Inside Higher Ed
New Leader for Public University Group
The selection of Mark Becker of Georgia State, best known for its focus on student success, reinforces the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ increased emphasis on improving student outcomes.
By Doug Lederman
Throughout its modern history, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (known previously as the National Association of State and Land-grant Universities) has been led by former presidents of major flagship and land-grant universities, the last three from institutions in the Big Ten Conference. The flagship orientation was no accident: APLU—unlike its sister organization, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, whose members include comprehensive and undergraduate-focused public universities concentrated as much on teaching as on research—has historically emphasized issues such as science policy, international education and funding for research.
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Diverse Issues In Higher Education
APLU Names Dr. Mark Becker as Next President
Inside Higher Ed
By Doug Lederman
…Kathy Schwaig, interim president of Kennesaw State University, in Georgia, has been appointed to the job on a permanent basis.
Atlanta Business Chronicle
On Leadership: Georgia Tech athletics director leads with the ‘total person’ in mind (Podcast)
By Crystal Edmonson – Broadcast Editor
When you see Todd Stansbury, it’s likely he will be wearing a white dress shirt, and a tie in Georgia Tech’s colors — gold, navy blue and white. That’s part of his professional “uniform” as director of athletics. But that was not the case when Stansbury landed his first job at Citizens and Southern National Bank (C&S Bank, a predecessor of Bank of America) in 1984. “About two weeks on the job, my manager said, ‘Todd you’re doing a great job, but I need you to cut your hair, buy some white shirts and change your shoes,’” Stansbury recalled during an interview on the “On Leadership with Atlanta Business Chronicle” podcast. “I could do spreadsheets and had all the technical skills,” Stansbury said. “But I had no idea about corporate culture.” That experience, along with time spent playing football under the leadership of Homer Rice (GA Tech athletics director 1980-1997) and Bill Curry (GA Tech football coach 1980-1986), “set his foundation” for the role intercollegiate athletics could play in shaping young people.
11Alive
How a trailblazing, living legend played a pivotal role in UGA’s integration
Hunter-Gault is a trailblazer, an acclaimed and award-winning journalist, and a living legend, especially for Black students at UGA
Author: Jennifer Bellamy
Their names go hand-in-hand in history at the University of Georgia. Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes were the first students to desegregate the school. While Holmes passed away in 1995, now more than 60 years later Hunter-Gault is still making a difference at the university and in the world. In January 1961, Hunter-Gault and Holmes stepped into history – desegregating UGA. Despite the governor’s segregationist vow of “No, not one.” Hunter-Gault is a trailblazer, an acclaimed and award-winning journalist, and a living legend, especially for Black students at UGA. The long process of becoming a student herself didn’t come easy, but now more than 60 years later she chooses to reflect on the good.
The Center Square
Georgia public universities eliminate per-semester special institutional fee
By T.A. DeFeo | The Center Square contributor
When Georgia’s fiscal 2023 budget starts on July 1, students will see a bit of a reprieve on their bills. The budget includes $230 million for the University System of Georgia (USG) to eliminate a so-called Special Institutional Fee (SIF). The fee ranges from $170 to $544 per semester, depending on the institution. “The university system’s longstanding commitment to affordability helps empower students, keeping them on track to learn the skills they need to get good jobs in a highly skilled workforce,” USG Chancellor Sonny Perdue said in an announcement.
Tifton CEO
‘Low Cost, Great Reward’ for Students Enrolling for Fall 2022 Semester at ABAC
Stacey Hudson
When it comes to the value of a diploma from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, President David Bridges gets right to the point. “It’s priceless,” Bridges, the longest serving president of the 26 colleges and universities in the University System of Georgia (USG), said. “Employers seek out our graduates for a good reason, they are ready to enter the workplace when they receive their diplomas.” The road to securing that diploma got a little easier on the wallet in recent days when the USG Board of Regents voted to eliminate the Special Institutional Fee and agreed to keep tuition costs at the same level for the 2022-23 academic year. As a result, the ABAC tuition cost remains the same for the third year in a row, and the bill for fees goes down, resulting in a total tuition and fees cost of $3,806, down 9.5 per cent from 2021.
