Albany Herald
Albany State recognizes achievements of nearly 1,000 students on Honors Day
By Alan Mauldin
For Albany State University senior Adia Sakura-Lemessy, it was a busy day walking to the stage to accept the five awards she picked up during the Honors Day Ceremony on Thursday. The computer science major was one of more than 960 students who were honored during the program held at the university’s West Campus, with 38 of those recognized for maintaining a 4.0 GPA.
See also:
Albany Herald
PHOTOS: Albany State holds 2023 Honors Day Ceremony
Fox 28 Savannah
Georgia Southern receives military-friendly designation 11 years in a row
by Christian Felt
Georgia Southern University has once again been ranked one of the nation’s best schools for military-connected students. A small veteran-owned business known as VIQTORY Inc. creates a military-friendly school list each year, evaluating more than 8,000 colleges nationwide. Georgia Southern was among 250 schools to receive a gold ranking making it the 11th year in a row they’ve been recognized.
Athens CEO
Georgia MBA Ranked a Top 5 Global Value for the Money by Financial Times
David Dodson
An MBA from the University of Georgia isn’t just valued by employers, it’s a world-class value for the money that is setting up graduates for career success, according to the Financial Times 2023 ranking of global MBA programs. The Georgia MBA program at the Terry College of Business was ranked a top 5 educational value in the crowded field of full-time MBA programs worldwide. For its rating, the Financial Times considered the time and cost to complete the degree, financial aid awarded to MBA students, and post-graduate salaries to measure students’ return on investment.
WJCL
The national organization is known to many around the country as ‘Call Me Mister’
Kyron Neveaux, Reporter
Georgia Southern University’s college of education has partnered with Clemson University to bring “Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models.” The national organization is known to many as “Call Me Mister.” The organization focuses on getting minority men into the field of education. Georgia Southern has a cohort of four; Ozellious Roberts, Isaiah Jobe-Winn, Jordan Moreno, and James Jenkins III. The students involved learn ways to enhance response and teaching practices.
WALB
ASU offering new master of athletic training degree program
By Fallon Howard
A new master of science in athletic training program is coming to Albany State University. This will be a first for Southwest Georgia and a way to keep students learning in the Good Life City. Statistics show that only three other schools have this program in the state. Those who choose to pursue this degree will be able to use their transferable skills from their undergrad degree.
Savannah CEO
Georgia Southern Recognized as Top 100 Degree Producer for Diverse Students
Staff Report
Georgia Southern University has ranked in the top providers nationally for degrees conferred to diverse students among higher education institutions. For several years, Diverse Issues In Higher Education has produced the Top 100 Degree Producers rankings of the institutions that confer the most degrees to diverse students. The data was reported at the end of 2022 for the previous year of 2020-2021.
yahoo!news
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College band director receives Georgia Music Educators award
The Albany Herald, Ga.
The Georgia Music Educators Association recently presented Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College Band Director Deborah Bradley its highest recognition award during the group’s state conference in Athens. GMEA President Matthew Koperniak called Bradley to the stage of the Classic Center to present first a “Certificate of Service” that denotes a music career of 40 years. The second call to the stage, in front of a packed house of music educators, music dealers and students, was to receive the GMEA’s highest honor: the “Distinguished Career Award.”
Albany CEO
Abbie DeLoach Foundation Seeks Partners to Join #HandsFreeForAbbie Campaign in April
Staff Report
The Abbie DeLoach Foundation (ADF) encourages organizations, community partners, individuals and students to join its #HandsFreeForAbbie pledge campaign starting in April to coincide with Distracted Driving Awareness month. The hashtag was created in honor of Abbie, who was one of five Georgia Southern University nursing students to lose their lives on April 22, 2015 due to a distracted driver. The HandsFreeForAbbie.com website has a variety of tools for individuals and organizations to take the pledge and share it with others with downloadable pledge sheets, and social media images to help others make a commitment and make a pledge.
Morning AgClips
Georgia 4-H pilots innovative ag tech program
part of the national 4-H Tech Changemakersinitiative.
High school 4-H’ers are bridging technology gaps in the agriculture community with Georgia’s new 4-H Ag Tech Changemakers program, part of the national 4-H Tech Changemakersinitiative. Students trained as 4-H Tech Changemakers create educational opportunities for adults to learn essential workforce-related technology. Georgia 4-H created the 4-H Ag Tech Changemakers program to expand the subject area coverage to include agriculture-specific skills, and youth take the skills they learn to provide outreach programming to their local farming communities. University of Georgia precision agriculture specialists developed and facilitated comprehensive training to start the program year in September 2022.
