The Moultrie Observer
Colquitt Regional presents 2022 scholarships
Staff Reports
Colquitt Regional recently awarded the recipients of its healthcare scholarships at the sixth annual Colquitt Regional Medical Foundation Scholarship Luncheon. On May 20, Colquitt Regional honored 32 recipients at Sunset Country Club. The total amount given to those recipients through scholarships and grants exceeded $65,000. …Spires could not attend the luncheon, so in her place, her daughter, Shannon Spires McAlphin, presented the 2022 Hospital Authority Trustee Scholarship to Beylee Roberts. Roberts is currently a senior at Georgia Southern University, where she is working to obtain her bachelor of science degree in nursing. …The Jane and Sam Perry Scholarship, given by the Brooks Sheldon family in memory of his parents, was given to Abby Patterson, RN. Patterson is a registered nurse in the Colquitt Regional emergency department and is currently enrolled at Georgia Southwestern State University, where she is pursuing her dream of becoming a nurse practitioner.
Marietta Daily Journal
Local student awarded Georgia Foundation for Agriculture Scholarship
Staff reports
Micah Jones of Mableton, a rising senior at the University of Georgia College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences, has been selected to receive a scholarship from the Georgia Foundation for Agriculture. He is one of eight rising college juniors and seniors statewide selected to receive a $2,000scholarship. Jones is pursuing a bachelor of science degree in horticulture. …The scholarships recognize deserving and outstanding students who are seeking a degree in agriculture or an ag-related degree at a college in the University System of Georgia, Berry College or Emmanuel College.
Americus Times-Recorder
Eighteen GSW students selected for prestigious President Jimmy Carter Leadership Program
By Ken Gustafson
Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) has named eighteen incoming freshmen to the President Jimmy Carter Leadership Program, established to honor the legacy of GSW alumnus and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. These students from Georgia, Florida and South Carolina are the fourth group to enter the program since its creation in 2019. …The program consists of two pathways, an Undergraduate Research Track and a Service Track, that exemplify Carter’s lifetime of leadership in education, politics and community service. Guided by the evidence-based “The Social Change Model of Leadership Development,” the four-year Carter Leadership Program allows students to develop their leadership skills both individually and within a group.
WRDW
Emergency drill looks, feels real for AU med students
By William Rioux
Firehoses full of water, doctors performing CPR and helicopters on standby. It wasn’t real, but it definitely looked real during a training simulation Wednesday in Augusta. The goal of the training was to give Augusta first responders and medical students some real-world experience with serious medical situations. …The Augusta University students stepped into emergency medical technician and firefighter boots for the day. …The event was missed for the past couple of years due to the pandemic. But it’s back as part of an effort to make sure new firefighters and emergency room doctors are prepared for anything.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Advocates predict a critical shortage of geriatricians
By Shelia Poole
Geriatricians are doctors that specialize in managing the overall health of aging patients and the current shortage is only expected to worsen
…Nationally, 30,000 geriatricians will be needed by 2030 to care for about 21 million older Americans, according to the latest figures by the American Geriatric Society. At the Augusta University-UGA medical program, typically out of a class of 50 students, perhaps two or three per year are interested in geriatrics, said Scott. … When Mel and Barbara Garber noticed her cognitive abilities were starting to decline, they sought out a geriatrician for her care. The Oconee County couple found one through the Cognitive Aging Research and Education (CARE) Center at the University of Georgia’s College of Public Health. They feel fortunate. While family and internal medicine physicians also treat older patients, finding a doctor who specializes in geriatrics “gave me that level of comfort,” said Mel Garber, a retired professor of horticulture at the University of Georgia.
Newnan CEO
Study: Wellness Programs Help Employees and Their Companies
Merritt Melancon
Most Americans now have one or more chronic health conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, anxiety or depression, and more than half of Americans have multiple conditions. That adds thousands of dollars — sometimes even tens of thousands of dollars — per employee per year to companies’ annual health care costs. Beyond that, poor long-term health influences a person’s ability to manage stress, fatigue, work-life balance and overall well-being. However, more than 20 years of research at the University of Georgia indicates workplace-based health and wellness programs can offer a variety of positive effects for both workers and their employers. …Vandenberg, along with professors in UGA’s College of Public Health, has researched workplace health programs across two decades as part of UGA’s Workplace Health Group. They’ve drawn more than $13 million in external funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and worked with large employers, including The Home Depot, Union Pacific Railroad and Dow Chemical.
