University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia universities offer lessons in clean energy
By Nedra Rhone
Several Georgia universities are taking the lead in moving their campuses to a 100% clean energy future, according to a new report from Environment Georgia, an organization that uncovers environmental challenges and advocates for solutions. The report, released Tuesday, features case studies of Georgia colleges that have made significant efforts to achieve their energy goals. It was designed to serve as a guide to help other schools achieve similar goals, said Jennette Gayer, executive director of Environment Georgia. …Georgia universities have also invested in a range of solutions to address environmental issues from installing more efficient heating and cooling systems to supporting greener transportation options on campus. The innovations have also provided opportunities for student learning and advanced research. The report first recognizes the Kendeda Building at Georgia Institute of Technology as the single building that best exemplifies a commitment to clean energy.
WSAV
Georgia Southern’s recycling efforts highlighted in statewide environmental report
by: Ashley Williams
Georgia Southern University’s efforts to help the environment were highlighted in a new report. Environment Georgia released “Renewable Energy 101,” which details some of the key tools that colleges, universities, state and local governments could use to shift toward 100% clean and renewable energy. Georgia cities like Atlanta, Augusta, Athens and Clarkston have already adopted 100% clean and renewable energy commitments, according to the report released Tuesday. The report shows how 12 of Georgia’s institutes of higher education have executed those tools — from energy efficiency and energy conservation, to transportation and use of renewable energy like solar and geothermal. Georgia Southern was featured for its accomplishments in recycling.
Printing Impressions
Clickable Paper-Enabled Book Adoptions Increase Among Printing Curriculums
Georgia Southern University and Illinois State University are the latest adopters of Introduction to Graphic Communication. They join a growing number of nationally recognized universities offering degrees in graphic arts and related areas. The textbook is the first to use Ricoh’s Clickable Paper technology to access videos and other related learning material.
Devdiscourse
Narayan Seva Sansthan
…STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Centre of Excellence has its ethos based on empowering the schools to prepare their students for the future. STEMCOE (Stem Centre Of Excellence) is an educational firm that designs and provides STEM curriculum and teacher training. STEMCOE has its origins and roots in the United States of America. The faculties are well trained in the programs and have trained schools across the globe. As a part of the school training program, the best trainers from Georgia Southern University, USA Dr. Kania Greer & Dr. Karin Fischer along with the CEO & Founder Dr. Paddy Sharma are going to train teachers of Narayan Seva Sansthan, Udaipur on 16th & 17th January 2020. The qualified candidates will get an opportunity to be a part of the global training program in the United States of America.
Griffin Daily News
GORDON STATE COLLEGE AND GEORGIA COLLEGE & STATE UNIVERSITY SIGN AGREEMENT
By: Brittany A. Tennant
Gordon State College signed an agreement Tuesday with Georgia College & State University that will allow for a transfer admission guarantee starting Spring 2020. The Highlander Pathways to Georgia College program participants will be identified as Georgia College & State University pathway students at Gordon State. “The Highlander Pathway to Georgia College & State University Partnership is another demonstration of our commitment to the Power of WE,” said GSC President Kirk A. Nooks. “As talented students start their journey as a Highlander, they will complete their Associate degree before working toward the Baccalaureate as a Bobcat. We believe, as a result of this partnership, we will reach students from across several different regions.”
Thomasville Times-Enterprise
Incoming GSW freshmen encouraged to apply for Carter Leadership Program
Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) is currently accepting applications for the prestigious President Jimmy Carter Leadership Program for the 2020-2021 academic year. Incoming freshmen who are interested in the program are encouraged to apply by the Feb. 1 deadline. Established in 2019, the Carter Leadership Program honors the legacy of GSW alumnus and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The program consists of two pathways, an Undergraduate Research Track and a Service Track, that exemplify Carter’s lifetime of leadership in education, politics and community service.
Albany Herald
PHOTOS: New student orientation at Albany State University
Photos by Reginald Christian
Students, staff and faculty at Albany State University gathered on Jan. 10 for new student orientation.
CR80News
It’s All About the Data: The card office’s role in student retention
By: Andrew Hudson
In the latest installment of NACCU’s “It’s All About the Data” video series, Georgia Southern University’s Director of Eagle Card Services, Richard Wynn, discusses how the card office can contribute to the all-important task of student retention. In the video, Wynn discusses key considerations like dining and meal plan data, student usage trends, and the evolving ideas around the role a university can play in using data to assist students in need.
WTOC
GSU planning to close an on-campus apartment complex
By Dal Cannady
Parents who send their students off to college want them to find a place to live that’s a home away from home. Georgia Southern plans to shut down an on-campus apartment complex after issues with several buildings. If finding housing on campus is like musical chairs, this takes several chairs out of the game. Georgia Southern tries to maintain enough spaces for every first year student who wants to live here. This cuts those numbers just a little closer.
Albany Herald
Poet Ed Pavliv to speak at ABAC event
Accomplished poet and author Ed Pavlic will speak at 7 p.m. on Feb. 3 in the History Room at Tift Hall on the campus of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. Open to the public at no charge, the presentation is a part of the Georgia Poetry Circuit, which was founded at Mercer University in 1985. The circuit is a consortium of 10 Georgia colleges and universities working together to bring poets of national and international reputation to the campuses annually.
Columbus CEO
CSU, Springer Partnership Brings Science to Life for Young Audiences
Staff Report
Columbus State University’s Coca-Cola Space Science Center and the Springer’s Theatre for the Very Young Series are partnering to present Columbus’s first-ever theatrical production within a planetarium. The original production, Twinkle Twinkle Little-est Star, premieres Saturday at 9:30 a.m., with additional performances scheduled until January 26. “This production reimagines theatre and science education to provide the youngest audiences with a memorable experience that expands their creativity and curiosity,” said Wanja Ngugi, Assistant Director of CSU’s Coca-Cola Space Science Center.
The Atlanta Jounral-Constitution
Fate of the Iron Horse, a contentious UGA icon, is again up in the air
By Rosalind Bentley
Many colleges and universities have at least one site of ritual, a symbolic place students must visit or an emblematic act they must do while enrolled. At Ole Miss, it’s tailgating in The Grove. At Auburn University, toilet papering the live oaks at Toomer’s Corner after a win — that is before an Alabama fan poisoned the iconic trees and did jail time for committing death by herbicide. (The trees have been replaced). At the University of Georgia, there are several customs: ringing the bell at the Chapel Bell Tower after a Dawgs’ win or upon graduation; not walking under the iron Arch along Broad Street until immediately after graduation, lest you not graduate on time or at all. Until you’ve got that degree, you walk around it. Another is driving 18 miles south of campus to Watkinsville to watch the sun rise or set through the mane and withers of a 2-ton, 12-foot-tall iron horse sculpture in the middle of a field. That sculpture, commonly known as, well, the Iron Horse, has stood in the field for 60 years, a symbol of why modern art can be difficult to understand, hard to accept and sometimes the target of violence.
Effingham Herald
2020 General Assembly session kicks off
Rep. Jon Burns
Friends,
On Jan. 13, the Georgia General Assembly convened for the 2020 legislative session. My duties as House majority leader include offering resolutions on the House floor regarding various issues such as our adjournment calendar, notification to Gov. Brian Kemp and the Senate that we are ready to begin our legislative work, and recognizing the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. …I enjoyed visiting with many of the small business owners and community leaders who attended the event and was especially happy to see large tables sponsored by Georgia Southern University and the Development Authority of Bulloch County!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kemp tells lawmakers his budget doesn’t include ‘drastic cuts’
By James Salzer
Gov. Brian Kemp told lawmakers Tuesday that the state has cut tens of millions of dollars in spending by doing things such as consolidating services, cutting overtime and administration, and reducing real estate leases. The budget Kemp proposed to lawmakers last week also eliminated about 1,200 vacant jobs. …Jeffrey Dorfman, the state’s fiscal economist and a University of Georgia professor, said several of the state’s top trading partners are in a recession or experiencing a slowing economy. He expects slow growth in the state this year. Unemployment is so low “we have essentially run out of workers,” so job growth has slowed, Dorfman said, and consumer confidence has dropped, slowing sales tax growth. …Dorfman said one of the main reasons the budget is tight “is because state government has returned to taxpayers and local governments a significant amount of revenue.”
Athens CEO
Lieutenant Governor Announces New Staff Member
Staff Report
The Office of Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan welcomes Hanna Yu in her new role as Press Secretary. …Hanna is a graduate of the University of Georgia where she earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She also holds a master’s degree in international policy from Kennesaw State University.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Public Library honors state’s first black library director
By Pamela Miller
The Georgia Council for Public Libraries recently announced recipients of its annual awards. Among the honorees is LeRoy Childs, the state’s first black public library director. Other awards include Library of the Year Award which has been awarded to Okefenokee Regional Library System; Librarian of the Year is Stephen Houser, director of Twin Lakes Library System; and Library Champion of the Year is Dr. Gordon Baker, who most recently served as a library trustee and board chair at Henry County Public Library and whose career in libraries spans more than 40 years. Throughout his career, Childs was active in the formation of state and national library policy. …He was appointed by Governor Joe Harris to serve on the Georgia committee for the White House Conference of Libraries.
