University System News:
www.augustachronicle.com
Defense Digital celebrates space at Georgia Cyber Center
By Tom Corwin
Defense Digital Services, which seeks to pair Army technical talent with civilian experts to work on complex problems, celebrated Thursday its move into the Georgia Cyber Center as it and the U.S, Army Cyber Command seek greater partnerships with industry and academia in the Augusta area. Under Star Wars-themed posters and on T-shirts, Defense Digital Service celebrated its move Thursday into the Hull McKnight Building of the Georgia Cyber Center. Both the service and U.S. Army Cyber Command are hoping the center can help them to partner with industry and academia to find collaborators to tackle the toughest challenges. Army Cyber Commanding General Stephen G. Fogarty also has to recruit not only talent but to sell his current civilian workforce on moving to the Augusta area when the new Army Cyber Command Headquarters opens at Fort Gordon in June 2020. …The idea is to come together with industry and academia in “partnerships, teaming together to answer our nation’s call,” said Maj. Gen. John B. Morrison Jr., commanding general of the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence and of Fort Gordon. Kristian Tran had been a software engineer with tech companies and had worked as a government consultant before joining Defense Digital and seeing all of the history in the halls of the Pentagon where the service is based. …The service has real-time power to protecting the military and its partners, Fogarty said. As enemies have learned to use drones to spy on allied forces and dropped an explosive down the turret of a Humvee and killed some Iraqi forces, the service was able to engineer a solution to foil it in a number of weeks, he said. Now a lot of that work, and a lot of Army Cyber’s work, is shifting to the Augusta area, he said. “This is where we are all converging,” Fogarty said, working in partnership with National Security Agency-Georgia, which is already located at Fort Gordon, as well as the state of Georgia, Augusta University, Augusta Technical College and law enforcement. The Cyber Center makes a lot of that possible and Fogarty commended Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal for pushing the project through.
www.myajc.com
Report: Georgia not doing enough to help students earn college degrees
By Eric Stirgus
A team of researchers released a report Thursday that concluded Georgia’s political and education leaders – at public and private schools – must do more to help students enroll and graduate college, saying the state is near the bottom nationally in both categories. Thirty-one percent of Georgians between the ages of 18 to 24 are in college, the 45th lowest rate in the nation, according to researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for the Research on Higher Education. The report also took Georgia to task for the small percentage of low-income students graduating college. Only four schools where the majority of students are eligible for federal grants to aid low-income students had six-year graduation rates greater than 50 percent, the researchers found. “Although the state saw very modest gains in higher educational attainment between 2011 and 2017, it is far from achieving the kinds of outcomes that can sustain a modern, competitive economy,” the report said. “This study shows that Georgia is not on track to educate enough people with high-quality workforce credentials or college degrees.” …University System of Georgia officials questioned the accuracy of some data points in the report. System officials are engaged in an ongoing effort to better assist students at the start of their academic careers. The system did not raise tuition this academic year, recognizing costs have increased in recent years. They also said they’ve saved $19 million a year in textbooks by using free, online resources as part of the Affordable Learning Georgia initiative. …The report said Georgia must do more to help low-income students, echoing additional research that the state’s poorest students are paying more for college than in recent years.
www.walb.com
Editorial: Albany State University Homecoming is ‘Unsinkable’
https://www.walb.com/2018/10/24/editorial-albany-state-university-homecoming-is-unsinkable/
Albany State University adopted the motto “Unsinkable” during the flood of 1994, and they still displayed an unsinkable spirit in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael. Students at Albany State were evacuated during Michael and taken to the Georgia Southern Armstrong campus in Savannah for shelter. The students were also allowed to continue their studies while there. The ASU campus had significant damage and there was concern about homecoming activities this year. After consulting with local officials, ASU student leaders, ASU alumni leaders, and the ASU Foundation, President Marion Fedrick made the tough decision to revise homecoming activities. …Students, alumni, and supporters showed up in big numbers for the ASU Day of Service, Homecoming Block Party, and Homecoming football game. More than 8,500 fans supported the football team as they defeated Clark-Atlanta University, 36-3! Unsinkable then, unsinkable now. The university is a part of this community, and as we’ve all seen during the recovery process, the “unsinkable” spirit is contagious!
www.augustachronicle.com
AU Health closes on $85 million in tax-exempt bonds
https://www.augustachronicle.com/news/20181025/au-health-closes-on-85-million-in-tax-exempt-bonds
By Damon Cline
Augusta University Health System on Thursday reported closing on $85 million worth of tax-exempt bonds, which system officials said would help pay off some of its variable-rate debt as well as fund major capital projects – including a proposed hospital in Columbia County. The bond sale, made possible by a $230 million industrial bond resolution approved earlier this year by the Augusta Economic Development Authority, was the system’s first foray into public financing. AU Health Chief Financial Officer Greg Damron told the health system’s board of directors the funds would help refinance a BB&T bank loan and pay off a line of credit with JPMorgan Chase. Damron said the health system initially asked for $230 million because it had planned, but later reconsidered, to pay off two previous private-placement bond issues. He said the $85 million serves the system’s immediate needs while giving it experience to access capital markets in the future.
www.wsbtv.com
Second major university has huge deal with Coca-Cola but never opened…
https://www.wsbtv.com/video?videoId=859854707&videoVersion=1.0
GSU tells Richard Belcher a loophole in the state law allows the no-bid deal.
www.emanuelcountylive.com
Donaldson included in GSU Alumni Association’s latest 40 Under 40 class
by WHITLEY CLIFTON
The Georgia Southern University Alumni Association is pleased to announce its 40 Under 40 Class of 2018. Out of 120,000 living alumni, nearly 50,000 are under 40 years old. 40 Under 40 honorees not only represent the excellence of the university’s young alumni but also demonstrate the positive contributions and remarkable achievements for which Georgia Southern and Armstrong graduates are known. Matt Donaldson of Twin City was one.
