University System News:
www.chronicle.augusta.com
MCG makes portable ultrasound training part of medical education
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2017-07-19/mcg-makes-portable-ultrasound-training-part-medical-education
By Tom Corwin
Staff Writer
Medical College of Georgia student Kristine Martin squirted gel onto Judy Waldrop’s bare midsection and then positioned the transducer of the portable ultrasound on her skin. …As a third-year medical student at MCG at Augusta University, Martin is just beginning her rotation through various clinics and is starting off in Family Medicine. She is also among the first MCG students to take a portable ultrasound with her into the clinic. Integrating ultrasound technology into medical student education has been evolving over the last several years and this latest step to make it part of the clinical rotations probably puts MCG among the leaders in that regard, said Dr. Paul Wallach, vice dean for academic affairs at MCG. Out of 139 U.S. and Canadian medical schools, 81 have ultrasound education in the first year and 61 include it in the second year but only 51 have it as part of the third year curriculum, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges. MCG has begun to make what Wallach calls “point of care ultrasound” part of residency training as well. For instance, those entering a residency at MCG must demonstrate that they can use ultrasound to place a central IV line correctly before they are allowed to put one in a patient, he said.
www.phys.org
Research shows that just 36 percent of new science teachers are teaching only in their trained subject
https://phys.org/news/2017-07-percent-science-teachers-subject.html?utm_source=eGaMorning&utm_campaign=5ab0cb72b5-eGaMorning-7_20_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_54a77f93dd-5ab0cb72b5-86731974&mc_cid=5ab0cb72b5&mc_eid=32a9bd3c56
by Andrea Christensen
Research shows that just 36 percent of new science teachers are teaching only in their trained subject. Ryan Nixon spent four years studying matter, energy and the universe—and learning how to teach those and other physics-related concepts to teens. In his first year as an eighth-grade teacher, he hit a roadblock. He was supposed to teach his students geology: something he hadn’t learned a thing about since, well, eighth grade. “As a new teacher, you don’t know what you’re doing, but if you let teenagers know, that’s not a good thing,” he said. Nixon, now a Brigham Young University assistant professor of science education, teamed with colleagues from the University of Georgia to explore both the rates and predictors of secondary science teachers who were assigned classes out of field, focusing on teachers in their first five years on the job. Among their findings: 40 percent of these new teachers taught mostly or entirely out of field, and 64 percent had at least one out of field course in their first five years.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Former Top Official in Obama’s Education Dept. Is Named President of ACE
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Former-Top-Official-in/240698?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=94a7c7d51e1f40b7924734f7dd2987f5&elq=a5dd0f7a6fa44031bcb545a92ee5448d&elqaid=14801&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6261
By Goldie Blumenstyk
Ted Mitchell, a top U.S. Department of Education official during the Obama administration and an architect of several of the college and student-loan accountability regulations the Trump administration is now trying to dismantle, was named on Thursday as the new president of the American Council on Education. Mr. Mitchell said countering the “narrative that college doesn’t matter anymore for individuals and society” would be among his highest priorities for the organization, which represents about 1,800 college presidents on national policy issues. Other core issues will be advocacy for the value of academic research and correcting public misimpressions about student debt that discourage from attending college “exactly the people” who need it most, he said in an interview.
www.insidehighered.com
Larger Pell Grant Voted Down in Committee
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/07/20/larger-pell-grant-voted-down-committee?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b1bee3f677-DNU20170720&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b1bee3f677-197515277&mc_cid=b1bee3f677&mc_eid=8f1f949a06
By Andrew Kreighbaum
House appropriators Wednesday voted down a proposed amendment to increase the maximum size of the Pell Grant during a markup of a funding package that included education spending. The package approved by the appropriations committee takes $3.3 billion out of the Pell Grant surplus while leaving the maximum grant flat at $5,920 for the 2017-18 academic year — the first time in six years the size of the award has not increased. Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat, called for the committee to allocate those cuts from the program surplus to increase the size of the grant by $135. Pocan and other Democrats argued that money taken out of the Pell surplus should be reinvested in the program. But the amendment failed on a party-line vote.
www.insidehighered.com
Most Colleges Did Not Change Aid Deadlines in Response to Early FAFSA
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/07/20/most-colleges-did-not-change-aid-deadlines-response-early-fafsa?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=b1bee3f677-DNU20170720&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-b1bee3f677-197515277&mc_cid=b1bee3f677&mc_eid=8f1f949a06
By Andrew Kreighbaum
An overwhelming majority of colleges and universities did not change priority aid deadlines in response to an earlier financial aid cycle last year, according to a survey of member institutions by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. The Department of Education last year moved up the release of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid from Jan. 1 to Oct. 1 — a change made to give incoming college students more time to submit the applications and to consider financial aid offers before deciding on a college. The earlier aid cycle was also made possible by the adoption of prior-prior year income data in applications. That allowed students and families to submit tax information already on file with the government rather than estimating income before they submitted their taxes. NASFAA found that those colleges that did move up their priority aid deadlines did so to give students and families more time to review financial aid offers. But respondents to the survey said even with earlier financial aid award letters, students did not make their college choice earlier than previous aid cycles.