WTOC
Georgia Southern’s study abroad program connects Savannah to Ireland
By Dal Cannady
Georgia Southern University will have a big presence in the St. Patrick’s Day parade Friday but the school’s connection to Ireland lasts all year round. An ocean and nearly 4,000 miles separate Southeast Georgia and Wexford, Ireland. University leaders say they’re building a relationship linked through the past, present, and future. Dr. Howard Keeley says GSU’s interest in Ireland started more than a decade ago with the Irish influence in Savannah.
Marietta Daily Journal
State retirement fund managers confident of little impact from bank failures
Rebecca Grapevine
Georgia’s Teachers Retirement System (TRS) lost about $33 million when two large banks – Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank – failed earlier this month. TRS lost $18 million from the SVB failure and $13 million from the Signature Bank failure, TRS Executive Director Buster Evans said Thursday. But the loss is just a sliver of a fraction of the TRS’ $88 billion in total assets – 0.04% — and is not expected to impact the overall health of the fund or retired employees’ benefits. “The impact would be pretty negligible,” Evans said. “Our portfolio is very diverse and we are not dependent on any one industry for performance. Year-to-date, our fund is up.” The Employees’ Retirement System of Georgia (ERSGA) also took a relatively small loss of $7.1 million from the two bank failures, Executive Director Jim Potvin told Capitol Beat. As at TRS, the loss represents just 0.04% of the ERGSA’s total assets of $17.7 billion. The TRS administers the fund from which the pensions of teachers and many University System of Georgia employees are paid retirement benefits. ERGSA administers a number of retirement plans for state employees, including retired judges and state legislators.
Savannah Business Journal
Staff Report
Georgia Southern University’s Business Innovation Group (BIG) has hired Patrick Woock, Ph.D., to lead its efforts in supporting south Georgia entrepreneurs as the unit’s new director of business incubation. In this newly created position, Woock will be responsible for continuing to grow the footprint that Georgia Southern has already established in the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. He will work in the southeast region through BIG’s Innovation Incubators (I2) and around the state through the Georgia Enterprise Network for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (GENIE) program.
Vice
Big Tech Is Now Developing Powerful AI Brains for Real-World Robots
Building on recent AI advancements to allow robots to complete tasks autonomously in the real world is a “major step forward,” researchers say.
By Chloe Xiang
Large deep learning models like OpenAI’s GPT-3 have ushered in a golden age for chatbots, but what about physical robots? Both Google and Microsoft have now announced research into applying similar AI models to robots, with impressive results. Researchers at Google and the Berlin Institute of Technology have released an AI model called PaLM-E this week that combines language and vision capabilities to control robots, allowing them to complete tasks autonomously in the real world—from getting a chip bag from a kitchen to sorting blocks by color into corners of a rectangle. …Danfei Xu, an Assistant Professor at the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, told Motherboard that PaLM-E is a big step forward for Google’s robotics research.
EurekAlert!
Bigger flowers, greater rewards: Plants adapt to climate disruptions to lure pollinators
There’s been a well-documented shift toward earlier springtime flowering in many plants as the world warms. The trend alarms biologists because it has the potential to disrupt carefully choreographed interactions between plants and the creatures—butterflies, bees, birds, bats and others—that pollinate them. But much less attention has been paid to changes in other floral traits, such as flower size, that can also affect plant-pollinator interactions, at a time when many insect pollinators are in global decline. In a study published online in the journal Evolution Letters, two University of Michigan biologists and a University of Georgia colleague show that wild populations of the common morning glory in the southeastern United States increased the size of their flowers between 2003 and 2012.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Opinion: Here are critical questions we should be asking about ChatGPT
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Stephanie Jones is the University of Georgia Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor, Mary Frances Early College of Education. In this guest column, she raises questions about the implications of artificial intelligence, including the widely debated ChatGPT, in our society, workplaces and classrooms.
By Stephanie Jones
ChatGPT is just another iteration of artificial intelligence in our lives, albeit a world-changing one.. While this model has caused a panic about students “cheating” on assignments, I largely stand with folks who have written about the importance of teaching with the program and rethinking what it means to be together in a shared classroom space.
