| Tuesday, April 14, 2015 |
| Former Washington cyber security official talks to MSU-Meridian students | |
 | Business students at Mississippi State University-Meridian were schooled on cyber criminals and cyber threats to the United States Monday by a former cyber security official who served during the George W. Bush administration. Marcus Sachs, a retired U.S. Army officer who served as a cyber security official for National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on the National Security Council during Bush's first term, spoke to students at MSU's downtown Meridian campus. Sachs also served as Verizon's vice president of National Security Policy. MSU/Meridian Division Head-Business Dr. William W. Hill said the school was fortunate to bring in someone of Sach's stature. |
| Former Cyber Security Official Gives Advice to Students at MSU-Meridian | |
 | A former cyber security official gave career advice to business students at MSU-Meridian Monday. Marcus Sachs is a retired U.S. Army officer and served as a former cyber security official in the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration. He talked with business students about things to think about when they graduate from college. Sachs also talked about how people need to be careful whenever they conduct business online. |
| Region's heavy rain provides prime mosquito breeding grounds | |
 | Mosquitoes are going to like Northeast Mississippi in the near future. "Right now, based on what's happening now, we're certainly going to have a lot of activity. There's water everywhere," said Dr. Jerome Goddard, Mississippi State University Extension professor of medical/veterinary entomology. Goddard said two factors affect the mosquito population, the onset of warm weather and rainfall amounts. Recent rains have created prime breeding areas. "With the rain we've been getting," Goddard said, "we're probably going to have a lot of mosquitoes within a month." He cautioned against making predictions too far out. |
| Russian ballet to headline final spring Lyceum event at Mississippi State | |
 | The Russian National Ballet Theatre's April 22 presentation of "Sleeping Beauty" will conclude Mississippi State's 2014-15 Lyceum Series schedule. The performance begins at 7:30 p.m. in the Bettersworth Auditorium of the university's historic Lee Hall. The internationally recognized performing company was founded in Moscow during the late 1980s as the Soviet government was easing its long grip on all areas of communist society. During this transitional period known as the Perestroika, many of the country's great ballet dancers and choreographers began exercising new-found freedoms. Today, the Russian National Ballet Theatre includes more than 50 dancers of singular instruction and vast experience. |
| Issues stacking up for potential special session | |
 | Gov. Phil Bryant before the 2015 legislative session ended April 2 dropped hints he might at some point call lawmakers back into special session to reconsider his workforce training proposal that died. Since then, the list of issues state leaders, lawmakers and others want added to any special call has grown. "Any potential topic must stand on its own merit," Bryant spokeswoman Nicole Webb said on Monday. "Things like response to a natural disaster or support for a major economic development project would certainly be priorities." |
| Illegal gambling target of joint push | |
| The nation's casino owners and gambling machine makers say they want to team with states to crack down on illegal gambling. Speaking to the National Association of Attorneys General on Monday, American Gaming Association President Geoff Freeman called on state legal leaders to join with his group, saying they "have a shared interest in putting an end to illegal gambling." Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, president of the National Association of Attorneys General, said the group may create a committee to examine illegal gambling. Freeman also suggests that if attorneys general don't wish to enforce laws against some activities such as sports betting, states should legalize them so casinos can legitimately compete. |
| USM Alumni Association to host Joe Paul roast | |
 | The University of Southern Mississippi Alumni Association will host a Retirement Roast in honor of Joseph S. Paul at 6 p.m. April 24 in the Thad Cochran Ballroom. Paul has worked at Southern Miss for more than 40 years, spending the last 21 as vice president for Student Affairs. In February, Paul announced his retirement from the vice president's position, effective June 30. "In his more than 40 years of service to the University, Dr. Paul has impacted thousands of Golden Eagles," said Jerry DeFatta, executive director of the Southern Miss Alumni Association. |
| Brooks to speak at Jackson State graduation | |
