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GCSU online graduate programs in national top 100 with nursing program ranked No. 1 in Georgia
The Georgia College & State University online nursing program placed first in the state and tied for No. 28 nationally in the “Best Online Programs” rankings by U.S. News & World Report released today. Only three schools from Georgia ranked in the top 100 on U.S. News & World Report’s list of best online nursing programs. The online graduate programs offered by Georgia College in business, criminal justice and education all rank in the top 100 overall against other programs across the nation.
WGAU Radio
UGA online degree programs earn high marks
By Tim Bryant
The Education and Business colleges at the University of Georgia are in the top ten in the latest rankings from US News and World Report magazine. The new ratings give high marks to the UGA colleges’ online programs.
From Mike Wooten, UGA Today…
The University of Georgia placed several programs in the top 10 in U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 Best Online Programs rankings released today.
WJBF
The dean of MCG responds to the possibility of a new med school in Georgia
by: Brad Means
We are checking in on the Medical College of Georgia on the next edition of The Means Report.
MCG Dean David Hess is our guest. Dr. Hess will give his “state of MCG” address in a few days. He will give us a preview of the speech. We talk about the importance of TeleHealth to make sure everyone has access to a doctor. We also talk about the possibility of new medical and dental schools coming to Georgia. Be sure to join us for our conversation with MCG Dean David Hess.
Athens CEO
UGA’s Embark Georgia Receives New Funds to Support Foster Youth
Charlie Bauder
Through $1.5 million in gifts from two foundations, a statewide network housed at the University of Georgia is expanding efforts to improve educational outcomes for students who have experienced foster care and/or homelessness. Embark Georgia, housed at the UGA J.W. Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, received $800,000 from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation and $750,000 from the Joseph B. Whitehead Child Well-Being Fund in fall 2022 to strengthen the network across the state.
Clayton News-Daily
CSU Launchpad Leadership Academy Opens New Campus Space
From staff reports
After years of operation and innovation, Clayton State University’s Launchpad Leadership Academy’s new campus space is open for business. The opening of the Academy’s new campus space was held in the James M. Baker University Center Thursday. Genesis Polo, the executive assistant to the dean of Clayton State’s College of Information and Mathematical Sciences (CIMS), said that the new academy space will be arranged to help students feel both relaxed and professionally ready to engage in casual conversations and networking events alike with local industry leaders.
Albany Herald
Albany State students get a taste of the world with International Day
By Alan Mauldin
As brightly colored flags from around the globe flapped in the breeze, Albany State University students got a taste of foods that have their origin in India, the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America and other exotic lacales. The celebration was part of the fourth International Food Tasting Day that was held on Thursday at the East Campus and brought out a number of faculty and students.
Forsyth County News
New group at UNG allows students to practice investing
UNG students are getting real-world investment experience through the school’s Student Investment Club.
Erica Jones, FCN regional staff
Students at the University of North Georgia (UNG) are getting real-world investment experience, thanks to $50,000 from the UNG Foundation.
Georgia Recorder
Georgia senators debate state pullout from accrediting American Library Association
By: Ross Williams
Some conservative state senators want Georgia to become the latest state to pull out of the American Library Association, a nonprofit organization that supports libraries and accredits the schools that train them. On Wednesday, the Senate Government Oversight Committee heard testimony from Georgia’s top librarian who said the Georgia Public Library Service is already not affiliated with the ALA and a dean at the state’s only university offering a graduate library studies program who said cutting ties with the only accrediting body for degree programs in library and information science could cost millions in tuition. Under Senate Bill 390, state and local entities would be banned from spending any money on the association, and directors of public library systems would no longer be required to hold a master’s degree from a school with a library program accredited by the ALA. …Georgia’s State Librarian, Julie Walker, who is also vice chancellor for libraries and archives in the University System of Georgia, said many library professionals in Georgia don’t agree with the ALA’s positions and libraries’ decisions about collections are made at the local level. She also said the Georgia Public Library Service, unlike its equivalents in other states that ended their membership of the ALA, is already not a member of the ALA. As the only body that accredits degree programs in library and information science, the ALA is responsible for Valdosta State’s accreditation, but that’s the case even in states that have revoked their affiliation, she said.
The Union Recorder
Workforce readiness program looks to prep high schoolers for local jobs
Georgia College & State University, in collaboration with the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Chamber of Commerce, is launching a new Workforce Readiness Program. It will connect businesses with high school seniors who want to stay in Milledgeville and find local employment. A Zoom information session for business owners to learn about the program will be at noon on Feb. 7. “If you’re a high school student standing at the intersection of 441 looking down Columbia Street, what do you see as a job opportunity? Running a cash register and selling fries, right? Milledgeville is so much more than that,” said Angela Criscoe, executive director of the School of Continuing and Professional Studies at Georgia College. “We want to match high school students, who want to stay here in Milledgeville, with businesses seeking quality talent. We want to help build a workforce pipeline for local businesses so they can train and mold workers for jobs they need to fill.” The program runs June 3 to July 26 with the ultimate goal of students getting permanent jobs. …At a career fair April 9, students will get an idea of the types of jobs available this summer. Local business owners will interview candidates at the fair and, soon after, a committee will determine best matches.
