University System News:
www.insidehighered.com
New Programs: Cybersecurity, Automated Science, Neuroscience, Data Science, Business, Counseling, Engineering Management, Computer Science, Student Development
By Scott Jaschik
Augusta University, in Georgia, is starting a bachelor of science in cybersecurity engineering.
www.georgiaentertainmentnews.com
UGA, Georgia Film Academy collaborate on new off-campus film production course
BY NEWS
If you want to know how popular films like “Black Panther,” “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” and “Baby Driver” were made in Georgia and whether you could work on the set of the next blockbuster hit, a new off-campus film production course will be offered to help students get hands-on experience in film production. …The Entertainment and Media Studies major within the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication has partnered with the Georgia Film Academy to create an opportunity for University of Georgia students to learn about the “nuts and bolts” of film production.
www.thebrunswicknews.com
Glynn County signs on five more REACH scholars
By LAUREN MCDONALD
Five Glynn County middle school students signed papers Tuesday that they will be able to someday transform into $10,000 scholarships for post-secondary education. All that these promising students have to do now is keep their grades high, achieve good school attendance, avoid bad behavior in and out of school, meet with mentors weekly, meet with academic coaches monthly, engage in college-prep activities and graduate high school … “A lot of our colleges and institutions are matching or double-matching (the $10,000),” Bryant said. “The University of Georgia, Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Southern have all said ‘We believe enough in this cohort of young people that when they graduate we will take that $10,000 and we’ll add $20,000 of our own money.’”
www.myajc.com
KSU changes policies after director allegedly stole, sold computers
By Ben Brasch – The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After a decade working at Kennesaw State University, police say Derrick Smith took $100,000 of technology and sold some of it on eBay. Smith, 33, was booked into Cobb County jail on Oct. 16 with felony theft charges, records show. Tammy DeMel, spokeswoman with KSU, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Tuesday that campus police started investigating in February 2018 after IT reported some missing equipment. The school has since made some changes to how it handles incoming purchases.
www.ajc.com
Fort Valley State prostitution case suspects turn themselves in to face charges
By Eric Stirgus Ernie Suggs
Six of the seven suspects in the ongoing criminal investigation that involved two former Fort Valley State University officials turned in themselves on prostitution charges, authorities said Tuesday. Arrest warrants obtained Tuesday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show the criminal activity began in October 2015, when former university official Alecia Johnson and another woman allegedly took scholarship money that was awarded to a student. Johnson took the woman to several locations in Peach County, where the university is located, to meet several men for prostitution, according to the arrest warrants.
See also:
www.41nbc.com
6 OF 7 FVSU SEX INVESTIGATION SUSPECTS TURN THEMSELVES IN
https://www.41nbc.com/2018/10/23/6-7-fvsu-sex-investigation-suspects-turn/
www.macon.com
Here are the people accused in FVSU pimping, pandering case
https://www.macon.com/news/local/crime/article220499395.html
www.wsbtv.com
Child rape suspect among 7 charged in Fort Valley State sex scandal
By: Nicole Carr
ATLANTA – Channel 2 Action News has learned that a child rape suspect is among the seven people charged in a pimping and prostitution investigation centered around Fort Valley State University. On Friday, the Peach County District Attorney’s Office named the seven suspects, including Alecia Johnson, the former FVSU president’s aide and campus Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority advisor. Channel 2 investigative reporter Nicole Carr first broke the story about Johnson’s involvement in April, shortly after she resigned from her position at the university. She faces more than a dozen counts of pimping, prostitution and attempted theft charges from 2015 to 2017. …Carr has now confirmed another suspect, Devontae Little, is the same Warner Robins man at the center of a criminal and civil case tied to the recent alleged rape of a 16-year-old girl. Little, 26, is accused of assaulting the teen in April at a Georgia Center for Youth facility in Taylor County. At the time, the teen, who is in foster care, was assigned to the state-contracted facility by the Division of Family and Children Services, and Little served as a human services professional.
www.ajc.com
Man who targeted Georgia Tech employees through phishing scheme sentenced
By J.D. Capelouto, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Nigerian man was sentenced to five years and 11 months in prison on Monday for his role in an online scam that accessed the employee bank accounts of several colleges and universities, including some at Georgia Tech, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. Olayinka Olaniyi, 34, was part of a “phishing” scheme that sent fraudulent emails that appeared to be from legitimate businesses to trick the recipients into providing personal information and passwords, according to officials … Georgia Tech officials contacted the FBI after discovering the suspicious activity in employee information in November 2014, AJC.com previously reported.
www.thegeorgeanne.com
Student’s tweet says Georgia Southern professor used N-word twice during class
http://www.thegeorgeanne.com/news/article_872668a2-250e-5baa-be16-fe21fcdbc519.html
By Matthew Enfinger, The George-Anne staff
A video posted by a student on Twitter depicts a Georgia Southern University professor using the N-word during class Monday. The tweet, posted by student Dashia Nugent, says Karen McCurdy, assistant professor of political science and international studies, used the derogatory term while quoting another African-American man. Nugent said the first video was taken after McCurdy allegedly said the word.
www.bizjournals.com
Georgia nonprofit launches with aim of protecting statewide intellectual property
By Madison Hogan – Atlanta Inno Staff Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle
The Georgia Intellectual Property Alliance officially launched Monday as a nonprofit designed to serve the state by establishing a better model for creating, protecting and enabling intellectual property … The GIPA Board currently has more than 50 members from across the IP ecosystem, including representation from the State of Georgia; Georgia Chamber of Commerce; Technology Association of Georgia; Metro Atlanta Chamber; FinTech Atlanta; Georgia Research Alliance; Emory University; Georgia Institute of Technology; Georgia State University; University of Georgia; Georgia and Atlanta Bars; and Georgia Lawyers for the Arts. Additional members include more than a dozen law firms, corporations, consultants and inventors.
