Talk Leadership at ACE’s Annual Meeting
[Updated (3/10/2014, 6:30 p.m.) with new interviews.] by Nick DeSantis
San Diego — Six college presidents sat down with Chronicle reporters here at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting to talk about leadership. Sharing their experiences were John R. Kroger of Reed College, Earl H. Potter of St. Cloud State University, Diana S. Natalicio of the University of Texas at El Paso, Teresa A. Sullivan of the University of Virginia, Mary Sue Coleman of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Ricardo Azziz of Georgia Regents University. …In earlier interviews, Ms. Sullivan talked about managing relationships with Boards of Trustees, Ms. Coleman offered strategies for juggling the many demands of a major research institution, and Dr. Azziz reflected on the challenges of merging two universities into one.

USG VALUE:
www.bizjournals.com
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/morning_call/2014/03/georgia-schools-rank-high-on-u-s-news-2015-best.html
Georgia schools rank high on U.S. News’ 2015 ‘Best Grad Schools’ list
Carla Caldwell, Morning Edition Editor
Several Georgia schools scored well on U.S. News and World Report’s 2015 list of “Best Graduate Schools.” U.S. News says it analyzed more than 1,300 graduate programs to determine this year’s rankings. University of Georgia’s public affairs program is ranked No. 4 among the nation’s top public affairs schools. Georgia State’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies is ranked No. 23. Georgia Institute of Technology’s program is ranked No. 53.

www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/uga/2014-03-10/gwinnett-lithonia-students-win-first-places-2014-teams-competition
Gwinnett, Lithonia students win first places in 2014 TEAMS competition
By UGA NEWS SERVICE
Student teams from Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology and Lithonia Middle School in DeKalb County won first places in their categories in the 2014 Tests of Engineering, Aptitude, Mathematics and Science competition recently hosted by the University of Georgia. …More than 14,000 students across the country participate annually in TEAMS competitions. Questions are aligned with national education standards. UGA is one of two sites hosting the competition in Georgia. The other site was Georgia Tech. TEAMS competition site sponsors include Northrop Grumman, the UGA College of Engineering, the UGA College of Education’s department of career and informational studies and the UGA Office of STEM Education.

www.redandblack.com
http://www.redandblack.com/uganews/organizations/uga-miracle-becomes-largest-donor-to-children-s-hospital/article_b15732ca-a664-11e3-bcb7-0017a43b2370.html
UGA Miracle becomes largest donor to children’s hospital
Brittini Ray
University of Georgia students danced their way to a miracle, raising a record of more than $500,000 during UGA Miracle’s 18th annual dance marathon. “This year’s dance marathon was by far the most successful,” said Brian Baker, the executive director of UGA Miracle. “It truly is a testament of the miracle makers that we have on our team. I told the executive board before the marathon beforehand, ‘No matter what the number that we reveal, we know that this year was a success.”

GOOD NEWS:
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/university-of-west-georgia-opens-community-academi/nd9Q7/
University of West Georgia opens community academic clinic
By Janel Davis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The University of West Georgia has opened an clinic offering children in Carrollton help with various school subjects. UWG students will provide area students with services in math, reading counseling and speech/language pathology. The Comprehensive Community Clinic brings the ongoing work of several UWG departments into one location.

RESEARCH:
www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/uga/2014-03-10/little-flying-machine-new-research-tool-uga-scientitsts
Little flying machine is new research tool for UGA scientitsts
By LEE SHEARER
A new University of Georgia research tool gave visitors to the State Botanical Garden of Georgia an unexpected show recently as it hovered high above now-bare flowerbeds in late February. It was a quadcopter, a little flying machine propelled and lifted by four rotors controlled by UGA student Corbin Kling on the ground below.

