University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AJC COVID-19 vaccine tracker: Ga. State sees progress on new treatment
By Eric Stirgus, Helena Oliviero
An ongoing notebook of developments in COVID-19 vaccines, distribution and treatments
Here’s an update on some news involving COVID-19 vaccines and treatments: A Georgia State University team released research Thursday showing progress on an oral medication that could be used to treat COVID-19. The drug, Molnupiravir, also known as MK-4482/EIDD-2801, completely suppresses virus transmission within 24 hours, the Georgia State team said. The research has been peer-reviewed with findings published on the website, Nature Microbiology.
James Magazine
Clayton State University: New Methods and Continued Success
By all measures, Clayton State is a young university. What may have been a well-kept secret on the southside of Atlanta when the school first opened its door in 1969, it is now well known as a prominent Georgia university that continues to gain recognition and respect.
Statesboro Herald
GS nursing student’s legacy funds $900,000 in scholarships, service
Abbie DeLoach Foundation launches new website
From staff reports
Since its inception in 2016, the Abbie DeLoach Foundation, created in the name of one of the five Georgia Southern University students who died in a tragic April 2015 wreck on Interstate 16, has awarded $900,000 in scholarships and funding for international outreach. The bulk of the money has gone into scholarships, including 28 medical scholarships and 12 student-athlete scholarships. The foundation reports that it has also funded 10 student service programs and enabled eight recipients to do world mission work. In addition, the Abbie DeLoach Foundation has built an international home for women, “Abbie’s Home,” with $90,000 invested to stop the exploitation of women.
WRBL
CSU graduate named Fulbright Scholar
by: Teresa Whitaker
Columbus State University graduate Brittany Parker is South Korea-bound again after being accepted into the Fulbright Korea English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Program. The prestigious honor awards Parker with a grant that allows her to live and teach for a year in South Korea. Parker graduated Cum Laude from the Schwob School of Music at Columbus State University in Fall 2019. She received a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Music (Voice), a Linguistic minor, and an International Studies Certificate. She has already participated in two study abroad programs in South Korea, one of which is the TESOL internship program in which she experienced teaching English abroad. Parker says she believes the previous awards enhanced her chances for being awarded the Fulbright Scholarship.
WSAV
Georgia Southern to hold in-person commencement, recent graduates to participate
by: Alex Bozarjian
In just one week, Georgia Southern University will hold its first in-person graduation ceremony since the pandemic began. University leaders say it was a decision made with both safety and the students in mind. They say they’re following guidance from the Georgia Department of Public Health and have a team internally monitoring community transmission. …Ballagh says around 400 graduates from the spring and fall semesters will come back and participate in the next week’s ceremonies.
SaportaReport
Georgia Tech wins national award for teaching students to address sustainability, social justice
By David Pendered
Georgia Tech’s Serve-Learn-Sustain program received a first place award Thursday from the national campus sustainability association, AASHE, for its approach to teaching students methods to solve problems involving environmental sustainability and social justice. Two other schools in Georgia were award finalists – Agnes Scott College and Georgia Southern University. In addition, a professor and assistant program director at Tech served on a team that made it to the finals, with colleagues from a university in Scotland.
Grassroots Motorsports
How University of Georgia Students Turn STEM Classes Into Racing Reality
By Staff Writer
…College Recruitment
ChampCar has begun to welcome school teams by offering free entry, normally an expense that ranges from $1000 to $3000. Bill Strong, the marketing director for the TireRack.com ChampCar Endurance Series, says participating high school and college teams must be part of a STEM program and run in their school colors. School teams should contact ChampCar CEO Michael Chisek at info@champcar.org. ChampCar currently has a dozen student teams racing with them this season, with Utah Valley University winning overall at ChampCar’s Utah Motorsports event in July 2019. Strong believes that the UGA students did well at their first appearances and looks forward to seeing more of them. He says their car choice wasn’t great for a first-time race effort, but as an engineering exercise for students, it was a good one.
Savannah Morning News
Savannah Convention Center expansion a priority for state lawmakers
DeAnn Komanecky
Savannah’s Convention Center expansion and incentives for retired veterans to stay in Georgia were two items presented as legislative priorities by the Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday at the chamber’s annual Eggs and Issues breakfast. …2021 State Legislative Agenda from the Savannah area Chamber of Commerce – Support the Board of Regents request of $4.5M for campus- wide utility infrastructure improvements to increase efficiency and increase campus security at Savannah State University.
