USG e-clips for April 20, 2023

University System News:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Most Georgia public colleges won’t require ACT, SAT for one more year

By Vanessa McCray

Students seeking to enroll at 23 of Georgia’s public universities for the 2024-2025 school year won’t need to take the ACT or SAT college exam to gain admission. Sonny Perdue, chancellor of the University System of Georgia, recommended waiving the admissions requirement at all but three of the system’s most academically rigorous schools: Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia and Georgia College & State University. The Georgia Board of Regents on Wednesday agreed with the plan, which still requires students to meet grade-point average thresholds as part of the admissions process. Test scores also are needed to qualify for the Georgia Lottery-funded Zell Miller Scholarship.

See also:

Albany Herald

Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College students receive Southeast Produce Council scholarships

From staff reports

Two Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College students recently received the 2022-2023 Southeast Produce Council Southeast Top Agricultural Recruits Scholarship (STARS) Scholarship. Lizzy Parks, a senior agricultural communications major from Cochran, and Joel Johnson, a junior crop and soil science major from Rome, were awarded the scholarships.

WRDW

AU announces dean of new School of Public Health

By Staff

Augusta University has announced Teresa M. Waters, Ph.D., as the inaugural dean of the new School of Public Health to start in the fall of 2023. Waters, who will begin in her new role on Aug. 1, currently she serves at the University of Kentucky’s College of Public Health as the chair of the Department of Health Management and Policy, Charles T. Wethington Jr. Endowed Chair in the Health Sciences and interim director of the Center for Health Services Research, Implementation Science, and Policy.

WGAU Radio

UGA names Student Employee of the Year

By Emily Ann Munnell, UGA Today

Esther Kim, a fourth-year public relations major from Sugar Hill, is the University of Georgia’s 2023 Student Employee of the Year thanks to her work with Megan Ward, administrative director of the New Media Institute. “Esther is a critical member and leader of the TEDxUGA steering committee, maintaining communication with students, faculty and staff at UGA,” said Ward. As curator for TEDxUGA, Kim oversees the development of nine TEDxUGA talks every year, past recordings of which have been viewed collectively more than 5.9 million times online. From ideation to delivery, Kim provides expertise on talk content, structure and messaging. This process takes months of weekly meetings, hard work, deep thought and continuous practice sessions.

Augusta CEO

Volunteers are Vital to the Mission of Augusta University

Karen Klock

April is National Volunteer Appreciation Month and is dedicated to the importance of the volunteers who serve not only the campus, but also the community. Augusta University and Augusta University Health System volunteers spend countless hours and show true dedication toward serving others, helping support the university’s missions of health care, education and research. For Ford Berger, Augusta University Student Government Association senator and general biology major with a concentration in pre-med, helping at the Children’s Hospital of Georgia solidifies his career path.

Athens CEO

UGA Celebrates Faculty Accomplishments in Public Service and Outreach

Staff Report

Six University of Georgia faculty received awards Monday for their commitment to public service and outreach. The awards were presented at the 32nd Annual Public Service and Outreach Meeting and Awards Luncheon, held at the UGA Center for Continuing Education & Hotel. “As usual, the faculty members selected this year are among the university’s strongest advocates for outreach and are committed to helping fulfill UGA’s land-grant and sea-grant mission,” said Jennifer Frum, UGA vice president for Public Service and Outreach.

MedicalXpress

Protecting the vision of premature babies

by Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University

In the spiraling cycle that can lead to vision loss in premature newborns, Medical College of Georgia scientists have found a new target and drug that together appear to stop the destruction in its tracks.

Augusta CEO

Garrison Boling of the UGA SBDC on the Small Business Loan Process

Business Advisor with the UGA SBDC Garrison Boling talks about the steps a business should take to secure a small business loan and how the SBDC can help.

WRDW

AU promotes safe sex, offers resources to students

By Macy Neal

Augusta University provides safe-sex resources supplies and information to students to improve sexual health and reduce risk of catching sexually transmitted diseases. AU’s Safe Sex Supplies Program is a free program to ease access to safe-sex supplies for students. The university educates students on STDs, prevention, sexual health and relationships. In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report showing that Augusta had the sixth most cases of STDs in the country. Augusta had 1,675 cases for every 100,000 people. That’s ahead of Atlanta, New Orleans and New York.

