University System News:
www.usnews.com
2017 Best Colleges Preview: Top 10 Public Universities
Interested in exploring the rankings of these schools and others? Visit usnews.com on Sept. 13.
By U.S. News Staff
Applying to college is a journey that involves finding the right school, submitting applications and then – if you’re lucky – choosing among the acceptance letters and financial aid awards to find that place you’ll call home for the next few years. To steer you in the right direction, U.S. News surveys colleges and universities each year and ranks nearly 1,400 of them in different categories according to our methodology. Here, we offer a sneak peek of the 2017 Best Colleges rankings. These 10 schools – listed alphabetically below – are the highest-ranking Top Public Schools among those in the National Universities category. Georgia Institute of Technology
www.getschoold.blog.myajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Is HOPE Scholarship lifting middle-class students while leaving poor kids behind?
Georgia has thousands of low-income students who cannot afford college because they don’t qualify for the HOPE Scholarship or its more lucrative offspring, the Zell Miller Scholarship. HOPE pays for 70 to 85 percent of tuition depending on which public campus students attend, while Zell Miller covers full tuition. Confronted with this problem, many Georgians insist the solution is prodding low-income kids to work harder in high school so they can win one of these merit scholarships. Middle-class parents point out they insisted their kids had to make at least a 3.0 GPA in high school to earn HOPE. (It takes a 3.7 GPA to win a Zell Miller Scholarship and at least a 26 on the ACT and 1,200 on the SAT.) Policy experts offer a different tack: Georgia ought to give out more financial aid based on student need rather than academics. And they cite an economic rationale: The state of Georgia needs a highly educated workforce to thrive and that means producing more first-generation college graduates.
www.11alive.com
Georgia Tech works to eliminate suicide on campus
http://www.11alive.com/news/georgia-tech-adopts-zero-suicide-approach/314973798
Jennifer Leslie, WXIA
Georgia Tech has adopted a “zero suicide” approach to try to prevent suicide on campus. It’s one of the first of its kind in the nation, according to Roland Behm, Chair of the Georgia Chapter of American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. To mark National Suicide Prevention Week, Behm wrote and shared the following article with 11Alive News:
www.11alive.com
ATL transgender man fights a judge’s denial to change name
Andy Pierrotti, WXIA
ATLANTA – A civil rights organization filed a brief today with the Georgia Court of Appeals to appeal a lower court’s decision to deny a transgender man the right to change his name. In June, Andrew Baumert filed a petition in Columbia County Superior Court to legally change his name from Delphine to Andrew. Baumert a graduate student at Georgia State University in Atlanta, is originally from Augusta.
www.ajc.com
Ga. Southern investigates alleged racial attacks against cheerleaders
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/ga-southern-investigates-alleged-racial-attacks-ag/nsTWD/
Raisa Habersham, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Southern University is investigating claims its students attacked Savannah State University cheerleaders with bottles and racial slurs during Saturday’s game in Statesboro. One of the cheerleaders posted about the incident on Facebook. “Key administrators from Georgia Southern University and Savannah State University discussed the offensive behavior shown by fans at Saturday’s game,” Georgia Southern spokeswoman Jennifer Wise told the Savannah Morning News. “A full investigation is currently underway.”
www.onlineathens.com
UGA faculty want to push back fall start day, but how far?
By LEE SHEARER
The University of Georgia’s University Council will have not one but two proposals to change next year’s academic calendar on the agenda when the council meets next, on Sept. 21. The council’s educational affairs committee proposed pushing back the first day of classes from Aug. 10, as it’s now set, to Aug. 14. A separate proposal, set forth in an petition signed by some UGA faculty members, would push the first day of classes back to Aug. 17, and would also change the first day of Spring 2018 classes from Jan. 4 to Jan. 11.
www.washingtonpost.com
The coming era of consolidation among colleges and universities
By Jeffrey J. Selingo
There are some 4,700 degree-granting colleges and universities in the United States. The number of campuses has grown by 9 percent since 2007, even as overall enrollment has fallen from a peak in 2010. In most sectors of the economy, when demand drops for a product consolidation usually follows — businesses either close or merge with competitors. But higher education seems immune to such economic pressures, mostly because it’s a heavily regulated and subsidized industry … Just about five institutions, on average, have closed in recent years, according to Moody’s Investors Service. Many of those closures have occurred among for-profit colleges, which have come under government scrutiny for the high debt and lackluster employment outcomes of their graduates … Selingo is the author of There Is Life After College, a book about how today’s graduates launch into their careers, and the best-selling College (Un)Bound. He is … a visiting scholar at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities.
www.athensceo.com
UGA and GT Alumni Launch “Social Display Network” Startup in Athens
Staff Report From Athens CEO
Alumni from UGA and GT have teamed up to create the first social display network. This entrepreneurial team is reinventing the community bulletin board, by making it digital, and social. With Instagram feeds, simple slideshows, and text message integration, their FrontDor device, makes it possible to turn any TV into a social bulletin board. Athens FrontDor will be the first Community Network by FrontDor. The purpose of the network is to showcase the community, and keep locals in-the-loop, on the places to go and things to do nearby.
www.savannahnow.com
SSU professor assists in sea turtle hatching
http://savannahnow.com/news-your-good-news/2016-09-08/ssu-professor-assists-sea-turtle-hatching
By Savannah Morning News
Savannah State University’s Christopher Hintz, associate professor of marine sciences, led a team of volunteers with the Tybee Sea Turtle Project this summer. The Tybee Sea Turtle Project is a volunteer organization permitted by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to monitor and assist nesting sea turtles on Tybee, a developed barrier island. Every day in the summer, volunteers walk the three-mile long beach looking for turtle crawls, evidence of a sea turtle nest. At the end of the incubation period, the volunteers sit by the nests, particularly in highly impacted areas of Tybee Island, to ensure the hatching turtles are oriented properly and make it to the ocean. Hintz participates regularly in the project’s activities and outreach opportunities. The volunteers have assisted in the release of more than 40 hatchling sea turtles that had not emerged by day five and were at risk of perishing in the nest. Nationwide, sea turtle nests are at a record high for the 2016 season, including record numbers in the states of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina.
www.politics.blog.ajc.com
Newt Gingrich to host town hall at Kennesaw State University next week
Tamar Hallerman
Top Donald Trump surrogate and onetime Georgia lawmaker Newt Gingrich will host a town hall at Kennesaw State University next week, the Trump campaign announced. The event will be held at the university’s Carmichael Student Center starting at noon on Monday, Sept. 12. Tickets and more info about the town hall can be found here. The campaign said Gingrich will focus on the election and “the most pressing issues facing America.” The event in a way represents a return to Gingrich’s roots. He spent early part of his career teaching at the University of West Georgia in the 1970s before moving into politics full time.
www.mdjonline.com
Gingrich to campaign for Trump at Kennesaw State University on Monday
From staff reports
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is scheduled to host a town hall meeting at Kennesaw State University at noon on Monday to discuss the upcoming presidential election and other issues.
Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
‘You Called Me a Liar’
U of Richmond student goes public with her grievances about the way the university handled a sexual assault she reported — and she is joined by many in criticizing the university’s response to her story.
ByJake New
In an escalating war of words, a student has filed a federal complaint against the University of Richmond and gone public with her allegations that officials mishandled her sexual assault complaint against a university athlete. Earlier this week, Cecilia Carreras, who said she was raped by the athlete in an off-campus house last year, published an essay on The Huffington Post’s contributor network detailing her experiences reporting the assault to campus officials. In response, the university sent a campuswide email, saying that many of the student’s “assertions of fact are inaccurate and do not reflect the manner in which reports of sexual misconduct have been investigated and adjudicated at the university.” Carreras responded to the email on Thursday with another, much longer Huffington Post essay that included several screen captures of what she said were emails with administrators and text messages from the athlete that backed her version of events. “Richmond, all I wanted was for you to say sorry,” she wrote. “But instead, you called me a liar.”
www.jbhe.com
Spelman College President Reports on Efforts to Combat Sexual Assault
https://www.jbhe.com/2016/09/spelman-college-president-reports-on-efforts-to-combat-sexual-assault/
Last May, allegations that a Spelman College student was gang raped by four students from nearby Morehouse College were published on an anonymous Twitter account. The allegations became front-page news across the country and prompted both colleges to examine their policies concerning sexual assault. Spelman College for women and Morehouse College for men, are both historically Black educational institutions. At the beginning of the current academic year, Spelman College President Mary Schmidt Campbell announced measures that the campus has taken to address the issue of sexual assault. The president stated that “the most significant change relates to reporting protocols for sexual violence; students are now encouraged to report incidences of sexual violence to the Office of the Dean of Students, as opposed to the Office of Public Safety, to better facilitate access to the wide array of support services they may want or need. This shift enhances our survivor-centered response, ensuring students receive immediate and comprehensive support. This support will include discussing all of their options with them, including counseling or medical treatment and filing a complaint with the appropriate campus administrative body or local law enforcement.”