University System News:
www.gareport.com
Regents approve mega-merger of Georgia State, Georgia Perimeter
http://gareport.com/story/2016/01/06/regents-approve-mega-merger-of-georgia-state-georgia-perimeter/
By TOM CRAWFORD
The Board of Regents gave final approval Wednesday to the consolidation of Georgia State University and Georgia Perimeter College, creating one of the largest universities in the country with a total enrollment of about 55,000 students. The merged institution will be known as Georgia State University, with current GSU President Mark Becker continuing in that position. Georgia Perimeter’s interim president, Rob Watts, will take a sabbatical and then return to teaching. Georgia State is now the largest institution in the University System and ranks among the 10 largest public university campuses in terms of enrollment, joining the likes of Arizona State, Central Florida, Ohio State, Florida International, and Texas A&M.

www.ccdaily.com
Training movie makers in Ga.
http://www.ccdaily.com/Pages/Workforce-Development/Training-movie-makers.aspx
By Associated Press
​Gwinnett Technical College in Georgia is joining the film industry. Starting in February, the college will offer pilot classes for the first semester of the Georgia Film Academy. Gwinnett Tech joins Clayton State and Columbus State universities, which will offer classes in January. There are plans to expand the courses to additional campuses and Pinewood Studios in Fayetteville. The Georgia Film Academy is designed to train people for jobs in the film industry is a partnership with the University System of Georgia and the Technical College System of Georgia. …On-set film workers are needed, but even entry-level jobs require a very specific set of skills, said Jeffrey Stepakoff, executive director of the Georgia Film Academy. The academy certification puts students on the fast track to gainful employment.

www.statesboroherald.com
President search at GSU still on course
Initial ‘airport interviews’ to take place in February
http://www.statesboroherald.com/section/1/article/72137/
BY Al Hackle
With at least 25 strongly interested candidates so far, the search remains on track to have Georgia Southern University’s next president in place by July 1, said Dr. Stephen Vives, who chairs the campus search committee. “Mid-February is when we have targeted to have looked at credentials and be conducting airport interviews in Atlanta,” Vives said Wednesday. A tentative timeline posted early last fall predicted a first round of interviews in early February, followed by campus interviews in mid-February. But with Jan. 28 as the soft deadline for candidates to submit their resumes and other documents, the committee now expects to hold each phase of interviews about two weeks later.

www.chronicle.augusta.com
New way-finding signs reflect Augusta University name change
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2016-01-07/new-way-finding-signs-reflect-augusta-university-name-change
By Travis Highfield
Staff Writer
Fifteen green way-finding signs that direct motorists to Augusta University were replaced last month to reflect the school’s new name, city officials said. The signs, initially installed under the guidance of the Augusta Convention and Visitors Bureau in October 2014, were swapped in mid-December, roughly two weeks after the school changed its legal name from Georgia Regents University to Augusta University, said Jennifer Bowen, vice president of destination development at the visitors bureau. “It just so happened that we were doing some repair work and were able to get permission to update the signs,” Bowen said. In September, the University System of Georgia Board of Regents voted to rename the school to one of the preferred choices from a $45,500 survey conducted prior to the consolidation of Augusta State and Georgia Health Sciences universities. To replace the signs, AU spokeswoman Christen Carter said, the university spent $14,560, money that had been previously budgeted as operational funds.

www.middlegeorgiaceo.com
Middle Georgia State University Foundation Board Names Trustee Emeriti
http://middlegeorgiaceo.com/news/2016/01/middle-georgia-state-university-foundation-board-names-trustee-emeriti/
Staff Report From Middle Georgia CEO
Fourteen community leaders who served on Boards of Trustees of the Foundations of Middle Georgia State University’s predecessor institutions now belong to a single circle of honor. They have been named Trustee Emeriti of Middle Georgia State University Foundation. Dr. Raymond Carnley, Executive Director for the Foundation said, “It is important to recognize that by devoting their time and energy to strengthen the legacy institutions of Middle Georgia College and Macon State College, these individuals helped to establish today’s Middle Georgia State University. Each represents a tremendous legacy of service to the University, its predecessors, and the University System. They set a great example for the Foundation’s current Trustees and for those who will follow. We will always be grateful for their service.” In early 2012, the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents recommended the consolidation of Middle Georgia College, which was founded in 1884 in Cochran, Ga., and Macon State College, which was founded in 1968 in Macon, Ga. The consolidation became official on January 8, 2013, creating Middle Georgia State College, a baccalaureate-granting institution with campuses in Macon, Cochran, Dublin, Eastman and Warner Robins. The Foundations of the two former colleges also linked together.

