University System News:
The Georgia Virtue
University System Credits Vax Campaigns For COVID-19 Case Decline On Campuses
The University System of Georgia (USG) continues to encourage students, faculty and staff to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and wear masks inside campus facilities, with institutions beginning to report declines in early spikes of positive COVID-19 cases on their campuses. Each of USG’s 26 public colleges and universities continues to monitor COVID-19 positivity numbers. As happened last fall and spring, some campuses experienced increases in positive COVID-19 tests as classes launched for fall semester several weeks ago. These increases have typically been followed by declines as the semester has continued, and several USG institutions are reporting similar campus trends now. Those include Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, Clayton State University, Columbus State University, Fort Valley State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Southern University, Kennesaw State University, the University of North Georgia and the University of Georgia, which this week have all reported a decline in cases.
Albany CEO
Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) will launch a brand new academic degree program, a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Emerging Media, set to begin Spring 2022. In response to regional industry workforce needs and student demand, GSW brought forth the proposal to the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia which was recently approved at the September board meeting.
WGAU Radio
UGA’s mobile flu shot clinic operates again today
COVID vaccines also offered
By Tim Bryant
The University of Georgia’s mobile flu shot clinic sets up shop at 3 o’clock this afternoon at Aderhold Hall: UGA is also offering flu shots—and doses of the coronavirus vaccine—at the University Health Center on Carlton Street in Athens. From the UGA master calendar… Get a flu shot on campus. Check out the many options for UGA students, faculty, and staff.
Gwinnett Daily Post
GGC hosting multiple events to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month
By Curt Yeomans
Georgia Gwinnett College is celebrating its Hispanic student population with several events between now and mid-October to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. The month, which starts in mid-September because several Latin American countries celebrate their independence days, is designed to highlight the contributions of people of Hispanic heritage to society. Mexico, costa Rice, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Belize all celebrate their independence days during Hispanic Heritage Month, which officially began Sept. 15 and continues until Oct. 15. “It is a time to pay tribute to the ideas and contributions of the Latinx/Hispanic Americans that grow with us, and time to remember the efforts and the triumphs of GGC’s growing population,” GGC officials said in an announcement.
Valdosta Daily Times
VSU NPHC Plaza project underway
By Brittanye Blake
Valdosta State University broke ground on the National Pan-Hellenic Council Plaza project Saturday. Valdosta State announced plans to construct the highly anticipated NPHC Plaza in July and is scheduled to host the ribbon cutting ceremony during the homecoming celebration in November. “Members of NPHC have served as SGA presidents, student ambassadors, student leaders and true change makers on Valdosta State campus.” Dr. Richard Carvajal, Valdosta State University President said. “This is our way to recognize the legacy of NPHC on this campus.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Jolt: Sonny Perdue raising GOP money while chancellor pick simmers
By Patricia Murphy, Greg Bluestein and Tia Mitchell
While Sonny Perdue’s bid to be the next chancellor of Georgia’s higher education system is on hold, the former GOP governor isn’t taking a break from partisan politics. A few weeks ago, he gave Gov. Brian Kemp a boost of support at a rally near his backyard in Perry. And he’s a part of an invite we’ve obtained touting a “unique and exclusive” reception with Perdue ahead of Donald Trump’s visit to Perry this weekend. …Perdue has jockeyed to lead the state’s higher education system, presenting himself as an experienced public leader who could bring stability and counter what he’s called a “culture revolution” at Georgia’s public colleges and universities. The Board of Regents in June named Teresa MacCartney to lead the system, stalling Perdue’s chances to land the powerful post. But his supporters say he still has a chance to win the job, and point to Perdue’s eight years as the state’s top executive and his leadership of the USDA, which has roughly a $140 billion-a-year budget.
Mashable
8 online experiences linked to suicide in kids and teens
New research points to these painful experiences.
By Rebecca Ruiz
When a child or teenager attempts or dies by suicide, it sets off a desperate search to understand why. While that’s the case with many suicide attempts or deaths regardless of the person’s age, a child’s vulnerability and relative innocence creates a particularly heartbreaking contrast with their feelings of hopelessness. A new study aims to better understand one set of risk factors for youth: their online experiences. …Fixing the “bad things” Dr. Munmun De Choudhury, Ph.D., an associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech who was not involved with the study, said it was clever and well-designed. De Choudhury directs the Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab at Georgia Tech, where her team analyzes social media to glean data-driven insights about how to improve well-being and mental health. (She collaborates with some of the study’s co-authors but wasn’t aware of the paper prior to publication.) De Choudhury said the findings prompted her to consider the role social media platforms should play in reducing children’s negative experiences.
