University System News:
www.theinkwellonline.com
Consolidation Implementation Committee Appointed
https://theinkwellonline.com/2017/02/02/consolidation-implementation-committee-appointed/
Emily Smith, Editor in Chief
The University System of Georgia Chancellor, Dr. Steve Wrigley, has appointed the Armstrong State University – Georgia Southern University Consolidation Implementation Committee. The USG press release stated that the 41-member committee consists of 20 representatives from each university as well as one from Savannah State University. “We have strong representation, including 20 Armstrong faculty, staff, students and administrators,” Armstrong President Linda Bleicken said to the Armstrong community in an email Jan. 26. The release details that the Student Government Association president from each institution will represent their respective student bodies. Armstrong SGA President Dustin Stewart and Georgia Southern SGA President Dylan John will serve as the committee’s student voices.
www.myajc.com
Opposed by sex assault victims, campus rape bill clears Ga. House panel
By Rhonda Cook
A bill that would limit the ability of Georgia’s public colleges to investigate and punish those accused of rape on campus cleared a key House panel Wednesday by unanimous voice vote. Two women who say they were sexually assaulted spoke against the measure at the state Capitol arguing it would discourage victims from coming forward. “This bill will not protect the victims or the accused,” said Grace Starling, who is now in law school. “This is not right. We are scared of this legislation.” Sponsored by state Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who chairs a House panel that oversees higher education funding, the measure would bar schools from pursuing final disciplinary action against a student unless he or she was convicted or pleads no contest to criminal charges. Schools also could not initiate their own investigation unless police had done so.
www.accesswdun.com
Georgia debates bill at odds with US rules on campus assault
By The Associated Press
A panel of Georgia lawmakers has approved a bill requiring college officials and employees to report sexual violence and other crimes to law enforcement, clashing with existing federal guidance laying out specific requirements under civil rights law. The bill also would bar schools from taking any disciplinary steps such as suspending a student accused of a felony until he or she is found guilty or pleads no contest. Administrators could take temporary steps including moving students from dorm rooms or rearranging class schedules. Wednesday’s vote by the House Higher Education Appropriations committee followed more than two hours of testimony from both opponents and supporters of the proposal by Rep. Earl Ehrhart.
www.politics.blog.ajc.com
Georgia Republicans take aim at ‘sanctuary’ campuses as Emory U ducks fight
Greg Bluestein
State Rep. Earl Ehrhart’s proposal to cut off funding to Georgia colleges that declare they will defy President Donald Trump’s immigration policy is moving forward, even after Emory University backed off a decision to declare itself a “sanctuary campus.” Incoming Emory president Claire Sterk told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution such a declaration is only “symbolically important” anyways, warning that it could hurt the private school’s research and education funding in a Trump White House. Ehrhart, one of the longest-serving Republicans in Georgia’s House, introduced legislation to ban colleges from receiving state funds if they aren’t complying with state and federal law after Emory and other colleges flirted with the “sanctuary” declaration. His House Bill 37 was approved Wednesday by the chamber’s Higher Education Committee, and it could reach a full House vote this month. Students and faculty from more than 100 universities have called on their administrators to declare themselves sanctuaries after Trump’s election, partly in hopes of helping “Dreamer” students who were granted a temporary reprieve from the threat of deportation by the Obama administration. …Sterk, who will be installed as Emory’s president next week, seems to have confronted a lesson that other powerful college presidents have already learned: Ehrhart is more than ready to challenge them. He clashed with Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson last year over his school’s handling of the sexual complaint process – and legislation he’s backing this year to curb the powers of school judiciary agencies also could soon reach a House vote. And he urged Kennesaw State University’s leaders to remove an art exhibit on the AIDS epidemic that he called an “insult for the sake of making a political statement.”
www.chronicle.augusta.com
Trump’s travel ban affects some at AU
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2017-02-01/trump-s-travel-ban-affects-some-au#
By Tom Corwin Staff Writer
A temporary ban on travel from seven countries means 14 people at Augusta University with visas from those countries are being advised not to leave the U.S., a university official said. A little-noticed part of President Donald Trump’s executive order, however, could become a burden for others with long-term visas or who are from other countries, said L.D. Newman, the assistant vice president of international initiatives at AU. The ban on travel for 90 days announced last week was met with widespread protests and left officials such asNewman scrambling to gauge the impact on students, faculty members and staffers from those countries: Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. They are people who are here either on student visas, training visas or temporary worker visas, she said. Until the ban is lifted or there is further clarification, the university is urging those affected not to risk leaving the country, said Newman, whose title is the director of the International and Postdoctoral Services Office at AU.
