University System News:
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Area colleges, universities gearing up for fall semester
By Ken Stanford Contributing Editor
With the K-12 people in northeast Georgia hitting full stride this week as they head back to school, colleges and universities in the area getting close to the start of fall semester. The first day of the semester at Piedmont College is Aug. 12; Aug. 14 at Georgia Gwinnett; Aug. 15 at North Georgia Tech; Aug. 19 at Lanier Tech, Young Harris College and the University of North Georgia;
The Gainesville Times
These townhomes offer new housing option for UNG students in Oakwood
Megan Reed
Some students at the University of North Georgia’s Gainesville campus will be able to wake up and walk to class this academic year, now that a cottage development targeted to students has opened up off of Thurmon Tanner Parkway. University Commons’ first residents are moving in Saturday. The neighborhood will have 18 cottages, each with three bedrooms and three bathrooms.
dividshub
Georgia Army National Guard Welcomes 230 New Soldiers
More than 230 Soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard were welcomed by their units of assignment during a battle handoff ceremony at Fort Stewart, Ga. August 4, 2019. …The battle handoff ceremony marks the transition of Soldiers from the recruit sustainment program to their unit of assignment. In addition to completing their basic combat training and individual training, the Soldiers have completed all administrative and medical clearance and are ready to assume their duties at their new units from day one. The Georgia Army National Guard has recruit sustainment programs in Albany, Atlanta, Augusta, Cumming, Ellenwood, Macon, Rome and Savannah. …Representatives of the Georgia Army National Guard’s five brigades stepped forward to receive the new Soldiers into their commands. Soldiers assigned to the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team were called first. As the names were called, each Soldier shouted the brigade motto “Send Me” and sprinted to join the 48th IBCT formation. This process was repeated for the 648th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, 78th Troop Command, 201st Regional Support Group 78th Aviation Troop Command and Statesboro-based Georgia Southern University Cadet Detachment.
Albany Herald
MAG Foundation to fund primary care scholarships at Medical College of Georgia
Medical College of Georgia will select the recipients of the scholarship using criteria that it develops
The Medical Association Georgia Foundation announced last week that, beginning in 2020, it will fund a $10,000 scholarship each year for the next five years for a fourth-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University who goes into a primary care specialty in Georgia. Included are students studying pediatrics, family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, general surgery and emergency medicine. “The data clearly suggests that we face a real shortage of primary care physicians in Georgia, especially in rural areas,” MAG Foundation President Dr. Jack M. Chapman Jr. said. “The goal of this scholarship program is to highlight this point and to encourage medical students to consider a career in primary care in Georgia.”
Albany Herald
Former ABAC professor honored by Wild West Association
From Staff Reports
Gary L. Roberts, professor emeritus of history at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, was recently honored by the Wild West History Association for “lifetime contributions to Wild West history.” “It was a great honor, and I am very appreciative of those who made it happen,” Roberts, who taught at ABAC from 1969 to 2000, said. “I have been playing cowboys and Indians all my life. I guess I never quite grew up.” Roberts is the author of three books: “Death Comes for the Chief Justice,” “Doc Holliday: The Life and Legend,” and “Massacre at Sand Creek.” He also co-authored “Georgia Governors in an Age of Change” with Hal Henderson. …A 1960 graduate of Tifton High School, Roberts had his first article published when he was a freshman at ABAC in 1961. …Roberts was one of the first students to receive an associate’s of arts in Liberal Arts from ABAC in 1962. He received his A.B. and M.A. degrees from Georgia Southern University before earning his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma.
