University System News:
www.bizjournals.com
Gov. Deal headed to Ireland for trade, football
Dave Williams
Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle
Gov. Nathan Deal will mix business and football when he travels to Ireland Wednesday for a five-day trade mission. While the governor plans meetings with Irish companies with operations in Georgia, he also will take time out to attend the Georgia Tech-Boston College season-opening football game in Dublin.
www.ajc.com
University of Georgia suspends three after financial audit
Janel Davis, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The University of Georgia has dismissed three employees of the UGA-based Institute of Continuing Legal Education following an audit that found financial improprieties among its staff. The audit noted several instances of personal use of ICLE resources, including the use of ICLE credit cards for things such as hotel upgrades and extended hotel stays, the purchase of tires for personal cars, and allowing an employee’s children to have and use ICLE cell phones. The Institute of Continuing Legal Education is a nonprofit consortium of the state bar and Georgia’s law schools, which provides continuing education classes for attorneys, and University System of Georgia money is used to fund ICLE operations.
www.valdostadailytimes.com
Eric Sheppard sentenced
By Dean Poling
VALDOSTA — A former Valdosta State University student who received national attention for walking on the American flag was sentenced to three years probation this week on an unrelated firearm plea, according to the district attorney. Southern Circuit Judge Harry J. Altman sentenced Eric Sheppard, 23, to three years probation; $32 per month supervision fee; $50 crime lab fee; a $2,000 fine; reimbursement of $1,036 to Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office for expenses in bringing him back from Tampa, Fla., following his arrest there, Assistant Southern District Attorney Brad Shealy said Tuesday. Conditions of Sheppard’s probation include a search clause, 120 hours of community service work, no contact with VSU, Shealy said. Sheppard pleaded guilty May 31 to one count of carrying a weapon in a school safety zone. The case stems from an incident where a gun — a loaded, .45-calber Springfield XD — was found in a book bag on the VSU campus, April 21, 2015. VSU police and the Valdosta Police Department connected the weapon to Sheppard in the days after he had walked across an American flag on campus in April 2015.
www.statesboroherald.com
Georgia Southern student shot, killed; friend faces charges
Police: Alcohol played significant factor in incident
http://www.statesboroherald.com/section/1/article/76042/
A Georgia Southern student was shot and killed early Wednesday morning and a friend faces involuntary manslaughter – felony charges in connection with his death, according to Chief Deputy Jared Akins with the Bulloch County Sheriff’s Office. Bulloch patrol deputies responded to reports of a shooting at 2:20 Wednesday morning to a residence on Planters Lane in Statesboro, where they found 20-year-old Blake Shurling of Tennille, Ga., deceased at the residence. After processing the scene and conducting multiple interviews, Coleton Weatherford, 20, of Planters Lane was taken into custody and charged with involuntary manslaughter – felony, reckless conduct and discharging a firearm while under the influence. In a release, Akins said, Shurling and Weatherford were “well-acquainted” with each other and both were students at Georgia Southern. Akins said alcohol is believed to have played a significant factor in the incident.
www.ajc.com
Students who are black, rural and impoverished overlooked by colleges
Maureen Downey, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Despite the urgency in the United States to produce more college graduates, a large group of students is being overlooked in the effort to get more kids to consider higher education – rural students, especially minorities. There are about 9.7 million rural students in the United States, 26.7 percent of whom are students of color. University of Georgia professor Darris R. Means studies equity and college access and is concerned with the options being presented to these rural teens. “Last fall, I was having a conversation with a group of high school students from a rural part of the Deep South. I asked them about college and university representatives that visited their predominantly black school, and I was shocked by their answers,” he writes in the AJC Get Schooled blog. “I graduated from a suburban high school, and we had college and university representatives visiting on a regular basis. So I was surprised when this group of high school students shared that the only representatives they could recall were from the local technical college and military.
www.getschooled.blog.myajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Black, rural and impoverished: Are colleges ignoring these students?