www.npr.org
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/10/288492921/military-conflict-decisions-why-weakness-leads-to-aggression
Military Conflict Decisions: Why Weakness Leads To Aggression
By Shankar Vedantam
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
From Syria to Afghanistan, to Russia and Ukraine, the United States finds itself confronting some major foreign policy challenges. There are old rivalries and new one testing the limits of the United States. NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam regularly joins us to talk about matters related to individual and organizational behavior, but today, he’s found some new research that’s relevant to the way we think about foreign conflicts and he’s in our studios. Shankar, welcome back.
SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Hi, David.
GREENE: So Russia’s aggression in Crimea, you were finding some research that might tell us what the United States ought to do or should think about doing. What are we talking about here?
VEDANTAM: Well, I’m not sure the research can give advice to the United States, but it might give some perspective, David. I came by some interesting work by Jeffrey Berejikian. He’s at the University of Georgia. He’s looking at whether a theory widely known in behavioral economics can tell us something useful about these foreign policy conflicts.

Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/10/the-myth-of-common-core-equity/?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads
The Answer Sheet By Valerie Strauss
The myth of Common Core equity
The Common Core State Standards were originally promoted as a way of raising academic standards for all children around the country. But is the initiative really about equitable outcomes? Here’s a post that takes on that question, by award-winning New York Principal Carol Burris and Alan A. Aja, assistant professor and deputy chair in the Department of Puerto Rican & Latino Studies at Brooklyn College (City University of New York). In 2012, he was a recipient of a Whiting Fellowship Award for Excellence in Teaching. Burris has been writing about the flawed Core implementation in New York on this blog.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/thoughts-what-excellent-community-colleges-do
Thoughts on ‘What Excellent Community Colleges Do’
By Matt Reed
Plato suggested that to know the good is to do the good, which is why I’m not a Platonist. Knowing something and doing it are very different propositions. That’s why I could finish a very good book about ways that community colleges can be more successful at what they do, nodding along contentedly as I read, and still come away feeling like something was missing. Joshua Wyner directs the Aspen Institute, which offers awards to community colleges for excellence in degree completion, equity, student learning, and labor market success. He has a new book out, What Excellent Community Colleges Do, offering an overview of what he has learned in that role.
It’s brief, accessible, and very much worth reading, once you get used to the genre.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/learning-insights-big-data
Learning Insights From Big Data
By Sergiy O. Nesterko
Upon starting my position of Research Fellow at HarvardX, a University wide effort to use technology to transform teaching and learning on-camps and online, I soon realized that I had an unprecedented opportunity—in particular, as a researcher. …As researchers, we are comfortable with all kinds of numbers, plots, and theoretical concepts … but having to think about making findings as easy to use as an iPhone app is not necessarily something you get taught in graduate school. But with MOOCs, where the very idea of them is to expand access to all and to advance the science of learning, it seemed utterly necessary to make sure that my work went beyond rarefied academic journals. With that as my mandate, I quickly embarked on several projects, including a Gates Foundation sponsored study to leverage clickstream data to personalize massively open online courses (MOOCs) for various learning goals of users. This work contributed to the inaugural set of Harvard-MIT working papers on the first 17 MOOCs offered via edX; the report is one of the most comprehensive studies of MOOC participant behavior to date.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/world-view/time-academic-bitcoin
Time for an Academic Bitcoin
By Liz Reisberg
Lately, reading about all the variations on what constitutes a university degree and how is should be evaluated, accredited and valued just makes me more and more frustrated. Every day seems to bring another ranking, another rating, another study, another debate, another controversy. Should for-profit providers be evaluated in the same way as non-profits? Can a MOOC be the equivalent of a class taught with everyone in the same physical space? Enough already! We are asking a university degree to be too many things to too many people. Maybe a rose by any other name will not smell quite as sweet after all. Or maybe it’s just that different roses smell different and it’s time for us to be more specific about the rose.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/augmentation-and-support
Augmentation and Support
By Joshua Kim
“The vast majority of talk about education and technology, at least publicly, is about disruption and “innovation,” rather than support and augmentation”. The above quote by John Warner, writing in response to my thinking on the debate between techno-utopians and techno-skeptics, helps puts much of our discussions on this topic into perspective. Where John sees most of the talk about education and technology has focused on disrupting the system, all the talk on my campus is about how technology can support and augment the teaching of our faculty.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/design-new-college
Design for a new college
The Wall Street Journal
He has pulled professors out of departmental silos and established more than a dozen new transdisciplinary schools and large-scale research initiatives such as the Biodesign Institute and the School of Sustainability, where faculty and scholars collaborate to solve challenges related to urban development, renewable energy and national security, among other things.
During his tenure, the university has tripled research spending and completed an unprecedented infrastructure expansion, all the while keeping tuition down despite significant cuts in state subsidies.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/rethinking-role-college-career-centers-humanities-graduates
Rethinking the role of college career centers for humanities graduates
The Huffington Post
Numerous studies indicate that the skills produced by a quality liberal arts education correspond precisely to what employers seek beyond technical training. The ability to articulate, write, apply quantitative methods, use technology, and work in a collaborative setting will continue to shape the parameters of the skill set needed in the 21st century. So, why do liberal arts graduates, especially humanities majors, suffer from inaccurate and inconsistent portrayals of their attractiveness to employers?

