USG Institutions:
www.smart-grid.tmcnet.com
Nonprofit Colleges Online Releases New “Students Before Profits Award” Ranking of Online MBA Programs: Unique Award Honors Top Online Schools Putting “Education Before the Bottom Line”
http://smart-grid.tmcnet.com/news/2015/01/26/8136440.htm
RALEIGH, N.C.,/PRNewswire/ — Nonprofit Colleges Online, an online publication promoting non-profit colleges and universities that offer online degree programs in a variety of academic disciplines, has released its 2015 ranking of online MBA programs. The ranking, which can be viewed at http://www.nonprofitcollegesonline.com/rankings/best-online-mba-programs/, is part of the website’s “Students before Profits Award” series. The series of awards for programs in a variety of disciplines aims to bring attention to nonprofit institutions that offer quality online programs with a track record of “putting students before profits and education before the bottom line.” Other universities making the list include (alphabetically ordered): …University System of Georgia of Athens, Georgia
www.georgiapoliticalreveiw.com
Seven Things We Learned About the State of the University
By Alex Edquist
“Welcome to the State of the Union,” was how it started. Unfortunately, it was not actually the State of the Union (Georgia Political Review’s budget isn’t quite enough to send writers to Washington to cover the real State of the Union). The law professor introducing UGA President Jere Morehead had meant to say “State of the University.” However, there were some similarities between Wednesday’s State of the University speech and the previous night’s State of the Union. For one, the two presidents represented two institutions that had very good 2014s. President Morehead opened his speech with “Let me begin with a simple but compelling truth: the state of the University of Georgia is stronger now than at any point in our 230-year history.” Here are seven things we learned from the State of the University speech:
www.tylerpaper.com
Texas College to offer Brown scholarships
http://www.tylerpaper.com/TP-News+Local/212553/texas-college-to-offer-brown-scholarships#.VMfBlih90eU
Texas College in Tyler is one of several religious colleges that will offer a scholarship to students at an eastern Missouri high school to honor Michael Brown, who graduated from the school days before he was shot to death by a Ferguson police officer. Eleven scholarships were announced at Normandy High School. They will pay for four years’ tuition at colleges and universities operated by three black Methodist denominations. …Their foundation, Michael Brown Chosen for Change, is partnering with the denominations to award scholarships to Miles College in Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia;
www.medicalxpress.com
Beating the clock: Researchers develop new treatment for rabies
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-clock-treatment-rabies.html
by James Hataway
Successfully treating rabies can be a race against the clock. Those who suffer a bite from a rabid animal have a brief window of time to seek medical help before the virus takes root in the central nervous system, at which point the disease is almost invariably fatal. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia have successfully tested a new treatment on mice that cures the disease even after the virus has spread to the brain. They published their findings recently in the Journal of Virology.
www.cavalierdaily.com
University researches help secure drone technology
Mission Secure, Inc. now commercializing work
http://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2015/01/university-researches-help-secure-drone-technology
by Madeline Nagy
University engineering researchers teamed up with researchers from the University of Georgia to flight-test a new System-Aware Cybersecurity concept and Secure Sentinel technology which could protect drones from cyber attacks.
www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com
New technology proves effective in thwarting cyberattacks on drones
http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20150127-new-technology-proves-effective-in-thwarting-cyberattacks-on-drones
Engineering researchers from the University of Virginia and the Georgia Institute of Technology have successfully flight-tested scenarios which could threaten drones, including ground-based cyber-attacks.
www.chinatopix.com
Americans to Test First Spacecraft Powered by Sunlight
http://www.chinatopix.com/articles/34454/20150127/privately-funded-spacecraft-set-to-launch-on-sunlight.htm
Marco Foronda
A tiny spacecraft designed to be pushed through space by ultra-thin “solar sails” will be launched in May by space advocacy organization The Planetary Society. The U.S.-based non-profit group announced on Monday that a date has been set for the first flight of its LightSail spacecraft. The 30-centimeter-long CubeSat is set to take off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in May as a secondary payload on an Atlas V rocket. …The Planetary Society collaborates with California Polytechnic State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Editorials/Columns/Opinions:
www.getschooled.blog.ajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Georgia school chief to feds: Stop the ”measure, pressure, and punish” approach
http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2015/01/27/georgia-school-chief-to-feds-stop-measure-pressure-and-punish-approach/
State School Superintendent Richard Woods today sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, members of Georgia’s congressional delegation and members of the U.S. Senate and House Education Committees about the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
www.getschooled.blog.ajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
A lost teen. A caring counselor. A good community college. A successful man.
