University System News:
www.walb.com
Out-of-state tuition is changing for some Georgia colleges
http://www.walb.com/story/29939265/out-of-state-tuition-is-changing-for-some-georgia-colleges
By Caitlyn Chastain
ALBANY, GA (WALB) – Ten University System of Georgia Schools now offer in-state tuition to residents of Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. Darton State College, Albany State University, Valdosta State University, and Georgia Southwestern State University are all participating in this initiative. The goal is to bring students to campuses who could benefit from an increase in enrollment. School officials also say it’s a good way to boost the local economy and potentially keep graduates in Georgia post graduation.

www.flagpole.com
‘The Greatest Generation’ Begins to Refigure Health Insurance
Pub Notes

‘The Greatest Generation’ Begins to Refigure Health Insurance

By Pete McCommons
If you were a journalist looking for a peg to hang a column on, you could call the UGA faculty who began arriving here in 1967 our “Greatest Generation.” That was the watershed year, when the Georgia governor and legislature finally faced up to the economic reality that a better University of Georgia would cost money—a lot of money. The appropriated funds started a flood of new, young faculty coming here to teach and propelled UGA out of the backwaters of sleepy, Southern academia. …Now, most of those young faculty are retired (one of them just this semester!), and as you know from reading this column, if not from reading your mail, the retirees will soon be forced to plunge into an insurance exchange and figure out which plan to buy, since the present University System of Georgia retiree health insurance coverage will be terminated as of Jan. 1. USG will pay a generous amount into a health maintenance account for retirees to use toward defraying the costs of their new policies, but since the costs of the various plans that will be available beginning in 2016 have not yet been announced, it remains to be seen whether retirees will end up paying more than at present or settling for less coverage than the seamless plan they now enjoy (and pay for).

USG Institutions:
www.myajc.com
Food banks on rise at college campuses
http://www.myajc.com/news/lifestyles/food-banks-on-rise-at-college-campuses/nnT4q/
By Gracie Bonds Staples – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The 100 block of Decatur Street in downtown Atlanta is a cacophony of honking horns, coughing motors and fleeting foot traffic, where students scurry to Georgia State University classrooms in search of their future. They are a complicated lot, a mix of old and young, black, white and other who more and more find their hopes threatened by, of all things, hunger. For the longest time, it was as if they didn’t even exist. Then Nicole L. Johnson, a former coordinator of student assistance at Georgia State, began to notice students were facing challenges far beyond those presented in the classroom. As the cost of tuition and living expenses rise, some students aren’t sure where their next meal will come from… .Clare Cady co-founded of The College and University Food Bank Alliance in 2011 in response to the flagging economy and increased demand for food from students. That year 15 campuses signed on for the effort. Today, she said, more than 200 college campuses across the country have food banks and the number continues to grow.

www.statesboroherald.com
Hospital gives $40K to GSU nursing scholarship fund
Established in memory of five nursing students killed in crash
http://www.statesboroherald.com/section/1/article/69814/
Special to the Herald
A gift of more than $40,000 of corporate and individual donations from a local hospital will enable Georgia Southern University to fund future scholarships for nursing students in memory of five young women killed in a tragic car accident in April. Tuesday, East Georgia Regional Medical Center gifted the university with $41,670 for the university’s School of Nursing Students’ Memorial Fund, established in memory of the five nursing students who lost their lives in a vehicle crash on Interstate 16 near Savannah on April 22.

www.artsatl.com
Q&A: Sam Dixon reflects on the richness of Spivey Hall’s legacy as it celebrates its 25th season
http://www.artsatl.com/2015/09/qa-sam-dixon-spivey-hall-25th-year/
By Mark Gresham
Acoustically superb and renowned for the artistic excellence of its programs, Spivey Hall — the critically acclaimed 392-seat recital hall on the campus of Clayton State University in metro Atlanta’s southern suburbs — is celebrating its 25th anniversary this season. A program of Brahms tonight, with Jennifer Stumm on viola and Roman Rabinovich on piano, will kick off the season. The hall was the brainchild of Emilie and Walter Spivey, who donated $2.5 million of the $4.5 million in construction costs. Emilie Spivey — who died of cancer in 1988 one month after plans for the hall were finalized — created the vision for the hall as a small and intimate, but acoustically superior, venue.

www.nbc26.tv
GRU Literacy Center opens new satellite locations
http://nbc26.tv/2015/09/01/gru-literacy-center-opens-new-satellite-locations/
By NBC 26 Staff
AUGUSTA, Ga. – One out of three adult Georgians is functionally illiterate, according to a recent report from the Georgia’s Task Force on Adult Literacy. In the Augusta area alone, there are more than 65,000 adults whose basic educational levels are less than those of the average eighth grader. In an effort to combat these statistics, Georgia Regents University’s Literacy Center has partnered with the Augusta-Richmond County Library and Paine College to open satellite locations to address the illiteracy rates in the Augusta area. Both centers are set to open Sept. 8, which is also International Literacy Day.

www.forsythnews.com
Forsyth County Public Facilities Authority OKs funding for college, career academy
http://www.forsythnews.com/section/2/article/28105/
By Kelly Whitmire
CUMMING — The Forsyth County Public Facilities Authority on Tuesday approved a $20 million funding resolution for the Alliance Academy for Innovation of Cumming-Forsyth County, a proposed college and career academy. The resolution is a component of the partnership between the Forsyth County Public Facilities Authority, the city of Cumming and the Forsyth County Board of Education. The school will also be a grant collaboration with the state, and programs will be in partnership with the University of North Georgia and Lanier Technical College.