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/other-higher-education-bubble-labor-supply
The other higher education bubble: labor supply
The Federalist
In the conservative imagination, the archetypal professor is Grady Tripp from Wonder Boys, Dave Jennings from Animal House, or Dr. Talc from A Confederacy of Dunces. They have old corduroy sports coats with worn suede elbows, stale lectures, incomprehensible publications, poorly kept offices, and leering stares for young co-eds. The truth is far different.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/grand-canyon-universitys-business-model-succeeds-education-rankings-lag
Grand Canyon University’s business model succeeds, but education rankings lag
azcentral.com
A camera pans the college grounds. Flashes of purple, the school’s color, burst onto the TV screen. You see students marching in the band, studying in classrooms, cheering wildly at a basketball game. At the end, a student blows a kiss at graduation. The campus is like a supermodel. There are no bad angles. “Grand Canyon University,” the announcer says as the 30-second TV commercial draws to a close. “The quality of a private, Christian education. The affordability of a state university.”

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-President-Obama-s/145243/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Why President Obama’s Rankings Are a Good Place to Start
By Kevin Carey
Part of my job involves traveling around the country talking to people who work at colleges. Lately, everyone has been asking, with a mix of puzzlement and exasperation, the same question: “Why on earth is the Obama administration trying to create a federal college-ranking system?” The answer, I tell them, is not really about rankings, politics, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, or President Obama per se. Rather, the rankings idea is the latest manifestation of a long-term change in the underlying relationship between the academy and the state.

Education News
www.macon.com
http://www.macon.com/2014/03/10/2982420/cgtc-has-economic-impact-of-955.html
CGTC has economic impact of $95.5 million on Middle Georgia
The recently merged Central Georgia Technical College has an economic impact of $95.5 million on the school’s 11-county service area, according to a report from the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. That fiscal 2012 figure comes from adding the total economic impact of Middle Georgia Technical College ($30.9 million) and Central Georgia Technical College ($64.6 million), which merged in July under the Central Georgia Tech name. In addition, 1,285 on-campus and off-campus jobs resulted from that spending. Statewide, the total economic impact of all 25 Technical College System of Georgia schools was $1.2 billion, resulting in nearly 15,000 jobs, the report states.

www.walb.com
http://www.walb.com/story/24918228/atc-has-47-million-impact-to-state-ecnomy
ATC has $47 Million impact to state economy
By Shannon Wiggins
ALBANY, GA (WALB) –
Technical Colleges in Georgia add more than a billion dollars to the state’s economy each year. A new study shows Albany Technical College’s impact is $47 million. Their spending creates more than 500 college related jobs.

