University System News
WTVM
Columbus State University offers new military scholarship
By Jatavia O’Neal
A local veterans’ organization partners with Columbus State University to establish a scholarship honoring the former Commanding General of Fort Benning. The regional chapter of the Military Order of World Wars is providing the scholarship. It’s called ‘The Lieutenant General Robert L. Wetzel Military Student Scholarship’ and will be rewarded to honorably discharged or active duty, full-time undergraduate or graduate student veterans, their spouses or dependents attending Columbus State University.
Times Georgian
‘You the people’: UWG hosts evening with Georgia State Supreme Court justices
By Colton Campbell
The University of West Georgia brought to light the inner workings of the state’s highest court Tuesday night, with UWG’s Murphy Center for Public Service hosting students and community members for An Evening with Georgia State Supreme Court Justices. “We were fortunate to have a conversation with these justices to take away some of the mystery that we perceive surrounding the court system, inform us on the judicial process and hear some off-the-bench commentary to better understand their work,” said Dr. Karen Owen, interim dean of University College and director of the Murphy Center.
Athens CEO
Forbes Designates UGA a Top University for Value, Career Success
Staff Report
The University of Georgia was recently highlighted as one of the top public universities in the country, earning a No. 21 ranking by Forbes. The rankings compiled by the international media company seek to highlight schools that offer “an excellent education at a great price, graduate high-earners and propel students to become successful entrepreneurs and influential leaders in their fields.” In compiling the rankings, Forbes considered factors such as alumni salary, debt, graduation rate, leadership and entrepreneurial success of graduates, return on investment, retention rate and academic success.
FOX 31
Gopher Frog revival project sparked by Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
By FOX 31 Staff
South Georgians are accustomed to spotting gopher tortoises slowly navigating the area landscape. But gopher frogs have been slowly disappearing from southern pinelands for decades. Dr. Vanessa Lane, an Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management in the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, is partnering with other agencies to help replenish the species.
WALB
ASU Police Chief encourages work-life balance through health and wellness expo
By Riley Armant
It was a party for first responders at Albany State University (ASU) Wednesday and it was aimed at maintaining the mental health of first responders. “I wanted to have an opportunity for us to get together and have an expo, where we can do outreach with our students, but also with each other as fellowship and a mental wellness program,” Anita Allen, ASU Chief of Police, said. Allen said she is making it part of her job to create a low-stress environment for her staff. She created the first annual First Responders Health and wellness expo to show the importance of work-life balance.
Times Georgian
UWG hopes to get right ‘One-act Play That Goes Wrong’
The UWG Theatre Company’s first production of 2022-2023 “All Things Possible” Season: the critically acclaimed and award-winning comedy The One Act Play That Goes Wrong by Henry Lewis, Jonathan Sayer, and Henry Shields. According to a release issued by the Univeristy of West Georgia’s Theater Department, the slapstick comic style of this show makes the production good fun for all, promising laughs amidst the utter catastrophe onstage.
Valdosta Today
VSU math professor strives for meaningful learning
A VSU Professor believes a shared identity is necessary for achievement in mathematics and the community. Valdosta State University’s Dr. Lorena Aguirre Salazar believes belonging plays a vital role in mathematics achievement and community is necessary for deeper, more meaningful learning. Their goal over the next year is to work to build a sense of shared identity across the Department of Mathematics, one that builds trust, fosters student success, encourages students to contribute, and increases engagement. Valdosta State University’s associate professor of political science, Dr. Bernard Tamas, is considered a top expert on third parties in U.S. politics. Valdosta State University’s Dr. Bernard Tamas has researched third parties in United States politics for well over a decade. His 2018 book, The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties, established him as a highly sought-after expert on the topic. Tamas was recently featured in The Conversation’s “A New Third Party for U.S. Politics: Three Essential Reads on What That Means,” on C-Span’s Washington Journal with Bill Scanlan, on CNN’s Full Stop with Mark Preston, where the other guest was former presidential hopeful Andrew Yang, and in The Guardian’s “Forward! Is America’s Latest Third Party Marching to Power — or Oblivion?”
Americus Times-Recorder
Americus Mayor signs proclamation declaring Thursday, September 22 as GSW’s Day of Giving
By Ken Gustafson
On September 15, Americus Mayor Lee Kinnamon signed a proclamation announcing Thursday, September 22, 2022, as the fourth annual Day of Giving for Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW).
See also: Albany CEO – Stephen Snyder on the Upcoming 2022 GSW Day of Giving
Barnesville (The Herald Gazette)
Gordon opens center for veterans, adult learners
By Walter Geiger
On September 14, Gordon State College hosted the grand opening of the Adults, Veterans and Non-Traditional Students Center located in Student Center.The purpose of the center is to provide this student population with a comfortable and family-friendly space on campus where they can go to study, connect, and access on and off-campus resources to support their educational journey.
WTOC 11
Georgia Southern gearing up to host Hispanic Heritage Month events
By Camille Syed
People are gearing up for Hispanic Heritage Month celebrations on the Armstrong campus on Georgia Southern University. The chairwoman for Migrant Equity Southeast is at Georgia Southern helping with Hispanic heritage events on campus. She says this month Migrant Equity Southeast is shedding light on all the contributions Hispanic people bring to our country and this community.Migrant Equity Southeast’s main mission is to fight for human rights for people who came to America from a different country.
WJCL
How did we get so close to a rail strike? Georgia Southern logistics professor explains
By Andy Cole
A dozen unions representing railroad workers have come to a tentative deal to keep trains moving. It’s estimated that railroads carry $2 billion of the country’s economy daily. Even the possibility of these lines becoming dormant sent ripples throughout the country. After hours of nonstop negotiations, the unions came to a tentative deal early Thursday, narrowly avoiding a strike.
Tifton Gazette
ABAC observes National Teach Ag Day
National Teach Ag Day is Sept. 15, and Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College students have solid reasons to celebrate. For the fourth consecutive year at the spring term commencement ceremony when 34 agricultural education graduates walked across the stage, ABAC produced more graduates with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural education than any other college or university east of the Mississippi River, college officials said in a statement.
Fox 28
City of Rincon names new city manager
By Parker Fluke
City officials announced Rincon’s new city manager Thursday morning. Jonathan Lynn will take over as the next city manager in Rincon, starting Monday, Sept. 19. Lynn graduated from Georgia Southern with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science in 2002 and received a Master of Public Administration degree from Georgia Southern in 2004.
Other News
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kemp campaigns on ‘learning loss’ grants, boosting teachers, counselors
By Greg Bluestein and Ty Tagami
Gov. Brian Kemp outlined a second-term education agenda Monday with an additional $65 million to address “learning loss,” recruit more counselors and help school staffers become full-fledged teachers. The money is a fraction of the state’s $10.7 billion education budget this year or the nearly $6 billion in pandemic-related federal aid for Georgia’s schools, but Kemp said a chunk of this new state funding would be targeted to tens of thousands of Georgia students.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Senate tries to revisit education funding formula
By Ty Tagami
A Georgia Senate committee will go to Savannah on Friday for a fact-finding mission about the state’s education funding formula. The special committee already met once at the state Capitol last month and plans a third meeting in Columbus next month. The lawmakers were empaneled by Senate Resolution 650, their mission to explore whether the funding formula created in 1985 — before computers and the internet became common tools in schools — remains relevant. The formula, known as Quality Basic Education, informed the distribution of $10.7 billion to school districts this year. It’s so complicated, though, that several prior efforts to amend it have failed.
CBS46
Students shift towards tech and trade schools; Atlanta companies are taking note
By Don Shipman
A growing number of young people are ditching college degrees for trade or tech schools, and the job market here in Atlanta is taking notice. Big companies are no longer requiring a college degree, which is saving college students money and it’s directly benefiting technical schools like Georgia Piedmont Technical College in Clarkston. Enrollment this semester is up a 12-percent from last fall. The current job market has many companies reconsidering their hiring requirements.