WRBL

CSU students plan for upcoming Taylor Swift Eras Tour concerts in Atlanta

by: Olivia Yepez

Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is coming to the Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and Columbus State University (CSU) Swifties are preparing for the trek. After fighting for tickets for the April 28-30 concert dates during November’s Ticketmaster pre-sale, student fans planned groups, picked out themed outfits and sorted transportation to see the pop icon next weekend.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Out of the murky waters of the Okefenokee, an alligator mystery emerges

By Mark Davis, For the AJC

A question is gnawing at the researchers who ply the waters of the Okefenokee Swamp: Why are some alligators there losing their teeth? This is a mystery that has confounded scientists for several years. They aren’t aware of the phenomenon happening anywhere else. …“The animals are otherwise very healthy,” said Kimberly M. Andrews, a coastal ecology specialist who heads the University of Georgia’s Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant Program. The irregularities occur among gators of all sizes and ages, she added. Like any scientist, Andrews is reluctant to speculate why some gators lose teeth while others retain a full array of choppers, or why some have teeth the color of weak coffee. But some experts have theorized that the stains might be caused by tannins, created by rotting vegetation, leaves and trees in the water.

Current

Dropping out of College: A Crisis We Must Address

Daniel K. Williams (Daniel K. Williams is a professor of history at the University of West Georgia. … He is a Contributing Editor at Current.)

Amid deep structural challenges, remember the power of a personal response

We are digging into our archives this week to re-publish a series of thought-provoking essays on higher education we’ve published over the past two years. As this year’s high school seniors finalize their post-graduation plans, we thought it might be worth revisiting some of the big questions facing higher education today.

As a professor at a regional state university in the semi-rural South, I would like to believe I’m helping the students in my classes reach their career goals and become civic-minded, politically engaged citizens. Many people I teach are first-generation college students. The majority are eligible for Pell Grants, which means they come from lower-income backgrounds. Our mission is to take these students and give them the training they need to become teachers, nurses, business managers, and other professionals who will give back to their local communities and become contributors to our democracy. …In 2021 only sixty-two percent of the students who started a four-year college program six years earlier had earned the bachelor’s degree they were seeking. This means that nationally more than one-third of the people who start college with the intention of earning a four-year degree will probably never finish.

Current

What Fruit Do Universities Bear?

Nadya Williams (Professor of Ancient History at the University of West Georgia)

Free inquiry without ethics endangers freedom

Walking around town, a small group of wealthy aristocrats runs into a middle-aged public intellectual who asks them a difficult question: What is justice, and how does it function in the ideal state? Or: What is courage? Or: What is knowledge? The interlocutors at first think, invariably, that they know the answer, but they quickly figure out they were mistaken. … So goes the plot of every Socratic dialogue, composed by Socrates’ student Plato, after the great master’s execution in 399 BCE on the charge of subverting the democracy, corrupting its youth, and disrespecting its gods. The place of figures like Socrates in a democracy comes to mind as debates continue about the role of public intellectuals and academics—especially those teaching in America’s universities—in upholding the truth and, in the process, our democracy.

The Red & Black

GUEST COLUMN: UGA lags behind rivals in the fight against climate change

Aarush Maheswaran and David Weber | Guest Columnists

When it comes to football, nobody can deny that the Dawgs are on top. But when it comes to tackling climate change, the University of Georgia is not a national champion. While UGA claims to be working towards the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to address climate change, it has fallen far short of reducing emissions at the rate necessary to meet local and global climate goals. The recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that there is a “rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.” The longer the university puts off the necessary transition to clean energy, the more it escalates the risks to our future. To demonstrate leadership, responsibility toward the planet and respect for future generations to come, UGA must commit to achieving 100% clean and renewable energy by 2035. The changing climate affects everyone, including our families, businesses and livelihoods here in Georgia. In the next few decades, more Georgia homes will be lost to severe floods, more Georgia farms will fail due to drought and more Georgians will die from extreme heat. UGA should recognize its impact in contributing to emissions in Athens.

