USG NEWS:
www.onineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2014-11-25/uga-break-ground-baldwin-hall-annex
UGA to break ground on Baldwin Hall annex
University of Georgia and state officials will break ground next week on a new building for the School of Public and International Affairs. The ceremony is planned for Dec. 2. UGA officials say the addition to Baldwin Hall will provide more classrooms, space for graduate teaching assistants to hold office hours and common areas for academic presentations and events.
www.jbhe.com
Tracking Black Student Graduation Rates at HBCUs
JBHE has compiled a listing of Black student graduation rates at a large group of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities. The graduation rate is determined by determining what percentage of students who enter a particular institution received their bachelor’s degree within six years at the same college or university. The highest Black student graduation rate at the HBCUs inlcuded in our survey is at Spelman College in Atlanta. There, 69 percent of entering students graduate from Spelman within six years. …Fort Valley State University 48 …Albany State University 42 …Savannah State University 32
www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/26/georgia-southern-university-investigating-professor-accused-proselytizing-his
Extra-Credit Creationism?
By Colleen Flaherty
Lecturing for a week about how “evolution could not have happened.” Offering extra credit for students to watch the film “God’s Not Dead.” Showing religious bias in exam questions. Student reviews saying he’ll try to “convert you.” Those charges, among others, make up a complaint filed recently by two First Amendment watchdog groups against T. Emerson McMullen, an associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University. The institution says it’s now investigating the professor for allegedly using his classroom at the public university to promote his anti-evolution Christian beliefs.
www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/11/26/u-georgia-seeks-fire-lecturer-over-relationship
U. of Georgia Seeks to Fire Lecturer Over Relationship
The University of Georgia is moving to terminate a psychology lecturer found to be in violation of the institution’s policy on student-professor relationships for a second time, the Athens Banner-Herald reported. The lecturer, Rich Suplita, says he plans to leave the university anyway, but has appealed the results of the most recent investigation, saying they are “completely inconclusive based on the evidence.” Suplita said his “personal conviction is I’m not in any way in violation.”
GOOD NEWS:
www.spoke.com
http://www.spoke.com/press_releases/5474baa0ac0925dc54001b2e
University of North Georgia Cadet No. 1 in Nation
Jonathan Chase Strickland Ranked Top Among 5,617 Army ROTC Cadets
DAHLONEGA, GA–(Marketwired – November 25, 2014) – University of North Georgia (UNG) cadet Jonathan Chase Strickland of Gainesville, Georgia, has been ranked the number one Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) cadet in the nation from among 5,617 cadets and is U.S. Army Cadet Command’s Cadet of the Year. Cadets are ranked on the national Order of Merit List (OML) by achieving superior grade point averages, strong performance in the Army physical fitness test, proving their worth as exceptional leaders in their college ROTC training, and their performance at the Leader Development and Assessment Course (LDAC).
RESEARCH:
www.forbes.com
http://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2014/11/26/how-exercising-helps-you-get-more-done/
How Exercising Helps You Get More Done
Sujan Patel
A lot of people don’t work out. In fact, not only do they not work out, they barely move at all. A typical workday for many consists of waking up, sitting in the car on the way to work, sitting at a desk at work, sitting in the car on the way home, sitting on the couch watching television, and then going to bed. As you might guess, this isn’t a great way to live. But before you tell me you don’t have time for exercise, I’m going to share an important truth with you. Not only do you have time to exercise, exercise actually makes you more productive. It’s a no-brainer, must-do for entrepreneurs, career warriors, and anybody else who wants to get more done. …But exercise doesn’t even have to be extreme for you to get these benefits. A University of Georgia study showed that study participants in a low-intensity exercise group reported growing levels of energy – just like the people in the moderate-intensity group. The low-intensity participants also reported a lower level of fatigue, showing that sometimes slow and steady really do win the race.