Fruit Growers News
A glimpse into the peach orchard of the future
Peaches, not surprisingly, pack a punch for Georgia’s economy. Over 130 million pounds of peaches are produced in Georgia per year, and the Southern staple has a total farm gate value of over $71 million, according to recent estimates. But cultivating peaches is a complex and manually-intensive process that has put a strain on many farms stretched for time and workers. To solve this problem, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has developed an intelligent robot that is designed to handle the human-based tasks of thinning and pruning peach trees, which could result in significant cost savings for peach farms in Georgia.
Albany Herald
UGA radon testing program influences national standards
By Maria M. Lameiras CAES News
University of Georgia Cooperative Extension’s radon testing program — a holistic program that combines radon education outreach with research, testing and mitigation — has helped optimize sampling and testing methodology for radon in water throughout the U.S. The program has influenced national standards in radon testing. Pamela Turner, professor and extension housing and indoor environment specialist with the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, is the primary investigator on the project with co-PI Uttam Saha, coordinator of UGA’s Agricultural and Environmental Services Laboratories Feed and Environmental Water Laboratory. The team receives funding for this program through an ongoing State Indoor Radon Grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Nature World News
Advancing Transition to Renewable Energy Should Include Honest Discussion of Costs, Supply, and More
By Rain Jordan
Scientists believe that recent significant weather-related outages across the country and the potential of more highlight the urgent need to move to a flexible and distributed resources power system that eliminates the emissions that exacerbate the climate catastrophe. “Many don’t understand the true intricacies of grid reliability and expansion,” said Mark Ahlstrom, vice president of renewable energy policy at NextEra Energy Resources and NextEra Analytics, and president of engineering think tank Energy Systems Integration Group (ESIG), in an interview with Utility Dive. According to Ahlstrom, the Biden target of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 necessitates quadrupling the current annual rate of renewables construction and maintaining it for 15 years, and “we usually overestimate how much can be done in the short term.” “However, I am hopeful because we also underestimate how much can be accomplished in the long run.” Georgia Institute of Technology Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Emily Grubert agreed that the current power system’s apparent stability will be transferred to a new system that “will eventually be just as reliable.” However, overcoming the transition’s issues, while neither the current nor the new system is fully operational, “will necessitate winning the trust of electricity customers by being transparent about what’s going to happen.”
WJCL
Experts: Record rainfall and flooding to be expected because of climate change
Record rainfall recorded in Savannah left roads blocked off and turned parking lots into lakes. “I know my roommate, who’s been driving around a lot more than I have, she has gotten stuck in water downtown,” Alvina Indhanonh said. Indhanonh said more should be done to prevent flooding in the first place. “I think there could be a little more focus on the roads and providing a safer for people getting around without worry of natural things like rain, heavy rainfall,” she said. Georgia Southern University biology professor Lissa Leege says the flooding is just a sign of a bigger problem.
Henry Herald
UGA scientists spread disease-resistant peanuts around the world
By Allison Floyd CAES News
A decade ago, University of Georgia plant scientists David and Soraya Bertioli were living and working in Brazil when they began to wonder about peanut plants they encountered in different corners of the world with an astounding ability to withstand fungal diseases without the use of fungicides. The Bertiolis wondered if these different plants might all have something in common. Did they owe their natural resistance to a single genetic source? Plant breeders around the globe have worked for decades to create peanut varieties that can fight off fungal diseases, and several have been successful. …The Bertiolis run the UGA Wild Peanut Lab (part of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences’ Institute Of Plant Breeding, Genetics and Genomics) as well as separate projects with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut, a U.S. Agency for International Development research program headquartered at UGA. Their primary work is tracking the genes of wild relative species of peanut, identifying where genes that control certain traits lie on the genome, and getting those traits into the peanut crop.
