University System News:
WFXG
Medical College of Georgia expanding its class size in 2021
By Sydni Moore
The Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University says it’s expanding its class size to address what they are calling a nationwide physician shortage. Dean of the College, Dr. David Hess says MCG will increase their class size by ten students, at their main campus here in Augusta and their campus in Athens. But he says while it is necessary to grow the number of physicians they are also finding ways to keep them in Georgia. “Our regional campus has students throughout the state and studies show if students go to a regional campus in a rural area, they are more likely to practice there.” Hess says there hasn’t been an increase in class size at the Medical College at AU since 2006. “So, Athens went from 40 to 50 this past year and will go to 60 next year, and then we’ll go from 190 to 200, here for the first time. So that’s the first increase in our class size here in 15 years.” The college also changed its entire curriculum allowing students to choose whether they want to graduate in three years instead of four if they decide to do their residency training in Georgia.
Coastal Courier
GSU planning in person graduation
After consultation with local and state health officials, Georgia Southern University is planning to hold in-person graduation ceremonies at the end of the fall 2020 semester. In order to implement social distancing guidelines for the safety of everyone in attendance, Georgia Southern will host multiple ceremonies. Georgia Southern is now planning five separate ceremonies, spaced out over three days:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AJC On Campus: Jimmy Carter’s Emory talk, UGA pushes COVID testing
By Eric Stirgus
Many leaders at Georgia colleges and universities have spent recent months thinking about how to address concerns about racial inequity on their campuses. In this week’s AJC On Campus, we report on one local university’s introspective look on the subject, a U.S. senator from Georgia weighing in on what she believes are racially discriminatory practices at colleges nationwide, a vice-presidential candidate’s conversation with Black college students and more. …East Georgia State College’s president to retire East Georgia State College president Bob Boehmer has announced his retirement, effective Dec. 1, University System of Georgia officials announced Friday. Dawn H. Cartee, who most recently served as director of the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education and Hotel, has been appointed interim president. …UWG update …More University of Georgia students seek COVID-19 tests …Commencement updates …More Georgia State University students withdrawing from classes
Savannah Morning News
By Dennis Knight
Kyle Frazier was cruising through his final semester at Glenn Hills High in Augusta in the spring of 2019, looking forward to graduating and starting his football career at Savannah State University, when he first noticed something was amiss. The standout defensive tackle had an abnormal growth in his neck. At first he thought it might be a harmless infection, but a trip to the doctor led to a biopsy and a diagnosis that the 17-year-old had cancer — Hodgkin’s lymphoma. …But with the support of his family, friends and the Savannah State program, he won his battle and was declared cancer free on Dec. 31. He has served as an inspiration to his teammates and reached another personal goal when he led them out for the Tiger Walk preceding SSU’s spring game in March. On this week’s edition of “Monday Night Football,” the Georgia Make-A-Wish Foundation teamed up with the Los Angeles Rams to feature Frazier as a part of their Crucial Catch Captains program, dedicated to fighting cancer through early detection.
U.S. News & World Report
Genetic Test for Cancer Risk Helps Young Woman Make Choices
By Associated Press, Wire Service Content
By Mary Landers, The Savannah Morning News
Ana Rosales wanted to know. An education major at Georgia Southern’s Armstrong campus, Rosales, 19, plans to become a high school math teacher. She has a good grasp of numbers, including risks. So after watching her 45-year-old mom struggle recently with a second round of breast cancer and knowing her mom carried the breast cancer gene BRCA-2, Rosales decided to be tested for the gene herself. Rosales’ approach to genetic testing is becoming more typical, especially among younger generations, said Jacob South, a genetic counselor at the J.C. Lewis Cancer & Research Pavilion at St. Joseph’s/Candler.
CR80 News
U. of Georgia makes OneCard available to online students
By: Andrew Hudson
The University of Georgia is now providing its online students with their own UGA OneCard complete with ID photo. The move will provide online students with the same credential as their on-campus peers, as well as provide digital learners with all of the benefits of the UGA OneCard. According to an official university release, the UGA OneCard is the official identification card for students, faculty, staff, official campus visitors, and their dependents. In addition to featuring an ID photo, online students that apply for a UGA OneCard will have access to its accompanying student benefits, including access to professional conferences, discounts on shopping, events and programs. Many businesses also offer students discounts for services with a valid UGA student ID card.
