The Griffin Daily News
GSC President gives State of the College address
By Savannah Shockley Assistant Managing Editor
Gordon State College held its fourth annual State of the College Address on Tuesday, delivered by President Dr. Kirk A. Nooks. The focal point of the address was the progress of the college’s five-year strategic plan called Building the Power of We.
Augusta CEO
Augusta University College of Nursing Chair, Mother Create Student Scholarship
Valerie Emerick
A 1952 article in The Augusta Chronicle described the late Marguerite Stark Stelling as a “person of vivid personality and charm.” Stelling had just been named Georgia’s most outstanding clubwoman, for her work with the Junior Women’s Clubs of Georgia. This accomplishment is one of many that inspired Stelling’s granddaughter, Elizabeth NeSmith, PhD, and daughter, Martha Hawkins, to establish the Stelling Leadership Award at Augusta University’s College of Nursing to honor Stelling and support promising nursing PhD students through scholarly leadership development.
Northwest Georgia News
Library system gets grant to help with financial literacy
From staff reports
The Sara Hightower Regional Library System, in partnership with the University of West Georgia’s Center for Economic Education and Financial Literacy, has received a $50,000 grant from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Foundation. Grant funds will be used to create and present financial literacy resources and programming for Floyd, Polk, and Chattooga Counties. The Sara Hightower Regional Library is a six-branch system with the mission to provide information, stimulate thinking, and support and enhance Floyd, Polk, and Chattooga counties’ educational, informational, recreational, and cultural pursuits.
WTOC11
Georgia Southern investing $1.2 million to upgrade campus security cameras
By WTOC Staff
Georgia Southern University is planning a upgrade to its campus security cameras and video technology. The University will upgrade the cameras in the resident halls and other buildings in Statesboro, Savannah and Hinesville to bring the current cameras from analog to a digital platform with a $1.2 million budget. In addition, the new cameras will be placed at entrances to our campuses that can tie into those from other law enforcement agencies.
The Red & Black
Statewide tornado warning drill and UGAAlert test scheduled for Wednesday
Ireland Hayes
A statewide tornado warning drill and UGAAlert test is scheduled for Wednesday, Feb. 8 at approximately 9 a.m., according to a release from the University of Georgia Office of Emergency Preparedness. The test will include a full activation of the UGAAlert emergency notification system along with campus outdoor warning sirens.
Bryan County News
Bryan County’s Gullah-Geechee history presented on Feb. 17
Georgia Southern University professor Dr. Amir Jamal Toure will speak on Bryan County’s Gullah-Geechee history during an event from 7 to 9 p.m., Feb. 17 at the Richmond Hill Chamber of Commerce, 2591 Highway 17, suite 100. Charitable donations will be taken that night.
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Pinky Cole’s Slutty Vegan is headed to Georgia Tech
By Chris Fuhrmeister – Staff Reporter
Aisha “Pinky” Cole is taking Slutty Vegan’s indulgent, meat-free cuisine to Georgia Tech. Slutty Vegan is planning to open a location inside Tech’s John Lewis Student Center in March, the restaurant announced. It will be Slutty Vegan’s first location on a college campus and fourth in metro Atlanta, following restaurants in Westview, Old Fourth Ward, Jonesboro and Duluth. The restaurant will serve an abbreviated, take-out-focused menu of burgers and sandwiches made with plant-based meats.