 | Cornell William Brooks, president and CEO of the NAACP, will speak at spring commencement at Jackson State University on May 2. Ceremonies begin at 8 a.m. at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium in Jackson. The 54-year-old Brooks, a lawyer and activist, was named leader of the civil rights organization last May. |
| Mississippi College table tennis team wins national title | |
| The trophy for the North American table tennis champions now resides at Mississippi College. The school's all male table tennis team beat out male and coed teams from the United States and Canada this weekend, including former reigning champion Texas Wesleyan University, to win the 2015 College Table Tennis Championship. Recognized as an Olympic sport in 1988, table tennis, with two paddles, a ball and a net, is commonly referred to as ping pong. MC's table tennis team has placed second for three consecutive years. The team from Texas Wesleyan has claimed the championship for 11 consecutive years. Calling the former champs a "powerhouse," MC's team faculty sponsor and a Mississippi senior olympian in table tennis, Andy Kanengiser said the win was historic. |
| U. of Alabama professor, student measure intensity of helmet impacts during collisions | |
 | The crack of football helmets is a distinct sound and one that a University of Alabama mechanical engineering professor and his student believe could be analyzed as part of a less costly method of measuring the severity of impacts on the field. UA sophomore Brandon McChristian and UA mechanical engineering professor Steve Shepard, began working last fall on a series of experiments to prove a direct correlation between the sound helmets make when they collide and the energy of the impact. They both say the technology could help monitor for concussions in the future. "We are not going to be diagnosing concussions, we are going to be saying this is the level of impact," Shepard said. |
| Nelly to perform Saturday concert at Toomer's Corner despite arrest | |
 | Rapper Nelly will perform Saturday at Auburn University's Auburn Airwaves concert despite being arrested for felony drug charges over the weekend. He will join national acts Ke$ha and Nick Jonas for the concert portion of the all-day Corner Block Party, presented in partnership with Auburn Airwaves, University Program Council, Auburn Athletics, City of Auburn, Auburn Chamber of Commerce, Auburn-Opelika Tourism Bureau, Office of Development and the Auburn Alumni Association. Juliette Harris, a publicist for the rapper, confirmed Monday afternoon Nelly would still perform at the university's annual spring concert. |
| U. of Florida's nuclear reactor back, ready to assist students | |
 | The small nuclear reactor on the University of Florida campus has been sleeping for about four years while the Nuclear Science Center was renovated. Just over two weeks ago, it woke up -- with upgrades. And it's still safe, UF officials said last week. "The laws of physics actively prevent anything from going wrong," Nuclear Training Reactor Director Kelly Jordan said. "There's been a slight renaissance of nuclear power needs because of climate change," said University of California Irvine Nuclear Training Reactor Supervisor George Miller. "So, there are somewhat more students going back into nuclear engineering and nuclear science programs than there were maybe 20 years ago." |
| Lt. Gov. Cagle speaks on education, public service at UGA awards banquet | |
 | Georgia Lt. Governor Casey Cagle espoused the importance of education as the state moves forward in improving school systems and providing "workforce development" as he spoke Monday at the University of Georgia's 24th Annual Public Service and Outreach meeting and luncheon. The current "one size fits all" approach to schooling has "created a bureaucratic maze around public education," Cagle said. Public education should instead be molded to fit individual students, he told his audience at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education. By June 30, all of the state's school systems will have to choose one of three governance models: status quo, Investing in Educational Excellence, or becoming a charter school district. |
| Construction of STEAM Academy at U. of Kentucky could start next year | |
 | Construction of a high school on the University of Kentucky campus to house Fayette County Public Schools' STEAM Academy could begin in July 2016 and be completed by December 2017, district officials told school board members at a meeting Monday. In the meantime, the board will be asked to spend $290,790 on portable classrooms at the academy's temporary location, the former Johnson Elementary School on East Sixth Street. That vote will be April 27. The new academy building is expected to serve 600 students in grades 9 to 12. In the program, which opened in fall 2013, STEAM students take high school classes while also earning college credits in courses taught by UK faculty and undergraduate and graduate students. |
