2 Dec. 5, 2016 columns.uga.edu
Around academe
UF Online growing but looking for strategies to increase enrollment
After canceling a contract with Pearson Education last year, the University of Florida is altering its strategy for getting more students enrolled in its online degree programs, according to an article in Inside Higher Ed. UF Online, a platform to earn a degree from the university exclusively through online courses, is integral to the state university system’s goal of making just less than half of all undergraduate credit hours online based. The university hasn’t reached enrollment goals it previously set but enrollment was up by 70 percent more than last academic year and made $66,000.
Report offers advice to maximize class scheduling efficiency
The new Higher Education Scheduling Index shows that more than a third of introductory-level courses at four-year public institutions had too many students per class offering, an issue that contrasts with the finding that the classrooms at those same kinds of institutions weren’t in use for more than half of the work week. Community colleges, on the other hand, focused on introductory courses and, as a result, fewer of those classes were overloaded than at traditional institutions. The report suggests four- and two-year institutions and community colleges can save money and reduce waste by terminating classes that don’t have enough demand.
VPN access changes on Jan. 3
News to Use
If you use UGA’s Remote Access Virtual Private Network to access university systems, you will soon need to use ArchPass Duo. Beginning Jan. 3, access to all VPN groups will require use of ArchPass Duo, UGA’s twofactor authentication system. Two-factor authentication requires “something you know” (such as a password) and “something you have” (such as a physical device) to access specified systems. This process requires users to verify their identities by providing both a password and a physical device. At UGA, the “something you have” is a mobile device, tablet or landline enrolled with ArchPass Duo used in conjunction with a UGA MyID password to access UGA systems. Currently, only users who need access to restricted data are required to use ArchPass Duo to authenticate. If you are not already an ArchPass user, you can self-enroll a cell phone, landline or tablet in ArchPass Duo through the Duo Self-Service Portal on the EITS website. You can find instructions at archpass.uga.edu. When logging in to the VPN, you will be asked for your MyID, password and an ArchPass Duo authentication method. Users who have not been granted privileges to access restricted data should use the default VPN group. Source: Enterprise Information Technology Services
A MATTER OF DEGREES Membership in the Alumni Association will expand Dec. 16 when more than 2,300 students receive their degrees. A breakdown of degrees conferred by level during the 2014-2015 academic year*:
Degree Bachelor’s Master’s** Professional Doctoral Total
Recipients 6,935 1,656 425 467 9,483
*The most recent year for which data is available **Includes educational specialist degrees Source: 2015 UGA Fact Book
UGA ARTS COUNCIL
Spotlight on the Arts breaks record with more than 23,000 attendees By Camie Williams camiew@uga.edu
More than 23,000 people attended UGA’s Spotlight on the Arts festival this November, setting an attendance record for the fifth straight year. Held Nov. 2-13, the festival featured more than 100 events and exhibitions and engaged 23,211 people in the visual, literary and performing arts. Events featured special guests as well as hundreds of student artists, musicians, writers and performers, including more than 200 who took part in an Opening Celebration kaleidoscope performance. “The success of Spotlight on the Arts underscores just how important the arts are to the cultural and intellectual vitality of our university and state,” said Pamela Whitten, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. “I am so grateful to the members of the UGA Arts Council for organizing such an extraordinary festival.” For the first time in the festival’s five-year history, the UGA Arts Council held a Spotlight on the Arts Family Day. More than 1,000 children and adults participated in the Nov. 5 festivities, which included dramatic and musical performances, art activities, dance classes, writing workshops and a chance to interact with musical instruments. The 2016 festival also featured performances from the University Theatre, the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and dance department, a Shakespeare symposium, a roundtable on arts and the environment, an open house at the Lamar Dodd School of Art and exhibitions at the art school, the Georgia Museum of Art, the State Botanical Garden, the Grady College of Journalism and Mass
Dorothy Kozlowski
Artist Elizabeth Baker, a new Renaissance artist primarily working in the sonic medium but also incorporating movement, performed Nov. 4 at the Georgia Museum of Art as part of Spotlight on the Arts.
Communication and the College of Environment and Design. Special guests included worldrenowned music producer Jacknife Lee, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Newfoundland folk band the Dardanelles and several visiting scholars and writers, including Roy Blount Jr., who was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. The festival also included the third annual 4 minutes, 33 seconds: Spotlight on Scholarship in the Arts competition, a signature Arts Council event where students present
their scholarship in the arts in oral or poster form and compete for prizes. “This was another wonderful year for the festival,” said Russ Mumper, chair of the UGA Arts Council and vice provost at UGA. “The council is so pleased to have organized a festival aligned with its mission to foster an awareness and appreciation of the arts and a campus environment conducive to artistic innovation.” Planning is underway for the 2017 Spotlight on the Arts festival, and information about arts events year-round can be found at www.arts.uga.edu.
OFFICE OF RESEARCH, GRADUATE SCHOOL
JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION
By James Hataway
By Stephanie Moreno
Symposium speaker: Responsible research drives scientific progress jhataway@uga.edu
The last 25 years have brought new technologies that have led to leaps in scientific advancement and opportunities for research collaboration. But with them have come added risks, as well as expectations for maintaining the public’s trust through responsible conduct of research and scholarship. As part of an ongoing effort to enhance the responsible conduct of research at UGA, the Graduate School and the Office of Research recently hosted a two-day symposium and workshop with Frank Macrina, vice president for research and innovation at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It is vitally important that we ensure the integrity of our research and scholarship,” said Vice President for Research David Lee. “It is the foundation of the trust and confidence that we want the public and decision-makers to have in our work.” Macrina is a nationally recognized expert in the responsible conduct of research, or RCR, and he has taught Frank Macrina scientific integrity to graduate and postgraduate trainees at VCU for more than 25 years. He is also the author of the highly regarded textbook Scientific Integrity, published by the American Society for Microbiology. “Frank’s visit to UGA and his important message mark the beginning of a new initiative to invigorate the culture that is the foundation for the integrity of our research and other scholarly activities,” said Christopher King, associate vice president for research and director of the Office of Research Compliance. In his public lecture, Macrina touched on a number of changes that affect how scientists and scholars conduct their research, how they relay their findings to the public and how they prepare the next generation of researchers See SYMPOSIUM on page 7
Grady College hosts international conference on media, public sphere s.moreno@uga.edu
UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication hosted the Thomas C. Dowden International Conference “Media and the Public Sphere: Empowered Audiences in the Digital Age” Oct. 20-22. “We were thrilled to welcome to Grady some of the nation’s leading experts on media analytics,” said Ann Hollifield, the Thomas C. Dowden Professor in Media Research at Grady College. “Our panelists discussed the challenges of understanding audiences and advertisers in this digital age and how that impacts media content decisions, audiences and the media’s role in the public sphere.” Panelists included Eric Bruce, research director at WSBTV in Atlanta; Billy McDowell, vice president of research at Raycom Media Inc.; Howard Shimmel, chief research officer at Turner Broadcasting; Steve Walsh, executive vice president of Local Television, comScore Inc.; and Reid Williams, senior director for analytics at Gannett. More than 50 scholars from UGA, the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration in Romania, the University of Florida, the University of Tennessee and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, among others, presented papers and discussed their research. The James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research, an outreach unit of the Grady College, partnered with the Institute of Communication at University Lyon 2, France, and the Center for Communication Research at the National University for Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest, Romania, in organizing the conference. It was the sixth annual conference on the topic of media and the public sphere. This year’s conference honored Dowden, who received a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in political science from UGA in 1962 and 1964, respectively. A pioneer in the cable industry, Dowden has been a generous supporter of the college.