University System News:
www.accesswdun.com
‘Everytown’ ad urges veto of Georgia campus carry bill
http://accesswdun.com/article/2016/3/382063
By The Associated Press
ATLANTA (AP) — A national group is urging Georgia’s Republican governor to veto legislation allowing guns on college campuses. Everytown for Gun Safety is a group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The group says it will spend $25,000 on ads to air in metro Atlanta from Thursday through Monday.
www.cbs46.com
Views mixed on Campus Carry Bill
http://www.cbs46.com/story/31614448/latest-on-the-campus-carry-bill?autostart=true
By Vince Sims
ATLANTA (CBS46) – On college campuses like Georgia Tech the views are mixed on whether students should be allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. “I think it’s okay,” Marissa Sulesk said. “I think it’s a good way to be safe around campus especially for girls.” CBS46 reporter Vince Sims spoke with Norred and Associates which is a national private security firm. Greg Norred is the C.E.O. and says some of his clients include colleges and universities. Norred lists one of his main concerns with the Campus Carry Bill. “Training or lack of,” Norred said. “This bill doesn’t call for any training for these students. We are just literally handing them a gun and saying go get them. Not only do they need to know how to shoot they need to know when to shoot.” Students already have their minds made up.
USG Institutions:
www.dailyreportonline.com
Georgia State University College of Law Accepted Into Order of the Coif
http://www.dailyreportonline.com/id=1202753813240/Georgia-State-University-College-of-Law-Accepted-Into-Order-of-the-Coif?kw=Georgia%20State%20University%20College%20of%20Law%20Accepted%20Into%20Order%20of%20the%20Coif&cn=20160401&pt=Morning%20News&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Daily%20Report&slreturn=20160301092738
Meredith Hobbs, Daily Report
Georgia State University College of Law has been accepted into the Order of the Coif, the national honor society for legal education—one of only two law schools accepted this year. GSU Law is the third Georgia law school to gain Order of the Coif membership. The others are Emory University School of Law and the University of Georgia School of Law. As a Coif chapter, GSU Law may induct the top 10 percent of its graduating class annually into Order of the Coif—as well as 2014 and 2015 graduates retroactively, said GSU Law’s dean, Steven Kaminshine, in a statement. “This recognition is based on, and an enormous tribute to, the scholarly excellence of our faculty,” Kaminshine said. He added that gaining Coif membership was one of the law school’s goals in its 2014-to-2020 strategic plan.
www.times-georgian.com
A conversation with Dr. John Green
Executive director, Carrollton/Carroll County Community Centered Education Collaborative
http://www.times-georgian.com/smartworks/a-conversation-with-dr-john-green/article_45b98736-f769-11e5-8878-23cbbb56e751.html
What is the Community Centered Education Collaborative (CCEC)?
Civic, community and educational leaders of the Carrollton/Carroll County community came together during 2014 to form a partnership to help more students be prepared for college and work. This group of visionary leaders believed that by working together rather than in their respective institutional silos, more students could be successful. The initiative is led by the president of the University of West Georgia, the president of West Georgia Technical College, the superintendents of Carroll County Schools and Carrollton City Schools, the head of school of Oak Mountain Academy and the president of the Carroll Chamber.
www.ibtimes.com
Is College Worth It? These Best-Value Universities Provide Bang For Your Buck
http://www.ibtimes.com/college-worth-it-these-best-value-universities-provide-bang-your-buck-2345419
BY JULIA GLUM
In a day and age where a college degree no longer equals a steady job, deciding whether to pursue higher education can be tricky. The average student attending a four-year, in-state public college pays about $19,500 in tuition each year. Is that an investment you should make? Forbes has made answering that question a little bit easier with its Best Value Colleges 2016 rankings, published online Tuesday. Looking at factors such as tuition, drop-out risk and post-graduation salary, the business magazine came up with a list of institutions “that provide students with the most value for the dollar.” … America’s Best Value Colleges 2016: 8. Georgia Institute of Technology
www.enginerring.com
Georgia Tech to Break Ground on Building with High Sustainability Goals
http://www.engineering.com/BIM/ArticleID/11790/Georgia-Tech-to-Break-Ground-on-Building-with-High-Sustainability-Goals.aspx
Megan Wild
A partnership between Georgia Institute of Technology and the Kendeda Fund, a private foundation in Georgia, will see a unique, living structure come to life in the form of a building. Called the Living Building, it will be an environmentally friendly education and research center located in the southeast portion of the Georgia Tech campus.
www.bizjournals.com
Southern Co. opens innovation center at Georgia Tech
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2016/03/southern-co-opens-innovation-center-at-georgia.html
Urvaksh Karkaria
Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle
Southern Co. (NYSE: SO) has opened its 6,000-square-foot research and development outpost at Georgia Tech. Last April, Atlanta Business Chronicle first reported the Atlanta-based utility holding company’s plans to open the innovation center at Technology Square. The Energy Innovation Center will be a “catalyst for innovation across Southern Co.,” said Michael Britt, vice president of the center. “Part of the DNA of the company is to to invent the next stage of the industry.” The innovation center will help commercialize and bring to market products and services developed by Southern’s companies, which include Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power and Mississippi Power.
www.scientificcomputing.com
Optimized, Parallelized Software Enhances Quantum Chemistry Research
http://www.scientificcomputing.com/articles/2016/03/optimized-parallelized-software-enhances-quantum-chemistry-research
By Linda Barney
Georgia Institute of Technology, known as Georgia Tech, is an Intel Parallel Computing Center (Intel PCC) that focuses on modernizing the performance and functionality of software on advanced HPC systems used in scientific discovery. Georgia Tech developed a new HPC software package, called GTFock, and the SIMINT library to make quantum chemistry and materials simulations run faster on servers and supercomputers using Intel Xeon processors and Intel Xeon Phi coprocessors. These tools, which continue to be improved, provide an increase in processing speed over the best state-of-the-art quantum chemistry codes in existence.