The Union Recorder
TaQuila Thomas is jealous. Where was all of this when she was aspiring to be a school teacher? Thomas isn’t too upset, though, as she gets to be the one helping make the Teaching as a Profession Pathway happen in Baldwin County. Thomas is the Teaching as a Profession (TAP) teacher of Baldwin plus an Early Childhood Education instructor. …Now, in high school, she said students can take what is necessary to become a paraprofessional, get that out of the way, or pass an exam to become an early childhood specialist. “You already have credentials walking into any job,” said Thomas. “They have a job interview on the table when you are done. I have one student already last year. She did the early childhood education part. She’s at Georgia College now. She’ll finish in two years. She’s already ‘jumped across the class,’ didn’t have to pay for it because she passed that exam. She’s going into the education cohort now…” …With some of the students making up part of the audience, the top brass of the Baldwin County School District, Georgia College & State University and Central Georgia Technical College were at Baldwin High School Wednesday to put their names on the agreement, the memorandum of understanding, as the colleges showed their support of the public school district in its efforts to “Grow Your Own.”
Athens Banner-Herald
Loran Smith: Art and war feature in UGA’s ‘greatest love story ever told’
Loran Smith, Columnist
A most extraordinary couple lives in this affluent mountain town where spring flowers and autumn leaves offer inspiration that would captivate daydreamers, sentimentalists, Pollyannas, artists and poets. …I have been invited for a respite with the Decosimo clan hierarchy and to hear the story of how they met and how they flourished in a time when guns were for police, the military, and for hunting; school systems were not broken, politicians were respected, and newspapers flourished. Let’s get ahead of ourselves for a moment and capsule the lives of Joe and Rachel. …Today, he is 98 and she is 96. …The chronicling of the script will remain an enduring enlightenment of what is, perhaps, the greatest love story ever told in University of Georgia annals. Rachel Sharp was a beautiful, talented artist from Chattanooga when she was awarded a scholarship to Georgia to study art under the legendary Lamar Dodd, renowned artist and longtime head of the university’s art department. Joe Decosimo was the son of an Italian immigrant who had settled in a town near Pittsburg, becoming a coal miner. Joe joined the U.S. Navy and was stationed in Athens before being assigned for duty in the Pacific aboard the USS Massachusetts. …After the war, he returned to Athens … Mrs. Smith, with whom he boarded when he arrived the first time, took him to see the legendary Dean of Men, William Tate, who explained that there were no dorm rooms available for any more students. “He will live at the Smith house,” she pointedly told the dean who allowed Joe to enroll. Good Karma would continue to follow Joe, but never so dramatically as it did when he showed up in French class a few days later. That is when Rachel Sharpe saw him for the first time.
Savannah Magazine
Written by Brienne Walsh
EVEN 11 YEARS AFTER THE TRAGEDY OCCURRED, it is still hard for Lisa Wilson to talk about the day that her son, Cory, passed away in 2013. …His general silliness is why fellow students thought Cory was joking when he collapsed in a morning class at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, where he was a junior management major. When they finally realized that something was seriously wrong, there was no automated external defibrillator (AED) nearby, and it was minutes before another student tried CPR. Minutes that Cory, who had suffered a fatal heart arrhythmia, didn’t have. …Through the Cory Joseph Wilson Memorial, which raises awareness and hosts fundraising events, she has placed over 100 AEDs in schools, stadiums, sports facilities and other public spaces across the country — three of them on November 11, 2023, which would have been Cory’s 32nd birthday. She has also led the effort to train tens of thousands of people in CPR and raised over half a million dollars in memory of Cory.
The West Georgian
Blessed Brand Clothing Has a Bright Future
By Breanna Tillie
When a person desires to spread a message that they are deeply passionate about, that person has many options. Some individuals choose to write creative works that bring underrepresented groups and social issues into the limelight. Other individuals may choose to communicate their values and ideals through painting, drawing and other forms of visual expression. The University of West Georgia encourages students to use their talents and gifts to not only make money but to also inspire others. One student is doing this through his clothing line.
