University System News:
www.bizjournals.com
State seeking designers for four university projects totaling $164M
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2017/07/09/state-seeking-designers-for-four-university.html
David Allison
Editor, Atlanta Business Chronicle
The state of Georgia is seeking design firms for four big university construction projects that will cost an estimated $164 million to build. The state on July 7 issued requests for qualifications for firms to design a new 100,000-square-foot Interdisciplinary STEM Research Building at The University of Georgia in Athens; a 157,000-square-foot Center for Engineering & Research at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro; a 155,000-square-foot College of Science and Math Building and campus infrastructure at Augusta University in Augusta; and the renovation of the Carlton Library and construction of a new fine arts building at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton.
www.times-georgian.com
UWG’s School of Nursing grows in number of students, acclaim
Erin McSwain/Times-Georgian
The University of West Georgia’s Tanner Health System School of Nursing is rising in the ranks of the top nursing schools in the nation. UWG’s nursing graduate online program rates 29th among all online nursing programs by the U.S. News World Report. “This is the fourth consecutive year and we have moved up each year,” said UWG Tanner Health System School of Nursing Dean Jenny B. Schuessler, Ph.D., RN, CNE. “I am not for certain but I believe we started at 41, but now we are at 29. The entire graduate program has grown exponentially for the last decade by any metric you use, such as students, fundraising, reputation, scholarship and much more.”
www.albanyherlad.com
‘Campus carry’ gun law goes into effect at Clayton State
By Chelsea Prince
It’s been one week since legislation allowing licensed students, faculty and others to carry concealed handguns on University System of Georgia property took effect at public colleges and universities across the state. The so-called “campus carry” legislation was signed into Georgia law by Gov. Nathan Deal on May 4 and went into effect on July 1. In a letter to the University System of Georgia community dated May 24, published for public view on the university system’s website, Chancellor Steve Wrigley asked for cooperation and patience as Georgia campuses prepare for the change. “I respectfully ask everyone to exercise patience, understanding and respect as we implement it,” wrote Wrigley. “We all share the same goal of ensuring a safe campus environment. We should work together to implement the law as written and thoughtfully address any complications that may arise.” Clayton State University has recently taken steps to prepare at the Morrow campus ahead of the 2018 academic year, holding a question and answer session last week, training public safety staff on enforcement of the law and providing information to students and staff.
www.breitbart.com
Professor: Anti-Campus Carry Arguments Not ‘Based on Logic, History, or Verified Facts’
by AWR HAWKINS
University of West Georgia adjunct professor Jason W. Swindle Sr. says arguments against campus carry are not “based on logic, history, or verified facts.” On the other hand, he suggests that arguments for campus carry are logical and important to the preservation of life. Writing in the LaGrange Daily News, Swindle describes his walk from the classroom to the parking lot on dark, cold nights in January and February. He says, “There have been times I wished I had my .38 revolver inside of my jacket.” He then turned to the newly enacted Georgia campus carry law, expressed his happiness over the law, and pointed out that those who opposed it did not not oppose it with logic. Moreover, he suggested that opponents of the law ignored history and regurgitated a list of worst case campus carry scenarios that have never proven true.
www.lagrangenews.com
Swindle: Gratitude for campus carry
http://www.lagrangenews.com/2017/07/05/swindle-gratitude-for-campus-carry/?sf96195003=1
By FROM STAFF REPORTS
The University of West Georgia gave me an opportunity a few years ago to become an adjunct professor in their Criminology Department. Teaching criminal law to future police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers and students pursuing other careers has been a blessing. My class is always taught during the Spring Semester on Tuesday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. When class ends, it is also completely dark. The walk from class back to my car is well lit, and I have never had a dangerous encounter. But, at the end of those January and February classes, there have been times I wished I had my .38 revolver inside of my jacket. As I write this column, HB 280, better known as “Campus Carry” is about to become law in Georgia. I recently expressed my gratitude for Campus Carry on Facebook because public universities around the state will now become safer. I realize that some people disagree with this new law. I always try my best to “agree to disagree” like a gentleman. I was surprised by some of the responses to my post. To put it lightly, they were not exactly a classy expression of disagreement. While I respect those who disagree with Campus Carry, I cannot recall an argument against it that was based on logic, history or verified facts. There are many assertions that Campus Carry is a bad idea.