Support Georgia Southern University’s request for $36.7M in construction funding for a Convocation Center – a multi- purpose complex housing academic space for teaching, research and a mixed-use event venue for large-scale gatherings for the University and surrounding communities … KEY PRO-BUSINESS POLICIES & POSITIONS: …Advocate for legislation, initiatives and funding to support registered and certified training programs such as Apprenticeships, Move On When Ready, Georgia College & Career Academies and other efforts that prepare students for future careers while providing a skilled workforce for the region’s current and future employers
Atlanta Business Chronicle
UGA business school dean: ‘COVID-19 recession is over’
By Crystal Edmonson – Broadcast Editor
Despite rising cases of COVID-19 in Georgia, the recession brought on by the pandemic was one of the shortest on record, and according to economists, it is practically a thing of the past. The recovery, meanwhile, is underway. “Absent another lockdown, the COVID-19 recession is over,” said Benjamin C. Ayers, dean of the Terry College of Business. On Dec. 3, the University of Georgia released its 38th annual Georgia Economic Outlook. The report showed the pandemic did less damage to Georgia’s economy than to the nation as a whole, and that a full, state-level recovery will arrive sooner than in the broader U.S.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
From: Beckie Supiano
Subject: Teaching: What Students Are Up Against
This week: I share some student observations about the fall semester. I pass along one explanation for why students report they’re doing more work, while professors say they’re assigning less. I link to some recent articles on teaching that you may have missed.
‘It’s a Lot’
Last spring’s shift to remote instruction was a remarkable moment in higher education. At the time, I marveled at the strangeness of talking with professors across the country — and even in other countries — and hearing the same experiences and emotions over and over. Neither instructors nor students were ready for online learning. They missed being on campus and in the classroom. Everyone was wrapping their minds around the reality of the pandemic. By fall, the sense of a shared experience was gone. Some classes would be in person, others online in various forms. What did it even mean to have a class? … Here’s some of what I learned from speaking with them: …Some classes are barely happening. Ben Conklin, a sophomore studying history at Georgia State University, described for me a geology course he’s taking asynchronously in which students are working through the textbook individually and have had very little direction from the instructor. By the time the semester ends, Conklin expects to have completed just two assignments. “The lack of audiovisual interaction is not something I expected when taking online classes,” he told me in an email. “I thought that professors would have widened their creativity, let alone participation in online formats.”
SaportaReport
McCamish Foundation invests in Parkinson’s research at Georgia Tech and Emory
By Maria Saporta
Parkinson’s disease is personal for the McCamish Foundation. Henry “Hank” McCamish Jr. – an insurance executive, entrepreneur and philanthropist – died of Parkinson’s in 2013. Now his family is making a multi-year, multi-million “landmark commitment” to accelerate Parkinson’s disease studies to position Georgia as a hub for collaborative research on this and other neurological diseases, according to a release. The transformational research will harness science engineering and technology at Georgia Tech and Emory to better analyze the complexities of the brain and transform the treatment of Parkinson’s and other disorders of the nervous system.
Global Atlanta
UGA Surges in Study-Abroad Participation to Claim No. 6 Ranking Nationally
Trevor Williams
University of Georgia football fans have grown accustomed in recent years to seeing the school at the higher end of the top 10 rankings. But catapulting into that list for study-abroad participation took a major surge. According to the newly released Open Doors report from the Institute for International Education, the state’s flagship school jumped eight slots to No. 6 in the nation, with 2,780 undergraduate and graduate students taking international classes for credit in the 2018-19 year tracked in the report. Appropriately, the news release announcing the milestone points out that UGA outpaced all other Southeastern Conference schools and was the only Georgia institution that cracked the top-10.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Dec. 3)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
DEATHS: 8,879 | 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: 433,353 | Cases have been confirmed in every county.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flu season starts light, thanks to COVID-19
By Christopher Quinn
Health workers say flu vaccinations, COVID protocols helping
An early rush by people to get flu vaccines — along with teleworking, the use of face masks and fewer social gatherings due to COVID-19 — seems to be tamping down the start of flu season in Georgia, some health providers say. The Georgia Department of Public Health’s most recent weekly report shows the number of reported cases is among the lowest in nine years.
