WGAU Radio
UGA project aims to help veterans with mental health concerns
By Katie Cowart, UGA Today
Consistent findings reveal that veterans are passionate about helping other veterans and their families; however, these same veterans don’t always feel comfortable helping themselves, said University of Georgia researcher Brian Bauer, who has developed a platform that will enable vets to help each other. Bauer was recently awarded $250,000 by Mission Daybreak, a part of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs’10-year strategy to end veteran suicide through a comprehensive, public health approach. Formerly known as the Suicide Prevention Grand Challenge, Mission Daybreak offers $20 million in non-dilutive funding, as well as non-monetary resources that include data, research, mentorship, educational webinars and partnership opportunities. Bauer’s submission is led by himself and his former mentor Alex Leow, professor of psychiatry and bioengineering at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Albany Herald
Albany State University prepares for ‘Homecoming to Remember’
From staff reports
Albany State University is preparing to welcome thousands of alumni and friends to the Albany area for the annual homecoming week celebration, which kicks off with the Miss ASU coronation Sunday and concludes with an ecumenical service the following Sunday. This year’s theme, “Greatest of all Time: Remember the Time,” pays homage to the past memories and traditions of the institution.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Universities Announce the Appointments of Five Black Administrators
…Ndidi Akuta is the new chief information officer at Fort Valley State University in Georgia. Since 2018, Akuta has served as the information security officer at the university.
yahoo!news
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College set to return to Sunbelt Ag Expo
The Albany Herald, Ga.
For most visitors, the Sunbelt Agricultural Exposition at Spence Field near Moultrie is North America’s Premier Farm Show. For Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, it feels more like a family reunion. ABAC students, faculty, staff, and administrators will be on hand Oct. 18-20 to welcome friends, alumni, and prospective students at the annual event. At the ABAC building near the Expo front entrance, visitors will experience different segments of ABAC life. …In the ABAC exhibit, visitors will have the opportunity to learn more about the school’s agricultural degree programs as well as the 14 different bachelor’s degrees offered by ABAC. Alumni will find new ways to connect with their alma mater, and everyone can purchase ABAC souvenirs, including some new merchandise making its debut at the Expo.
Savannah Morning News
GSU Economic Monitor: Growth slows but ports, tourism offers help to possible recession
Zoe Nicholson
If the Savannah region’s economy was an engine, it was firing on all cylinders for part of 2020 and most of 2021 in the post-pandemic boom. “And now maybe we have four out of the six that are firing strongly, but they’re rotating among each other,” explained Michael Toma, an economist and professor at Georgia Southern University’s Armstrong campus. …Toma writes Georgia Southern’s Economic Monitor, a quarterly report detailing the impacts of local, national and international forces on the Savannah’s regional economy. The second quarter report, April to June, was released this week and detailed how industry and employment is faring in Chatham County.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Children in Crisis: How Georgia’s mental health system is failing kids
By Carrie Teegardin
As depression and suicides rise, families trying to find help face inadequate and substandard care
For parents, the words are hard to hear. Your child is deeply and dangerously depressed. Your child has a plan for suicide, involving a rope, a bridge, or a gun. For their own safety, your child needs to be hospitalized. Objecting is almost unthinkable. This is the way to get help, to get better. But soon, for too many families, the reality of the mental health system in Georgia reveals itself. …Parents have little, if any, say in where their child is sent. They go to wherever a bed is open, even if it is far away. “Whoever accepts the child first, that is where they will go rather than being closest to home,” said Dr. Dale Peeples, child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
Atlanta Magazine
A team of UGA researchers is creating a “Noah’s Ark” of forgotten Southern apples
The Heritage Apple Orchard is home to 140 heirloom varieties, grown from wood cuttings snipped from trees found in niche orchards, rural backyards, and other sources across the Southeast
By Gray Chapman
In 2015, when Stephen Mihm moved his family from Decatur to South Oconee County, just outside of Athens, his new historic home came with an unusual stipulation: Per a restrictive tax covenant, the property owners had to produce agricultural activity. Mihm, originally from Connecticut, wasn’t a farmer—he was a history professor at the University of Georgia, specializing in business and technology. …As Mihm began to realize how vast the diversity of Southern apples once was, he realized there might be a project in reclaiming some of them. “So,” he says, “I started planting my own orchard.” A hundred miles from Athens, and unbeknownst to Mihm, a UGA colleague was pursuing a similar line of inquiry. Josh Fuder’s interest was also catalyzed by a real estate purchase, when he bought a house in Canton with around 25 old apple trees on site. A Cherokee County extension agent, Fuder felt compelled to learn more and soon started teaching grafting workshops. …Today, the orchard is home to 140 heirloom varieties, grown from wood cuttings snipped from trees found in niche orchards, rural backyards, and other sources across the Southeast—two trees of each, or “a Noah’s Ark of Southern apples,” as both Fuder and Mihm describe it.
Feedstuffs
Researchers assess tracking of laying hens in cage-free systems
Study finds RFID based trackers can be deployed to track resource utilization by cage-free hens.
Cage-free hens are primarily reared in large numbers in housing environments that have complex designs. To thrive in a physically and socially complex production environment for over 75 weeks, a hen should be able to maintain physiological and social homeostasis. Despite best efforts, cage-free systems have several challenges of their own. To effectively evaluate and predict welfare and/or production issues, systems that can reliably track a hen’s movement in the cage-free environment should be developed. This week, USPOULTRY and the USPOULTRY Foundation announced the completion of a funded research project at the University of Georgia in which researchers assessed automated tracking of laying hens in cage-free aviary environments.
Poultry Times
Contact between wild birds and backyard chickens is risky
Wild birds come into contact with backyard chicken flocks more frequently than people realize, creating a pathway for pathogens to transmit back and forth, according to new research from the University of Georgia. Such pathways increase the risk for spillover events that can threaten the health of all these groups — wild birds, backyard chickens and the people who care for them.
Other News:
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Arrman Kyaw
The U.S. Department of Education (ED) will give the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) $8.4 million to manage the Equity Assistance Center (EAC) for the Southern region of the U.S. With a five-year grant, SEF will manage the federal Equity Assistance Center-South (EAC-South), serving 11 states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—and the District of Columbia. Four EACs in the U.S. operate around matters of civil rights, equity, and school reform, aiming to help school districts and state education agencies with issues in educational achievement and opportunity. They provide assistance and training on race, sex, national origin, and religion, to public school districts and other governmental agencies.
Higher Education News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s technical college system gets $15 million for jobs program
By Vanessa McCray
A $15 million federal grant will pay for a workforce program that includes job training to help Georgia workers recover from COVID-19 setbacks. The Technical College System of Georgia announced this week it received the funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. The state’s 19 Local Workforce Development Areas can apply for a portion of the grant to help workers in their counties or regions pay for training courses or programs through a technical college or other approved provider. The initiative will focus on teaching the skills needed for good-paying jobs in high-demand industries such as healthcare, logistics, information technology, transportation, distribution and advanced manufacturing.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
To fill teacher jobs, community colleges offer new degrees
By Janelle Retka of The Seattle Times
Amid national teacher shortages, community colleges are stepping in, launching teacher-training programs traditionally found in four-year colleges
In her second-grade classroom outside Seattle, Fatima Nuñez Ardon often tells her students stories about everyday people realizing their dreams. …Another day, she told them her own life story — how she, an El Salvadoran immigrant who arrived in the U.S. in middle school speaking very little English, came to be a teacher. Nuñez Ardon took an unusual path to the classroom: She earned her teaching degree through evening classes at a community college, while living at home and raising her four children. …Community college-based teaching programs like this are rare, but growing. They can dramatically cut the cost and raise the convenience of earning a teaching degree, while making a job in education accessible to a wider diversity of people. …Around the country, education programs remain far more common at four-year institutions. Six other states — Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Nevada and New Mexico — have community colleges that offer degrees related to K-12 education, according to Community College Baccalaureate Association data.
Higher Ed Dive
Legal ruling may signal trouble for Biden’s Title IX plan, LGBTQ guidance
Judge rules against policies based on Bostock v. Clayton County, a case the White House used to support Education Department regulations.
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Senior Reporter
Some legal experts say a new federal court ruling striking down pro-LGBTQ employment policies from the Biden administration may spell trouble for similar guidance from the U.S. Department of Education and its mammoth regulatory proposal on Title IX. A federal judge in Texas delivered that big legal blow to the administration Oct. 1. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk threw out guidance documents from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stating that employers should allow transgender workers to access restrooms and facilities aligned with their gender identity. …The U.S. Department of Education also applied it in similar guidelines from June 2021 finding that Title IX — the federal law banning sex discrimination in federally funded schools — shielded gay and transgender individuals. And references to Bostock are littered throughout Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s proposed Title IX rule, which would direct how colleges must investigate and potentially punish sexual violence, but also cements protections for LGBTQ students.
University Business
Will Great Resignation among faculty hit higher ed next?
Cengage report shows professors aren’t really doing what they love most, and leaders should be concerned.
By Chris Burt
Faculty in higher education are only spending 13% of their time truly engaging with students but working more hours on other tasks, leading to increasing questions about their willingness to remain in their positions long term. A new Faces of Faculty survey of more than 1,000 professors and instructors by education technology provider Cengage raises the possibility that colleges and universities may soon face a Great Resignation on the faculty side because of a number of factors. So far, colleges have not experienced the same kind of attrition that has plagued K-12 school districts over the past few years. However, being asked to embrace different forms of instruction while heavily increasing new content to meet demand has pushed some to think about leaving altogether.
Higher Ed Dive
Federal data change means colleges can’t count unfinished applications in admit rates
New IPEDS reporting policies could prompt some institutions to examine the barriers for students to finish applying.
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Senior Reporter
A seemingly trivial tweak in how colleges report application numbers to the federal government could cause them to more closely scrutinize barriers, like fees, that make it hard for students to finish applying, enrollment experts say. In turn, this change could help demolish roadblocks that prevent historically underrepresented students from seeking a college education. Federally funded institutions must send their application counts to the U.S. Department of Education each year as part of information gathering for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, known as IPEDS. IPEDS is a public-facing database containing statistics on individual institutions, covering areas such as enrollment. It can also be used to view national trends over time.
Higher Ed Dive
What colleges can learn from COVID-19 relief to improve other emergency aid programs
Laura Spitalniak, Associate Editor
Dive Brief:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, most colleges advertised emergency financial aid for students widely and repeatedly online. But some students were still unaware of the help that was available, according to new research from the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and NASPA, a higher education association for student affairs administrators. The research draws lessons from federal pandemic emergency relief funding to suggest improvements for any similar programs operated by colleges, states or the federal government in the future. Colleges should increase transparency around emergency aid processes by making funds’ availability and eligibility criteria clear, and by explaining why applications are denied, according to a report on the research findings. At the state level, leaders should create emergency aid programs before they become necessary and add flexibility to current need-based programs to reach more students, according to the report. States should also give colleges technical assistance to help them get aid into students’ hands.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
University of Illinois to Spend More Than $50 Million to Hire New Faculty
Arrman Kyaw
University of Illinois (UI) will invest more than $50 million in hiring new faculty over the next few years, The Daily Illini reported. With the school’s student population growing significantly, additional teaching faculty is required to maintain classroom ratios. UI’s “Next 150” strategic plan anticipates allocating $50 million to the hiring initiative to be spent over the next several years. UI employs more than 2,500 academic staff. This move is expected to increase faculty by 150 to 200, bolstering faculty size by approximately 10%. Several UI colleges will hire additional faculty in specified strategic areas.
Higher Ed Dive
Republican Sen. Ben Sasse set to become University of Florida president
Rick Seltzer, Senior Editor
Dive Brief:
Sen. Ben Sasse, a Republican from Nebraska, is the sole finalist for the University of Florida presidency. Sasse is expected to resign from the U.S. Senate to lead the university once the institution’s trustees and Florida Board of Governors approve his selection. The pick is notable given intense debate about political influence in the state’s higher education system and its institutions. But Sasse has academic as well as political chops, as he served as the president of a small nonprofit college in Nebraska from 2010 to 2014.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Six Florida A&M Students File Lawsuit Claiming the State Underfunds the HBCU
The law firm Grant & Eisenhofer and noted civil rights attorney Joshua Dubin have filed a class action complaint in federal court in Florida, alleging that the state deliberately and systematically maintains a racially segregated higher-education structure that favors traditionally White schools over historically Black colleges and universities. The suit was filed on behalf of six graduate and undergraduate students at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) in Tallahassee, whose more than 9,000 students make it one of the nation’s largest HBCUs. Their complaint names the state, the board of governors of the State University System, and system chancellor Marshall M. Criser III as defendants.
Inside Higher Ed
U of California Law School Name Change Prompts Lawsuit
By Marjorie Valbrun
The descendants of the founder of the University of California Hastings College of the Law sued California on Tuesday to block the state from changing the name of the institution, the Los Angeles Times reported. The college is the state’s first law school and was founded in 1878 by Serranus Clinton Hastings, the first chief justice on the California Supreme Court, the Times reported. According to a 2020 report reviewing his legacy, Hastings arrived in California during the Gold Rush and “paid for and promoted expeditions in the Eden and Round Valleys of Northern California that resulted in the deaths and displacement of hundreds of Yuki Indians, whose land he later took for himself,” the Times reported. Governor Gavin Newsom last month signed into law Assembly Bill 1936, which allowed California to sever its ties from Hastings’s legacy and change the name of the law school to University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.
Inside Higher Ed
Campus Leaders Clash With Michigan State Trustees
A Title IX compliance review casts new light on the effort to push out Michigan State’s president. But another battle—over allegations of an overstepping board—is also underway.
By Josh Moody
For nearly a month, the fate of Michigan State president Dr. Samuel Stanley Jr. has remained uncertain amid an effort by some members of the Board of Trustees to force him out. Dueling narratives have emerged, with the board claiming that Dr. Stanley has made missteps on Title IX procedures, while the president contends the mistakes belong to the trustees who failed to adequately certify Title IX compliance reports as required by state law. Failure to uphold the Title IX compliance process can prompt state funding cuts—the result of a law passed to strengthen reporting procedures after former Michigan State doctor Larry Nassar was convicted of sexually abusing hundreds of female gymnasts for years.
Cybersecurity Dive
Multifactor authentication is not all it’s cracked up to be
Text message and email-based authentication aren’t just the weakest variants of MFA. Cybersecurity professionals say they are broken.
Matt Kapko, Reporter
The recent spate of phishing attacks against identity-based authentication shows the extent to which MFA defenses can crumble, even under unsophisticated tactics. Cybersecurity professionals and authorities resoundingly agree MFA in any form is better than single-factor authentication, such as a username and password combo, but its strength resides on many variables, most of which are unattended to or unmet. Configurations that depend on email, text messages or unmanaged devices that might contain malware create weaker methods of authentication.