www.wctv.tv
http://www.wctv.tv/home/headlines/Spending-Associated-with-SWGTC-has-213-Million-Impact-in-Region-249189731.html
Spending Associated with SWGTC has $21.3 Million Impact in Region
Thomasville, Georgia – How much does the area served by Southwest Georgia Technical College (SWGTC) benefit economically from spending that is either directly or indirectly related to the college? According to Dr. Jeffrey M. Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, it adds up to $21,371,303.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/03/11/lawmaker-praises-colleges’-changes-financial-aid-sites
Lawmaker Praises Colleges’ Changes to Financial Aid Sites
The Democratic Congressman who last month accused more than 100 colleges of misleading students about the requirements for federal student aid said Monday that he is satisfied with the changes institutions have since made to their websites.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/secretary-education-pushes-more-higher-education-funds
Secretary of Education pushes for more higher education funds
The Michigan Daily
Three fourths of this appropriation would go toward financial aid for college students, special education and high-poverty schools, according to the Department of Education website.
The remaining funds would be invested in the expansion of high quality preschooling, the establishment of a new college ranking system and an effort to increase college affordability.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/post-graduation-salaries-show-me-money
Post-graduation salaries: Show me the money
The Boston Globe
When she was applying to college a few years ago, Donna Jo Cassidy heard plenty of friends at private colleges stressing out about their tuition bills. By graduation, some of them would have spent $200,000 or more, piling on part of it in student loans. So when it came time for Cassidy to look at schools, she wanted to know what the return would be on one of the biggest investments of her life.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/higher-education-finance-new-coalition-looks-answers
Higher education finance: a new coalition looks for answers
Main St.
The campaign, which calls itself “Higher Ed, Not Debt” held a kick-off rally in Washington last Thursday with the twin goals of managing existing student loan debt while decreasing the cost of college. Anne Johnson, executive director of Generation Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress and an organizer of the campaign, demanded an overhaul of the nation’s “increasingly dysfunctional system of higher education.”

www.sltrib.com
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/57655659-79/college-percent-jobs-degree.html.csp
College grads taking low-wage posts displace less educated
By Katherine Peralta Bloomberg News
Washington • Jeanina Jenkins, a 20-year-old high-school graduate from St. Louis, is stuck in a $7.82-an-hour part-time job at McDonald’s that she calls a “last resort” because nobody would offer her anything better. Stephen O’Malley, 26, a West Virginia University graduate, wants to put his history degree to use teaching high school. What he’s found instead is a bartender’s job in his home town of Manasquan, N.J. …The jobless rate of Americans ages 25 to 34 who have only completed high school grew 4.3 percentage points to 10.6 percent in 2013 from 2007, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Unemployment for those in that age group with a college degree rose 1.5 percentage points to 3.7 percent in the same period.

