CAMPUS CONSOLIDATIONS:
www.macon.com
http://www.macon.com/2013/01/23/2327740/leaders-caravan-to-middle-georgia.html
Leaders caravan to Middle Georgia State campuses
By JENNA MINK
WARNER ROBINS — … A caravan of administrators traveled to the college’s five campuses Wednesday during “A Day of Knights” event, chatting with students and faculty members about the consolidation of Macon State and Middle Georgia colleges.

USG NEWS:
www.41nbc.com
http://www.41nbc.com/news/local-news/19090-gov-deal-recommends-10-million-for-military-academic-center-in-warner-robins
Gov. Deal Recommends $10 Million for Military Academic Center in Warner Robins
Written by Jasmine Williams
WARNER ROBINS, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Governor Nathan Deal’s proposed budget will include $10 million for a military “gateway center” in Warner Robins. The facility would focus on military outreach, training and education for civilian jobs.

www.cordeledispatch.com
http://cordeledispatch.com/local/x2056593245/Darton-project-about-to-move-forward
Darton project about to move forward
Peggy King
Cordele Dispatch
Cordele — Since county public works personnel completed the demolition of the Roobins building in anticipation of new construction for Darton College, it seems as if nothing has been happening. That’s not the case, however, according to Bob Evans who chairs the higher education committee for the Cordele-Crisp Chamber of Commerce and has worked closely with the Darton project since its inception. Originally planned for fall of 2012, a groundbreaking ceremony now is scheduled for the second week in February, Evans says.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/education/2013-01-23/georgia-regents-university-adding-funding-wacg-fm?v=1358993464
Georgia Regents University adding funding for WACG-FM
By Meg Mirshak
Staff Writer
A new voice is coming to local radio station WACG-FM (90.7), the Georgia Public Broadcasting station on the former Augusta State University campus. Georgia Regents University is providing funding for a station manager, radio host and community liasion – someone who will provide hyperlocal content for the school and Augusta, university and GPB officials said.

wwww.times-georgian.com
http://www.times-georgian.com/view/full_story/21496556/article-Gun-carrying-on-campus-an-issue-with-support-of-some-local–lawmakers–but-not-University-System?instance=TG_home_story_offset
Gun carrying on campus an issue with support of some local lawmakers, but not University System
by Winston Jones/Times-Georgian
Debate over gun laws has spilled onto the college campus in Georgia, where student groups and some lawmakers want licensed owners to be able to carry their firearms.

www.savannahnow.com
http://savannahnow.com/latest-news/2013-01-23/aasus-police-department-named-savannah-drug-take-back-location#.UQFeXI6TpGN
AASU’s police department named Savannah drug take-back location
By Savannah Morning News
People needing to dispose of prescription drugs in the Savannah area can do so at the Armstrong Atlanctic State University Police Department. The Medical Association of Georgia recently selected Armstrong to be Savannah’s year-round prescription drug drop-off location, said Emily Belford, university spokeswoman.

GOOD NEWS:
www.wtoc.com
http://www.wtoc.com/story/20661620/georgia-southern-university-offers-low-cost-flu-shots
GSU offers low-cost flu shots
By Dal Cannady
STATESBORO, GA (WTOC) –
Students stopped by the Recreation Activity Center for something that could save them days of misery later in the winter. Georgia Southern University’s Health Services and the College of Nursing have teamed up to offer flu shots.

www.ledger-enquirer.com
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2013/01/23/2355683/columbus-state-university-adds.html
CSU adds new dining hall, convenience store downtown
By LARRY GIERER
Columbus State University student Erica Bussey says CSU’s new Rankin Den and Dining is much more than a place to eat. The health science major from Cuthbert, Ga., now in her third year at the school, said students come to study, write papers and do online classes. “It is a place to just come and relax.

RESEARCH:
www.hpcwire.com
http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-01-23/darpa-led_starnet_alliance_seeks_revolution_in_chip_design.html
DARPA-led STARnet Alliance Seeks Revolution in Chip Design
Tiffany Trader
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) have launched a new consortium to advance the pace of semiconductor innovation in the US as the technology approaches the limits of miniaturization. …Participating universities include Columbia, Duke, Georgia Tech, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, Illinois, Washington and Virginia.

