University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia university system to review names of buildings and colleges
By Ty Tagami
Georgia’s public university system will consider whether the names of any buildings and colleges at its campuses should be changed, system Chancellor Steve Wrigley’s office announced Wednesday evening. He and Board of Regents Chairman Sachin Shailendra asked an advisory group “to review and study the names” then report “on any recommended changes,” a statement from Wrigley’s office said. There was no explanation of what spurred the review.
See also:
Athens CEO
Advisory Group to Review Names Used On University System of Georgia Campuses
WRDW
Advisory group to review names used on University System of Georgia campuses
The George-Anne
The University System of Georgia is now reviewing names of colleges and buildings on their campuses
WGAU
Name change for UGA’s Grady College?
Morehead, Smart weigh in
By Tim Bryant
The state Board of Regents has appointed an advisory group to look at names of buildings and colleges on campuses in the University System of Georgia: the University of Georgia’s Grady College is among the candidates for a name change. UGA’s College of Journalism and Mass Communication is named in honor Henry Grady, a University of Georgia graduate and journalist who is said by some to have been a white supremacist. From UGA Today…Board of Regents Chairman Sachin Shailendra and Chancellor Steve Wrigley of the University System of Georgia (USG) have asked an advisory group to review and study the names of buildings and colleges on all USG campuses and report to the Board on any recommended changes. …President Jere W. Morehead, University of Georgia: “I want to express my strong support and appreciation to the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, particularly Chairman Sachin Shailendra and Chancellor Steve Wrigley, on announcing a distinguished group of civic leaders to engage in this very important and timely work. UGA stands ready to assist and support in this review of names at USG institutions, including those at the University of Georgia.”
News Medical
Georgia Tech professor donated 7,000 gallons of redesigned sanitizer to fight COVID-19
So many people Seth Marder spoke to didn’t see the hand sanitizer crisis brewing. The country was going to run dangerously short if someone did not act urgently. The professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology rallied colleagues and partners around the cause in March, and by early June, they had replaced a key component of hand sanitizer, created a new supply chain, and initiated their own donation of 7,000 gallons of a newly designed sanitizer to medical facilities. Its name: Han-I-Size White & Gold, named for the colors of Georgia Tech. The new supply chain also may ensure that hand sanitizer producers across the country do not run out of the main active ingredient, alcohol, but the team’s path to success was a stony labyrinth.
Forbes
College Students Need Help: Here’s What You Can Do Now
Andrew GrauerBrand, Contributor
As the COVID-19 pandemic began to upend the world of work, Silicon Valley businesses like ours quickly provided support for employees adjusting to the new realities of remote work. While daily Zoom calls became the norm, we were fortunate to have jobs that were both safe from termination and well-suited for a transition to telework. But as we adjusted, a very different narrative played out on college campuses around the country. The virus forced students, displaced from dorms and residence halls, to grapple with food insecurity and homelessness as their connection to campus life severed. Dreams deferred for parent learners with no access to childcare. Working learners who lost their jobs put higher education on hold. COVID-19 exposed fault lines that have vexed equity advocates for years. …Georgia State University’s Panther Retention Grant program, which provides $1,000 and $1,500 micro-grants to cover financial gaps, has seen great success in helping students graduate. It should be no surprise that Georgia State is now one of the few institutions in the country at which low-income students graduate at rates on par with or better than the general student population. But this is not the norm, and far too many students are left to struggle on their own—especially in the wake of COVID-19.
Gwinnett Daily Post
Georgia Gwinnett College puts 39 athletes on A.I.I. Academic All-Conference Team
By Will Hammock
Success in the classroom has earned 39 Georgia Gwinnett College student-athletes across four sports recognition on the 2019-20 Association of Independent Institutions Academic All-Conference Team. Eligible student-athletes must have completed at least two consecutive terms at the institution and played in at least one varsity competition during the season. The student-athlete must have at least a 3.2 cumulative GPA. GGC competes for A.I.I. championships in baseball, men’s and women’s soccer and softball. The men’s and women’s soccer teams won conference championships in 2019.
WTOC
Everyday Heroes: Love In Action telephone assurance program
Sometimes a phone call is all it takes to improve someone’s day. That thought is what helped create the Love in Action telephone reassurance program. The Senior Companion Program at Georgia Southern University has launched the program. These Everyday Heroes provide free wellness checks on older adults in the area with telephone calls. University students, among others, participate in the initiative. The Love in Action director gave insight on what exactly the Senior Companion Program does.
WRBL
UGA Student speaks on summer of changes
This story was produced as part of the WRBL 2020 Summer Intern program
by: Kelsey Miller
Earlier this year, University of Georgia journalism major Willie Daniely III imagined his summer to be full of adventure in the city by interning at a national news station. Through Daniely’s involvement in UGA’s chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists chapter, he learned of a fellowship with NBC’s Today show in New York and immediately applied. Later, he found out about the CNN Ted Turner Maverick internship and also applied for it. …He received offers from both programs in early March 2020 while he was on a spring break trip in the Dominican Republic. When he came back home to Atlanta, those offers changed quickly due to COVID19. The Today show internship was cancelled, so he accepted the CNN internship. That internship was later cancelled also and he was left with no other options at that time. …When he heard back from both places, they presented new offers that fit under the conditions. “The Turner internship was paid, so they’re paying me half of the summer even though it was cancelled. The NBC internship is offering workshops to network with anchors and fellow students,” Daniely said.