www.emanuelcountylive.com
Annual Farm Bureau scholarship given to ECI alum
http://emanuelcountylive.com/2018/10/annual-farm-bureau-scholarship-given-to-eci-alum/
by WHITLEY CLIFTON
Peyton Mercer was recently awarded the 2018 Dolan E. Brown Memorial Scholarship by Emanuel County Farm Bureau. Mercer graduated from Emanuel County Institute this past spring and attended East Georgia College as a Move On When Ready student.
www.emanuelcountylive.com
EAC hosts face-painting, boomerang-making
http://emanuelcountylive.com/2018/10/eac-hosts-face-painting-boomerang-making/
by WHITLEY CLIFTON
The Emanuel Arts Council sponsored face-painting and How-to-Make-a-Boomerang activities during the Downtown Swainsboro Fall Festival on Oct. 16 at The Boneyard. Members of the East Georgia State College Art Club, under direction of art professor Desmal Purcell, painted numerous faces during the festival.
www.albanyherald.com
Dougherty Coroner: ASU East Campus death was suicide
Albany State University police, Georgia Bureau of Investigation initially treat death investigation as a homicide
By Terry Lewis
Dougherty County Coroner Michael Fowler said the death of a 28-year-old Albany State University student who was found to be fatally shot Wednesday night behind ASU’s east campus is the result of a suicide. Fowler said the man, identified as Vendrayvius Jenkins, was found at approximately 10 p.m. between South University Drive and Sands Drive behind the campus near a gazebo.
Higher Education News:
www.chronicle.com
After the Killing of a Journalist, Colleges Confront Their Saudi Ties
By Steven Johnson
The killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi exile and Washington Post columnist, first troubled media companies, then business titans, then nongovernmental organizations, and ultimately government officials. It drew responses on Tuesday from the Trump administration, which issued its first diplomatic action against the suspected killers, and on Wednesday from Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, in his first public comments on Khashoggi’s death. Now, as Saudi officials issue yet another about-face on the killing, urgent questions surrounding the grisly death of a dissident are reaching academe. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology told faculty members on Monday that it would re-examine its connections with Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, a New Haven activist has pressed the University of New Haven to end its partnership with a college in Riyadh that trains security forces. The Harvard Crimson examined Harvard University’s ties to the country on Wednesday. And Babson College, which partnered with the kingdom and Lockheed Martin to establish an entrepreneurship college, is “monitoring events closely,” it said in a statement to The Chronicle. Many U.S. colleges receive millions of dollars in Saudi contracts and gifts, according to Education Department data. But some programs go further, crafting academic and advisory partnerships with the kingdom’s development efforts. Those partnerships illustrate the entanglements of globalized academic deals, particularly as colleges look to enter emerging markets, where research and money-making opportunities can come attached to murky geopolitics.
www.chronicle.com
Here’s What Today’s Students Want From College
By Jeffrey J. Selingo
If you talk to college leaders these days, you’ll hear that one of their biggest worries is the demographic headwind facing their institutions. The number of U.S. high-school graduates is mostly flat and projected to remain that way until it declines by the middle of the next decade. The cohort that arrives on campus in the 2020s will be more racially and ethnically diverse, and will include more first-generation and low-income students than any other group of undergraduates previously served by American higher education. And all of those recent high-school graduates will hail from Generation Z, a group with different expectations than those of the millennials. While those demographic trends have been on the radar of colleges for nearly a decade, finding a strategy to serve those students has proved elusive. So college leaders return to what is familiar, rather than listen to what prospective students want from higher education or even how current students navigate it.
www.insidehighered.com
Grad Students’ ‘Fight for $15’
Graduate student assistants at campuses across the U.S. are pushing for $15 per hour, what they call a minimum living wage. Many labor for far less, but Emory recently upped stipends to effectively meet that target.
By Colleen Flaherty
Amazon announced this month that it would begin paying its workers at least $15 per hour, making it the latest employer to cede to labor activists who have been pushing for that new minimum wage nationally for several years. Graduate assistants want $15 per hour, too, and are waging their own campus campaigns for it. “Fifteen dollars an hour represents a living wage in much of the U.S.,” said Casey Williams, a Ph.D. candidate in literature at Duke University. “Grad workers, like all workers, deserve to earn enough to live decently in exchange for the research and teaching labor they provide universities, many of which depend on the work of grad students and adjunct professors to function, maintain prestige, secure key grants and attract tuition-paying undergraduates.” Graduate students pushing for $15 per hour generally maintain that they are full-time, full-year employees, even if universities view them as part-time employees or as students learning to teach and do research. Fifteen dollars per hour times 40 hours per week, times 52 weeks per year, is $31,200. So $31,000 — which is on the high end of graduate student stipends nationally — has emerged as a new target minimum annual stipend.
www.chronicle.com
Margaret Spellings Is Reportedly Resigning as U. of North Carolina President
By Sarah Brown
Margaret Spellings is reportedly resigning as president of the University of North Carolina system, after three years in which she forged ahead with major changes aimed at increasing affordability and accountability, and simultaneously became mired in a series of culture-war controversies. Spellings, who served as education secretary under George W. Bush, has been negotiating her departure with the system’s governing board and could leave as soon as early next year, according to The News & Observer, a newspaper in Raleigh, N.C. One motivation is a desire to return to Texas, her home state, the paper reported. Doyle Parrish, a board member, confirmed to the Triangle Business Journal that Spellings would resign and said he believes she’s doing so for two reasons: the “turbulent experience” she has had in a politically charged climate, and a “divisive board.”