University System News:
www.wspa.com
Georgia students allowed to carry Tasers, stun guns on public college campuses
By WSPA Staff
Savannah, Ga. (WSAV-TV) – For many of your kids going off to college in the next few weeks, this will be their first time living away from home. And as parents, you aren’t the only ones concerned for their safety. Thanks to a new bill signed by Governor Nathan Deal on July 1st, your kids will have a way to legally protect themselves on campus this fall. Thanks to House Bill 792, don’t be shocked if you see students with stun guns and Tasers on campus this year. Governor Nathan Deal signed the bill into law on July 1, 2016. It allows students to have an electroshock weapon, (i.e. a Taser or a stun gun), on any public college and university campus in the state of Georgia.
USG Institutions:
www.myajccom
Georgia State student’s Facebook post leads to police questioning
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Social media ensnared another person this week. This time it was a Georgia State University student so frustrated with trying to register for fall classes that he took to Facebook early Thursday to express his anger. That led to an encounter with campus police. “I’ve officially lost track of how many times I’ve tried to register for classes. GSU, you should fear people like me. I’m a mentally (expletive)-up white guy, heard of what we do??,” read one post. He followed with a second post, “GSU #ImGonna(expletive)KillYall.” That post has since been deleted from his timeline. Some of the student’s friends chided him on Facebook for the extreme comments, but not before they were seen by concerned parents and students who reported them to campus officials. The student was questioned by Georgia State police, and wrote a statement apologizing for the social media posts.
www.mdjonline.com
Davis hosts first graduation ceremonies as KSU’s interim president
Mary Kate McGowan
KENNESAW — Rounding out his first official month in office, Kennesaw State University Interim President Houston Davis presided over his first KSU graduation ceremony Thursday afternoon. He will have shaken the hands of the university’s expected 1,600 graduates once commencement ceremonies have wrapped up today. About 33,000 students are enrolled at KSU, the third largest university in the state behind the University of Georgia and Georgia State University. After graduates filed into KSU’s Convocation Center Thursday afternoon, Davis addressed the graduates, their families and their friends.
www.chattanoogan.com
Dalton State Remains One Of Most Affordable Colleges In Nation
http://www.chattanoogan.com/2016/7/28/328883/Dalton-State-Remains-One-Of-Most.aspx
by Misty Wheeler, Dalton State College
For the sixth consecutive year, Dalton State has been named one of the most affordable public four-year colleges in the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Dalton State remains on the U.S. Department of Education’s College Affordability and Transparency Center’s list of lowest net price, which is the average cost of college attendance for full-time students after grants and financial aid. The ranking is based on the 2013-2014 academic year.
www.onlineathens.com
UGA’s online courses lift summer enrollment to new record
By LEE SHEARER
Enrollment in University of Georgia’s slate of online summer school courses has more than doubled in two years, helping push the university’s summer school enrollment to a new record this year. Students registered for 7,507 virtual seats in online courses this summer — up from 4,500 in 2015 and 2,965 in 2014, said UGA Vice President for Instruction Rahul Shrivastav. Most of the enrollment is undergraduate — 6,245, vs. 1,262 graduate registrations. Shrivastav sees that as a major factor in pushing summer school enrollment to a record 15,792 this year, up by nearly 10 percent from a year ago.
www.accessdun.com
University of North Georgia cuts ribbon on new residence hall at Dahlonega campus
By AccessWDUN staff
The University of North Georgia (UNG) has opened the doors to its newest residence hall on the Dahlonega Campus. A ribbon cutting was held for the new co-ed, two-building facility known as The Commons Thursday morning. The new facility adds 540 beds to UNG’s residential on-campus housing. Participating in the ribbon-cutting ceremony were UNG President Bonita C. Jacobs; Philip Wilheit of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, Jimmy Scott, program director of Corvias Campus Living; Dr. Janet Marling, UNG vice president for student affairs and enrollment management; and Oreva Aki, president of the Student Government Association at the Dahlonega Campus. With the addition of The Commons, UNG will now serve 2,740 students with on-campus housing – about 39 percent of the student population at the Dahlonega Campus.
www.chronicle.augusta.com
New dorm opens for Augusta University graduate students
By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer
Jarrett Davis looks like any other college student loading up plastic storage bins onto a hand truck to haul them into his new dorm room at Augusta University. But the place where the first-year student at the Medical College of Georgia will now lay his head is much different than the residences he might have found in previous years. Graduate students like Davis began moving in Thursday into the newly opened Elm Hall on the Health Sciences Campus. Oak Hall next door, for undergraduate students, will open Aug. 13. Together they will house more than 700 students, which is a net gain of about 500 beds from the housing the campus previously had, said Mark Allen Poisel, AU’s vice president for enrollment. “Not to mention a quality gain that is very different” from the previous housing, he said. “We had 40-year-old buildings compared to apartments that we designed with specialized students and programming in mind” in the new buildings.
www.bizjournals.com
Georgia Tech’s biz incubator Advanced Technology Development Center gets new chief
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2016/07/20/atdc-gets-new-chief.html
Urvaksh Karkaria
Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle
Jennifer Bonnett has been named general manager of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a business incubator at Georgia Tech. Founded in 1981, the ATDC helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build technology companies by providing coaching, connection and community-building services. The program has helped kick-start more than 140 companies, including Suniva Inc. and SoloHealth Inc. Bonnett is an entrepreneur with more than 25 years experience in the information technology and software development fields. Bonnett, who was acting general manager since October 2014, leads a team of 22 full- and part-time employees. A unit of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), Georgia Tech’s chief outreach and economic development arm, ATDC works with more than 800 technology startup entrepreneurs each year across Georgia. Bonnett will report directly to Chris Downing, the freshly minted director of EI2.
www.mdjonline.com
MDJ Time Capsule: The Week of July 28
Damon Poirier
This week’s Time Capsule looks at a Confederate reunion, desegregation, the Braves, Kennesaw Junior College, the Centennial Olympic Park explosion and the loss of TWA Flight 800.
