University System News:
www.money.cnn.com
The skill employers really want from new recruits
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/23/pf/jobs/jobs-millennials-work-resilience-grit/
by Alanna Petroff
Managers are reporting a rising number of cases of newly hired grads and young workers becoming easily discouraged in the office. When things get tough, they sometimes even call their parents for advice. Recruitment experts say young workers often lack the ability to recover from setbacks and persist in the face of challenges. Some call it grit, others resilience … Some universities have already recognized the scale of the problem, and are changing tack as a result. The Georgia Institute of Technology overhauled its career programs this year. “We are teaching students not just how to get work, but how work works,” said Michelle Tullier, executive director at the institute’s career center. “It’s actually smart these days not to plan too rigidly,” she told CNNMoney. “If we can provide career education to help them see that life is much more happenstance than planned, that should make setbacks easier to deal with.”
www.macon.com
CTAE seeds planted by Georgia leaders a century ago
http://www.macon.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article104205601.html
BY MATTHEW GAMBILL
Special to The Telegraph
Anybody who works in the field of career, technical and agricultural education (CTAE) these days knows the name Carl D. Perkins. Perkins was a long-serving Kentucky congressman whose name is on the current federal law that funds and governs vocational and technical education in America. He rightly gets credit for leading the effort to modernize the nation’s technical education system about 30 years ago. But long before Perkins pushed his law through Congress in 1984, two Georgia lawmakers pioneered the field and seeded a movement that will mark its 100th anniversary next year. And as we approach that important centennial, it seems important to recall and salute the Georgians who got this ball rolling in the first place. Hoke Smith was a lawyer and one-time publisher of The Atlanta Journal who went on to serve as governor and U.S. senator. Dudley M. Hughes was a prominent Georgia agriculture leader who served first in the state Senate and then, from 1909 to 1918, in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he represented huge swaths of middle and south Georgia. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed Sen. Smith and Rep. Hughes to a special commission to study whether the federal government should get involved in funding vocational education. As the commission finished its work, Smith and Hughes teamed up to sponsor and ultimately pass the National Vocational Education Act of 1917. …From high school, these young students obviously scattered in dozens if not hundreds of different directions. Some are already in the labor force and some are in college, including the state’s technical schools and institutions of the University System of Georgia. Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture includes a good many students who cut their teeth in CTAE architecture and drafting classes at Georgia’s high schools; likewise, the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia actively recruits high schoolers who show an interest in business and assume leadership roles in their Future Business Leaders of America organizations. Truth is, if you’ve been cared for by a nurse, hired an architect to design your home, had your HVAC system serviced, or taken your computer in for repair, there’s a good chance you’re working with somebody who got the first taste of their future career in a CTAE classroom. Next time that happens, I hope you’ll tip your hat to Sen. Smith and Rep. Hughes. The seeds they planted a century ago are still bearing fruit for our state and our country.
www.ajc.com
Tech great Taz Anderson dies at 77
http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/college/tech-great-taz-anderson-dies-at-77/nsfkf/
Ken Sugiura, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of Georgia Tech’s all-time greats who later became a most successful entrepreneur and faithful alumnus, Taz Anderson died Monday. He was 77. Anderson was a member of the Tech and Georgia sports halls of fame. At Tech, he played fullback and end and lettered three times. He was named All-SEC in 1959. He later played in 62 NFL games and was a member of the inaugural Falcons team in 1966. …He led the effort to place a statue of his beloved coach, Bobby Dodd, outside the stadium that bears his name, a project completed in 2012. Two decades earlier, he was on a committee that re-named the stadium in Dodd’s honor. Anderson also served on the Tech athletic association board for 10 years and helped with fund-raising for the department for dozens of years.