Suwannee Democrat
Peanut show research benefits farmers
By Eve Brechbiel
The 44th annual Georgia Peanut Farm Show and Conference on Jan. 16 was attended by more than 1,400 farmers, exhibitors and peanut enthusiasts from all over the state. Held at the University of Georgia Tifton Campus Conference Center, the event is a central hub that brings together farmers, vendors, researchers and industry specialists to mingle and exchange ideas.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Ed Department Opens New Civil Rights Center
By Kery Murakami
The U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office is launching a center to increase awareness of civil rights laws by schools, educators, families and students to help them avoid facing complaints, Secretary Betsy DeVos said Tuesday. The Outreach, Prevention, Education and Nondiscrimination (OPEN) Center will be housed in the Office for Civil Rights, which enforces civil rights laws.
Inside Higher Ed
Muddied Picture for Defrauded Borrowers
Betsy DeVos has sought to make it more difficult for defrauded student loan borrowers to get full debt relief with an approach that is facing political and legal challenges.
By Kery Murakami
Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives were able to pass a measure last week expressing opposition to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s borrower-defense rule. But because of politics and both ongoing and upcoming legal battles, the vote did little to clear up what will happen to students who are asking for their loans to be discharged because they were defrauded by colleges. Hardly clear are two questions: how to deal with the backlog of more than 200,000 borrowers, most of whom attended for-profit institutions, who’ve been waiting for the Education Department to process their requests for debt forgiveness.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By 2020, They Said, 2 Out of 3 Jobs Would Need More Than a High-School Diploma. Were They Right?
By Goldie Blumenstyk
Did that prediction about jobs requiring education beyond high school by 2020 pan out? “By the year 2020, nearly two-thirds of all jobs will require postsecondary education and training.” Anyone who’s been to a higher-ed conference or read a book on the topic in the past decade has no doubt heard some version of that prediction — some of us to the point of numbness. …Well, it’s 2020, so who better to ask about the prediction than the folks at the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, which offered it in 2013 (following a similar prediction three years earlier, keyed to 2018)? Was it true? And if so, at what point did we pass the threshold? Those seem like simple questions. The answers, alas, are anything but.
Inside Higher Ed
The Imperative to Improve College Learning
Affordability and credential attainment are important goals. But the big question for higher education now, some of the enterprise’s best minds say, is “completion of what?”
By Doug Lederman
If you were trying to kick off a new column about the state of college teaching and learning, to put a stake in the ground as a starting point for what’s to come, where would you begin? Find a longtime observer for some perspective? Identify a collection of thoughtful essays from a group of experts convened by a national body to assess the state of learning, and ask the editor to summarize them? Elicit the views of one of the most astute higher education researchers, or a thoughtful former college president (not all of them are, you know), or the recently retired head of a foundation whose work focuses on research on learning? Or, as a shortcut, you could just talk to Michael S. McPherson, who is all of the above.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Administrators Who Help Keep Students on Track
By Julia Piper
Like many offices of student success, the one at Kansas State University has the goal of ensuring that students leave with a degree that sets them on their chosen path. College is not just about finding your way anymore, says Stephanie Bannister, who became assistant vice provost for student success in June. With more students joining the work force right out of high school, student-success offices like the one where Bannister works need to prove that attending college yields a better return on investment. More colleges are hiring administrators with “student success” in their titles and charging them with making students’ college experience rewarding and fruitful, whether the students are first-generation and low-income or show up well-prepared by their families and high schools.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
What the Fast-Growing Cannabis Industry Means for Colleges
University administrators looking into the future of the American workforce to see what programs they should be creating aren’t seeing a clear picture. The nation’s fastest growing industry is left out of the official statistics because federal law still makes it illegal. So you won’t see the 64,000 cannabis industry jobs that were created in 2018 listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But they’re in the Leafly 2019 Cannabis Jobs Count, which found that the industry now employs more than 210,000 people and has grown by 110 percent in just three years. …At current growth rates, the U.S. cannabis industry is expected to support at least 414,000 jobs by 2021. Popular imagination may focus on direct cultivation jobs, but the range of career opportunities stretches much farther afield. Legal cannabis touches numerous areas: legal, finance, marketing, product development, medical applications, clinical patient care, and technology. For universities, that breadth means numerous academic disciplines can play a role in training for cannabis careers.