The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Navya Shukla, Covering Poverty
It can be difficult to quantify whether you have made an impact in someone’s life. However, University of Georgia student Riya Patel thinks she can see the difference every time another homeless person returns to the blood pressure screenings she and the other students lead. The fourth-year genetics and biology major from Duluth founded the Athens chapter of Hearts for the Homeless (H4H), a student club that provides a combination of education and service focused on heart and mental health.
Grice Connect
Pursuing dreams, and a promotion, thanks to Georgia Southern
After working on fighter jets in the Air Force and working for Lockheed Martin, Jonathan Grow needed a degree from a college endorsed by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) to advance in his career at Gulfstream. He achieved his goal in the Allen E. Paulson College of Engineering and Computing.
Farm Progress
Camp Hand receives Extension cotton specialist award
Shelley E. Huguley
Camp Hand, University of Georgia cotton agronomist and associate professor, Tifton, Ga., was recognized by his peers as the 2024 Beltwide Extension Cotton Specialist of the Year at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences in Fort Worth, Texas. Hand is the 35th honoree of this award.
Specialty Crop Grower
Corn Earworm a ‘Ridiculous’ Pest in South Georgia Sweet Corn
By Frank Giles
Georgia is the third-largest fresh market producer of sweet corn in the United States with about 27,000 acres per season. Sweet corn is also the second-most valuable vegetable crop produced in the state. Consumers love sweet corn, but so do corn earworms (CEW), which have become increasingly problematic. With virtually zero tolerance for CEW in fresh sweet corn from marketers, the pest is a top grower concern. “CEW is a fairly consistent pest, particularly in sweet corn. Populations are relatively low in spring corn, but are treatable, because the tolerance for damage is very low,” said Alton “Stormy” Sparks, a professor of entomology with the University of Georgia (UGA). “It can be ridiculous in summer corn … but can drop off in fall corn.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Harvard president’s resignation ‘disappointing moment’ for some Black women
By Vanessa McCray and Mirtha Donastorg
Black women in metro Atlanta, particularly on college campuses, expressed dismay at this week’s resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay. In July, Gay reached the pinnacle of academia when she became the Ivy League school’s first Black president. But her time helming arguably the nation’s most prestigious university abruptly ended amid two circling storms. … The impact of Gay’s resignation rippled through academic and leadership circles in Atlanta, the city that’s cultivated a reputation as a global center of Black influence and success and is home to several historically Black colleges. …Ebony Gibson, an associate professor of English at Georgia Gwinnett College who studies African American literature, closely watched the final few weeks of Gay’s presidency. “The worry is, how hard is it going to be for the next Black women to get a position of power there?” Gibson said. Gay’s critics knew not to attack a woman on “specific, race-based issues,” Gibson said, so instead they dissected her decades-old doctoral dissertation and other work. …Harvard is among the law schools that Camille Trotman, a 21-year-old Georgia Tech senior, is thinking of applying to. Trotman chartered Georgia Tech’s NAACP chapter and said she “was already discouraged” by the U.S. Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling in June that rejected Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Legislature ‘24: Higher ed is Georgia’s lifeblood. Support it
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution asked educators, policymakers and advocates to share what they deem the most important priorities for the upcoming 2024 General Assembly. Today, Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, urges lawmakers to recognize the vital role that higher education plays in the state’s economy and well-being. He urges the Legislature to fund it and treat it accordingly. Boedy is conference president of the Georgia chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a national organization that represents the interests of college and university faculty members.
Morning AgClips
Plans Underway for Georgia Peanut Farm Show
Producers can improve the bottom-line of their farming operation with knowledge, connections and information gained at the 47th annual Georgia Peanut Farm Show and Conference, held at the University of Georgia Tifton Campus Conference Center, Jan. 18, 2024. …Peanut farmers and those involved in the peanut industry will be able to learn more about the latest products, services and peanut research at the show, which is sponsored by the Georgia Peanut Commission. The show offers farmers an opportunity to view the products and services of more than 100 exhibitors and educational programs.
Grice Connect
Help us wish Georgia Southern’s beloved mascot Freedom a happy birthday! Learn more about his history and how you can support the Center for Wildlife Education.
Georgia Southern’s cherished mascot, Freedom, is hitting a milestone. Today, January 4, 2024, he turns 20 years old! A message from the Georgia Southern Center for Wildlife Education:
Times-Georgian
UWG names Mallory Sayre new head soccer coach
By Jared Boggus UWG Sports
The University of West Georgia Department of Athletics has named Georgia Southern assistant coach Mallory Sayre as the next head coach of the UWG women’s soccer program. Sayre, who has been at Georgia Southern for the past two seasons, becomes the sixth head coach in the history of the UWG soccer program.
BVM Sports
Cougars defeat Bobcats in first night of PBC play
The Columbus State University men’s basketball team opened up Peach Belt Conference play with a 91-77 victory over Georgia College & State University Wednesday night in the Lumpkin Center. The Cougars improve to 7-3 (1-0 PBC) and the Bobcats fall to 7-4 (0-1 PBC).