www.myajc.com
Lilburn mother’s decades-long journey back to college
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/lilburn-mothers-decades-long-journey-back-to-colle/npyfG/?icmp=ajc_internallink_referralbox_free-to-premium-referral
By Gracie Bonds Staples – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stephanie Jackson was at a crossroads. She was 40 years old and, after 19 years of marriage, in the middle of a divorce. Now a judge was telling the Lilburn mother she had two years to get her life together, get a job and help support herself and her sons. But except for a retail job here and there, Jackson, now 43, had no work experience. Two decades earlier, she’d dropped out of college so she had little education beyond high school. … She was in court when she saw her day of reckoning. You have two years to become self-sufficient, the judge told her. Then she would lose support from her ex-husband. …She began researching paralegal programs and discovered “Go Back. Move Ahead.” Launched in July 2014 as part of the state’s Complete College Georgia initiative, the program is a collaborative effort between the University System of Georgia, the Technical College System of Georgia, the Georgia Student Finance Commission and Gov. Nathan Deal. It is intended to encourage the more than 1 million Georgians like Jackson who have completed some college to return and finish their degrees and for good reason. Rosalind Barnes Fowler, director of public awareness and outreach for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, said that by 2025, it is projected that more than 60 percent of jobs in the state will require a college certificate or degree. Only 42 percent of the state’s population, however, hold college credentials.

USG Institutions:
www.myajc.com
GSU: No fee increase, state money needed for Turner Field project
http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/gsu-no-fee-increase-state-money-needed-for-turner-/npyrT/
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia State’s portion of a $300 million redevelopment of Turner Field will not require any increase in student fees or request for state funding. Instead, the university plans to fund its part of the project through a mix of private dollars, advertising and naming rights for the project’s athletic facilities, and other building funds. Georgia State’s president Mark Becker told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday that the university’s portion is estimated to cost between $100 million and $150 million.

www.thesylvesterlocal.com
ABAC Receives $4,620 Grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety

    ABAC Receives $4,620 Grant from the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety

By Cari Colby
TIFTON – The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety (GOHS) is proud to announce the receipt of a $4,620 grant to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College for participation in the GOHS Georgia Young Adult Program. The GOHS addresses young adult driver crashes, injuries and fatalities and partners with colleges and universities throughout the state to implement the Georgia Young Adult Program (GYAP). This program has proven to be successful using strategies such as peer education, providing educational speakers to schools, and encouraging schools to develop creative, innovative techniques to reduce young adult crashes, injuries and fatalities in their communities.

www.onlineathens.com
UGA accountant’s firing was not retaliation, lawyer for state Board of Regents says
http://onlineathens.com/mobile/2016-01-07/uga-accountants-firing-was-not-retaliation-lawyer-state-board-regents-says
By LEE SHEARER
University of Georgia officials had good reasons to fire a UGA accountant after she revealed her boss’s questionable travel expenses and time accounting to university officials, according to a lawyer for the state Board of Regents. Lawyer Ed Tolley also argues that a critical part of the Georgia law under which former UGA accountant Sallyanne Barrow sued the Board of Regents, the Georgia Whisteblower Statute, is unconstitutional, in a legal filing in Athens-Clarke County Superior Court this week.

www.wsav.com
Local Universities Ban “Hoverboards”
http://wsav.com/2016/01/07/local-universities-ban-hoverboards/
By Ian Margol
One of the hottest gifts this holiday season seems to be getting a little too hot. “Hoverboards” have been bursting into flames all across the country, sending people to the hospital and causing plenty of damage, and now some schools are taking steps to prevent a disaster on campus. So far locally, Georgia Southern University has banned the boards from campus entirely and Armstrong State University has banned them from on-campus housing. More than 20 schools across the country have banned hoverboards. …As for other local schools, a Savannah State University spokespersons said they currently do not have any restrictions on the boards, and SCAD is treating them like normal skateboards; meaning students can have them, they just cant be used indoors.

