USG eclips for January 30, 2019

University System News:

 

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

On Campus: Budget hikes for colleges,  help for veterans and HBCUs?

By Eric Stirgus

With more than a half-million students attending colleges and universities in Georgia and billions of dollars spent annually on higher education, there’s plenty of things happening on the state’s public and private campuses. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is committed to telling you about it with our weekly campus round-up. Look for it on Tuesdays.Here’s a look at what happened on the higher education front in the last week on some metro Atlanta and Georgia campuses: UGA teaching assistant’s posts sparks controversy … Funding increases proposed for Georgia’s public colleges …

 

The Sentinel

Agreement between USG and U.S. Army hopes to fill growing number of cyber jobs

JAKE DRUKMAN

This article has been updated since its original publication. The University System of Georgia signed an agreement earlier this month with the U.S. Army Cyber Center that will allow active duty and reserve military members to work toward a degree in cyber fields at several of Georgia’s universities during their service. The agreement affects military members who are stationed at Fort Gordon in Augusta, which houses the U.S. Army Cyber Center of Excellence. The Army intends for the program to help fill over 11,000 open cyber jobs in the state, both inside and outside the armed forces. According to the USG, the agreement includes Kennesaw State, the University of North Georgia, Columbus State University, Middle Georgia State University and Augusta University, all of which are designated as National Security Agency Centers of Academic Excellence. The partnership is meant to allow military members to receive college credit for certain courses based on their experiences of duty, providing them a way to earn their degrees with less time spent in class, according to the USG.

 

Savannah Morning News

Georgia Southern seeks community input in planning process; two meetings at Savannah’s Armstrong campus

By Ann Meyer

Georgia Southern University plans to hold seven town hall meetings, including two at Savannah’s Armstrong campus, in February to encourage community input in its strategic planning process.

A five-year vision to move the university forward is the goal of the strategic planning process. A committee of 15 members was formed to develop new mission and vision statements for the university in February and deliver a new strategic plan in May, according to the university’s website. Carl Reiber, provost and vice president for academic affairs, is overseeing the strategic planning process, which began in October. “Building on an impressive legacy of academic excellence, Georgia Southern’s new strategic plan will offer a collective vision for the future to ensure student success, unity, community engagement and inclusive excellence, while strengthening our financial and human capital and advancing teaching and research,” Reiber said in a release.

 

WGAURadio

UGA PRESIDENT DELIVERS STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY SPEECH

By: Tim Bryant

University of Georgia president Jere Morehead delivers his annual State of the University address today. Morehead’s speech is set for 3:30 this afternoon in the Chapel on UGA’s North Campus.  The University of Georgia’s spring and career internship fair is on tap for today, underway at noon at the Classic Center in downtown Athens. The annual networking event is hosted by UGA’s Career Center. Shuttle buses will take students from the University to the Classic Center.

 

Marietta Daily Journal

KSU names new provost

Shaddi Abusaid

Kennesaw State University on Tuesday announced that Kathy Schwaig, dean of the Michael J. Coles College of Business, will take over as provost and vice president for academic affairs in February. Schwaig will become the first woman to hold this chief academic position at KSU. The Dinos Eminent Scholar Chair of Entrepreneurial Management and a professor of information systems, Schwaig joined KSU’s faculty in 2002 and has headed the business college since 2012. She starts her new role as provost on Feb. 18. As provost and vice president for academic affairs, she will be responsible for all aspects of the university’s academic mission, including the intellectual environment for faculty, students and staff, and planning, budgeting, supervising, and reviewing programs in instruction, research, and continuing education, the university announced in its news release. She will oversee the deans of KSU’s 13 colleges and lead the faculty’s efforts to strengthen the school’s academic programs.

 

Tifton CEO

ABAC Graduates Get Early Admission to Mercer Medical School

Staff Report From Tifton CEO

Two Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College graduates who earned their bachelor’s degrees in biology have been notified of their early admission into the Mercer University School of Medicine. Dr. Jordan Cofer, Interim Dean of the ABAC School of Arts and Sciences, said Kyle Posey from Ocilla and Pedro Escobar from Tifton plan to enroll at Mercer for the 2019 fall semester.  They will join Kelly Delgado who enrolled at the Mercer Medical School for the 2018 fall term.  Delgado also received a bachelor’s degree in biology from ABAC. “This is really exciting,” Cofer said. “The fact that our students are having such success really speaks highly of the strength and rigor of our bachelor’s degree programs and our emphasis on undergraduate research.” Cofer said Posey credits his success to his work with the professors at ABAC, particularly his advisor, Dr. Marvin Holtz.