Darris R. Means is an assistant professor in the University of Georgia College of Education. In the essay below, he examines the lack of outreach by colleges to rural youth, particularly black students. Rural students are underrepresented at many colleges. The 2014 report, “The Effects of Rurality on College Access and Choice,” found students in rural areas were less likely than urban peers to enroll in higher education. When rural students go to college, they are also less likely to attend a four-year school, a private campus or a selective one. I once talked to a counselor in a rural Georgia high school. A newcomer to Georgia, she told me many members of the school staff grew up in the area and attended college nearby. As a result, they tended to direct kids to the same college, figuring perhaps the students, like them, wanted to stay close to home. And they felt parents in the town preferred their children not to leave, according to the counselor. Another issue for rural students is navigating the college admission process. (As a parent of two high school seniors, I can testify to the challenges of the application process. I am in awe of kids who travel this path without a lot of adult guidance.) With that background, here is Dr. Means’ essay:
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Colleges Brace for Impact of Overtime Rule
By Lee Gardner
Colleges are worried about how to cover the costs of overtime pay that dozens of coaches, counselors, and other employees may soon become entitled to under a new federal rule designed to ensure they’re paid equitably. The new law, a change to the Fair Labor Standards Act that takes effect in December, makes more full-time salaried employees eligible for overtime pay. Those employees who earn up to $47,000 per year will be eligible for extra pay for work over 40 hours a week; now only those who earn up to $23,000 per year are. Colleges are scrambling to sort out who on their campuses will become eligible for overtime pay and how to budget for the increased costs. Any employee whose primary responsibility can be defined as teaching is exempt, but determining that can be complicated. Many of the people likely to fall under the new threshold have a lot of contact with students and work long, often sporadic hours: student-life coordinators, residence-hall directors, athletics staff members, admissions counselors. Administrators are grappling with how to effectively serve students if they need to reduce the hours of some employees who help them. Administrators agree that an update to the rule was overdue.
www.washingtonpost.com
‘Toxic environment’ for sons accused of campus sex offenses turns mothers into militants
By Fred Barbash
In the course of a year, Sherry Warner-Seefeld went from high school teacher to activist promoting fairness for students accused of sexual misconduct. Explaining why, for her, means revisiting a night of shock and a phone call she will never forget. She was grading social science papers on a cold, late January evening in Fargo, N.D., when her cellphone rang, she told The Washington Post. It was her son, Caleb Warner, calling to tell her he had heard from a dean at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. A woman with whom he had had a short sexual relationship, the dean told him, had accused him of sexual misconduct, of nonconsensual sex, that she alleged had occurred on the night of Dec. 13, 2009. The charge was filed after the winter break in January 2010, his mother said, after he had “made it clear to her that he was not interested in having a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.” Then out of the blue this notice arrives, with its intimidating legal language. She stopped grading papers and paced the room as she listened to him. His innocent and ultimately childlike trust struck her. He was sure “there was some mix up or confusion”and that “all would soon be cleared up.” That was reinforced by his saying that the dean “told him, ‘don’t worry. An investigation will be done.’” “He calls me,” Warner-Seefeld said, “and tells me this was happening. He says ‘no, I don’t have to have a lawyer.” He’ll just go talk to the woman and that’ll be the end of it. “I teach sociology and I’m thinking, this is very much worse than he’s saying.” It was worse and it would become worse still, about which more later. The experience inspired her to co-found, with other aggrieved mothers, an organization called FACE (Families Advocating for Campus Equality) designed to assist other parents who received similar phone calls and, bewildered and scared, don’t know where to turn.
www.hbr.org
Why Do So Many Women Who Study Engineering Leave the Field?
https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-do-so-many-women-who-study-engineering-leave-the-field
Susan S. Silbey
Engineering is the most male-dominated field in STEM. It may perhaps be the most male-dominated profession in the U.S., with women making up only 13% of the engineering workforce. For decades, to attract more women to the field, engineering educators have focused on curriculum reform (e.g., by promoting girls’ interest in math and science). While these efforts have brought in more women to study engineering, the problem is that many quit during and after school. Focusing solely on education doesn’t address the fact that women tend to leave the profession at a higher rate than men. Women make up 20% of engineering graduates, but it’s been estimated that nearly 40% of women who earn engineering degrees either quit or never enter the profession. Clearly, some elementary and high school reforms are working, but those at the college level are not. So why do women who study engineering leave to pursue careers in other fields? We explored how the culture within engineering—the shared values, beliefs, and norms—might contribute to the under-representation of women in the profession. My colleagues Carroll Seron (UC Irvine), Erin Cech (University of Michigan), Brian Rubineau (McGill), and I conducted a longitudinal study of engineering students to see how “socialization,” or learning about the culture of engineering, affects their future job decisions. We found that female students do as well or better than male students in school—but often point to the hegemonic masculine culture of engineering itself as a reason for leaving.