Dalton Daily Citizen
State legislative budget could negatively impact Dalton State College students, faculty and staff
The state legislature on Wednesday passed the state’s operating budget for the 2024 fiscal year. “We are grateful for and thank our elected officials, especially our local and regional delegations, for their hard work and service to the state,” said Margaret H. Venable, president of Dalton State College. …Although the budget includes many valuable items that will benefit University System of Georgia (USG) institutions, including Dalton State, it also includes a $66 million decrease in state funding to the USG, a cut that could result in $488,000 less funding for Dalton State. “As an already lean organization, a funding cut of this magnitude would be difficult for us to manage,” Venable said.
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Georgia Tech drives effort to land $500M clean energy hub
By Amy Wenk – Staff Reporter
A group including Georgia Tech is pursuing up to $500 million for a new regional hub focused on clean energy manufacturing, an industry bringing thousands of jobs to the state. The plan is to apply for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program, federal funding to build tech hubs in key U.S. regions. The process could open this summer and is expected to be highly competitive. The idea is to create additional areas of tech expertise in the country, similar to Silicon Valley or Seattle, said Julia Kubanek, vice president of interdisciplinary research at Georgia Tech. It could bring more economic development and secure a more reliable domestic supply chain, she said.
The Moultrie Observer
Georgia Cotton Commission approves 2024 research
Staff Reports
The Georgia Cotton Commission Board of Directors approved $740,609 in research for the 2024 crop year during the March board meeting. The money will fund 19 projects that will be conducted by University of Georgia researchers and extension specialists, according to a press release from the commission. Projects range from funding for the UGA cotton team to research on resistant weeds, evaluating the economics of conservation production, irrigation management and many more. The goal of this producer-funded research is to help cotton producers by conducting research that can either raise yields, promote efficiency or open new markets.
Forbes
A New Report On Hurricane Ian Confirms The Deadly Nature Of Water
Marshall Shepherd, Senior Contributor (leading international expert in weather and climate, was the 2013 President of American Meteorological Society (AMS) and is Director of the University of Georgia’s (UGA) Atmospheric Sciences Program)
It is not hurricane season, but a particularly notable storm from 2022 is still on our minds. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) released its tropical cyclone report on Hurricane Ian (2022) and a familiar message emerged. Water is still the deadliest aspect of a hurricane. Scholars have driven home this message in recent years, and Ian was no different. Here are some key findings from the report along with some important context.
Savannah CEO
Georgia Southern University to Promote Sustainable Practices during Southern Sustainability Week
Staff Report
Next week, Georgia Southern University’s Office of Leadership and Community Engagement (OLCE) will host Southern Sustainability Week to raise awareness about sustainable practices with fun and engaging activities. Events will be hosted on the Statesboro Campus from April 3-6, featuring exhibits, games, a scavenger hunt, the Campus Thrift Store and a farmer’s market. Prominent speakers Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, hosts of the Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary, “The Minimalists: Less is Now,” will also give a talk about living with less that is open to the public.
Higher Education News:
Higher Ed Dive
Legislators want short-term Pell — but can’t agree on the details
Congress is considering three proposals that would allow Pell Grants to go toward programs shorter than 15 weeks.
By Lilah Burke
The federal Pell Grant program, one of the most well-known ways to help low-income students pay for college, can only be applied to college programs that last longer than 15 weeks. But some advocates have long wanted to offer more flexibility for students taking shorter programs. This policy idea, colloquially called short-term Pell, has broad bipartisan support and now is the subject of multiple proposals floating around Congress. “The fact that there are three bills right now on short-term Pell shows that there’s definitely interest in the conversation,” said Michelle Dimino, deputy director of education at the nonprofit organization Third Way. “But also the fact there are three bills shows that there is pretty healthy disagreement around what expanding Pell to short-term programs should actually look like.”
Inside Higher Ed
Rewriting the English Curriculum
With numbers of humanities majors declining, English departments are on the hunt for new strategies to attract students. Can a walk in Ishmael’s footsteps do the trick?
By Johanna Alonso
For students in Sarah Blackwood’s How to Read Moby-Dick class at Pace University, learning about Herman Melville’s work isn’t confined to lectures, essays or classroom discussions. Blackwood’s syllabus includes a tour of Lower Manhattan locations featured in the author’s novels and stories: the Wall Street law offices where Bartleby, the titular scrivener of one of Melville’s best-known stories, worked, as well as the streets that Ishmael walked in the opening chapter of Moby-Dick. …If Blackwood’s course sounds like a divergence from the humdrum small-group discussions that college English courses bring to mind, well, you probably haven’t taken a college English class recently. With the discipline facing a surge of scrutiny in the wake of a viral New Yorker article published in late February called “The End of the English Major,” English faculty are employing a range of efforts to give their field new relevancy and pizzazz.