 

Statesboro Herald

GS honor society earns national award

Students volunteer for projects around campus, Bulloch

BRENDAN WARD, Herald Intern

The Georgia Southern University chapter of the Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society earned the Capstone Award at the most recent national award ceremony, the only chapter of the organization’s 210 chapters across the nation to do so.

 

Seed World

Arielle Hurst Loves All Aspects of Ag, From Show Horses to Technology

Alex Martin

At the 30th Annual Independent Professional Seed Association Conference in Indian Wells, California, Alex Martin sat down with IPSA Scholar Arielle Hurst, a senior at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College majoring in agricultural business. This is Hurst’s second IPSA Conference — she was an IPSA Scholar in the 29th Annual IPSA Conference as well, and she said there’s so many changes in just over a year.

 

AllOnGeorgia

Georgia Southern hosts 30th annual National Youth-At-Risk Conference

More than 120 training sessions are coming to Savannah as the Georgia Southern University College of Education hosts the 30th annual National Youth-At-Risk Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel March 3 through 6. The conference brings together over 1,200 professionals in education, social work, law enforcement, counseling, and other child and family advocacy fields from around the country for quality, relevant training to better serve youth placed at risk. …The National Youth-At-Risk Conference aims to help professionals create safe, healthy, caring and intellectually empowering educational environments for children and adolescents.

 

Coastal Courier

Dual Enrollment parent night brings crowd to LCPAC

Lainey Standiford

Staff Writer

“Twice the credit, half the time, zero tuition,” Executive Director of Special Programs Sonja Duncan said, describing the benefits of dual enrollment. Both Duncan and CEO of Liberty College and Career Academy Karisa Young held an informative parent and student session to discuss the opportunities and process of dual enrollment. More than 312 people filled the room and overflowed to hear about the unique opportunity for students in Liberty County. In 2015, the Georgia General Assembly passed a law that combined existing dual-credit programs into one—Move on When Ready—which is now known as dual enrollment. The program provides state-funded assistance for college tuition, mandatory fees, and textbooks for part-time and full-time participating students, Young said. “This information session is to provide you with the vital information concerning dual enrollment,” Young said. “So your student can know what steps they need to take in preparing for their future. We want to empower our students to consider dual enrollment.” …Dual enrollment representatives from Georgia Southern’s Liberty Campus, Savannah State University, and Savannah Technical College came to also speak about the guidelines of dual enrollment at each respective school. Each representative talked briefly about the guidelines surrounding dual enrollment participation, and opened themselves up for questions at the end of the presentation at tables outside of the auditorium.

 

The Brunswick News

HBCU Fair raises awareness about education opportunities

By LAUREN MCDONALD

Jordan McClinton and Sabrina Luckey are on the cusp of making one of the most significant decisions of their lives. Both are seniors in high school with just a few months left before they receive their diplomas and embark on the next part of their journeys. And because they’re both high-performing students who have schedules packed with extracurricular activities, they’ve got to decide which of several college offers to accept. At the top of the list for both, though, is a Historically Black College and University, or HBCU. “I haven’t chosen a school yet, but it’s between Georgia Tech and North Carolina A&T,” said McClinton, a senior at Glynn Academy. “I plan on majoring in computer engineering.” Luckey earned acceptance into several HBCUs, she said, and she’s yet to decide where to go. …McClinton and Luckey became familiar with the many HBCU options in Georgia and around the country by attending the annual HBCU Fair held in Glynn County. The seventh annual fair will take place Feb. 22 from 9 a.m. to noon in the new gym at Glynn Academy.

 

Macon Telegraph

More students are enrolling, so this Middle Georgia school is building a new dorm

BY LAURA CORLEY

Middle Georgia State University is set to open a new multimillion-dollar student residence hall on its Macon campus in 2020. The three-story 73,000 square feet building is set to open July 1, 2020 on the north side of the campus lake beside the Recreation and Wellness Center. It will have 310 beds. “It will be a nice hub for the students,” Nancy Stroud, the school’s executive vice president for finance and operations, told The Telegraph. “They’ll have a lot of informal spaces like for meetings and study groups … It’s going to be a great building.”