Georgia Law News

Georgia Tech’s removal of student journalist’s report on training center coverage raises concerns about freedom of expression – SaportaReport

By John Ruch

Georgia Tech has removed from its website a student journalist’s personal account of critical reporting of Atlanta’s controversial public safety training center, which raised issues of free speech and academic freedom. Alex Ip, the student who founded and edits independent news site The Xylom, says Georgia Tech’s communications department ordered his April 17 post to be heavily edited or deleted altogether. Blair Meeks, Georgia Tech’s associate vice president of external communications, didn’t deny it, but did point out that the post violates an IT policy and a law that makes the site the official voice of the school and the state of Georgia. However, the basis for this interpretation is unclear, and the website in question contains many other personal comments and third-party information.

WTOC

Sylvania leaders holding public meeting for downtown improvement project

By Dal Cannady

A meeting in Sylvania is being held for people interested in revitalizing their downtown. It happens at 6 p.m. at the recreation department. Organizers of the meeting say it’s a chance to get everyone on the same page for what the community wants from its downtown. A quick glimpse around downtown and you see a range of storefront styles, and some empty storefronts too. Sylvania’s mayor hopes to see improve. …Sylvania’s Downtown Development Authority has partnered with professors from Georgia Southern University and the University of New Orleans to gather feedback on what people want to see from downtown merchants and what merchants need too.

Athens Banner-Herald

UGA football, Athens high schools, Jeff Foxworthy and Sonny Smart make NFF banquet memorable

Loran Smith Special to the Banner-Herald

The National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame has local chapters across the country with one of the objectives being to honor contributors to the game of football and to honor outstanding achievement for both athletes and coaches. Organized in 1986, the UGA chapter, with understandable growing pains, has become the No. 1 chapter in the country and has enjoyed that enviable status for over a dozen years. …One of the objectives of the Georgia chapter is to honor scholar athletes. That includes Northeast Georgia area high school players and UGA athletes. The highlight of the latter is the honoring of scholar athletes who are honored with the Billy Payne Award. This award is presented to young men who have been with the Bulldog program for four years, have graduated and have at least a 3.0 cumulative GPA. This year’s winners are Jack Podlesny and Payne Walker.

The George-Anne

Divine Nine Fraternity Suspended

Nayia Worrell, Your Newsroom, Editor-in-Chief

Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc- Xi Tau chapter has been suspended from Georgia Southern University following reports of hazing.

What we know: The fraternity is accused of hitting, punching, and physically hurting students during initiation ceremonies, according to the incident report.

Campus Reform

EXCLUSIVE AUDIO: Prof and drag queen discuss ‘gender-affirming care’ and drag for kids at university event

Georgia Southern University’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department co-hosted ‘The

Ben Mincey ’25 | Georgia Campus Correspondent

An event co-hosted by Georgia Southern University (GSU) featured a panel on gender identity, legislation banning drag shows and gender-affirming healthcare, and introducing children to drag. GSU’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department co-hosted “The Politics of Drag” with Boro Pride, a non-profit that “advocate[s] for the visibility, inclusion, celebration, equality, and safety of LGBTQIAP+ people.” Boro Pride announced the Apr. 12 event in an Instagram post describing the panel as a way to address “anti-LGBTQ+ legislation.” Campus Reform obtained exclusive audio of the discussion featuring panelists Dr. Stacy Smallwood, a public health professor at GSU, and performer Tiffany DuBois.

Higher Education News:

Inside Higher Ed

Skills-Based Hiring and Higher Education

Two key federal policy makers from different parties agreed that higher education needs to evolve to stay relevant as employers begin to emphasize skills over degrees in the hiring process.

By Katherine Knott

Higher education—particularly four-year institutions—needs to evolve to stay relevant in a potential future where individuals are hired based on their skills rather than their degrees, policy makers said Wednesday. “But I think that [evolution] will happen more in community colleges, and you’ll see it happening in universities, but the universities are going to see their enrollment drop, and they’re going to become less relevant,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who chairs the House education committee. Foxx was one of four speakers, including Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, featured during Axios and LinkedIn’s event about skills-based hiring. She and the other panelists, who spoke separately, acknowledged the need to emphasize skills and ensure that workers have what they need to meet workforce demands. This issue could be an opportunity for bipartisan solutions, several speakers said.

