University System News:
www.thecitizen.com
Georgia Film Academy to open in Fayetteville in January
http://thecitizen.com/news-business/georgia-film-academy-open-fayetteville-january
Ben Nelms
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal earlier this year stated his intention to establish the Georgia Film Academy to meet the needs of the state’s growing film industry. The film academy is now a reality, one that will be located at Pinewood Atlanta Studios in Fayetteville. The new film academy will open its doors in January and, according to Executive Director Jeff Stepakoff, the intent is to offer for-credit courses in conjunction with the University System of Georgia (USG) and the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG) along with continuing education course work. “There is tremendous support and interest in the film academy,” said Stepakoff, a professor of film and television writing at Kennesaw State University, who has been involved in producing, writing and content creation for both television and motion pictures. Stepakoff said industry partners, such as Pinewood Atlanta, are integral to the film academy’s goals and intent.

USG Institutions:
www.chronicle.augusta.com
UGA hits record grad rate
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2015-10-27/uga-hits-record-grad-rate
By Lee Shearer
Morris News Service
ATHENS, Ga. — Only about one in 20 of last year’s University of Georgia freshmen didn’t make it to their second year of college, the university announced Monday. UGA’s “freshman retention rate” for 2014-15 was a record 95.2 percent, up 1 percent from the year before. The university also reached a record high graduation rate — 85.3 percent of the freshmen who enrolled six years ago graduated within six years. Both statistics helped in a small way to boost another statistic — UGA’s record enrollment of (as of Monday) 36,015.

www.savannahnow.com
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal to speak at Savannah State University gala
http://savannahnow.com/news/2015-10-26/georgia-gov-nathan-deal-speak-savannah-state-university-gala
By Savannah Morning News
Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal will speak at Savannah State University’s 125th anniversary gala next month, the school announced Monday. The event will be held at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at the Savannah International Trade & Convention Center on Hutchinson Island. Net proceeds from the event, which also features a silent auction, will support student scholarships. During the black-tie affair, the university will present awards of excellence in service, leadership, scholarship and philanthropy.

www.fox5atlanta.com
University Name Change Could Cost Taxpayer’s Millions
http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/i-team/39462546-story
By: Dale Russell
AUGUSTA, Ga. – On a quiet college campus in Augusta, you can hear the change coming. The finger pointing has ended. The final bell has rung. Georgia Regents University is changing its name to Augusta University. Students, like Summer Asbury, find it a bit crazy. “In a sense,” Asbury says, “you’re wasting money a little bit.” The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia voted to change the name in September. If the name change sounds familiar, it should. Three years ago, this university was called Augusta State University. The Board of Regents decided to merge Augusta State with the state’s medical college. So, the Regents commissioned a nearly $50,000 study to pick the best name for the new research institute. …But, the new name change could cost taxpayers another four million dollars. Debbie Dooley, of Georgia Tea Party Patriots, thinks it is all a crazy, colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.

www.myajc.com
DO STUDENTS AVOID TOUGH MAJORS TO KEEP HOPE?
Shunning STEM
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/opinion/shunning-stem/nn75t/
By Maureen Downey – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We know the positive effects of Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship: An increase in high school rigor. More academically gifted students remaining in state for college. A rise in the quality of public campuses. We know less about the negative effects. In two new studies, researchers at Georgia State University and Oklahoma State University suggest a negative consequence: fewer Georgia students pursing grueling science and math degrees. Students need a 3.0 GPA to get and keep HOPE, which pays most of the tuition bills. For every 10 students who start a public college or university with the scholarship, only about four — 37 percent — hold onto it the entire time they are in school. At the University of Georgia, the percentage of students keeping HOPE through graduation is 48.5 percent. At Georgia Tech, it’s 37.3 percent. No slack is cut for students in the hardest disciplines — the electrical engineering majors at Tech, or biochemistry majors at UGA — when their GPAs stumble to a 2.9.