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Albany Herald
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College boasts of ‘low cost, great reward’
The Brunswick News
College to host 10th annual service-learning symposium
By Lauren McDonald
College of Coastal Georgia will celebrate more than a decade of service-learning at its 10th Annual Service-Learning Symposium next week. The symposium will begin at 3 p.m. Thursday at the Southeast Georgia Conference Center. The symposium will return in-person this year and will showcase how the partnership between students, faculty members and local agencies benefit the community and contribute to students’ education.
Albany Herald
Cairo student an Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Student of Distinction
From staff reports
Lindsey Winzell, an agricultural education major from Cairo, has been selected as the Student of Distinction for the School of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. Students of Distinction are chosen by faculty through a competitive process. They must first be a Superior or Distinguished Honor student with a grade-point average of 3.5 or higher. Many other factors are considered during the selection, including involvement in engaged academic learning activities, active participation on campus in clubs and school/college activities, service to the community, leadership among peers, and strong interpersonal skills.
WGAU Radio
UNG students earn study abroad scholarships
North Ga has six of 119 FEA scholars
By Denise Ray, UNG
Three University of North Georgia students have been selected for Fund for Education Abroad scholarships. Grants were renewed for three additional students for travel this year. That gives UNG six of the 119 FEA scholars. “This means 5% of all FEA awards in 2022-23 are UNG students,” Dr. Anastasia Lin, assistant vice president of Academic Affairs and director of the Nationally Competitive Scholarships office, said. Lin said FEA scholarships are geared toward supporting underrepresented students studying abroad. “FEA makes life-changing, international experiences accessible to all by supporting students of color, community college, and first-generation college students before, during, and after they participate in education abroad programs,” according to the FEA website.
Marietta Daily Journal
KSU students compete in Marietta parking garage competition
Staff reports
The design skills of architecture students at Kennesaw State University were on full display Thursday in a contest in which they were challenged to build the best possible parking garage. Teams of students competed for cash as they designed and built models for a concrete, multipurpose parking garage to be located at 25 Mill St. near Marietta Square. The teams had to work under several restraints: the garage couldn’t be more than four levels, had to offer between 75 and 80 parking spots per floor and had to feature alternative energy solutions, such as solar panels. Groups presented their projects one by one to a panel of five judges, comprised of Mayor Steve “Thunder” Tumlin and four locals with backgrounds in architecture and design. The first-place group featured students Tyler Quick, Ben Audinet, Alli Parker, Trammel Crowley and Austin White. The group won a $2,000 cash prize for their design.
Augusta CEO
Augusta University Student Trades Traditional Spring Break to Experience Working the Masters
Monique Williams
Augusta University’s Dilan Shah is not your average college senior on the cusp of graduating in May and attending the Medical College of Georgia in the fall. While some of his peers sought sandy beaches, family time or other freedoms during spring break, the 22-year-old cell and molecular biology major chose to punch a time clock. All week. Early mornings and late nights. At the busiest and most prestigious golf tournament in the world: The Masters Tournament.
Times-Georgian
Former Coke exec named chief business officer at UWG
Scott McElroy, a seasoned business leader with more than two decades of experience with The Coca-Cola Company, has been named the University of West Georgia’s Vice President for Business and Financial Services and Chief Business Officer, effective May 1.
Athens Banner-Herald
UGA Performing Arts Center to host award-winning Broadway star for anniversary celebration
Andrew Shearer
What better way to ring in a quarter century of bringing Broadway to Athens than with a performance by one of its best and brightest stars? On Sunday, the University of Georgia Performing Arts Center (PAC) will kick off its 25th anniversary with a gala celebration starring six-time Tony Award-winner Audra McDonald. …The venue’s 25th anniversary event series will continue with the “City on a Hill” art exhibit with guest speakers William U. Eiland and Annelies M. Mondi on April 26, a performance by UGA’s Symphony Orchestra on April 28, and will conclude with an Atlanta Symphony Orchestra concert on May 1.