www.myajc.com
As paperwork goes missing, private student loan debts may be wiped away
http://www.myajc.com/news/national/paperwork-goes-missing-private-student-loan-debts-may-wiped-away/b3lJDVvU8jtvnALB2vanYN/
By Stacy Cowley and Jessica Silver-Greenberg – The New York Times
Tens of thousands of people who took out private loans to pay for college but have not been able to keep up payments may get their debts wiped away because critical paperwork is missing. The troubled loans, which total at least $5 billion, are at the center of a protracted legal dispute between the student borrowers and a group of creditors who have aggressively pursued them in court after they fell behind on payments. Judges have dismissed dozens of lawsuits against former students, essentially wiping out their debt, because documents proving who owns the loans are missing. A review of court records by The New York Times shows that many other collection cases are deeply flawed, with incomplete ownership records and mass-produced documentation.
www.diverseeducation.com
HBCU Leaders Aim to Make Campuses More LGBTQ Inclusive
http://diverseeducation.com/article/99252/?utm_campaign=DIV1707%20DAILY%20NEWSLETTER%20JUL20&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
by Gia Savage
WASHINGTON — After years of criticism for not doing enough to ensure the diversity and inclusion of LGBTQ students on its campuses, presidents and leadership officials of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have convened a first-of-its-kind summit to develop strategic ways to turn their campuses into safe spaces for students who identify as LGBTQ. …The presidents and executives of 14 HBCUs met recently at the headquarters of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ organization. Working with the campaign’s HBCU Project, the participants hope that the summit ultimately will result in the stronger implementation of the mission of HBCUs in their support for both LBGBTQ students and faculty. “We’ve got to figure out how are we going to make a deeper engagement in changing the culture on the campus?” Dr. Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in New Orleans, said at the meeting. Kimbrough and other HBCU leaders discussed the changes that already have taken place on their campuses, and what they plan to do in the future. …The institutions represented at the summit were Fayetteville State University, Dillard University, North Carolina A&T, Virginia State University, University of the District of Columbia, Morehouse College, Norfolk State University, Howard University, Delaware State University, Savannah State University, Johnson C. Smith University, Prairie View University, Tennessee State University, and Texas Southern University.
www.chronicle.com
Students Accused of Sexual Assault Have the Government’s Ear. What Are Their Goals?
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Students-Accused-of-Sexual/240701?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=468bd1f309344c78a5c9986c9fa9aceb&elq=a5dd0f7a6fa44031bcb545a92ee5448d&elqaid=14801&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6261
By Sarah Brown
When Will entered his campus disciplinary hearing after being accused of sexual assault at a university in the South, he immediately felt that the odds were stacked against him: “You walk in there, and they see a guilty person.” The members of the hearing panel deciding the case weren’t well trained or objective, said Will, who asked to use only his first name, and “they treated me with no respect at all.” He requested that his surname and the name of his former institution not be used because of the sensitive nature of the allegations; he was not charged with a crime. After several months, Will was found not responsible for violating campus policy. But he doesn’t want other accused students to be treated the way he was by administrators. He said he has been struggling with depression and anxiety ever since and had to drop out of college for a while. “I literally walked into a kangaroo court and, by the grace of God, got out unscathed,” he said. Will was one of roughly a dozen students who met with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos last week to tell their stories of being falsely accused of sexual assault. The meeting was one of the “listening sessions” the secretary held with victims, accused students, and college officials as the department’s Office for Civil Rights considers changes in the Obama administration’s guidance on Title IX, the federal gender-equity law.
www.diverseeducation.com
Study: Increased Credit Hours’ Impact on Graduation Rates ‘Very Limited’
http://diverseeducation.com/article/99257/
by Jamaal Abdul-Alim
When Dr. Dennis A. Kramer II, assistant professor of higher education at the University of Florida, set out to study the impact of excess credit-hour policies that charge students extra for taking significantly more courses than they need to graduate, he expected to find that the policies would be associated with higher graduation rates. Kramer said he was surprised to find that not only were the policies having a “very limited” impact on graduation rates and degree completion, but they were actually plunging students — particularly low- and middle-income students — deeper into debt. “What we were surprised to find is that while not having systemic impact on graduation rates or degree completion that it really had an impact on median student debt levels at the institutional level,” Kramer said in a phone interview with Diverse. “This finding was robust across a variety of specifications and appeared to be concentrated primarily in low-and middle-income students.” Kramer’s findings are contained in a new study being released today titled “The Costs and Consequences of Excess Credit Hour Policies.”