University System News:
www.wfxl.com
ABAC students use teaching forest for first time
https://wfxl.com/news/local/abac-students-use-teaching-forest-for-first-time
by Danielle Ledbetter
When one thinks of a classroom. one might think of chairs, desks and whiteboards. But some ABAC students are getting a different classroom experience in the college’s new teaching forest. In April, the ABAC foundation bought 1,000 acres of land and today was the first time ABAC students were able to try it out. The students go to the teaching forest for various classes such as forestry education and forest measurements. Professor Renaldo Arroyo says the teaching forest allows students to get a hands-on learning experience.
www.albanyherald.com
‘Farm girl’ has impact in nation’s capital
UGA CAES Fellow works with Sen. Johnny Isakson
By Sage Barnard
Johnson Collins, a small-town girl from Jasper, Georgia, never believed she would work in the nation’s capital. But Collins spent 12 weeks this summer in the office of Sen. Johnny Isakson, serving as a University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences Congressional Agricultural Fellow. Since 1997, the Agricultural Fellows program has matched more than 100 university students with congressional offices in Washington, D.C. Collins, who transferred from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College to study agribusiness at the UGA Tifton campus in fall 2017, said she was excited to be one of seven CAES students to serve as an Agricultural Fellow this summer.
www.bizjournals.com
Chick-fil-A CEO, Georgia Tech leading idea to cap Downtown Connector
By Douglas Sams and Maria Saporta – Atlanta Business Chronicle
Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy is working with Georgia Tech on a long-term master plan that would cap the Downtown Connector to create a park that links Midtown with the heart of Tech’s campus, according to multiple sources … Chick-fil-A declined a request for an interview, but issued a statement saying “Dan Cathy has many contacts in the Atlanta real estate world, and occasionally has discussions about opportunities that interest him.” Georgia Tech President “Bud” Peterson deferred comment to Cathy, but in an email said of Midtown: “The past 10 years have seen explosive growth in Technology Square, largely due to the rapidly expanding innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
www.sciencemag.org
A year after Hurricane Maria, mainland scientists have helped Puerto Rican colleagues recover
By Elizabeth Gamillo
It’s a cliché to say it takes a village to educate a scientist. But Yoana Guzman Salgado and Ana Milena Reyes Ramos are proof that such a global village exists, and that it was able to swing into action within days of Hurricane Maria’s punishing blow to Puerto Rico last fall … She’s also a co-principal investigator for an NSF-funded Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT). The center, based at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, received a $300,000 supplemental grant from NSF for a range of hurricane recovery efforts. It allowed Domenech to place Ramos in the lab of Sean Palecek, a professor of chemical and biological engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who is also CMaT’s associate director for research.
www.uwire.com
Inaugural Graduate Student Convocation welcomes students new and old
http://uwire.com/2018/08/31/inaugural-graduate-student-convocation-welcomes-students-new-and-old/
On Wednesday, Aug. 29, first-year and returning Georgia Tech graduate students alike streamed into the spacious McCamish Pavilion, seated for the first ever Graduate Student Convocation. The idea of hosting a Graduate Student Convocation was developed based on the recommendations from last year’s Path Forward Campus Culture action team, which found that graduate students desired a better sense of a community. The action team found that one of the largest items that diminished the community aspect of the graduate student experience compared to the undergraduate student experience was the lack of a proper celebratory event to welcome students to the school: hence, the creation of the inaugural Graduate Student Convocation.
www.hcanews.com
Taking a Data-Driven, Multidisciplinary Approach to Radiology Research
https://www.hcanews.com/news/taking-a-datadriven-multidisciplinary-approach-to-radiology-research
Jared Kaltwasser
A new center at the Georgia Institute of Technology will leverage the power of big data and the expertise of an interdisciplinary team of researchers to tackle major challenges in healthcare policy and delivery. The new Health Economics and Analytics Lab (HEAL) is a partnership between Georgia Tech and the American College of Radiology’s (ACR) Neiman Health Policy Institute. It is being seeded by a five-year, $3 million investment from ACR … The team looked at a number of top-tier research institutes but ultimately chose Georgia Tech because it seemed to already have an interdisciplinary research approach embedded in its culture .. “Everyone says that they have [interdisciplinary teams], but when you see how professors go up for tenure [or] promotion, you see how it really is,” he said. “Georgia Tech is a place where it’s not just lip service. It’s absolutely their model.”