www.gpb.org
http://www.gpb.org/news/2014/03/08/what-germans-know-could-help-bridge-u-s-workers-skill-gap
What Germans Know Could Help Bridge U.S. Workers’ Skill Gap
By Susanna Capelouto
Job training programs are failing to turn out enough skilled workers to fill job openings in the U.S., a phenomenon that puzzles some European companies that expand into the U.S.
President Obama freely admits that America needs to improve the way it trains workers. In a speech at a General Electric manufacturing plant in Wisconsin earlier this year, he said, “We gotta move away from what my labor secretary, Tom Perez, calls ‘train and pray.’ You train workers first and then you hope they get a job.” In other words, not enough Americans are training for the jobs industry needs to fill. Nationwide, about 4 million job openings are going unfilled, but 10 million people are unemployed, according to Labor Department statistics.The phenomenon is puzzling to some European companies that have expanded to the U.S. and are used to a more skilled workforce.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/u-cincinnati-continues-efforts-improve-graduation-retention-rates
U. of Cincinnati continues efforts to improve graduation, retention rates
The News Record
With the University of Cincinnati’s current UC2019 Academic Master Plan drawing closer and expected completion of the new Our Third Century Initiative in April, administrators are working hard to compile metrics and evaluate areas of need that the university must address. But two numbers in particular are garnering a significant amount of attention: retention and graduation rates.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Missouri-Budget-Tiff-Exposes/145277/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Missouri Budget Tiff Exposes Doubts About Competency-Based Education
By Dan Berrett
In public-policy terms, competency-based education has been on a roll. Last year federal officials opened the way for student financial aid to be awarded on the basis of direct assessments of what students learn instead of how much time they spend in a course, as is the case with traditional measures of “seat time.” A new network of institutions dedicated to that form of educational delivery announced its formation last week.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Rescind-Ban-on-Federal/145279/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Rescind Ban on Federal Unit-Record System to Track Students, Report Says
By Kelly Field
Washington
A new report by the New America Foundation calls for lifting a five-year-old ban on the creation of a federal database for tracking students into the work force, saying such a system could answer students’ and policy makers’ questions about the value of different degrees. The report, “College Blackout: How the Higher Education Lobby Fought to Keep Students in the Dark,” traces the controversial “unit record” proposal from its origins, in the George W. Bush administration, to the recent Student Right to Know Before You Go bill, which would link individual student records to wage data in an effort to better inform consumers. The report argues that momentum is building for the creation of such a system, despite continued opposition from the private-college lobby.

Related article:
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/11/new-america-report-takes-aim-private-college-lobby-student-unit-record-system
One Dupont & Unit Records

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/11/princeton-students-want-university-stop-asking-whether-applicants-have-criminal-past
Is a Criminal Past Relevant?
By Scott Jaschik
From time to time, colleges face scrutiny over whether they are aware of the criminal backgrounds of prospective students. The 2004 murder of a University of North Carolina at Wilmington student by a classmate who had attacked women before, for example, led to a lawsuit that led the UNC system to require its campuses to conduct criminal background checks on students whose records suggested possible risks. Princeton University is having a different sort of debate. The university, through the Common Application, asks applicants whether they have a criminal background. A campus group — Students for Prison Education and Reform — is organizing a petition drive urging Princeton to stop using that question.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/03/11/sc-house-keeps-financial-penalty-gay-book
S.C. House Keeps Financial Penalty for Gay Book
The South Carolina House of Representatives on Monday twice refused to reverse a $52,000 cut to the College of Charleston’s budget — a cut added by a legislative committee to punish the colleges for assigning Fun Home, a well regarded memoir by a lesbian, to freshmen, the Associated Press reported. Lawmakers said that they wanted to send a message about the selection of the book.

Related article:
www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/61128/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=cb05d0740f5c4055b49336b6b861551f&elqCampaignId=173
SC House Refuses to Restore College Cuts for Books

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/welcome-newest-part-college-campus-wellness-center
Welcome to the newest part of the college campus: the wellness center
Fast Company
Universities seeking to advance the health and wellness of their students must begin the process by rethinking how they currently organize and facilitate their recreational programs and health and counseling services. The traditional model of delivering these programs often results in multiple facilities; a recreation center focused primarily on physical activity, and other services such as health and counseling, nutrition, and wellness education placed in other buildings across campus. While this approach has worked successfully in the past, it fails to meet the needs of today’s students.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-Students-at-Cornell/145221/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Graduate Students at Cornell U. Push for Right to Workers’ Compensation
By Vimal Patel
Richard Pampuro sliced his forearm on a shard of broken glass at a Cornell University protein-engineering lab in August. The accident, which the Ph.D. student in chemical engineering says left him with several severed tendons and a destroyed ulnar artery, led graduate-student leaders to ask whether master’s and doctoral students who are injured while doing university-related work have a right to workers’ compensation. The students think they should. University administrators think they don’t.