Newsbreak
Augusta University holds ‘Multicultural Monday’ in honor of Black History Month
By Hannah Litteer
Augusta University is starting off its Black History Month celebrations with Multicultural Monday. The Multicultural Student Engagement Office at AU holds these events twice a month to spotlight diversity and inclusion for different cultures. “I think there’s a lot of close minded people, that just need a little push to expand the horizons of their mind, and this is a good way to at least start that,” says Jadan Daceus, a first-year student at AU. It’s an opportunity for the office to engage with students of all backgrounds and let them know what initiatives it’s planning.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Audit: Retiree tax break saves Georgia seniors $1.37 billion in 2023
By James Salzer
Whether it helps attract wealthy retirees to state is unclear
A tax break on pensions and other retirement income for Georgia seniors will cost the state — and save retirees — about $1.37 billion this year, according to a new state audit report. The report found little support for the notion that the retirement income exclusion played a significant role in persuading wealthy retirees to move to the state — one of its stated objectives — or that such an in-migration of retirees is a significant driver of economic growth. The audit report by Robert Buschman of Georgia State University’s Fiscal Research Center — which provides the state with financial assessments of proposed tax breaks — is part of a series of reviews requested by the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee. The committees are reviewing tax breaks to determine how much they cost the state and whether they do what supporters said they would. Georgia first enacted a tax exclusion for retirees more than 40 years ago. It has increased several times and became a prominent part of Republican Sonny Perdue’s campaign for governor in 2002, when, as an upstart Republican contender facing a Democratic governor, he proposed slashing taxes on seniors.
Atlanta Magazine
Georgia could soon be home to the world’s first vaccine for honeybees
The vaccine would target the “historic bad boy” of bee diseases: American foulbrood, caused by a bacterium that infects larvae with deadly spores and can wipe out an entire colony in days
By Gray Chapman
“It’s just getting harder for bees to do what they do,” Keith Delaplane says. Increasingly, honeybees and other pollinators face survival challenges from climate change, pesticide use, and habitat destruction—in addition to bacteria, parasites, and viruses that can swiftly decimate a hive. But researchers like Delaplane, a professor of entomology at the University of Georgia and the director of UGA’s Bee Program, are working to offer beekeepers tools to combat at least some of these threats. Next year, Georgia—home to one of the biggest commercial beekeeping industries in the country—might also be home to the world’s first vaccine for honeybees.
Savannah CEO
Staff Report
Officials of the Club Car Championship at The Landings Golf & Athletic Club announced today the details surrounding the event’s 2023 Executive Women’s Day presented by Hancock Askew & Co. and Bank of America. The celebration of the power and accomplishments of women in Savannah, GA, and beyond, takes place on Friday, March 24 at The Landings Golf & Athletic Club. Georgia native, active member in communities across her home state, and current regional vice president at Georgia Power, Audrey King will deliver the keynote speech, following an opening Fireside Chat …A panel discussion will close out the inspirational event, featuring: Jennifer Abshire, CEO, Abshire PR; Kendria Lee, Deputy Chief of Staff, Georgia Southern University;
Higher Education News:
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
What is Higher Ed Community Looking for in State of the Union Address?
Jon Edelman
When President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address from the House rostrum Tuesday, he is expected to discuss the economy, to talk about the war in Ukraine, and to make a case for his re-election. But the world of higher education will be listening carefully for what Biden may say about the many issues America’s colleges and universities are facing, several of which have assumed national prominence in recent months.
Inside Higher Ed
ABA Votes to Keep Standardized Tests
The association rejected the idea of allowing law schools to be test optional.
By Scott Jaschik
The American Bar Association voted Monday to reject a proposal to let law schools become test optional. The vote by the association’s governing House of Delegates was a major victory for the producers of the Law School Admission Test and the Graduate Record Examinations, which had lobbied hard against it. This is the second time in five years that a serious effort to end standardized testing as a requirement for ABA-accredited law schools has failed. The vote was a defeat for the Council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar, which proposed lifting the testing requirement starting in the fall of 2025 and had argued that such a move would increase racial diversity at the nation’s law schools.
