Gwinnett Daily Post

Georgia Gwinnett College Interim President looks to school’s future, growth opportunities

By Isabel Hughes

Georgia Gwinnett College has come a long way since August 2006 when it opened its doors with just more than 100 students. Yet the college, which had more than 12,500 students enrolled as of August 2018, still has many opportunities to grow, and in a multitude of areas, GGC Interim President Mary Beth Walker said. At a Thursday morning meet-and-greet, Walker, who joined the school in January following the departure of former president Stas Preczewski, focused on where the college is headed — both while she serves as interim president and into the future. “What I’ve learned from (working at Georgia State University) is you don’t rest on your laurels,” said Walker, who served as associate provost for strategic initiatives and innovation at Georgia State prior to accepting GGC’s interim president position. “(GGC) has done a great job, and everybody involved in that startup phase and bringing it to where it is should be incredibly proud of that. But we’re not done.” To help facilitate GGC’s growth, Walker said she would like to see the college cater more to those already in the workforce.

Atlanta Business Chronicle

Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School names new leader

By Maria Saporta  – Contributing Writer, Atlanta Business Chronicle

A new leader has been selected as chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech, succeeding Joseph Bankoff, who is stepping down this spring after seven years in the role. Adam Stulberg, a senior faculty in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, will begin his appointment as the new chair in July. Stulberg has been on faculty in the Nunn School for more than 20 years. He is the Neal Family Chair, and he holds numerous leadership roles in the school and across campus. Stulberg is associate chair for research and co-director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy in the Nunn School and associate director of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute.

The Red & Black

Worth it: Double-CEO and UGA student juggles school and entrepreneurship

Vanessa Sachs | Contributor

Haley Dunigan has been the owner and full-time operator of Athens-based fashion company Chokers and Charms since 2013. But now, Dunigan is branching out into the clothing sector with her new sustainable company, VAUT. VAUT launched March 2, and despite Dunigan’s success with her first company of five years she’s decided VAUT will be its own entity rather than a sister company. Her mentor, Fab-rik’s CEO Dana Spinola, helped Dunigan achieve the innovative brand she’d always envisioned by inspiring Dunigan and sharing ideas with her. Dunigan, a University of Georgia senior studying fashion merchandising from Flowery Branch, Georgia, didn’t plan to launch VAUT while still in school. The morning of the launch, Dunigan was awake with the sunrise, pulling apart fabric and piecing it together. After hours of repurposing, Dunigan positioned the models and the fairytale of VAUT was photographed in the back alley of the Graduate Hotel in Athens.

Barnesville

UPDATED: Brinkley endowment fund established at GSC

Posted by Walter Geiger in Features

An endowment to honor the late Ray Brinkley and his wife Margie of Barnesville has been established at Gordon State College by their children. The fund will support a scholarship to a deserving student accepted into the Gordon State College School of Education. Ray Brinkley was an alumnus of Gordon, and all three of his children are graduates. All of his grandchildren attended or graduated from Gordon. Three of his children and one of his grandchildren chose to become teachers.

The Brunswick News

Atlanta BeltLine visionary shares story of community revitalization

By LAUREN MCDONALD

The photo features a woman walking down a trail on the Atlanta Beltline during a bright spring day. She’s surrounded by other walkers and bike riders, and she’s carrying her groceries home. Ryan Gravel, who took the picture several years ago, showed it to audience members Thursday evening at the inaugural 2019 Distinguished Speakers Series hosted by the College of Coastal Georgia Foundation. He said it’s his favorite photo he’s taken of the BeltLine after about 15 years working on the project. …The talk on Thursday, which included an on-stage interview with Bert Roughton, a former senior managing editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, created a buzz around the community, and attendees filled most seats in the college’s Southeast Georgia Conference Center. “This is our purpose for the speaker series — it’s to encourage conversation, thoughts, questions,” said Michelle Johnston, president of the college. “So, it’s working.” As an architecture student at Georgia Tech in the early 1990s, Gravel spent a year abroad in Paris, France. During his time there, he lost 15 pounds in the first month from walking as a main mode of transportation and eating healthy fresh food inside the city. “The role of the physical city around me was shaping my own health and well-being,” he said. “… It got me really obsessed with the design of cities, specifically the role of infrastructure in shaping our lives.”

Successful Dealer

Volvo hosts annual student competition

SD Staff

Volvo Group North America recently hosted the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Carolina Section’s Student Night at its Greensboro, N.C. facilities. The annual meeting gave students an opportunity to present their design projects for various SAE student competitions, including AeroDesign, Baja SAE, Formula SAE and Formula SAE Electric, which were then judged on merit by a panel of eight local Volvo Group employees. “The students’ projects encourage them to display true teamwork, as each team member must apply knowledge from their area of study or expertise in order to be successful,” says Stephanie Borne Prieur, manager, Volvo Group North America engineering project office. “It’s the same way we work in business and is a great preparation for the students as they build skills that will help them achieve their career goals.” Nearly 100 students among seven teams presented 12 project vehicles for judging, with the top performing teams taking home grant money to help offset project costs. Beginning in April, all seven teams will enter their project vehicles in SAE’s nationwide competitions. The SAE Carolina Section’s student chapters include teams from Clemson University, Georgia Southern University, the University of South Carolina, the University of North Carolina – Charlotte, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University, Duke University, the University of North Carolina – Asheville and North Carolina State University.

