University System News:
41 NBC
Georgia College awarded $650,000 S-STEM Grant from National Science Foundation
By Lizbeth Gutierrez
A Georgia College scholarship will provide students up to $8,000 per year, totaling $32,000 over four years. As the largest grant received by Georgia College, it helps 18 students in the next five years. The scholarship will offer experiences in undergraduate research, career counseling, internship placement, and academic counseling. …The college will award students the scholarship this fall. Only freshmen pursuing careers in chemistry and physics can apply.
Fox5 Atlanta
Georgia Tech grads launch app to help people quit drinking while social distancing
By Emilie Ikeda
As telemedicine continues to take root, even quitting alcohol has become pocket size. Reframe combines education, exercises, and progress tracking in an app for a few dollars a month. “It’s not just about cutting back or quitting, it’s about building a life where alcohol doesn’t play a pivotal part,” said Vedant Pradeep, co-founder of the app. It’s based on recent Georgia Tech graduates Pradeep and Ziyi Gao’s conversations with roughly 700 people, ranging from psychiatrists and top researchers to people dealing with substance use issues. Their methodology, in part, was inspired by Pradeep’s own bouts of obsessive-compulsive disorder. So, the pair built in distractions to avert cravings: Games, meditation guides, opportunities to connect with a private community. Since launching last summer, the app has garnered 3,000 subscribers, according to Pradeep.
Tifton CEO
ABAC Tutor Support Professional Receives $1,500 Scholarship
Jana Malone, a tutor support professional at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, has been named a Valdosta State University Scholar and has received a $1,500 scholarship toward her Master of Arts in History degree at VSU. Malone graduated from ABAC in 2018 with a Bachelor of Science degree in history and government. The Valdosta resident was a member of the first graduating class for the history and government degree at ABAC. Malone has come full circle at ABAC since she was a tutor in the ABAC tutoring center as a student.
Athens CEO
New UGA Presidential Fund Helps Graduate Students Complete Their Degrees
University of Georgia President Jere W. Morehead has launched a new fund to help graduate students overcome financial challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic and complete their degrees. The new $250,000 Graduate Student Degree Accelerator Fund will award up to $5,000 to eligible master’s and doctoral degree students to defray expenses associated with their graduate education.
WSAV
Hospitality and tourism industries lag behind as local economy shows signs of recovery
by: Alex Bozarjian
Savannah’s economy is showing strong signs of recovery, especially when it comes to employment. While some industries are doing well, others are still struggling to bounce back. Hospitality and tourism industries are centered around close contact. It’s part of the reason they’ve been so hard hit during the pandemic. Thanks to the weather, business is picking up for a lot of Savannah restaurants, but it’s bittersweet for many employees. …The interpersonal nature of food service and hospitality means economic recovery will be slow. According to Georgia Southern University economics professor Mike Toma, a full rebound will depend on how fast we can achieve herd immunity, likely through vaccinations.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Tech spring practice delayed by COVID-19 protocol
By Ken Sugiura
Georgia Tech’s first day of spring practice was postponed Tuesday morning due to what coach Geoff Collins termed “a small number of COVID-19 positive tests within our program.” The Yellow Jackets were to begin the first of 15 practices later in the morning. “Out of an abundance of caution, we have decided to delay the start of our spring practice season,” Collins said in a statement. “We will always err on the side of caution when it comes to the health and safety of our players and staff.”
Albany Herald
Albany police still seeking Albany State freshman reported missing
From staff reports
The Albany Police Department is seeking information on the whereabouts of an Albany State University student who still has not resurfaced after being reported missing over the weekend. …Tyson Evan Williams, a freshman at ASU, was last seen at about 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, and his family alerted police that he was missing.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Coronavirus in Georgia: COVID-19 Dashboard
Latest stats and the news on the coronavirus outbreak
Q: What is the latest on confirmed and probable coronavirus cases in Georgia?
843,675 TOTAL CONFIRMED* CASES
1,046,382 TOTAL INCLUDING PROBABLE** CASES
Q: What is the latest on coronavirus deaths in Georgia?