 

Fox28Media

SSU, GSU collaboration expands presence in Liberty County

by Robert Catanese

In November, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by both Georgia Southern University and Savannah State University, creating a partnership to enhance educational programs for students attending both universities. “We are really looking forward to that partnership with Savannah State,” said Carl Reiber, the Georgia Southern provost and vice president of academic affairs. The MOU would form a larger footprint for both institutions in Liberty County.

 

The Augusta Chronicle

New Adrenal Center opens at AU Health Sciences campus

By Jozsef Papp

The Augusta University Adrenal Center is officially open. The center, located at Professional Building One on the Health Sciences campus, is one of a few in the country and the first in the Southeast to provide complete care to patients with all aspects of adrenal gland disease. Disorders can occur when the glands produce too much or not enough of these hormones. Dr. Aaron Bolduc, the adrenal center’s surgical director, said it is a very complicated disease, but the center will allow patients to receive the specific treatment and care that they need. “The adrenal gland is a small gland that sits over your kidney and makes a lot of hormones, such as adrenaline, and it can have some disorders associated with it. It can even develop into cancer,” Bolduc said at Tuesday’s grand opening. Former Georgia state Sen. Curt Thompson began advocating for funding after his son was diagnosed with a form of adrenal cancer in 2017 and was told there was no place in Georgia or the Southeast for treatment. While in a Mayo Clinic waiting room in Rochester, Minn., he realized a lot of the people there were from Georgia with similar adrenal diseases.

 

Atlanta Business Chronicle

UGA names its 2019 fastest-growing alumni-operated businesses

The University of Georgia Alumni Association recognized the fastest-growing companies owned or operated by UGA alumni during the 10th annual Bulldog 100 Celebration on Jan. 26, 2019, at the Hyatt Regency in Atlanta. The University of Georgia has named its fastest-growing, alumni-operated businesses for 2019. The 2019 fastest-growing business is Terminus, a business-to-business advertising platform led by CEO Eric Spett, who earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration in 2010. Four of the other top-ranking companies are also based in metro Atlanta. Rounding out the top 10 are:

 

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s ports shake off trade worries and post record year

By J. Scott Trubey

Georgia’s sea ports shook off fears of global trade tensions and the early days of the partial government shutdown to post another record year of freight traffic in calendar year 2018, a sign the economy remains sound despite recent turmoil. Georgia’s inland and coastal ports are vital cogs in the state’s economy, and in some ways canaries in the global economic coal mine. The volume of cargo that flows in and out of the Savannah and Brunswick harbors are bellwethers of U.S. demand for imports and of the appetite abroad for Georgia grown or manufactured products. …A recent study by the University of Georgia found that maritime trade accounts for $44 billion of the state’s gross domestic product and the ports directly or indirectly touch more than 439,000 jobs.

 

 

Higher Education News:

 

Inside Higher Ed

Alexander Wants New Higher Ed Law by End of Year

By Andrew Kreighbaum

A top staffer for Senator Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate education committee, said Monday that the senator wants to pass a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act before Christmas. David Cleary, Alexander’s chief of staff, made the comments at an event hosted by the Education Writers Association.

 

Inside Higher Ed

Does Paying Top Dollar for Public University Presidents Pay Off?

Study finds no relationship between pay for public university presidents and money brought in from state appropriations or fund-raising.

By Rick Seltzer

What’s the return on investment on a public college president? It’s a complicated question, because the return part of the equation is much more difficult to calculate than the investment portion. A president’s total compensation — the investment — can be looked up or sought via a freedom of information request. But the return on that investment — the president’s performance — can take many different forms. A president might raise more revenue than his or her predecessor. He or she might prove particularly adept at improving an institution’s academic standing — or at standing up for academic values. Some presidents just have to clean up the mess left by a predecessor. The discussion is nonetheless important as presidents at publicly subsidized universities take home hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation. A study recently published in the winter edition of The Review of Higher Education seeks to look at one element of return on investment from presidential compensation by examining two slices of institutional revenue. Specifically, the study asks whether presidential compensation at four-year public research institutions is correlated with more revenue from state appropriations or more revenue from private fund-raising. The answer: it’s not correlated, at least according to data from a relatively small sample of research institutions examined over a seven-year period.