www.scientificamerican.com
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-people-make-summer-hotter/
How People Make Summer Hotter
Researchers wired Madison, Wisc., to get a better grasp of the urban heat island effect
By Niina Heikkinen and ClimateWire
A recent study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison offers one of the most detailed records of the variation in temperature between cities and the surrounding rural areas, known as the urban heat island effect … Understanding the phenomenon is becoming more important as a growing number of people are moving to cities and climate change is driving overall temperatures higher, according to the study’s authors … Cities can lower temperatures by incorporating reflective surfaces on roofs to deflect heat absorption. Another larger-scale approach could be to make cities more compact. According to a 2010 study from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, urban sprawl, even in cities with relatively small populations, leads to a faster increase in the rate of extreme heat events than in compact cities.
www.fastcompany.com
http://www.fastcompany.com/3038471/elasticity/how-ebola-is-breaking-the-aversion-to-using-experimental-drugs
HOW EBOLA IS BREAKING THE AVERSION TO USING EXPERIMENTAL DRUGS
WHEN INNOVATION COMES FRUSTRATINGLY SLOW, SOME CRITICIZE “A TENDENCY TO TRY DO NO HARM AT ALL COST.”
BY SATTA SARMAH
When there’s a health epidemic, here’s how innovation often happens: Lives are tragically lost, then wall-to-wall media coverage leads to public hysteria and then drug companies respond by racing to find treatment. Other public health crises, including the AIDS epidemic, swine flu, and the SARS outbreak have followed this same script—and now it’s Ebola’s turn … “One person’s side effect could be another person’s cure,” says Jeffrey Skolnick, a scientific advisor to Intellimedix and the director of the Center for the Study of Systems Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Skolnick’s research group has licensed its newly developed algorithm to Intellimedix. The algorithm can suggest the best drugs that target and act on Ebola proteins or the human proteins the virus needs to reproduce.
www.knuw.org
http://kmuw.org/post/drugged-marshmallows-can-keep-urban-raccoons-spreading-disease
Drugged Marshmallows Can Keep Urban Raccoons From Spreading Disease
By EDITOR
The masked garbage crusaders of the night can be more than just a nuisance. Raccoons also can be bad news for human health, carrying diseases such as rabies and roundworms. And because raccoons have happily colonized cities and suburbs, a particular roundworm called Baylisascaris procyonis that the critters often carry can make its way into humans. The parasite’s eggs are carried in raccoon poop. …As Shots has reported before, you can keep yourself and your kids safe by checking the yard once a month for raccoon feces. You should wear gloves to pick up any feces and put it in the garbage. If you’re worried there may be roundworms still lurking, pour boiling water over the spot to ensure the eggs are dead. Otherwise, use common sense: “Keep raccoons away from your home, monitor your children … wash your hands, wear gloves when you work outside,” says Sarah Sapp, a Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia who is studying the raccoon parasite.
www.westernfarmpress.com
http://westernfarmpress.com/cotton/beltwide-offer-sessions-new-herbicide-tolerant-cotton-traits
Beltwide to offer sessions on new herbicide-tolerant cotton traits
Forrest Laws
From a single cotton field in central Georgia in 2004, glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth has spread from the Southeast to the Mid-South to the Southwest and now into several Midwestern states – all in the space of less than 10 years. Glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth or pigweed has been responsible for millions of dollars in added herbicide expense as well as the cost of hand hoeing and wholesale crop destruction. It may also have helped spur the shift from cotton to corn and grain sorghum in the Mid-South. …Dr. Steckel, who has been involved in fighting herbicide-resistant weeds in Tennessee since the early 2000s, will be the presenter on a paper entitled “Integrating New and Old Technologies for Effective Weed Control in Cotton.” (The paper is a joint effort by Steckel, Stanley Culpepper, weed scientist with the University of Georgia, and Tom Barber, weed scientist with the University of Arkansas.)