Higher Education News:
www.ajc.com
Failing a college class? Why not drop it?
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-education/failing-a-college-class-why-not-drop-it/nqxNz/
Maureen Downey, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Georgia college instructor shares an interesting occurrence he sees at his college: Rather than withdrawing from a class they are failing during the drop/add period, students let the deadline go by, stay in the course and take the F. Why? Instructor Rick Diguette offers a reason that should interest parents: “If mom and dad are footing the bill, many students would rather fail a class than withdraw. They apparently feel more confident explaining an F as the fault of a professor who made the class way more difficult than it needed to be. And I suspect some parents, given the rather low opinion college and university professors seem to be held in these days, will be inclined to accept such an explanation.”
www.getschooled.blog.myajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Why college students choose to fail a course rather than withdraw
http://getschooled.blog.myajc.com/2016/03/31/why-college-students-choose-to-fail-rather-than-withdraw-from-a-course/
Rick Diguette is a local writer and college instructor. I value his contributions to the AJC Get Schooled blog because he is writing from the classroom so he can tell us how policy impacts students and outcomes. This is a good piece for parents of college-age children. His point — that college students often blame their grades on unreasonable professors — rings true. I have been chatting with local kids back from college for spring break. Whenever they mention struggling in a course, their explanation typically is, “The professor is incredibly hard.” By Rick Diguette
www.chronicle.com
Record-Breaking Numbers of Applicants? Don’t Gloat
http://chronicle.com/article/Record-Breaking-Numbers-of/235930?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=805132b114614443a6e2df19f42196aa&elq=cea68c4501a3436889b2eaa381ff3a5f&elqaid=8515&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=2811
By Eric Hoover
Forget the blooming flowers and chirping birds. Spring’s the time for writing triumphant news releases about how many applications your college received. More than last year! More than ever! The ritual has an air of redundancy. Many selective colleges that just announced unprecedented application totals this year did the same in 2015, 2014, and so on. All the record-breaking tallies have become a broken record. So let’s examine this annual rite more closely. Sure, it might seem like nothing more than numerical boasting of the “size matters” variety, and for some colleges, that’s true. Beyond that, it’s a crucial means of signaling success to constituents on and off the campus, some admissions officials say. For donors, legislators, and anyone else who’s eager to see prestige or progress, application counts are a seductively simple measure. But applications are going up — way up — just about everywhere, so the meaning of any one college’s surge can be murky.
www.diverseeducation.com
Obama’s 2017 Budget Freezes Funding for Most Low-income Student Aid Programs
http://diverseeducation.com/article/82944/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elqTrackId=afa71db0d55a41d3b031e9a723219a53&elq=ca02332c19a847e08b16947a28fc1db0&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=771
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON — Despite high school graduation rates being at a record high of 82.1 percent and with rising numbers of minority students heading to college, President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal 2017 budget freezes funding for most higher education and student aid programs that serve low-income and minority students, according to a budget analysis released Thursday on Capitol Hill. “We are deeply disappointed the budget freezes funding for key foundational education programs,” said Makese Motley, president of the Committee for Education Funding, or CEF, a coalition of education associations that released the analysis titled “Education Matters: Investing in America’s Future.” The analysis found that funding would be frozen for several financial aid and college access programs, such as the federal TRIO and GEAR UP programs, as well as aid for historically Black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, and other minority-serving institutions.
www.diverseeducation.com
Expert: Higher Ed Needs to Embrace Assessments of Student Learning
http://diverseeducation.com/article/82959/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elqTrackId=909d6cdbd82e4e22a660303f478c83d7&elq=ca02332c19a847e08b16947a28fc1db0&elqaid=88&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=771
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
WASHINGTON — Colleges and universities should embrace assessments of student learning in order to prove their worth as college costs rise and the job market remains tough. That was the proposition proffered during a panel discussion Monday at the New America Foundation, a nonprofit think tank. It came by way of Fredrik deBoer, a Limited Term Lecturer at Purdue University—where he recently obtained his Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition—and a writer who deals with higher education policy. “There’s no enterprise in the world where we pay hundreds of millions of dollars and no one asks to see how well we’re doing, except the defense industry,” deBoer said.His message was directed largely at faculty, particularly those who may be resistant to assessments in the world of higher education.
www.insidehighered.com
Creative Solutions in Florida
A two-year college in Florida makes dramatic gains in developmental education course pass rates, even amid a state-mandated change to remedial education and the addition of performance funding.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/04/01/floridas-indian-river-state-college-sees-significant-improvements-remediation?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=f07f910a88-DNU20160401&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-f07f910a88-197515277
By Ashley A. Smith
Florida’s two-year colleges have become more creative in how they handle their lowest-performing students in the wake of a new performance funding formula and a controversial remediation law. In an attempt to save students money, Florida lawmakers three years ago passed a law requiring that traditional high school graduates could no longer be mandated to take a remedial course if they didn’t score well on the state’s standard placement assessment. That placement exam also is no longer a requirement for incoming students, although adult or nontraditional students aren’t exempted from placement tests. To cope, St. Petersburg College created its own measurements in order to recommend whether students needed remediation.