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
Workforce Development Top Priority for State Higher Ed Officers
By Jessica Blake
A new report by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association lists economic and workforce development as a top priority among higher education leaders for the second year in a row. The report, released Thursday, is based on the results of a survey conducted in November asking state higher ed leaders to rate the importance of 25 policy issues going into 2024. The report ranks the top 10 issues, including the value of higher education (3), state funding for financial aid programs (5), general college completion/student success (7), enrollment declines (8) and adult/nontraditional student success (10). It also cites FAFSA completion and institutional accountability as honorary mentions.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Teacher: What college admissions offices should know about pandemic effect
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
Patrick Kelly teaches Advanced Placement U.S. Government and History at Blythewood High School outside Columbia, S.C., and is a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card,” In this guest column, Kelly explains how the pandemic affected and changed the seniors in his high school AP classes and what colleges ought to know about these teens.
Inside Higher Ed
Veterans’ Studies Gains Traction as Emerging Field
As more colleges focus on recruiting military veterans, proponents of this nascent academic discipline want to promote academic inquiry about veterans.
By Kathryn Palmer
After two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Army, Travis Martin enrolled at Kentucky’s Somerset Community College in 2007. While he was trying to build his future as a civilian, pervasive stereotypes about veterans followed him onto campus. …Dismantling stereotypes about veterans and bringing nuance and agency to their history and experiences is what motivated Martin to help launch the emerging academic field of veterans’ studies more than a decade ago. It’s now gaining traction as an academic discipline at a time when colleges and universities are increasingly turning their recruitment efforts toward veterans of the armed services amid a declining population of traditional-age college students. Arizona State University is the latest institution to invest in expanding the field; it created a veterans’ studies certificate program in 2020, which quickly attracted students, and it is scheduled to launch a bachelor’s degree program in applied military and veterans’ studies when the spring semester starts next week. According to data from Ithaka S+R, a higher education research group, 610,009 veterans used their GI Bill benefits to pay for college in 2021, the most recent year for which data are available.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education
Diverse Classrooms in College STEM Courses Improve Learning Outcomes for All Students
Students achieve better grades in college science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses when those classrooms have higher numbers of underrepresented racial-minority and first-generation college students, according to new research published by the American Educational Research Association. While this link holds true for all students, it is even stronger for students who are underrepresented racial minorities (URMs) and the first in their family to attend college. The authors found that in STEM courses with higher URM representation, the gap in grades between URM and non-URM students dropped by 27 percent. More impressive, the grade disparity between first-generation and continuing-generation students dropped by 56 percent in STEM courses with high first-generation representation.
Higher Ed Dive
Black students who enroll at HBCUs have higher bachelor’s degree attainment, research finds
But those who initially attended a historically Black college also had higher debt loads than their similarly situated peers, a working paper found.
By Lilah Burke
Dive Brief:
Black students who enroll in historically Black colleges or universities increase their probability of earning a college degree by 30% compared to other Black students with similar characteristics, according to a new working paper. The incomes of Black students who enrolled in HBCUs were also 5% higher by the time they were 30 than those of their non-HBCU counterparts. However, they were also more likely to have student debt. Researchers concluded that HBCUs improve long-term outcomes for Black students and said they will likely be key in increasing bachelor’s degree attainment, particularly among Black workers.
Inside Higher Ed
Tackling the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in the Classroom
Professors who teach about the Middle East report increased interest in their spring courses—though not necessarily from the biggest activists on campus.
By Johanna Alonso
When Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel catalyzed a contentious protest movement on college campuses across the country, Michelle Murray, an associate professor of political studies at Bard College in New York, and her colleagues wondered if there was a role they could play in promoting thoughtful discussion of the conflict on their campus. “I was observing students, on the one hand, being really hungry for knowledge and, on the other hand, kind of encountering a lot of terminology that’s circulating around in the discourse,” she said. Those observations, combined with extensive discussions with her fellow faculty members, led Murray and another professor to develop a course for the spring semester designed to give students tools to talk about the conflict in Gaza by focusing on key terminology. In the course, titled Keywords for Our Times: Understanding Israel and Palestine, students will explore how words like “Zionism,” “genocide” and “settler colonialism” have been defined and applied by different groups of people.
Higher Ed Dive
Education Department sued over gainful employment rule
The American Association of Cosmetology Schools said the rule is based on a “flawed” debt-to-earnings ratio.
Laura Spitalniak, Staff Reporter
Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education is being sued over its new gainful employment rule by a trade organization representing postsecondary beauty schools. The American Association of Cosmetology Schools, along with one of its members, filed the lawsuit in federal court late last month seeking to stop the rule’s forthcoming implementation on July 1. Chief among their complaints is that the rule’s debt-to-earnings ratio is a flawed metric and fails to properly track income for tipped workers like beauticians. AACS argues the regulation is arbitrary and that the department overstepped its authority in adopting it. The organization also says the rule violates its institutions’ and students’ First Amendment right to free speech, since it will selectively restrict colleges’ ability to operate.
Cybersecurity Dive
LastPass enforces 12-character master password lengths
The password manager made its years-old guidance on master password complexity a requirement nearly a year and a half after it was hit by a major cyberattack.
Matt Kapko, Senior Reporter
Dive Brief:
LastPass is requiring customers to increase the complexity and length of their master passwords to at least 12 characters, the company said Tuesday. The password manager made 12-character master password lengths a default setting starting in 2018, but customers could still, until now, create a less complex master password with fewer characters. LastPass sent notices of the change to consumer customers this week and will inform business customers on Jan. 10, a company spokesperson said.