www.huffingtonpost.com
These Are The Colleges Where Students Stay Up On Dropbox The Latest. Nerds.
Just go to bed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dropbox-ranking-colleges-late-night_5627aff8e4b02f6a900ee112
Tyler Kingkade
Senior Editor/Reporter, The Huffington Post
A ranking of colleges and universities whose students are the most active on the cloud-based file transfer service Dropbox provides a glimpse of which campuses are chock-full of nerds, dorks and all manner of dweebs. Princeton University leads the nation in the percentage of students using Dropbox accounts during the school week late at night, defined by Dropbox as between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. local time, according to a company analysis released this week… These are the 10 campuses where the greatest percentage of student users stay up late on Dropbox: 1. Princeton University 2. Carnegie Mellon University 3. Georgia Institute of Technology

www.savannahnow.com
Study aims to help Georgia and South Carolina shrimpers weather black gill
http://savannahnow.com/news/2015-10-26
By Mary Landers
There’s no quick fix for black gill, a disease that affects shrimp from Florida to North Carolina. But as regulators and scientists collaborate with fishermen to work on the problem, they’ve already boosted an iconic coastal tradition. “Generally, we’re seen as the bad guys, the ones that kill the turtles and rape the ocean,” said Micah LaRoche, a third generation shrimper from Wadmalaw Island, S.C. “I’m anything but that. I have grandchildren looking to get into the business. As far as conservationists go you’ll never find another one like me.” LaRoche spent Thursday aboard the Research Vessel Savannah, out of the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. …The research cruise is part of a larger effort funded by Georgia Sea Grant to research black gill, a mysterious condition that’s been blamed for reduced harvests in recent years. Little was scientifically documented about the condition until the UGA Skidaway Institute of Oceanography began looking into it in early 2014. Since then, researchers have learned much about it, but have also raised more questions.

www.news.blog.myajc.com
UGA scientists eye tiger, leopard creation
http://news.blog.myajc.com/2015/10/27/uga-scientists-eye-tiger-leopard-creation/
By Mark Davis, AJC Staff Writer
Call it a pipe dream, or — better — something cooked up in the imagination of people who do implausible things with the very strands of life, DNA. Call it a last-chance grab at something fast vanishing. What is more fleeting than the genetic makeup of an endangered species? Call it the stuff of miracles. How else do you explain what scientists at the University of Georgia are proposing? Researchers at UGA’s Regenerative Bioscience Center want to create a Sumatran tiger and clouded leopard from skin cells harvested years ago from a tiger and leopard at Zoo Atlanta. By creating more big cats, they say, each species — one endangered, the other threatened — has a better chance of surviving.

www.thebrunswicknews.com
Student death at Augusta University called suspicious
http://www.thebrunswicknews.com/news/state_news/student-death-at-augusta-university-called-suspicious/article_3dca96d3-31e9-50b1-aff0-c99bf2e9a3e4.html?_dc=647221886785.7009
Associated Press |
Brunswick man found dead at Augusta college
AUGUSTA — An autopsy is planned following the weekend death of a student at Augusta University. Richmond County Coroner Mark Bowen says 20-year-old Michael Wilson of Brunswick was found dead at a student housing complex on Saturday afternoon. Bowen told local media that the death is suspicious. But no cause of death was immediately determined, and Bowen says the body was sent to a laboratory for an autopsy.

www.onlineathens.com
UGA student suspected of arson
http://onlineathens.com/blotter/2015-10-26/uga-student-suspected-arson
By JOE JOHNSON
A University of Georgia student is suspected of setting an arson fire Sunday morning that damaged a house in the 800 block of Oconee Street, Athens-Clarke County police said. The 23-year-old student was suspected of causing the fire because he earlier threatened residents he would burn down the house, police said. …Police said they went to the house earlier in the morning because of a complaint that the student was refusing to leave.