http://getschooled.blog.ajc.com/2015/01/22/a-lost-teen-a-caring-counselor-a-good-community-college-a-successful-man/
Noel F. Khalil is founder and principal of Columbia Residential, a leading affordable housing developer based in Atlanta. In this essay, Khalil explains why he supports President Obama’s proposal to make community college free. He says a community college played a major role in his career success.
www.insidehighered.com
Valediction for the Liberal Arts
https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2015/01/27/essay-offers-valediction-liberal-arts
By Victor E. Ferrall Jr.
Liberal Arts at the Brink was published three years ago. In it, I reported that student demand for liberal arts courses and majors — the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences — was rapidly declining and being replaced by demand for vocational, directly career related courses and majors. Liberal Arts at the Brink focused on liberal arts colleges, but the student-demand shift was also occurring at universities with both liberal arts and professional programs. As the book’s title suggested, I thought the future of liberal arts education was bleak, but not hopeless. Now, I believe I was too optimistic.
www.insidehighered.com
The New Interlibrary Loan
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/new-interlibrary-loan
By Barbara Fister
Quite a few years ago, a college president said to us, not entirely in jest, that he couldn’t see why the library needed all that money when we had interlibrary loan. Why not just order whatever students and faculty needed from other libraries? We had to explain that there was a legal agreement in place that prevented us from sponging off other libraries. Sharing is great, and we couldn’t possibly meet the needs of our students or faculty without it, but it only works so long as every participating library was willing to pitch in. We had to have a collection that we could share if we wanted to borrow. We all had to be prepared to do our part. …Right now, academic libraries all spend a large part of our budgets on ephemeral licensed materials which, for the most part, we cannot legally share among libraries. We can still get our students and faculty what they want, kind of like interlibrary loan, but we have to pay publishers by annual subscription or by the piece and for the most part we don’t have any assets to show for the money we’ve spent. If we have a bad year, large chunks of the library can vanish.
Higher Education:
www.insidehighered.com
Maine Central Planning
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/27/maine-system-looks-further-centralize-its-staff-budget-and-academic-programs
By Ry Rivard
Officials at the University of Maine System are tightening the reins on their seven universities to avoid steep budget shortfalls, they announced Monday, calling their vision “One university for all of Maine.” The consolidation will centralize staff jobs and academic programs. It represents the latest — some say most realistic — in a long series of attempts by Maine higher education officials to create a more efficient statewide system. Last year, the system said, six of its seven campuses operated in the red. Some of the system’s pushes to save money and merge operations have been controversial, like an effort to close campuses that lawmakers blocked.
www.insidehighered.com
Bending the Cost Curve
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/27/working-paper-suggests-online-education-can-lower-tuition-costs
By Carl Straumsheim
Online education can “bend the cost curve” of an undergraduate degree, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, but whether the lower tuition is caused by a boost in productivity — as opposed to more competition — is still undetermined.
www.chronicle.com
Science and Engineering Degrees Inch Up, but Progress for Women Is Mixed
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/science-and-engineering-degrees-inch-up-but-progress-for-women-is-mixed/92831?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Report: Snapshot Report
Organization: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center
Summary: The past decade has seen a slight uptick in the share of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the so-called STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Women lost ground to men at the bachelor’s level, while gaining at the doctoral level. Among the specific findings:
www.insidehighered.com
A Day Without Adjuncts
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/27/national-adjunct-walkout-day-approaches-attracting-both-enthusiasm-and-questions
By Colleen Flaherty
Adjuncts sometimes say they make up higher education’s invisible class. So an idea pitched on social media a few months ago struck a chord: What would happen if adjuncts across the country turned that invisibility on its head by all walking out on the same day? National Adjunct Walkout Day, proposed for Feb. 25, immediately gained support, and adjuncts continue to use social media and other means of communication to plan what the protest will look like on their campuses. Some tenure-line faculty members also have begun to pledge support, and Canadian adjuncts recently signed on, as well.
www.chronicle.com
For Its Next President, a Liberal-Arts Standard-Bearer Looks to the World of Finance
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Its-Next-President-a/151395/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Ruth Hammond
Being a professor at Harvard is not an unusual stop on the path to the presidency of a small liberal-arts college. But some of the other lines on Clayton S. Rose’s résumé make his appointment as the next president of Bowdoin College stand out. He was vice chairman and chief operating officer at the investment bank J.P. Morgan, a job he left in 2001, and had also been the bank’s head of global investment banking and head of global equities.
