University System News:
The George-Anne
Kemp signs budget supporting major projects at Georgia Southern campuses
By Sarah Smith
Georgia Southern University was shown support in the state of Georgia’s budget for the 2020 fiscal year, signed by Governor Brian P. Kemp earlier this May, with the funding of three major projects. State budgets provide a detailed financial plan for the fiscal year based on the state’s needs. State budgets are continually monitored through a budget cycle to ensure that funding needs are met. “Each of these projects are critical to Georgia Southern University’s progress,” President Kyle Marrero said in a press release. …The budget offers $5.2 million in equipment for the new 135,000-square-foot Engineering and Research Building, which will feature real-world laboratories for students and faculty members. ….$5 million dollars will be set aside in the budget to renovate the Armstrong campus’ Pirate Athletic Center. …$3.8 million dollars will be provided by the state to further expand the partnership between East Georgia State College and GS.
Tifton CEO
ABAC Produces More Ag Ed Graduates Than Any College in Southeast in 2019
Staff Report From Tifton CEO
When 26 agricultural education graduates walked across the commencement stage at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College on May 9, they represented the largest group of agricultural education graduates in the entire southeastern United States. ABAC President David Bridges could not be prouder of the accomplishment. “This spring marked the first time in ABAC’s 111-year history that we awarded the bachelor’s degree in agricultural education,” Bridges said. “The agricultural education program is one of our largest bachelor’s degree programs, and this first ABAC cohort is the largest ag ed cohort in Georgia and I would say the largest in the southeast.” …“No other college or university in Georgia had those kinds of numbers this year in ag ed,” Flanders said.
Yahoo finance
Students Gain Competitive Edge with Anaplan University Connect
…The Anaplan University Connect program works closely with leading universities around the globe to develop and deliver a model building curriculum that incorporates the latest data science methods to modern business planning practices. With valuable and real-world data analysis skills, students from the program can be hired to quickly contribute to the digital transformation efforts of enterprise companies. One example is Jaymin Patel, a recent graduate from the Parker College of Business at Georgia Southern University. He secured a data analyst role at global data analytics and technology company Equifax after taking several Anaplan Model Building courses through the Anaplan University Connect program. He will be recognized as the first recipient of the ‘Student Anaplanner of the Year’ award during Anaplan’s Connected Planning Xperience (CPX) conference in San Francisco, June 10-12, 2019.
Athens Banner-Herald
Women in Science supporting the next generation
By Katie Cowart
Five years ago, Cecilia Sánchez and Anya Brown, ecology doctoral candidates at the time, founded the Women in Science organization at the University of Georgia in service of creating a community where they could connect with peers and mentors. Open to anyone (including men) interested in pursuing equality and diversity in science, WiSci has grown to incorporate undergraduate students and an outreach program as well as all STEM disciplines. The organization hosts several events each academic year, offering opportunities in mentoring, networking and career development, with either a career panel or workshop organized every semester. Career panels illustrate the variety of careers undergraduates can pursue with their degrees. Career development workshops help students work on their resumes and cover letters, interviewing skills and negotiation techniques in preparation for entering the job market. Occasionally, the group sponsors social gatherings where participants meet up and have fun as they connect with others. On campus, the group is beginning a tradition of support in the form of the Females First Grant.
Greenhouse Grower
Georgia Student Develops Plant Disease Diagnosis App
Posted by Brian Sparks
Shaza Mehdi is a computer science major in the University of Georgia (UGA) Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. She’s also the developer of PlantMD, a smartphone app that can diagnose a plant disease with the snap of a photo. …Since launching the app, Mehdi has met personally with the Google team, and was interviewed by Wired magazine.
Savannah Morning News
Jennifer Bonnett column: Collisions are the magic of startup world
I spent a significant part of last week in Toronto for the “Collision Conference.” The Collision Conference is put on by the same people who put on Web Summit, a conference that Forbes Magazine has called “the best technology conference on the planet.” The Collision Conference is their North American Conference, and it also has become a venture conference, bringing together startups, venture capitalists and the Fortune 500. There were nearly 25,000 attendees at the conference from all over the globe. …Why would a tech conference be named Collision? Collisions are the magic of the technology startup world. Take a founder with a business idea and put them in the same room as a marketing guru and a technical whiz and voila – a startup is born. Okay – maybe it’s not quite that easy. But it is the start. …At the Collision Conference, I went to collide. I collided with startups at various stages that might benefit from either locating in Savannah or having a relationship with a large company in Savannah. I was doing my customer discovery, as I’ve mentioned before in this column, to try and understand what resonates with these companies as I seek to recruit them to relocate and join our ecosystem here in Savannah. …The talent coming out of both Savannah College of Art & Design and Georgia Southern University is highly attractive to the companies I met with. The SCAD students are experts at user experience, no matter their major, and Georgia Southern is teaching students about machine learning and big data.
