University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Board of Regents approves changes to its post-tenure review guidelines
By Eric Stirgus
The Georgia Board of Regents voted Wednesday to approve changes to its post-tenure review process that critics say will make it easier to fire faculty members and tougher to recruit professors. University System of Georgia officials maintain the changes are needed to better measure student success in the tenure review process, which they say is critical to improving their efforts of getting students to complete their degrees. The changes include adding a student success component to reviews to evaluate how faculty members interact with students outside the classroom through mentoring or advising.
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Capitol Beat
Board of Regents adopts new tenure policy for state university system
Inside Higher Ed
The Board of Regents for all 26 University System of Georgia institutions says it wants to make posttenure review better, but professors say it’s really weakening tenure by subverting due process.
By Colleen Flaherty
The University System of Georgia’s Board of Regents is poised to pass changes to the system’s posttenure review policy today — changes that professors across the state say will weaken tenure, not strengthen it. Most significantly, the proposal effectively separates the posttenure review process from the system’s existing faculty dismissal policy and its due process protections. Poor performance could eventually get a tenured professor fired under the current, faculty-led posttenure review policy. But the board’s proposal makes that outcome easier to achieve, by putting more power in the hands of administrators and less in the hands of the professor’s faculty peers. A regents’ committee unanimously approved the changes Tuesday, ahead of a full board vote. In so doing, the committee and Tristan Denley, the system’s chief academic officer, noted that the final policy proposal reflects faculty feedback.
Georgia Recorder
Public college tenure changes headed for vote despite professor protests
Georgia’s tenured public college professors could soon face more scrutiny if they want to keep their titles, but some professors say planned changes to the state’s post-tenure review system will cause talented academics to look for jobs in other states. A Georgia Board of Regents committee Tuesday unanimously approved changes to the way the state’s approximately 7,500 tenured professors are evaluated. The full board is set to vote Wednesday. About 50 professors and allies waving signs protested outside the meeting, which was held on the Georgia Tech campus in Atlanta, said they want the regents to leave the state’s tenure system alone. Under the proposed changes, a faculty member who is found not to be meeting expectations in two subsequent annual reviews or a post-tenure review, which takes place every five years, will receive an improvement plan from their supervisors. If the professor does not meet the requirements of the plan, “the institution shall take appropriate remedial action corresponding to the seriousness and nature of the faculty member’s deficiencies.”
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia professors rally against proposed tenure review changes
Capitol Beat News Service
University System of Georgia faculty taking on tenure policy changes
by Dave Williams
The University System of Georgia Board of Regents is expected to adopt changes in the tenure system Wednesday strongly opposed by many of the system’s faculty members. “This is the death of tenure and due process in Georgia,” Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said Tuesday after the board’s Academic Affairs Committee unanimously approved the changes during a meeting on the campus of Georgia Tech and referred them to the full board for action. “They are removing faculty peer review and putting it in the hands of the administration.” Faculty members at some university system campuses have run afoul with administrators in recent week over the system’s policy to make mask wearing in classrooms and other indoor spaces voluntary rather than mandatory. Individual teachers have vowed to impose mask mandates on students and staff inside their classrooms. But Boedy said the dispute over tenure goes beyond concerns prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Article also appeared in:
Athens Banner-Herald
University System of Georgia faculty fighting changes to tenure system
yahoo!finance
Chevron, Fab Foundation and Fort Valley State University Collaborate to Launch a Fab Lab
Chevron Corporation announced a major financial contribution in support of two long-standing community partners, Fab Foundation and Fort Valley State University (FVSU), to create a digital fabrication lab for the middle Georgia community. Fab labs are designed to foster innovation, learning and invention: a place to play, to create, to learn, to mentor and to invent. Fab labs, with their suite of digital fabrication tools and prototyping machines — including laser cutters, 3-D printers, vinyl cutters and milling machines — are inspiring young people across the United States, to learn about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
WFMZ
Clark Atlanta University Among Three Institutions Awarded $1.5 M for Cyber Security Program
Clark Atlanta University (CAU), Augusta University, and Mississippi State University consortium has been awarded $1.5 million from the Griffiss Institute, a nonprofit talent and technology accelerator for the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense. The award will fund the establishment of a virtual institute in the southeastern United States with the VICEROY program (Virtual Institute for Cyber and Electromagnetic Spectrum Research and Employ) focused on the development of expertise in critical cybersecurity skills under the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act of 2019. VICEROY will focus on the creation of academic programs leading to certifications and cyber-related degrees; develop the foundations of cryptography and data science; and promote an early interest in cyber careers and cyber talent.
American GeoScienes Institute
The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) is pleased to recognize Dr. J. Marshall Shepherd, Georgia Athletic Association Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Geography at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia, as the 2021 recipient of the AGI Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Public Understanding of the Geosciences. Dr. Shepherd is well known for his hosting of the Weather Channel show “Weather Geeks” since 2014 and the associated podcast since 2018. …Also noteworthy is Dr. Shepherd’s regular column in Forbes Magazine online exploring topics in weather and climate. …In addition to his professorship, Dr. Shepherd is Director of the UGA Atmospheric Sciences Program and Associate Director of Climate and Outreach for the Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems at UGA. He is the only person in the history of the University of Georgia to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
11Alive
Georgia Tech students designing space technology for NASA
The students will design, build and test technology to keep dust from building up on spacesuits.
