University System News:
www.myajc.com
Classroom technology also helping with college readiness
http://www.myajc.com/news/local-education/classroom-technology-also-helping-with-college-readiness/t4DTUqNzocDcd7U1aYHgaO/?utm_source=eGaMorning&utm_campaign=907aac3d5c-eGaMorning-8_25_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_54a77f93dd-907aac3d5c-86731974&mc_cid=907aac3d5c&mc_eid=32a9bd3c56
By Marlon A. Walker – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The DeKalb County School District is handing out more than 70,000 desktops and laptops to teachers and students hoping to increase classroom collaboration between students and with teachers while boosting parental involvement. Gary Brantley, the district’s chief information officer, said among the top reasons for the $27 million purchase is to make sure the district’s students are ready when they head to college. Computer technology has become an everyday teaching tool in public schools and colleges, and DeKalb’s initiative is a response to a problem: Students don’t all have the same access to it. “We have a lot of kids — especially in our underserved regions as it related to those who have the ability to do for themselves — who are coming out not really understanding how to do basic tasks, PowerPoint presentations, word processing,” he said. “They’re unable to live with (technology).” The district received information from several university partners, including Georgia Tech and the University of Georgia, that told them students from the DeKalb County School District struggle with classroom technology when they get to college, often because they’ve not been exposed to what’s being used currently. “That’s kind of my motivation, to get that equity gap,” Brantley said. “They can’t enter college without a PC, and knowing how to operate it.” Mauise Ricard III, Morehouse College’s interim vice president of information technology and chief information officer, said a clear gap exists with students entering his institution, mostly because the students have little to no experience with the instructional tools used on campus.

www.albanyherald.com
Study: ASU has major economic impact on region
USG says Albany State University had $289 million economic impact in 2016
http://www.albanyherald.com/study-asu-has-major-economic-impact-on-region/article_adc0ad60-e3ae-54c5-862b-6cd60f620fd4.html
By Terry Lewis
ALBANY — A new study released earlier this week by the University System of Georgia shows the new Albany State University had a $289 million economic impact on the Albany region in 2016. The total amount includes employment as well as direct and indirect spending. The university’s annual economic impact increased by $4 million, compared to the combined 2015 economic impact of ASU and the former Darton State College prior to consolidation. Much of the university’s economic impact is attributed to student spending, personnel services and operating expenses. A breakdown of the dollars shows that the university employed 3,256 people for a total of $121 million in labor income for the region, as described by the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. Student spending was valued at $140 million, with output for operating expenses at $41 million. The study reviewed data from both institutions from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. Area counties included in the study were Dougherty, Lee, Worth, Mitchell, Terrell, Colquitt, Baker, Sumter, Calhoun and Tift.

www.ledger-enquirer.com
CSU’s economic impact on Columbus area more than doubles in past 15 fiscal years
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/education/article169172827.html
By Mark Rice
In the past 15 fiscal years, Columbus State University has more than doubled its economic impact on the local region and generated approximately 1,000 additional jobs, according to the results of a new study CSU announced Thursday. CSU’s economic impact in fiscal year 2016 was calculated as $295 million, producing 3,220 jobs on and off campus. In fiscal year 2001, CSU’s economic impact was $146 million with 2,205 jobs. …Also impressive, CSU’s recent growth rate in economic impact outpaces the University System of Georgia as a whole. While USG’s economic impact grew by 8 percent (from $15.5 billion in FY 2015 to $16.8 billion in FY2016), CSU’s economic impact grew by 12 percent (from $263.5 million in FY2015 to $295 million in FY2016). “This is a tangible, real, economic indicator of Columbus State University’s growth and influence on this region,” CSU President Chris Markwood said in the university’s news release. “It is impossible to measure how much of an impact our partners, alumni and supporters have on CSU; it’s nice to point to this figure to show a return on their investment.”