WSB-TV
Crews find body of missing college student in Chattahoochee River
Search crews recovered the body of a missing college student in the Chattahoochee River Thursday afternoon. Christian Maloney, 23, had been missing since Tuesday when he and some friends went to Akers Mill Trail to jump off a popular diving rock. After Maloney jumped, witnesses said he called out for help and then went under. He never resurfaced. Crews searched for him for days before recovering a body Thursday. Police have not officially identified the body, but Maloney’s mother told Channel 2’s Audrey Washington that police told her it was her son. Maloney was a student at the University of West Georgia.
Athens Banner-Herald
Associated Press
An inmate at Valdosta State Prison has died. The Georgia Department of Corrections said that at about 11:30 a.m. Sunday guards found Astair Holmes Jr. unresponsive in his cell. Officials say paramedics were called but efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. The department, in a statement Tuesday, said Holmes was pronounced dead by the prison’s doctor at about 12:10 p.m. The Valdosta Daily Times reports the corrections department is conducting an investigation into the death, which officials say could have been a suicide. Holmes was serving time after being convicted of robbery by force in Houston County. …At least seven other inmates have died at the prison since 2018.
New York Post
University of Georgia to sell beer, wine to $25K donors
By Associated Press
Some University of Georgia fans will be able to buy beer during football games — but only donors who have agreed to give tens of thousands of dollars will be allowed to drink. UGA Athletic Director Greg McGarity told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday that beer and wine will be sold in Sanford Stadium’s premium seating area during the upcoming football season. He says that area will be limited to Magill Society members, who must pledge at least $25,000 to the UGA Athletic Association. Members won’t be able to view games from there, the only area where drinking is permitted.
Tifton Gazette
Fillies eliminated from nationals
The 2019 softball season ended for Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Thursday evening. The Fillies dropped their final game of the year to Butler Community College (Kan.), 6-4, which eliminated them from the NJCAA national softball tournament.
Higher Education News:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Burger King to pay off up to $250,000 in student loan debt with ‘Whopper Loans’ campaign
By Najja Parker
Need help paying off your student loans? Burger King may be able to assist you. The fast food chain recently announced its Whopper Loans initiative, which seeks to give away up to $250,000 to cover the cost of student loan debt. It began May 23 and ends June 6.BK will give away 300 prizes valued at up to $500, and there will be one grand prize winner, who will receive up to $100,000. …Only adults, 18 and older, with a post-secondary student loan debt in their name are eligible, and you can enter once weekly during the promotion period.
Inside Higher Ed
‘The College Completion Glass — Half-Full or Half-Empty?’
Author discusses new book about flaws in the way many people evaluate college completion.
By Scott Jaschik
To many students, parents, taxpayers and politicians, a key way to measure colleges’ success is their graduation rates. A new book, The College Completion Glass — Half-Full or Half-Empty? (Rowman and Littlefield), challenges much of the way college completion is talked about. The book argues that other measures matter as well, and that completion rates need context to be understood. The author is Tiffany Beth Mfume, assistant vice president for student success and retention at Morgan State University. She responded via email to questions about the book. Q: Many discussions of colleges’ performance focus on graduation rates. You suggest that there are problems with these rates. What are the problems?
Inside Higher Ed
Curriculum Sharing Without Limits
Two Canadian colleges agree to share academic programs with each other at no charge — to save their government money and speed their ability to offer new offerings to students.
By Doug Lederman
NorQuest College, in Edmonton, Alberta, typically spends roughly $300,000 to start a new academic program, which on average takes two years from conception to launch. At a time when students and employers are seeking new programs in emerging fields at an escalating pace, and government support for the public institution has stagnated, says Norma Schneider, the college’s vice president of teaching and learning, “we have to be more inventive about how we reach more students.” The situation looks much the same at Bow Valley College, 180 miles to the south in Calgary — so much so that Laura Jo Gunter, the president there, describes NorQuest as Bow Valley’s “sister.” The two institutions have on occasion adopted courses from each other, with one paying the other for the rights to the curriculum. Each arrangement was a little different, requiring renegotiation along the way.