Grice Connect
Faculty and graduate students in the University’s Biodynamics and Human Performance Center and Medical Laboratory Sciences program have teamed up
By Grice Connect
Researchers in the Waters College of Health Professions (WCHP) at Georgia Southern University are studying why Black adults in America are 30% more likely to die from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than white adults through a study on racial disparities and cardiovascular health. Faculty and graduate students in the University’s Biodynamics and Human Performance Center and Medical Laboratory Sciences program have teamed up to examine the biological basis for these racial differences to aid in the development of effective prevention and treatment strategies.
WTOC
Georgia Southern University to test new device for parking tickets
By Dal Cannady
Georgia Southern University will begin testing a high-tech device next week to get campus drivers’ attention to pay unpaid parking tickets and do so any time of day or night. It’s called the Barnacle. A parking staffer would install it across a windshield of a car that’s gotten too many parking tickets. The suction cups underneath apply roughly a thousand pounds of pressure to stick to the windshield. Parking officials say you risk damaging your windshield if you try to take it off yourself plus, you set off an alarm and the GPS inside tracks you.
Behavioral Health Business
Behavioral Health Could See Major Benefits from Voice Tech and AI, But Skeptics Wonder At What Cost
By Chris Larson
Yared Alemu faced high stakes when treating 4,000 low-income youth at a community health clinic in Atlanta. In his mind, getting care right could mean helping patients stay in school. Not getting it right left open the possibility of entanglements with the law. He also knew that he was fighting blind without an objective way to measure the trauma causing patients problems. He turned to speech emotion recognition (SER), a form of voice tech and artificial intelligence that seeks to measure the emotional content of speech regardless of what is said. …Several startups, including TQIntelligence, use different forms of speech recognition and AI technology. Alemu left his job at the clinic to join a business accelerator at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and founded the startup TQIntelligence in 2016 to develop and commercialize pediatric trauma-focused SER. “I literally walked out of my job and went to Georgia Tech as a first-time founder — I have no background in technology and no background when it comes to finance,” Alemu said. “But that frustration had been brewing for quite a while.”
Albany Herald
Georgia Southwestern celebrates one year with new website
From staff reports
It’s been one year since Georgia Southwestern State University launched an entirely new website created from scratch using Cascade CMS (content management system). Data from the last year have shown the project to be a huge success. Since launch on May 17, 2021, GSW’s website (gsw.edu) has seen a more than 50% increase in impressions, a 15% increase in engagement, a 12% increase in page time views and a significant reduction of mobile site errors from approximately 500 to 0. The modern design, fresh content and imagery, and consistent layouts, in addition to repaired urls, clutter removal and mobile responsiveness, all worked together to improve the overall visitor experience.
Washington Examiner
A BIG solution to gun violence
by Reps. Michael Burgess and Drew Ferguson
Our hearts are broken over the recent string of mass shootings. While debates stream across America, many have doubts that Congress will deliver any meaningful change. …It is time to get off the wheel and look at proven solutions that equip communities and schools with the tools they need to prevent the next trauma. One such tool is the Behavioral Intervention Guidelines Act, or simply the BIG Act. If enacted, this bill would empower schools and local communities with the resources necessary to ensure the safety and health of each student. It would do so by developing best practices for schools to establish behavioral health intervention teams, which can use evidence-based tactics to identify students who are at risk of harming themselves or others and address their mental and behavioral health needs. The legislation was conceived through innovative programs at two public universities: Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas. Columbus State developed its program to help students get the support needed before a problem develops into a crisis. Columbus State shared with us a success story about a top-performing student whose grades had suddenly and inexplicably slipped, and he had been starting fights.
Albany Herald
UGA offers global leadership in food safety research
By Jennifer L Reynolds & Claire Sanders University of Georgia
…The World Health Organization estimates that of the approximately 600 million people who contract foodborne illnesses annually, 420,000 die as a result. The organization fears that those figures are likely low because there are areas where surveillance data for foodborne illnesses are not available. With 25 faculty members involved in food safety microbiology, the University of Georgia has one of the largest teams of food safety researchers of any university, and the work of these experts can be felt globally through their research and collaboration efforts. In March, Francisco Diez, director of UGA’s Center for Food Safety — the university’s dedicated food safety research unit — traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to present at the Global Food Safety Initiative Conference. The annual conference unites members of the food industry, regulatory agencies, governmental organizations, academia and more to help maintain a safe global food supply.
KRDO
By Rachel Ramirez, CNN
Humans’ historical greenhouse gas emissions have caused the climate crisis the world is in today. But it’s the amount emitted now and in coming years that will determine whether humanity can avert catastrophic climate changes. That’s the main finding of a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on Monday, which says that even if the world cut emissions to zero today, there would still be a 42% chance of hitting 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels within a decade. That probability rises to 66% if the world waits until 2029 to reach zero emissions. …Kim Cobb, director of the Global Change Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the study is proof that understanding the evolution of the different types of emissions matters. …Cobb said the latest study not only builds on existing climate research, but also underscores what many in the scientific community already knew to be true.