| Texas A&M weighs identity protection efforts for employees after breach | |
 | An accidental online posting of nearly 5,000 Social Security numbers belonging to Texas A&M University faculty members and graduate assistants in February has university officials taking a closer look at preventing identity fraud. In an address to the A&M Faculty Senate Monday, Provost Karan Watson said the school is considering the use of identity protection software for all A&M faculty members. "Since we have found out so many people who work for the university who weren't on this list are dealing with this crime, we are investigating this as a benefit service which we should and can afford to provide for everybody because it seems to be a problem that people in general are having to deal with now, but especially for people in the public as much as you are." |
| Monday groundbreaking at U. of Missouri marks start of main engineering building renovation | |
 | Bob Schwartz, interim dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Missouri, said educating students for engineering jobs is a challenge. "It's far more challenging in cramped and deteriorating space," Schwartz said. Renovations that started Monday will help alleviate that challenge. A ceremony Monday marked the start of renovations of Lafferre Hall, the main building for the College of Engineering at MU. Gov. Jay Nixon on Oct. 16 toured Lafferre and approved the state's issuance of $38.5 million in bond proceeds for renovations of the 1935 and 1944 sections of the building. The state Board of Public Buildings in February approved the sale of bonds to finance the project. |
| Survey finds marketing officials pleased with outcomes of branding projects | |
 | Colleges are eager to highlight their strengths and distinctive characteristics for prospective students, parents and donors. Despite that high level of interest, though, college marketing departments have little information about best practices or common approaches to branding strategies. That absence was the catalyst for a survey to measure "The State of Brand Strategy in Higher Education." The survey was conducted by mStoner, a higher education marketing agency. The lack of agreed-upon methods is due in part to the recency of the focus on branding in higher education. Only in the past decade have higher education administrators generally recognized the importance of developing a brand strategy, which Deborah Maue describes as an internal understanding of what a college offers to the world that is translated into external communications such as brochures and logos. |
| Helping Minority Ph.D.'s in STEM: Something's Working | |
 | Earning a Ph.D. in a STEM field is meant to be challenging, but data has shown it can be especially so for minority students. While universities have had some success in diversifying their STEM graduate ranks in recent years, completion rates for Ph.D. candidates who are African-American, Latino, Native American, or Alaska Native have lagged behind those of their white counterparts. A report released on Tuesday by the Council of Graduate Schools offers some good news: Seven-year Ph.D. completion rates for minority students at institutions surveyed rose by 5 percent from 1996 to 2005, the most recent cohort it examined. That means that something the universities are doing is working. |
| Study suggests STEM faculty hiring favors women over men | |
| Many studies suggest that women scientists aspiring to careers in academe face roadblocks, including bias -- implicit or overt -- in hiring. But a new study is throwing a curveball into the literature, suggesting that women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields. Could it be that STEM gender diversity and bias awareness efforts are working, or even creating a preference for female candidates -- or is something more nuanced going on? Experts say it's probably both. |
| Are master's degrees on their way out? Alternatives grow as enrollment fades | |
 | When George Washington University announced last week that it was laying off nearly 50 employees to reduce costs, the university's president, Steven Knapp, blamed a decline in enrollment in graduate and professional programs. Graduate degrees and professional certificates have been the fastest-growing segment of higher education in recent years, and the thinking has always been that when the economy improves, fewer people go back to school for such credentials because they can more easily get jobs instead. But GW and thousands of other college and universities are mistaken if they think that any downward trend in graduate enrollment is a temporary blip caused by an improving economy. Rather, what is happening now is a permanent shift in how today's working adults acquire education throughout their lifetimes. |
| Good Mental Health Away From Home Starts Before College | |
