University System News:
Albany Herald
Georgia Path2College among nation’s top-rated 529 plans
From staff reports
Morningstar Inc., a leading investment research firm, upgraded its rating of Georgia’s Path2College 529 Plan from Neutral to Silver, leapfrogging 18 other state 529 college savings plans. Georgia is the only state to receive a two-tier upgrade. Morningstar’s report stated that the Georgia Higher Education Savings Plan Board, chaired by Gov. Brian Kemp, “displayed characteristics of strong stewardship” as the plan “underwent a major revamp.” “Our Path2College 529 Plan has been recognized as one of the leading college savings plans in the nation,” Kemp said in a news release. “Ensuring Georgia’s children have the resources they need to pay for continued education is vital. Our Path2College 529 Plan is now the lowest-cost college savings plan in the nation, and I hope more families will utilize it to help their children achieve their dreams.” Of the 62 plans rated by Morningstar, the Path2College 529 Plan is one of only 11 plans in the nation to receive the Silver rating. Morningstar noted that Georgia “boasts a simple, well-diversified enrollment-date glide path overseen by the state’s diligent stewards.” The analysis continues saying that Georgia’s plan “further sets itself apart by having the lowest price tag for an age-based series of any 529 plan across the nation.”
Albany Herald
Kennesaw State among nation’s most diverse universities
By Thomas Hartwell
“Diverse: Issues in Higher Education” recently ranked Kennesaw State University among the nation’s Top 100 colleges and universities for conferring degrees to minority students. This is the 11th consecutive year the university has been ranked. “Kennesaw State University is committed to providing every student with resources and opportunities they need to be successful,” KSU Interim President Kathy Schwaig said. …Among the more than 2,500 colleges and universities examined by Diverse, Kennesaw State ranked 14th nationwide, up three spots from the previous year, in bachelor’s degrees presented to African American students across all disciplines for the 2019-20 reporting period. Additionally, the university ranked among the top 75 in bachelor’s degrees conferred to all minority students in all disciplines and among the top 100 in the nation in master’s degrees conferred to African American students in all disciplines.
Columbus CEO
Columbus State Donors Double Donations During Homecoming Week Day of Giving
Columbus State University Cougars from around the country answered the university’s call during its annual “CSU GIVES” day of giving by more than doubling their generosity compared to last year’s campaign. The annual homecoming week fundraising drive, held on Tuesday, Oct. 19, raised $87,257—150% of its $58,000 goal. The university’s Office of Alumni Engagement set that goal in recognition of CSU’s founding in 1958.
Tifton CEO
ABAC Students Selected for First Lady Congressional Luncheon Floral Design Team
Maddie McDonald and Kira Buckner, two agricultural education majors at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, were selected as floral design assistants for First Lady Jill Biden’s recent Congressional Luncheon. McDonald, a junior from Dublin, and Buckner, a sophomore from Covington, spent three days in Washington D.C. in October preparing for the event. “Selection for the congressional design team is an honor and excellent professional development opportunity for these students,” Dr. Frank Flanders, ABAC’s agricultural education program coordinator, said. “These are the type of engaged activities that ABAC encourages for students. As design team members, Maddie and Kira worked alongside some of the top designers in the U.S.”
Marietta Daily Journal
Kennesaw State business students partner with veteran to create opportunities for others
Students in the Michael J. Coles College of Business are helping a combat veteran sow the seeds of a better future for fellow vets at his farm 45 miles north of campus in Calhoun. Mike Reynolds retired from the military in 2012 following 18 years as a U.S. Army flight medic, when he suffered a traumatic brain injury while serving in Iraq. He said students in the Coles College Scholars Program, an initiative that gives high-achieving business students opportunities for leadership development, community engagement and mentorship, are helping him achieve his dream of assisting other veterans in readjusting to civilian life.
Polk Today
Georgia Foundation for Agriculture offers $65,000 in Ag Scholarships
The Georgia Foundation for Agriculture (GFA) is offering $65,000 in scholarships to Georgia students pursuing a degree in agriculture, veterinary medicine, family and consumer sciences or a related field, James Casey, Polk County Farm Bureau president, recently announced. Polk County Farm Bureau also offers scholarship money, please call our office if interested in attending college for agriculture. The GFA will award scholarships in the following four categories:
Scholarship for Agriculture – This scholarship is for high school students who plan to enter a college that is part of the University System of Georgia, Berry College, Emmanuel College or any accredited college/university in Georgia with an ag program during the 2022-23 academic year to pursue an undergraduate degree in agricultural and environmental sciences, family and consumer sciences or a related agricultural field. The GFA will award 10 scholarships of $3,000 each. The top three ranked applicants will be eligible for an additional $1,000 bonus. …Rising College Junior/Senior Scholarship for Agriculture – This scholarship is for college students who have at least two semesters of college remaining to receive an undergraduate degree from a unit of The University System of Georgia, Berry College, Emmanuel College or any accredited college/university in Georgia with an ag program. Applicants must be majoring in agriculture and environmental sciences, family and consumer sciences or an ag-related field. The GFA will award eight scholarships of $2,000 each. UGA College of Veterinary Medicine Scholarship – This scholarship is for students currently enrolled in the UGA Veterinary Medicine program specializing in large animal/food animal practice. The GFA will award two $5,000 scholarships.
Patch
Georgia Gwinnett College Researchers Seek To Build Cyber-Attack Resilient Passenger Air Networks
As Americans prepare to come together this Thanksgiving, the threat of travel disruptions looms a little heavier than usual due to a recent spate of mass flight delays and cancellations. …Canceled flights can cause more than just temporary frustration. They can lead to any number of disruptions in a person’s life including financial hardships and emotional distress. Multiply that by the thousands, add the havoc mass flight delays can wreak on critical supply chains, and the negative ripple effects of just one airport or airline being shut down for only a matter of minutes can impact the entire country. Unfortunately, our enemies know this. The growing threat of attacks against critical infrastructure that come from inside computers as opposed to exterior forces has become a major concern for travelers, government officials and airlines alike. Dr. Skanda Vivek, assistant professor of physics at the School of Science and Technology at Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) teamed up with Dr. Charles Harry, an associate research professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, to conduct a research study to better understand those threats in order to mitigate them.
Atlanta Inno
Georgia Tech’s aerospace, security research lands partnership with U.S. Space Force
By Erin Schilling – Technology Reporter/ Atlanta Inno
The Georgia Institute of Technology’s first “Space Game” this Saturday was planned to celebrate its contributions to space exploration and research. Now, the themed football game against Boston College is also commemorating a new partnership. Georgia Tech is joining 11 other universities in the U.S. Space Force’s University Partnership Program — another win for the university’s aerospace expertise and talent. The U.S. Space Force is the newest branch of the military and established its University Partnership Program to recruit and retain a diverse science and technology workforce and innovate aerospace technologies. Georgia Tech’s aerospace engineering research, expertise in national defense and security, diverse student population and ROTC program secured the partnership.
Griffin Daily News
“The Walking Dead,” exec producer to create film featuring GSU students as cast and crew
By NEWS STAFF
Georgia State students soon will be able to get course credit and professional experience while working on a feature project produced by a veteran of film and television, Tom Luse. Luse, who made his first film as a thesis project while in graduate school at Georgia State, has gone on to build a storied career with producer credits spanning four decades, including as producer and executive producer from 2010 to 2019 on the AMC phenomenon “The Walking Dead,” which he recently rejoined for its final episodes.
Savannah CEO
Jared Benko on the New Strategic Plan at Georgia Southern
Director of Athletics at Georgia Southern University Jared Benko talks about the new strategic plan at Georgia Southern and how they are always looking to improve the college experience for their students.
11Alive
Hiring new police will be a challenge for Atlanta’s next mayor
Both candidates are promising to combat a wave of violent crime.
Author: Doug Richards
Both candidates for Atlanta mayor are promising to hire hundreds more police officers to help combat a wave of violent crime. But whoever wins – Andre Dickens or Felicia Moore – it won’t be easy task. “They’re in dire need of police officers, all over the state,” said Dr. Butch Newkirk, the director of the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega’s law enforcement academy. Aspiring police officer Julia Ross expects to have plenty of job options when she graduates next month from college, which is the only school in America that combines a police academy with a four year college degree. “It is nice. It’s hard choosing one place, but it is nice having those options,” said Ross, who attends the law enforcement academy at the University of North Georgia in Dahlonega. For new recruits, there’s no better time to find a new job in police work and perhaps no more difficult time for police agencies to find them.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
International college student enrollment rising after pandemic slide
By Eric Stirgus
Fewer international students took courses in U.S. colleges and universities last school year, but the numbers appear to be improving this fall, according to an annual report released by federal officials Monday. Officials blamed last year’s decrease — down 15% to 914,095 students during the 2020-21 academic year — on global travel restrictions and other challenges created by the coronavirus pandemic. But some statistics suggest a rebound this fall as other countries loosen travel guidelines. Preliminary research shows the total number of international students is up 4% this fall from last year, officials said. There was a reported 68% increase in new international students enrolling for the first time at a U.S. college or university this fall, up from the 46% decline reported last fall.