WALB
Damaging fungus takes control of South GA crops
Video from WALB
By Anthony Bordanaro
South Georgia corn farmers are acting quickly as damaging fungus continues to spread. If fungicides aren’t applied quickly to plants, it could spell trouble for farmers. That’s why Bob Kemerait, a Plant Pathologist at the University of Georgia, wants all corn farmers to check their stalks. … Agriculture experts said if it impacts farmers, it’ll impact consumers at the dinner table.
Higher Education News:
NPR
Unionization is catching on among undergraduate student workers
Kay Perkins
Student workers are the latest in the wave of unionization nationwide. Students from several private universities have unionized, and undergrads from dozens of other schools are making plans to do so.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Inflation, stagnant wages and difficult working conditions have prompted a wave of unionization across the country. And as Connecticut Public Radio’s Kay Perkins reports, the union movement has now reached undergraduate students at small liberal arts colleges with campus jobs.
KAY PERKINS, BYLINE: Undergraduate student workers across the country say they’ve been under more stress than ever. Esmeralda Abreu-Jerez is a dining worker at Dartmouth College. I met with her near the campus cafe where she works. …She says the working conditions are grueling.
PERKINS: And this is on top of an Ivy League course load. Abreu-Jerez says some of her co-workers were already working up to 40 hours per week. And the pandemic only made conditions worse. She says most dining workers got COVID, so they were always short-staffed. But when they brought these and other concerns up to their managers, nothing changed. So when students saw the successful union campaigns at other colleges, they decided to start their own, and they voted to unionize unanimously. But the path for other unions hasn’t been as smooth.
PERKINS: But union advocates point out that public colleges have had underground employee unions for years. While private colleges have to follow policies set by the National Labor Relations Board, public schools are beholden to state laws. And Bill Gould, former chair of the NLRB, says universities are businesses, and student employees are no different than other employees.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Legislation to Limit Critical Race Theory at Colleges Has Reached Fever Pitch
By Wyatt Myskow
Bills introduced in state legislatures across the country have increasingly taken aim at higher education and the discussion of race, racism, and gender in college classrooms and programs. That’s according to new data from PEN America, an advocacy group for free expression, which began tracking all such bills, including those aimed at K-12, in January 2021. So far, 70 bills — which PEN America calls “educational gag orders” — have been introduced in 28 states, with 56 more coming in 2022. The upswing signals an increased effort by lawmakers in those states to limit the discussion of certain topics on campuses, according to the group. Overall, 42 percent of these legislative proposals have targeted higher ed in 2022, up from 26 percent last year. Most of them have been introduced by Republicans who are concerned about what they consider to be liberal indoctrination on campuses.
See also:
Inside Higher Ed
‘An Affront to Open Discourse’
PEN America and the American Association of Colleges and Universities come out once more against so-called divisive concepts bans, saying they represent the biggest threat of all to free speech.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Everything About How We Evaluate Teaching Needs a Makeover
For a true culture shift to take place about teaching, colleges need to fix more than just the peer-review process.
By Richard Badenhausen
One thing most academics can agree on: How we evaluate our colleagues’ work in the classroom is a vexed system, badly in need of overhaul. A recent essay in The Chronicle, “How Peer Review Could Improve Our Teaching,” offers wonderfully clear advice on how to improve one element of that system: peer review of teaching. The authors offer ideas on how to overcome a host of entrenched, unproductive habits that now make peer review of teaching feel not just unsatisfying, but also punitive and hurtful at times.
Inside Higher Ed
Film Producer Pledges Movie Proceeds Will Go to HBCUs
By Sara Weissman
Realm Pictures International is committing 10 percent of the profits from its upcoming film Steal Away to historically Black colleges and universities, according to a press release from the film production company.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
How Would Student-Loan Forgiveness Really Work?
By Eric Kelderman
Nearly 18 months into the term of President Biden, his administration continues to grapple with whether and how to provide blanket forgiveness to the more than 40 million people who hold nearly $1.6 trillion in student-loan debt. Since he was a candidate in 2020, the president has consistently said he wanted to erase up to $10,000 of debt for each borrower, preferably by an act of Congress rather than executive action. So far, Congress has failed to act, and Biden’s campaign proposal remains just that, with little indication from the administration if or when an executive action will be announced. The White House has denied that any plan is imminent, though news accounts in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal indicate otherwise. …A proposal to cancel student loans would make more sense if it were part of a broader discussion about how to finance a college education, said Matthew M. Chingos, who directs the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute.