The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kemp reappoints two members to Georgia Board of Regents
By Vanessa McCray
Gov. Brian Kemp reappointed two members to the Georgia Board of Regents. The governor announced Wednesday that Erin Hames and James Hull will remain on the board, a move that brings consistency to the 19-member board that oversees Georgia’s 26 public colleges and universities. Hames and Hull’s new terms will run through Jan. 1, 2030, according to the University System of Georgia’s website.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bill would make more Georgia students eligible for need-based aid
By Vanessa McCray
It could be a bit easier for Georgia’s low-income college students to receive need-based financial aid under new legislation filed this week. House Bill 249, introduced by Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, would allow students to apply earlier in their academic studies for so-called “completion grants” aimed at helping students get to graduation. Last year, lawmakers passed House Bill 1435, which provided up to $2,500 in need-based financial aid to undergraduate students to help pay for their final credits. To receive the assistance, students had to have earned at least 80% of the credits they needed to complete their degrees.
41NBC
GCSU’s graduate online nursing program named state’s best
A Middle Georgia nursing program is making headlines.
By Brick Nelson
A Middle Georgia nursing program is making headlines. The Graduate Nursing Program at Georgia College and State University has been named the state’s top graduate online nursing program by U.S. News and World Report. …Interim Director of the School of Nursing at Georgia College, Dr. Josie Doss, attributes the program’s 100% certification pass rate for family nurse practitioner graduates to the dedicated attention of the faculty members.
The Red & Black
RISE gives UGA students from rural communities ‘home away from home’
Dillon Edelson
While it is not uncommon for a new college student to arrive on a campus knowing almost no one, students from rural communities face a unique challenge, sometimes trading in a farmhouse for a high rise dormitory building. This is the reality for many students at the University of Georgia who pack up their things for college and go from a small town to a bustling city. Rural Students Igniting Success in Education, or RISE, is designed to help these students find a community by giving them a “home away from home.” Not only do they foster community with fun group events like arts and crafts or ice skating, but they also provide students with helpful resources like resume workshops, headshots, scholarship information, professional development and more.
Athens CEO
UGA Regional Leadership Program Connects Middle Georgia
Charlie Bauder
Created in 2015 as a partnership between the Middle Georgia Regional Commission and the University of Georgia J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, a unit of UGA Public Service and Outreach, the Middle Georgia Regional Leadership Champions program has set out to build a network of people with the leadership skills and understanding to work across geographic boundaries to build a stronger middle Georgia. As a participant in the 2020 Middle Georgia Regional Leadership Champions program, Jonathan Pitts and his classmates learned how poverty affected the 11 counties around Macon that make up the Middle Georgia Regional Commission.
Augusta Business Daily
CSRA companies to represent at AU job fair tomorrow
By Josh Heath
More than 70 local, regional, and national companies will attend the Augusta University’s annual job fair tomorrow. Applying for a job is often impersonal and typically consists of filling out a detailed application a prospective employer may not even read, but this is an opportunity for students, alumni, and the general public to get in front of area employers under the same roof. Tomorrow, the university’s Career Services office will host its annual Jaguar Job Fair from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Christenberry Fieldhouse located at 3109 Wrightsboro Road in Augusta.
Athens CEO
University of Georgia to Host 2023 SEC MBA Case Competition
David Dodson
The University of Georgia Terry College of Business will host the 10th annual Southeastern Conference MBA Case Competition from March 30-April 1. The SEC MBA Case Competition, established in 2013, provides opportunities for SEC business schools to showcase their students’ skills at solving simulated, real-world problems faced by a large corporation. Previous corporate sponsors have included Valvoline, Aflac, AT&T, Regions Financial and FedEx. This year’s case company will be revealed at a later date.
WGAU Radio
UGA campus cops, ACCPD conduct joint training exercises
By Tim Bryant
Officials in the University of Georgia and Athens-Clarke County Police departments are assessing the results of joint training exercises conducted at the Athens Church. Police simulated an active threat at the sprawling church complex on Huntington Road in Athens.
