University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia universities preparing for full operations this fall
By Eric Stirgus
Several public universities in Georgia are discussing plans for a full return to classes and campus living for the fall semester, anticipating their campuses will be safer for students and employees because of expanded availability to the COVID-19 vaccine. “(The availability) should allow us to resume normal operations in the Fall Semester, including a return to full in-person instruction, full capacity in our residence halls and dining facilities, and regular operations for other campus services,” University of Georgia officials said in a message Wednesday to students, employees and faculty. “All research and public service operations are also expected to resume regular activities no later than Fall 2021.” Georgia State University President Mark Becker wrote Wednesday it plans to have “a full complement of in-person classes” and “a fully populated residential community and campuses that provide the usual student services, activities, events and recreational opportunities.” Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera told parents the school is preparing for “full operations and a complete residential experience for our students this fall.”
11Alive
According to UGA, wider vaccine availability contributed to the decision.
yahoo!news
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College plans return to ‘normal’ for fall semester
The Albany Herald, Ga.
To use a couple of time-honored expressions, Dr. David Bridges does not want to jump the gun, but he does want to be ahead of the curve. Bridges, the president of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College since 2006 and the longest-serving president in the University System of Georgia, said ABAC students can expect a return to normalcy for the 2021 fall semester. “Our plan is to return to normal operations in the fall,” Bridges said. “I want our existing students to know that, and I particularly want incoming freshmen to know it.” Like all the other 25 institutions in the USG, ABAC offered only online classes for the final weeks of the 2020 spring semester and the entirety of the summer term because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Athens CEO
Reports of COVID-19 at UGA Reach Lowest Level Since Testing Began
Reports of positive cases of COVID-19 at the University of Georgia now stand at the lowest level since the University began its surveillance testing last August, with 51 individuals reporting positive tests for February 22 – 28. That number is down 25 percent from the previous week. Of those who reported positive tests through the DawgCheck system, 43 were students, six were staff, and two were faculty members. Surveillance tests were administered to 1,929 individuals at the Legion Field surveillance site and in a satellite location. Of those tested, 19 yielded positive results for a positivity rate less than 1 percent, at 0.985 percent.
Marietta Daily Journal
KSU engineering professor uses data, simulations to combat COVID-19
Universities that encourage their communities to implement social distancing and wear face masks could prevent 99.9% of COVID-19 infections, according to a study recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Information Discovery and Delivery. The study, co-authored by Kennesaw State University assistant professor Lin Li with University of Texas at Arlington assistant professor Yuan Zhou and graduate students, attempted to measure virus transmissions on a college campus using a simulation model, allowing them to gauge the effectiveness of mitigation techniques when used separately and combined with others. Techniques included encouraging social distancing, mask use and shifting courses to an online environment.
The Red & Black
UGA physicists involved in groundbreaking discovery
Alaina O’Regan | Contributor
Yohannes Abate, professor of physics at the University of Georgia, said he has always been interested in physics. “I don’t remember a time when I was not intrigued by gravity, for example, or small particles or the stars,” he said. Abate, who has a doctorate in physics, and graduate student Alireza Fali recently played a key role in the groundbreaking development of a new one-step process for creating self-assembled metamaterials, which are materials that are engineered to have properties that do not occur in nature. This discovery could have wide applications in electronics and optical devices, according to an article shared by the UGA Physics Department. The University of Georgia is home to the Abate Quantum Nano Optics Lab, where samples are sent from around the world to be examined by Abate and his team of researchers. With their specialized instruments and training, researchers in Abate’s lab are able to examine materials at a much smaller scale than most other laboratories in the world.
Science Times
Universal Coronavirus Vaccine: Research Ongoing for Possible Solution to the Next Pandemic
Marie Morales
Beyond Flu Vaccine Needed
For a decade-and-a-half now, the director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia, Ted Ross, has been developing a universal flu vaccine. Specifically, in 2019, Ross’s team was granted one of the largest contracts ever provided by the National Institutes of Health for the development of the universal vaccine. The award took place when flu was considered as ‘the thing’ to lead to the upcoming pandemic. The director added that the manner that flu vaccines are designed at present means that they should be tweaked each year in expectation of which variants will prevail in that coming flu season.
…Earlier Plan to Develop a Universal Coronavirus Vaccine
Earlier on, the Georgia State University Research Magazine came out with a report featuring professor Baozhong Wang from the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at Georgia State, who’s also taking a more extensive approach to combatting COVID-19 through the use of an innovative procedure he developed through his study on flu. At that time of release of the report, he was working to develop a universal vaccine that could shield from any strains of the COVID-19, as well as other inherently similar coronaviruses.
Growing Georgia
ABAC Spring Virtual Arts Series Begins March 11
Arts and Culture at ABAC presents a new way to celebrate performing arts despite current challenges with a brand-new Spring Virtual Arts Series beginning March 11 on the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College website. Presented by James C. and Jolene C. Bell, each virtual performance will be available for 24 hours at no charge to the viewer. The four performances in the series can be accessed at arts.abac.edu on the dates of the performances.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Jolt: Kemp not ready to join GOP governors relaxing COVID precautions
By Tia Mitchell, Greg Bluestein
Don’t count Gov. Brian Kemp among the “Neanderthal” state leaders that President Joe Biden knocked for rolling back pandemic restrictions. The Georgia Republican said Wednesday he wasn’t ready to go the same route as the governors of Texas and Mississippi who rolled back pandemic guidelines meant to contain the spread of the disease.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated March 3)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
CONFIRMED DEATHS: 15,349 | Deaths have been confirmed in every county. This figure does not include additional cases that the DPH reports as suspected COVID-19-related deaths. County is determined by the patient’s residence, when known, not by where they were treated.