Author: Meredith Sheldon
For Aliyah Mahmud, studying space is a passion. The aerospace engineering student at Georgia Tech is co-leading a team of students that are designing innovative technology that could be used in space. “I think engineering for me is the perfect vehicle to execute that passion for space,” said Mahmud, who is a senior. Her team, Shoot for the Moon, is one of six finalists selected to compete in NASA’s Big Idea Challenge. This year’s challenge called for students to design, build and test technology to keep dust from building up on spacesuits. According to Mahmud, that lunar dust can actually be dangerous for astronauts.
MSN
Deadly gas could treat diabetic blindness, according to AU study
Tom Corwin, Augusta Chronicle
Carbon monoxide from engine exhaust kills hundreds of people each year. But a tiny controlled amount might be a potential therapy for a leading cause of blindness.
That is the working premise of a partnership between researchers at Augusta University and a California start-up company. Their work is funded by a $300,000 innovative grant from the National Institutes of Health meant to promote public-private partnerships. Carbon monoxide is an odorless, colorless gas that kills at least 430 people and sends 50,000 to the Emergency Room each year, according to the National Center for Environmental Health. But in very small doses, it could have some benefit. The AU researchers and Hillhurst Biopharmaceuticals of Montrose, Calif., are studying it in diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of adult blindness. …Hillhurst has come up with a way to take carbon monoxide gas and turn it into something that can be given in a pill, said Dr. Ravirajsinh Jadeja of the AU Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, who is co-principal investigator on the grant.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cisco becomes latest tech company to flock to Atlanta’s Midtown
By Andy Peters and Greg Bluestein
California giant moving into Coda tower with Georgia Tech researchers
A decade ago, a global technology company like Cisco might have opened its Atlanta office in Buckhead. Twenty years ago, perhaps it would have picked Norcross where modem pioneer Hayes was located. Now Midtown is the preferred place for West Coast tech titans who want to establish a research hub in Atlanta. Cisco Systems, based in San Jose, California, on Wednesday said it will open an innovation office at Coda at Tech Square in Midtown. The maker of computer-networking equipment and software plans to invest $41 million in Atlanta and hire 700 new workers. …Fifteen years ago, Coda was the site of dreary parking lots. Today it is a $375 million office tower for Georgia Tech researchers and their corporate partners.
WGAU Radio
UGA study: gorillas can distinguish human voices
Report published in the journal Animal Cognition
By Leigh Beeson, UGA Today
Many animals recognize the voices of members of their own species, and some can even recognize those of other species, such as humans. But it turns out a few animals, such as gorillas, can not only recognize familiar voices but also connect those voices to pleasant or not so pleasant memories. A new study from the University of Georgia is the first to show that gorillas are able to recognize familiar human voices based on their relationship with the speaker. The researchers found that captive gorillas responded negatively when they heard the voices of people they didn’t know or with whom they’d had negative interactions. Their reaction indicates that the apes likely recognized who the voices belonged to and possibly the nature of their relationship with those individuals.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Oct. 12)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
CONFIRMED CASES: 1,246,100
CONFIRMED DEATHS: 23,512 | 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:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
How Did These Pandemic Predictions Turn Out?
By Audrey Williams June and Brian O’Leary
When colleges first shut down more than 18 months ago in response to the coronavirus, it didn’t take long for the prognostications about higher education’s future to begin. Sharp declines in enrollment, and in revenues from room and board, were imminent. Some students would sit out a year or transfer to institutions with cheaper tuition. And perhaps the most dire: The pandemic would be the death knell for institutions that, for years, had been barely hanging on. How accurate were these crystal balls? Let’s test some of the most notable predictions against what the data now say about the 2020-21 academic year.
Inside Higher Ed
Half of All College Students Take Online Courses
New federal data show a significantly higher proportion of college learners took at least one course online than previously thought.
By Suzanne Smalley
An analysis of newly available federal data shows that a far larger proportion of college students take at least one fully online course than was previously understood. The analysis, first conducted by the ed-tech consultant and blogger Phil Hill, shows that based on 12-month reporting — which the Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System only recently began collecting for distance learning — 51.8 percent of students took at least one online course in 2019-20. This number is much higher than the 37 percent reflected in the fall 2019 enrollment data that has been cited in the past, and on which most estimates of the prevalence of online learning have historically been based. While the 2019-20 academic year includes some of the early months of the pandemic, Hill and other experts noted that the Department of Education instructed universities not to count classes that were moved online on an emergency basis during the pandemic in their survey reporting.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Politics and the Pandemic Are Straining the Role of Campus Leadership
By Eric Kelderman
In South Carolina, emails from a recently resigned university president reveal the hostility he felt from some board and faculty members. In Michigan, a university president agrees to leave early with reportedly tepid board support. In Nevada, a system chancellor formally complains against board members, alleging they micromanaged her and created a hostile work environment. Taken separately, these examples may seem like campus-specific flash points. But altogether they show how campus and system leaders increasingly find themselves in impossible jobs, caught between competing demands from a governing board, often with a partisan agenda, and campus constituents who demand autonomy and are sometimes unaware of the institution’s financial constraints. Higher education has been under increased pressure for decades because of the increased demands of federal and state regulations, the growing corporatization of campus operations, and the intense competition for students and philanthropic dollars.