USG e-clips for November 1, 2022

University System News:

Dalton Daily Citizen

DSC president to retire

Submitted by Dalton State College

Margaret H. Venable, who has served as the fifth president of Dalton State College since January 2015, has announced she will retire in the summer of 2023. During her eight-year tenure as Dalton State’s first female president, Venable focused the college on providing broad access to high-quality education that transforms lives. Dalton State is ranked No. 23 nationally by Business Insider for Best Return on Investment and nearly two-thirds of graduates last fall completed their degrees without student loans.

The Times

‘It puts UNG on the map’: How students won an international competition against Oxford University

Ben Anderson

As Russia’s war against Ukraine enters its ninth month, a team of students at the University of North Georgia are proposing innovative ways of combating disinformation in the warring countries.

Higher Ed Dive

Colleges have more data than ever. Here are 3 things to consider as they use it.

Higher education institutions house troves of student data. College leaders at Educause’s annual conference shared innovative ways to use it.

Natalie Schwartz, Editor

Student data comes with big promise. With the right kind of data, colleges can understand what’s causing students to leave school without finishing a degree, which students could benefit from more academic advising, and where they should focus their recruiting efforts. But getting access to this type of data — and using it in the right ways — can often be challenging. That was a key theme repeated by this year’s speakers and panelists at industry group Educause’s annual conference, hosted in Denver during the last full week of October. …Below, we rounded up three important trends about using and securing data, according to conference speakers. Improving student success

Georgia State University has developed a reputation for being at the forefront of using student data. The institution is a high-profile adopter of predictive analytics, which can help colleges target services like advising to students who display warning signs, such as missing classes. But the university is also using data, including student grades, to improve its courses.

The Brunswick News

College offers nursing scholarship to honor faculty member

By Lauren McDonald

College of Coastal Georgia recently honored the first two recipients of a scholarship honoring the legacy of a faculty member who passed away in 2021. The Dawana Gibbs Nursing Scholarship is a community-supported scholarship that friends, family, community members, former co-workers, college faculty and staff have given to. The scholarship supports aspiring nurses. College of Coastal Georgia Associate of Science in Nursing students Kevin Howard and Shannon Evertsen are the first recipients of the Dawana Gibbs Nursing Scholarship.

CNHI

ABAC hosts Ala. poet laureate

Ashley M. Jones, poet laureate of Alabama, will be the first of three speakers in the Georgia Poetry Circuit series beginning Nov. 7 at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. Jones will speak at 7 p.m. in Ernest Edwards Hall at ABAC, college officials said in a statement. Each event in the series is free and open to the public with no ticket required.

The Red & Black

Out of state students on why they chose UGA

Gianna Uvari

As application season begins, potential students have been applying to the University of Georgia for fall 2023. However, UGA is starting to look a lot different than it has in past years with an increase in out of state applicants and students, specifically from the Northeast. In 2020, 15% of the incoming class of 2024 were from a state other than Georgia, according to an article from UGAToday. This year, 25% of students admitted in the class of 2026 are from out of state, according to the UGA Undergraduate Admissions website. …One of the main reasons seems to be the increase of the aesthetic of Southern schools and their traditions through the use of social media. …For some out of state freshmen, the weather is another motivator. …Mertz also said she enjoys the football scene that UGA has, compared to other schools she looked at, and it stands out for having competitive academics and a fun student life. The campus food is another attraction students pointed out.

Biomass Magazine

Research team receives $15.8M to modify poplar for bioproducts

By University of Georgia

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Georgia and two partner institutions have been awarded a $15.8 million grant over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to reengineer poplar trees (Populus sp. and hybrids) to be used as a sustainable energy source. The researchers will use state-of the-art biotechnology approaches to breed the trees as a multipurpose crop that can be used for bioenergy, biomaterial and bioproduct alternatives to petroleum-based materials.

The Augusta Chronicle

New Medical College of Georgia physician strengthens fight in war against childhood cancer

Joe Hotchkiss

Not every medical community has a physician who can help fight childhood diseases at the cellular level. Augusta’s medical community does. Dr. Luis Velasquez-Zarate recently joined the faculty of the Medical College of Georgia and Children’s Hospital of Georgia as a pediatric pathologist and cytopathologist.  Pediatric pathology is the study of human disease from before birth through adolescence. Cytopathology is the specialized examination of tissue or fluid to diagnose illnesses.

Times Higher Education

THE podcast: is AI in higher education worth the hype?

Artificial intelligence has a lot of potential for higher education. It can automate onerous tasks for teachers, help researchers leapfrog exercises that require complex computing skills and make higher education more accessible and personalised for students. We may be a long way from understanding exactly how higher education can harness AI and machine learning’s great potential safely, but this episode’s guests say that continuing to test and explore it is the only way to make progress.

Ashok Goel, John F. Wu, Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities, Space Telescope Science Institute, Johns Hopkins University

CNN

Scientists share their ‘gravitational waves’ excitement

Video – Researchers at Georgia Tech tell us about their excitement with the discovery of gravitational waves and what’s next.