GPB
Hospital CEOs To Gov. Kemp: Staffing Crunch Is Biggest Pandemic Challenge
By: Andy Miller
The problems abound: Medical supply vendors are upping their prices, and there are occasional shortages of COVID-19 test equipment. But Georgia hospital CEOs told Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday that their biggest challenge amid the pandemic is finding enough staff to treat people stricken by COVID and also take care of other patients. There are ”not enough RNs out there,’’ said Don Avery, CEO of Fairview Park Hospital in Dublin. Kemp told the hospital officials that he recognizes it’s a “very competitive environment’’ that they find themselves in. He added that Georgia is in the process this year of spending $250 million in federal CARES Act money on supplying medical staff to facilities, with more than $200 million of that total dedicated to 56 hospitals during the pandemic.
Higher Education News:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The 5 Biggest Lessons We’ve Learned About How Coronavirus Spreads on Campus
By Francie Diep
When colleges shifted operations online in the spring because of Covid-19, so much remained in question. How did the new coronavirus spread? What were its ill effects? Could colleges open for in-person instruction in the 2020-21 academic year, and what would happen if they did? As the fall term comes to a close, we now have some hard-earned answers. These five lessons may shape institutions’ responses both to the coming spring semester and to pandemics and other public-health threats in the future.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Audrey Williams June
Amid a chorus of calls to cancel student debt, the U.S. Department of Education released new data on Wednesday that, for the first time, provides a look at the debt parents shoulder to pay for their children to go to college. The bottom line about borrowers in the federal parent PLUS loan program: They’re taking out loans whose size could upend their finances.
Inside Higher Ed
Financial Aid Officers Could Use Powers to Help Students, Paper Says
By Kery Murakami
At a time when the economic impact of the pandemic is disproportionately hurting the incomes of Black and Latino families, financial aid officers at universities and colleges could use their professional discretion to help keep students of color in school. However, first-generation students in particular might not know that officers are allowed to adjust the financial information used to determine the amount of aid they can receive if they or their families have lost a job or had their income cut, says a new policy paper by Education Trust. Jaime Ramirez-Mendoza, an Education Trust higher education policy analyst, said in an interview he’d been a first-generation student and didn’t know administrators could use their professional judgement to take recent changes in a family’s income into consideration. Whether students can get more aid “could mean the difference between getting a degree or [being] one of the 36 million students who drop out,” said Ramirez-Mendoza, who wrote the brief with Tiffany Jones, the group’s senior adviser on higher education policy.
Inside Higher Ed
National Academies Release Guidance on Altering Student Behavior, COVID Testing
By Lilah Burke
The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine released guidance Tuesday on altering student behavior as it relates to COVID-19, as well as testing for the virus. The first report from the National Academies makes recommendations for campus leaders looking to alter student behavior, using existing research in developmental psychology. “Making a behavior easy to start and rewarding to repeat, tying a behavior to existing habits, providing alternatives to unwanted behaviors, and providing specific descriptions of desired behaviors are strategies that campus leaders can employ to make it more likely that protective behaviors will become habitual for students,” the National Academies said in a press release about the report. “Many adolescents and young adults are socially driven, with a strong desire for reward and acceptance. Identity, agency, and autonomy are centrally important during the college years.”
Inside Higher Ed
New Model Proposed for College Football’s Biggest Players
Current and former college leaders who believe that athletics have strayed from a student-centered mission recommended a structural overhaul for top Division I football programs.
By Greta Anderson
The Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics issued recommendations to overhaul management of the nation’s top college football programs, suggesting that a new entity be created to oversee the Football Bowl Subdivision, which includes the most successful and lucrative teams in the sport. The commission, which advocates for college sports reform and an academic-focused model, completed a yearlong review on Thursday of the current competition and revenue structure for 130 institutions in the FBS, a college football subdivision within Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The commission published a wide-ranging report on the history of FBS governance and issues that commission members, including current and former college presidents, athletic directors, and former college athletes, believe have led to inequities among FBS institutions and a lack of accountability for how revenue from college football championship and playoff games is allocated.