University System News:
www.myajc.com
Atlanta deemed top U.S. city for moviemakers
http://www.myajc.com/news/entertainment/movies/atlanta-deemed-top-us-city-for-moviemakers/nqNsd/
By Jennifer Brett and Rodney Ho – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Moviemaker magazine has named Atlanta the best place to work and live for TV and film people among all major cities, beating New York and Los Angeles. This is up from sixth a year ago. Atlanta was also deemed better than cities such as Austin, Texas, (No. 3) and Albuquerque, N.M. (No. 5). Atlanta is still third in terms of total production among U.S. cities behind New York and L.A. But the story cited the metro area’s significantly lower cost of living in terms of housing and thriving restaurant scene. The author noted local indie film festivals and a city of Atlanta job training program to bolster the local crew talent pool. State higher education officials in December also unveiled a statewide certificate program called the Georgia Film Academy.
USG Institutions:
www.nes.sys-con.com
UWG’s MBA, Georgia WebMBA Ranked Top in the World by CEO Magazine
http://news.sys-con.com/node/3678806
BY MARKETWIRED .
CEO Magazine has ranked the University of West Georgia’s MBA program as a Tier 1 program in their 2016 Global Online MBA Rankings. The online magazine also ranked the Georgia WebMBA program, which is offered at UWG, 12th in the world and 5th in the nation.
www.southeastgreen.com
USDA Awards $18 Million for 1890 Land-Grant Universities Research, Education and Extension Activities
http://www.southeastgreen.com/index.php/news/southeast/14998-usda-awards-18-million-for-1890-land-grant-universities-research-education-and-extension-activities
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced 53 grants totaling more than $18 million to support research, teaching, and extension activities at 1890 historically black land-grant colleges and universities through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). …Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, Ga., $149,999. NIFA provides support to historically black colleges and universities that were designated as land-grant universities (LGUs) in the Second Morrill Act in 1890. Grants to these universities support research, extension, and teaching in the food and agricultural sciences by building the institutional capacities of these schools. There are currently 19 institutions under the legislation.
www.nytimes.com
Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else
By QUENTIN HARDY
Thirty-four years ago, Kevin Stephenson got his younger brother, Randall, a job with the telephone company … Today, Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and chief executive, is trying to reinvent the company so it can compete more deftly … Inside a glass-walled office where Mr. Stephenson meets presidential candidates and corporate titans, Mr. Thrun gave him a pitch on funding an online master’s degree in engineering that Udacity proposed to teach in conjunction with the Georgia Institute of Technology.
www.fox5atlanta.com
Georgia Gwinnett College Tennis Player Beats Cancer
http://www.fox5atlanta.com/sports/90778586-story
By: Cody Chaffins
LAWRENCEVILLE – Tennis season is underway for the Georgia Gwinnett Grizzlies and the GGC women’s team is searching for its second NAIA National Title in three years. “Our goal is pretty simple, we want to win a national championship,” says GGC tennis coach Chase Hodges. “That’s the goal and Klara’s going to be a big part of that” That’s a huge statement from Chase Hodges, not that his team will be in the hunt, but that junior Klara Dohnalova will play a role. It was exactly a year ago that Klara’s world changed. “On Valentine’s Day I woke up in the morning and my neck was swollen. I had difficulty to breathe,” says Dohnalova. After a week of tests, she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. …A year after her diagnosis she is back playing the sport she loves. Although she quickly learned that she needs to ease herself back in. …She has battled and now beaten her lymphoma. Klara is now cancer free and back out on the court and helping get the Grizzlies another national championship.
www.gainesvilletimes.com
UNG fraternity suspended for alcohol, hazing violations
http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/section/6/article/115132/
Times staff reports
A fraternity at the University of North Georgia’s Dahlonega campus was suspended Wednesday after allegations of alcohol misuse and hazing. Sigma Nu’s Kappa chapter “will cease to function until recolonization,” a statement from the national fraternity said in an announcement. The chapter was founded in 1881, at what was then North Georgia College.