www.gpbnews.org
Nobel Winner Says Georgia Leads in Clean Energy
http://www.gpbnews.org/post/nobel-winner-says-georgia-leads-clean-energy
By J. CINDY HILL
Dr. Marilyn Brown directs Georgia Tech’s Climate and Energy Policy Lab. She was on a team of scientists, energy and policy leaders that won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for work mitigating climate change. In a recent talk at Georgia Southern University, Brown said Georgia is working to cut carbon emissions in two significant ways, “The utility-scale solar systems that are being constructed mostly in southern Georgia. But also Plant Vogtle. We’re keeping the nuclear option alive and of course nuclear is a carbon-free form of electricity.” (w/audio)
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
Public Flagships Are Offering More Middle-Income Scholarships. What Gives?
By Chris Quintana
The cost of a higher education is weighing ever more heavily on the minds of Americans. Nearly three in five people tell the Pew Research Center that “affordability of a college education” is a “very big” national problem, a jump of about 11 percent from 2016, when just one in two had the same concern. Selective flagship universities appear to be getting the message. More of them are rolling out financial-aid packages aimed directly at students from middle-income families.
www.chronicle.com
Undergraduates Aren’t Sure About Postgraduate Study. These Factors Encourage Them to Apply.
By Lindsay Ellis
A wide network of relatives, professors, and people already working in a field offer career advice to white undergraduates who are likely to pursue an advanced degree, and those white students are more likely than their black, Hispanic, and Asian peers to have received such guidance. That finding, released on Tuesday as part of a Gallup survey commissioned by two law-school associations, was one of several that suggested universities should attempt to widen access to advising so that all students who could excel in postgraduate study are encouraged to do so. “Unless our undergraduates are exposed to and consider investing in higher degrees,” said Kent D. Syverud, Syracuse University’s chancellor and president, on Tuesday, “this engine of social mobility stops.” The survey results were released at a moment of hand-wringing among graduate- and professional-school administrators. Applications to American business schools’ graduate programs dropped this year, and law schools, despite an uptick last year, have seen declines in applications since 2010. Graduate enrollment at American universities is about flat, but international interest has fallen, the Council of Graduate Schools reported this month.
www.insidehighered.com
Coaxing Dropouts to Return and Earn Degrees
Colleges are hoping a new initiative will help them encourage former students who stopped out to return and complete their degrees.
By Ashley A. Smith
In the quest to help raise degree-attainment rates across the country, college administrators are realizing they’ve allowed millions of students to drop out over the decades — and now they want them back. The colleges have joined a new national effort to entice those former students to re-enroll and earn their degrees. The Institute for Higher Education Policy recently launched a three-year initiative, called Degrees When Due, to help colleges identify former students who dropped out and help them earn a degree or academic credential. “To successfully and meaningfully re-engage students, we need to offer them a new educational environment that acknowledges the student’s responsibilities inside and outside the classroom and supports them through the inevitable challenges of completing one’s degree,” Lexi Shankster, IHEP’s director of student success and mobility, said in a statement. Students drop out of college for various reasons, including family responsibilities, financial hardships, housing problems, health challenges and academic difficulties, Shankster said. “Degrees When Due will prompt campuses to consider multiple changes,” she said.
www.insidehighered.com
Parental Education Linked to Interest in Grad School
By Scott Jaschik
Undergraduates are more likely to consider going to graduate school if at least one of their parents did so, according to new data from the Association of American Law Schools and Gallup. The survey found that 41 percent of those considering graduate or professional education have at least one parent with an advanced degree, compared to 33 percent whose parents hold a bachelor’s degree and 26 percent whose parents do not hold a four-year degree.
www.chronicle.com
A Message to College Leaders: Don’t Overlook Resources Right Under Your Nose
By Goldie Blumenstyk
It’s easy to paint higher education as stagnant and unresponsive to changing times and the complexities of students’ lives, but that’s an inaccurate picture. In reality, there are tons of efforts underway — movements, even — that are already making an impact on students and the institutions they attend. Outside interests, such as foundations and investor-backed startups, often get the credit for stirring the pot on these developments. Of course, their money and clout bring influence. Yet existing projects can also be enormously important too. Innovation-minded college leaders overlook them at their peril.
www.insidehighered.com
Empowering the Faculty in Debates Over Managing Online Programs
A new tool kit from the AAUP offers faculty groups concrete steps for ensuring that partnerships with for-profit companies don’t threaten academic freedom and program integrity.
By Mark Lieberman
Faculty members’ hackles have been raised in several recent cases over the terms of their institutions’ agreements with online program management providers — and over their involvement in setting those terms. Now the American Association of University Professors wants to empower instructors in those debates with the help of a tool kit of resources under the umbrella of “Education Not Privatization.” The association’s materials, released Monday, don’t explicitly make the case that faculty members should seek to block deals with OPMs or other for-profit companies like learning management system providers. But they aim to even the playing field of contentious negotiations between for-profit companies and the complex network of shared governance on the institutional side. “While the use of digital platforms and online teaching tools can enrich higher education, elements of contracting with for-profit online education corporations can present problems in areas of interest to faculty, particularly academic freedom and shared governance,” the tool kit introduction reads.