Clayton News-Daily
Clayton State University pledges $5,000 to increase black male nursing professionals in Georgia
From Staff Reports
Clayton State University has committed $5,000 toward student scholarships as part of a statewide project of the Georgia Nursing Leadership Coalition to increase the number of black male nurses in Georgia. The GNLC’s grant was selected as one of 10 Nursing Innovations Fund Award winners by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Clayton State School of Nursing is working with the GLNC, a group made up of several Georgia organizations and agencies. Innovation grantees will receive up to $25,000 from the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, an initiative of AARP Foundation, AARP, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to address inequalities in the healthcare system.
Tifton CEO
Mike Chason on Popular Bachelor’s Degrees at ABAC (VIDEO)
Director of Public Relations Emeritus at ABAC Mike Chason talks about a few of ABAC’s most popular bachelor’s degrees and some of the current trends with students.
Statesboro Herald
Georgia’ Southern’s Performing Arts Center to offer online concerts on Facebook
Special to the Herald
Looking for something to do during the next few weekends? Georgia Southern University’s Performing Arts Center has the ticket — and you won’t even need one. In the coming weeks, the PAC will be offering concerts exclusively on its Facebook page. The concerts each begin at 6 p.m. and are free to view. Sunday night, Naturally 7 will perform a mix of pop, rock, and rhythm and blues, recreating the sound of a full band using only their voices. Named Best Vocal Group in 2019 on CBS’ World’s Best with James Corden, Naturally 7 is one of those rare groups of performers that will absolutely blow your mind.
Athens CEO
Georgia 4-H Provides Virtual and In-person Environmental Education
Austin Clark
The Georgia 4-H Environmental Education program is accommodating the needs of students around the state by offering both virtual and socially distant in-person visits at its six facilities in Georgia. As a response to COVID-19 restrictions, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension’s 4-H environmental educators around the state began posting videos to highlight activities, concepts or ideas that would have been traditionally taught in person. Since March, over 50 videos from the centers have been posted on topics ranging from animal care to the geography of Georgia to wilderness survival. The videos also allowed each center to highlight local and unique environmental landmarks such as the salt marshes and beaches on the coast and the Chattahoochee and Oconee National Forests.
Athens CEO
ThryftShip Lands $2,500 UGA Idea Accelerator Prize
Merritt Melancon
Instagram has become a steady source of income for millions of merchants, who use the social networking platform to sell everything from art to vintage clothing and makeup. Businesses have found ways to do most of their direct-to-consumer transactions on the app, but shipping has remained a time-consuming challenge. That’s where Valeria Brenner’s idea for ThryftShip comes in. Brenner’s concept for a web browser extension that makes shipping easier for Instagram merchants won first prize and $2,500 at the University of Georgia Idea Accelerator Demo Day finals on Oct. 8.
Albany Herald
Tidewater loans CASE Tractor to J.G. Woodroof Farm at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
From staff reports
Students will have the opportunity to use the new top of the line CASE IH AFS Connect Magnum 200 CVT Tractor at the J.G. Woodroof Farm at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College this year thanks to Tidewater Agriculture and Construction. Mark Kistler, dean of ABAC’s School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, said he is thankful for the relationship ABAC has with Tidewater. “The new Case IH Mag 200 CVT AFS will be a tremendous asset to not only our farm operation but, more importantly, to our students and their hands-on learning,” Kistler said in an ABAC news release. The newly designed tractor features a luxury cab with a 360-degree view. There is a lot of new technology and power sources integrated into the tractor’s system. Tidewater officials say they hope to get feedback on the technology from the ABAC students.
Inside Higher Ed
The colleges with the most cumulative cases of COVID-19 show no signs of shutting down. Some of their critics find themselves burned out and resigned.
By Lilah Burke
When some colleges announced this summer that they would be reopening in person, there was backlash. Critics said university administrations were being careless, deluding themselves and setting up the conditions for mass outbreaks. Now, a little over halfway through the semester, some of those critics’ fears have come to pass, while others have been unfounded. Some colleges have had few to no cases on their campuses. Others have seen unmanageable outbreaks and chosen to close, sending all their students home and continuing education online. But some institutions have been confronted with outbreaks and high case numbers, and they have chosen to continue on. Those institutions have in many cases been reporting alarming numbers, but they show no signs of shutting down. …The University of Georgia has similarly been putting up high numbers. Cumulatively, nearly 3,600 students have been infected. If enrollment hasn’t changed from last year, that means about 9 percent of students, including graduate and professional students, have been infected since August.
WSB_TV
Police searching for gunmen who shot student at metro Atlanta university
Police say a student at Clayton State University was shot Saturday morning. Campus officials said four people were visiting Laker Hall around 10:30 a.m. when one of them fired a gun, striking the student. The student was taken to the hospital. The victim’s identity and condition have not been released.
