University System News:
Inside Higher Ed
Consolidation and Completion Gains
Merger between a low-performing community college and a nearby university has increased graduation and transfer rates — and could be a model for other colleges.
By Ashley A. Smith
Three years ago the University of Georgia Board of Regents tried to improve single-digit graduation rates at Georgia Perimeter College by merging the two-year college with its Atlanta-area neighbor, Georgia State University. Georgia State had been praised widely for improving its completion rates and closing equity gaps, and state leaders hoped that success would translate to the community college. The merger decision appears to have paid off. Georgia Perimeter, which had a 6.5 percent graduation rate in 2014, increased that three-year rate to nearly 15 percent last year. Its completion rates, which measure graduation and transfers to four-year institutions, increased from 41 percent to 58 percent during that same time period.
Columbus CEO
CSU Students Meet President Jimmy Carter for Presidents’ Day
Staff Report From Columbus CEO
More than 30 Columbus State University students and professors traveled to Plains, Ga. on Presidents’ Day for an opportunity to meet President Jimmy Carter. “It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, said Tiffany Morgan, a senior majoring in history and secondary education. “It is not every day that you get to meet a president.” Attendees joined more than 200 other students – middle school through college – for a meeting with President and Mrs. Carter. The Carters answered students’ questions with topics ranging from foreign policy and education to the qualities of good leadership.
Athens CEO
Dawgs at the Dome: Bulldogs Descend on Capitol
Staff Report From Athens CEO
Students from the University of Georgia visited the Georgia state Capitol on Tuesday for the sixth annual Dawgs at the Dome. The event, a collaboration between the Student Government Association and the Office of Government Relations, allows students to spend a day interacting with state lawmakers and showcases the university’s many contributions to the state. …Legislators, staff and lobbyists joined UGA students for a breakfast reception, and alumnus Gov. Brian Kemp joined the group for a photograph. The students were welcomed to the Capitol by Senate Higher Education Chairman Lindsey Tippins and by House Higher Education Chairman Chuck Martin. “Dawgs at the Dome provides an excellent opportunity for UGA students to interact face-to-face with legislators and UGA alumni serving the state under the gold dome,” said Griff Doyle, vice president for government relations.
Albany Herald
Volunteer training begins at ABAC’s Georgia ag museum
Four sessions planned for persons interested in volunteering
From Staff Reports
Training sessions begin Feb. 20 for volunteers and potential volunteers at the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Georgia Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village. Museum Volunteer Coordinator Lynn McDonald said the training sessions will be offered on both weekdays and weekends and will consist of a site tour and an interpretation lesson. …Volunteers will receive a full site tour with the goal of becoming familiar with the entire Historic Village while also observing interpreters in action. The second part of the training focuses on how to interpret. All the training sessions will be led by Gina Beckman, historic area supervisor for the museum. …“The training will give an overview of the entire Historic Village, and the interpretation information will be applicable to all the areas. These classes will be a great start for someone who is considering becoming a volunteer.
Calhoun Times
Owen’s dissertation leads to award
Staff reports
Ashworth Middle School teacher Rebecca Owen recently was announced as the recipient of the 2019 School Improvement Dissertation of the Year Award from the University of West Georgia. “Under the direction of Dr. Yan Yang, her dissertation, ‘Exploring the Relationship Between Rural Young Adolescents’ Expectancy-Values in Reading and their Reading Performance’ investigated a critical issue and has valuable practical applications in the field of school improvement,” a news release stated. …Prior to receiving her doctorate from UWG, Owen received a specialist in education degree from the University of Georgia in 2014, earning her ESOL endorsement. She received her Master of Arts degree in 2011 from Piedmont College, and earned her Bachelor of Science in Education degree at UGA.
Marietta Daily Journal
‘Devoted caregiver’ Joel Siegel, husband of former KSU President Betty Siegel, dies at 89
Jon Gargis 12 hrs ago 1
Joel Siegel, the husband of former Kennesaw State University President Betty Siegel, died Tuesday afternoon following a stay in hospice. He was 89. A college professor for most of his life, he taught English literature and linguistics at a number of institutions during his career, most recently in state at Dalton State College but also at Spelman College in Atlanta, the University of Florida, Virginia Tech and Western Carolina. But many in the Cobb community may know him for how he took care of his wife of 53 years. Betty Siegel served as KSU’s president from 1981 until her retirement in 2006, making her the first woman to lead an institution in the University System of Georgia and the longest-serving female president of a public university in the entire nation.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
KSU students make demands after racist post
By Eric Stirgus
More than two dozen Kennesaw State University students and supporters gathered on campus Tuesday to demand the school do more to improve the environment for students of color and diverse backgrounds after a racist social media post targeting an African-American student made the rounds on campus. The 35,000-student university began an investigation last week after discovering derogatory and discriminatory posts about an African-American, Islam and Judaism. The post of the African-American student showed the student sitting in a classroom with an arrow pointed at his face, with the words, “Need to call the Klan to solve this issue” underneath it. …KSU told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Levi Smith, the student John said took the photo, is no longer a student at the university. The university declined to discuss if the student was expelled, which John demanded, or if he left voluntarily. Efforts to contact Smith via social media were unsuccessful Tuesday. John was unaware of Smith’s departure and planned to discuss it with university administrators.
Higher Education News:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Vimal Patel
In 1911, Berea College really didn’t like its students to eat at a restaurant across the street from the campus. That summer the college’s administrators changed the conduct code to forbid students to visit restaurants or recreational sites not controlled by the institution. The rules, they said, were intended “to prevent students from wasting their time and money, and to keep them wholly occupied in study.” When a few students decided to go anyway, Berea expelled them. The restaurant’s owner sued the college — and lost. Berea was acting according to the philosophy of in loco parentis, the idea that colleges should act “in the place of the parent” — responsible not just for students’ education but also for their physical and moral safety. That approach predominated through most of the 20th century. As a matter of law, in loco parentis has been in retreat in recent decades. But as an organizing principle for college behavior, it’s making something of a comeback. This resurgent version, at traditional four-year colleges, is more attitudinal than legal, and motivated by 21st-century conditions. Past iterations were paternalistic, but the new version is driven by tuition-payers’ expectations, colleges’ concerns about legal liability, shifting cultural and social norms, and an evolving understanding of human development.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Study Finds Professors’ Beliefs About Intelligence Impacts STEM Achievement
by Sammy G. Allen
A revealing analysis of university faculty and students in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) indicates that professors’ beliefs about intelligence play a measurable role in the success of STEM students, especially underrepresented minorities. “In a university-wide sample, we found that all students – and Black, Latino and Native American students in particular – earn significantly higher grades in STEM courses when their professors believe intelligence is a malleable quality that can be developed over time, compared to when their professors believe intelligence is a fixed trait that cannot change very much,” said author Dr. Elizabeth Canning, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Mary Murphy, a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Science’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Murphy is the study’s principal investigator.
Inside Higher Ed
Online Students Multitask More (Not in a Good Way)
Study finds that even those who are inclined to stray do so less in face-to-face classes — presumably because instructors and peers are watching. What are the implications for online learning? And is all multitasking bad?
By Doug Lederman
Andrew Lepp wasn’t surprised — and wouldn’t expect most people familiar with higher education to be surprised — by the headline finding of a study he and several colleagues published last week: that students in online courses said they engaged in more noneducational multitasking than did their peers in in-person courses. “I would have bet anything that students would have multitasked more in online courses,” said Lepp, a professor of recreation, park and tourism management at Kent State University. “In that way this study just confirmed what’s obvious.” But “where it gets interesting,” Lepp said of the study he and his colleagues published this month in Sage Open, is in the finding that students who were deemed to have similar levels of inclination to multitask were much less likely to do so in face-to-face classes than in online courses. What that suggests, Lepp said, is that something about in-person courses constrains students from engaging in the texting, web shopping and other behaviors that are widely shown as impeding learning. What is that something? “The presence of the teacher and other students who might look sideways at a student who is multitasking,” Lepp asserts.
Inside Higher Ed
Getting Clearer Signals From Employers
As employers admit they need to give clearer signals about needed job skills, a broad U.S. Chamber-led group seeks to use standardization and technology to better align credentialing and work-force data.
By Paul Fain
A wide range of employers have complained for years that higher education is failing to adequately prepare students to join the work force. However, a growing number of businesses are owning some of the blame for the disconnect between college and jobs. Employers too often send the wrong signals about the skills their workers need, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Center for Education and the Workforce. That lack of clarity causes problems for job seekers as well as employers and postsecondary education providers. “Everybody writes job listings in their own language,” said Kemi Jona, associate dean for undergraduate programs at the Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. The result, he said, is a “big mess that nobody can understand.” To help create a more coherent jobs marketplace, the center brought together a group of more than 150 colleges, foundations, HR groups, associations, technical standards organizations and major employers, including Salesforce, Google, IBM, LinkedIn and the U.S. Navy. Walmart and the Lumina Foundation are helping to fund the group, which is dubbed the T3 Innovation Network.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Rise of the Mega-University
By Lee Gardner
…While some so-called mega-universities have physical campuses, they’ve focused intensely on building online programs. They’ve emphasized recruiting working adults over fresh high-school graduates. They’ve embraced competency-based education, in which students earn credits from life experiences and from demonstrating proficiency in a subject. They market widely and vigorously, and lean into, rather than recoil from, some other common corporate practices and philosophies. These universities have clearly found a new way to play the game that many colleges are losing. With no end to their expansion in sight, they could one day lay claim to a significant share of the nation’s new college students. Much as Amazon and Walmart now stand as the templates for the retail business, mega-universities in many ways reflect a shift in what Americans seek in a college degree: something practical, convenient, and inexpensive. Traditional institutions can certainly learn from these disruptors. And the more they do, for better or worse, the more these mega-universities may change the shape and purpose of higher education. ..Colleges have offered online courses for many reasons, and to many types of students. At one point, free online education was supposed to pose an existential threat to brick-and-mortar institutions — remember massive open online courses? But the MOOC revolution collapsed in part because the courses typically didn’t connect to credentials that employers, or students, valued. Seat time survived.
Psychology Today
What Is the Purpose and Future of Higher Education?
A sociologist explores the history and future of higher education
Jonathan Wai
A recent story asked, “Can small liberal arts colleges survive the next decade?” This question is important as we see the closure of some small schools, mostly in areas away from big cities. Yet, as University of California Riverside sociology and public policy distinguished professor Steven G. Brint notes based on his new book Two Cheers for Higher Education, “There’s always been a small number of colleges that close every year – usually fewer than a dozen – and more are opened for the first time than closed.” This illustrates, among other things, why it is important to consider a historical perspective on higher education to place recent individual news stories in context. That’s exactly what his latest book does: It explores the rich history of higher education, leading him to argue that overall higher education appears to be doing quite well, but also that there remain important concerns for higher education on the horizon. …Today, we would have to start by recognizing the fundamental fact that the purposes of higher education are highly differentiated by the stratum in the system institutions occupy. The aims of community colleges are very different from those of research universities. …The great majority of the 3,000 or so four-year colleges and universities are primarily devoted to teaching students, mainly in occupational fields that in theory equip graduates to obtain jobs. Students will receive a smattering of general education in lower-division and will have opportunities to participate in extra-curricular activities. The latter are more important for many students than classroom studies. Students hone interpersonal skills on campus, make contacts that can be useful for instrumental purposes as well as ends in themselves. For those who finish, their diplomas do provide a boost in the labor market, more for quantitative fields than for other fields.