www.albanyherald.com
Kwantavious Threadgill participates in internship program at Fort Valley State
Threadgill is one of 18 students participating in the TEAM Success Program
Staff Reports
Threadgill is one of 18 students participating in the TEAM Success Program sponsored by Fort Valley’s Cooperative Extension program this summer. TEAM is an acronym for Teaching, Enlightening, Achieving and Mentoring. Threadgill is a 2017 graduate of Westover High School. For the past five weeks, Threadgill has been shadowing Dougherty County Extension agent Charlie Grace. As a county extension agent, Grace provides various services to youths, seniors, farmers and other members of the community. For the duration of the program, Threadgill will assist Grace in activities and projects in areas such as horticulture, food and nutrition, and financial planning. “The purpose of the TEAM Success program is to educate our high school junior and seniors about the opportunities offered by Fort Valley State University’s College of Agriculture, Family Sciences and Technology,” said Kena Torbert, family life specialist and coordinator of the TEAM Success program.
www.foxnews.com
Georgia Tech’s 3D-printed heart valve models could be a genuine lifesaver
By Luke Dormehl
Long-term, the dream of 3D-printed objects is to use additive manufacturing to be able to bioprint entire functional organs for use in transplant surgeries. While we are not at that point just yet, that does not mean there is not some massively exciting work happening in the field, however.The latest example? Research carried out at Georgia Institute of Technology and the Piedmont Heart Institute in Atlanta, where investigators have created 3D-printed heart valves, designed for use in the planning of lifesaving surgeries.
www.myajc.com
Georgia Tech’s Matthew Jordan ‘superhero’ to diabetic children
By Ken Sugiura – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On a warm July evening in a sunlit gymnasium on a woodsy campground, Matthew Jordan gave encouragement, signed dozens of autographs and shook his booty. All three acts delighted Camp Kudzu, which serves children and teens with whom Jordan shares a disease that has no known cure. The Georgia Tech quarterback was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes almost 10 years ago, and he credits the discipline required to manage the disease for his successes. They include his business-administration degree, earned in 3 ½ years, and his likely status as the Yellow Jackets’ next starting quarterback. That pride wove through a message he gave last Wednesday at the camp, held at Camp Twin Lakes, a nonprofit that provides camping experiences to children with serious illnesses, disabilities and other life challenges.
www.myajc.com
After six years, Georgia Tech’s NCAA probation comes to end
By Ken Sugiura – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 4
The Ramblin’ Wreck will not lead a parade down Techwood Drive. No confetti cannons will be shot in McCamish Pavilion. But Thursday nevertheless will be a noteworthy day — Georgia Tech will complete its six-year sentence on NCAA probation. The day will be the final ounces of penalty paid by the school for two embarrassing infractions, both of which were entirely avoidable. For Tech, not much will change procedurally. But it’s undeniable that, whatever one’s opinion of the NCAA, the penalties that Tech paid had the intended effect — to improve its ability to be compliant with the NCAA rulebook.