Higher Education News:
www.vox.com
Sanders and Clinton want the federal government to fund public college. Colleges aren’t so sure.
http://www.vox.com/2015/10/23/9604540/sanders-clinton-college-opinions
There’s a growing agreement among Democratic policymakers on college costs. The consensus is that state spending cuts are the reason college tuition has skyrocketed for most students, and the solution is for the federal government to step in. But some skepticism is coming from an unlikely corner: public college presidents…Still, the response was telling. The presidents at the dinner — which included the leaders of Arizona State, Texas Tech, the University of California Riverside, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, the University of South Carolina, and the University of Kansas, as well as Bennington College and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute — said they feared more federal money could come with increased federal control. And they’re right. Those ideas are baked into Clinton and Sanders’s plans. …The presidents said they’d rather states restore their previous levels of funding and the previous balance of power: States keep college affordable for the typical family, and the federal government helps, with grants, students who still can’t afford it. “Turning the funding of public institutions over to the federal government is a recipe for disaster,” said G.P. “Bud” Peterson, the president of Georgia Tech.

www.insidehighered.com
SAT’s Racial Impact
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/27/study-finds-race-growing-explanatory-factor-sat-scores-california?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=9100c271bb-DNU201510027&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-9100c271bb-197515277
By Scott Jaschik
Large and growing gaps in SAT scores, by race and ethnicity, are nothing new. The College Board and educators alike have acknowledged these gaps and offered a variety of explanations, with a focus on the gaps in family income (on average) and the resources at high schools that many minority students attend. And indeed there is also a consistent pattern year after year on SAT scores in that the higher the family income, on average, the higher the scores. But a new, long-term analysis of SAT scores has found that, among applicants to the University of California’s campuses, race and ethnicity have become stronger predictors of SAT scores than family income and parental education levels. Further, the study has found that all three factors — race/ethnicity, family income and parental education levels — now predict one-third of the variance in SAT scores among otherwise similar students, up from a quarter in 1994.

www.insidehighered.com
2 More Colleges Go Test Optional on Admissions
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/10/27/2-more-colleges-go-test-optional-admissions?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=9100c271bb-DNU201510027&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-9100c271bb-197515277
The College of Idaho and Salem State University are both dropping requirements that all applicants submit SAT or ACT scores.

www.chronicle.com
Missing the Mark on Enrollment and Revenue: No Easy Fix
http://chronicle.com/article/Missing-the-Mark-on-Enrollment/233898
By Scott Carlson
There’s a sense of urgency these days in Defiance, Ohio. Defiance College, an institution of 1,000 students halfway between Toledo and Fort Wayne, Ind., hasn’t hit its goals for enrollment and tuition revenue since 2011. “This was not just a blip, but a trend that has to be addressed,” says Tim Rickabaugh, a professor of exercise science who is filling in as interim provost. In the past year, Defiance has lost its provost and its president, and has embarked on a strategic-planning process, identifying new partnerships and programs that might bring students in — and keep them around for all four years. Defiance is hardly the only college hoping for a better future. It is one of 144 institutions that missed their goals for both first-year enrollment and net tuition revenue this year, according to the third annual Chronicle survey of small colleges and midsize public institutions.

www.insidehighered.com
How Much for a Name?
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/27/renaming-nyus-engineering-school-after-donors-irks-some-students-and-faculty?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=9100c271bb-DNU201510027&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-9100c271bb-197515277
By Kellie Woodhouse
When donors give $100 million to an institution, many expect gratitude, not criticism. But a recent nine-figure donation to New York University’s engineering school garnered the latter after many students and alumni balked at the name change that came along with the gift. The controversy comes soon after a judge blocked Paul Smith’s College from changing its name for a donation. While that case had some unique legal features, both controversies illustrate that changing a name may not always be simple.

www.insidehighered.com
The Political Pick
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/26/unc-presidential-pick-margaret-spellings-highlights-systems-desire-political-acumen
By Kellie Woodhouse
A tense and controversial search for the University of North Carolina System’s next leader ended Friday in the unanimous selection of Margaret Spellings, secretary of education under President George W. Bush and the only finalist to meet with the full board and the governor. Spellings said she wants to lead a “productive, accountable, agile and transparent” university system. And, despite the disagreements within the governing board about the search and criticisms of the process from faculty members and legislators, Spellings says she feels “strongly supported” by the full board.