www.radiotvtalk.blog.ajc.com
‘The Real’ surprises Hampton mom with $10,000 for college
http://radiotvtalk.blog.ajc.com/2016/09/26/the-real-surprises-hampton-mom-with-10000/
Rodney Ho
Syndicated talk show “The Real” today surprised Hampton single mom Micah Glover with $10,000 to help her finish college. Glover, 23, came on the show thinking she was getting a simple “mommy makeover.” She did – but the bonus came as a complete surprise. The pre-taped episode, shot in Los Angeles, airs Monday morning at 11 a.m. locally on Fox 5 (WAGA-TV). …Glover originally attended Savannah State University, then transferred to the University of West Georgia. Then she got pregnant and had a son two years ago. She struggled to take classes but it was too much. Her grades fell short and she lost her financial aid. She said the $10,000 should help her get closer to finishing school. She is hoping to graduate by May, 2018.
www.americustimesrecorder.com
GSW, City roll out new bike share program
http://www.americustimesrecorder.com/2016/09/26/gsw-city-roll-out-new-bike-share-program/
By Beth Alston
AMERICUS — Thanks to a generous donation of 10 bikes from the City of Americus, Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) rolled out a new bike share program for students through the university’s Fitness Center. A ceremonial “bike transfer” from the City of Americus to GSW took place at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Marshall Student Center Patio. “Georgia Southwestern is very proud to partner with the City of Americus on the university’s Bike Share Program,” said GSW Interim President Charles Patterson, Ph.D., at the conclusion of the event. “We’ve got 10 bikes on campus now that are on loan from the city, and our students — place-bound or not — will be able to use them to visit downtown and other retail in the area. We thank the City of Americus and our Georgia Southwestern State University staff for making this happen.”
www.theatlantic.com
Virtual Classrooms Can Be as Unequal as Real Ones
Online courses are praised for their potential to make education accessible to everyone—but they’re leaving students behind.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/inequaity-in-the-virtual-classroom/501311/
KAVEH WADDELL
When massive open online courses, or MOOCs, exploded in popularity in the early 2010s, educators were particularly excited about the courses’ potential to give disadvantaged students equal access to a quality education. But a bevy of recent research has shown that online learning has largely fallen short of that goal. The same factors that have held back low-income or minority students in physical classrooms also plague virtual ones … Parents’ outsize roles in their children’s learning patterns are apparent in even younger kids, too. Betsy DiSalvo, a professor and researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology, studied families with elementary- and middle-school children. She found that parents in lower-income families were less likely to use the internet to find learning resources for their kids, or to find information about how to help them with school. Even though they had access to the internet, parents in lower-income families didn’t have the digital skills to find the best online resources, DiSalvo found.
www.wtoc.com
Not enough cyber security experts in Atlanta, U.S. to fight cyber war
By Natalie Rubino
Hackers gained access to 500 million Yahoo accounts. Yahoo believes it was targeted by a state-sponsored agency. The breach is concerning even the most experienced cyber security experts. A Georgia Tech professor says Atlanta and the rest of the country do not have the experts needed to combat cyber attacks. Dr. Mustaque Ahamad has been teaching computer technology at Georgia Tech for more than 30 years. He says everywhere around the world, hackers are working to access our information. Dr. Ahamad estimates the country is short at least two million cyber security professionals. He says that’s partially because of people’s growing dependency on the internet … Because Atlanta is home to hundreds of large corporations, it is a vulnerable cyber security target. Georgia Tech does offer both an undergraduate and masters degree in cyber security, however Dr. Ahamad says other universities need to start doing the same. (w/video)
www.onlineathens.com
Georgia Center of Innovation appoints new executive director for state agency
By STAFF REPORTS
A new executive director was recently appointed for the Georgia Centers of Innovation, a division of the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Steve Justice was moved into the position from his previous role as director of the Center of Innovation for Aerospace, where he was responsible for programs to accelerate the growth of Georgia aerospace companies. The center serves as a consultant to Georgia businesses of all sizes at no charge … Justice, a native of Atlanta, lives in Fayette County. He graduated high school from Woodward Academy and attended college at Georgia Tech … Justice is a member of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Aerospace Advisory Council and the Georgia Southern University College of Engineering and Information Technology Advisory Council.