Athens Banner-Herald
The debut album from this UGA grad took six years to make. See it performed live this weekend.
Andrew Shearer
When Avery Leigh Draut returned to Athens from a March 2022 performance at the prestigious South By Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, the debut album from her band, Night Palace, had yet to come out. Those who would consider the scenario to be a result of pure luck or good timing have no idea of the journey Draut took to get there. …Snellville native and University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music graduate Draut corresponded with the Banner-Herald via email for a Q&A that detailed the six-year recording process of “Diving Rings” and the air of mystery surrounding Night Palace’s beautifully cinematic music videos.
Southeast Agent Radio Network
GCC, UGA Remind Growers ‘One Plant Per Foot, Evenly Spaced’
By Clint Thompson
It will soon be planting season for Georgia’s cotton growers. The Georgia Cotton Commission (GCC) and University of Georgia Extension caution producers that reduced seeding rates may not be the best plan of action for all growers. UGA Extension cotton agronomist Camp Hand reminds farmers what the end result should look like.
Athens CEO
Innovation Lab Uses Power of Peanuts to Fight Hunger
Allison Floyd
In the poorest part of Senegal in West Africa, 60% of households grow at least some peanuts, even as climate change creates hotter, drier weather that makes it harder to bring in a crop. Across the continent, in Uganda, families give peanut seeds as a wedding present to help the couple get a good start, although farms there are hit hard by a fungal disease that can destroy a peanut crop. …The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences is helping them do it through a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The Peanut Innovation Lab — technically, the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut — is a five-year, $14 million program funded through an agreement between USAID and UGA.
Georgia Recorder
Exit of prominent, veteran state lawmakers creates brain drain at Georgia Legislature
By: Stanley Dunlap
The Georgia Legislature needs to replace a wealth of knowledge in coming years following the announced departure of the chief House budget writer, the lawmaker who controls which Senate bills receive a vote, the widely admired “dean” of the House, a GOP public education maverick and others who long carried their party’s standard. …Longtime Georgia political observer Charles Bullock said that as some legislators spend more time in office and reach more powerful positions, there becomes a breaking point where the investment it takes for what’s essentially a full-time job for part-time pay gets old. “Whatever they do to earn a living and doing this legislature gets to a point where, ‘I need to get to make politics full time,’” said the University of Georgia political science professor. ‘And I can do that by getting elected to Congress – or to one of the state constitutional officers or I just gotta get out of here. I can’t continue to invest as much time as I am here for $17,000 a year.’” This year’s brain drain also includes legislators credited with an ability to work successfully across the political divide. And multiple lawmakers who’ve spent 10 or more years representing their Georgia districts are making way for new blood.
The George-Anne
We Don’t Know who Lives in the University Terrace Apartments
Duncan Sligh, Co-Editor-in-Chief
The George-Anne Inkwell recently sent several questions to the Georgia Southern Housing Department regarding the quality and standard of living on the Armstrong Campus. These questions covered a wide range of subjects related to Armstrong housing. One of the most concerning answers was the nature of University Terrace and its relationship with the Armstrong Campus. The inquiry began when Inkwell heard rumors that non-students lived in student housing. When we asked the housing department if this was true, the department explained that while this was not officially the case, the claims were not far off.