50 years ago …
Also that day, the Kennesaw Junior College was reported as not being able to use its new campus that fall. The college was scheduled to open with its full complement of courses, but would be housed in temporary facilities. Chancellor George L. Simpson Jr. of the University System of Georgia announced that construction delays had made it impossible to open the new Cobb County college campus on time. A carpenters’ strike was the latest event to hamper completion of the school’s buildings. Earlier in the year, other work stoppages had also halted progress for several weeks.
www.washingtontimes.com
College sex-assault complaints prompt lawsuits from both sides
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/28/colleges-sex-assault-complaints-prompt-lawsuits-fr/
By Bradford Richardson – The Washington Times
An increase in high-dollar settlements and court rulings against universities this year — levied by both accused and accusing students — shows that colleges increasingly are being found at fault for how they handle allegations of sexual assault on campus, legal experts say.
www.bizjournals.com
Energy data startup Urjanet raises $2 million
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2016/07/29/energy-data-startup-urjanet-raises-2-million.html
Urvaksh Karkaria
Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle
An Atlanta energy data startup, backed by retired Southern Co. CEO David Ratcliffe, has raised $2 million and plans to double its workforce over time. Urjanet Inc. provides large enterprises an automated data service to help lower energy costs, reduce carbon footprint and evaluate long-term energy investments. Urjanet, a Georgia Tech spinoff, has developed technology that is able to connect to and provide data from more than 4,000 utilities. Energy is a major expense for large manufacturers and retail chains. Some Urjanet customers spend more than $1 billion annually on electricity. Energy consumption “is a big (line) item on a company’s balance sheet,” Urjanet CEO Sanjoy Malik said. “Whatever can be done to save energy costs drops directly to the bottom line.”
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Why Do So Many College Presidents Call Their Campuses a ‘Family’?
By Gabriel Sandoval
In one of his first messages to the campus after taking over as interim president of Baylor University, a campus whose record on sexual assault made it the object of national outrage, David E. Garland began with three simple words: “Dear Baylor Family.”
Family. On its face, the metaphor is an odd one. Families aren’t made up of tens of thousands of people — a large percentage of whom leave the family every year — linked to each other by little more than a common location. And Mr. Garland is not alone in his use of the word. “Family” pops up in messages from leaders at campuses across the country. … So what gives? “You can thank a PR person for this,” said Gene Grabowksi, a crisis-management expert and a partner at the public-relations company Kglobal. By virtue of their positions, college presidents must communicate in precise, tactful language meant to impart a sense of concern, compassion, and care, said Erin A. Hennessy, vice president of TVP Communications. And such leaders need to rise to an almost impossibly high standard of speech, especially following a national tragedy or an event causing turmoil on campus.
www.chronicle.com
Why Is UVa Under Title IX Investigation Again?
[Updated (7/28/2016, 4:30 p.m.) with a statement from the university.]
by Andy Thomason
The U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights said on Wednesday that the University of Virginia was under investigation for its handling of sexual violence under the federal gender-equity law known as Title IX. The announcement triggered a sense of déjà vu among close watchers of the office’s weekly list of institutions under investigation because the university is no stranger to federal scrutiny on Title IX. In fact, the office, known as OCR, just last fall concluded a bruising Title IX investigation of the university. That investigation was notable for the high-profile wrangling that resulted in its resolution. Heavy hitters from the university, the state, and the federal government negotiated for months over the terms under which the investigation would end. The talks, which were at points tortuous, ended in an 11th-hour agreement between the university and the office that, among other things, a “basis” for a sexually hostile environment had existed on the campus (though disagreement continued to fester). …The circumstances of the investigations are notoriously opaque. But a spokeswoman for the Education Department, Dorie Nolt, told The Washington Post that the new investigation “involves facts that were not covered as part of OCR’s previous investigation at the university.”
www.chronicle.com
The Slow-Motion Downfall of Linda Katehi
With her job on the line and Janet Napolitano on the case, the U. of California at Davis’s chancellor can’t resist a fight
By Jack Stripling and Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz
Picture two locomotives barreling down a single track, heading for a collision as predictable as it is unstoppable. Such is the path of Janet A. Napolitano and Linda P.B. Katehi, the president of the University of California and the chancellor of its Davis campus, respectively.
By August 1 the university is expected to receive the findings of a months-long investigation into whether Ms. Katehi violated system policies related to her family members’ employment at the university, her service on corporate boards, and the hiring of companies to suppress embarrassing internet mentions of the chancellor and the campus. Ms. Napolitano’s decision to broadcast a litany of specific charges against the chancellor, wounding her publicly from the start, is in keeping with what those who have worked with the president describe as her take-no-prisoners approach. The chancellor’s response, which has included fiery press releases from a hired crisis manager and the filing of a formal grievance, surprises few of her colleagues, who describe her as resentful of criticism. The face-off between Ms. Napolitano, a former Arizona governor and U.S. Homeland Security secretary, and Ms. Katehi, who has been placed on administrative leave, poses a profound leadership test for a politician-turned-president who is still relatively unschooled in the culture of academe. And, at its heart, the crisis portends an ugly denouement for Ms. Katehi, a chancellor who seems forever scarred by a years-old scandal that destabilized her administration and hardened her instincts toward self-preservation. The Chronicle interviewed more than 20 administrators, professors, regents, and lawmakers for this article.