University System News:
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Board of Regents hiring designer for new $40M UGA residence hall
By David Allison – Editor, Atlanta Business Chronicle
The state of Georgia is looking to hire a designer for a new $40 million residence hall for first-year students at The University of Georgia. UGA proposes to construct a new first-year student residence hall just east of Creswell Hall on the former site of Bolton Dining Commons, according to a request-for-qualifications and request-for-proposals issued Oct. 23. The new residence hall will be approximately 120,500 square feet and have 525 beds. The school recently completed renovations of its Russell Hall and renovations are ongoing at its Brumby Hall –both high-rise first-year student residence halls constructed in the l960s whose living and programmatic spaces are being modernized. The proposed project would deliver new beds with amenities very similar to those renovations.
Statesboro Herald
Ceremony installs Marrero as GS’s 14th president
Dr. Kyle Marrero was officially conferred the duties and responsibilities of president of Georgia Southern University during an investiture ceremony Friday inside Hanner Fieldhouse. Marrero took office as Georgia Southern’s 14th president on April 1. …This is a critical time for the institution as it defines its new path and regional presence post-consolidation, Marrero said, and cited the importance of the university’s Strategic Plan and its five structural pillars: student success, teaching and research, inclusive excellence, operational efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability, and community engagement. It is also important to invest in people, he said.
Daily Report
Pass Rates Jumped Across the Board for Georgia Bar Exam
The University of Georgia School of Law led the pack for the sixth year in a row, with a first-time pass rate of 93.7% for the July 2019 bar exam.
By Meredith Hobbs
In good news for both Georgia Bar Exam applicants and the state’s law schools, the pass rate for the July exam increased across the board, according to results released Tuesday by the Georgia Office of Bar Admissions.
11Alive
It was a shot in the dark for second-year computer science major Gursimran Singh. It paid off.
Author: Adrianne M Haney
Sometimes, it can be hard to make yourself stand out from the crowd when you’re job seeking. But a Georgia Tech student’s craftiness and audacity paid off in a big way – it landed him an interview for an internship with a Fortune 500 company. And he did it without having to leave his apartment. It was a shot in the dark for second-year computer science major Gursimran Singh. He lives in a Spring Street apartment in Midtown – which happens to be located right next door to NCR’s headquarters. The company is a leading provider of point-of-sale technology for retail and hospitality. Singh’s unit happens to face some of the company’s conference spaces, so he got crafty and used bright yellow sticky notes to spell out on his window what every job-seeker asks: “HIRE ME.” He added a smiley face. To his surprise, he got a response from NCR, who replied – also in sticky notes – “EMAIL?”
13WMAZ
Dublin elementary school receives nearly $14,000 to expand ‘STEAM’ studies
Susie Dasher Elementary and Georgia Southern University will work together to use the grant money to help teachers, students, and parents.
Author: Wanya Reese
STEAM — science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics — is getting a big boost at one central Georgia school, thanks to a pair of grants. Susie Dasher Elementary recently got the grants totaling $13,987.40 to help teach STEAM in the classroom. School leaders say the money will help make sure students, teachers, and kids have the resources to receive a world-class education. …”The focus of one grant is to build teacher capacity,” Kinnel said. To do that, instructors from Georgia Southern University will come to train teachers like Brantley twice a month.
Tifton CEO
ABAC’s Museum of Agriculture Ag Literacy Program Partners with YANMAR America EVO//Center
Staff Report
The Destination Ag education program at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College’s Georgia Museum of Agriculture recently committed to a partnership with YANMAR America EVO//Center. The EVO//Center will incorporate the Destination Ag curriculum-based agriculture and natural resource educational programming into its Academy, which is a focal point of the EVO//Center. Destination Ag programming will complement the current YANMAR Academy field trip offerings and community outreach.
Smart Energy Decisions
Georgia Tech dedicates sustainable, living building on campus
The Georgia Institute of Technology on Oct. 24 dedicated its newest building on campus, a regenerative facility that is changing the landscape for sustainable building practices. Each year, the “living” building will generate more on-site electricity than it consumes and collect and harvest more water than it uses. It is the first academic and research building in the Southeast designed to be certified as a living building by the International Living Future Institute. Georgia Tech received funding for the project from the Kendeda Fund, which included $25 million to design and build a regenerative building on campus despite the heat and humidity of the location. An additional $5 million will support programming activities once the building is certified.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Green school buildings put metro Atlanta in design spotlight
By Nedra Rhone
When Scott Starowicz was in elementary school, things like iPads and iPhones didn’t exist. “I had to go outside. We are bringing that back,” said Starowicz, CFO of the SAE School in Mableton, a year-round project-based learning school founded in 2011. SAE students spend more time outdoors and engaged in projects ranging from growing aquaponic lettuce by using fish waste as fertilizer to designing sustainable parks. Now the school is on track to become the first elementary school in the state to operate with 100% solar energy. “Sustainability is not just a project at the SAE School but a permanent way of life,” Starowicz said. It is just one example of educational institutions in the metro area making a substantial investment in green building. Last week marked the opening of the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design on the campus of Georgia Tech, a $30 million marvel that will be the first major Living Building Challenge-certified education and research facility in the Southeast.
accessWDUN
Dorms? Sports teams? Student med-center? UNG leader talks future
By Marc Egggers
University of North Georgia Gainesville Campus Vice President Dr. Richard Oates addressed members of the South Hall Business Coalition Tuesday about the current status and future considerations of the growing multi-campus school. With a student population on UNG’s five campuses now exceeding 20,000, and expansion underway onto the former Lanier Technical College complex abutting the Gainesville campus, Oates said choices made by UNG leadership, faculty, students and the communities involved are of great importance and will carry significant impact into the future. “With a $667-million economic impact annually…we try to be a good economic partner working with the workforce development in those areas,” Oates said. “We’re still primarily an undergraduate institution; we’re trying to grow our graduate program opportunities.” But growth, Oates said, is taking place across the board for UNG, not just in courses being offered.
WTOC11
Fight continues to save Ga. HBCUs, fundraising in next steps
By Marilyn Parker
There is an ongoing fight for Georgia’s three public Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Current students, alumni and supporters are working to stop a proposed senate bill that would merge Albany State, Fort Valley State and Savannah State universities into one system. The focus of Monday’s meeting was on fundraising and how the Albany community can help. Guest speakers included Albany business owner Gilbert Udoto and representatives from Albany State.
Statesboro Herald
GS parent not satisfied with response to football player’s role in shotgun incident
Holli Deal Saxon/staff
An incident involving a shotgun blast that apparently came from the apartment of a Georgia Southern University football player resulted in him being suspended from part of a game and made to move. It also has a university student’s mother concerned about her daughter’s safety. No one was injured in the incident. Jessie Liptrot, a senior defensive back from Atlantic Beach, Florida, was not charged in the incident but was suspended for one quarter in a recent football game for “team policy violations,” said a GS spokesperson. Also, Liptrot reportedly moved to another building in the apartment complex at the behest of the apartment complex’s management, according to Melissa Griner of Rincon, whose daughter’s apartment was damaged by the gunfire. She said her daughter, who lives on the fourth floor at 111 South Apartments, found damage to her closet floor a little less than two weeks ago and, thinking it was a maintenance issue, reported it to apartment staff. But when her roommate called and said the maintenance man brought police to her apartment, Griner’s daughter learned he had found a 20-gauge shotgun slug in the closet floor.
Albany Herald
Local equipment company partners with UGA-Tifton campus
By Maria Sellers Special to the Herald
A partnership between Tidewater Equipment Co. and the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences has led to the UGA Tifton campus receiving two tractors this fall to aid with field research. The partnership allows researchers and field managers at UGA-Tifton to use the Case IH tractors before Tidewater replaces them with a new set in six months. Joe West, assistant dean for UGA-Tifton, said this partnership allows the university to save money and dedicate more resources to science.
Albany Herald
UGA to host Food Security Summit
By Merritt Melancon
For the past decade, demographers have predicted that the world would have to double its food supply by 2050 to feed the growing population. Progress is being made toward that goal, but scientists, farmers and policymakers still have a lot of work to do to meet the goal of ensuring food security for the projected global population of 9 billion people. “Perhaps the single greatest challenge that our students will face is feeding a global population that is expected to exceed 9 billion people in a relatively short period of time,” Sam Pardue, dean and director of the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, said. “It’s a goal that drives everything we do at CAES — from the plant breeders looking for more productive varieties to entomologists working on sustainable ways to protect crops — because it’s a goal we have to meet. CAES is convening leaders from academia, agriculture, global development nonprofits and government to discuss the roles that UGA and the state of Georgia will play in meeting this goal.