www.hypepotamus.com
Atlanta’s ATDC Is Looking for Health Tech Startups to Pitch the Federal Government
https://hypepotamus.com/events/atdc-federal-healthcare-innovation-summit/
BY HOLLY BEILIN
The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the longest-running state-sponsored startup incubator in the country based at Georgia Tech, has been chosen as one of eight stops on a national “Startup Day” tour for federal government heath officials to connect with tech startups. The ATDC Federal Healthcare Innovation Summit, which will be held September 12, will allow entrepreneurs and technologists to connect with representatives from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.
www.blerdsonline.com
Interview With Dr. Ayanna Howard
http://www.blerdsonline.com/2015/03/interview-with-dr-ayanna-howard.html
Recently I had the pleasure to talk with Dr. Ayanna Howard about her work with artificial intelligence in robotics as well as the future of robotics. Dr. Howard began her career by graduating from Brown University with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering followed by a M.S. and PHD from USC. She’s been awarded such honors as being one of MIT’s Top 100 Young Inventors as well as the NASA Space Act Award. She’s also been able to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Dr. Howard currently teaches at Georgia Tech. She also went on to found the Human-Automation Systems Lab, HumAnS Lab for short. The goal is to increase the levels of humanized intelligence in automated systems. You can learn more about HumAnS here. The moment she decided to choose robotics: Dr. Howard stated that she was a big fan of The Bionic Woman growing up. She said from the first moment she saw the show she decided that’s what she wanted to do. She wanted to build a bionic woman.
Higher Education News:
www.insidehighered.com
‘The Coddling of the American Mind’
Co-author of new book discusses its critique of societal values, how young people are taught to think about the world and free exchange of ideas in higher education.
By Scott Jaschik
More than 30 years ago, Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind became a cultural phenomenon with its critique of American higher education as dominated by trendy concepts rather than ideas truly tested by time. This academic year arrives with a new critique of American higher education and American society, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Penguin Random House). You may recognize the title from a much discussed Atlantic article by the authors (discussed below). The book discusses what its authors see as an unwillingness by college students to engage in ideas with which they disagree. And while some of the blame in the book goes to students and academic leaders, much of it is placed on parents and society that the authors argue are not preparing students for challenges to their ideas and challenges in life.
www.wsj.com
In Race for Students, Colleges Offer to Match Tuition at Rival Schools
Price-match guarantee, a sales tactic borrowed from retailers, illustrates how fiercely competitive higher education has become
Escalating the heated battle for students, some private colleges are offering to match public in-state tuition. Oglethorpe University near Atlanta will match the tuition of any state flagship university for high-achieving students, and Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh said last week it will charge Pennsylvania residents the same price as local public universities, plus a $3,000 scholarship to boot. The discounts aren’t limited to private schools. Public universities in Michigan, South Dakota and Nebraska now let students from other states pay as if they were locals. The University of Maine in Orono matches neighbors’ in-state rates. Public schools regularly charge two or three times as much—or more—for non-residents.
www.theatlantic.com
Reining In the Excesses of Title IX
The Department of Education’s proposed rule changes aren’t without their flaws—but they move the policy in a more just direction.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/title-ix-reforms-are-overdue/569215/
Emily Yoffe
Contributing editor at The Atlantic
What happens when a morally reprehensible administration puts forth morally just reforms? We are about to find out. A New York Times report on Wednesday outlined the Trump administration’s proposed revisions of rules governing how campuses deal with sexual misconduct allegations (the official release is expected by October). A year ago, Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos declared that the rules and procedures put in place by the Obama administration on this volatile subject had created a “failed system” that brought justice neither to accuser or accused. She promised to change that.
www.chronicle.com
No More Hard Liquor at Fraternity Houses, National Group Says
https://www.chronicle.com/article/No-More-Hard-Liquor-at/244436?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest
By Sarah Brown
A large swath of fraternities will no longer allow hard liquor in chapter houses or at parties in most circumstances, according to a new policy approved by the major national association for fraternities. The North-American Interfraternity Conference’s resolution is another sign that national fraternity leaders are phasing out their traditional hands-off approach, amid a wave of recent hazing deaths that have provoked widespread outrage.