INC
By Rebecca Deczynski, Staff Reporter, Inc.
The robots are taking over–and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. …Automation can help small- and medium-sized businesses cope with labor shortages, especially when robotics help to streamline otherwise inefficient tasks. Research even shows that automation can have a positive impact on work environments. The journal Technology and Society found that automation and artificial intelligence can improve worker productivity and decrease stress, for instance. However, the negative consequences are something to note. In that same study, which was conducted by graduate researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Georgia State University, the authors found that increased automation can reduce worker satisfaction and have a negative impact on worker health. The negative impact of automation and A.I. on health and satisfaction may be due to increased surveillance and a reduced sense of meaning at work.
Scientific American
This Cheap Device Could Expand the World’s Access to Vaccines
A new delivery method for certain vaccines could make the lifesaving treatments more effective and accessible
By Sam Jones
By combining a standard BBQ lighter with superfine microneedles that are common in medical and cosmetic procedures, researchers have developed a $1 device that uses electricity to inject certain vaccines more efficiently—and less painfully. Its developers say it could expand global access to vaccines containing genetic material, including the ones that fight COVID-19. “Everybody across the planet has a basic right to modern nucleic acid tools,” says Saad Bhamla, a chemical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-developer of the pen-sized device, called the ePatch. The “tools” he refers to are DNA and mRNA vaccines, which use a portion of a pathogen’s own genetic code to evoke an immune response (in contrast, traditional vaccines use actual pieces of a pathogen, or its weakened or inactive form). DNA and mRNA vaccines are less expensive to manufacture than traditional ones, and they are easier to modify—a major selling point for dealing with newly emerging variants of a virus.
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Nov. 15)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
CONFIRMED CASES: 1,274,491
CONFIRMED DEATHS: 25,362 | 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
By Karin Fischer
The number of international students at American colleges declined precipitously during the Covid-19 pandemic, with new enrollments tumbling 46 percent in fall 2020, a steeper decline than for any other student group. The overall number of international students enrolled in U.S. higher education fell below one million for the first time since the 2014 academic year, according to the annual Open Doors report from the Institute of International Education and the U.S. Department of State. In total, some 914,000 studied at an American college last year, a figure that includes those who studied remotely from their home countries. A preliminary snapshot, however, shows rebounding enrollments this fall. Colleges reported a 68-percent jump in new international students this semester, with the total number of foreign students increasing by 4 percent, according to a survey conducted by the institute, which is known as IIE, and nine other higher-ed organizations. Still, the data, along with a Chronicle analysis of real-time student-visa issuances, suggest certain international enrollments may be quicker to bounce back than others. Those divides break in many ways, by academic level, by institutional type, and by students’ home country.
GPB
Colleges are turning to science to limit suicide contagion and help heal campuses
By: Aneri Pattani
Ethan Phillips was 13 years old when he first heard the term “suicide contagion.” It’s the scientific concept that after one person dies by suicide, others in the community may be at higher risk. Phillips learned the phrase growing up in Fairfax County, Va., where more than a dozen teens and preteens died by suicide while he was in middle school. It came up again when a high school classmate killed himself. By the time Phillips entered college at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2019, he’d developed “an unfortunate level of experience” in dealing with the topic, he says. So this fall, when Phillips — now a junior and head of the UNC student government’s wellness and safety division — heard that two students had died by suicide on campus within 48 hours, he knew what to do. Along with his peers in student government, Phillips shared mental health resources on social media, developed email templates for students to request accommodations from professors — if they needed to — to allow extra time to deal with the trauma of losing a friend, and held a meeting of various mental health clubs on campus to coordinate their response. …It’s an area of particular interest for colleges, as suicide is the second-leading cause of death for U.S. teenagers and young adults, and these are the groups most likely to experience contagion. With the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating depression and thoughts of suicide in some people, several universities have needed postvention strategies over the past year and a half.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Campus Counselors Are Burned Out and Short-Staffed
By Alexander C. Kafka
For decades, a growing number of students with psychiatric and neurodiverse histories, conditions, and medications have been enrolling in college. From an access standpoint, that’s been terrific. From a counseling standpoint, however, it has meant a professional state of siege. Counseling centers are trying to keep up with requests for care, but that was challenging for most of them even before the emotional havoc wreaked on students by Covid-19 and political and social unrest. Keeping up is even harder now. More students are asking for help; their suffering is more acute; and the pandemic has made it harder for centers to recruit counselors.