www.chronicle.com
Community College’s Board Will Vote Again on President’s $760,000 Buyout
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/community-colleges-board-will-vote-again-on-presidents-760000-buyout?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
by Charles Huckabee
The Board of Trustees of the College of DuPage, a community college in Illinois, will vote again on the buyout deal it approved last week for the college’s president, Robert Breuder, the Chicago Tribune reports. The agreement calls for Mr. Breuder to receive a lump-sum payout of $762,868 upon retiring in March 2016, three years before his contract is up. On Monday the board announced that it would meet in a special session on Wednesday to “clarify a procedural motion” regarding its approval of the agreement, in an addendum to Mr. Breuder’s contract.
www.insidehighered.com
Guidelines for Police-College Efforts to Stop Sex Assault
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/27/guidelines-police-college-efforts-stop-sex-assault
The Obama administration’s task force on campus sexual assault on Monday published new recommendations for how colleges should partner with local law enforcement agencies to combat sexual violence.
www.diverseeducation.com
Va. Senate Panel OKs Mandatory Campus Sex Assault Reporting
http://diverseeducation.com/article/69046/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=ced3f52c24464dfd8e4c19a79e1b104b&elqCampaignId=415
by Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. — Legislation to mandate reporting of alleged campus sexual assaults to police is advancing in the General Assembly. A state Senate subcommittee approved a bill Monday submitted by Republican Sen. Richard Black of Loudoun County that would require any employee of a state college or university who learns of such an allegation to report it to a local law enforcement agency within 24 hours. Failure to do so would be a misdemeanor. Black’s measure is one of 10 bills advancing in the Senate that were prompted by several recent high-profile cases of alleged sexual assaults on Virginia campuses. Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Delegates.
www.diverseeducation.com
Sexual Assault Reports Double at University of Kansas
http://diverseeducation.com/article/69052/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=ced3f52c24464dfd8e4c19a79e1b104b&elqCampaignId=415
by Associated Press
LAWRENCE, Kan. — The University of Kansas received nearly twice as many sexual assault complaints in 2014 than the year before, likely because of increased awareness after public criticism of the school’s handling of rape allegations, a school official said. The school’s Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access received 169 complaints last year, compared with 85 in 2013, Executive Director Jane McQueeny said last week during a presentation to the university’s Sexual Assault Task Force, The Lawrence Journal-World reported. McQueeny said 120 of last year’s complaints were filed under Title IX, a federal law that requires campuses to provide education in an atmosphere free of sexual violence and domestic violence.
www.insidehighered.com
Tennessee Colleges to Meet at Sex Assault Summit
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/27/tennessee-colleges-meet-sex-assault-summit
More than 430 representatives from 76 colleges and universities in Tennessee will attend a summit this week focused on campus sexual assault. The summit will be hosted by the state’s public and private higher education systems — the University of Tennessee, the Tennessee Board of Regents, and the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association — and will include training and resources provided by the Tennessee Coalition to End Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. The two-day meeting is taking place the same week that a high-profile rape trial involving two Vanderbilt University athletes is expected to conclude.
Related article:
www.diverseeducation.com
Colleges Meet in Nashville in Effort to Fight Sex Assaults
http://diverseeducation.com/article/69050/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=ced3f52c24464dfd8e4c19a79e1b104b&elqCampaignId=415
www.triblive.com
Officials dissent on whether offices can prohibit, charge to photograph public record documents
http://triblive.com/state/pennsylvania/7485916-74/office-documents-public#axzz3Q1g8ULE6
By Debra Erdley and Jacob Tierney
When Laura Bistok snapped cellphone photos of public documents in the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds office, she set in motion a series of events that would end with her being jailed on a disorderly conduct charge. Bistok, 37, of Indiana County violated a longstanding but unposted policy against photographing documents in the public records office that handles deeds and mortgages, authorities said. When she refused to put away her phone, office clerks called security. Policies that bar photographing public documents and those that permit photos — for a per-page fee — are drawing challenges across the country as high-quality cellphone cameras and handheld scanners grow in popularity. Some government officials entrusted to maintain documents owned by the public insist they have a right to bar citizens’ digital devices and demand fees for copies to underwrite office costs.