The Georgia Virtue
Menacing spiked images of the coronavirus have been reimagined with a gentler profile for a global design contest, which was recently won by Georgia Southern University Art Professor Casey Schachner. In honor of the five-year marker of the pandemic, Schachner’s winning design for the COVID-19 Monument of Honor, Remembrance, and Resilience, selected by the COVID-19 Monument Commission, will be unveiled in Chicago in spring 2025.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
UNCF Report Examines Black Teacher Pipeline, Offers Best Practices
Johnny Jackson
A 40-page report released by the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) reveals that Black teacher scarcity may be attributed to factors including desegregation, racism, and the incorporation of standardized tests that result in Black teachers losing their license. The report, titled “The Heart Work of Hard Work: Black Teacher Pipeline Best Practices at HBCU Teacher Education Programs,” found that teacher certification exams used to screen effectiveness eliminated nearly 100,000 minority teachers in 35 states between the late 1970s and early 1990s. UNCF’s report identifies recruitment, curricular, and co-curricular best practices implemented at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as major producers of Black teachers for America’s public education system. It provides some best practices four UNCF-member HBCUs — Huston-Tillotson University, Alabama A&M University, Albany State University, and Fayetteville State University — shared to strengthen the Black teacher pipeline. The participating institutions were listed among the top 25 four-year HBCUs that produce Black teacher college graduates in various K-12 education fields.
Inside Higher Ed
Professors Cautious of Tools to Detect AI-Generated Writing
Mixed performance by AI-detector tools leaves academics with no clear answers.
By Lauren Coffey
As AI-driven fakery spreads—from election-related robocalls and celebrity deepfake videos to doctored images and students abusing the powers of ChatGPT—a tech arms race is ramping up to detect these falsehoods. But in higher ed, many are choosing to stand back and wait, worried that new tools for detecting AI-generated plagiarism may do more harm than good. …Elizabeth Steere, a lecturer in English at the University of North Georgia, has written about the efficacy of AI detectors. She and other UNG faculty members use the AI detector iThenticate from Turnitin. Students’ work is automatically checked when they turn in assignments to their Dropbox. Several journals also use the iThenticate tool, although the value of the costly software has been debated. Turnitin, the company behind iThenticate, offers customized pricing based on organizations’ size and needs. Otherwise, it’s generally $100 for each manuscript of fewer than 25,000 words. Steere said the AI detector is just one tool in preventing plagiarism.
Forrester
Higher Ed Rethinks The Three R’s To Close The Cybersecurity Skills Gap
Jess Burn, Principal Analyst, Joseph Blankenship, VP, Research Director
Cybersecurity pros continue to lament the lack of skilled professionals to fill the cybersecurity skills gap. To see how a Georgia university is addressing this, my colleague Joseph Blankenship (JB) and I recently took a road trip two hours south of Atlanta to visit Columbus State University (CSU) in Columbus, GA and check out its Cybersecurity Nexus Program. The Cybersecurity Nexus Program is a one-year certificate program designed to give students of all ages and backgrounds intensive, hands-on learning to prepare them for early career security operations center (SOC) or offensive security roles with a focus on fintech (GA-based Global Payments and Synovus are big backers of the program).
WABE
Georgia to reconsider air quality regulations as EPA announces new soot emission limits
Marisa Mecke
…Air pollution in Georgia
In Georgia, researchers have already been making headway on understanding how air pollution affects community health and monitoring where the current standards and regulations haven’t been protective enough for community health. Christina Fuller is a researcher at UGA who is on the advisory group of scientists that gave recommendations to the EPA about what emissions standards would be the best to protect human health. She said the PM 2.5 regulation is movement in the right direction toward protecting communities, and aside from regulation there is still more work to be done to mitigate pollution’s reach into nearby neighborhoods. She has been working with neighborhoods on the Westside and Southside to monitor air quality and educate neighbors on the issue.
Southeast FarmPress
Spray drone gathering targets end users, draws national experts
Spray drone technology is a new technology but with limited amount of knowledge and information for new operators to find and use.
Brad Haire
Interest in spray drones and the technology’s potential for the agricultural sector continues to grow. But applicable information has lagged. People are coming together to change that. The 2nd Spray Drone End User Conference starts Feb. 26 in Gulf Shores, Ala. Organizers say the gathering will be the most informative spray drone event in North American specifically for end users. The goal is to promote legal, safe, effective, and efficient spray drone operation to current and future drone operators. …Simer Virk is the University of Georgia precision agricultural specialist. He said the use of spray drones is expanding rapidly in the United States, and interest in the technology continues to grow.
Coastal Review
DNA project links individual female loggerheads, nests
by Trista Talton
During any given summer on North Carolina beaches, volunteers comb the shores for evidence of freshly laid sea turtle nests. As the height of tourism season goes on, beachgoers are likely to see brightly colored ribbon tied between stakes used to cordon off carefully buried nests. …Loggerheads in the northern recovery unit are genetically distinct from those that nest in Florida and other areas of the world. To better understand how loggerheads in this unit are doing in the wild, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission in 2010 partnered with the South Carolina and Georgia departments of natural resources and the University of Georgia for the Northern Recovery Unit Loggerhead DNA Project. That partnership was formed after Shamblin in 2006 discovered he could extract DNA from the shells of nonviable sea turtle eggs and use that DNA fingerprint to identify a mother with her nest.