www.occupational-therapy.advanceweb.com
http://occupational-therapy.advanceweb.com/Features/Articles/Strengthening-Young-Bodies.aspx
Strengthening Young Bodies
Weight training can address a range of deficits in the pediatric and early intervention settings
By Mary Jane Baniak
…The effectiveness of early intervention is well documented in scientific literature. In fact, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) ensures that early intervention is available to all children who have a developmental delay or those who are at risk of a delay. As practitioners, we’ve long understood and appreciated that early intervention (EI) is key for our young patients who have developmental delays. In most cases, the sooner we can start working with a child, the greater the chance of success. …In 2013, researchers at Georgia State University found that adding ankle weights to children with Down syndrome significantly improved gait kinetics. This study was performed with children who averaged 9 years of age, but indicates that a very small weight added during functional activities can improve gait kinetics.
www.globalatlanta.com
http://www.globalatlanta.com/article/27292/ambassador-investments-show-us-and-india-closer-than-you-think/
Ambassador: Investments Show U.S. And India Coser Than You’d Think
by Trevor Williams
A trend toward significant Indian investments in the U.S. is an “underreported story” that shows how well connected the two economies have quietly become, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s ambassador to the U.S., told Global Atlanta during a visit to Atlanta … He took the same approach toward the university collaborations. A law governing the establishment of foreign campuses in the country has been stuck in parliament for years, keeping universities from investing in physical facilities like the campus Georgia Institute of Technology had been planning in Hyderabad. Dr. Jaishankar couldn’t point to when that law might be addressed in parliament, but partnerships are continuing to grow, nonetheless, he said.
Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.getschooled.blog.ajc.com
http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2014/11/21/teens-cleaning-up-their-social-media-at-least-from-colleges-viewpoint/
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Teens cleaning up their social media, at least from college’s viewpoint
In its annual survey of college admissions officers, Kaplan Test Prep found 35 percent went to an applicant’s social media pages to find out more about them. But Kaplan says students are doing a better job keeping their pages sanitized; only 16 percent of admissions officers reported finding offensive things, down from 30 percent last year and 35 percent two years ago. I notice fewer kids posting photos of themselves with alcohol or drugs. Eight years ago, I routinely saw photos on Facebook of teens taking swigs from a Smirnoff bottle or smoking. I don’t think kids or adults fully understood the implications of social media postings then. Today, teens and adults are both much savvier on privacy and the need to be circumspect online.
www.chronicle.augusta.com
http://chronicle.augusta.com/opinion/letters/2014-11-26/azziz-criticized-style
Azziz criticized for style
By Don Dunbar
What a shame that in the Nov. 23 editorial “A matter of record” that The Augusta Chronicle stoops to style over substance – slinging mud at Georgia Regents University President Ricardo Azziz over the simple matter of a disputed university name and nothing else. The other issues mentioned in the editorial are incidental and not worthy of further discussion.
You criticize Dr. Azziz’s style in not listening to the locals, but you say nothing of his substantive accomplishment in merging the Medical College of Georgia and Augusta State University – which likely would not have occurred without his stewardship – into one institution that is poised to get national recognition! …If the Board of Regents agreed that GRU is the best name, then direct your criticism at them, as they were the final naming authority. Regardless of the name, GRU will bring much recognition to Augusta in the coming years, to which we owe some gratitude to Dr. Azziz, not scorn!
www.nytimes.com
Is Harvard Unfair to Asian-Americans?
By YASCHA MOUNK
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — NEARLY a century ago, Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews. Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, warned that the “Jewish invasion” would “ruin the college.” He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard’s admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of “character and fitness” to limit Jewish enrollment. As the sociologist Jerome Karabel has documented, these practices worked for the next three decades to suppress the number of Jewish students. A similar injustice is at work today, against Asian-Americans. …A new lawsuit filed on behalf of Asian-American applicants offers strong evidence that Harvard engages in racial “balancing.”