Athens CEO
Athens Technical College Launches Newly Accredited Academy
Staff Reports
Athens Technical College (ATC) has been awarded high school accreditation from Cognia, the high school accrediting agency in the state of Georgia. This coincides with the creation of the Athens Technical College Academy, which will offer two pathways to a traditional high school diploma or equivalency. The newly created Dual Achievement Program (DAP), established by Georgia SB-204 earlier this year, offers high school coursework for students ages 16-21. The Career Plus High School Equivalency (HSE) offers high school coursework for students over age 21. Both pathways allow enrolled students to combine high school courses and college credit level coursework for an accredited high school diploma and college level credentials for quick entry into the workforce.
Athens CEO
Staff Reports
Dr. Dana Rickman is President of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education. She talks about their celebration of 30 years serving and how they continue to work with leaders on educational challenges in the state.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Black colleges get $5 million tech boost from Cisco
By Ernie Suggs
Technology giant Cisco is hoping a multi-million-dollar gift to Atlanta’s Black colleges will help cultivate the next generation of Black entrepreneurs. Through a partnership with the Black Economic Alliance, a national nonprofit that promotes generational wealth-building for the Black community, Cisco is making a $5 million commitment in grants and technical services to Spelman College, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University. Cisco Executive Vice President Fran Katsoudas said the donations are part of a $150 million commitment to social justice and HBCUs and across the country, “strengthening our workforce and providing access to education and technology.”
Higher Education News
The Chronicle of Higher Education
What Will It Take to Make College More Affordable?
By Rebecca S. Natow
This year’s midterm elections are critically important for determining party control of Congress and the future direction of federal policy. What’s at stake for higher education? As part of my recent research, I asked higher-ed advocates, think-tank researchers, federal employees, and other policy actors what they believed to be the most prominent political issues for colleges. Their most frequent response was college affordability. And for good reason: According to the National College Attainment Network, only 23 percent of public four-year institutions and 41 percent of public two-year institutions were affordable for the average Pell Grant recipient, as of the 2018-19 academic year. As one interviewee in my study observed, the escalating cost of college and the huge amount of student-loan debt is likely to “have a lasting impact on people’s beliefs around higher education, and especially for middle- and lower-income families.” The result: Higher ed is becoming “an unattainable goal.”
Inside Higher Ed
Growing Public Concerns About Higher Ed’s Value: Key Podcast
By Doug Lederman
Americans don’t seem to doubt the importance of higher education, but they are increasingly asking hard questions about whether it’s worth the time and money. This week’s episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, the first in a three-part series on the “value” of higher education, looks at several recent surveys of public attitudes about higher education and their implications for colleges, students and policy makers.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Growing Out-of-State Enrollment at Flagship Universities Could Be Worsening the Student-Debt Crisis
By Sylvia Goodman
A student in Indiana decides to go to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor instead of staying in state. At the same time, a student in Michigan, who can no longer get into their state’s flagship, decides to go to Indiana’s flagship, Indiana University at Bloomington. The same amount of education attainment is provided as if the students had attended a school in their home state, but the cost is not the same. A recent report from the Brookings Institution found that nearly every state flagship university has increased the number of out-of-state students they enroll since 2002 and has contributed to the ballooning of student debt across the country. The price tag in just the 16 states for which the study goes into debt found that the “Great Student Swap” may have increased the total tuition paid by roughly $57 billion over a 16 year period.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Emporia State University Is Told It Can Fire Employees, Including Tenured Professors
By Emma Pettit
Emporia State University got permission on Wednesday to fire employees, including tenured professors, for any of a host of reasons, including “current or future market considerations.” Many faculty members there object that the plan essentially suspends tenure. The cuts have already begun. The move was made possible by the Kansas Board of Regents. In January of last year, regents approved a policy that allowed the state’s six public universities to suspend or terminate employees, including tenured faculty, even if the institution had not declared financial exigency or initiated that process. The board wanted to give its institutions the flexibility they needed to deal with financial strain brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, regents said at the time.