The West Georgian
UWG Art Program Features Alumni to Promote Students’ Creativity
By Jeff Igbokwe
For the next couple weeks, the Art Program at the University of West Georgia is holding its annual student art exhibition. The exhibition is juried this year by UWG alumni Brittany Watkins. Each year, the exhibition aims to honor the best artwork produced by UWG students throughout the year. They awarded Donavon Thomas with the prize for best work of the show for his Zen Sculpture.
Art Daily
Group show of large-scale figurative painting at the New York Academy of Art
The New York Academy of Art began last month Big Stories, a group exhibition that follows its initial showing at the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia. Curated by Bo Bartlett, Noah Buchanan, and Carl Dobsky, Big Stories is a collection of large-scale contemporary figurative paintings influenced by the narrative tradition.
Higher Education News:
Inside Higher Ed
New Study Challenges Conventional Wisdom on Shortage of STEM Graduates
Large numbers of students who major in STEM subjects do not pursue related careers, a study found. Toxic work cultures prompt many who do work in related fields to leave.
By Jack Grove for Times Higher Education
As headlines screaming about acute shortages of scientists, technicians or engineers arise on a near-monthly basis, the finger of blame for the so-called STEM skills gap is often pointed at universities—which, in some eyes, are too keen to churn out unworldly arts graduates lacking technological proficiency. In turn, government support for humanities is wound down; generous subsidies are plowed into science, technology, engineering and mathematics education; and students are urged to earn a scientific degree offering a well-paid and secure career. But a new book-length study of the actual destinations of U.S. STEM graduates has sought to challenge what has become a hardened political consensus in the U.S., the U.K. and more widely.
Higher Ed Dive
University of California and Cal State push back May 1 commitment deadline
The two systems, which collectively enroll more than 600,000 undergraduates, are moving back the date amid Free Application for Federal Student Aid delays.
By Lilah Burke
Dive Brief:
The University of California and California State University systems announced Wednesday they will both extend their enrollment commitment deadline in light of delays related to the Federal Application for Free Student Aid. Both public college systems, which typically ask students to commit by May 1, will extend that date to May 15. Their decisions may influence other institutions to extend their deadlines, as they collectively enroll more than 600,000 undergraduates. They join other large public institutions that have been delaying key deadlines for prospective students in light of the FAFSA situation. Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and University of Arizona announced recently that they will push back their deadline for students to be prioritized for financial aid to May 1, 12News reported.
Inside Higher Ed
Pa. Governor Unveils Budget Details of Higher Ed Overhaul
By Jessica Blake
Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro has outlined a 15 percent budget increase for the state’s public university system and community colleges as part of his larger budget proposal for 2024–25. Shapiro provided the budget details on Feb. 6, just over a week after he announced a sweeping overhaul of the state’s higher education system, which would combine 10 of the state’s public universities and all its two-year colleges under one governing authority.
Inside Higher Ed
California Bill Raises Hopes for 4-Year Nursing Programs at 2-Year Colleges
A new state Senate bill would permit community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing.
By Sara Weissman
California community colleges could begin offering bachelor’s degree programs in nursing under a new pilot program proposed in a recent state Senate bill. Community college leaders are celebrating the bill as a way to expand access to more affordable bachelor of science in nursing (B.S.N.) programs and fill critical nursing shortages in the state. California State University officials, however, have expressed concerns that new programs will cause undue competition. Senate Bill 895, authored by state senator Richard D. Roth, would allow the chancellor of the community college system to choose up to 15 community college districts that already provide nursing associate degrees to offer B.S.N. programs. These new programs would be limited in size at up to a quarter of colleges’ nursing associate degree enrollments or 35 students, whichever is greater.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Study Reveals Only 16% of Faculty is Ready for GenAI in Higher Education
Johnny Jackson
A new study examines potential effects of artificial intelligence on current challenges faced in higher education and notes that few are ready. The 2023-2024 Digital Learning Pulse Survey revealed that three-quarters of higher education trustees, faculty, and administrators believe GenAI will noticeably change their institutions — and help solve ongoing issues. But only 16% of faculty and 11% of administrators feel prepared for change. The survey was conducted by Cengage Group and Bay View Analytics to better understand attitudes and concerns of higher education instructors and leadership. For example, it found that stress, rising costs, and lack of academic support are higher education’s top concerns.
Inside Higher Ed
PEN America Cites 6 Bills ‘Dangerous’ for Higher Ed
By Jessica Blake
PEN America released a list of state bills that the free speech organization considers “dangerous” for higher education because they attempt to limit speech and other forms of expression on college campuses. The six bills range in state of origin, area of focus and scope of influence. And one, proposed in Utah, has already become law.