Athens Banner-Herald

Here are details on plans for former UGA coach Vince Dooley’s funeral and public celebration

Marc Weiszer

There will be private funeral services for Vince Dooley, the former Georgia football coach and athletic director who died Friday at age 90. A public celebration of the College Football Hall of Famer inductee’s life will be held at a later date, according an obituary shared by UGA early Sunday. Bernstein Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements. The family is requesting in lieu of flowers, that donations be made to the following:  –University of Georgia Libraries. –Georgia Historical Society Vincent J. Dooley Distinguished Fellows Program –Champions Community Foundation 2850 Old Alabama Road, Johns Creek, GA 30022 –The Catholic Center at the University of Georgia

The Florida Times-Union

On-field foes, in-the-field friends: UF, UGA feed the world through crop research

J. Scott Angle & Nick Place Guest columnists

We won’t give an inch to each other in this weekend’s big game in Jacksonville, but tomorrow the University of Florida and University of Georgia return to working together on thousands of acres as they create regional prosperity through plants. If you love peaches and peanuts, drink OJ for breakfast, wear Gator or Bulldog T-shirts, or live in a wood-frame house, you’re part of the reason that the food, agriculture and natural resources sector is Georgia’s No. 1 industry and second only to tourism in Florida. Even the sky’s no limit for what our states’ farmers and agricultural scientists can achieve together. For the last five years, they’ve been developing a new regional industry based on carinata, an oilseed crop that gets turned into jet fuel.

Savannah Morning News

What Georgia residents need to know about flood insurance prices and why they need it

Marisa Mecke

For the average homeowner, few activities sound more tedious than spending an afternoon reviewing insurance policies. Deciding what kind of risks your home has and how much you’re willing to dish out on a possible incident is a growing concern for many Georgians as storms and flooding become more frequent. Rising tides, rising risks

Storms are becoming stronger than they once were, and scientists note they are slowing down, causing storms to dump more water on concentrated areas and worsening floods. Coupled with other climate change related threats like sea-level rise in coastal communities and development, which can pave over soils that help absorb flood water, insurance agencies are forecasting more flooding, and more risk for their customers and businesses.…Counting the costs

According to the experts, insurance — and its prices — all boil down to risk. Rob Hoyt is chair of the Risk Management and Insurance Department at the University of Georgia. He said that storm severity and flooding is a major consideration for insurers now more than ever and it is going to hit Georgians in the pocketbook.

The Tuscaloosa News

Skeletons are for more than Halloween | ECOVIEWS

Whit Gibbons Whit Gibbons is professor of zoology and senior biologist at the University of Georgia’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory

I have written before about the perfect Halloween-appropriate coffee table book. “The Skeleton Revealed: An Illustrated Tour of the Vertebrates” by Steve Huskey (Johns Hopkins University Press) remains an ideal choice. A superb blend of science and art, the book simultaneously educates and enthralls. Over the course of many years, Huskey prepared all the skeletons himself from vertebrates found around the world. They are displayed in numerous museums, including the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the California Academy of Sciences and Miami’s Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science. His booklets readers marvel at amazing skeletal exhibits all in one place. This extraordinary book provides a comparative and seldom-emphasized perspective on the inner structure of vertebrates: fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. …The book illustrates the elegant architecture of skeletons, each designed for its own purpose in life.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ex-UGA student who pleaded guilty in Ponzi scheme accused of new fraud

By Zachary Hansen – J. Scott Trubey

SEC alleges man who defrauded investors from Athens fraternity house took part in another scam before reporting to prison

A former University of Georgia student who pleaded guilty three years ago to running a Ponzi scheme from his Athens fraternity house has been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a separate civil matter of defrauding brokerage firms before reporting to prison. Syed Arham Arbab, 25, and five others are accused of operating a “free-riding” scheme from May 2019 to January 2021, in which the group made more than $2 million in fictitious deposits from empty or underfunded bank accounts into trading accounts at two brokerages, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Atlanta.

WGAU Radio

UGA’s Tate Center is new early voting venue

By Tim Bryant

With just one week before election day in Athens, the University of Georgia becomes a venue for early voting: UGA’s Tate Student hosts advance voting today, tomorrow, and Thursday. Early voting ends Friday in Athens and around the state. Election day itself is November 8, one week from today.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Capitol crowd’s money bet on the familiar faces: Republicans Kemp, Jones

By James Salzer

Before this year’s Republican primary, veteran lobbyist Trip Martin and his partners gave about $14,000 to the lieutenant governor campaign of Georgia Senate leader Butch Miller, a car dealer favored by many Capitol interests. But after Miller was bested by fellow Republican state Sen. Burt Jones in the primary, Martin and his team of lobbyists quickly got on board. They gave at least $8,000 to Jones’ campaign, and his clients chipped in about $135,000 more to the candidate’s leadership fund. …Nonpartisan checks Martin remembers in 1990 when powerful House Speaker Tom Murphy backed Lauren “Bubba” McDonald for governor in the Democratic primary. Nobody at the Statehouse wanted to be on Murphy’s bad side. But McDonald got about 6% of the vote, and Miller eventually won in a runoff. That meant any Capitol interest who had backed Murphy’s candidate had to try to make up with the future governor. Twelve years later, lobbyists were slipping checks under the door of Republican Sonny Perdue’s campaign headquarters the night he upset Barnes, becoming the state’s first GOP governor since Reconstruction. Lobbyists and business associations aren’t the only ones with connections giving to the incumbents. Democrats say Kemp’s campaigns have collected $4 million from people he appointed to various state boards, much of it from members of the coveted panels that run the University System of Georgia, recommend judges for him to appoint and govern the Department of Economic Development. In the months before they were appointed by Kemp to the Board of Regents, two new members and their families donated about $300,000 to his campaign efforts. They recently chipped in an additional $150,000.