www.ajc.com
Georgia State joins colleges banning hoverboards
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/georgia-state-joins-colleges-banning-hoverboards/npzww/
Janel Davis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia State has a message for students wanting to try out their hoverboards on campus: Leave them at home. The university posted a message on its Facebook page on Friday telling faculty, staff and students that hoverboards are banned, effective immediately. “Because of fire concerns, the use, possession or storage of hoverboards (self-balancing scooters, battery-operated scooters, hands-free Segways and other similar equipment) is prohibited in university-owned or managed buildings, including residence/dining halls” And don’t try to use them in your dorms, they are banned their too.

www.jacksonville.com
Researchers to map sand deposits off St. Simons, Sea Island and Jekyll
Sand could be used to replinish beaches of three barrier island should a hurricane erode them, Skidaway Institute says
http://jacksonville.com/news/georgia/2016-01-07/story/researchers-map-sand-deposits-st-simons-sea-island-and-jekyll
By Terry Dickson
Researchers will conduct a two-year study of underwater sand deposits off St. Simons, Sea Island and Jekyll Island that could be used to replenish beaches in the event of erosion from hurricanes. Clark Alexander, a scientist at the University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, will lead the study that will be funded by Georgia Sea Grant, the institute said in a release. Citing the billions in damages that Hurricane Sandy caused along the East Coast in 2012, the institute said that Georgia’s coastal communities are vulnerable to future storms. Some of those communities have begun developing strategies to “increase their resilience” to storms and speed the recovery should one strike, the release said. The study is intended to provide detailed information on the location and characteristics of usable sand.

www.newscientist.com
Plastic grass could cover buildings to produce energy from wind
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22930552-600-plastic-grass-could-cover-buildings-to-produce-energy-from-wind/
The wind flowing over your roof is packed with energy, if you could only harness it. A new type of wind power generator carpets a surface with plastic strips that sway in the wind like grass, producing renewable energy where traditional windmills would be impractical. The generator is made by fixing flexible strips of plastic to a board, so they stand upright like rows of dominoes. The strips have nanowires etched on one side and a coating of indium tin oxide (ITO) on the other. When the strips flail in the wind, the nanowires slap against the ITO surface of neighbouring strips. This temporary contact allows electrons to leap from one material to the other, creating a current through a phenomenon known as the triboelectric effect… Yang worked on the project with Zhong Lin Wang’s group at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The goal was to tap energy not just from steady winds, but from the choppy gusts typical of built-up areas too. “Compared with a wind turbine, our triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is effective at harvesting the energy from natural wind blowing in any direction,” says Yang. He adds that the harvesting system is simple to make, and easy to scale to larger systems.

Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
Do Students With Guns Save Lives?
That’s the claim of concealed carry supporters, but the evidence is limited and clear examples are few and far between.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/08/few-examples-exist-armed-civilians-preventing-mass-shootings-campuses?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=109c653cab-DNU20160108&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-109c653cab-197515277
By Jake New
Days after two shooters killed 14 people and injured 22 others in San Bernardino, Calif., Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, stood in front of 10,000 students, faculty and staff and urged them to bring guns onto campus. In his back pocket, the president said onstage, he carried a small pistol. “Let’s teach them a lesson if they ever show up here,” Falwell said of recent acts of terrorism, before turning his attention to campus shootings. “What if just one of those students or one of those faculty members had a concealed permit and was carrying a weapon when the shooter walked into Virginia Tech? Countless lives could have been saved.” The comments were met with a round of applause, and the university said hundreds of Liberty students have now signed up for a training course to get a concealed-carry permit. Nearly 1,000 students, faculty and staff members already had the permits, according to the university.

www.insidehighered.com
How States Fare in Their Support of Public Higher Ed
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/07/how-states-fare-their-support-public-higher-ed?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197515277
Young Invincibles released report cards today that grade states on their support of public higher education. The results weren’t great, and only one state — Wyoming, the least populated state in the U.S., got an A (seven states received a B). In its report, Young Invincibles, a think tank that advocates on behalf of jobs, health care and education for young adults, considered factors like a state’s growth or decline in public higher education support since the recession, how states compared to other states in terms of support, a state’s support to disadvantaged students, and whether states offer aid on the basis of need or merit. …Among the more than 40 factors Young Invincibles considered when grading states is how much tuition at public four- and two-year colleges has risen since the recession. In Arizona, which received an F from the group, tuition rose 72 percent from 2008 to 2014 (Georgia and Louisiana followed close behind, with increases of 68 and 66 percent, respectively).