Education News
www.jbhe.com
African American Graduate Enrollments Hold Steady
A new report from the U.S. Department of Education offers preliminary data on higher education enrollments in the fall of 2013. The report includes data on all students enrolled at Title IV institutions. These are educational entities that are permitted to participate in federal student financial assistance programs. The new data shows that in the fall of 2013 there were 329,196 African Americans enrolled in U.S. graduate school degree programs. African Americans were 11.3 percent of the total graduate school enrollments.
www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2014/11/25/flight-moocs-coming-jetblue
In-Flight MOOCs, Coming to JetBlue
The massive open online course provider Coursera is taking cloud-based education to its most literal interpretation yet. Coursera’s users will soon be able to watch 10 educational videos while flying on JetBlue as part of the airline’s Fly-Fi onboard wireless internet service.
www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/26/competency-based-bachelors-brandman-could-be-glimpse-future
Mobile Bachelor’s Degree
By Paul Fain
Brandman University’s competency-based bachelor’s degree gives a glimpse of where the increasingly popular form of higher education might be headed. The new bachelor of business administration is fully online. There are no textbooks. Students can access 30,000 pages of course material for the degree (not all of it required) on their tablets or smartphones.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Video-Public-Colleges-Face/150097/
Public Colleges Face Major Threat From Some Trustees, Says AAU Chief
Hunter R. Rawlings III, president of the Association of American Universities, says that ideologically motivated and corporate-minded trustees pose a great threat to public colleges. Mr. Rawlings, who leads a group of elite research universities, was highly critical of a recent effort to fire William C. Powers Jr., president of the University of Texas at Austin. In 2012, Mr. Rawlings also admonished University of Virginia board members for forcing out Teresa A. Sullivan as president, only to reinstate her under public pressure. Both cases, Mr. Rawlings says, point toward a troubling trend that has created instability at some of the nation’s top academic institutions.
www.hechingerreport.org
http://hechingerreport.org/content/two-states-poured-money-public-higher-education-2_18160/
Why two states have poured money into public higher education
North Dakota and Alaska putting cash behind the college-economy link
By Jon Marcus
GRAND FORKS, North Dakota — Construction cranes sprout like stalks of wheat from the windswept, tabletop-flat campus of the University of North Dakota. More than a quarter of a billion dollars’ worth of new facilities are going up here or have been opened in the last few years. Another $80 million is being spent at North Dakota State University, an hour and a half south in Fargo, where carillon bells blare the fight song every afternoon at 5. And $179 million more was approved for public universities and colleges statewide by the last session of the legislature, along with $12 million for research and nearly $40 million for raises and increased operating and utility costs. A stark contrast to the worn and demoralized condition of public higher education in much of the rest of the United States, these bustling campuses populated by purposeful students are exceptions that prove a troubling rule: In a time of frantic calls to raise the number of Americans with university degrees who will be needed to feed the globally competitive knowledge economy, only two states — North Dakota and Alaska — have increased spending per student on higher education, when adjusted for inflation, since the economic downturn, according to the independent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
www.jbhe.com
Affirmative Action Lawsuits Filed Against Harvard and the University of North Carolina
Affirmative Action Lawsuits Filed Against Harvard and the University of North Carolina
A group calling itself Students for Fair Admissions has filed federal civil rights lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The suits claim that both institutions have practiced racial discrimination in their undergraduate admissions policies and procedures.
www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/68117/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=a177ff6eba474c5f866ef48b5ae59302&elqCampaignId=415
University of Virginia Looks at Alcohol as Factor in Sex Assaults
by Frederic J. Frommer, Associated Press
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. ― A University of Virginia board on Tuesday honed in on alcohol as a contributing factor in sexual assaults on campus, with one member calling for more aggressively enforcing the law banning underage drinking. Members of the Board of Visitors discussed sexual assault allegations that came out in a devastating portrait in Rolling Stone that has rocked the campus.
www.insidehighered.com
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/26/u-virginia-board-adopts-policy-show-it-getting-tough-sexual-assault-policy-lacks
Zero Tolerance of What?
By Jake New
The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors on Tuesday unanimously committed to adopting a zero-tolerance policy toward sexual assault – although the university hasn’t figured out what zero tolerance means. …”The Board of Visitors adopted a zero-tolerance approach toward sexual assault at the university today,” Anthony de Bruyn, a university spokesman, said. “The details of the approach and how it is articulated and implemented will be refined in the near term in collaboration with the university adiminstration.”