WJBF
AU hosting Writers Weekend March 16th-18th
by: Karlton Clay
Augusta University will be hosting a writers weekend. The weekend event will begin on Thursday, March 16th starting at 7 P.M. with Reading, Conversation, and Book Singing with Elissa Bassist and Chris Beiden at the Columbia County Library on Evans Town Center Blvd. On Friday, March 17th, the Humor Writing with Elissa Bassist Workshop will take place at 10 A.M. at University Hall 170 on the AU Summerville Campus, and the Writers in the Ring: A Competitive Reading will take place at the Doris Building n Broad Street at 7 P.M.
Flagpole
Georgia House Passes Bill Limiting Transgender Care
by Ross Williams
Republican House lawmakers have approved a controversial measure limiting the care doctors can provide transgender patients under the age of 18. The bill was unexpectedly teed up for a vote early Thursday morning and put before lawmakers two hours later. Under it, doctors will be allowed to prescribe minors drugs that block the effects of puberty, but they cannot use surgical or hormone treatments for gender dysphoria. … Matéo Penado, a Hall County transgender man, said he fears the legislation will lead to transgender youths experiencing more ostracization. … The 22-year-old Georgia State University student worries that if the bill gets Kemp’s signature, those who have supportive families will now face discrimination from the state.
See also:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Opinion: An open letter to Gold Dome on transgender bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jalen Carter pleads no contest to traffic charges from fatal crash
By Chip Towers
Former Georgia star defensive lineman Jalen Carter resolved the traffic charges he received as a result of his involvement in the fatal car crash that took the lives of a teammate and a UGA recruiting staffer in January. In an agreement reached with Athens-Clarke County prosecutors Thursday, Carter entered pleas of no contest to charges of racing and reckless driving. He was sentenced to 12 months probation, a $1,000 fine and 80 hours of community service. He also must complete a state-approved defensive driving course, according to his Athens attorney, Kim Stephens.
Other News:
InsiderAdvantage
Logistics Summit talks innovation, Georgia as a powerhouse
by Baker Owens
The Georgia Center of Innovation hosted its 14th annual Georgia Logistics Summit in Savannah last week. The event is a chance for industry experts to come together and talk technology, economy and other supply-chain related topics. It is also a chance for the Georgia Department of Economic Development and the governor’s office to showcase the policies and strategies they are putting in place to continue to grow the industry in the state. “With the logistics industry contributing one-in-nine jobs in Georgia, this vital field helps our state remain No. 1 for business,” said Governor Brian Kemp. “Our logistics assets are a critical tool in the state’s toolbox to recruit the industries of tomorrow, and it’s no surprise that job creators consistently cite our logistics network as a reason they choose Georgia. You can truly make anything here and get it markets all over the world.”
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
After a Decade of Growth, Degree Earners Decline
The number of undergraduate degree earners fell last year for the first time since 2012. Is it a bump in the road or a harbinger of a changing higher ed landscape?
By Liam Knox
The number of students who earned undergraduate degrees fell by 1.6 percent last year, reversing nearly a decade of steady growth, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. An “unprecedented” one-year loss in first-time degree earners drove the decline, the report said. Associate degree earners experienced the steepest drop, at 7.6 percent, though that rate had been falling for several years, according to previous NSCRC data. The number of bachelor’s degree earners fell by 2.4 percent, the first drop in a decade. The number of first-time certificate earners, meanwhile, rose by 9 percent. The number of students who earned a bachelor’s degree after having earned an associate degree fell by 2.5 percent, leading to the first drop in a decade of graduates who already have another degree—a 0.8 percent decrease.
See also:
Inside Higher Ed
New Network to Boost Black Student Enrollment and Completion
By Sara Weissman
A group of CEOs, community college leaders and state and federal officials is forming a network to develop new strategies to boost Black student enrollment and college completion rates, according to a press release from the group Thursday. The release noted that U.S. colleges and universities have lost more than 600,000 Black students over the last decade, and over half of those losses were at community colleges.
