University System News
The Albany Herald
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College student gains insight through internship with Rep. Austin Scott
From Staff Reports
When Bryce Roland woke up every morning, the United States Supreme Court building was directly in front of him. During his time this fall in Washington, D.C., on an internship with U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, Roland learned a lot about how the wheels of justice turn and gained insight into just how the government makes thing happen.
GPB
Georgia Tech receives federal grant for renewable Energyshed project
By GPB News Staff
Researchers from Georgia Tech are using funding from the U.S Department of Energy to reimagine Atlanta’s electric power infrastructure. Part of the project includes educating communities about energy planning. The U.S. Department of Energy will take a more regional approach to energy planning in order to meet the needs of communities. Over the next three years, the Georgia Energyshed (G-SHED) project will examine methods of distributing electricity, associated costs, and energy usage through tests and models.
WSBTV
University of North Georgia adds new safety feature to campus safety app
By WSBTV.com News Staff
The University of North Georgia’s Public Safety Department has added a new feature to the LiveSafe app that gives students, faculty and staff more control over their safety on all five UNG campuses. The app now has a panic button that gives users access to more emergency options, including reporting suspicious activity, a “Safe Walk” button and a resources button containing other useful information.
Gwinnett Daily Post
Georgia Gwinnett College receives grant to research diversity and inclusiveness in STEM classrooms
Georgia Gwinnett College will join with 103 higher education institutions nationwide that will research initiatives to advance diversity and inclusiveness practices in STEM education. Funded by a six-year $60 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 3 (IE3) initiative, the institutional teams have been organized into seven “learning community clusters,” (LCC) with each tackling one of the below challenges: Make the content of the introductory science experience more inclusive. Evaluate effective inclusive teaching and use the evaluation in the rewards system including faculty promotion and tenure. Create genuine partnerships between two- and four-year colleges and universities so that transfer students have a more inclusive experience.
Marietta Daily Journal
KSU eyes $60M STEM center at Marietta campus
By Chart Riggall
Among Kennesaw State University’s top priorities for the coming year is moving forward on a 100,000-square-foot, $60-million science, technology, engineering and math building for its Marietta campus. The facility will offer research space for a variety of STEM fields, according to Alex McGee, the university’s vice president for external affairs.
FOX 31
ABAC recognizes students for fall term academic excellence
By FOX 31 Staff
Students who achieved academic excellence in their course work during the fall semester were recently recognized at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. ABAC cites its top academic students each semester on the President’s Honor List, the Dean’s Honor List, and the Distinguished Achievement List.
Other News
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
New federal budget sets aside millions for Georgia projects
By Tia Mitchell
The U.S. House on Friday passed a $1.7 trillion federal spending plan that would fund the government through September, sending the bill to President Joe Biden to sign into law. The package also includes earmarks, including hundreds of millions of dollars in projects requested by Georgia lawmakers. U.S. Reps. Buddy Carter and Barry Loudermilk are the only Georgia Republicans, out of eight, who submitted “community project” requests this year. All six House Democrats and Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock also have earmarks in the package.
Capitol Beat News Service
Audit finds state’s videogame tax credit a worthwhile investment
By Dave Williams
Georgia’s tax credit for videogame developers is paying off for the state’s economy, according to an audit released this week. The General Assembly created the videogame tax credit in 2005 as part of a broader tax credit for film and TV productions. Eligible game developers receive a 20% income tax credit plus an additional 10% if they add the Georgia Entertainment Logo to their game, like the extra credit filmmakers get for displaying the Georgia Peach logo at the end of their movies. An average of 34 videogame projects used the tax credit each year from 2017 to 2021, according to a report the Center for Business Analytics and Economic Research at Georgia Southern University prepared for the state Department of Audits and Accounts.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Water issues, travel woes linger with frigid metro Atlanta weather
By Jozsef Papp
Freezing temperatures Monday from a prolonged arctic blast caused major problems with metro Atlanta water systems and holiday travel as forecasters predicted the potential for overnight snow showers. Gov. Brian Kemp extended the state of emergency on Monday an additional day ahead of what forecasters said could be overnight flurries or a dusting of snow over a broad swath of North Georgia. The order is set to expire on Tuesday at 11:59 p.m. Georgia Department of Transportation said crews will be monitoring throughout Monday night and Tuesday morning and will be prepared to treat roads as needed.
See also:
Forsyth County News
UPDATE: Boil water advisory continues after outages
By Kelly Whitmire
Fast Company
How the pandemic ushered in a new era of hybrid homeschooling
By Greg Toppo
Since the start of the pandemic, public school enrollment has crashed—from fall 2019 to fall 2020, it dropped by 1.4 million students, or 3%, the largest single-year decline since World War II, according to federal data released last spring. While educators are trying to figure out how to bring these families back, researchers are starting to find them persisting in unusual spaces. Many are relying on a type of homeschooling made popular when school closures became widespread in 2020.
Atlanta Inno
Here are the Atlanta startups that laid off workers in 2022
By Zach Armstrong
After a year when new, $1 billion companies and record venture capital raises dominated the headlines in Atlanta’s startup ecosystem, layoffs were the main story in 2022. By the beginning of spring, investors shifted their focus from growth to profitability, resulting in a decrease of company valuations by as much as 70%. Companies don’t tend to seek outside capital if their valuation declines from when they previously raised money. Some also opted to restructure their business to cut costs, which oftentimes meant layoffs. That trend is also happening on a national scale — Meta Platforms Inc., Intel Corp. and other major technology companies also announced hiring freezes or layoffs this year.
Atlanta Inno
Where did the unicorns go? $1B startups are getting harder to find
By Jim Dallke
A unicorn, in startup vernacular, was designed as a term to describe a rare event for a young tech company: a $1 billion valuation. But in 2021, unicorns were more ubiquitous than ever. There were a record number of global unicorn startups in 2021, with 596 startups raising rounds at $1 billion valuations or higher, according to Pitchbook. In 2021, there were 340 unicorn deals in the U.S. alone.
KPVI 6
From forces of nature to inflation, stressors have outsized impact on farm families
By Maria M. Lameiras
Farmers are tough. They work long days at physically demanding, often dangerous work and rarely get a break, much less a vacation. But farmers are also resilient, and a multidisciplinary team from the University of Georgia’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UGA Cooperative Extension, UGA School of Social Work and UGA College of Family and Consumer Sciences is working to help farmers handle the hard times through a number of projects, including the Farmer Stress and Suicide: Community Prevention and Intervention program, all under the umbrella of the Rural Georgia: Growing Stronger initiative.
Higher Education News
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Penn State’s Diversity Dilemma
By Oyin Adedoyin
During her first few months as president of Pennsylvania State University, Neeli Bendapudi began to have doubts about a planned multimillion-dollar Center for Racial Justice that had been envisioned by her predecessor, Eric J. Barron, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. Bendapudi’s skepticism, honed over a two-month listening tour, essentially boiled down to a belief that a $3.5-million center that would centralize antiracism research and advise the administration on equity-related policies would not address the university’s most urgent needs. How Bendapudi arrived at and conveyed her decision to scrap the center, through a series of ill-timed, tense, in-person and virtual meetings with a rolling cast of administrators, faculty, and students, has resulted in widespread confusion, roiling protests, and a ubiquitous belief among faculty and students that she is not earnestly committed to racial justice.