University System News:
Albany Herald
States with the most highly ranked colleges
By Frederick Reese
Stacker
As state education budgets ebb and flow, so do collegiate rankings. Stacker studied Niche’s 2022 Best Colleges in America list to determine which states have the most highly ranked colleges.
States with the most highly ranked colleges
#26. Georgia
– Schools in top 250: 3
– Highest ranked schools: Georgia Institute of Technology (#30 national rank), Emory University (#35), University of Georgia (#57)
Georgia’s capital city of Atlanta is a university-dense metropolitan area. Besides Emory, Georgia Tech, and UGA, the city is home to Morehouse University—which is the alma mater of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.—as well Spelman College, Clark Atlanta College, Georgia State University, Oglethorpe University, and many others.
NewsBreak
Medical College of Georgia growing in students, statewide reach, now adding star recruits
By Tom Corwin, Augusta Chronicle
Even as it adds students and extends its statewide reach, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University is undersized for faculty and needs to grow, Dean David Hess said Friday. Some big new hires and a new center should help with that, he said. Hess gave his annual State of the College address on Friday that was also connected remotely to its regional campuses across the state: in Athens, Brunswick and Savannah, Albany and Rome. MCG has been strengthening ties with the Wellstar Health System in Atlanta with residencies and hopes to establish an Atlanta campus there soon, Hess said.
The George-Anne
Top 15 tips for success from GS’s 40 Under 40 Award recipients
Allison Graham , Culture Editor
Georgia Southern University has produced some truly incredible alumni that have accomplished the unthinkable. On Tuesday, January 18, five of GS’s 40 Under 40 Award recipients held a virtual conference to talk about success. GS describes this award as an honor and recognition for the most influential and successful graduates who “have made significant strides in business, leadership, community, educational or philanthropic endeavors.” The award recipients in attendance were Dr. Jemelleh Coes, Rahman Anjorin, Mary Githens, Dr. Kathryn Lanier and Major Joe Quenga. During the virtual conference and in follow-up emails, these five recipients of the award shared a few of their top tips for success that we can all learn from.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In reelection year, Georgia governors take on role of ol’ Saint Nick
By James Salzer
The year was 1994 and Gov. Zell Miller was facing reelection after steering the ship of state through a painful recession. The economy was improving, and Miller needed a boost for what would be a politically dicey year for Democrats such as himself, so he did what governors up for reelection do. He proposed a budget that promised teacher and state employee pay raises, an expansion of the HOPE scholarship to more students, more money to fix the slow process of getting car tags and titles, extra funding for pre-kindergarten classes, tax breaks for businesses that created jobs, and more. He also promised a $100 million tax cut. It prompted then Senate Republican Leader Skin Edge, now a Capitol lobbyist, to quip, “Yes, Georgia, there is a Santa Claus, and he’s running for governor.” … Almost 30 years later, Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing an election-year budget to dwarf all others, with $3 billion in new spending, big pay raises and bonuses, pension increases, an income tax refund, prison and criminal justice upgrades, and greatly increased funding for schools, colleges and health care. The big pay raises and school funding hikes are traditionally high on the agenda of Democrats. Tax cuts are traditionally high on the agenda of Republicans.
Gwinnett Daily Post
PHOTOS: Georgia Gwinnett College students return to campus for spring semester
Photos by Rod Reilly/GGC
Georgia Gwinnett College students returned to campus for the spring semester and in-person instruction this week.
The Red & Black
UGA students discuss creative writing on campus
Allyson Reynolds
Transforming imaginative ideas and emotions onto paper gives many writers relief from the outside world. Writers share their growth, advice and experiences in stories. From the spark of an idea to the final product, creative writing acts as an essential outlet. Tyler Martin, a senior linguistics major and English minor at the University of Georgia, spoke on his creative writing development and how it enabled him to become both the president of the UGA creative writing club and a tutor at the UGA Writing Center.
AllOnGeorgia
Professional Guitarist and Broadway Veteran to Lead GSU’s New Music Industry Program
Georgia Southern has hired professional guitarist and composer Eric B. Davis as its inaugural Gretsch Distinguished Scholar of Guitar/Music Industry. Davis, who has extensive industry experience, has been performing for Broadway shows continuously since 2009, and is currently guitarist and in-house contractor for Jagged Little Pill. The show’s original cast soundtrack recording, which includes Davis, won a Grammy in 2019.
yahoo!news
Farewell Angelina will provide An Evening for ABAC entertainment
The Albany Herald, Ga.
Celebrating 50 years of providing scholarship opportunities for students at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, An Evening for ABAC is scheduled this year on Feb. 26. ABAC Alumni Director Lynda Fisher, coordinator for this year’s event, said the ABAC Foundation’s annual student scholarship fundraising gala will include a silent auction, a virtual auction beginning Feb. 23, cocktails, dinner, and a dynamite entertainment package featuring Farewell Angelina. The black-tie affair begins at 6 p.m. at the Tifton Campus Conference Center.
Columbus CEO
CSU Students Contribute to Columbus Museum Civil Rights Exhibit
Staff Report
The Columbus Museum’s latest exhibition, Journey Toward Justice: The Civil Rights Movement in the Chattahoochee Valley, will feature the research and work of several Columbus State University students. Students in Dr. Gary Sprayberry’s fall 2021 “Civil Rights Movement/Black Power” class conducted research and provided content for exhibit panels and the exhibit guidebook. The class explored the American civil rights movement, the rise of militancy in the 1960s, origins of reconstruction and the rise of segregation. The nine students who worked on the project each focused on different aspects of the movement.
11Alive
Device to scan air for COVID being developed at Georgia Tech
Video – Imagine a device that scans the air of a building for COVID particles and alerts you if any are detected.
Labroots
CBD inhalant effective in reducing glioblastoma tumors
Written By: Kerry Charron
Researchers at Augusta University found that CBD inhalant can alter the lung microenvironment and subsequently inhibit glioblastoma growth in an animal model. This study, published in Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, is the first study to research CBD treatment of tumors caused by glioblastoma–one of the most aggressive forms of cancer growth. CBD minimizes the chronic inflammation surrounding glioblastoma growth; this type of inflammation happens when the immune system is “confused” by the microenvironment and mistakenly tries to defend the malignant growth.
Suncoast View
Equifax and Georgia Tech Announce Financial Inclusion Research Partnership
Georgia Tech Financial Services Innovation Lab to Leverage Differentiated Data Assets ‘Only Equifax’ Can Provide to Drive New Studies on Access to Credit and Fintech Entrepreneurship
Equifax® (NYSE: EFX) and the Georgia Institute of Technology (“Georgia Tech”) have announced a new research partnership designed to develop new ways to reach underserved, underbanked and credit-rebuilding consumers. As part of this relationship, the Financial Services Innovation Lab at Georgia Tech will leverage anonymized Equifax data assets to further its innovative research designed to increase consumer access to credit and Equifax data scientists will provide hands-on data education to speed research time. The research partnership is designed to stimulate growth in fintech entrepreneurship in Atlanta.
Science
News at a glance: A volcanic eruption, a fired president, and long-distance hares
The latest in science and policy
Byscience News Staff
Gift funds academic software
Schmidt Futures, a philanthropy co-founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, said this week it will give universities $40 million over the next 5 years to help their scientists obtain better software for use in their research. Academic researchers often rely on shaky, homemade computer software written by students and postdoctoral researchers, and some U.S. research grants that do pay for software engineering only cover a part-time position. The Virtual Institute for Scientific Software will fund centers at the Georgia Institute of Technology …to hire full-time software engineers, paying salaries high enough to compete with industry and government.
Albany Herald
UGA researchers create disease-resistant hybrids from wild peanuts
By Allison Floyd CAES News
Using proven production practices to fight disease in the field, Georgia farmers produce half the peanuts grown in the U.S. each year. Modern peanut varieties carry few genetic defenses against some of the more devastating diseases, so peanut farmers carefully consider when to plant, whether to irrigate and when to apply fungicide and insecticide to keep those diseases from infecting the plant. …University of Georgia horticulture scientist Ye Juliet Chu is the latest peanut researcher in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences to produce three breeding lines from peanut’s wild relatives. Chu works with UGA plant geneticist Peggy Ozias-Akins and U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service peanut breeder Corley Holbrook in Tifton, where she focuses on improving profitability and sustainability of peanut through genetic breeding.
The Augusta Chronicle
What does it mean if national faculty organization censures University System of Georgia?
Abraham Kenmore
The American Association of University Professors will likely take the unusual step of censuring the entire University System of Georgia for employment policies they say gut academic freedom and the tenure system. The Board of Regents #of the University System of Georgia #made changes last fall that the AAUP say#s# threaten tenure and academic freedom.