www.chronicle.augusta.com
MCG students research dialysis maladies
By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer
A previously unknown high rate of syphilis in dialysis patients and an increased risk of death from shingles in those same patients are among the findings students at Medical College of Georgia presented at Augusta University on Monday. The second-year medical students took part in the eighth annual Medical Scholars Research Day. After completing their first year of medical school, 120 of the 200 students chose to spend their last free summer during medical school doing research. The high percentage – 60 percent – is not unusual for the program, and the research results are also impressive, Michael Diamond, AU senior vice president for research, said as he wandered among the posters presenting the research. “They do great, as evidenced by these presentations,” he said. Diamond also did research in the summer after his first year of medical school, though there wasn’t a formal program like the one MCG has. It helped him to know that was the career path for him, but it can also be valuable for those who go on to be clinicians to evaluate research as it comes out and decide whether it is useful for their practice, Diamond said.
Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
In Transitional Year, SAT Scores Drop on Old Test
By Scott Jaschik
The College Board today announces average scores on the SAT for last year’s high school graduating class — and such announcements are typically a time of debate over the state of education, the value of standardized testing, educational inequities and more. This year’s results are somewhat difficult to analyze, because some students took the old version of the SAT and others the new. The College Board reported declines in the average scores from the class, but those averages are for those who took the old SAT. The ACT also reported declines this year, noting that more students are taking the test. Both the College Board and the ACT are pursuing more contracts with states to require high school seniors to take one test or the other, and that means more test takers may not in fact be prepared for or preparing for college.
www.chronicle.com
Economists Offer Unconventional Wisdom on Student-Loan ‘Crisis’
By Beckie Supiano
Student debt is a crisis, holding back the economy and hobbling a generation. Wonder why today’s young adults aren’t getting married, having children, buying homes, starting businesses, saving the world? Look no further, the culprit is obvious. That’s the conventional wisdom, and it’s taken for granted in many news articles and plenty of policy prescriptions. That narrative, however, is misguided, according to two new books. What’s worse, they argue, the crisis talk precludes a closer examination of the student-loan system’s real problems and hinders efforts to help the borrowers who are struggling the most. To push back on that understanding of debt, the books offer data, evidence, context. But will any of that change people’s minds? After all, the assumption that the country is in a student-debt crisis is everywhere.
www.texastribune.org
Starr: Sexual Assault at Baylor Not “an Endemic Problem”
https://www.texastribune.org/2016/09/24/starr-sexual-assault-baylor-not-endemic-problem/
by Jim Malewitz
Former Baylor University President Ken Starr pushed back Saturday against the notion that the school — or its athletic department — has systemic problems handling sexual assault investigations, and called for release of more details of the independent investigation that concluded otherwise. “I’m going to resist the issue, or the characterization, that there was an endemic problem,” the university’s former president and chancellor told Texas Tribune CEO Evan Smith at the Texas Tribune Festival … Starr called for the release of more details of a university commissioned report, whose executive summary released this summer, concluded that Baylor had “failed to consistently support” students who reported sexual assault and “failed to take action to identify and eliminate a potentially hostile environment, prevent its recurrence, or address its effects for individual complainants or the broader campus community.”
www.chronicle.com
A University Draws Fire for Its Communications to Students About Suicidal Thoughts
http://www.chronicle.com/article/A-University-Draws-Fire-for/237897
By Katherine Mangan
Northern Michigan University on Friday publicly responded to concerns about a practice, which it says it has discontinued, of warning students that they could face disciplinary action if they discuss suicidal thoughts with other students. Until this year, the university was sending emails to some severely depressed students that cautioned them against speaking about “suicidal or self-destructive thoughts” to other students. The concern, the emails suggested, was that doing so could overwhelm those students and interfere with their studies. But to some of those who received the emails, the warning felt like an ill-timed gag order …The university has set up a mental-health task force to examine policies “and provide better communication for all involved,” Mr. Hall said.