Higher Ed Dive
Gates Foundation pours $100M into college transformation effort
By Rick Seltzer
The five-year commitment flows through six intermediary organizations, which the foundation says is an evolution in its approach to grant-making. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will spend $100 million over five years to fund a group of nonprofit organizations working to help colleges “transform themselves” in the face of falling enrollment, increasing demands for educated workers and declining public confidence in higher education, it said Thursday.
The Washington Post
U-Va. expected to heed Youngkin’s plea for flat tuition with rebate
By Laura Vozzella
The University of Virginia’s governing board is expected to vote on Friday to give students a one-time credit equal to its most recent tuition hike, an extraordinary step that comes amid Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s push to hold tuition flat at the state’s public universities. Earlier this week, a finance subcommittee of U-Va.’s board of visitors recommended giving in-state undergraduate students a 4.7 percent credit on next semester’s tuition bill.
Higher Ed Dive
House Democrats introduce bill to double Pell Grant, rework federal loan system
By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Dive Brief:
- Two prominent House Democrats introduced a bill Thursday that would double the maximum Pell Grant award and substantially rework the federal student loan system, including changes to the troubled Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
- The Lowering Obstacles to Achievement Now, or LOAN, Act, would also make certain unauthorized immigrant students eligible for federal financial aid, and it would attempt to lower interest rates on student loans so they would not exceed 5%.
- The bill also aims to make loans cheaper, such as by giving graduate students attending nonprofit colleges access to subsidized loans at the same interest rate as unsubsidized loans. It would also repeal origination fees.
Higher Ed Dive
By Laura Spitalniak
Dive Brief:
- Florida state Sen. Ray Rodrigues, a Republican lawmaker who sponsored several controversial pieces of education legislation, will be the State University System of Florida’s next chancellor.
- Rodrigues is a political ally of the state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, who has praised Rodrigues’ work to reshape Florida’s higher education system.
- One high-profile bill that Rodrigues sponsored requires public institutions to change accreditors every accreditation cycle, a proposal that drew warnings from the Education Department and higher education experts before it was enacted into law.
Higher Ed Dive
The public comment period for Biden’s Title IX proposal is over. What’s next?
By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
The two-month window for the public to submit feedback on the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX regulatory proposal just wrapped up — and higher education organizations, civil liberties supporters and more have a lot to say. Title IX is the law that bans sex-based discrimination, and by extension, acts of sexual violence, in federally funded K-12 schools and colleges. The draft rule governing it, which the Education Department introduced in June, would dictate how institutions must investigate and potentially punish sexual misconduct.
Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
University of Kentucky to Launch Student Financial Education and Wellness Initiative
By Arrman Kyaw
The University of Kentucky (UK) is launching a financial education and wellness initiative for its students, UK President Dr. Eli Capilouto announced in a letter to the campus community. UK Invests aims to improve student health, finances, and financial knowledge. “UK Invests is a holistic wellness initiative anchored by financial education,” Capilouto wrote in the letter. “Ultimately, through this initiative, everyone on our campus can receive a voluntary personal account that they can invest in, matched in part by investments from UK. Those micro-incentives will be tied to rewards around healthy habits, such as financial education, wellness visits and going to the gym. In other words, we are seeking to hardwire good habits, ensuring that micro-interventions and incentives have a macro-impact.”
Diverse: Issues In Higher Education
Amazon Launches Program to Fund the Education of its Delivery Drivers
By Arrman Kyaw
Business titan Amazon is launching a program to help its delivery drivers pursue education. The program, Next Mile, will give participating Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) up to $5,250 per eligible driver per year for access to more than 1,700 academic programs, such as bachelor’s and associate degrees, skill certifications, and high school completion courses.