University System News:
www.accesswdun.com
Georgia Gwinnett College president to retire
http://accesswdun.com/article/2018/9/716570/georgia-gwinnett-college-president-resigns
www.fox28media.com
Board of Regents investigation confirms sexual harassment claims at Savannah State
By Robert Catanese
www.myajc.com
Tech slow to investigate ethics complaints, records show
By Eric Stirgus – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Robert Martinengo was a project manager at Georgia Tech when he said he contacted its EthicsPoint hotline in September 2016 raising concerns that his boss wasn’t sharing accurate financial information about his department. “If I don’t speak up,” Martinengo, 59, recalled thinking, “then I’m complicit in the lie … It was time for me to tell the truth or endorse the lie.” The truth came out, albeit slowly, in November 2017. The department, Georgia Tech’s internal auditor concluded, “presented inaccurate information” and correspondence to one company, the Association of American Publishers, “lacked transparency.” But it took a year before Georgia Tech completed its report into Martinengo’sconcerns. Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson has promised the university will be more vigilant with investigating ethics complaints in the wake of recent findings that some top officials violated its guidelines. However, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution review of internal reports and interviews shows Georgia Tech has often been slow to investigate employee complaints about ethics abuses or conflict-of-interest violations. One investigation that began in September 2016 took 290 days to complete. An investigation of another complaint took 210 days to complete. In one instance, a frustrated employee threatened to share information with a Channel 2 Action News reporter because Tech officials seemed to be dragging their feet. …Georgia Tech took an average of 102 days last year to investigate a complaint, the second-longest time of any college or university in the University System of Georgia, according to a report presented in April to the state’s Board of Regents. Savannah State University had the longest average time, 135 days. On average, it took 48 days for a University System school to conduct and complete an investigation. Georgia Tech had 85 complaints last year, more than any University System college or university.
www.savannahnow.com
Armstrong State University is gone, but you can still buy a piece of its Savannah legacy
By Will Peebles
Want to own a piece of Armstrong State University history? This week, Armstrong Alumni Association is selling the light post banners that once hung on campus before the university’s consolidation with Georgia Southern University. “There are a lot of Armstrong alumni keenly interested in making sure that the heritage, history and legacy of that institution continues to be important,” said Cheryl Ciucevich, associate director of alumni relations. The sale lasts from Monday to Friday, and the money raised will benefit the Armstrong Legacy Scholarship. The scholarship, according to the group’s Facebook page, benefits the descendants of Armstrong Alumni. Ciucevich said early in the consolidation process members of the alumni association started asking what would happen to the banners. The alumni association’s decision to use them as a fundraising tool for the scholarship came almost immediately. “It just seemed a natural fit to put those two ideas together,” Ciucevich said.
www.wjbf.com
MCG turns its focus to the nationwide doctor shortage and improving health across Georgia
By Marlena Wilson
Just days before giving his annual State of the College address, Dr. David Hess – the Dean of the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University sat down with our Brad Means on the set of The Means Report. He shared many of the key highlights from his address from the nationwide doctor shortage to the need for better healthcare in rural Georgia. It is a firsthand look at the growing medical college and its impact on everyone’s health.
www.postandcourier.com
Missing weather buoys off SC coast ‘a serious handicap’ to hurricane forecasts
By Bo Petersen
As Hurricane Florence closed in on North Carolina, data from six weather buoys off of Wilmington told forecasters what the rest of their instruments didn’t. The subtle variations in waves, water temperatures and wind were key clues in just how strong the winds and waves would be from the storm. If Florence had headed toward Charleston on a similar path, the forecasters wouldn’t have had those readings. Only one buoy sits offshore here — the Edisto Buoy. …“Buoys are expensive and difficult to maintain,” said Catherine Edwards, an associate professor at Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, Ga. On top of equipment wearing out and salt corrosion, at least one of the buoys has been run over by a ship. And they occasionally are vandalized — incidents that the NOAA National Data Buoy Center in 2010 estimated to have cost $5.4 million in the previous five years. …Off North Carolina, one of the subs picked up a sharp difference in warmer, fresher surface water and denser, saltier deep water that satellites, hurricane hunter aircraft and the buoys couldn’t. That was fed into computer models predicting the storm. “It made a big improvement (in the forecasting). This is the sort of information that often gets lost in some of the models,” Edwards said. She deployed the sub that took readings along the Continental Shelf off South Carolina. The gliders, which cost from $160,000 to $250,000 and are hundreds of dollars per day to operate, aren’t seen as an eventual replacement for the buoys. They are more of a complement, Edwards said. The more-mobile subs can cover more of the ocean, but the stable buoys can take readings in one spot over longer periods of time. “They really work together well,” she said.