University System News:
Daily News
HOPE Academy hosts new program kickoff event
By Alicia B. Hill
There was an unusual amount of activity of HOPE Academy on Saturday morning as parents, students and teachers gather at the school to learn about development, empowerment and resilience. Saturday was the family engagement kick-off for Unpacking the Blueprint Leadership, a program that aims to equip the next generation of leaders to drive impact through others, creating a better world for all. The program has been around for 30 years, but it is still new to Troup County. A group of Clayton State University students led the workshops and made the material relatable and actionable.
The Signal
Proposed College Affordability Act could expand access to higher education
By Nate Harris
The rising cost of college is often on the minds of students across the country, including at Georgia State. State-wide, the cost of attendance at University System of Georgia schools has increased over 77% since 2006, according to a 2016 state audit. In-state tuition and fees at Georgia State specifically have jumped over 27% since 2010, records show, including another increase this semester. With those costs only expected to rise, legislators are looking to combat the trend with a comprehensive overhaul to federal funding of higher education.
Tifton CEO
Nine Students Selected as ABAC School of Agriculture and Natural Resources Leaders
Staff Report
Nine students have been selected as School of Agriculture and Natural Resources (SANR) Leaders at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. SANR Academic and Career Coordinator Suzanne Bentley said the students play a key role in the growth of the School. “The SANR Leaders program is in its first year and thriving,” Bentley, advisor for the group, said. “So far, they have participated in the Sunbelt Ag Expo, ABAC Farm tours on Family Weekend, and the SANR Golf Tournament. They have several events planned for the rest of the year including our Career Connections event and Stallion Day. They also host SANR information sessions during campus tours by the admissions office.”
Albany CEO
Staff Report
Georgia Southwestern State University (GSW) is implementing a new student leadership development program called CliftonStrengths for Students on campus to help students discover their inner talents, strengths, and gifts. The goal is to foster an environment for students to learn, develop and apply their individual talents to their present and future endeavors. Since 2002, schools have used Gallup’s StrengthsQuest program, now known as CliftonStrengths for Students, to help students identify and understand their unique talents by taking the CliftonStrengths assessment. Out of 34 themes, students receive a report listing their top five most dominant themes of talent. Students then learn how to best apply their strengths to succeed in and out of the classroom. “This nationally recognized program will help our students tap their natural gifts and strengths to achieve personal goals,” said Laura Boren, vice president for Division of Student Engagement and Success. “Our motivation for this program is to engage students in their personal growth and eventually become a Strengths-Based campus. This effort contributes to our commitment to the University System of Georgia’s Momentum approach.”
Athens Banner-Herald
UNG honored as top military college in nation
MOST POPULAR
The University of North Georgia Corps of Cadets has been selected as the 2018-19 recipient of the MacArthur Award for U.S. Army Cadet Command’s 1st Brigade. The Brigade encompasses the nation’s six senior military colleges — UNG, Norwich University, Texas A&M University, Citadel, Virginia Military Institute, and Virginia Tech. “This national recognition as the number-one ROTC program among senior military colleges underscores the long-standing reputation for excellence that UNG’s Corps of Cadets has earned,” UNG President Bonita Jacobs said. “As UNG continues to set records for the number of second lieutenants that we commission, the quality of our cadets remains among the best in the nation.” UNG previously won the brigade-level MacArthur Award for the 2016-17 academic year as well as in 2010, 1995 and 1991. UNG has campuses in Dahlonega, Gainesville, Cumming and Watkinsville.
See also:
11Alive
University of North Georgia named nation’s top senior military college
These are the schools the University of North Georgia beat. (video)
Tifton CEO
ABAC Receives $6,000 Grant for Food Pantry Program for Students
Staff Report
Sarah Herring, Residence Life Coordinator for Leadership Development, recently received a $6,000 grant to expand the food pantry at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College. The grant is being used to help Herring double the space of the clothing closet and food pantry and to purchase items such as shelves, collection bins, and storage items. Herring said the food pantry and clothing closet were designed to provide food and professional clothing for students in need. With the expansion, Herring hopes to have storage space to bring more items such as towels, pillows, curtains, school supplies, toiletries, and cookware to ABAC students. Many of these items are donated to other organizations, such as Goodwill, once students move out of their ABAC living spaces. Herring’s goal is for these items to be donated to the closet so they can be utilized by other students in need.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Anti-abortion group’s photos draw criticism, curiosity at Georgia Tech
By Eric Stirgus and Maya T. Prabhu
An Ohio-based anti-abortion group posted a dozen photos of what it said were aborted fetuses along walkways and on a Jumbotron in the middle of Georgia Tech’s campus Monday. The images were intended to disturb students, and they did. One turned in the other direction. Several shook their heads. A few yelled obscenities. Others debated the organizers. “It’s kind of uncomfortable to see,” said Grace Kim, 26, a senior. The group, Created Equal, visited Georgia Tech as the first stop of a weeklong tour of Georgia’s four largest public universities to encourage more students to become pro-life. Created Equal didn’t appear to make many converts, but it achieved another goal. The images caused a stir.