Albany Herald
UGA Extension training helps keep produce safe
By Merritt Melancon For CAES News
Over the past decade, Americans have fallen in love with locally grown produce. But just because something is grown nearby doesn’t automatically make it safe. Small and beginning farmers, who put a lot of their energy into producing quality vegetables, might not have the education or experience to know how to keep their produce as safe as possible. That’s why University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is partnering with local food advocates and farmers across the state to offer produce safety training. The training helps farmers ensure that they’re providing their customers the safest produce possible and helps them meet new food safety regulations without the added expense of consultants or private trainers.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flag stolen by Georgia Tech fraternity pledges returned to Jekyll Island after 40 years
A handmade flag that pranksters stole from Jekyll Island more than 40 years ago has been returned to the state park. The Brunswick News reports the flag featuring a crest of a seashell and a cotton ball was handed over to its executive editor and president, Buff Leavy, recently along with a handwritten note explaining that it had been swiped by Georgia Tech fraternity pledges in 1975. Leavy returned it to the Jekyll Island Authority. Rose Marie Kimbell is the archivist of the island’s Mosaic museum. She suspects the flag was one of two that once flew atop flagpoles at the entrance to the Jekyll Island causeway. The flag will be placed on display at the museum, where Kimbell says it will be watched closely by a security camera.
The Washington Post
Graduate students are mounting degrees of protest over ‘hidden fees’
By Jon Marcus
The quiet of the summer seemed a good time for at least one new enrollee to come fill out his paperwork for the master’s program in public administration at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York. Except for the backpack he was wearing, it would have been hard to pick him out as a graduate student. Like many Americans who go to graduate school, he works full time and will attend Baruch part time for the next three years in hopes of improving his career prospects. He’ll pay for it himself with student loans. That’s why he was so perturbed to learn that, on top of the tuition he has already budgeted for, he’ll have to pay the university a $1,000-a-year “academic excellence fee.” He’s lucky it’s only that much. In one department at Baruch, this fee is $2,000 a year; in another, $8,000. …The University System of Georgia Board of Regents imposed a “special institutional fee” of $100 a semester as a “temporary measure” to make up for state cutbacks in 2009. It’s still there, and is up to $344 a semester for graduate students, part of a slate of fees that add up to $1,012 per semester. “It may not seem like a lot, but when you’re making [a stipend of] $25,000 and working in a major city, it’s a major problem,” said Joshua Weitz, a professor of biological sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Weitz depends on graduate teaching and research assistants, and has become a critic of these fees. “We would expect that we wouldn’t be making them pay a fee to do the work we want them to do,” he said. Terri Dunbar, a doctoral student and teaching fellow in psychology at Georgia Tech, estimated her fees to be about $4,000 a year, including for the summer, when she stays on campus. Unable to cover those from her $20,000-a-year stipend while living in Atlanta, Dunbar said, she has borrowed about $20,000 to pay them.
The Macon Telegraph
National ranking puts Macon near top for student loan debt. How residents handle rising costs
BY ANISAH MUHAMMAD
Michelline Dieujuste-Antoine enrolled at Mercer University in 2012. She relied on scholarships, help from her parents and student loans to pay for tuition at the Macon college. By the time she reached her junior year, she had $40,000 in student loans. She said she dropped out of college, no longer able to afford the cost of an undergraduate education. She has a plan to eventually finish her college degree and pay the student loan debts, but like many others, the loans piled up more quickly than she expected. She said she didn’t really understand how student loans worked when she first started college.