Inside Higher Ed

New Guide for Using Data to Track Student Success

By Sara Weissman

Complete College America, an organization dedicated to boosting college completion rates, released a new guidebook today that aims to help college leaders and state agencies better use data to measure and improve student outcomes. The guide offers recommendations on choosing performance indicators to assess student success, finding relevant data and using data from the National Student Clearinghouse Postsecondary Data Partnership, a source of institutional student success data.

Inside Higher Ed

Leveling the Playing Field in Texas

New legislation addresses long-standing funding disparities among Texas research universities. A record surplus and college football drama helped push it into the end zone.

By Liam Knox

The Texas Senate passed a bill last Friday to create a multibillion-dollar endowment to fund Texas’ emerging public research universities. The endowment, called the Texas University Fund, is the realization of over a decade of negotiations. But it took a flurry of college football drama—along with a record budget surplus—to carry it over the goal line and score a win for the state’s less well-funded research institutions.

Cybersecurity Dive

ChatGPT prompts experts to consider AI’s mark on cybersecurity

Previous AI advancements in cybersecurity tools and practices could be a precursor of what’s to come.

Matt Kapko, Reporter

The rapid ascendance of ChatGPT sparked a scramble in the cybersecurity space as multiple vendors rushed to embed the generative artificial intelligence tool into products designed to protect organizations from cyberattacks. Microsoft combined its security network and global threat intelligence capabilities with GPT-4 to launch Security Copilot in March, and Cohesity last week announced plans to integrate its data security products with Microsoft services and OpenAI to better detect and classify threats. Microsoft is a strong supporter of ChatGPT maker OpenAI and has invested more than $11 billion in the company thus far.

Diverse Issues in Higher Education

Report: Colleges and Universities Rely on Admissions Positions with High Turnover and Young Employees for Much of the Work

Arrman Kyaw

Colleges and universities rely on admissions positions with high turnover and young employees to do much of the work when it comes to building graduating classes, according to a recent data analysis by College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR).Admission. The research report, The Higher Ed Admissions Workforce: Pay, Diversity, Equity, and Years in Position, contains analyses of data reported by 940 institutions about 12,042 admissions employees in six admissions positions: chief admissions officer; deputy head of student admissions; head of student admissions for a college or school; head of campus graduate admissions; graduate program admissions coordinator; and student admissions counselor. Findings include that median salaries were highest for the position of chief admissions officer; representation of women was higher than men for each race/ethnicity at all admissions position levels; and that turnover was high in admissions coordinator and counselor positions, the roles where the employees tended to be significantly younger (median age 30).

Cybersecurity Dive

Women in cybersecurity still fight for inclusion despite the talent shortage

The cybersecurity field is riddled with stringent job descriptions that can alienate applicants across technical and non-technical roles. It’s also contributing to a broad gender imbalance.

By Sue Poremba

A global cybersecurity talent shortage continues to put networks and data at risk. With more than 3.4 million jobs still open worldwide, it’s not surprising that the majority of cybersecurity workers, 70%, do not feel their organizations have enough staff to effectively defend against cyberattacks, according to (ISC)2’s 2022 cybersecurity workforce research. … Women are too often blocked before they can even apply for the job. Many applicants are coming in with skill sets they’ve learned in other jobs — both technical and non-tech positions — and don’t have the exact qualifications laid out in the job description. Shawn Richardson, senior manager, cyber security operations with NVIDIA, was told she was not technical enough. …Richardson’s skills often lacked respect, which is a common complaint according to a study by Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) released this year.

Inside Higher Ed

Univ. of Florida Quietly Removes Crime Data From Website

By Susan H. Greenberg

The University of Florida quietly took off-line nearly eight years of crime data, leaving only information about crimes committed on or near campus in the past 60 days, WUFT reported Tuesday. The move is legal under the Clery Act, which holds that colleges and universities must keep a publicly accessible log of the last 60 days’ worth of crime data; if older data are requested, they must be made available within two days. Though it wasn’t required to, UF kept historical data available on its website for years, giving students, faculty, staff and prospective families valuable details about safety on and around campus, WUFT reported. According to a statement from the university, the old data were removed “to ensure the information displayed is accurate and current.”

GHC Inform

GHC EMAIL DIGEST (FACULTY & STAFF)

USG e-clips for April 20, 2023