University System News:
www.ajc.com
How much are Georgia college students saving on textbooks?
Janel Davis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Efforts to cut college costs are paying off for Georgia students. Students in Georgia’s public University System saved the most money on textbooks last year through an open publishing program known as OpenStax, a Rice University-based publisher. The savings information released this week by Rice, shows that the almost 36,000 University System of Georgia students participating in the textbook program saved more than $3.5 million during the 2015-2016 school year.
www.onlineathens.com
Big shift to free texts in state colleges
By LEE SHEARER
The University System of Georgia, which includes the University of Georgia, is apparently one of the top university systems in a nationwide movement to reduce the amount college students have to pay for textbooks. According to a press release from Rice University, the University System of Georgia is the number-one system in the nation for saving money by using free textbooks developed and distributed by Rice’s OpenStax publishing house. …Some 35,942 University System of Georgia students, out of an enrollment of almost 320,000 students, saved some $3.5 million using OpenStax last year, according to Rice University’s announcement. …University System administrators were unable to give a college-by-college breakdown within the university system on Tuesday. But the $3.5 million is just a fraction of what university system students saved last year with open-source course materials, said Houston Davis, the interim president of Kennesaw State University. Davis was formerly chief academic officer and executive vice chancellor for the university system, and under his watch the system launched an initiative called “Affordable Learning Georgia” to reduce textbook costs. Counting other free sources of textbooks and course materials, University System of Georgia students kept about $16.5 million in their pockets last year, he said.
www.myajc.com
Georgia colleges’ safety plans call for more police, training
By Janel Davis – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The state’s University System plans to hire 51 additional campus police officers this year as part of its efforts to make Georgia’s college campuses safer. The police hires are part of a safety and security report submitted this week to Gov. Nathan Deal. Deal requested the safety plans in May as part of his veto of a “campus carry” bill passed by the state Legislature. Deal requested the reports from the state’s public university and technical college systems be due on Aug. 1, the same day a campus-carry law went into effect in Texas. …Not counting the 51 new officers, the University System currently has 818 full-time, certified officers on its 29 campuses. Georgia State is adding 75 officer over the next five years.
www.macon.com
New training center shows commitment to veterans, official says
http://www.macon.com/news/local/military/article93302162.html
BY WAYNE CRENSHAW
WARNER ROBINS
Several prominent people spoke at Tuesday’s opening of a new veterans training center, but the man who built it may have best summed up what the center is all about. The last person to speak was David Cyr, president of Parrish Construction Group. He told the audience of about 250 people that his company has changed as a result of the project. When they got the contract to build it, he said, company leaders decided to get in the spirit by looking at ways to hire more veterans. Since then, Parrish has hired three veterans, and Cyr said they have all worked out well, even if they didn’t have experience in the job they were given. …One of the vets he hired is Ben Simmons, … “I applied to four different colleges before I found one that gave me what I thought was fair credit for my training in the military,” he said. The center has been named the Veterans Education Career Transition Resource Center, or VECTR. It is 32,000 square feet and includes computer labs and an industrial lab. Its aim is to help veterans, active duty military members and their immediate family make the transition to civilian life. The center will help veterans with education benefits and make sure they get proper credit for training they may have had in the military. It was funded by $10 million from the Georgia General Assembly. Middle Georgia State University owns the building and will offer programs in conjunction with Central Georgia Technical College. “If there is any doubt remaining about how committed the state of Georgia is to our veterans, this facility should erase any of that concern,” said Hank Huckaby, chancellor of the University System of Georgia.