From Kristen Linthicum, UGA Today…
More than 100 emergency responders, staff, and volunteers from across the University of Georgia and Athens-Clarke County arrived on the campus of Athens Church with one objective: work across departments to respond to a simulated crisis.
Gwinnett Daily Post
PHOTOS: Georgia Gwinnett College diversity dinners
Photos by Rod Reilly/GGC
In all cultures, food is a way to connect with others when it is shared. The meal is a staple feature that encourages understanding, cooperation and togetherness. Georgia Gwinnett College is harnessing that concept to celebrate its differences and to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in the higher education space through a series of dinners that began Feb. 1.
WALB
New research aims to help the South Georgia peanut industry
By Alicia Lewis
On Wednesday, the Georgia Peanut Commission gave over 50 southwest Georgia peanut growers, professors and students the chance to showcase the latest reports and newest information available on peanut research projects. Peanut growers learned about new technology, research and data that can be used to help manage viruses and diseases found in peanuts. Things like fungicides that farmers can apply to their crops were discussed. As well as the breakdown of culture practices to help peanut farmers, economically, produce more crops. For breeders, they mentioned a robot that is being created to help improve their output.
WVTM
A vibrating pill? It could be a drug-free relief option for chronic constipation
By Brenda Goodman, CNN
People who struggle with chronic constipation have a new drug-free option to help get things moving again. It’s a first-of-its-kind capsule about the size of a regular pill — but instead of releasing medication after it’s swallowed, it vibrates to stimulate the colon. The capsules, called Vibrant, was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in August but just became available for doctors to prescribe this week.
Athens Banner-Herald
Here’s how UGA athletics did financially after winning the 2021 football national title
Marc Weiszer
Georgia athletics posted an operating surplus of just over $34.0 million from its fiscal year 2022 NCAA financial report, a 12-month period that included the school’s first football national championship in 41 years. The UGA Athletic Association reported $203,048,566 in operating revenue and $169,026,503 in operating expenses for the fiscal year that started July 1, 2021 and ended June 30, 2022, according to information it released Wednesday to the Athens Banner-Herald through an open records request. That’s about $33.9 million more in revenue than a year earlier and about $46.3 million more in expenses.
Athens Banner-Herald
Marc Weiszer and Steve Berkowitz USA TODAY
Georgia football is recruiting at an elite level and its athletic department is sparing no expense for the two-time national champions. The Bulldogs spent just over $4.5 million on football recruiting during the school’s 2022 fiscal year, according to an NCAA financial report the athletics department provided Wednesday to the Athens Banner-Herald in response to an open-records request. No other program at a Power Five public school has come close to that number so far for 2022.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
House Education Committee Ready to Tackle Short-Term Pell
The first hearing of the new House Committee on Education and the Workforce featured talk about the return on investment of a college education, expanding the Pell Grant to cover short-term programs and the need to provide more access to postsecondary programs.
By Katherine Knott
Expanding Pell Grants to cover short-term programs is a top priority for North Carolina representative Virginia Foxx and her House Committee on Education and Workforce. The possible Pell Grant expansion was one of the main topics of discussion at the committee’s first full hearing Wednesday. Foxx, the Republican who chairs the committee, is sponsoring a bill to expand the Pell Grant, and similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate. The grants are currently restricted to programs that run at least 15 weeks long, but the proposed bills would lower that threshold to at least eight weeks.