STATE NEEDS/ISSUES:
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local-govt-politics/new-hope-benefits-come-as-fewer-students-get-the-a/nT5qk/
New HOPE benefits come as fewer students get the award
By Laura Diamond
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Nathan Deal has touted good news for the HOPE scholarship — a proposal for higher award payouts and extra money for technical college students who study subjects in fields with worker shortages. What isn’t being discussed is why Georgia can afford this. It’s because fewer students have HOPE.

www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-01-23/georgias-schools-are-drawback-when-seeking-industry-says-top-recruiter
Georgia’s schools are a drawback when seeking industry, says top recruiter
ATLANTA – Weak schools are a stumbling block for state industry recruiters, state Economic Development Commissioner Chris Cummiskey told lawmakers Wednesday.

www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/business/metro-area-poised-to-grow-with-mobile-technology-b/nT5qm/
Metro area poised to grow with mobile technology boom
By David Markiewicz
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Apps — those cheap or free smartphone tools that give you coupons, let you play games, and can help run your life — are everywhere, and their proliferation is fueling a mobile technology industry that business leaders say can be a major local job generator. …A 2012 study ranked Georgia fifth in the nation in mobile app industry employment, with 24,000 jobs, and pegged the industry’s economic impact at just over $1 billion — seventh-best.

www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-01-23/georgia-poised-economic-growth-2013-says-uga-business-dean
Georgia poised for economic growth in 2013, says UGA business dean
By NICK COLTRAIN
The dean of the University of Georgia Terry College of Business on Wednesday called the state economy poised to outpace national economic growth this year. But, said Dean Robert Sumichrast, that growth requires vigilant business executives and politicians to avoid the most precarious decisions that loom before them. Sumichrast predicted a 2.1 percent growth in the state economy this year, bolstered by a private sector that’s crested over the remains of the housing bubble and pushed by major industrial projects, such as the $200 million Caterpillar plant in Athens and Baxter International opening a $1 billion plant east of Atlanta.

Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.blogs.ajc.com
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2013/01/24/more-hope-to-go-around-this-year-because-fewer-students-earned-it-in-the-first-place-time-to-consider-need-based-hope/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog
Get Schooled with Maureen Downey
More HOPE to go around this year because fewer students earned it in the first place. Time to consider need-based HOPE?
AJC reporter Laura Diamond is reporting that the slight rise in HOPE payouts this year is a result of fewer Georgia students receiving the scholarship as a result of state lawmakers making the award harder to earn and harder to keep. I stand nearly alone on this issue here on the blog, but still contend that Georgia has to consider a need component to HOPE.

www.albanyherald.com
http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2013/jan/23/getting-keeping-teachers-concern/?opinion
Getting, keeping teachers a concern
By Justin Willson
In his 1903 book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” W.E.B DuBois spent two chapters sketching the results of sociological work completed during a recent trip. …How do we attract young, bright minds to teach and redirect this county’s rising generation? When starting out, I was told by a specialist that most beginners flag in the fourth or fifth year and start eyeing another career.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/24/essay-what-professors-can-learn-moocs
Learning From MOOCs
by Andrew Ng
Educators create online courses for the same reasons that they became teachers to begin with: to educate students, broaden their awareness of the world and thereby improve the students’ lives. And with massive open online courses (MOOCs), educators can now reach many more students at a time. But MOOCs offer many other benefits to the education community, including providing valuable lessons to the instructors who teach them.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/01/24/essay-flaws-distance-education
Being Present
By Bob Samuels
One potentially positive result of the current fascination with online education is that universities and colleges may be forced to define and defend quality education. This analysis of what we value should help us to present to the public the importance of higher education in a high-tech world. However, the worst thing to do is to equate university education with its worst forms of instruction, which will in turn open the door for distance learning.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/minor-details/forgotten-segment-educational-pipeline
Forgotten Segment of the Educational Pipeline
By Erica Nicole Griffin
When parents, teachers, lawmakers and communities debate over which part of the American education system should receive the most scrutiny or support, adult education, specifically General Educational Development (GED), is rarely in contention. …We talk less about the GED, perhaps, because the need for such a credential in some ways represents a failure of K-12 systems. However, with a new version of the GED set to debut in 2014, it seems we should be discussing the use of the new GED as a primary “stop gap” tool in our educational system.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/student-affairs-and-technology/how-have-you-been-innovative-ellucian
How Have You Been Innovative with Ellucian
Eric Stoller
Ellucian has announced a new initiative called the “Ellucian Inspire Awards.” With the goal of recognizing their customers who have made “measurable improvements” at their institutions using Ellucian’s solutions or services, the new award offers a $3,000 prize. The new awards program focuses on projects that “achieved measurable results during the past two years in any of three categories:”

Education News
www.bizjournals.com
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/a-healthy-conversation/2013/01/emory-gets-300000-for-mental-illness.html
Emory gets $300,000 for mental illness research
Urvaksh Karkaria
Staff Writer-Atlanta Business Chronicle
Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine have received three grants of up to $100,000 each to help identify the causes, improve treatments and develop prevention strategies for mental illness. The awards were made by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/24/finances-affected-years-entering-class-educational-and-personal-ways-cirp-survey
Minding the Money
By Allie Grasgreen
One might hope that the economic recession, which formally ended in 2009, is no longer inhibiting students’ educational pursuits — or, perhaps more realistically, not as much. But an annual survey of freshmen suggests precisely the opposite: more students than ever (66.6 percent) say America’s economic condition significantly affected their choice of college — so the recession’s residual effects, at least, linger on. And financial considerations are affecting students in more ways than just where they enroll.

www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/50876/
Incoming Freshmen Consider Cost and Value of Degree When Choosing School
by Jamaal Abdul-alim
The desires to get a good job and earn more money are playing historically high roles in incoming freshmen’s reasons for going to college. And the lack of money is also figuring more prominently in students’ choices of which college to attend. Those are some of the key findings of a new survey released Wednesday by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), which is part of the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA.