See also:
www.wgxa.tv
New job center for Veterans now open
http://wgxa.tv/news/local/new-job-center-for-veterans-now-open
www.bizjournals.com
Georgia schools offer financial support, guidance to veteran students
Lauren Leising, Contributing Writer
Veterans transitioning out of the military or looking to gain better training for new careers within the military by pursuing graduate degrees in the Atlanta area can benefit from improving financial and community support. Many veterans seek out higher education to prepare them for civilian jobs and for new assignments within the military. Georgia Tech, Emory University and Georgia State University offer veterans opportunities to learn in environments that values their unique experiences.
www.msn.com
The 15 best public colleges in the US
State colleges and universities are usually the most affordable option for in-state students and sometimes for out-of-staters as well. Many now have reciprocal arrangements with nearby states to provide discounted tuition rates to their residents. Due in part to their affordability, public colleges have become increasingly popular—and sometimes harder to get into—in recent years. They have also substantially improved their graduation rates on average, a statistic experts use as a key measure of educational quality…
- Georgia Institute of Technology-Main Campus, GA Overall MONEY rank: 35.
www.thecrier.net
Casual mention leads to research and book on founder of Georgia Tech
http://www.thecrier.net/news/article_6c4d06ea-5847-11e6-b728-17523d971f16.html
By Carol Niemi For The Crier
Fourteen years ago, Lee Dunn overheard her father-in-law mention that his great-grandfather, John Fletcher Hanson, had founded Bibb Manufacturing in Macon in the 1880s. Lee and her husband had never even heard of Hanson. Her father-in-law knew little else about him. For the sake of her sons, she decided to find out more. What she found was more than she or anyone expected and is the subject of her just published book Cracking the Solid South: The Life of John Fletcher Hanson, Father of Georgia Tech. …Hanson was a visionary who saw the value of vertical integration, whereby a company or industry could gain efficiencies by controlling all the stages of its production. For example, he rebuilt Central of Georgia Railway and its subsidiary, the Ocean Steamship Company, to facilitate the movement of Georgia goods from the port of Savannah to New York and Boston. But perhaps his greatest accomplishment was founding the Georgia Institute of Technology, now one of the highest ranked engineering institutions in the world. To move Georgia from a bankrupt agrarian economy to a more competitive one, Hanson believed Georgia needed people who were creators of things, not just fixers of them. Working with Nathaniel Harris, a state legislator from Bibb County, Hanson planted the seed for the creation of Georgia Tech. “He told Harris the Macon Telegraph would back his campaign if he agreed to drop a bill in the hopper for a technical university,” said Dunn. “Harris said he didn’t even know what a technical school was but agreed.”
www.bizjournals.com
UGA offers new Certified Public Manager program
Phil W. Hudson
Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle
The University of Georgia has a new program that will aim to strengthen leadership skills for local and state government managers in the Peach State. The Athens, Ga.-based school’s Carl Vinson Institute of Government is launching a new Certified Public Manager program. The 26-day program will engage participants in 300 hours of study focusing on areas such as self-awareness, collaboration and process improvement. UGA is the sole provider of this CPM program in Georgia.
www.tiftongazette.com
ABAC alumnus to speak at freshman convocation August 9
Special to The Gazette
TIFTON— Buzzing with nervous anticipation, hundreds of freshmen will enter Gressette Gymnasium on Aug. 9 for the 12th annual freshman convocation at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. The 11 a.m. ceremony serves as the opening of the academic year as the students embark on a path to gain a college diploma. Dr. Gail Dillard, interim vice president for Academic Affairs, said convocation is a formal induction ceremony of the freshman class each fall semester into the academic community of ABAC. “The ceremony signals the beginning of a college career,” Dillard said. “The program communicates to students their roles both as people who learn from others and as people who contribute to the vitality of the college.” This year’s convocation speaker is Dr. Thomas Turcotte. A native of Jasper, he graduated from Pickens County High School before entering ABAC in 2008. As a student he was an ABAC Ambassador, a campus assistant, a Welcome Week leader, a math and science tutor, an ASSETS scholar and an active member in multiple clubs. Turcotte was one of the first students at ABAC to take advantage of the junior and senior level classes leading to a bachelor’s degree in biology.
www.gwinnettdailypost.com
Sandra Deal offers practical advice to 150 Georgia Gwinnett graduates
By Keith Farner
DULUTH — With his mother watching on video from Nigeria, Kareem Adekunle repeatedly fought back tears in an emotional speech to fellow graduates. Adekunle originally had a dream to play college basketball, but when that didn’t materialize, he enrolled at Georgia Gwinnett College. And on Tuesday morning, he reflected on his college experience from a stage inside the Infinite Energy Center where about 150 students were honored at a summer graduation ceremony. First Lady Sandra Deal gave the commencement address. Adekunle graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business after the former Providence Christian Academy basketball player didn’t get the offers he expected. …President Stas Preczewski said Adekunle was one of GGC’s first international students because he applied the first year the school could accept students under a Visa program. …Speaking in her trademark homespun delivery, Deal offered practical advice to the new graduates and encouraged them to comb their hair, have a nice haircut and wear a pressed shirt,”not like you slept in it. Brush your teeth and present yourself with a smile and a pleasant look.” Deal said she was glad to hear that student loan debt is not as much of a burden among GGC students as students at other schools. …Deal asked for a show of hands of the soon-to-be graduates who had already landed a job, and then encouraged them to look at each job, no matter how humbling it is, as a stepping stone to learn something. “It’s what you do with what you have learned that’s going to make the difference,” she said. “Be worthy as you go out into the world, whatever job you choose, do it to the best of your ability.”
www.getschooled.blog.myajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Schools celebrate diversity, but force students to leave their cultural knapsacks at the door
Rouhollah Aghasaleh is a postdoctoral researcher in the department of middle and secondary education at Georgia State University and cofounder of Feminist Scholar-Activists. In this piece, Aghasaleh talks about dress codes as enforcement of privilege. His essay comes at a time when black parents are questioning school rules against braids, twists, cornrows or dreadlocks — traditional African-American hairstyles. Parents are asking why these hairstyles are deemed distracting by school dress codes when ponytails or pigtails are not. Why are these styles in violation of school dress codes requiring hair to be “clean and neat”? (Here is a good New York Times op-ed on the unfairness of rules that penalize black students for essentially having “black hair.”) Aghasaleh’s piece goes far deeper than school dress codes and, in quoting an anonymous racist comment at the University of Georgia, it uses a racial slur.
www.yahoo.com
Homeless teen: $184K in donations to be used to create trust
https://www.yahoo.com/news/homeless-teen-184k-donations-used-create-trust-095610530.html
BARNESVILLE, Ga. (AP) — A homeless teenager says a decision regarding $184,000 in donations raised for him through a GoFundMe.com account has been made. Fred Barley said on his Facebook page Monday that his attorney and a lawyer for the Georgia woman who started the page have agreed on establishing a trust that’ll cover Barley’s living expenses and tuition.
www.fox28media.com
Tybee Island may see jellyfish increase this month
http://fox28media.com/news/local/tybee-island-may-see-jellyfish-increase-this-month
BY IAN DEMBLING
Tybee Island, Ga. (WTGS) — After a surprising number of jellyfish stings on Myrtle Beach, some Tybee Island residents are wondering if we are about to see an increase in jellyfish here. Dr. Richard Lee with the Skidaway Institute and Oceanographic Center spent years studying jellyfish. He says the early August weather conditions will most likely bring more of them to Tybee. “All of the conditions I guess are just ideal,” said Lee, “Oxygen, temperature, a lot of different environmental conditions.” He says if you see a lot of jellyfish washed ashore, there’s a good chance there are more in the water nearby.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
‘Coalition’ Leader Wants New Application to Serve the Underdog in Admissions
By Eric Hoover
Three months ago, Annie Reznik agreed to help lead a college-admissions experiment. Since then, the first executive director of the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success has overseen the rollout of a new college-application platform shared by dozens of private and public colleges. Now that it’s up and running, a big question looms: Will the group’s controversial online system help more students, especially those from low-income families, get to college? If Ms. Reznik didn’t think it could, she says, she wouldn’t have taken the job. In a telephone interview this week with The Chronicle, she discussed the coalition’s plans, some criticisms of the group, and what drew her to the admissions field in the first place.
www.insidehighered.com
Ed-Tech Stamp of Approval
Complete College America launches an awards program to recognize technology companies that can deliver on their promises.
ByCarl Straumsheim
Complete College America is getting into the quality-assurance business. The nonprofit, which advocates for remediation reform, performance-based funding and other strategies it argues will help more people graduate from college, on Monday launched the GPS Direct Seal of Approval program. The initiative will evaluate ed-tech vendors and their products, awarding the organization’s seal of approval to technology that is shown to help students get through college. Complete College America is the latest organization to argue for more independent quality assurance of ed-tech vendors. With the market overflowing with products promising to save colleges money and boost student outcomes, many administrators, faculty members and staffers are seeking to verify what works and what doesn’t. …This year, the GPS Direct program will focus on products that target one of Complete College America’s priorities — that students should be presented with clearly defined pathways leading them all the way from course registration to major selection and eventually to graduation. (In this case, GPS is short for Guided Pathways to Success.)
www.pbs.org
Most grads say college is a worthy investment, but support making college tuition free
BY KULSOOM KHAN
Despite the rising price of higher education, many college graduates still believe a college degree is worth the cost. According to a Bankrate survey released Monday, 89 percent of four-year college grads believe that their degree was a good investment. Age was a major factor in the responses. Approximately 21 percent of younger millennials, who attended a four-year college, said college was not worth the cost, which was more than any other age group. Of college graduates 65 or older, however, 97 percent said it was a good investment. The survey also touched on free college tuition, an issue that has been raised in the 2016 presidential campaign.
www.insidehighered.com
Student Debt Correlates With ‘Negative Wealth’
New York Federal Reserve analysis finds that student loan debt contributes both to high levels of negative wealth and to income inequality. But financial aid experts say analysis misses some shadings.
By Andrew Kreighbaum
High levels of student debt are contributing to negative wealth — when a household’s debt is greater than its total assets — and inequality, according to an analysis of household finance data by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Student loans make up nearly half (47 percent) of the total debt of households with between $47,500 and $52,000 in negative wealth. For households with between $12,500 and $46,300 in negative wealth, college loans made up about 40 percent of total debt. In households with the smallest amounts of negative wealth, most debt was held in credit cards. The analysis is based on a 2015 special module on household finance from the Survey of Consumer Expectations, which includes data on respondents’ assets, debt and expectations from 1,300 respondents. About 15 percent of U.S. households have total wealth at or below zero, according to a blog post describing the findings.
www.diverseeducation.com
Colleges Renew STEM Push With Diversity in Mind
by Reginald Stuart
President Obama may have spent much of his time in office as the nation’s chief advocate for getting more students and educators STEM-smart for this century. He’s talked about it, held White House STEM events on it and persuaded Congress to allocate nearly $3 billion in each of the last two federal fiscal years for STEM and STEM education. No miracles yet. With dozens of razzle-dazzle distractions getting young people’s attention compared to their more focused generations before, today’s educators in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, aka STEM studies, are finding there is no stampede to their classrooms, despite the president’s appeals and widespread talk of the importance of STEM studies to the future of the nation.
Diversity outreach
The challenge is spurring new thinking about how to lure today’s early college and college-bound students to give STEM more than a passing gaze. STEM is getting a top-to-bottom overhaul with diversity in mind and aimed at students who have lots of choices of what to do with their adult lives.
www.chronicle.com
Why Isn’t Baylor Under Title IX Investigation? A Records Request Yields Laughably Little
by Andy Thomason
Few institutions have been as sharply criticized for their handling of sexual-assault cases as Baylor University. Media coverage of the football program’s apparent inaction on accusations of sexual assault came to a head in May, when independent investigators ripped Baylor’s response to the charges, and the university removed its president, Kenneth W. Starr, and fired its football coach, Art Briles. The months of disturbing allegations raised an important question: Why was Baylor not among the more than 200 colleges under Title IX investigation by the federal government for its handling of sexual violence? The U.S. Education Department’s deliberations on the issue are notoriously opaque. But in an attempt to answer that question, The Chronicle made an open-records request for the following materials: copies of any emails containing the word “Baylor” that, during a nine-month period ending in late May, were sent to, received by, or copied to 16 members of the Dallas branch of the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights staff and one member of the department’s main office’s staff. The start date of the request coincided with the publication of a Texas Monthly investigation that raised questions about the university’s handling of a sexual-assault case involving a football player. The department responded on Tuesday, turning over 2,203 pages of emails. But they are almost entirely redacted, repeatedly citing the same exemption to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act — that any material that “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings” is protected from public disclosure.