Augusta Chronicle

Royal Live Oaks earns ‘Distinguished Delegation’ honor at Model United Nations competition

By Submitted to JCST

For the second time since Royal Live Oaks Academy started participating nearly four years ago, 31 fifth- to eighth-graders from the Hardeeville-based charter school earned the designation of “Distinguished Delegation,” the second highest ranking, at the Georgia Southern 21st Annual Coastal Georgia Center Middle School Model United Nations competition on March 14. Model United Nations is an extracurricular competition held worldwide by many high schools and universities. Students, referred to as delegates, simulate the role of a diplomat and are assigned a country to represent with pre-set topics that they are required to research, debate, negotiate, amend, and come to a consensus that can get the most countries to support. It requires critical thinking, collaboration, exposure to diverse cultures and countries, and effective communication.

The Brunswick News

Public sector workers offer advice during college panel

By LAUREN MCDONALD

Shauntia Lewis knew in college she wanted to save the world. At that time, though, she didn’t know how. “I wanted to go to the highest level of Secret Service. I wanted to jump out of a plane and disappear and nobody know where I was until I popped back up on the map,” said Lewis, neighborhood revitalization manage for the City of Brunswick. “I wanted to be like NCIS.” Lewis shared this story with students, faculty and others at the College of Coastal Georgia during a panel discussion Tuesday with young professionals in the community. The event aimed to provide insight and advice for those with interest in working in the public sector. …The purpose of the panel was to give attendees an idea of what it means to work in the public sector, said Heather Farley, the event’s moderator and an assistant professor of public management at the college. Each panelist discussed the roles they have in their jobs and the inspiration that led them to pursue that kind of career.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Get Schooled with Maureen Downey

Opinion: Easier to blame teachers for achievement gap than tackle poverty

A University of Georgia education professor today responds to a recent interview I did with Stanford economist Eric Hanushek about his new study on the achievement gap. Peter Smagorinsky, a frequent contributor to the AJC Get Schooled blog, challenges Hanushek’s comments on the role that teacher quality plays in student performance. He believes Hanushek underplays the effects of poverty  on student performance. By Peter Smagorinsky Get Schooled recently ran an essay titled “New study: Achievement gap persistent and resistant to reform.” The story summarized economist Eric Hanushek’s dismal view of what is called the “achievement gap between low and high income students in the United States.” The study relies on four sets of standardized test scores over a 50-year timespan, concluding that “A stark opportunity gap persists between America’s haves and have-nots, despite a nearly half century of state and federal attempts to provide poor children with extra resources to catch up. Yet, the gap hasn’t budged.” To Hanushek, whose thinking is typical of policymakers, tests tell everything we need to know about teaching and learning, and by extension teacher education. Hanushek has a villain or two to account for the differences between the test scores produced by students from the lowest and highest SES levels: “a lack of meaningful reinvention of high school,” and “a decline in teacher quality,” which to Hanushek and colleagues “fell as women gained access to career opportunities outside of the classroom…We are shirking the issue of teaching quality. …There is no direct effort on a national scale to enhance the quality of the teaching profession.” Hanushek concludes, “Scores in these achievement tests are actually good measures of expected future incomes, so, if kids are unprepared for life, or at least for jobs and college, as seen by these test scores, they are going to have their own families of poor kids. That is the tragedy .”What I find tragic is the specious logic that drives this argument.

Savannah Morning News

UGA scientists investigate marine murder mystery in Savannah

A team of University of Georgia investigators is working on a murder mystery. It’s not your everyday who-done-it, but one in which the investigators are scientists, and the victims are thousands of tiny oyster larvae. The mystery began the in the summer of 2017 at the UGA Shellfish Research Laboratory, a unit of UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant on Skidaway Island near Savannah. The shellfish lab is leading a movement to develop oyster aquaculture in Georgia and operates the state’s only oyster hatchery. One day, as they frequently do, the oyster hatchery team changed the water in the tanks containing oyster larvae. The team pumped water from the Skidaway River behind the lab and ran it through filters before introducing it to the larvae tanks. At this stage in their life cycle the oysters are free swimmers — not having developed a shell or attached to any surface — and they are tiny, only a tenth of a millimeter in diameter. When the team arrived at work the following day, they were shocked. “We had lost 80 to 90 percent of our larvae,” said Tom Bliss, director of the shellfish lab. “The day before, they were perfectly healthy, then overnight, they went.” They quickly concluded the mortality must have been connected to the water change, but they had no idea what substance or organism in the water was responsible. To find some answers, they approached UGA Skidaway Institute of Oceanography researcher Elizabeth Harvey.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Trump vows to withhold money to colleges violating campus speech rules

By Eric Stirgus

President Donald Trump said Thursday his administration will cut research funding to colleges and universities that violate the rights of student groups and people invited to speak or hold events on campus. “If a college or university doesn’t allow you to speak, we will not give them money. It’s very simple,” Trump said to applause before signing an executive order outlining the policy at the White House. Some conservative student groups and faith-based organizations in Georgia have won lawsuit settlements in recent years after filing complaints that schools illegally prevented them from speaking or posting displays on campus. State lawmakers passed legislation sponsored by Senate Republicans last year that requires, among other things, the Georgia Board of Regents submit an annual report detailing any violations of campus freedom of expression policies. The federal government awards an estimated $35 billion annually in research funding, Trump said. About $1 billion of those dollars comes to Georgia’s public and private colleges and universities.