Higher Ed Dive
Students who met with counselors more likely to apply for college aid
Kara Arundel, Senior Reporter
Dive Brief:
Students were more likely to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid and receive need-based grants when they met with high school counselors about college financial aid, according to a longitudinal study of more than 23,000 students who were 9th graders in 2009, a data point from the National Center for Education Statistics released last month shows. For students planning on college, 87% who met with a counselor completed the FAFSA, compared to 59% of those who did not meet with a counselor. The report highlighting the role counselors play comes against a backdrop of national school counselor shortages at the same time some states and districts are using emergency pandemic funding to boost counseling programs.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
A Return to the ‘Normal-Normal’: Colleges Ready to Adjust to End of Pandemic Emergencies
Jon Edelman
As the COVID-19 pandemic dawned in Spring 2020, the federal government granted institutions of higher education a series of waivers and flexibilities that allowed them to continue functioning under radically different conditions. Schools were allowed to pay work-study wages for students whose employment was interrupted by COVID, for example, and didn’t have to count incomplete classes due to COVID in financial aid calculations. Domestic students were freed from financial aid verification requirements, and some international students were allowed to skip the visa interview process. Now, with the Biden administration’s announcement that the national and public health emergencies declared in response to COVID will end May 11th, all of those accommodations are coming to an end, and institutions will have to make an adjustment.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Hybrid Learning Connects More Students With Opportunity
Liann Herder
COVID-19 pushed higher education online almost overnight. The field transformed itself, troubleshooting on the go to make sure students could succeed while quarantining at home. Federal funding was heavily invested in resources that connected students with technology and high-speed internet. As the pandemic has begun to taper, many institutions are transitioning back to fully-in-person education—but not all. The 22 colleges and 88 campuses within the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), and four-year North Carolina Central University (NCCU) have continued to embrace technology as a tool to improve and expand educational opportunities, especially for nontraditional students, through the creation of hyflex or hybrid courses. These programs offer their students options to attend class in person, online, or asynchronously.
Higher Ed Dive
Free college keeps growing — at the state level
Elected officials are calling for new programs and expansions. Policy wonks sometimes critique design choices, but free remains a powerful hook.
By Lilah Burke, Contributor
In 2021, Vermont launched a new free college program, the 802 Opportunity grant. The program offered free tuition at the Community College of Vermont for students from families with an annual household income under $50,000. In the first year, 2,000 students used the scholarship to pay for college. That number increased 10% the next year. Most were first in their families to go to college…. Legislators too seem to think the initiative is going well. Last year, they voted to expand eligibility for the scholarship, which now covers those with incomes up to $75,000, or half of all Vermonters…It’s a trend happening across the nation. After the defeat of President Joe Biden’s nationwide free community college plan a year ago, some momentum for the idea moved to the state level. Now, more states are jump-starting their own programs, and ones that launched last year are looking at potential expansions.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
APLU and Temple University Releases Guide on Higher Ed Completion Grant Implementation
Arrman Kyaw
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and Temple University have released a guide for higher ed institutions on how to implement completion grants for their students. Completion grants are funds given to students who need them to finish out their degree or academic journey. The APLU and its sister organization, the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, partnered with Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice for a five-year, randomized control trial (RCT) to study completion grants at 11 APLU institutions, an endeavor funded through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s (ED) Institute for Education Science (IES).
Cybersecurity Dive
Half of executives expect an increase in cyber incidents targeting financial data: report
David Jones, Reporter
Dive Brief:
Almost half of company executives expect an increased number of cyber incidents targeting accounting and financial data during the next year, according to a poll from the Deloitte Center for Controllership. If those concerns are realized it would indicate a significant rise in threat activity. More than one-third of executives said their organization’s accounting and financial data was targeted during the previous 12 months. The poll also revealed a disconnect between the level of concern and the level of preparedness across organizations. Just 1 in 5 respondents said their accounting and finance teams work closely with their cybersecurity teams.