See also:
Marietta Daily Journal Northside Neighbor
Created Equal to show anti-abortion videos at Georgia Tech
Albany Herald
UGA’s FABricate encourages entrepreneurship
By Chad Cain CAES News
Sometimes even the best ideas need a little help getting off the ground. The University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences FABricate entrepreneurship program was designed to do just that — to empower students to turn their great ideas into working businesses. FABricate is an entrepreneurship competition and course for students who want to develop and implement ideas in a way that can help feed a growing population. Students develop personal and professional skills while refining their ideas for a new food product, agricultural technology, or environmental or agricultural business.
The George-Anne
BRIEF: Georgia Southern to host Food for Fines food drive
By Nathan Woodruff
Georgia Southern University Parking and Transportation services will waive outstanding campus parking tickets for students, faculty and staff on the Statesboro campus, in exchange for food donations, for its Food for Fines events on Nov. 7. Anyone with a current GS parking ticket can donate 10 nonperishable food items at the Parking and Transportation office in exchange for amnesty on the oldest fine on their account on Thursday, Nov. 7, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the Statesboro Campus.
Douglas Now
SGSC’s Dr. Scott Thigpen elected to ACEN Board of Commissioners
Dr. Scott Thigpen DNP RN has been elected to the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) Board of Commissioners for a three-year term. The 17-members of the ACEN Board of Commissioners are elected by ACEN-accredited nursing programs. ACEN is recognized by the United States Department of Education (USDE) and the Council on Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) to accredit all types of nursing education programs, including the clinical doctorate, master’s/post-master’s certificate, baccalaureate, associate, diploma and practical nursing programs. ACEN also accredits nursing programs in United States territories, including: Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam.
AllOnGeorgia
20 New Appointments Made by Governor
Georgia State Board of Physical Therapy
Terri Jo Burner is the director of Therapy Services for Three Rivers Home Health in Milledgeville, Georgia. She earned her doctorate in Physical Therapy from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts, a master’s degree in Physical Therapy from Armstrong Atlantic State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Community Health from Georgia Southern University.
Georgia Professional Standards Commission
Vincent Daniel Dooley is the founder and chair of 34ED d/b/a Centegix. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Education at the University of Georgia
Growing Georgia
ABAC Names Rural Studies Head, Launches Track in Community Health
With the naming of Dr. Adrian Israel Martinez-Franco as the new head of the Department of Rural Studies, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College is launching a new Community Health track in the Rural Community Development bachelor’s degree program. Dr. Matthew Anderson, Dean of ABAC’s School of Arts and Sciences, believes the appointment of Martinez-Franco and the new Community Health program will have far reaching implications for ABAC students.
EurekAlert
Spherical exosomes may deliver what an injured kidney needs
Like a swarm of construction workers in the aftermath of a destructive storm, cargo-filled, nanometer-sized spheres arrive on the scene following an acute kidney injury. Like the construction workers, scientists suspect these spheres, called exosomes, are there to repair damage and restore function, and now want to learn more about what they are doing and the cargo they carry with the idea of one day equipping similar exosomes to better treat an acute injury and help people avoid permanent kidney damage. “Once we better understand how they are produced and what they are doing, both good and bad, we will want to be able to control exosome secretion to help patients,” says Dr. Sang-Ho Kwon, cell biologist in the Department of Cellular Biology and Anatomy at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. A $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases is helping Kwon explore the potential of this apparent endogenous recovery system for an injury with an increasing incidence and without good treatment.
Futurity
3D-PRINTED DEVICE WEEDS OUT BLOOD CELLS TO FIND CANCER
Posted by John Toon
A new method using 3D-printed cell traps can separate cancer cells from billions of blood cells in a patient sample, researchers report.
Trapping the white blood cells—which are about the size of cancer cells—and filtering out smaller red blood cells leaves behind the tumor cells, which could be useful in diagnosing disease, potentially provide early warning of recurrence, and enable research into the cancer metastasis process. The work could advance the goal of personalized cancer treatment by allowing rapid and low-cost separation of tumor cells circulating in the bloodstream. “Isolating circulating tumor cells from whole blood samples has been a challenge because we are looking for a handful of cancer cells mixed with billions of normal red and white blood cells,” says A. Fatih Sarioglu, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. “With this device, we can process a clinically-relevant volume of blood by capturing nearly all of the white blood cells and then filtering out the red blood cells by size. That leaves us with undamaged tumor cells that can be sequenced to determine the specific cancer type and the unique characteristics of each patient’s tumor.”