Inside Higher Ed
Student Mental Health Worsens, but More Are Seeking Help
By Johanna Alonso
College students are experiencing all-time high rates of depression, anxiety and suicidality, according to the latest Healthy Minds survey. In the annual survey, which received responses from 96,000 U.S. students across 133 campuses during the 2021–22 academic year, 44 percent reported symptoms of depression, 37 percent said they experienced anxiety and 15 percent said they have seriously considered suicide—the highest rates in the survey’s 15-year history. However, the survey also showed that students are now getting more help than in the past. Thirty-seven percent of respondents said they have received mental health counseling in the past year, a 7 percent increase from 2020. Binge drinking is also down, with 54 percent of respondents saying they haven’t consumed any alcohol in the past two weeks and 17 percent reporting that they consumed alcohol but did not binge drink.
Higher Ed Dive
Iowa’s 3 public universities ordered to pause new DEI programs
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Senior Reporter
Dive Brief:
Iowa’s three public universities will pause implementation of new diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the behest of the state’s regent board, it announced this week.
Over the next few months, the governing board will study all DEI efforts at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa, Chair Michael Richards said in a statement Tuesday. The board ordered all pending DEI initiatives to be halted during that time.
Three regents will lead the evaluation and report any recommendations to the full board, Richards said.
Inside Higher Ed
Still Hoping for Free Community College
Free community college is back in President Biden’s budget. Although Congress is unlikely to support the full $90 billion, experts hope for a smaller budget item to provide free programs for about 90,000 students a year.
By Katherine Knott
The Biden administration’s $90 billion plan to provide free community college likely won’t make it through Congress, but supporters of the effort say the request shows it’s a priority for the administration and helps to continue the national conversation about the policy. The plan, which calls for the $90 billion to be spread out over 10 years, was part of the administration’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposal to Congress released last week. Free community college has been part of President Biden’s agenda since the 2020 campaign, but funding for the program was scrapped from the social spending package that eventually became the Inflation Reduction Act. The administration did not propose a free community college plan in its previous budget proposal for the current fiscal year.
Inside Higher Ed
Consumer Watchdog Issues Warning to Private Loan Servicers
By Katherine Knott
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is warning loan servicers to stop collecting private student loans that were discharged by bankruptcy courts, the agency announced Thursday. The agency found that some servicers were continuing to collect payments on loans after bankruptcy proceedings had concluded, in violation of federal laws, and many borrowers ended up paying thousands of dollars they did not owe. The agency directed those servicers to return the money.
Inside Higher Ed
Susan H. Greenberg
Pennsylvania State University is bracing for layoffs, Spotlight PA reported. A top administrator asked leaders of virtually all university departments to, by the end of June, identify the employees they would lay off, according to documents obtained and shared by Spotlight PA. Penn State president Neeli Bendapudi is trying to balance the system’s budget by 2025; last fiscal year it operated with a structural budget deficit of more than $125 million.
Inside Higher Ed
Putting the Heat on Campus Leaders About the Cold
City College of San Francisco students, faculty and staff members are fed up with cold classrooms. Trustees called on administrators to address long-neglected maintenance issues and aging heating systems after some campus buildings went months without heat.
By Sara Weissman
The City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees held an emergency meeting Tuesday to approve funds for much-needed fixes to the heating systems on several campuses. The meeting came after months—and some say years—of complaints from students, faculty and staff members about overly chilly classrooms caused by aging or broken heating systems. Alan Wong, president of the board, said the current classroom conditions are unacceptable. He noted that he received emails from faculty and staff members and students as far back as winter 2021 about heating issues, which he forwarded to college administrators. …The culprit for the poor heating is old boilers and leaky underground steam pipes, according to the release from the board. During the Tuesday meeting, board members approved $2.6 million to replace boilers and make other fixes to the affected campuses, though the boiler replacements won’t be finished until this summer, the release noted.
Inside Higher Ed
Fla.’s Stop WOKE Act Remains Stymied
A panel of federal judges is keeping in place a block on Florida’s Stop WOKE Act while appeals progress.
By Ryan Quinn
A bronze bull statue at the University of South Florida(University of South Florida)
The Stop WOKE Act continues to be blocked at Florida public colleges and universities, and it will likely stay that way at least through the end of this academic year. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit released a ruling Thursday that a lower court’s injunction stopping the law’s enforcement in public higher education will remain in effect while appeals of the injunction continue. The Florida Board of Governors of the State University System and the University of South Florida Board of Trustees have been defending the act in court. Spokespeople for both said Thursday that they don’t comment on pending litigation.