www.wsbtv.com
No Swarmin Hornet for water tower after Georgia Tech objects
DAMASCUS, Md. (AP) – The Swarmin’ Hornet of Damascus High School will not fly over the town. The Washington Suburban Sanitation Commission announced Friday that it is abandoning plans to paint the school’s logo, a swarming hornet, on the water tower. The hornet bears a strong resemblance to Georgia Tech’s mascot, the yellow jacket. The commission said objections raised by Georgia Tech have forced community leaders to abandon the plan. As an alternative, the commission will paint a large “D” on the tower in the school’s colors of green and gold.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Executive Compensation at Public Colleges Rises by 5%, With Texas Leading the Way
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/240453
By Dan Bauman
Everything’s bigger in Texas, including the pay of public-college leaders. Two chiefs of college systems and one campus president in Texas each took home $1 million or more during the 2016 fiscal year, according to a Chronicle analysis. In all, seven top executives at public institutions in the state earned more than $700,000 each. No other state had more than four public-college chiefs earn above $700,000. Both William H. McRaven of the University of Texas system and Michael K. Young of Texas A&M University at College Station broke the record for highest base salaries among public-college chief executives. Mr. McRaven earned $1.2 million in base pay in the 2016 fiscal year; Mr. Young, $1 million. …The average pay of public-college leaders, including those who served partial years, was roughly $464,000 in 2016. Among presidents who served the whole year, average pay was slightly more than $521,000. Leaders who served full years at institutions surveyed in both 2015 and 2016 saw a pay increase of 5.2 percent. …No. 32; G.P. ‘Bud’ Peterson, Georgia Institute of Technology; No. 58; Jere W. Morehead, University of Georgia; No. 81; Mark P. Becker, Georgia State University
www.insidehighered.com
Texas Professors’ Campus Carry Suit Thrown Out
By Nick Roll
A federal judge threw out a lawsuit brought by professors at the University of Texas at Austin trying to fight the state law that allows for the widespread concealed carry of handguns on campuses and in university buildings. Part of the professors’ suit was based on First Amendment grounds — that allowing concealed handguns in classrooms would prevent professors from addressing sensitive topics, for fear of reprisal. District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote in his decision that the plaintiffs couldn’t prove their First Amendment claim.
www.wsj.com
College Counselors Go Where the Students Are—Dorms and Starbucks
Concerned about distressed students being overlooked, schools bring mental-health services to more convenient locations
By Melissa Korn
For college students in need of mental-health services, help may be just down the hall from their dorm rooms. Amid reports of long wait times for students in crisis to see counselors and concerns that school officials sometimes learn of problems too late to offer help, some institutions are taking a new tack to identify and treat troubled students: bringing counselors directly to them. Montana State University last summer converted two dorm rooms in a quiet hallway into counseling offices with chairs, couches and desks, allowing staffers to see 200 individuals there over the course of the year and ease pressure on the wait list at the main counseling center. The University of Iowa is adding a second “embedded counselor” in a residence hall this summer. And Virginia Tech now has satellite counseling clinics in locations including at a graduate student center and above a Starbucks in downtown Blacksburg.
www.insidehighered.com
Support Grows for Major Shift in Pell
Bipartisan support builds for expanding Pell Grant eligibility to short-term certificates, although some experts worry about quality control and funding.
By Paul Fain
Bipartisan support is building for federal legislation that would make Pell Grants available to students who are pursuing short-term certificates. Under current law, the major federal grants for low-income students cannot be used to pay for academic programs that are shorter than 600 clock hours or 15 weeks in length. But a bill introduced in January by Senator Rob Portman, an Ohio Republican, and Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, would expand Pell eligibility to shorter job-training programs, with a minimum cutoff of 150 clock hours of instruction time over a period of at least eight weeks. Anthony Carnevale, a research professor and director of Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, said the bill is part of a long-term shift toward using public funds for job-related training.
www.washingtonpost.com
Trump changes higher ed with rollback of Obama-era consumer protections
By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel
Step by step, the Trump administration is walking back policies and rules in higher education that its predecessor said were needed to protect students who rely on federal funding to pursue a degree. Supporters say the Education Department under President Trump is restoring balance after overreach during the Obama administration led to punitive regulations and aggressive policing that threatened the stability of schools and student loan companies. But consumer advocates say they fear Trump is unraveling years of work to ensure borrowers are placed ahead of profits. Through the first half of the year, the department led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has withdrawn, delayed or announced plans to revamp more than a half dozen Obama-era measures involving federal student aid.
www.nytimes.com
DeVos’s Hard Line on New Education Law Surprises States
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/us/politics/devos-federal-education-law-states.html
By ERICA L. GREEN
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who made a career of promoting local control of education, has signaled a surprisingly hard-line approach to carrying out an expansive new federal education law, issuing critical feedback that has rattled state school chiefs and conservative education experts alike. President Barack Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 as the less intrusive successor to the No Child Left Behind law, which was maligned by many in both political parties as punitive and prescriptive. But in the Education Department’s feedback to states about their plans to put the new law into effect, it applied strict interpretations of statutes, required extensive detail and even deemed some state education goals lackluster. In one case, the acting assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, Jason Botel, wrote to the State of Delaware that its long-term goals for student achievement were not “ambitious.”