Related article:
www.chronicle.com
Freshman Survey: This Year, Even More Focused on Jobs
http://chronicle.com/article/Freshman-Survey-This-Year/136787/

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/24/study-debunks-myth-male-faculty-milk-paid-leave
Paternal Parental Leave
By Colleen Flaherty
…In “Parental Leave Usage by Fathers and Mothers at an American University,” in this month’s issue of the journal Fathering, Jennifer Lundquist and Joya Misra of UMass, along with KerryAnn O’Meara of Maryland, found that relatively few male faculty members with children took paid parental leave (72 percent of reported leave-takers were women, while 82 percent of all non-leave-takers were men).

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/24/group-drafts-bill-rights-digital-learners
Digital Learning, for the Learners
By Doug Lederman
It was probably inevitable that any group of people who sought, however tentatively, to define “the rights, responsibilities, and possibilities for education in the globally connected world of the present and beyond” would find themselves accused of excluding important parties, of being “top-down,” and of hubris.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/universities-try-mooc2degree-courses-to-lure-successful-students-to-online-programs/41829
Universities Try MOOCs in Bid to Lure Successful Students to Online Programs
By Steve Kolowich
Since massive open online courses exploded into the public consciousness, college presidents have been trying to figure out how to use higher education’s most hyped innovation to deal with one of its greatest challenges: enrolling and graduating more students at a time of rising costs and declining support. Academic Partnerships, a company that helps traditional institutions build online programs, believes it has found a way. And it involves awarding academic credit to students who take MOOCs—at no charge.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/24/world-bank-affiliate-invests-150-million-profit-college-provider
Global Development and Profits
By Elizabeth Redden
The International Finance Corporation on Wednesday announced a $150 million equity investment in Laureate Education, Inc., a Baltimore-based, privately held, for-profit education company that operates 65 career-oriented colleges in 29 countries. The investment is the largest-ever in education on the part of the IFC, an arm of the World Bank that focuses exclusively on the private sector in developing countries.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Report-Calls-for-Renewed-Focus/136813/
Report Calls for Renewed Focus on Raising College-Completion Rates
By Katherine Mangan
Improving college-completion rates is “an economic and moral imperative,” a national higher-education commission said on Wednesday in an open letter to college and university leaders. The letter, which takes the form of a report subtitled “College Completion Must Be Our Priority,” summarizes a yearlong effort by the National Commission on Higher Education Attainment to identify innovative repairs for colleges’ leaky pipelines.

Related article:
www.nytimes.com
To Raise Graduation Rate, Colleges Are Urged to Help a Changing Student Body

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/01/24/national-commission-higher-education-attainment-releases-final-report#ixzz2ItZe7Z2N
College Chiefs Contemplate Completion
By Libby A. Nelson
College leaders should embrace the goal of getting college degrees into the hands of more Americans, which may require changes in campus culture and more aggressive steps to improve graduation rates, a group of college presidents from across all sectors wrote in an open letter to their peers released Wednesday night.

www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/Capstones-Build-Academic/136815/
‘Capstones’ Build Academic Skills but Are No Cure-All, Study Finds
By Dan Berrett
Capstones, the cumulative, large-scale projects that two-thirds of students seeking bachelor’s degrees complete, can carry some heavy expectations. They are seen by many faculty members and administrators as a way to demonstrate the academic rigor of higher education.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/01/24/new-tech-campus-chicago
New Tech Campus in Chicago
The University of Illinois System, together with Chicago and state officials, plan to today announce plans for a major technology research lab to be built in Chicago, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.

www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2013/01/24/texas-am-will-push-engineering-enrollments
Texas A&M Will Push on Engineering Enrollments
Texas A&M University announced a major campaign to increase enrollment in engineering, with the goal of enrolling 25,000 students (more than double current levels) by 2025.

www.heraldtribune.com
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20130123/APN/1301230885
New Florida education chief setting top priorities
By BILL KACZOR
Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Florida’s new education commissioner told a legislative panel Wednesday that his top priorities are implementing nationwide academic standards and a new teacher merit pay and tenure law.

www.huffingtonpost.com
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/guns-on-campus-texas-arkansas_n_2528106.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share
Guns On Campus: Texas, Arkansas Legislators File To Allow Concealed Carry At Colleges
Lawmakers in Texas and Arkansas on Thursday filed legislation to allow citizens on public college and university campuses to carry concealed weapons, according to Campusreform.org.