…RISING COLLEGE TUITION IN MIDDLE GEORGIA
One factor related to student debt in Georgia is the rising cost of college tuition. The average tuition increase in Georgia overall from the 2015-2016 school year to the 2016-2017 school year was 2.2%, according to data from the Institute of College Access and Success. During that same period, the institute reported that the average debt of Georgia college graduates increased by 3.6% from 2016 to 2017. Nationally, tuition increased by 3.1%, and debt increased by 1.02%. Middle Georgia colleges are seeing tuition increases as well. The University System of Georgia recently approved a 2.5% tuition increase for the 2019 school year. That means higher tuition for students at Middle Georgia State University, Fort Valley State University and Georgia College and State University
Forbes
Robotic Underwater Gliders Could Improve Hurricane Forecasts
Marshall Shepherd Senior Contributor
August is typically a transition month for the Atlantic hurricane season. While the peak of the season is in September, tropical cyclone formation starts migrating to the “Cape Verde” origin region off the coast of Africa in August. At the time of writing, the National Hurricane Center was keeping an eye on an area of low pressure over the central tropical Atlantic Ocean. Forecasters give the storm a 20-40 percent chance of further development over the next 5 days. The United States is still recovering from the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season. Hurricane Michael, a rare Category 5 storm, rapidly intensified before making landfall in the panhandle of Florida. …The near surface temperatures were roughly 86 degrees F before the passage of Harvey and remained well above 80 degrees F after the storm passed. These findings suggest that knowledge of subsurface ocean temperatures are important for assessing hurricane intensity. New technology being tested by the University of Georgia (UGA) Skidaway Institute is promising.
WSAV
Underwater gliders help make hurricane predictions in Chatham County
by: Martin Staunton
Scientists based in Chatham county at the University of Georgia’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography are part of a team of researchers collecting information to help with Hurricane predictions. They operate underwater robots that collect a new data set for storm forecasters. The Robots look more like torpedoes and they are called underwater gliders. For the first time, they are giving meteorologists water temperatures beneath the waves during the storm. This information is vital to making more accurate forecasts of a hurricane’s power by revealing if it will either gain strength or weaken. This will be the second hurricane season where this technology comes into play.
WSAV
Georgia Southern QB passes drug test, returns to practice with team
QB1 is back with his team in Statesboro. According to Georgia Southern University, quarterback Shai Werts passed a drug test and returned to practice with the team Sunday morning. The junior signal caller was arrested and charged with speeding and misdemeanor possession of cocaine during a traffic stop in Saluda, South Carolina Wednesday night. Moving forward, Werts’ case will be handled in accordance with the Georgia Southern Student-Athlete Code of Conduct. According to the COC, Werts is still suspended for the opener against LSU as the case plays out. Per policy, Werts will miss the August 31st game if he’s convicted of the misdemeanor or the case is not adjudicated. If the charges are dropped or Werts is cleared, it is up to the athletic director and school staff to determine the disciplinary action.
Higher Education News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kemp unveils ‘laborious’ plan to dismantle Common Core standards
By Greg Bluestein
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s plan to eliminate Common Core won’t involve a swift overhaul of education policy, but rather what he called a “laborious” process to review the reading, writing and math standards. The governor wrote in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed this week that three separate panels will be involved in his push to “dismantle” Common Core, an effort that resurrects a long-simmering debate in Georgia politics. The Common Core standards, established with the help of then-Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, were meant to ensure students nationwide learned the same concepts at the same time. But they ran afoul of groups that saw it as an effort to increase federal influence over k-12 education to the detriment of local control. Kemp wrote that a citizens’ review committee will analyze feedback on a state survey on the Common Core standards, and a committee of teachers will also offer insight.
U.S. News & World Report
Should You Get an Emergency Student Loan?
An emergency student loan can offer fast access to funds, but it may not be the least costly option.
By Ben Luthi, Contributor
IF A DEATH IN THE family, a job loss or a sudden financial demand leaves you short on funds for college, an emergency loan could help you stay in school. Your college or university may provide this type of aid to cover necessities such as food, medication and housing. The cost of your emergency loan will depend on the source, which can also include the state you live in, nonprofits, federal programs and private lenders. Your financial aid office can help you work through your options. Whatever your reason for needing urgent student aid, you can find help to pay your bills and keep working toward your degree. How Emergency Student Loans Work Emergency student loans are short-term interest-free loans. Still, keep an eye on fees and the repayment period – typically between 30 and 60 days – to understand your loan’s full cost. If your college or university has emergency student loans, you can look for terms and applications online, or ask your school’s financial aid office. You may be able to get a loan for as little as $100, or one that exceeds $1,000, depending on your school and the type of loan.