Athens CEO
UGA Partnership Helps Georgia Communities Manage their Infrastructure
Aaron Cox
Angela Nguyen has been sheltering at home since March, but the UGA College of Engineering graduate student is still hard at work researching how to help Georgia communities — specifically smaller communities — better care for their bridges. Nguyen is the second graduate assistant from the University of Georgia to work with the American Public Works Association (APWA) Georgia chapter in as many years, thanks to a partnership with the Carl Vinson Institute of Government and the UGA College of Engineering. The program, developed by Walt McBride, a senior public service associate at the Vinson Institute, partners an engineering grad student with the APWA Georgia chapter to help Georgia communities address infrastructure challenges they may not be able to handle on their own.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated June 17, 3pm)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
DEATHS: 2,575 | Deaths confirmed in 140 counties. For 2 deaths, the county is unknown, and for 39 deaths, the residence was determined to be out-of-state. CONFIRMED CASES: 60,030 | A case’s county is determined by the patient’s residence, when known, not by where they were treated. Cases have been confirmed in every county. For 1,154 cases, the county is unknown. For 2,813 cases, the residence was determined to be out-of-state.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Supreme Court rules that the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was “arbitrary and capricious.”
By Elizabeth Redden
DACA lives. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration’s decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was “arbitrary and capricious” under the Administrative Procedure Act, and that the decision to end it must be vacated. The decision returns the issue to the Department of Homeland Security and means the Trump administration cannot immediately end the DACA program, which provides protection against deportation and work authorization for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children. An estimated 454,000 undocumented immigrant college students comprise roughly 2 percent of the U.S. higher education system. About half — 216,000 — are eligible for the DACA program. Many college leaders had advocated for keeping DACA protections in place.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Eric Hoover
Colleges that don’t use the ACT or SAT scores in admissions will no longer find themselves exiled to the lonely margins of the world’s most-loved-and-hated rankings. U.S. News & World Report announced on Wednesday that it will now rank test-blind colleges in its controversial but closely watched Best Colleges guide. Previously, test-blind institutions were excluded from the rankings and categorized as “Unranked.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
A Fall Enrollment Disaster? Early Signs Say, Not Everywhere
By Eric Kelderman
The sky isn’t falling in college admissions. Not yet, anyway. The threat of the coronavirus and uncertainty about how campuses will operate in the fall had threatened to drive prospective college students to reconsider their options for the coming semester, at least. But enrollment managers at several small private and public regional colleges have told The Chronicle that they are close to meeting their goals for new first-year students, as well as maintaining strong retention of current students. In addition, news reports on both public and private colleges suggest that the fall headcount looks more promising than it did earlier in the spring — meaning many colleges are not facing a full-scale disaster after all. That said, the institutions that responded to The Chronicle’s questions about enrollment trends showed a striking range of forecasts, with some colleges badly lagging behind their targets and others coming out ahead.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Covid Obstacles Abound, but Colleges Can Successfully Recruit for Fall 2021
It will take a combination of cutting-edge digital advertising and old-fashioned people skills
By Alexander C. Kafka
Recruiting for the fall of 2021 poses a thicket of problems. It’s hard for students to get to know colleges when Covid-19 prevents them from visiting campuses or learning about them at admissions fairs. And it’s hard for colleges to get to know students when canceled or delayed standardized tests, disrupted academics, and suspended sports and other activities thin the files on their achievement, aptitude, and interests. Yet colleges’ financial stability, even survival, depends on robust recruiting. A new Chronicle report and a just-released survey of rising high-school seniors offer some strategies to make the best of a chaotic situation.
Inside Higher Ed
Stop-Out Programs Expand Amid Pandemic
Companies and colleges are launching new programs and partnerships to re-enroll stopped-out students. The timing couldn’t have been better.
By Madeline St. Amour
When looking at its data, ReUp Education discovered a common problem for some of the students to whom the company reached out. ReUp helps institutions contact students who had stopped out before completing a degree in the hope that they will return and finish. The company’s data show that nearly 90 percent of the students it engages with want to earn a degree, according to Sarah Horn, the company’s CEO and founder. For about 75 percent of those students, returning to their original institution and picking up where they left off is a good option. For the other 25 percent, it’s not, she said. Those results became the impetus for the ReUp Network, a group of colleges that uses ReUp to help re-enroll their stopped-out students.
Inside Higher Ed
New study argues that the class-size debate needs a lot more nuance. Will this finally move conversations forward, beyond “small is good” and “big is bad”?
By Colleen Flaherty
There is now a body of literature questioning the link between small class size and student success. A new study of interactions between different class sizes and more than a dozen other variables within Temple University’s general education program further supports the “small ain’t all” argument. It encourages educational researchers to look deeper at the effect of class size on student success, and to the effect of peers as well as teaching methods, especially in an era of constrained resources. The study also has some hidden implications for COVID-19-era instruction, since professors teaching remotely or in hybrid models arguably have more flexibility with respect to class size. “In terms of student race and gender, the findings for underrepresented groups contrast with previous research, which has found that smaller class sizes correlate with improved academic outcomes,” states the new study, published in Educational Researcher. That’s probably because “the effect of class size is far more nuanced than historically discussed.”
Inside Higher Ed
Study Examines How Spring Break Spread COVID-19
By Lindsay McKenzie
College students who traveled to popular spring break destinations likely contributed to the spread of COVID-19 on college campuses and in surrounding communities, a recent study suggests. Looking at university vacation dates, cellphone data and reported COVID-19 cases, researchers propose that students who flew to New York City or Florida for spring break contributed more to COVID-19 spread than the average student. “To inform the immediate policy discussion, our results imply that universities can play an important role in containing further COVID-19 spread,” wrote the study authors. “Our results suggest that reducing long-distance student travel can reduce COVID-19 spread both within the university and for higher-risk individuals in the surrounding county.”