University System News:
www.albanyherald.com
Board of Regents approves termination of 15 ASU academic degree programs
Regents say cutting low-producing programs will allow for academic realignment
http://www.albanyherald.com/news/board-of-regents-approves-termination-of-asu-academic-degree-programs/article_71274ff5-9375-5553-95bd-a82cd3c500aa.html#utm_source=albanyherald.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1507809617&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline
By Terry Lewis
ALBANY — The Georgia Board of Regents late Wednesday morning approved the termination of 15 academic degree programs at Albany State University. ASU President Art Dunning had recommended the terminations, citing numbers of low-producing programs.
www.onlineathens.com
Regents: State colleges must have same semester lengths
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2017-10-11/regents-state-colleges-must-have-same-semester-lengths?utm_source=eGaMorning&utm_campaign=66a9321930-eGaMorning-10_12_17&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_54a77f93dd-66a9321930-86731974&mc_cid=66a9321930&mc_eid=32a9bd3c56
By Lee Shearer
The University of Georgia can’t shorten the length of its semesters to match those of Georgia Tech and Georgia State University. Instead, the two Atlanta schools will have to lengthen theirs under revisions in the state Board of Regents policy on instructional time. Semesters must have 15 weeks of instructional time, as defined by federal regulations, and those 15 weeks cannot include registration or final exams, according to language the board approved Wednesday. The issue of semester length became an issue at UGA last year as faculty governance committees struggled to find a solution to UGA’s unusually early starting dates, and how to change that. The university started fall semester classes Aug. 14, before most U.S. colleges, including Tech and Georgia State, which began Aug. 22.
www.chronicle.augusta.com
Regents approves new advanced degree to further studies in military intelligence, security
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2017-10-11/regents-approves-new-advanced-degree-further-studies-military-intelligence-security
By Tom Corwin Staff Writer
A vote Wednesday might help Delexica Durham extend her career a little farther at Augusta University on her way to becoming an analyst for the U.S. Air Force and hopefully working at the Pentagon. Durham, 19, plans to be among the first to enroll in a new Masters in Intelligence and Security Studies that was approved during the monthly meeting of the University System of Georgia Board of Regents. The new degree plans to appeal to not only current students but those already in the military at Fort Gordon who need an advanced degree to further their careers, said Dr. Gregg Murray, chair of the AU Department of Political Science, where the degree will be located. A 2012 survey of 303 intelligence personnel at the fort found that 42 percent were very interested in a masters program, according to information given to the board.
www.chronicle.augusta.com
State senate cybersecurity committee meets with Augusta-area education leaders
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/2017-10-11/state-senate-cybersecurity-committee-meets-augusta-area-education-leaders
By Joe Hotchkiss Staff Writer
Augusta-area education leaders told a state committee that they’re up to the challenge of growing the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. The Senate Study Committee on Cyber Security Education, comprised of state officials and education experts, convened for the first time Wednesday at Augusta University. Its members include state Sens. Harold Jones (D-Augusta) and Lee Anderson (R-Grovetown). The committee was created March 28 with the adoption of Senate Resolution 454, which empowers an appointed group “to study the current and future implementation of a cybersecurity curriculum in Georgia high schools.” Augusta is a growing focal point of cyber activity. Fort Gordon, already home to the Army’s largest cyber training center, will become the home of the U.S. Army’s Cyber Command by 2020. Also, the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center – designed to promote modernization in cybersecurity through public-private partnerships – is under construction on Reynolds Street downtown. …Zach Kelehear is dean of AU’s College of Education. He told the committee that AU provides professional development not only to current teachers but also to students aspiring to become teachers. It develops around STEAM and STEM. STEM stands for science, technology engineering and math – the collective term for tailored instruction in that block of academic disciplines. STEAM is STEM with an “A” added to incorporate the arts.
www.wtoc.com
ABAC admissions on par for next year
http://www.wtoc.com/story/36566341/abac-admissions-on-par-for-next-year
By Ashley Bohle, Reporter
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College is one of many colleges looking to gain enrollment for next school year. Luke Ellis, an enrollment counselor for ABAC, said admissions is already looking over applications for next year. Ellis said there are students from 154 of Georgia’s 159 counties at ABAC. The college also has students from 18 different states and 24 different countries. Ellis hopes to see excitement over the school growth with more bachelor’s programs being offered. …ABAC currently has 3,400 students.
www.thebrunswicknews.com
Goodyear Elementary partners with CCGA education program
http://thebrunswicknews.com/news/local_news/goodyear-elementary-partners-with-ccga-education-program/article_63ca5d9c-88ed-55d4-81a7-9d3c38395c4a.html#utm_source=thebrunswicknews.com&utm_campaign=%2Fnewsletters%2Fheadlines%2F%3F-dc%3D1507802469&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline
By LAUREN MCDONALD
As the pep rally ended, students were cheering, clapping and bouncing in their seats in Goodyear Elementary School’s cafeteria. All were excited to embark on a semester-long effort to become better readers. Goodyear Elementary has partnered with a cohort of early education majors at College of Coastal Georgia this year, and the college students will work with students in Goodyear’s after-school program to improve their reading skills. …The CCGA education majors will first assess the elementary students’ current reading abilities and begin to devise strategies to improve their reading levels.
www.times-georgian.com
UWG: Transfer students important to university
http://www.times-georgian.com/news/local/uwg-transfer-students-important-to-university/article_ebf8d3fc-aefd-11e7-a1ed-3bec137dec65.html
Erin McSwain-Davis/Times-Georgian
The University of West Georgia is “celebrating” its transfer students this week for the very first time. “This is the first year we have done this,” said UWG Assistant Director of Admissions-Transfer Katie Taylor. “There is an organization for the study of transfer students. They conduct a national conference every year at the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students. They were the ones that got this week going.”
www.myajc.com
New video of Georgia Tech shooting surfaces
http://www.myajc.com/news/crime–law/new-video-georgia-tech-shooting-surfaces/2KwTgcoJYzzp9bShg69EWI/
By Christian Boone – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New video of the death of Georgia Tech student Scout Schultz provides possibly the clearest view yet of last month’s shooting by a campus police officer.
The video, shot by a student in a nearby residential hall and linked via the Twitter account of a lawyer associated with the case, shows Schultz walking slowly towards the officers as they formed a semi-circle — some 20 feet away — around the 21-year-old Lilburn native.
www.getschooled.blog.myajc.com
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Should Kennesaw State president stand up for cheerleaders who knelt?
http://getschooled.blog.myajc.com/2017/10/11/should-kennesaw-state-president-stand-up-for-cheerleaders-who-knelt-down/
In all the debate around athletes taking a knee, no one was as eloquent as 97-year-old World War II veteran John Middlemas. In a photo went viral, the Missouri farmer took a supportive knee because “those kids have every right to protest.” He’s right. Now, if only Kennesaw State University President Sam Olens would take such a spirited and public stand on behalf of freedom of speech and his students. Olens hasn’t talked about the five Kennesaw State cheerleaders who knelt on the football field during the national anthem at the Sept. 30 game.
www.insidehighered.com
Retaliation for Taking a Knee?
Some Kennesaw State cheerleaders took a knee during the national anthem. The next week, a change to the pregame ceremonies kept them off the field. Albright College kicks off the team a football player who took a knee.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/12/cheerleaders-knelt-during-anthem-were-removed-field-next-week?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=991649962d-DNU20171012&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-991649962d-197515277&mc_cid=991649962d&mc_eid=8f1f949a06
By Nick Roll
A handful of Kennesaw State University cheerleaders took a knee during the playing of the national anthem before a football game Sept. 30. In the following days, both the local sheriff — who is a Republican — and a Republican state representative who chairs a subcommittee in charge of appropriations for Georgia’s public universities complained publicly in the local press. Both said the university president, Sam Olens — a former Republican attorney general for the state — had been helpful, and they expressed confidence that the situation would not happen again. “During a recent conversation, Olens assured me that this will not happen again,” Sheriff Neil Warren told the Marietta Daily Journal in a story published Friday. “I hope he is right, because I stand with America, I stand to show respect to our military and all those that serve in public safety.” State Representative Earl Ehrhart said that he suspected a directive regarding protests during the anthem would “come from the athletic department to the coaches to the team from the president.”
www.ajc.com
Kennesaw State cops found professor passed out drunk in student center
http://www.ajc.com/news/local/kennesaw-state-cops-found-professor-passed-out-drunk-student-center/pEHxg52c6XlFZmSJ5HpnEI/
Ben Brasch The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Police say they found a Kennesaw State University professor drunk and asleep inside the school’s student center. Brent Christopher Allsup told police that he drank three to five beers before driving to campus the night of Oct. 5, according to a warrant. Allsup was “discovered by police passed out in the student center” on Bartow Avenue about 10 p.m., according to a warrant. The Acworth man gave investigators permission to search his car, where they found Hydrocodone, Xanax and amphetamine salts. They also found a half-empty, 16-ounce aluminum beer bottle in the center console, the warrant said.
Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
The New, Improved IPEDS
A decade in the making, upgrade of the federal government’s main higher ed database enables tracking part-time and adult students and gauging graduation rates for Pell Grant recipients. Limits remain, though.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/12/new-federal-higher-ed-outcome-measures-count-part-time-adult-students?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=991649962d-DNU20171012&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-991649962d-197515277&mc_cid=991649962d&mc_eid=8f1f949a06
By Doug Lederman
There has hardly been an easier target for disdain in higher education circles than the federal graduation rate produced through the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. The federal government’s primary data collection vehicle for higher education is both essential and subpar, particularly when it comes to measuring how students move into and through the postsecondary ecosystem. The graduation rate, whose importance as an accountability measure for institutions has spiked along with the U.S. government’s spending on student financial aid, has been rightly derided as flawed because it has included only those students who enroll full-time and are entering college for the first time (leaving out the ever-increasing numbers of part-time students and those who switch colleges or return as adults). At many community colleges and other institutions that serve large numbers of older students, particularly, the graduation rate has ranged from misleading to virtually useless. (“Flawed” is one of the kinder things you’ll hear it called.) Today, the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics unwraps a revision of the IPEDS database that will expand the government’s tools for measuring postsecondary outcomes, especially for the students who, for lack of a better term, are frequently called “nontraditional” (even though they now outnumber the “traditional” 18- to 22-year-olds).
www.chronicle.com
Expanding Undergraduate Research
Colleges like the problem-solving skills it can teach. Here’s how to offer more opportunities on a tight budget.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Expanding-Undergraduate/241393?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=929444717bbe4da98a032a39e340f14c&elq=0d7f0ff3d27c43caaf218ec1a315a218&elqaid=16034&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=6919
By Kathryn Masterson
…Across the country, colleges are looking to involve more undergraduates in hands-on research. Academics say it teaches important skills such as problem solving, resilience, and how to work in a team. It is also seen as having a positive effect on their academic success and persistence. The Council on Undergraduate Research, a membership organization of researchers and colleges, has seen an explosion of undergraduate research at all types of institutions, says Elizabeth Ambos, the nonprofit group’s executive director.
www.bizjournas.com
College websites must accommodate disabled students, lawsuits say
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2017/10/12/college-websites-must-accommodate-disabled.html?ana=e_mc_prem&s=newsletter&ed=2017-10-12&u=xw%2BDRjRaikB6EdaliSJBWQ0ae2f198&t=1507815107&j=78977921
By Vivian Wang – The New York Times
NEW YORK — The lawsuits came one after the other, against Fordham University, Manhattan College, Long Island University and other area colleges and universities. In all, eight suits have been filed in federal court in Manhattan over the past two weeks, most recently against Hofstra University on Long Island on Oct. 4. In each case, lawyers for Emanuel Delacruz, who is blind, charged that the college’s website is inaccessible to their plaintiff and therefore in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act. The filings are part of a growing number of actions involving accessibility and the internet. The federal law requires that public accommodations be accessible to those with disabilities, and legal battles have long revolved around physical spaces and therefore physical solutions, such as elevators or ramps. Now, advocates and lawyers argue, websites are also public spaces and need to be accessible, with things like captions or audio descriptions. Since January 2015, at least 751 lawsuits have been filed over the issue. …And another website, which includes not only lawsuits but also government investigations into web or technological accessibility, lists 37 schools that have been accused of noncompliance with disability law.
www.chronicle.com
U. of Wisconsin System Proposes Merging 2-Year and 4-Year Colleges
http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/u-of-wisconsin-system-proposes-merging-2-year-and-4-year-colleges/120589?cid=at
by Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz
The University of Wisconsin system wants to merge its 13 two-year colleges with its four-year institutions, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Under the proposal, each two-year institution would merge with one of seven four-year campuses. It’s not immediately clear what the proposed mergers would mean for jobs and programs at the two-year colleges. Ray W. Cross, the system’s president, said the plan would take effect in July 2018, pending approval in November by the Board of Regents.