Inside Higher Ed
CUNY Program for High School Seniors Boosts College Enrollment
By Sara Weissman
New York high school seniors who participated in a City University of New York system mentoring program were seven percentage points more likely to enroll in college, according to a new study by the system’s Office of Applied Research, Evaluation and Data Analytics. The student participants enrolled in CUNY and non-CUNY colleges and universities. The College and Career Bridge for All program started as a pilot in 2017 as a partnership between CUNY and the New York City Public Schools. All public high school seniors in the state became eligible in 2020 in response to the pandemic. The program connects seniors with trained college student mentors who help them with enrollment, financial aid paperwork and course registration, among other tasks.
Higher Ed Dive
NCAA permanently ends SAT, ACT eligibility requirement for Division I, II student-athletes
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Senior Reporter
Dive Brief:
The NCAA last month permanently removed a requirement that first-year Divisions I and II athletes earn a qualifying SAT or ACT score to participate in sports. The shift stems from an NCAA plan to advance racial equity, which entailed studying athletes’ eligibility requirements like admissions testing. NCAA officials had waived these testing mandates starting in 2020, when COVID-19 began to spread and shut down typical exam sites.
The Nation
“Revolutionary” Housing: How Colleges Aim to Support Formerly Incarcerated Students
The number of formerly incarcerated people heading to college is sure to grow. Designing supportive housing for these students could be key to ensuring that they graduate.
By Gail Cornwall
…Colleges and universities are expecting an influx of students like Conner soon. The vast majority of incarcerated people are currently ineligible to receive Pell Grants, federal financial aid for low-income students. But that decades-long ban will end this summer, thanks to legislation passed in 2020. Nicholas Turner, the president of the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform, estimates that more than 767,000 people will be able to apply for funds to pursue a credential or a degree through an in-prison education program. At least 95 percent of the people in American prisons are eventually released, with more than 600,000 released each year. These numbers make it clear that the United States will soon have many more people reentering society prepared to attend classes on a college campus. A significant percentage of these new students will face such substantial barriers that they won’t return for a second semester. That’s a loss for society, for formerly incarcerated individuals, and for the college communities to which they would otherwise have made valuable contributions.
Inside Higher Ed
OPINION
Governor DeSantis is leading an assault on the state’s public higher education institutions, Andrew Gothard writes.
By Andrew Gothard
Governor Ron DeSantis said it himself last year, after U.S. News & World Report again ranked Florida the No. 1 state for higher education: “Florida schools are some of the best in the nation.” He expressed similar sentiments last week, when—from the other side of his mouth—he announced all of the ways he needs to fix those same institutions because they are factories for “indoctrination.” Despite the cross-messaging from Kim Jong-Ron, it is clear that Florida’s colleges and universities are not broken. They will be, however, if the governor’s long-term agenda to dismantle higher education is allowed to succeed. A man who holds degrees from not one but two Ivy League universities, Harvard and Yale, has mounted an assault on our institutions of higher education that will leave them weaker and of significantly less value to the many thousands of students they serve. As those of us in higher education know well, colleges and universities are a public good vital to our communities and our democracy.
Cybersecurity Dive
Hive takedown puts ‘small dent’ in ransomware problem
Successful law enforcement actions against ransomware can only do so much. The threat is omnipresent, lucrative and largely in the shadows.
Matt Kapko, Reporter
The Justice Department’s months-long disruption campaign and seizure of the Hive ransomware group’s IT infrastructure was a significant win in the fight against ransomware, a win for hospitals and schools alike. But experts don’t expect it, or any isolated event, to ultimately diminish the persistent threat and forces that propel ransomware activity.
Cybersecurity Dive
Corporate boards struggle to understand cybersecurity and digital transformation
David Jones, Reporter
Dive Brief:
Corporate board directors are struggling to oversee the rapidly evolving threat of cyberattacks, according to a report from Diligent Institute, which specializes in corporate governance issues. They consider cyber and data security as their most challenging issue. The report, based on a survey of 300 directors, shows corporate boards are struggling to understand cybersecurity and digital transformation issues. Nearly half of board members are pursuing director education programs to prepare themselves for new breach disclosure rules the Securities and Exchange Commission is proposing, according to the report.