CONFIRMED CASES: 823,008 | Cases have been confirmed in every county.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
The Single Biggest Equity Issue in Higher Education
It isn’t access or affordability. It’s success in high-demand, high-outcomes majors.
Steven Mintz
If you didn’t pass advanced math, chemistry and physics in high school, it is unlikely that you can succeed in today’s high-demand fields: accounting, computer science, engineering, nursing and a host of STEM disciplines. In fact, one of the reasons why a disproportionate share of men drop out of college is because of a misguided belief that they can succeed in fields for which they were ill prepared in high school. Persistence and perseverance may be ethical virtues, but these can be counterproductive if the end result is to instill a sense of failure. At many campuses, the single best predictor of whether a student will drop out or transfer is whether they are closed out of their top-choice major.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Cost of Insuring Colleges Continues to Rise. And Covid’s Not the Reason.
Two of the biggest risks? Data breaches and sexual abuse.
By Alexander C. Kafka
Risk management has become an increasingly high-stakes enterprise for higher education in recent years. The Covid-19 pandemic, the accompanying economic strain, and political polarization have only made it more so. The Chronicle recently released a special report, “The New Risk Management,” that explores the trends that are making academe an ever-riskier business. Here is a condensed excerpt.
Colleges face an increasingly complex and unpredictable array of challenges — abuse, harassment, assault, police misconduct, accidents, health and environmental hazards, fiduciary wrongdoing, the pandemic — that are making it more difficult to calculate risk and insure against it. That’s a big part of why annual insurance premiums have gone up by double digits in recent years. John McLaughlin, senior managing director of the higher-education practice at Gallagher, an insurance brokerage and risk-management and consulting firm, says those increases range between an average of 10 and 35 percent across an institution’s insurance portfolio.
USA TODAY
‘I felt immeasurably stuck’: High school seniors face college acceptances, rejections alone
Jenna Ryu
Torey Leverton entered into her senior year of high school knowing full well the college application process would be competitive. Yet the 17-year-old didn’t realize how cumbersome it would feel until she was fully engrossed in writing essays and filling out applications. …Another year of remote learning was weighing on her, and the final high school memories she had looked forward to disappeared one-by-one as she lost her homecoming, prom and graduation. …Because of all this, college rejections were especially painful for Leverton. An acceptance was her “ticket out” to move on to the next phase in her life. Leverton isn’t alone. Stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures have created an unprecedented college admissions process for the Class of 2025. Now, like the class right before them, the teens are coping with celebrating or sulking over their acceptances and rejections without the usual fanfare and in-person support.
Vox
The Supreme Court case that could end affirmative action, explained
A case challenging Harvard’s admissions policy gives a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court the vehicle it needs to end race-conscious admissions.
By Ian Millhiser
Last week, a conservative group led by a prominent skeptic of laws seeking to cure racial injustice formally asked the Supreme Court to hear a challenge to Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy for undergraduates. The plaintiff in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College presents its lawsuit as a bid to vindicate the rights of Asian American applicants to Harvard — though Harvard rejects the overwhelming majority of undergraduate applicants, the rejection rate among Asian Americans is especially high. But the implications of this suit go far beyond Harvard or the lawsuit’s implications for people of Asian descent. The Harvard case is the first major affirmative action suit to reach the Supreme Court since Republicans gained a 6-3 majority on that Court, and it’s the first such case to reach the justices since Anthony Kennedy’s retirement in 2018. Kennedy had unexpectedly cast the key vote to uphold an affirmative action program in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (2016). Kennedy is gone now, as is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and the Court’s new majority can potentially use the Harvard case to end all race-conscious admissions programs altogether.
Inside Higher Ed
Students Disengage From Controversy
Many students were hesitant to discuss controversial topics in the classroom and felt their campuses’ climate did not allow for open discourse during the fall 2020 semester, according to a new report.
By Greta Anderson
In the six weeks leading up to the 2020 election, a majority of students said they were reluctant to discuss politics, race and other controversial topics in class settings, according to a new report from the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit group that promotes open inquiry and viewpoint diversity at colleges and universities. Overall, 60 percent of 1,311 undergraduate students who responded to an online survey developed by the Heterodox Academy said they were hesitant to talk with classmates and professors about certain issues, including politics, race, religion, sexual orientation and gender, the report said. All the students surveyed were between 18 and 24 years old. They attended four-year institutions in every region of the U.S. and shared responses between Sept. 22 and Nov. 3, according to the report’s methodology.
Inside Higher Ed
Federal Lawmakers Push Cardona to Undo DeVos Title IX Rule
By Greta Anderson
More than 100 U.S. representatives urged Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona to prioritize changing the current federal regulations that govern how colleges and universities address campus sexual misconduct under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law prohibiting gender-based discrimination at federally funded institutions.
Inside Higher Ed
Making Sense of a Mask Non-Mandate
After Texas governor rescinded statewide mask mandate, many colleges say they are reviewing the order’s applicability to their campuses. Others say they will keep their mandates on campus.
By Elizabeth Redden
Many Texas colleges say they are reviewing an executive order issued by Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, on Tuesday ending a statewide mask mandate and allowing businesses and facilitates to open at full capacity, actions that have been widely condemned by public health officials as premature. Mississippi governor Tate Reeves, also a Republican, likewise acted on Tuesday to lift county-level mask mandates and allow businesses to operate at full capacity. Officials in Oxford, home to the flagship University of Mississippi, subsequently voted to lift a citywide mask mandate. Federal public health officials have strongly urged Americans to continue wearing face masks to control the spread of COVID-19 and limit the emergence of potentially more dangerous variants while the country embarks on a massive vaccination campaign. Colleges have widely embraced mask requirements on campuses, but the actions by state and local officials in Texas and Mississippi stand to potentially complicate colleges’ efforts to enforce compliance with public health recommendations.