 | With high-school seniors deciding where they'll be attending college in the fall, now is the time, psychologists and psychiatrists say, for teens and their parents to focus on how to maintain good mental health away from home. This is particularly vital for the growing number of teenagers who have already struggled with mental illness in high school. About 14.3% of college students were diagnosed with or treated for anxiety problems during the past year, and 12% were diagnosed with or treated for depression, according to a spring 2014 survey of 79,266 college students by the American College Health Association. |
| BOBBY HARRISON (OPINION): A period of IHL uncertainty | |
| The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal's Bobby Harrison writes: "Much has changed since early November when then-Higher Education Commissioner Hank Bounds spoke to the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute/Capitol press corps luncheon. By coincidence, only hours before that long-scheduled speech, news broke that Bounds was a finalist for the presidency of the University of Nebraska. And weeks before that speech, information began to come out in drips and drabs that perhaps the 12-member IHL Board was not entirely satisfied with University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones. Five months after Bounds' speech, the College Board does not have a long-term chancellor for Ole Miss. And with Thursday's dramatic announcement by Jim Borsig that he would remain as MUW president instead of taking the commissioner's post, the College Board has some major decisions to make." |
SPORTS
| Bully XXI debuts Saturday at Maroon and White Spring Game | |
| Saturday's Maroon and White game will begin with the introduction of a new era in Mississippi State athletics. About 30 minutes prior to the game, Bully XX, also known as Champ, will step onto the Scott Field at Davis Wade Stadium for the last time with his son, Jak. "We'll do the exchanging of the harnesses, and after I transfer the harness from Champ to Jak, Champ will go into official full retirement," MSU Mascot handler Lisa Pritchard said. "There will be no more appearances for Champ." Champ will retire to enjoy the "easy life," Pritchard said. He'll remain in the home he's lived in during the past decade with Pritchard. Jak's formal name is "Cristil's Golden Prince" in honor of Jack Cristil, MSU's former play-by-play announcer for 58 years who died last year. |
| Donald Gray brings lofty goals to Mississippi State from Co-Lin | |
| Donald Gray hears the noise on social media. Through the first month of Mississippi State's spring practice, the junior college transfer hasn't returned a punt. After each practice fans, who saw him average 20 yards per return at Co-Lin, ponder why. "I'll block the punt, I'll punt it," Gray said. "I'll do anything to help us get that ultimate goal." Gray has asked to return punts but that responsibility has belonged to Fred Ross and Will Redmond so far. MSU started last season with Jamoral Graham as its punt returner. A few mishandled punts thrust Ross into the role. |
| McDonald, Bulldogs gearing up for SEC championships | |
 | Mississippi State's women's golf team enters the postseason ranked No. 2 in the nation. The Bulldogs won two tournaments back in October, including at Old Waverly, and they've finished in the top ten in every event they've entered, including a recent second-place finish at LSU. MSU, led by senior Ally McDonald of Fulton, is among the favorites this week at the SEC Women's Championship, which tees off Friday at Greystone Golf & Country Club in Hoover, Ala. |
| Southeast Missouri State replaces Nutt with Ray | |
| Former Mississippi State men's basketball coach Rick Ray was not out of a job long. Three weeks after being fired by the Bulldogs, Ray was hired by Southeast Missouri State on Monday afternoon. Ray went 37-60 during his three seasons at MSU, including a 13-41 mark inside Southeastern Conference play. He signed a four-year contract with the Redhawks through 2019 with a base salary of $175,000 plus a $20,000 annuity. |
| PATRICK OCHS (OPINION): Mississippi's baseball teams may be down, but they're not out just yet | |
 | The Sun Herald's Patrick Ochs writes: "At the beginning of the month, Baseball America had Ole Miss as the lone Mississippi school in the NCAA Tournament -- as one of the last four teams in. Last week, D1Baseball.com took it one step further and had zero Mississippi schools making the field of 64. Zero. Let's just say it hasn't been a great year on the diamond in the Magnolia State. Should the prognostications hold true, it'll mark the first time since 2002 the Rebels, Mississippi State and Southern Miss have all been left out at home. Not the type of clean sweep folks are hoping for. But there seems to be some good news for fans of the three schools, outside of the pitching performances from James McMahon, Trevor Fitts and Scott Weathersby." |
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