USG Institutions:
www.golfcourseindustry.com
University of Georgia establishes turfgrass breeding endowment
http://www.golfcourseindustry.com/gci/072215-Georgia-Hanna-turf.aspx
Multiple companies make contributions to effort started by Wayne Hanna and his wife.
Lawns, golf courses, football fields and athletic grounds around the world use University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences turfgrass. Two of those varieties – TifGrand and TifSport – will be featured in the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Georgia-based turf companies Super-Sod, of Lakeland, and Georgia Seed Development, of Athens, see the value in UGA’s success. Both organizations made financial contributions to the University of Georgia Tifton Campus Warm-Season Turfgrass Breeding Endowment started by retired UGA turfgrass breeder Wayne Hanna and his wife, Barbara.
www.myajc.com
Georgia Perimeter College gets connected to county trail system
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/georgia-perimeter-college-gets-connected-to-county/nm49j/
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Students at Georgia Perimeter College’s Decatur campus will have greater access to nature and fitness options with a new connection to the South River Trail System. A concrete trail from the campus to Gresham Park is being completed as part of the 5.5-mile trail System stretching from the Atlanta Radio Control Club to the college. The 3.1-mile trail connection to Georgia Perimeter includes a new 260-foot bridge over Doolittle Creek.
www.thebrunswicknews.com
College shows use of unusual teaching methods
http://www.thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/college-shows-use-of-unusual-teaching-methods/article_5eac1dc8-4009-5f77-8185-aafd3ccdffc5.html
by Anna Hall
Hopscotch diphthongs, books of Mad Libs and exploding homemade volcanoes may not seem like normal ways to teach elementary school students how to improve their literacy skills. And that’s the point. These examples and other non-traditional methods of learning have been actively occurring at College of Coastal Georgia in Brunswick the past six weeks. Part of the college’s school of education teacher preparation curriculum, the summer course set out to explore new, creative ways to help rising third to fifth grade students dig a bit deeper into their academic development prior to the start of the new school year.
www.13wmaz.com
Tuskegee Airmen camp helps dreams take flight
http://www.13wmaz.com/story/news/local/2015/07/22/tuskegee-airmen-camp-helps-dreams-take-flight/30540305/
Kristen D Swilley, WMAZ
An Alabama-based program is trying to get more minorities involved in aviation with some help from Middle Georgia State University. For the first time, the school sent instructors to the Tuskegee Airmen Legacy Flight Academy, a two-week camp. …The Red Tail in training are two of more than a dozen students from the Tuskegee Airman Flight Academy who got a tour of Middle Georgia State’s Eastman campus Wednesday after taking off from some historic ground.
www.savannahnow.com
Savannah State researchers document Tybee Island dolphin birth, attempted infanticide
http://savannahnow.com/news/2015-07-22/savannah-state-researchers-document-tybee-island-dolphin-birth-attempted-infanticide
By Mary Landers
Savannah State researchers have laid claim to the first documented live birth of a wild bottlenose dolphin. But the birth was only the beginning of a remarkable chain of events. As the researchers watched the dolphin baby born just off Tybee Island, they quickly realized something else was going on. “More surprisingly, we also witnessed what we believe to be an infanticide attempt on the newborn calf by two male dolphins just minutes after the birth,” said Robin Perrtree, a marine sciences technician at Savannah State University.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Our Leader Left. Who’s Left to Lead?
http://chronicle.com/article/Our-Leader-Left-Who-s-Left/231159?cid=megamenu
By Nathan Bennett
This is a challenging time for higher education. Securing funds for operations continues to be daunting. Public universities are continually reminded that there is little appetite among state legislatures for increased budgets. There are frequent alarms about the pace of tuition increases. Campus leaders are confronted by increasing competition from many directions. Demographic trends foreshadow a shrinking pool of applicants. And dire predictions about the impending technological disruption to the conventional educational model suggest that the university, as we know it, is about to go the way of the dinosaur. These circumstances represent a considerable threat to higher education. …An example of the challenge of leadership played out here in Atlanta during the 2013-14 academic year. By coincidence, the four major business schools in the area — at Georgia State, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and Emory — were searching for new deans. At GSU, Tech, and Emory, internal candidates were told they should “save face” and withdraw because internal candidates would not be considered. Essentially, the message sent by each campus was that “our leader has left, and there is no one left who can lead.”
www.jbhe.com
Hate Crimes on College Campuses Up Slightly
http://www.jbhe.com/2015/07/hate-crimes-on-college-campuses-up-slightly/
New data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that in 2012 there were 791 reported hate crimes on college and university campuses in the United States. This was up slightly from 2011 but down from the 928 reported hate crimes on campus in 2010.