www.savannahnow.com
2 Savannah universities contribute $400 million to local economy in 2016
http://savannahnow.com/news/2017-08-24/2-savannah-universities-contribute-400-million-local-economy-2016
By Katie Nussbaum
Armstrong State University and Savannah State University contributed more than $400 million to the local economy during the fiscal year 2016 and provided nearly 5,000 jobs, according to recent study conducted by the Selig Center for Economic Growth in the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. …Armstrong State University’s total output impact, which is the overall economic impact generated, was $252,124,574. The FY 16 amount was an increase of $17 million from FY 15, according to a press release distributed by the school on Tuesday. …Savannah State University, which also included Chatham, Effingham, Bryan, Liberty, and Bulloch counties total output impact was $192,429, 182, which was an increase of about $13 million compared to FY 15. …Georgia Southern University, which is about 50 miles away from Savannah and will be consolidating with Armstrong in January, pending accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, showed total economic impact of $719,699, 581. The university’s total initial spending was $569,400,195. The study area for GSU didn’t include Chatham County, but instead looked at Bulloch, Screven, Candler, Jenkins, Evans, Tattnall, and Emanuel counties.

www.chronicle.augusta.com
Lack of physicians blamed for Augusta University health system’s nearly $9 million loss
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2017-08-24/lack-physicians-blamed-augusta-university-health-system-s-nearly-9-million-loss
By Tom Corwin, Staff Writer
Augusta University’s health system lost nearly $9 million last fiscal year, in part because of a lack of physicians to treat patients, officials said. An aggressive recruiting campaign already has landed 40 new faculty members who will come in the next couple of months, however, and the search is on for key positions such as the director of the Georgia Cancer Center. AU Health System’s board also voted Thursday to streamline the health system’s governance to one main board to improve efficiency. AU Health lost $8.8 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30 mainly because of a lack of clinicians to treat patients, said state Board of Regents member Jim Hull, the chairman of the health system’s Finance Committee.

www.gpbnews.org
As Classes Begin, Georgia’s Universities Work To Understand ‘Campus Carry’ Law
http://gpbnews.org/post/classes-begin-georgias-universities-work-understand-campus-carry-law
By Sam Whitehead
Georgia’s public college and universities are back in session this week, and there’s a new presence on their campuses: concealed handguns. Faculty, staff, and students are still trying to navigate exactly where guns will be allowed under the state’s new “campus carry” law. “There are a lot of grey areas,” said Kim Cobb, a professor of earth atmospheric sciences at Georgia Tech. Cobb was one of a handful members of the university community to attend an information session this week on the new rules for concealed weapons. Many of the questions were aimed at clearing up just where guns are allowed. Though the law permits concealed weapons on the state’s public colleges and universities, it contains a litany of exceptions that bars them from places like student housing, sports facilities, and spaces used for childcare. “We’ve done close to 60 site assessments and individual meetings on campus, and we have at least 20 to 30 more,” said Robert Connolly, chief of the Georgia Tech Police Department. …It’s a process that’s happening all over the state. Georgia Southern University has set up a dedicated email address to field questions about the rules. Middle Georgia State University held their own “campus carry” info session in early August. But it’s hard to reach everyone. Jelani Perkins is in his third year at Middle Georgia. He says he first heard about the “campus carry” law when we asked him about it.

www.chronicle.com
So You Want to Work at a Teaching College?
http://www.chronicle.com/article/So-You-Want-to-Work-at-a/240975
By Jordan Cofer
During my graduate-student orientation, one professor began her talk with her own Horatio Alger story: She’d worked her way up from a teaching-focused college, where she’d found it agonizing to face a steady stream of students in her office, to a coveted position at a research university, where, she happily noted, faculty members don’t get bogged down in student drama. I remember her talk so vividly because what seemed so repulsive to her sounded like an ideal job for me. I made it a point to track her down later and learn exactly which college she was talking about, so I could watch for openings there. Of course, not all professors at major universities look down on teaching or on teaching colleges. My dissertation adviser used to tell me that any job was a good job. Now that I work at a teaching college, however, I’ve come to realize that a majority of Ph.D.-granting programs — at least in the humanities — are unfamiliar with the faculty profile of a “teaching school.” Candidates who apply to colleges like mine are often ill-prepared for the realities of faculty work and life there. What is it really like? Here are the two most common misconceptions about teaching colleges:

www.myajc.com
UGA group removes portrait of Robert E. Lee
http://www.myajc.com/news/local-education/uga-group-removes-portrait-robert-lee/SoqDsZ3kc9LE6xD1hfnNbI/politicallygeorgia.html
By Eric Stirgus
A University of Georgia student group voted late Thursday to remove a portrait of Robert E. Lee from its hall. The Demosthenian Literary Society voted 27-0 with one abstention to take down the portrait of Lee, who served as a general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, said Alanna Pierce, a first-year UGA law student who is the society’s president. Pierce said the 40-member society, an oratory group created in 1803, decided to remove the portrait after the recent racially-charged violence in Charlottesville, Va. that has renewed a national debate over monuments to Confederate leaders. …Pierce said the portrait may be moved to the university’s Special Collections Libraries.

www.wsbtv.com
Georgia Tech creates 2.5 million-dollar robotics lab
http://www.wsbtv.com/video?videoId=597634168&videoVersion=1.0
Georgia Tech’s robotarium will help improve traffic and control wildfires.

www.news.wabe.org
Ga. Tech Unveils World’s First Open Robotics Research Lab
http://news.wabe.org/post/ga-tech-unveils-worlds-first-open-robotics-research-lab
By Tasnim Shamma
Georgia Tech researchers have opened a new lab that allows anyone around the world to remotely access and control its robots. It’s called the “Robotarium” and the university claims it’s the world’s first open robotics research lab. To demonstrate how it works, a few dozen robots sit on what looks like a large air hockey table with a smooth white surface. Georgia Tech post-doctoral fellow Sean Wilson said these “swarm robots” are meant to mimic how animals like honeybees and flocking birds move and solve problems together that individual animals or robots can’t on their own. “Swarm robotics is the challenge of controlling a large number of robots without a central computer,” Wilson said. “So what commands do you send each individual robot so that swarm does what you want them to do?”

www.bizjournals.com
Atlanta eyed for North America HQ of Graphenano
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2017/08/25/atlanta-eyed-for-north-america-hq-of-graphenano.html
Douglas Sams and Urvaksh Karkaria Atlanta Business Chronicle
Midtown is emerging as a top contender to land the North American headquarters of Graphenano, a Spanish company known for its research and development of graphene batteries. Founded in 2012, the company is attempting to manufacture graphene, the thinnest compound known to man, on an industrial scale. Advancements in the technology are closely watched. Graphenano calls it “one of the most coveted and studied materials in modern science.”… Georgia Tech is a leader in graphene innovation. Graphenano’s applications — batteries, pulp and paper, aerospace composites, solar — are major research areas at Georgia Tech. In May, it was reported Georgia Tech scientists were part of an international team developing new ways to produce graphene. The research was carried out by Bokwon Yoon and Uzi Landman at the Georgia Tech Center for Computational Materials Science… Graphenano’s potential interest in Georgia makes senses, said Jud Ready, deputy director at Georgia Tech’s Institute for Materials. “Georgia Tech’s got the largest academic group of material scientists in the country,” Ready said. “We’ve got about 250 material scientists and…perhaps a third-to-a-half of them dabble in graphene research.”

www.ledger-enquirer.com
University of Georgia researchers developing drugs to fight sickness caused by tsetse fly
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/education/article169173612.html
By Larry Gierer
University of Georgia researchers are going to be working to develop drugs to fight a sickness transmitted to humans by the bite of the tsetse fly. According to a report by Alan Flurry on the school’s website, the National Institutes of Health has awarded $2.6 million to researchers to find a way to treat human African trypanosomiasis which is also known as African sleeping sickness. The report says the disease is caused by a single-cell parasite called trypanosome brucei, which infects the central nervous system causing changes in behavior, confusion, poor coordination and sleep disturbances. Without adequate treatment, the infection is almost always fatal. …Leader of the research team is Kojo Mensa-Wilmot, UGA professor in the department of cellular biology. Collaborators in the UGA-led consortium are Andrei Purmal of Cleveland BioLabs Inc. and Michael Pollastri of Northeastern University.

