University System News:
Savannah Business Journal
Savannah State University Honors 50-Year Tradition in Recognition of NROTC Students
Staff Report
Savannah State University’s Department of Naval Science recently held Spring Review, an annual Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) event to recognize and honor midshipmen for their outstanding performance during the academic school year. Officer candidates currently attending the four-year program, midshipmen, will commission as an Ensigns in the United States Navy or Second Lieutenants in the United States Marine Corps upon completion.
Patch
University Of Georgia: Study Rooms Dedicated For Couple Who Escaped Slavery
Library honoring Georgians who worked to build a better future for students In 1848, William and Ellen Craft fled Georgia in disguise — and for 19 years, left the country — to escape slavery and become activists for freedom, literacy and education for Black Americans before and after the Civil War. Nearly 175 years later, their names will be permanently etched at the heart of the birthplace of public higher education in the United States, with two study rooms in the Main Library of the University of Georgia dedicated in the couple’s honor. Along with the naming of two adjoining study rooms for Mary Blount Bowen Green, a little-known white schoolteacher from the same community, the markers will celebrate Georgians who worked to build a better future for the students of today.
yahoo!news
Herring family presents patriarch’s portrait to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
The Albany Herald, Ga.
Descendants of John Lewis Herring recently gathered to present his portrait to Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College where it will occupy a distinguished position in the building named in his honor. To honor their family’s connection to ABAC, Jim and Martha Moore donated the re-creation of their treasured family oil painting of John Lewis Herring. Herring was a prominent citizen who was instrumental in bringing the Second District Agricultural and Mechanical School to Tifton. He was the publisher of “The Tifton Gazette” when Second District A&M opened in 1908.
GrowingAmerica
UGA Extension Celebrates Volunteer Appreciation Week
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, volunteers have continued to make a positive impact for Georgians of all ages. Throughout Volunteer Appreciation Week April 19-23, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension is honoring thousands of volunteers who have dedicated their time to facilitate 4-H, Master Gardener and Family and Consumer Sciences programming at the county, district and state levels.
Athens Banner-Herald
UGA to honor those it lost, including some from Athens area, at candlelight vigil
Don Reagin, University of Georgia
Fifty-one University of Georgia students, faculty and staff members who have died since April 2019 will be honored at the university’s annual candlelight memorial service May 4 at 7 p.m. on the steps of the Chapel. No ceremony was held last spring due to COVID-19 pandemic. UGA President Jere W. Morehead will lead the service, called “Georgia Remembers … a Candlelight Memorial.” Names of each of the 21 students and 30 faculty and staff members will be read aloud, followed by a toll of the Chapel bell and the lighting of a candle. Names will be read by David Shipley, chair of the University Council Executive Committee; Savannah Hembree, president of the UGA Staff Council; and Carter Marks, president of the Student Government Association. Members of the university’s Arch Society will light candles as each name is read.
WJBF
MCG partners with A.R. Johnson; students learn life-saving techniques
by: Mary Calkins
A.R. Johnson students focus on STEM subjects, and Thursday, they learned life-saving techniques through a simulation with MCG students. Students on A.R. Johnson’s health track are usually across the street from their school at the Medical College of Georgia for clinicals, but this time around, they’re doing them virtually– in their own classroom.
News Break
Augusta University aiming to address forensic pathologist shortage (Video)
WABE
University Of Georgia Works To Preserve Local Radio Broadcasts, Make Them More Accessible
Emil Moffatt
The University of Georgia Libraries is continuing efforts to archive thousands of hours of local public radio news broadcasts from the last century. It’s a labor-intensive process that sometimes only humans can do. The broadcasts were submitted for the Peabody Awards, the prestigious honor that’s based at UGA. The tapes range from the 1940s to the 1990s. Hours and hours of these local broadcasts have been transferred from their original format to digital. Now an effort is underway to transcribe them. Mary Miller, an archivist with the Peabody Awards Collection, says some of that can be done by computer, but it’s not always perfect, and that’s where people come in.
Globe Newswire
Johnson Named Dean of UWG’s Richards College of Business
Carrollton, Georgia, April 23, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — University of West Georgia President Dr. Brendan Kelly and Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Jon Preston have named Dr. Christopher Johnson the next dean of the Richards College of Business following a nationwide search. Currently serving as associate dean in the Coggin College of Business at the University of North Florida, Johnson will assume the new role on July 1 to support the university’s mission of fulfilling talent pipeline needs while contributing to the social, cultural and economic development of the university’s region and state.
The Red & Black
UGA University Union hosts Bill Nye the Science Guy for Earth Day Q&A
Hayley Croke | Contributor
After an hour watching Bill Nye answer questions from University of Georgia students during his virtual conversation with University Union, it’s clear the fast pace and quick wit of his show reflects Nye in real life. The event, held on Thursday, was put on by University Union in partnership with the Office of Sustainability and UGA Student Government Association. Nye appeared on Zoom from an apartment overlooking New York City, sporting a teal bow tie with blue and white stripes. Nye started off the evening with two experiments, both of which he referred to as “stupid fun.”