www.insidehighered.com
Guidance or Rule Making?
The U.S. Department of Education’s guidance on how colleges handle cases of sexual violence and harassment improperly created sweeping regulatory changes, Republican senators say.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/07/senators-challenge-legality-us-guidance-campus-sexual-assault?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197515277
By Jake New
The guidance letters issued in recent years by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on how colleges should investigate and adjudicate cases of sexual assault are effectively — and illegally — acting as binding regulations, a Republican senator argues in a letter sent to the department today. In a sharply worded missive, Senator James Lankford wrote that, while the department’s two Dear Colleague letters on harassment and sexual violence sent to institutions in 2010 and 2011 “purport to merely interpret statements of existing law,” the letters actually enacted sweeping regulatory changes without first going through the required notice-and-comment procedures required by the Administrative Procedure Act. The guidance, the senator argues, goes further than clarifying Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 — it expands the gender discrimination law’s scope, increasing the liability for institutions dealing with bullying, harassment and sexual violence and relaxing the burden of proof institutions are required to use when adjudicating cases of sexual assault.

www.insidehighered.com
More Changes to FAFSA List
States worry that a Department of Education plan to curtail their access to data from the federal student aid form will cause headaches for state aid awards.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/07/states-cry-foul-over-us-plan-curtail-access-fafsa-student-data?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=d09de06013-DNU20160107&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-d09de06013-197515277
By Michael Stratford
The U.S. Department of Education is planning to further restrict how it shares information about students’ college preferences, but some state officials are concerned the changes will make it more difficult for them to award funds from state financial aid programs. The department has already stopped providing colleges with the entire list of institutions that students express interest in attending when filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as the FAFSA. That new policy, which took effect Jan. 1, was a response to concerns that students may have been disadvantaged by colleges knowing the other colleges to which a student was also applying (and where those institutions ranked on the student’s list.)

www.diverseeducation.com
Experts Debate Keys to Student Loan Crisis
http://diverseeducation.com/article/80007/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=cb21b8e2bf0f455ab6d5faacf5486cf6&elqCampaignId=771&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqTrackId=1b580beb88354e8f9f41646fc67ac011
by Diverse Staff
A recent report by the Brookings Institute revealed that low earnings, not high levels of individual debt, are to blame for the high default rates of student loans. Debtors who borrowed under $5,000 were nearly twice as likely to default on their student loans as those who borrowed over $100,000. “The fact is that default is highest among those with the smallest student debts,” wrote Susan M. Dynarski, the report’s author. “Of those borrowing under $5,000 for college, 34 percent end up in default. This default rate actually drops as borrowing increases. For those borrowing more than $100,000, the default rate is 18 percent. Among graduate borrowers — who tend to have the largest debts — just seven percent default on their loans.”

www.insidehighered.com
Tennessee Chancellor Resigns Over Governor’s Restructuring Plan
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/01/08/tennessee-chancellor-resigns-over-governors-restructuring-plan?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=109c653cab-DNU20160108&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-109c653cab-197515277
John Morgan, chancellor of the Tennessee Board of Regents, is resigning a year earlier than planned in opposition to Governor Bill Haslam’s plan to change the governance structure of the regents system. In a resignation letter dated Jan. 7, Morgan wrote that he “cannot, in good conscience, continue as chancellor for another year” because he believes “the path being proposed is the wrong one.” Haslam announced in December that he would help draft and support legislation to form separate governing boards for the system’s six four-year universities. The universities are under the governance of the 18-member Tennessee Board of Regents, which also oversees 13 community colleges and 27 technical colleges. Under Haslam’s plans — which are still being drafted into proposed legislation — the existing board would focus mainly on the community and technical colleges, and the six four-year universities would gain more autonomy through independent governing boards. Yet Morgan says the plan is “unworkable and will seriously impair the critical alignment of the state’s needs.”