www.usnews.com
http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/articles/2014/03/11/look-to-a-business-masters-to-build-specialized-skills
Look to a Business Master’s to Build Specialized Skills
The popularity of these yearlong master’s degrees are growing among both business schools and students.
By Margaret Loftus
A decade ago, Nate Curtis would almost certainly have pursued an MBA as a way to parlay his experience as a spokesman for the chief of naval operations and a passion for rock climbing into a marketing job for an outdoors retail company. But not today. The U.S. Navy officer from San Diego, 29, instead chose to enroll last fall in a new focused nine-month master’s program in marketing analytics offered by the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business. “It’s a totally different game from traditional marketing,” says Curtis. “We’re getting skills that I wouldn’t have gotten in another program.” And it requires considerably less time (and money). Long a fixture in Canada and Europe, one-year specialized master’s programs – from older standbys in accounting and finance to ultraniche newcomers like global luxury management – are becoming wildly popular among American business students. A survey of U.S. institutions accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International revealed that the number of such degrees conferred rose by 52 percent from 2009 to 2013. B-schools are feeding the flames by rolling out new offerings at a swift clip. Marketing analytics is the fourth introduced by Smith in the last five years; the others are in finance, information systems and supply chain management. Two more – in general business and entrepreneurship – are in development.

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/chancellor-angles-retool-universities-pennsylvania-state-system
Chancellor angles to retool universities in Pennsylvania State System
TribLive
Change is ahead for the 14 state-owned universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, which enrolls more than 112,000 students. Chancellor Frank Brogan, who took over in the fall amid enrollment declines, insists radical change can spawn a healthy system out of one going through serious financial problem

www.universitybusiness.com
http://www.universitybusiness.com/news/college-inmates-plan-still-works
College for inmates plan still in works
Democrat and Chronicle
When Cuomo last month proposed to use state funds to pay for the program, his office signaled a formal request for proposals would be opened March 3. His office also hasn’t estimated how much the total program would cost in the budget. A Cuomo spokesman said Friday evening the requests and the funding for the program were still being developed.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/11/calif-city-brings-search-engineering-school-ace-meeting
Hunting for a University
By Paul Fain
SAN DIEGO — It was schmooze time Sunday evening here at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education, the national association for higher education. Drinks and appetizers in hand, attendees milled around the various vendor-sponsored booths in the exhibit hall. One booth in the corner advertised the virtues of Carlsbad, Calif. Kathryn B. Dodson, Carlsbad’s assistant city manager, was there to represent the city, which is 35 miles up the Pacific coast from here. Her pitch? Carlsbad wants a graduate-level engineering university. The booth was certainly unusual, and perhaps the first of its kind at a council conference. It also appeared to be paying off. …Carlsbad’s need for an engineering school is urgent, she said. The city’s population of 110,000 is growing rapidly. And the many defense contractors and 500 high-tech companies in its backyard are desperate to hire more engineers.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/11/survey-university-libraries-finds-diversity-developing-institutional-type
Beyond eBooks
By Carl Straumsheim
Library directors and administrators at all types of colleges and universities agree their libraries should teach undergraduates research skills and information literacy, but the Ithaka S+R Library Survey 2013 also suggests libraries are increasingly tailoring their services to address institutional needs. …Yet library directors and faculty members remain split on the usefulness of electronic collections of books and journals. Instructors are more likely to prefer ebooks — more than 50 percent of respondents in Ithaka’s 2012 faculty survey said they “play an important role” in research and teaching, while only about one-third of library directors agreed.

Related article:
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/what-matters-to-academic-library-directors-information-literacy/51005?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
What Matters to Academic-Library Directors? Information Literacy

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/03/11/bill-renew-science-funding-draws-universities-criticism
Bill to Renew Science Funding Draws Universities’ Criticism
Congressional Republicans introduced legislation Monday to reauthorize funding for the National Science Foundation and other agencies, and the bill drew sharp criticism from university research groups.