Inside Higher Ed
Confronting Racism in Admissions
Is now the moment when college admission professionals will start breaking down known barriers to admission for Black students?
By Elizabeth Redden
The barriers to admitting more Black students to the nation’s selective universities are numerous and well-known. Research shows college admission officers focus recruiting efforts on wealthy, predominantly white high schools. …Legacy admission preferences favor wealthy white students, perpetuating long-standing inequalities in college access. And in some states, prohibitions on affirmative action preclude any consideration of race in the admissions process. A recent report by the Education Trust on Black and Latinx enrollment at 101 selective public colleges found only 9 percent enroll Black students at rates proportionate to their population within the state. The organization, which advocates for educational opportunities for all students with a focus on students of color, found that the percentage of Black students at nearly 60 percent of the institutions has actually fallen since 2000. …Meanwhile, nine states — California, Florida and Michigan being among the biggest and Idaho being most recent — have adopted bans on race-based affirmative action. Public universities in a 10th state, Georgia, dropped the use of race in admissions after losing a court challenge in 2000.
MSN
Institutions make the switch from animals for training
Kennedi Harris
Augusta University was one of those facilities that held animals for training, but that will be changing as the university and Medical College of Georgia are committed to ending the practice. Surgical residency students will no longer use any animals to learn. This comes after eight doctors from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine delivered a letter to the president of Augusta University and the dean of the Medical College of Georgia. The letter asked the institutions to stop animal use for medical training. In the letter, the doctors say: “MCG has an opportunity right now to make its surgery training more humane and more consistent with national standards.”
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Oct. 25)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
DEATHS: 7,809 | Deaths have been confirmed in all counties but one (Taliaferro). County is determined by the patient’s residence, when known, not by where they were treated.
CONFIRMED CASES: 350,923 | Cases have been confirmed in every county.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Tuition Rises at Historically Low Rate Amid Pandemic
Four-year colleges increased prices at the lowest rate in three decades, on average. But the COVID-19 pandemic’s greatest effects on pricing, funding and student aid might still be to come.
By Emma Whitford
Scrambling to attract and retain students in the middle of a historic health crisis, many colleges across the country froze or lowered tuition and fees for the current 2020-21 academic year. The average sticker price nonetheless increased across public and private, two-year and four-year institutions. But the increases were historically low, according to the College Board’s latest Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid report, released today. Average public, four-year, in-state tuition rates, as well as average tuition rates at private, nonprofit four-year institutions, saw their lowest percentage increases in 30 years before adjusting for inflation, said Jennifer Ma, senior policy research scientist at the College Board and co-author of the report.
Inside Higher Ed
Higher Ed Institutions Reexamine Role of Police in Student Mental Health Care
by Sara Weissman
Stanford University announced that, in most cases, it will now rely on the Palo Alto Fire Department instead of campus police to transport students put in psychiatric holds to the emergency room. “We are deeply appreciative of our collaborative working relationship, and we are grateful to partner with you on discussing different options for transporting students who are experiencing a mental health crisis from campus to a hospital,” wrote Dr. Susie Brubaker-Cole, vice provost for student affairs at Stanford, and Dr. Bina Pulkit Patel, director of counseling and psychological services at Stanford, in an Oct. 13 message to Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU). “We also want to express our gratitude to the many students in and outside of the ASSU who have been committed to raising this issue and addressing this challenge.” The decision comes amidst a national conversation about police practices after Black Lives Matter protests this summer, including a reexamination of what part police should play, if any, in responding to mental health crises. Campus police departments – and their place in campus mental health care – are undergoing similar scrutiny.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Why More Colleges Are Testing Off-Campus Students for Covid-19
By Katherine Mangan
Like many campuses that welcomed students back this fall, the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse initially limited its Covid-19 testing to students living in dorms. Meanwhile, students who lived off campus frequented bars and stores, mingling with local townspeople. Some who were training for health-care careers honed their skills caring for residents of area nursing homes. So it came as little surprise when an outbreak of Covid-19 last month, concentrated mainly among 18- to 24-year-olds, spilled over into some of the area’s most vulnerable residents. The possible links between the reopening of three La Crosse colleges and the deaths of at least nine area nursing-home residents was the subject of a study that has not yet been peer reviewed, but has been touted as a cautionary note on campus reopenings. As the ties between infection rates among students and college towns become clear, campuses like Wisconsin-LaCrosse are extending frequent testing to more students, including those who live off campus. It’s a financial and logistical challenge, but one that could be vital to maintaining the community’s trust.