16,171 TOTAL CONFIRMED* DEATHS
18,556 TOTAL INCLUDING PROBABLE** DEATHS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
All Georgia adults could soon be eligible for coronavirus vaccine
By Eric Stirgus, Helena Oliviero and Greg Bluestein
Gov. Brian Kemp is expected to announce Tuesday that all Georgia adults will soon be eligible to sign up for coronavirus vaccines. The governor’s office has scheduled a 4:15 p.m. press conference to address the plans, though it’s not immediately clear when eligibility will expand. Earlier this month, Kemp said he expected to allow all adults to qualify for the vaccine by early April.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia reports first case of worrisome variant dominant in Brazil
By Helena Oliviero
Georgia has detected its first case of a worrisome coronavirus variant first found in Brazil, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. The variant of concern, known as P.1, is highly contagious and has, in some cases, reinfected people who have recovered from the coronavirus. The case was detected in Newton County. A total of 54 cases of the P.1 variant have now been reported in 18 jurisdictions, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Moody’s Raises Higher Ed Outlook to Stable
By Rick Seltzer
Moody’s Investors Service raised its outlook for the U.S. higher education sector from negative to stable Monday, pointing to improved revenue potential for colleges and universities over the next year to year and a half. The improvement is fueled in part by tuition and auxiliary revenue standing to gain should prospects for a widespread return to on-campus and in-person learning come to pass in the fall of 2021, according to the ratings agency. Federal relief funds are also helping to offset revenue losses and expense increases that colleges and universities faced because of the pandemic. In addition, recovering state economies mean a lower risk of funding cuts for public universities, and the current strength of financial markets bodes well for fundraising and university endowment performance. Large public flagships and elite private universities can be largely expected to outperform regional institutions and private colleges with less visible brands.
Inside Higher Ed
State Funding Hit Lands on 2-Year Colleges
Four-year institutions have fared much better than two-year colleges when it comes to state support, a split that might be tied to enrollment declines.
By Emma Whitford
States slashed financial support for two-year colleges by $457 million during the pandemic, while four-year institutions received a $256 million increase in support, a new analysis of state higher education appropriations shows. Federal stimulus funding softened the blow for many state higher education budgets, but state tax appropriations, which are often the predominant recurring revenue stream for public higher education, declined this fiscal year. Six states cut funding for two-year institutions by more than 10 percent in the 2021 fiscal year, which began July 1, 2020, and will end June 30, 2021. Only three states cut funding for the four-year sector by a similar amount, according to the analysis, published by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. The analysis builds on findings presented in the most recent Grapevine report on state higher education funding for fiscal year 2021.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
American Council on Education Kicks Off Its 2021 Conference
by Sara Weissman
As he kicked off the American Council on Education’s virtual annual meeting, which started on Monday, U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. Miguel Cardona’s voice came out garbled at first, his image on the computer screen intermittently freezing. But the moment of technical difficulties felt “symbolic” of what he wanted to address, he said, the educational inequities highlighted by the pandemic, like the digital divide. “This is a perfect example … of what our students are facing,” Cardona told administrators and educators. He noted that students aren’t just struggling with broadband access but also their own emotional and “cognitive bandwidth” as they face basic needs insecurity, job loss and the trauma of losing family members. Meanwhile, a typical student today isn’t “your typical college student you might think of twenty or thirty years ago,” he added, with increasing numbers of student parents or full-time workers, who face extra obstacles to their education during the pandemic. “This is our opportunity as a country to make sure we … intentionally design, our higher education institutions to meet the social-emotional needs of our students, the mental health needs of our students,” he said. Cardona’s hope for the fall is to set a “higher bar than just reopening.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
It’s Time to Rethink Higher Education
What if our goal was creating social impact, not preserving the status quo?
By Brian Rosenberg
Pointing out that much of higher education is in a state of crisis is at this point about as revelatory as noting that the U.S. Senate is dysfunctional. We know. More interesting is a consideration of how far colleges and universities, beyond those whose wealth and reputations insulate them from both disruption and self-reflection, are willing to go to mitigate the crisis. How fundamental are the assumptions we are willing to challenge? How many established orthodoxies and traditions are we willing seriously to interrogate? Will this be a slight mid-air course correction or a redesign of the plane? In an industry where the elimination of a small program, the creation of a new interdisciplinary minor, or even the renaming of a department is considered dramatic change, these are important questions. As Gabriel Paquette recently asked, can higher education save itself?