Times Higher Education
For US tenure to survive, academics must take peer reviewing seriously
Too many reviewers ignore their duty to independently review materials and instead rely on the candidate’s narrative, says Richard Utz
Richard Utz
Whenever academic tenure is eroded in the US – most recently in the University System of Georgia in 2021 – faculty rightly point to the deleterious consequences, and numerous national and international colleagues take note. For the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), tenure is the holy grail that protects academic freedom, the precondition for any successful higher education work. “When faculty members can lose their positions because of their speech, publications, or research findings, they cannot properly fulfill their core responsibilities to advance and transmit knowledge,” the body states. But tenure also has its enemies. For many accelerationist higher ed consultants, it is the last bastion of an antediluvian era in which the proverbial slow professor impeded innovation and progress. Economists sometimes stress that a tenure track appointment presents a risky “commitment with a lifetime present value of several million dollars – a huge unfunded liability.” And conservative politicians around the country feel that tenure offers state-funded protection to tenured radicals whose goal is to infect studious young Americans with feminism (1970s), deconstruction (1980s), or critical race theory (2020s).
Inside Higher Ed
‘Demanding Times for System Heads’
Political interference is making one of higher ed’s hardest jobs even tougher.
By Lee Gardner
If there’s a new “hot seat” in higher-education administration, it might burn hottest at the top. The job of public-college system head has seen a string of abrupt departures, board battles, and contentious searches. Last month, for example, Melody Rose resigned as chancellor of the Nevada System of Higher Education after less than two years on the job. Rose had filed a complaint with the system’s general counsel in 2021, alleging, among other things, harassment by members of the system’s Board of Regents based on her gender and their political views. The nation’s growing political polarization has fueled much of the current upset in system governance, says Jill Derby, a senior consultant with the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, known as AGB, and chair of the Board of Trustees of the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan. Derby was chair of the board of the Nevada system back in the ‘90s and ‘00s and says she often didn’t know her fellow regents’ political affiliation. Now, she says, partisanship “is very much in the mix of boards.” Such dynamics can be particularly acute in states with one-party control of the governorship and legislature, according to a Chronicle analysis. … A strong partisan brand isn’t a dealbreaker, though. The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia recently hired as chancellor Sonny Perdue, a former Republican governor of the state and a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Donald J. Trump. He was the lone finalist for the job, despite never having run a college. The Board of Regents paused the search briefly last year after the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges questioned whether the search for a chancellor wasn’t subject to “undue political influence.” As challenging as it may be to find the right person to run a state system these days, people continue to apply.
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Inside Higher Ed
What’s Driving Increased Hiring of Presidents of Color?
Two scholars of higher education discuss Inside Higher Ed data showing colleges have hired more Black and Latino leaders since George Floyd was killed—and what will give the trend lasting significance.
By Doug Lederman
Inside Higher Ed published data in February showing that colleges and universities had hired significantly more presidents and chancellors of color in the year and a half after the death of George Floyd. A full quarter of the presidents hired from June 2020 through November 2021 were Black, and the proportion of Latino presidents who were appointed roughly doubled from the previous 18 months. A recent episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, invited two prominent scholars of higher education and the college presidency to dissect the data, what they mean and how much they matter. Lorelle L. Espinosa is program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, where she focuses on grant making that drives evidence-based change around diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM education. She formerly oversaw research on the college presidency and other topics at the American Council on Education.
Inside Higher Ed
University says it has “concluded its membership in the Association of American Universities” and criticizes the way the group selects its members. Iowa State has been a member since 1958.
By Scott Jaschik
Iowa State University announced Thursday that it is leaving the Association of American Universities. The news revived a debate over the AAU’s membership criteria. “While the university’s core values have not changed since joining the association in 1958, the indicators used by AAU to rank its members have begun to favor institutions with medical schools and associated medical research funding,” said an Iowa State statement on its departure. (University leaders said they made the decision to withdraw.) The AAU is an organization of 65 research universities (two are Canadian). A majority are public. AAU is invitation only, and most of its meetings are private. Iowa State is still a member of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, which lobbies on behalf of many of the same issues as AAU does. APLU, however, consists only of public institutions and doesn’t have the pull that comes from having the Ivy League and Stanford University as members. A spokesman for APLU said only that Iowa State was a member in good standing. All the public American universities in the AAU are also members of APLU.