The Hechinger Report
From admissions to teaching to grading, AI is infiltrating higher education
As colleges’ use of the technology grows, so do questions about bias and accuracy
by Derek Newton
Students newly accepted by colleges and universities this spring are being deluged by emails and texts in the hope that they will put down their deposits and enroll. If they have questions about deadlines, financial aid and even where to eat on campus, they can get instant answers. The messages are friendly and informative. But many of them aren’t from humans. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is being used to shoot off these seemingly personal appeals and deliver pre-written information through chatbots and text personas meant to mimic human banter. It can help a university or college by boosting early deposit rates while cutting down on expensive and time-consuming calls to stretched admissions staffs. …Georgia State University, which pioneered the use of these chatbots, says its version, named Pounce, has delivered hundreds of thousands of answers to questions from potential students since it launched in 2016 and reduced “summer melt” — the incidence of students enrolling in the spring but failing to show up in the fall — by 20 percent. Georgia State was also among the first to develop inexpensive, always-on AI teaching assistants, ready to answer student questions about course material. Theirs is called Jill Watson, and studies found that some students couldn’t tell they were engaging with AI and not a human teaching assistant.
Patch
Georgia Gwinnett College Research Aims To Stop Traffic Jams Before They Start During Emergencies
Anyone who lives in or near Atlanta has been intimately acquainted with traffic jams more times than they’d like to recall. Traffic emergencies show how susceptible urban roads are to gridlock, or what Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) Assistant Professor of physics Skanda Vivek calls “cascading road interruptions.” Vivek is working with undergraduate student Hannah Connor, a senior majoring in mathematics, to show how real-time traffic data can be a powerful, actionable tool to make critical decisions when time is of the essence.
The Red & Black
UGA researchers, volunteers help push forward microplastics research
Ben Lacina | Contributor
Researchers at the University of Georgia Skidaway Institute of Oceanography are working at the forefront of discovering how and to what extent humans are damaging the environment all along Georgia’s coast with the help of community volunteers. Jay Brandes, a UGA Skidaway Institute of Oceanography researcher, and Dorothea “Dodie” Sanders, an educator at the UGA Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, have teamed up to map the abundance of microplastics in the waters along Georgia’s coast and understand their sources.
Inside Higher Ed
Georgia Regents Put Chancellor Search on Hold
By Emma Whitford
The University System of Georgia Board of Regents has paused its search for a new chancellor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The announcement came hours after the Journal-Constitution reported that several board members opposed tapping Sonny Perdue, former Georgia governor and U.S. secretary of agriculture, for the chancellorship.
Statesboro Herald
Georgia Southern awaiting guidance on mandating COVID vaccinations for fall semester
AL HACKLE/Staff
(Note: This story was updated Saturday with additional clarifying information from Georgia Southern University.)
Georgia Southern University President Dr. Kyle Marrero told Statesboro business and community leaders last week the university will not – or cannot – require COVID-19 vaccinations for students arriving for the fall semester. And in an email Saturday from Georgia Southern, Marrero said the “university is awaiting guidance from the University System of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Public Health on whether or not to require COVID-19 vaccinations for students attending fall semester.”
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Coronavirus in Georgia: COVID-19 Dashboard
Q: What is the latest on confirmed and probable coronavirus cases in Georgia?
875,493 TOTAL CONFIRMED CASES
1,093,768 TOTAL INCLUDING PROBABLE CASES
Q: What is the latest on coronavirus deaths in Georgia?
17,387 TOTAL CONFIRMED DEATHS
19,975 TOTAL INCLUDING PROBABLE DEATHS
Higher Education News:
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
College Promise for All Proposal Aims to Make Free College a Reality
by Liann Alise Herder
The dream of free college for all recently took a big step forward. The College Promise campaign unveiled its proposal for joint support from both federal and state governments. This partnership, if enacted, could make public community and two-or four-year colleges and universities completely free for all qualifying students. The proposal is the brainchild of Dr. Martha Kanter, the CEO of College Promise and former undersecretary of education for President Obama. “My goal in life is to give every student, who has the potential and the desire to go beyond high school, the open door,” she said.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
A Tipping Point? Dozens of Public Colleges Announce Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates
By Megan Zahneis
The list of colleges that will require students or employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 this fall has been dominated by private institutions. That may be about to change. Rutgers University, a public institution, was the first in the nation to announce a vaccine mandate, on March 25. Until Thursday, just two of its public peers had followed suit. But now a wave of public colleges, led by a pair of heavyweight university systems — the University of California and California State University — said they, too, would require vaccines. The California systems are hedging their bets by waiting until vaccines are formally approved by the Food and Drug Administration to make their mandates official, avoiding questions about the legality of requiring vaccines that remain under emergency-use authorization, or EUA. But on Friday the University System of Maryland and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor announced requirements without such contingencies. The Maryland system will require all on-campus faculty, staff, and students to be vaccinated, and Michigan said it would require the vaccine for residential students.