Higher Ed Dive
1 in 5 Black students feel discriminated against in their postsecondary programs
Laura Spitalniak, Associate Editor
Dive Brief:
Just over 1 in 5 Black college students, 21%, reported being discriminated against in their academic programs, according to a new joint report from the Lumina Foundation and Gallup. That’s compared to 15% of all other students. Black learners enrolled in short-term credential programs were twice as likely to report discrimination compared to their peers seeking associate and bachelor’s degrees. A third of Black learners in certificate programs said they frequently or occasionally were discriminated against, versus 16% of those seeking associate degrees and 14% of those seeking bachelor’s degrees. The type of institution a student attends matters too. A third of Black students enrolled at for-profit colleges, 34%, reported experiencing discrimination there, compared to 23% of Black students at private nonprofits and 17% attending public institutions.
Inside Higher Ed
Texas Governor Warns Against DEI in Hiring Practices
Texas governor Greg Abbott is taking aim at diversity, equity and inclusion practices in hiring. The move comes shortly after Florida announced reforms to defund DEI efforts.
By Josh Moody
Governor Greg Abbott is cracking down on public institutions that use diversity, equity and inclusion practices in hiring, according to a memo from the governor’s office obtained by The Texas Tribune. Written by Abbott’s chief of staff, Gardner Pate, the memo warns that using DEI policies in hiring violates both federal and state employment laws by illegally discriminating against “certain demographic groups,” though it does not specify which ones.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
OPINION
Should African Americans Trust the College Board with African American Studies?
Ivory A. Toldson (Dr. Ivory A. Toldson is the national director of Education Innovation and Research for the NAACP. He is also a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and editor-in-chief of The Journal of Negro Education.)
The College Board’s decision to revise its African American Studies curriculum has come under fire from many who argue that the changes are motivated by political pressure rather than pedagogical considerations. The new curriculum, which is stripped of much of the subject matter that the DeSantis administration opposed, has been criticized for erasing the experiences of Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, reparations, the queer experience, and Black feminism. Education is a center of much vitriolic partisan debate in America. However, David Coleman, head of The College Board, insists that the changes were not due to political pressure. He has stated that the revisions were made after input from professors and in accordance with “longstanding A.P. principles.” ETS supported the College Board. Whether or not one believes that the changes to the African American Studies curriculum are justified, it is clear that they will have far-reaching implications for the way that race is taught in America.
Inside Higher Ed
OPINION
ChatGPT Is a Plague Upon Education
What winter of 2020 was for COVID-19, winter of 2023 is for ChatGPT—and higher education will never be the same, Jeremy Weissman writes.
By Jeremy Weissman
…Today we are facing a new sort of plague, one that threatens our minds more than our bodies. ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chat bot that can write college-level essays, is going viral. The New York Times reports that the hashtag #chatgpt has surpassed well over half a billion views on TikTok. A lecturer at an Australian university found that a fifth of her students had already used ChatGPT on their exams. Scores of Stanford University students reportedly used it on their fall 2022 final exams mere weeks after its release. A critical mass, a superspreader event, is clearly forming. Yet as in the early days of COVID, most educators have yet to fully grasp the stark reality of the tsunami that is about to hit the educational system. While headlines warning about ChatGPT have populated the news cycle daily for more than a month now, most educators have yet to really feel the brunt of this viral sensation directly.
Cybersecurity Dive
Unsophisticated ransomware campaign targeting VMware ripe for copycats
Ransomware doesn’t typically hit thousands of potential victims at once. “All of it’s very strange,” one security researcher said.
Matt Kapko, Reporter
A series of ransomware attacks exploiting a known VMware vulnerability bears the markings of an unsophisticated campaign, according to researchers. And yet, the number of potential victims and damage caused by the ransomware spree is growing. A list of victims linked to corresponding IP addresses surpassed 3,800 Tuesday, according to the latest data compiled by Ransomwhere, an open-source ransomware payment tracker. Four payments valued at a total of $88,000 have been made thus far, according to Censys data shared by Ransomwhere on Twitter. More than 1 in 4 of the compromised IP addresses are hosted in France, but the attacks, which started Friday, span multiple countries in Europe, Canada, Asia and the U.S.