www.onlineathens.com
UGA student’s role in car accident under investigation
http://onlineathens.com/blotter/2016-02-12/uga-student%E2%80%99s-role-car-accident-under-investigation
By JOE JOHNSON
Athens-Clarke County police said they were investigating a traffic accident south of Five Points Wednesday night in which a University of Georgia student apparently ran a red light and drove her car into the side of another. The 22-year-old student was not immediately cited, as she was taken to Athens Regional Medical Center because she complained of having difficulty breathing, police said. …Police noted in the accident report the student apparently was holding her cellphone at the time, as the phone’s screen was shattered when the car’s airbag deployed.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Antonin Scalia’s Death Probably Won’t Affect ‘Fisher,’ but It Could Change the Future of Affirmative Action
http://chronicle.com/article/Antonin-Scalia-s-Death/235318?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=9aec4ad0d23a43d3b3e84e04cd56f008&elq=05c0a2ebf32947db95d91a409a3d1249&elqaid=7883&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2436
By Eric Hoover and Eric Kelderman
WASHINGTON
he death on Saturday of Antonin Scalia, the sharp-tongued justice who shaped constitutional debates for nearly 30 years, could end up shifting the Supreme Court’s ideological balance. But his absence is unlikely to affect the highly anticipated ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the pending legal challenge to race-conscious college-admissions policies. In short, the math still seems to favor the court’s conservative wing. …What happens to pending rulings when a justice dies? Votes he or she has cast in cases that have not been publicly decided become void, according to Thomas C. Goldstein, a lawyer who publishes the widely read Scotusblog. In a post published on Saturday, he wrote: “If Justice Scalia’s vote was not necessary to the outcome — for example, if he was in the dissent or if the majority included more than five justices — then the case will still be decided, only by an eight-member court.”
www.insidehighered.com
Scalia and Higher Ed
Justice’s death may not change outcome on affirmative action, which he opposed. His record includes key votes and dissents on issues of black colleges, hate speech, single-sex public higher education and church-state line.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/15/scalias-record-higher-education-and-pending-affirmative-action-case?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=60fcfa955f-DNU20160215&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-60fcfa955f-197515277
By Scott Jaschik
The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stunned legal and political observers — and left many wondering about the possible impact on a pending U.S. Supreme Court case over affirmative action.
Many cases before the Supreme Court have the potential — as long as there are only eight justices on the court — to end in 4-4 ties. In such situations, the appeals court decision that brought the cases to the Supreme Court would stand. But in the current affirmative action case, Justice Elena Kagan has recused herself, so the seven remaining justices would produce a majority one way or the other. Many legal observers had been predicting a 5-3 decision barring or limiting the consideration of race in admissions, as all but three justices have expressed strong skepticism about government use of race. Scalia’s death would change that likely outcome to 4-3 and may give more hope to defenders of affirmative action that they could sway Justice Anthony Kennedy to either back the University of Texas at Austin, whose consideration of race is at issue in the case, or to favor only modest limitations on the consideration of race. But whichever way Justice Kennedy votes, a decision will have a majority behind it, and thus will count.
www.chronicle.com
How 3 Crisis-Communications Experts Would Have Handled the Uproar at Mount St. Mary’s
http://chronicle.com/article/How-3-Crisis-Communications/235310
By Rio Fernandes
Over the last few weeks Mount St. Mary’s University of Maryland has been engulfed in controversy over its president’s handling of a controversial student-retention plan, which was first covered by its student newspaper. The various legs of the controversy are now well known to higher-ed watchers: first the now-infamously blunt comments about unprepared students — “Instead of thinking of students as cuddly bunnies, you just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads” — then the reported firing and attempted reinstatement of two professors for violating their “duty of loyalty” to the university by criticizing the plan. Through it all, critics of the president, Simon P. Newman, have been quick to say he failed in managing the furor. The Chronicle spoke with three crisis-communications experts about how they would have suggested Mr. Newman handle each of the controversies he has faced.