Article also appeared in:
The College Fix
Professor: Opposition to critical race theory is ‘rebranded Nazi-style antisemitism’
Dave Huber – Associate Editor
A professor of creative writing, working class literature and “changing masculine roles” believes opposition to critical race theory (CRT) is not only antisemitic, but Nazi-style antisemitic. Georgia Southern University’s Jared Yates Sexton, who according to his Twitter bio fancies himself a political analyst, made this claims in a Friday Twitter burst which also included the invocation of QAnon and “white supremacist paranoia.”
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Jan. 21)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
CONFIRMED CASES: 1,726,969
CONFIRMED DEATHS: 27,037 | 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
Students Embrace Peer Mental Health Counseling
A new survey finds increased interest in peer mental health counseling. Experts say it can help alleviate overburdened campus services, but they stress the importance of proper training.
By Maria Carrasco
One in five undergraduates uses peer counseling for mental health support, according to a new survey of more than 2,000 U.S. college students. Two-thirds say they have faced a mental health challenge in the past year. The survey, “Peer Counseling in College Mental Health,” was conducted by the Mary Christie Institute and the Born This Way Foundation, two organizations that focus on the mental health of young people. Zoe Ragouzeos, president of the Mary Christie Institute and executive director of counseling and wellness services at New York University, blames the COVID-19 pandemic for increasing student stress, isolation and rustiness in building social connections.
Inside Higher Ed
Beyond Burnout: Survival Strategies for 2022
The start of the new year can be a good time for grad students to take steps toward managing their energy and navigating the stressors they’re confronting, writes Andrew Crain.
By Andrew Crain (Andrew Crain is the director of experiential professional development in the University of Georgia’s Graduate School)
Graduate school is a challenging undertaking in normal times. In the present moment, it can be an extraordinarily difficult experience. While advanced degree programs often push brilliant and talented folks to their limit, the rigors of completing such programs are now made all the more demanding by the social, economic and public health shocks reverberating throughout the world. Higher education and political leaders have often struggled to adequately address these new challenges, and many graduate students are left feeling somewhat adrift as they manage their way through added layers of complexity. In light of these circumstances, it could be helpful address head-on the difficulties that we are engaged in at the moment. After two years of surviving the “new normal” of the pandemic and working to support graduate student career development at my institution, I can honestly say that I have witnessed both the very best and the very worst that academe has to offer.
Mad In America
Study Discovers Extensive Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest in Medical Research
Public records reveal major discrepancies in medical researchers’ self-disclosures of financial conflicts of interest.
By Ben Goldstein (Ben is currently a doctoral student in Psychology at the University of West Georgia. He received an M.A. in Philosophy with a neurophilosophy concentration from Georgia State University)
A new open-access study evaluates the reliability of self-disclosure as a method for identifying researchers’ financial conflicts of interest (COI) in leading US medical journals. The results of the cross-sectional investigation, which compares COI self-disclosures by researchers with public financial records of payments from producers of related medical goods, indicate serious inconsistencies in reported COIs. The researchers, led by James H. Baraldi of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, emphasize the breadth of potential repercussions of conflicts of interest interference with medical research integrity, writing:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Justices to hear challenge to race in college admissions
By Mark Sherman, Associated Press
The conservative-dominated Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to the consideration of race in college admissions, adding another blockbuster case to a term with abortion, guns, religion and COVID-19 on the agenda
The conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the consideration of race in college admissions, adding affirmative action to major cases on abortion, guns, religion and COVID-19 already on the agenda. The court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants. A decision against the schools could mean the end of affirmative action in college admissions.
Inside Higher Ed
Expanded Options for Some Foreign Students
The Biden administration has taken steps to make the U.S. more attractive to international talent, including expanding eligibility for some foreign STEM students to participate in a popular postgraduation work program.
By Elizabeth Redden
The Biden administration announced a series of administrative actions aimed at attracting and retaining international students and researchers in STEM fields on Friday. These actions include identifying 22 new fields of study eligible for the STEM optional practical training program, which allows international students in STEM fields to stay in the U.S. and work for up to three years after they graduate, rather than the typical one-year period allowed for non-STEM graduates. The expansion will newly allow international students in a range of fields—including climate science, cloud computing, data analytics, economics and computer science, geobiology, geography and environmental studies, financial analytics, and industrial and organizational psychology—to gain additional work experience in the U.S. while remaining on a student visa.