13WMAZ
Underwater gliders are helping improve hurricane forecasts
These motor-less gliders travel hundreds of miles to collect data, improve forecasts, and save lives
Author: Austin Chaney
Every hurricane season, meteorologists are tasked with figuring out where tropical storms and hurricanes will go and how strong they’ll be. Meteorologists have significantly improved the accuracy of track forecasts over recent decades, however, there hasn’t been near as much improvement in intensity forecasts over the same period of time. Unfortunately, there has not been the same reduction in error forecasting. Researchers at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography are looking to change that. Skidaway Gliders are motor-less, battery-operated gliders that can travel hundreds of miles and collect all kinds of data. …Now that meteorologists have this data, it can be integrated into weather models and improve forecasts right away.
Fox News
Army eyes groups of autonomous ‘morphing’ robots for 2040
By Kris Osborn | Warrior Maven
What if a small army of forward operating robots were able to detect an upcoming river gap and then … without requiring human intervention — autonomously mesh together into a bridge-like structure enabling manned combat units to advance? What if an aerial swarm of mini-drones was able to autonomously operate in a synchronized fashion to act collectively as a group – perhaps combining otherwise separate small munitions into a larger explosive to attack a large emerging target if directed by human decision-makers? These types of hypothetical scenarios might be possible in 20 years or so, depending upon the progress of current Army Research Lab work investigating new scientific frontiers in the area of robotics and autonomy. The Army Research Laboratory, working with Northwestern University and Georgia Tech, is experimenting with groups of small robots to observe “emergent collective behavior” — wherein otherwise disparate individual robots operate in a coordinated, synchronized fashion in ways they cannot do by themselves.
Higher Education News:
The College Fix
For the sake of education, colleges should cut back on administrative bloat
Daniel Payne – Assistant Editor
More than a dozen ‘vices’ is more than enough
The University of Tulsa is emblematic of a larger problem in higher education, namely, its focus on administration at the expense of education itself. The school’s board of trustees is looking to eliminate or consolidate numerous programs in the humanities, social sciences and arts; this is the sort of thing some universities do when they’re budget-crunched and looking to save cash. But the school also has an administrative bloat that is typical of many institutions of higher education today: It employs more than a dozen staffers with the title of “vice,” and it’s actively looking to add more to that list.
Inside Higher Ed
No More ‘At-Risk’ Students in California
California education law will now refer to those with economic or social challenges as “at-promise” students. Advocates hope the impact will be more than just a semantic shift.
By Lindsay McKenzie
A decades-long effort to change how educators talk about students facing economic or social challenges has been backed by California lawmakers. A bill to remove references to “at-risk youth” and replace the term with “at-promise youth” in California’s Education Code and Penal Code was approved by California governor Gavin Newsom in mid-October. The California Education Code is a collection of laws primarily applying to public K-12 schools. The bill does not change the definition of “at risk,” it merely replaces it with “at promise.” “For far too long, the stigmatizing label of ‘at risk’ has been used to describe youth living in difficult situations,” said Assemblymember Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer Sr., lead author of the bill, in an address to the California State Assembly earlier this year. “This is a perception issue,” said Jones-Sawyer. “By using this term, we are creating expectations of failure for our most vulnerable students.”
Inside Higher Ed
$150 Million Donation for Utah Mental Health
By Greta Anderson
The University of Utah announced Monday that it accepted a $150 million donation for its on-campus counseling services and Neuropsychiatric Institute, to form what the university expects to be a leading hub for mental health research, care and education. The University Neuropsychiatric Institute will be renamed the Huntsman Mental Health Institute to honor the significant donation made by the Huntsman family, billionaire philanthropists who hold the fortune of late packaging and chemical businessman John Huntsman Sr. The Huntsman Corporation previously donated $100 million to the University of Utah to open the Huntsman Cancer Institute in 1995 and has since donated more than $1.4 billion to the university’s hospital and cancer research, according to The New York Times.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
By Wesley Jenkins
Florida State University bought out its head football coach Willie Taggart’s contract on Sunday, leaving the institution on the hook for nearly $22 million. The former coach now makes that staggering sum to do nothing while the entire Florida State team is paid nothing to play football. Taggart’s total buyout comes from three separate buyouts: $17.7 million from his position at Florida State, $3 million that Florida State paid to the University of Oregon to buy out his contract, and the remaining $1.3-million buyout that Oregon owed the University of South Florida, from when that institution hired Taggart, but which Florida State agreed to pay. If all of Taggart’s assistants were also to leave Florida State, the total monetary obligation would rise by $4 million. ESPN’s Andrea Adelson reported that Florida State had raised $20 million from private donors to cover the buyouts, but a Florida State official denied that’s what the money was for. Regardless of the source, Florida State owes Taggart $22 million. If that money was applied to his players instead, it could: