Valdosta Today
VSU senior wins first place at 2023 LSAMP
Jasmine Freeman’s research, “Utilizing the Continuous and Absorption Spectrum to Calculate the Components of Stars,” recently won first place at the 2023 Southwest Georgia Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Summit Juried Poster Competition in Columbus. A Valdosta State University senior from Shelby, North Carolina, Freeman said the LSAMP Summit experience has inspired her to attend additional academic events and gradually pursue more complex research topics. She plans to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Astronomy and a Bachelor of Science in Physics in May 2025. “Jasmine is very talented, bright, easy to work with, always positive, and ‘shooting for the moon,’” shared Dr. Martha Leake, a professor of astronomy and physics in VSU’s College of Science and Mathematics and Freeman’s mentor. “She’s ambitious.”
Data Base Trends and Applications
Oracle announced that the University System of Georgia (USG) has joined Oracle Academy to advance technology education and help students develop career-ready expertise in cloud, software development, and business applications. Oracle Academy will work with USG to provide curriculum, cloud technology and professional development across the university system’s 26 public colleges and universities serving over 334,000 students. Through the collaboration with Oracle Academy, USG students can access hands-on experience and develop an in-depth understanding of the latest technologies including cloud computing, machine learning, data science, and more. The academy will also support faculty from USG’s universities and colleges as they work with students to learn, build, and explore.
Building Design and Construction
Georgia State University Convocation Center revitalizes long-neglected Atlanta neighborhood
The 8,000-seat venue will host men’s and women’s basketball, as well as large-scale academic and community events.
By Peter Fabris, Contributing Editor
Georgia State University’s new Convocation Center doubles the arena it replaces and is expected to give a shot in the arm to a long-neglected Atlanta neighborhood. The new 200,000 sf multi-use venue in the Summerhill area of Atlanta is the new home for the university’s men’s and women’s basketball teams and will also be used for large-scale academic and community events. With a seating capacity of up to 8,000, the facility provides users with world-class amenities, including a club room and suites for attendees and locker rooms, nursing, and sports medicine rooms for student athletes. The design concept, “A Window to the City,” includes elements offering visitors a heightened sense of awareness and connection to their community and deliberately turns its focus to the surrounding neighborhood and the larger city beyond.
Athens Banner-Herald
How Katie Abrahamson-Henderson’s ‘reload’ has UGA basketball in NCAA tournament in year one
Marc Weiszer
Text messages piled up in Katie Abrahamson-Henderson’s cell phone when she awoke the day after returning to Orlando following her UCF team’s 5-point loss to powerhouse UConn in the NCAA tournament second-round last March. …The Georgia women’s basketball head coaching job had just opened when Joni Taylor jumped to Texas A&M. Three days later, the school announced Abrahamson-Henderson as its coach. So far, so good for ‘Coach Abe’ in her return to the program where she started her college career under Andy Landers. … She sat in the former football team meeting room Sunday night in the Butts-Mehre building with members of the program’s Fastbreak Club as Georgia landed an NCAA tournament berth as a No. 10 seed. A roster with 10 newcomers and five holdovers from Taylor’s last team will play No. 7 seed Florida State Friday at 1:30 p.m. in Iowa City.
Inside Higher Ed
Data-Based Decision-Making Tip: Student Assessment of General Ed
Georgia Institute of Technology gathers student feedback on general education assessment to better understand how they frame and grasp learning outcomes.
By Ashley Mowreader
Connecting students’ coursework to their future career is seen as an engagement tool and a necessity for career development. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, gathering data to evaluate how students view their own learning outcomes and how general education courses are targeting those outcomes required creative solutions. Sarah Wu, the academic assessment manager at the Office of Academic Effectiveness at Georgia Tech, shared the results of a feedback project her team orchestrated at the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ recent conference on general education, pedagogy and assessment.
BBC
Security minister asks cyber experts to investigate TikTok
By Kate Whannel, Political reporter, BBC News
Home Office Minister Tom Tugendhat has asked government cyber-security experts to look at the risks posed by TikTok.
The minister didn’t rule out a ban on the Chinese-owned social media app, telling Times Radio he would wait for evidence before reaching a decision. It comes one day after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the UK would look at what the US, the EU and Canada had done in banning TikTok on government phones. TikTok has faced allegations it hands users’ data to the Chinese government. …Like most other social media companies, TikTok collects huge amounts of data on its users, such as their location and what other apps they have. However, because TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based tech company ByteDance, there have been concerns it could pass information on to the Chinese government. China’s National Intelligence Law says all Chinese organisations should “support, assist and co-operate” with the government’s intelligence efforts. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology say the law also includes protections for the rights of users, and TikTok says Chinese staff cannot access the data of non-Chinese users.
Savannah Morning News
Georgia’s elusive nocturnal bird: conservationists’ search for the chuck-will’s-widow
Conservationists want to preserve an elusive nocturnal bird that breeds in Georgia. But first, they have to find it.