Fortune
We are reinventing the toilet to prevent the next pandemic
By Shannon Yee
The global pandemic has spotlighted deep and devastating health inequities that plague our planet. It has also highlighted the power of international collaboration to address the world’s most urgent challenges. Close to half the world’s population, in fact, lack access to safely managed sanitation. Of those, about two billion people lack even the most basic sanitation, such as toilets or latrines. About 673 million people —roughly the combined populations of the U.S., Brazil, and Mexico—still defecate in the open, in rivers from which people must fetch their drinking water. The result? A global inequity that kills more than 500,000 children from preventable diarrheal disease each year, making it the second-leading cause of death in children under age five. …Our global collaboration led out of Georgia Tech has developed a reinvented toilet prototype for households. We’ve gathered the best concepts from around the world and used expert engineering to integrate them into a single, stand-alone system that treats at your home. Finding the right collaborators and then wrangling them to make decisions collectively as a global team was the hardest part of this program, but without this type of collaboration, solving such a complex problem like this would have been impossible.
Phys Org
Dog parasite is developing resistance to treatments
by Leigh Beeson, University of Georgia
Hookworms are one of the most common parasites plaguing the companion animal world. They use their hooklike mouths to latch onto an animal’s intestines, where they feast on tissue fluids and blood. Infected animals can experience dramatic weight loss, bloody stool, anemia and lethargy, among other issues. Now they’ve become multiple-drug resistant, according to new research from the University of Georgia.
Inside Higher Ed
Biden’s Promise to HBCUs Unfulfilled by Congress
A member of Congress and organizations representing historically Black colleges and universities aren’t thrilled with the treatment of HBCUs in the current language of the budget reconciliation bill.
By Alexis Gravely
President Biden’s ambitious higher education agenda has had its disappointments as Congress turns it into legislation, with a strict budget forcing lower-than-anticipated funding levels for some of its provisions. While the bill includes funding for historically Black colleges and universities, advocates say it is well below what’s needed. In the current version of the budget reconciliation bill serving as the vehicle for Biden’s Build Back Better Act, HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions are slated to receive $27 billion in tuition subsidies, $1.45 billion for institutional aid and $2 billion to improve research and development infrastructure. Meanwhile, Biden proposed a total of $55 billion for HBCUs and other MSIs to upgrade research infrastructure and create research incubators for improving STEM education. “The number is just significantly lower than what we had hoped for,” said Paul Jones, president of Fort Valley State University and vice chair of the Council of 1890 Presidents. “Along with the minority-serving institutions and the Hispanic-serving institutions, it’s really sort of lumping us all into this one sector when we all have tremendous needs.” The presidents and chancellors of the 1890 Universities — the HBCUs designated as land-grant institutions by Congress — sent a letter to House Education and Labor Committee chair Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia, and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions chair Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, asking them to consider including additional infrastructure funding for HBCUs in the package, given that the institutions have historically been underfunded.
The Red & Black
OPINION: UGA, your promise to protect First Amendment rights is not enough
Emily Garcia
A promise from a university to protect students’ rights is endearing but, unless codified, is ultimately worthless. The University of Georgia finds itself in a paradoxical position in terms of its policy concerning free speech. On UGA’s freedom of expression webpage, the header boasts that, “no rights are more highly regarded at the University of Georgia than the First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and expression.” Yet, further examination of UGA’s policies governing posters on campus calls UGA’s statement into question.
South Florida Times
MALCOLM X, MUHAMMAD ALI BASED ON GA. PROF ’S BOOK
In the early 1960s, firebrand preacher Malcolm X and boxing phenom Cassius Clay became close friends, a fascinating relationship that fell apart and never was repaired before Malcolm X was killed by an assassin in 1965. That relationship is explored in detail in a new Netflix documentary coming out Sept. 9 called “Blood Brothers: Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali.” The documentary by Marcus A. Clarke relies heavily on a 2016 book, also called “Blood Brothers,” co-authored by Georgia Tech associate history professor Johnny Smith and his former academic advisor Purdue University history professor Randy Roberts. Both were consultants on the film and Smith was happy with the final result.
Fin Tech Xoom
Stock Market Analysis Today – TikTok Users Watch Nancy Pelosi For Stock Trade Tips From Congress
by Yuuma Nakamura
Dinesh Hasija, an assistant professor of strategic management at Augusta University in Georgia, has been studying whether the market moves based on congressional disclosures. His ongoing research suggests that it does. “Investors perceive that senators may have insider information,” he said. “And we see abnormal positive returns when there’s a disclosure by a senator.”
Savannah Morning News
Georgia Southern head football coach Chad Lunsford tops university’s payroll in 2020
Barbara Augsdorfer
In 2020, Georgia Southern University had just over 7,100 employees on its payroll. Leading the earnings list is head football coach Chad Lunsford with a salary of $706,000. Lunsford is starting his fourth full season leading the Eagles’ football program in 2021. He had previously been an assistant and interim head coach at GSU. University President Kyle Marrero is second on the list at $444,700. The Savannah Morning News culled the Georgia Southern district employees’ salary data for 2020 from the Open Georgia website at open.georgia.gov. In addition to educational staff, the list includes school maintenance workers and food service staff among others.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
NCAA hands down penalties to MaChelle Joseph, Georgia Tech
By Ken Sugiura
The NCAA ruled that former Georgia Tech women’s basketball coach MaChelle Joseph committed Level II violations for requiring team members to exceed daily and weekly time limitations for countable athletics activities. The NCAA released its findings from the committee on infractions in a report Tuesday. “During this time (2016-17 school year through February 2019), the head coach consistently required student-athletes to practice in excess of permissible limitations for CARA (countable athletically related activities) and did not provide them with a required day off,” the NCAA’s infractions decision report read. “Relatedly, for over seven months, the head coach permitted graduate student managers to provide impermissible instruction, which caused the program to exceed the limit on countable coaches.”
See also:
Inside Higher Ed
NCAA: Georgia Tech Women’s Basketball Committed Violations
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
UGA faculty risking jobs by planning mask mandate for their classes
By Eric Stirgus
More than 50 University of Georgia faculty members say they will soon require their students wear masks in their classes to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, violating rules against mandates the educators say could result in disciplinary action that includes losing their jobs. The faculty members, many with expertise in the study of infectious diseases, sent a letter Tuesday to university administrators detailing their plans concerning the mask requirement, which they plan to start in two weeks. The potential action is likely the largest effort by faculty at any University System of Georgia school. At least one UGA professor has already enacted a mask requirement for his classes.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Sept. 21)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
CONFIRMED CASES: 1,197,182
CONFIRMED DEATHS: 21,563 | 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.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Miss. Board Bans Vaccine Mandates at Public Universities
By Scott Jaschik
The Mississippi Board of Trustees of the Institutions of Higher Learning has voted to ban public universities from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for students, faculty members and staff, Mississippi Today reported. Board members have said that they support vaccines but do not believe they should be required. (One possible exception to the rule is University of Mississippi Medical Center.)
Politico
Governors shun vaccine mandates as colleges beg for help
Some universities have tried to implement stricter Covid-19 precautions but quickly backed down once they realized the political consequences.
By Daniel Payne
College presidents fighting Covid-19 outbreaks in many Republican-controlled states are pushing to enact campus vaccine mandates but are running into a problem: lawmaker resistance. School leaders in states like Florida, Arizona, Texas and Tennessee hoped to bring life back to their dorms and lecture halls this fall as the pandemic appeared to wane earlier this year and vaccinations were on the rise. Instead, they’re in the throes of combating the highly contagious Delta variant and vaccine resistance, scrambling their defenses and pleading with GOP lawmakers who left them to fight the disease without strong safety protocols. … Following advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, college presidents have been pushing students and staff to wear masks and enticed students with prizes if they get inoculated against Covid-19. But unlike schools in many blue states, several institutions in conservative regions lack the stick that might nudge holdouts, which in some cases represent 40 percent or more of the student body.
AP News
With the fall semester underway and COVID’s Delta variant raging across many parts of the country, a new Kaplan survey, conducted by College Pulse, finds overwhelming support among college students for vaccine and mask mandates on campus*. Of the 1,001 college students across the United States polled this month, 72 percent support colleges requiring students to be vaccinated if they want to attend in-person classes. This is a slight increase from a previous Inside Higher Ed/College Pulse Student Voice survey completed in May, which was sponsored by Kaplan, when 69 percent supported a vaccine mandate.