www.diverseeducation.com
Congress Pondering How to Catch Up With Education
http://diverseeducation.com/article/76498/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=8f624e21b50e435b97f9ca46db9a74d2&elqCampaignId=415&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqTrackId=da33c460b111459190dab98a9bdffcf1
by Catherine Morris
Disruptive innovation is a force that promises to transform almost every aspect of our lives, whether we like it or not. Corporations such as Uber, Airbnb, and Facebook are all “disruptive innovators,” changing the nature of commerce and how we communicate. Similar forces are at work in higher education. When online classes were first invented, they seemed to spell the inevitable demise of brick and mortar schools. Instead, traditional institutions simply incorporated online coursework into their academic offerings. Many are now flourishing as a result, and some schools are doing so well that they are able to use the profits made from online courses to fund unrelated programs. There are now colleges that are almost entirely online, signaling the creation of an entirely new class of higher education providers. …As Congress moves towards reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA), members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) said that they would hope to encourage innovation in higher education. The HELP Committee looked at barriers to innovation at a hearing on the HEA reauthorization on Wednesday.
www.insidehighered.com
Caution and Competency
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/23/senate-hearing-features-familiar-tensions-between-innovation-and-quality-assurance
By Paul Fain
In recent years the U.S. Senate has done plenty of hand-wringing over “bad actors” in higher education, many of them for-profit and online. And that tension goes back to policy debates on distance education in the 1990s. “We don’t want to repeat debacles,” said Senator Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, during a Senate education committee hearing on Wednesday. “That actually is the theme of our committee.” Franken was kidding, mostly. The hearing was one of several in the run-up to the eventual reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, the law that governs federal student financial aid.
www.chronicle.com
Facing More Regulations, Aid Offices Struggle to Serve Students
http://chronicle.com/article/Facing-More-Regulations-Aid/231615/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Beckie Supiano
Like many campus offices, financial aid is doing more with less. The pattern looks like this: More students are applying for aid, and more aid is being awarded, but aid offices’ operating budgets are flat, according to a report released this year by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, or Nasfaa. “This survey,” the report says, “reveals the widespread perception that the resource shortages felt by aid administrators are not short-term products of our economy, but rather permanent structural problems without foreseeable reprieve.”
www.insidehighered.com
CFPB Crackdown on Loan Servicers
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/07/23/cfpb-orders-loan-servicer-pay-185m-over-illegal-charges-signals-broader-crackdown
By Michael Stratford
Discover Bank has agreed to pay $18.5 million to resolve allegations that its student loan servicing and debt collection practices were illegal, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced Wednesday. The settlement, $16 million of which will be paid out in refunds to borrowers, marks the first time the CFPB has publicly taken an enforcement action against a student loan servicer since it began overseeing much of the industry in 2013.
www.diverseeducation.com
Professor: Student Debt Threatening American Dream
http://diverseeducation.com/article/76526/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=8f624e21b50e435b97f9ca46db9a74d2&elqCampaignId=415&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqTrackId=2838906460e5400c921b23ae43fa08b9
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON — In order to solve the growing problem of student loan debt, stakeholders in higher education must ask deeper questions about the purpose of financial aid and whether it really creates socioeconomic equity over the long haul. That was one of the main arguments that University of Kansas professor William Elliott III put forth recently during a panel discussion that featured The Real College Debt Crisis: How Student Borrowing Threatens Financial Well-Being and Erodes the American Dream, a new book of which he is co-author.
www.chronicle.com
Boom in Academic Poaching Is Fueled by Visions of Economic Development
http://chronicle.com/article/Boom-in-Academic-Poaching-Is/231859/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Paul Basken
Sean J. Morrison, professor of pediatrics: $10 million. James P. Allison, professor of immunology: $10 million. Nancy A. Jenkins and Neal G. Copeland, deans of cancer biology and genetics: $7.5 million each. Such are the hefty recruiting packages that lured four researchers — along with their labs and staffs — to Texas. They’ve joined 80 other leading cancer researchers who have moved to Texas’ universities and institutes over the past five years thanks to a $250-million state-aided spending spree on science superstars. It’s part of a strategy to make Texas a clear leader in studying cancer — to attack one of humanity’s most devastating diseases and, hopefully, to bolster the state’s economy in the process. …At a time when American research universities face growing financial pressure, driven largely by cuts in federal and state financing, Texas stands as something of an anomaly — and, perhaps, a role model. By laying out millions of dollars to lure premier cancer scientists from other universities across the country, the state is drawing criticism and skepticism as well as envy and emulation.
www.chronicle.com
Grant Dispute Throws an Unwritten Rule of Academic Poaching Out the Window
http://chronicle.com/article/Grant-Dispute-Throws-an/231857/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
By Paul Basken
A less-than-collegial battle between two major research universities in laid-back Southern California says much about the severity of the financial pressures mounting on American higher education. Among research universities a longstanding gentlemen’s agreement has held that a scientist who moves from one institution to another is allowed to carry any grant support along to his or her new home. Now, with universities counting every dollar, that bit of protocol may become a quaint courtesy of days gone by.
www.insidehighered.com
Consumer Groups Urge Feds to Flag Colleges Under Investigation
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/07/23/consumer-groups-urge-feds-flag-colleges-under-investigation
The Obama administration’s new college comparison website, which it’s now developing in lieu of college ratings, should include information about colleges facing investigations or lawsuits from state or federal authorities, a coalition of consumer and student advocates said Wednesday. In a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the coalition, led by the Institute for College Access & Success, proposed that the department’s consumer-focused website “alert consumers if a school is the subject of public federal or state investigations, lawsuits or settlements.”