Marisa Mecke
Georgians may have never heard of the chuck-will’s-widow, but they probably have heard them calling to one another from the treetops on dusky, warm spring evenings. The elusive and nocturnal chuck-will’s-widow is Georgia Audubon’s “species of concern” for 2023 to 2025, said an ambassador for the organization’s conservation programs. Highlighting the work that can help bird species experiencing population decline in Georgia, the species of concern also offers an opportunity for Georgians to learn more about a native species. This year’s choice is also a challenge: Scientists, conservationists and researchers know next to nothing about the chuck-will’s-widow, but they do know their populations are dropping. What are chucks? Chuck-will’s-widow are a type of nightjar, a family of birds active at night that are recognizable for their brown camouflage, small beaks, long wings and stubby neck and legs. But most notably, they’re known for their giant, cavernous mouths. “I sometimes describe them almost like if you had asked Jim Henson to design a little Muppet dragon,” University of Georgia ornithologist Clark Rushing said.
The Economist
The ocean is as important to the climate as the atmosphere
But only now is it beginning to be studied properly
For homo sapiens, a dry-land species, discussions of the climate and how it is changing tend to revolve around what is going on in the atmosphere. This is a dangerously parochial attitude, for the atmosphere is but one of two fluid systems circulating above Earth’s solid surface. The other, the ocean, is in many ways the more important of the pair. …The poverty of human understanding of ocean circulation, compared with that of the atmosphere, is therefore lamentable. And the aaas meeting was treated to an excellent lamentation on the matter by Susan Lozier of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was also last year’s president of the American Geophysical Union.
Science
Compassion fatigue in those who care for lab animals, and straightening out ocean conveyor belts
By Sarah Crespi, Kevin McLean, David Grimm
First up this week: uncovering compassion fatigue in those who work with research animals—from cage cleaners to heads of entire animal facilities. Host Sarah Crespi and Online News Editor David Grimm discuss how to recognize the anxiety and depression that can be associated with this work and what some institutions are doing to help.
Featured in this segment:
Preston Van Hooser
Megan LaFollette
Anneke Keizer
Next up on the show, a segment from the annual meeting of AAAS (which publishes Science) on overturning assumptions in ocean circulation. Physical oceanographer Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, talks with producer Kevin McLean about the limitations of the ocean conveyor belt model, and how new tools have been giving us a much more accurate view of how water moves around the world.
Statesboro Herald
A quiet community leader, Bobby Smith passes
Jim Healy/staff
An icon of Georgia Southern University and a pillar of the Statesboro and Bulloch County community, William Robert (Bobby) Smith, Sr. died Sunday. Smith’s funeral service is set for 11 a.m. Thursday, March 16 at the Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church with Elder Randy Waters officiating following a private burial. A reception will follow in the church Fellowship Hall. Lindsay Walker, owner of Walker Pharmacy, first met Smith when he was a student at Georgia Southern College in 1977 and Smith was an economics professor. …After working in the business for a number of years, he returned to the college — now named Georgia Southern College — to earn a master’s degree. As a master’s graduate, he was invited to teach one class, then two, then a full schedule. He discovered that he loved teaching, and he continued to teach in the Department of Finance and Economics both full-time and part-time at Georgia Southern from 1972 to 1995.
yahoo! life
Albany State announces departure of Vice President A.L. Fleming
Alan Mauldin, The Albany Herald, Ga.
Remembering A.L. Fleming’s tenure at Albany State University, University President Marion Fedrick initially said he was one of her first hires after arriving in 2018. But she quickly corrected that she actually brought him on board before she officially arrived on campus. Albany State now must begin looking for a replacement for Fleming, the university’s vice president for advancement and executive director of the ASU Foundation. Fleming’s resignation was announced to the college community in a Tuesday email, and his final day on the job will be April 5. “He is just moving on to another position,” Fedrick said on Wednesday. “I really hate to lose him in this role, but that’s OK; we are unsinkable and we’ll move on from there.”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Opinion: DeSantis isn’t beacon for Georgia higher education to follow
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
In a guest column today, Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition at the University of North Georgia, warns Georgia against following the lead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who wants to rid college campuses of what he calls “wokeism.” 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.
By Matthew Boedy
Many have asked me if what is happening to Florida’s higher education system will happen in Georgia. …The bill is addressing the course I teach, known as first year writing courses. Any instructor of writing would applaud the standards until they read the mandate to engage (perhaps solely) that tradition. This mandate is intended to nod to President Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission that promoted similar ideas. Clearly then this is an attempt to not only bypass faculty expertise and their academic freedom, but promote a specific tradition viewed by many “anti-woke” conservatives as under attack. Few if any public colleges mandate such a tradition in first year writing. The University of Florida’s catalog description for its first year writing courses mentions those abilities but not the literary tradition. The University of Georgia’s version and the course at UNG, where I teach, echo that description.
Higher Education News:
Higher Ed Dive
5 charts breaking down demographic trends in college transfer enrollment
National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data shows mostly across-the-board declines — though there are hints of recovery.
Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Senior Reporter
The pandemic’s effects continue to scramble college enrollments — particularly on the transfer side. Between fall 2020 and 2022, transfer enrollments fell nearly 7%, according to the latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Some of the dropoff can be attributed to shrinking enrollment at community colleges. Four-year institutions are concerned with what’s known as upward transfers, a move to one of those campuses from a community college. And upward transfers have experienced a steep decline since the onset of the pandemic, plunging 14.5%, translating to 78,500 fewer students. Other types of transfers, like lateral moves between two- and four-year institutions, are rising, however.
Higher Ed Dive
OPINION
Walking the free speech tightrope: How to balance competing voices with campus safety
The chancellor of UC Davis shares lessons learned from leading a diverse university and its new governmental anti-hate partnership.
By Gary S. May
Editor’s note: The following op-ed was written prior to Tuesday’s protests against a student-organized far-right speaker event on the UC Davis campus.
In today’s highly charged and politicized environment, free speech has become both a weapon and a shield. Increasingly heated and divisive debates about free speech and hate speech are playing out at college campuses across the country. But at universities, free speech remains at the heart of our mission — even when we may profoundly disagree with its content. At the University of California, Davis, we’ve seen recent hate speech targeting Black Americans, Jewish people, Muslims, Asian Americans and the LGBTQIA+ community. We’ve seen outside groups with their own agendas come to campus with the intention to disrupt and cause damage. We’ve heard calls from students, faculty and staff who want to ban those who express ideologies with which they disagree. …Yet, we cannot close off our campuses to people and views we disagree with. We cannot isolate ourselves from bullies or from words that are hurtful, mean-spirited or offensive. Freedom of expression is vital to the higher education mission.
Higher Ed Dive
Just over 1 in 10 faculty say their college has set classroom ChatGPT guidance, survey finds
Laura Spitalniak, Associate Editor
Dive Brief:
Only about 14% of faculty members say their colleges’ administration has set guidelines for how professors and students should use ChatGPT in the classroom, according to a new survey published by analysis firm Primary Research Group. Faculty teaching at private colleges report being more satisfied with their institution’s handling of ChatGPT’s challenges than those at public institutions, researchers found. Community college faculty were more likely to say that students’ unattributed use of ChatGPT was a major problem compared to their counterparts at other institutions, the survey said.
Inside Higher Ed
Community Colleges to Get More Head Start Centers
By Sara Weissman
The Association of Community College Trustees and the National Head Start Association are partnering to bring more Head Start centers to community college campuses. Fewer than 100 of the more than 1,400 community and technical colleges in the country have Head Start centers on campus. Meanwhile, Head Start programs are struggling to enroll children, with up to 180,000 childcare and early learning slots unfilled, according to a press release from the partners. The organizations plan to match campuses with Head Start providers.
Inside Higher Ed
Jackson State President Resigns While on Paid Leave
By Josh Moody
Jackson State University president Thomas Hudson has resigned after spending nearly two weeks on paid administrative leave for reasons that remain unclear, Mississippi Today reported. The move—announced Tuesday during Jackson State’s spring break—comes after Hudson was placed on administrative leave for what was previously described as a “personnel matter” by the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, which oversees Mississippi’s public universities. Hudson will remain on leave until his resignation becomes effective March 31. Elayne Hayes-Anthony has been appointed acting president of the historically Black university.
Inside Higher Ed
Mesalands Community College President Resigns
By Sara Weissman
The former president of Mesalands Community College in New Mexico formally resigned last week, KAMR reported. Gregory Busch and the Board of Trustees received a vote of no confidence from faculty and staff members in February due to concerns about the financial health of the college. James P. Streetman, chairman of the Board of Trustees and secretary/treasurer of the College Foundation Board, also resigned, according to KAMR.
Inside Higher Ed
University Settles With Family of Wrestler
By Johanna Alonso
The University of the Cumberlands has settled with the family of a member of the men’s wrestling team who died of heatstroke in 2020 following an on-campus workout, the institution announced Wednesday. The university will pay over $14 million to the family of the student, Grant Brace, in addition to promising to complete heat-illness training and promote the Brace family’s work raising awareness of heat-related injuries.
Inside Higher Ed
Princeton Student Charged With Attacking Officers on Jan. 6
By Scott Jaschik
A Princeton University student was charged Tuesday with civil disorder, a felony, and related misdemeanor offenses in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. A Justice Department announcement of the arrest said Larry F. Giberson Jr. “was among rioters who repeatedly engaged in violence against law enforcement officers guarding the Capitol in the Lower West Terrace tunnel entrance. Giberson entered the tunnel at approximately 3:10 p.m., and made his way towards the front of the pack of rioters. Giberson joined rioters as they attempted to force their way into the building by coordinating ‘heave-ho’ pushing efforts against the police line. While Giberson was at the front of the pack of rioters pushing against officers in unison with other rioters, one officer was crushed between a door and a shield held by a rioter. A few minutes later, Giberson rushed to the tunnel entryway and began waving more rioters into the tunnel. Giberson then returned into the tunnel to participate in a second round of coordinated pushing against the police line. Eventually, police officers were able to gain temporary control over the tunnel and push rioters, including Giberson, out.”