Higher Education News:

Higher Ed Dive

Education Department releases final rules on borrower defense to repayment, closed school discharge

Rick Seltzer, Senior Editor

The U.S. Department of Education on Monday released final rules affecting key parts of the federal student loan system, including two programs that can clear some borrowers’ debts:  borrower defense to repayment and closed-school loan discharges. The changes won’t just affect student loan borrowers. They’ll shift the landscape for colleges and for-profit operators, in some cases by adding regulatory requirements and in others by modifying when they could be held liable for their actions. Department officials cast the new rules as replacing a broken student loan system with one that limits red tape, holds problematic colleges responsible for their behavior, and makes borrowing cheaper.

Inside Higher Ed

Where the Tech Troubles Are

Students value connectivity, convenience and being consulted about technology but have little concern about protecting institutional networks.

By Nancy Mann Jackson

Student interest will continue to grow when it comes to virtual courses and remote learning options for live courses, the desire for creating richer academic and on-campus experiences, and new technology options. Yet, on many campuses, technology dollars are limited, with a wide variety of initiatives competing for that funding. Even at higher ed institutions that value student input in making allocation decisions, student desires must be weighed against other priorities, such as cybersecurity. “Campus IT dollars are stretched more than ever before at our institution,” says Bill Balint, chief information officer at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “We have to figure out what initiatives are truly important to student success—and remember that a lack of proper investment in cybersecurity carries the most risk, even if students don’t perceive it. Cyberbreaches shut down campuses.” More than one-third of college undergrads believe students should have a significant amount of input on the tech investments their institutions make, and an additional half think they should have some input, according to a Student Voice survey conducted Sept. 19 to 27 by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse with support from Kaplan.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Andrew Young, McGraw Hill team up for HBCU scholarship program

By Ernie Suggs, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By the time Andrew Young graduated from Howard University in 1951, he estimates that he probably never spent more than $400 a semester for his education and graduated debt-free. Today, according to the U.S. Department of Education, the average cost of college in the United States is $35,550 per student per year, including books, supplies, and daily living expenses. “The challenge today is how do you get an education and get a job to help pay you to pay back all of that money you borrowed that is going to leave you in debt,” the former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador asked. “College should not destroy your credit rating and set you back before you start.” In an effort to assist students who plan to attend Black colleges, on Friday, Young was on hand for the launch of the new Andrew Young HBCU Scholarship Program. …McGraw Hill Education has poured an initial $50,000 into the scholarships, which will fund 10 first-year students next fall who plan to attend a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).

Higher Ed Dive

OPINION

How to fix segregation by college major and in the workforce

Two experts at the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality outline ways to address growing racial and gender segregation by field of study.

By Laura Tatum and Natalia Cooper

Every year, millions of college students make big decisions about enrollment, class schedules and major declarations — all with significant implications for their futures. Decisions about majors are not just a matter of academic likes or dislikes. Students’ life experiences, education systems and institutions, and wider societal factors — including sexism and racism — shape these decisions, and these factors ultimately segregate students by gender and race. Over the past three decades, segregation across groups of majors, or fields of study, between women of color and White men has increased. This segregation threatens equal opportunity and contributes to a segregated workforce — which negatively impacts wages, job security and career mobility for millions of workers, especially women and Black and Brown people. Even as topline statistics on diversity in overall enrollment improve, higher education institutions shouldn’t miss critical opportunities to ensure that women and students of color are aware of, feel welcome in, and can participate in all fields of study.

Higher Ed Dive

Supreme Court justices question when race-conscious college admissions can end

During oral arguments for two highly watched lawsuits, conservative justices also repeatedly asked the parties to define diversity.

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Senior Reporter

Some colleges have credited race-conscious admissions policies with helping construct diverse student bodies — but conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices Monday repeatedly turned to a possible expiration date on these programs. The high court heard five hours of oral arguments in closely watched lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill challenging the institutions’ race-conscious admissions practices. Legal experts forecast the Supreme Court, pushed to the right by former President Donald Trump’s three nominees, will strike down decades of legal precedent enabling colleges and universities to account for an applicant’s race if it is one of a multitude of factors they consider in the admissions process.

See also:

Inside Higher Ed

Skepticism on Affirmative Action

Most of the Supreme Court appears impatient for its end. But the justices appointed by Democrats made the case for the practice.

Inside Higher Ed

‘We Will Not Go Back’

Hundreds show support for affirmative action programs as Supreme Court weighs their fate.

Inside Higher Ed

Survey: Dobbs Ruling May Impact Where Med Students Study