www.ledger-enquirer.com
Columbus leaders tout the city at Georgia Capitol
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/politics-government/article130159214.html
BY CHUCK WILLIAMS
ATLANTA
A group of political and business leaders from Columbus made it to the Georgia Capitol on Wednesday to sell the city, Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce President Brian Anderson said. Led by Anderson and Mayor Teresa Tomlinson, the group from the chamber and city made its way to Gov. Nathan Deal’s office and the House of Representatives and Senate chambers. The group grew to about 100 for an after-hours reception for General Assembly members and state officials at The Depot adjacent to the Capitol. …Prior to the reception, the group also met with new University System of Georgia Chancellor Steve Wrigley. Columbus State President Chris Markwood and members of his leadership team joined that meeting. The reception was sponsored by the Greater Columbus Chamber of Commerce and Columbus State University.
www.orlandosentinel.com
UCF program gives students chance to finish degrees
By Gabrielle RussonContact Reporter
It was a lifeline most UCF students didn’t know existed. There were no reminder emails sent out and no brightly colored advertisements posted in the Student Union. The help came quieter for the college seniors when they were the most desperate. Since 2013, a University of Central Florida grant program has helped about 225 students — a number expected to keep growing in the future — who are 18 or less credits from finishing their degrees but have run out of money. During the students’ education, something unexpected along the way. Maybe they were nontraditional students who took years to finish or they transferred schools, exhausting their financial aid and scholarships. …As part of the UCF Knight Success Grant, the university pays for the rest of their classes with no strings attached. Each student typically can receive anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to $2,500. …The idea for the Knight Success Grant came from Georgia State University — a school that looks similar to UCF on paper. Both educate large numbers of people who are the first in their families to attend college or come from diverse backgrounds and low family income backgrounds. In 2011, the GSU president Mark Becker and his wife, Laura Voisinet, donated $40,000 with the goal of doing something innovative to help the school. “He wanted us to do something different with it, so to speak,” said Allison Calhoun-Brown, a GSU associate vice president. …Similar to UCF, GSU provides up to $2,500 per student, although most typically receive about $900. GSU pays for the program with private donations and money generated from student fees.
www.athensceo.com
UGA Joins Initiative to Advance Biotech Manufacturing in the U.S.
Staff Report From Athens CEO
The University of Georgia is partnering in a biopharmaceutical innovation institute that aims to boost market production of cell-based therapies and develop a skilled workforce trained for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry. The new public-private partnership, called the National Institute for Innovation of Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, or NIIMBL, will focus its efforts on driving down the cost and risks associated with manufacturing advanced cell and gene therapies for biopharmaceutical production. Steven Stice, director of the UGA’s Regenerative Bioscience Center, is the UGA lead in the partnership, which is coordinated by the University of Delaware.
www.onlineathens.com
UGA analysts: Georgia economy will outpace U.S. in 2017, and Athens will outpace state
By Lee Shearer
Georgia’s economic growth will outperform the nation’s, and growth in Athens will outperform the state average, analysts from the University of Georgia told a crowd of more than 500 on Wednesday. “The 2017 outlook for the state of Georgia is quite good,” said Benjamin Ayers, dean of UGA’s Terry College of Business. Jobs will be plentiful, income will rise, and housing prices have recovered to pre-recession levels, if you don’t take inflation into account, said Ayers and UGA economic analyst Jeff Humphreys. But the risk of recession has grown — about a 35 percent chance, up from 25 percent a year ago, Ayers said.
www.coastalfamily.com
Feb. 1 – Deal announces Georgia’s Older Adults Cabinet
Dublin Business Journal Staff Report
Gov. Nathan Deal this week announced the creation of Georgia’s Older Adults Cabinet, a committee working to enhance the state’s capacity to serve older adults. The Older Adults Cabinet seeks to identify ways for Georgia to improve the well-being of its older residents by bringing together state agency heads whose work supports older Georgians, as well as stakeholders in the business, philanthropic and education communities.
“Georgia has one of the fastest-growing populations of older adults in the country — a statistic we expect to continue to rise as baby boomers reach the age of retirement,” said Deal. “The members of this cabinet will be instrumental in examining issues that affect elderly Georgians and ensuring we have the infrastructure to meet their needs and the needs of their caregivers. I am confident that the Older Adults Cabinet will bring together leaders from across the state to effectively address the issues affecting older individuals and families in Georgia.” …The cabinet comprises an executive committee made up of leaders representing DHS, Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, Community Affairs, Community Health, Public Health, Transportation, Early Care and Learning, the Technical College System of Georgia, Family and Children Services and Bureau of Investigation agencies and a larger committee that includes partners from the University System of Georgia, providers of health care and community-based nutrition programs, advocacy organizations and members of the Georgia General Assembly.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
- of California Will Pay Student $1.15 Million to Settle Sexual-Assault Suit
by Lindsay McKenzie
The University of California system has agreed to pay $1.15 million to a former student on the Santa Cruz campus who said that she had been raped by a professor, in one of the largest individual settlements of a campus sexual-assault case. Luz Portillo, the former student, told BuzzFeed News that she was raped by the professor in June 2015, the day before her graduation. She said she immediately reported the assault to the campus office that handles Title IX violations and to the police. Ms. Portillo said that she had decided to bring the claim against the university because the institution knew about previous predatory behavior by the professor but failed to act on that information to prevent future incidents of sexual assault, including her own. The faculty member, Hector Perla Jr., an assistant professor of Latin American studies, resigned in June of last year.
www.sub-sentinel.com
Bill would require Florida universities to charge flat rate tuition
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/fl-college-block-tuition-20170128-story.html
By Scott TravisContact Reporter
Sun Sentinel
The answer to college affordability in Florida may be one-price-fits-all. The state Legislature is considering a bill that would have full-time students pay a flat rate, no matter if they took 12 hours or 18 hours. Right now, state law allows, but does not require, universities to charge block tuition. So far, none have done that although several have been developing proposals, including the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. A bill sponsored by State Sen. Bill Galvano would require each university to develop its own proposal. He said he would prefer universities charge for only 12 hours. But officials at FAU said charging for only 12 credit hours could lead to millions in lost revenue. They have an initial proposal that would charge for 15 hours.
www.chronicle.com
An ‘America First’ Presidency Clashes With Higher Ed’s Worldview
By Karin Fischer
The American campus today is global. Colleges send their students abroad and welcome the best and brightest from around the world, some one million last year, to their classrooms. Research is international, and universities work with partners around the world to create new programs, degrees, and even institutions. More than half of all colleges include internationalization among their top strategic priorities. But those globalist attitudes put higher education at odds with the nationalist policies of the new Trump administration. Colleges that have prided themselves on working across borders of country and culture now find themselves dealing with a president who campaigned on a pledge to build a wall to keep out foreigners. As higher education was looking outward, President Trump and his supporters embraced a mantra of “America first.” Last Friday brought the clearest example of that divide when, just a week into his presidency, Mr. Trump signed an executive order imposing a travel ban on all visitors, including students and those with valid visas, from seven largely Muslim countries.
www.chronicle.com
What Trump’s Supreme Court Choice Might Mean for Higher Ed
By Eric Hoover
What happens on college campuses often depends on what men and women in black robes decide. So anyone with a stake in higher education had good reason to tune in on Tuesday night and see who President Trump would choose to fill the U.S. Supreme Court’s long-empty seat. The answer: Neil M. Gorsuch, a conservative federal appellate judge who, if confirmed by the Senate, just might help shape academe for decades to come. …Predicting how a justice will vote can be a tricky exercise. Societal circumstances change, and so, too, might the gears of a justice’s mind. And nobody can ever know for sure which cases the Supreme Court might accept, or what the mix of justices might be months or years from now. Still, a deep-red conservative is poised to join a divided court that will continue to weigh many of the same questions that colleges are grappling with. Perhaps none is thornier than how best to recognize and support many facets of diversity in a way that’s fair to all. What happens on a diverse campus when one student’s rights seem to infringe on another’s? Often lawsuits arise.