www.cjr.org
Want to major in sports journalism? Now you can
http://www.cjr.org/the_feature/sports_journalism_degree.php
By Anna Clark
WITH THE EXPANSION OF BROADCAST NETWORKS, the rise of heavily trafficked niche outlets, and ever-popular local coverage, sports journalism is one of the few beats that can be called a media growth industry. That’s why universities are recalibrating to train students for the field. Not coincidentally, sports journalism programs are first emerging at colleges that have both a long-running school of journalism and a robust athletics department. It’s too early to fully measure the impact of these programs, but as pioneers, they have the potential to change the game when it comes to the reporting skill, historic background, and diversity of who’s making our sports media. …The University of Georgia’s Grady College launched a certificate program in sports journalism last year, the first SEC school to do so, and it’s seeing three times as many students apply than can be accepted.

www.motherboard.vice.com
This AI Creates Interactive Fiction by Reading Other People’s Stories
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-ai-creates-interactive-fiction-by-reading-other-peoples-stories
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed an artificial intelligence that can create interactive stories by reading and learning from stories written by other people. The AI, named Scheherazade-IF (interactive fiction) after the fabled Arabic queen and storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights, was able to create interactive fiction that a group of readers found just as coherent and involving as one created by a human.

www.wabe.org
Kennesaw State Drug Center Helps Students Kick The Addiction
http://wabe.org/post/kennesaw-state-drug-center-helps-students-kick-addiction
By SHELBY LIN ERDMAN
Illicit drug use has been on the rise among college-age young adults, mostly driven by increases in marijuana use. The non-medical use of stimulants, including Adderall and Ritalin, has also more than doubled in the past few years, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Kennesaw State University is taking a proactive position when it comes to student drug use. The Center for Young Adult Addiction and Recovery is located on the college’s campus in Kennesaw. It was established in 2008 to provide a means to address drug use and help students recover from addiction.

www.onlineathens.com
Walton County deputies searching wells for body of missing college student Justin Gaines
http://onlineathens.com/mobile/2015-09-01/walton-county-deputies-searching-wells-body-missing-college-student-justin-gaines
By WAYNE FORD
A search for the body of a Gainesville State College (now University of North Georgia) student missing since 2007 will resume Wednesday in Walton County where for two days authorities have been examining wells that might contain the missing teen. “We had an informant give us information that possibly the body of Justin Gaines was dumped in a well in this location,” Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman said Tuesday afternoon. Deputies located four wells in the High Shoals area of Walton County off Georgia Highway 186, where three counties — Walton, Morgan and Oconee — intersect.

Higher Education News:
www.politifact.com
Report accurate about Georgia’s low diploma rate
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2015/sep/02/melissa-johnson/report-accurate-about-georgias-low-diploma-rate/
By Nancy Badertscher
With all the expectations placed on workers today, it’s hard to think that hundred of thousands of Georgia adults are lacking what many consider a basic necessity: a high school diploma. But in a recent report, Melissa Johnson, a policy analyst with the left-leaning Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, said the Peach State has the ninth highest rate of adults, ages 18 to 64, without a high school diploma or its equivalent, the GED. We’re talking about roughly 866,000 working age Georgians, Johnson said. Disturbing? Yes. Accurate? PolitiFact decided to do some checking. …He and Rickman said multiple initiatives have been launched — everything from trying to simultaneously raise rigor and graduate rates in high schools to closely tracking college students so they stay in school and focused on completion of a degree or certificate program. “We were part of Complete College America, which we coined Complete College Georgia, and that was helpful,” Dolinger said. “Now there are two new pieces, Go Back Move Ahead, to get kids who have some college to go back and complete, and the new legislation, Move on When Ready. Those are to help the kids stay in school or go back.” …We rate Johnson’s statement True.

www.healthcaredive.com
Universities debate grad student insurance subsidies
http://www.healthcaredive.com/news/universities-debate-grad-student-insurance-subsidies/404941/
By Heather Caspi
Dive Brief:
A number of universities have dropped or are re-evaluating programs to help graduate students pay for health insurance coverage in response to new guidance from the IRS. The guidance says the methods of many universities do not comply with the ACA, because IRS classifies graduate students who serve as teachers and research assistants as employees of the university. The law does not allow businesses to give subsidies to employees to purchase individual health insurance.

www.huffingtonpost.com
A Supergroup Of Academics Is Trying To Stop People Who Profit From Campus Rape
They’re quietly meeting to try to drastically change how colleges approach sexual assault.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/professor-group-fighting-campus-rape_55e5120de4b0aec9f35459d9
Tyler Kingkade
Senior Editor/Reporter, The Huffington Post
Jennifer Freyd, a longtime researcher and advocate against sexual violence, has been pleased to see so much focus in recent years on campus rape. But the University of Oregon psychology professor has also been worried. As a record number of universities have come under federal investigations for allegations they mishandled rape and harassment cases, it seemed like every week a new app, consulting group, conference or educational program cropped up to help colleges improve their responses to sexual assault — as long as the schools were willing to pay a price. In some cases, including at UO, Freyd said, schools would rather spend close to six figures on a product that promised to address the problem than engage with faculty to devise their own program.

www.chronicle.com
How One State Reduced In-State Tuition for Undergrads
http://chronicle.com/article/How-One-State-Reduced-In-State/232795/
By Sarah Brown
The rarity of a public-college tuition cut became a reality this year in Washington State, where lawmakers approved a reduction for state residents over the next two years. At some institutions, the price tag will fall by one-fifth for in-state undergraduate students. Every campus will see a 5 percent cut this year, and for 2016-17, students enrolled at four-year colleges and universities will see tuition fall by an additional 10 or 15 percent. Lawmakers also will tie tuition levels to the state’s median family income starting in 2017 in an effort to keep college costs down in the future. (Some campuses are raising tuition for nonresidents and graduate students, although the increases vary and are generally small.)