Growing Georgia
UGA’s Coastal Gardens Celebrate 100 Years of Service to Georgians
By: Sharon Dowdy
One hundred years ago, philanthropist Barbour Lathrop bought a bamboo grove and 46-acre farm and leased the property to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for $1. For the next 60 years, the property became an agricultural research station where, in the 1940s, industrialists Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone cooperated on research on goldenrod as a potential source for latex. Today, the land is the site of the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens (CGBG) at the Historic Bamboo Farm. The garden’s focus has shifted from research on plants for manufacturing and commercial agriculture to ornamental plants for use in home gardening and landscaping.
Athens CEO
Farming for the Future: UGA Leads the Way in Precision Agriculture
Scott Michaux
A fifth-generation farmer in Calhoun County, Adam McLendon starts his days at the crack of dawn. He looks at software logs that show his tractors’ fuel use the previous day, and whether his irrigation system is functioning efficiently. He reviews satellite imagery of his 8,500 acres of corn, cotton, peanuts and pecans, revealing which areas he needs to prioritize. “I spend the first 45 minutes of my day, every day of the week, utilizing technology to make me a more efficient manager of our labor and our farm,” McLendon said. Efficient management is the hallmark of modern agriculture. Scientists project that the world’s population will reach 9.7 billion by the middle of the century, and to feed all of those people, crop production will need to double in the next 30 years. With this challenge looming, precision agriculture — the use of technology to increase the profitability, efficiency and sustainability of crop production — has become an indispensable part of farm management as growers try to maximize every acre. The University of Georgia was among the first academic institutions to delve into precision agriculture when it emerged in the mid-1990s. A quarter-century later, UGA is stepping up efforts to expand its faculty, curriculum, research and outreach to again become a leader in the field.
WTOC11
Former Georgia Southern kicker Koo joins the Atlanta Falcons
The Atlanta Falcons have a new kicker and the name will be very familiar to many of you in Southeast Georgia. Former Georgia Southern University kicker Younghoe Koo has agreed to terms with the Falcons. The team announced on Tuesday it was releasing kicker Matt Bryant, the leading scorer in franchise history, and replacing him with Koo.
Athens Banner-Herald
Smart, legislator react to NCAA’s move towards name, image and likeness
By Marc Weiszer
A Georgia state legislator who announced plans last week to introduce a bill to allow college athletes to be compensated for their name, image and likeness was encouraged by the step the NCAA took on Tuesday. State Rep. Billy Mitchell (D-Stone Mountain) plans to still press forward next year with a measure modeled after a California law that would also take effect in 2023 but “will probably be less vigorous about its passage unless we don’t see movement from the NCAA.” Meeting in Atlanta, the NCAA Board of Governors voted to “permit students the opportunity to benefit from the use of their name, image and likeness in a manner consistent with the collegiate model.” The NCAA still needs to nail down details including whether receiving benefits means being paid for such things as endorsements or autographs. The board asked the NCAA’s three divisions to change rules by January 2021. “That still seems like a long way off in my mind,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Tuesday. “We’ll have to prepare and whatever they decide to go with, we’ll deal with it. I don’t have enough information to form a complete opinion on it or understand it completely.” Smart said he can’t be sure exactly how the name, image and likeness issue will affect college football but has trust in those who are examining the issue.
The Brunswick News
College athlete pay not likely to advance in Ga. House
By Wes Wolfe
Regardless of the NCAA’s announcement Tuesday morning, state Speaker of the House David Ralston said he doesn’t expect the General Assembly to authorize payments to college athletes in a manner akin to legislation passed by California’s legislature earlier this year.
Higher Education News:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
NCAA Says It Will Allow College Athletes to Profit From Their Celebrity
By Wesley Jenkins
The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Board of Governors voted unanimously on Tuesday to allow college athletes to benefit from their name, image, and likeness as long as those benefits stay within the “collegiate model.” The vote came in response to a presentation made by a working group that had been appointed to advise the board on how to proceed in the face of a growing national movement. Instead of issuing a final report at the meeting, as was the expectation when the Federal and State Legislation Working Group convened in May, the 19-member committee presented “principles and guidelines” along which the NCAA should address the question of name, image, and likeness. Included in the guidelines were recommendations to “maintain the priorities of education and the collegiate experience,” distinguish between “collegiate and professional opportunities,” and “protect the recruiting environment.”
See also:
Inside Higher Ed
NCAA Votes for Athlete Payment
The National Collegiate Athletic Association’s governing board votes to allow college athletes to be compensated in third-party sponsorship deals.