Higher Education News:
www.ajc.com
Pension, health care, education costs in Georgia eating up new revenue
http://www.ajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/pension-health-care-education-costs-georgia-eating-new-revenue/9LUwL825cGPVtdvswh9SbO/
James Salzer The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Most years the state takes in an extra $700 million to $900 million in tax collections, but proposals sent to Gov. Nathan Deal’s budget office show most of that money is all but spent for next year. The boards that run schools, universities and the public health system have, combined, spoken for about $750 million of increased spending for the upcoming year. The money will go to pay for increased enrollment in K12 schools and universities, and the rising cost of Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor and disabled. More than half of the new money for education would go to prop up the state’s pension system for teachers and university employees.

www.myajc.com
Pensions, health care, education drive big Georgia budget requests
http://www.myajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/pensions-health-care-education-drive-big-georgia-budget-requests/Jj4CL1dVGyvoo3lfPnLNeO/
By James Salzer – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Nathan Deal told Georgia agencies not to ask for new spending during the upcoming year, but it turns out the cost of holding the line is still really, really high. Even with his admonition, the board of the Department of Community Health — whose programs provide health care to about 1 in 4 Georgians — approved a request Thursday for about $240 million more in spending over the next year and a half, in part to cover increased costs for Medicaid. That’s on top of $550 million more in requests for spending next year from the Department of Education, which oversees k-12 schools, and the University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents. About $344 million of that would go for increased payments to the Teacher Retirement System, the pension plan for teachers and University System staffers. Those three requests, if included in Deal’s budget proposal that will be released in January, go a long way toward eating up the new tax revenue that the state is expected to bring in as the economy grows. But the requests are also pretty much what Deal’s budget staffers and top lawmakers expected. They knew the rising costs of education, pensions and Medicaid — the state-federal health care program for the poor and disabled — would drive next year’s state budget, which could near or top $26 billion.

www.insidehighered.com
Report Examines State Funding Cuts
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/08/23/report-examines-state-funding-cuts
By Rick Seltzer
A new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities compares state spending on two- and four-year public colleges and universities over a decade, finding funding at the end of the 2017 academic year was nearly $9 billion below its 2008 level, after adjusting for inflation. On a per student basis, 44 of 49 states analyzed spent less in 2017 than in 2008, found the report, released today. The average state spent $1,448, or 16 percent, less per student. Falling state spending has consequences, according to the center, a research and policy think tank focused on budget and tax policies that help low-income people. Today’s report draws heavily on data from two other well-known annual reports on higher education finance, the Grapevine survey and the State Higher Education Finance report from the State Higher Education Executive Officers association.

www.diverseeducation.com
Colleges Utilizing Web Tool to Curb Sexual Assaults
http://diverseeducation.com/article/100745/?utm_campaign=DIV1708%20DAILY%20NEWSLETTER%20AUG25&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua
by Tiffany Pennamon
In 2014, Dr. Penny Smith created Keys to Coping, an online sexual assault reporting tool, hoping to transform the way colleges and universities handle reports of sexual assault, domestic violence and stalking on their campuses. The web-based tool is newly modified to increase victim support for students, bystander intervention training and risk mitigation for institutions, even as the Department of Education debates potential rollbacks to Obama-era Title IX policies regarding reporting and investigating sexual assaults on campus. Smith, president and CEO of Alegria Technologies and a survivor of sexual assault and domestic violence, made it her mission to break the silence surrounding sexual assaults on college campuses and universities. The former higher education administrator says she realized that colleges were scrambling for prevention options, rather than reporting options. After speaking to administrators at nearly 60 institutions, Smith says she  realized schools were concerned that a technology tool like Keys to Coping would increase the number of reports, “thereby making them appear to not be safe,” she says.