Higher Ed Dive
Louisiana bill would impose annual reviews on tenured faculty
Laura Spitalniak, Associate Editor
Dive Brief:
Proposed legislation in Louisiana would require all full- and part-time faculty at public colleges — including those with tenure — to undergo an annual performance review and would create a process for retracting tenure status from faculty who fail to meet review standards. Under the bill filed Friday by state Sen. Stewart Cathey, a Republican, any faculty member who receives an inadequate performance review two years in a row or twice in three years would be placed on a year-long remediation plan. For tenured faculty, refusal to agree to the plan or failure to “achieve significant progress” would result in a loss of tenure. They would also lose tenure and the chance to regain it if they are placed on a remediation plan a second time.
Inside Higher Ed
Opinion
Defending Community Colleges Against Attacks on DEI
Community college leaders can’t sit on the sidelines, for three important reasons, Steve Robinson writes.
By Steve Robinson
Community college presidents are reluctant to enter partisan debates, and with good reason. Community colleges in particular have strong supporters on both sides of the aisle. As a lifelong community college professional, I’ve worked with both Republicans and Democrats at the state and federal levels who deeply understand the community college mission. While other sectors of higher education are sometimes caught up in political rancor and culture wars, our nation’s community colleges are rightfully celebrated by both major political parties and recognized for two very important roles they play in American life: bringing about a) socioeconomic mobility for students and their families and b) economic and community development for the regions they serve. But recent attacks on higher education—especially our efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion—cannot go unanswered simply because those assaults come from prominent voices within one of the two major political parties in our country. Our nation’s community colleges were designed for access and equity from their very beginning, and DEI is an important part of who we are as open-access institutions.
Inside Higher Ed
U.S. Resolves U of Vermont Antisemitism Investigation
By Katherine Knott
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has resolved its investigation into how the University of Vermont responded to complaints from students who said they faced antisemitic harassment at the institution. Department investigators identified several areas of concern, including failure to investigate the allegations and that the failure to do so “may have allowed a hostile environment for some Jewish students to persist at the university.” Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects students from discrimination based on race, color or national origin.
Inside Higher Ed
Antiabortion Speech Disrupted at VCU
By Scott Jaschik
Virginia Commonwealth University’s president, Michael Rao, on Saturday criticized the disruption of a speech at VCU last week by antiabortion activists. “As our nation’s Constitution protects the free speech of all, regardless of whether we agree or disagree with what is being said, it is essential that everyone treat everyone else with respect and civility,” Rao said. …According to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, the first 30 minutes of the speech by Kristan Hawkins, an antiabortion activist, were disrupted by yelling. Then the police arrived, fighting broke out and the event was shut down. Virginia House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican, called the incident “another sad episode of free speech being shouted down on college campuses across our nation.”
Inside Higher Ed
A Strike Begins at Chicago State
Faculty members and academic support professionals began striking Monday, the first of what may be several new walkouts at multiple universities in the coming days.
By Ryan Quinn
Chicago State University faculty members and academic support professionals began striking Monday, and more walkouts are set to begin this week and next in Illinois. University Professionals of Illinois president John Miller said the union’s members will likely begin striking Thursday at Eastern Illinois University, in Charleston, and likely are walking out at Governors State University, in Chicago’s Southland, at the start of next week. In New Jersey, three Rutgers University unions—representing various employees, including full-time faculty, part-time lecturers, graduate student workers and physicians—have authorized strikes that don’t yet have start dates.
Inside Higher Ed
Ex-President Questions Texas A&M’s Support of Prairie View
By Josh Moody
After stepping down as president of Prairie View A&M University in February, Ruth Simmons has registered sharp criticism at the Texas A&M University system, telling The Houston Chronicle she questions the ability of system leaders to support the historically Black university. “I don’t believe that the Board of Regents of the system is at all capable of managing the affairs of Prairie View,” Simmons told the newspaper, adding that regents “have no interest in learning” about the lone HBCU in the 11-university system, which Prairie View A&M joined in 1973.
Inside Higher Ed
Opinion
A Better Way to Address Revenue-Sharing and Online Marketing
The Education Department is right to try to regulate third-party providers and curtail online marketing, but there’s a simpler, more transparent way to do it, James DeVaney and John Katzman write.
By James DeVaney and John Katzman
The U.S. Department of Education is now considering changes to its guidelines addressing how outside providers bundle the services they offer to colleges and universities and to the regulations that define and govern third-party servicers. The department helped create the online program manager industry, in part to encourage traditional universities to embrace online learning. The industry has evolved; so too have the OPMs. Whatever updates the department makes should serve to lower the cost of higher ed and increase college completion.