Politico
House committee takes up Democrats’ higher education plan
By Michael STRATFORD
HOUSE COMMITTEE TAKES UP DEMOCRATS’ HIGHER EDUCATION BILL: The House education committee today will consider Democrats’ sweeping plan to overhaul federal higher education policy. The $400 billion proposal to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, dubbed the College Affordability Act, H.R. 4674 (116), calls for expanding federal student aid programs and new federal spending to help states eliminate tuition at community colleges. Here’s what to expect:
Science Magazine
White House to host closed-door summit on U.S. research enterprise
By Jeffrey Mervis
You’ll need an invitation to attend, but on 5 November the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) will host a 1-day meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss a host of hot-button issues affecting the U.S. research community. Several dozen university and industry leaders from across the country have been summoned by OSTP Director Kelvin Droegemeier to advise an internal committee he leads that is trying to harmonize research policies across all federal agencies. The impact of foreign collaborations on national security will probably be uppermost on the minds of attendees, some of them still reeling from aggressive efforts by the National Institutes of Health to enforce existing rules that require NIH-funded scientists to disclose all foreign sources of support. But the Joint Committee on the Research Environment (JCORE) is also tackling three other long-running challenges: how to combat sexual harassment in the workplace, how to reduce the administrative burden on grantees, and how to strengthen scientific integrity.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Eric Hoover
Lawyers representing students, the Compton Unified School District, civil-rights groups, and college-access organizations said on Tuesday that they planned to sue the University of California unless it drops its ACT/SAT requirement. In a letter to the system’s regents, the lawyers allege that the testing requirement violates state civil-rights laws. They describe their clients as well-qualified students who as a result of the requirement “have been subject to unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, disability, and wealth.”
Inside Higher Ed
Another Drop in College Readiness
Percentage of students who have met English and math benchmarks lowest in 15 years.
By Elin Johnson
No gains have been made in student preparedness for college, according to ACT data. There are still gaps in scores between white and minority students, excluding Asian American students, who have improved over the past few years. The new ACT score results show that scores across the country are continuing to decline slightly from last year, especially in math and English. The number of graduates meeting the required benchmarks in math and English is the lowest it has been in 15 years. The average composite score was 20.7, a tiny drop from 20.8 last year and down from 21 in 2017. The ACT test is scored on a 36-point scale. Almost 1.8 million students, or 52 percent of the 2019 graduating class, took the ACT.
Inside Higher Ed
Professors’ Slow, Steady Acceptance of Online Learning: A Survey
By Doug Lederman
“Embrace” is probably too strong. “Acquiescence” suggests too much passivity. Whatever word you choose, though, the data indicate that American faculty members — whether grudgingly or enthusiastically — are increasingly participating in and, to a lesser extent, accepting the validity of online education. Inside Higher Ed’s 2019 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology, conducted with Gallup and published today, shows a continuing uptick in the proportion of faculty members who have taught an online course, to 46 percent from 44 percent last year. That figure stood at 30 percent in 2013, meaning that the number has increased by half in six years.
Inside Higher Ed
Interview Practices for Title IX Investigators
By Colleen Flaherty
A new study published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition says that certain recommended interviewing skills for investigators in sexual harassment cases align with evidence-based practices but that other suggested techniques are at odds with the existing research. Additional interviewing practices related to memory and credibility are “critically absent” from commonly recommended practices, the paper says. The study includes additional suggestions for interviewers in sexual misconduct cases that the authors argue are more likely to improve the “development of rapport and cooperation” with an interviewee, to elicit more accurate and relevant information from memory, and to “enhance assessments of credibility when applying strategic questioning approaches.”
Hechinger Report
University of Chicago projected to be the first U.S. university to cost $100,000 a year
But fewer students are paying the full tuition. Is widespread discounting helping more people afford higher education, or just making it more complicated?
by Pete D’amato
Butterflies congregated on a bush as Griffin Badalamente walked past the carefully cultivated lawns and flowers on the University of Chicago campus. In addition to its reputation as an international powerhouse in the field of economics and a home to multiple Nobel Laureates, the school has grounds that are designated as an official botanic garden. The privilege of attending is costly, at $57,642 for the 2019-20 academic year. It’s already one of the most expensive colleges in the country. But in less than a decade, by 2025, students like Badalamente could expect to pay more than $100,000 per year, based on projections by The Hechinger Report using annual college cost growth rates from 2008 to 2018. That would likely make the University of Chicago the first college or university in the United States to break the six-figure mark. Three other schools — Harvey Mudd College in California, Columbia University in New York and Southern Methodist University in Texas — are projected to cost almost as much.