Appalachian higher education center celebrates opening on Jan. 12

DAHLONEGA - The new Georgia Appalachian Center for Higher Education is the first such agency in the state to unite colleges, universities, technical colleges and high schools to increase the number of Appalachian Georgians to continue their education beyond high school. The center, designed to further the educational goals of "at-risk" Appalachian region students, has been funded for the current year at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega.

A Jan. 12 opening event introducing the Appalachian center to area constituencies will take place at NGCSU starting at 1 pm. Educational partners, local and national public officials and Georgia high school students have been invited to take part in the introduction of the new state organization. Appalachian Center for Higher Education Director Shirley Davis will present the mission of the center.

The center is designed to provide opportunities for grant awards to high schools; to develop close relationships with schools; to heighten awareness and advance the concept of higher education; and to provide technical assistance and training to high school grantees. The NGCSU School of Education is partnering with the new higher education center to provide resources and expertise.

The Appalachian Regional Commission, which provides part of the funding for the new center, has identified eleven counties as "educationally distressed" - Banks, Elbert, Fannin, Franklin, Lumpkin, Chattooga, Dade, Gilmer, Gordon, Murray and Walker.

"The Appalachian center will target the high schools in these counties," said Davis. "In addition, other services, including workshops, dissemination of research, and technical assistance will be available for most counties in the northern tier of the state."

"Georgia's current high school graduation rate hovers around 64 percent with only 28 percent of the state's 18-24 year olds enrolled in postsecondary programs," said Alice Sampson, project manager for the higher education center and director of the Appalachian Studies Center at NGCSU. "For a number of our Appalachian high schools the student college enrollment rates are closer to 8 percent. We believe we can do much better."

The center is inviting the 21 higher education institutions in the Georgia Appalachian region to serve on an advisory board and to promote the new educational initiative.

"This organization will provide technical assistance and grant awards up to $20,000 to selected high schools in eleven counties across the northern part of the state," said NGCSU President David Potter. "Awardees will implement projects of their own design, tailored to meet each school's individual needs and challenges for moving students toward postsecondary education."

For more information about the Georgia Appalachian Center for Higher Education contact Shirley Davis at gache@ngcsu.edu or 706-864-1995.

PHILANTHROPY FOR THE HOLIDAYS: North Georgia College & State University President David Potter and Dahlonega Mayor Gary McCullough volunteered to be waiters Dec. 5 at Pizza Hut to raise money for the Community Helping Place White Christmas program, which supplies food to needy families in the community during the holidays. More than $900 from tips and pizza sales went to the charity. "It's quite refreshing to see the president taking time out of his day to do this for the community," said NGCSU Assistant Professor Michael Marling. Ministerial Association and CHP White Christmas volunteers also participated. More Community Helping Place support came through the NGCSU Staff Council with members collecting from faculty and staff more than 1,436 lbs. of food, as well as toys and money, on Dec. 8. North Georgia students in Greek organizations contributed new sports equipment, more than $600 worth, to the CHP through their own fundraiser.
 

New director named to Georgia Appalachian Center for Higher Education at NGCSU
 

DAHLONEGA - Shirley Davis has been appointed the first director of the new Georgia Appalachian Center for Higher Education, located at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega. NGCSU is home to Georgia's first Appalachian Studies Center, which was formed last year, and will include the new center for higher education. Both are funded by Appalachian Regional Commission grants and other matching funds.

The Georgia Appalachian Center for Higher Education seeks to encourage and assist at-risk Appalachian Georgia high school students to continue their education and to increase college enrollment rates in selected communities. Davis' teaching experience includes working with minority, low socio-economic, and at-risk students in numerous inner city schools in metropolitan Atlanta and throughout the state.

Shirley Davis

The center will provide students with information about public higher education, develop close relationships with selected high schools, provide opportunities for grant awards and lend technical assistance and training to high school grantees. The NGCSU School of Education is partnering with the new higher education center to provide resources and expertise.

Davis, a native of Lumpkin County, grew up in the North Georgia mountain area of Suches and graduated from Woody Gap High School, where she later served as principal. She received her bachelor's degree in education from Georgia Southern College and a master of education degree in Administration and Supervision as well as an education specialist degree in leadership from the University of Georgia.

Davis has served as the assistant director of the Okefenokee Science Curriculum Project and instructed pre-service teachers at Emory University, Agnes Scott College, and Georgia State University. She spent four years as the administrator of Public School Standards with the Georgia Department of Education before accepting an appointment in Gwinnett County and spending 17 years as an elementary principal and also opening two new schools.

The new GACHE director may be contacted at gache@ngcsu.edu or 706-864-1995 for more information.

North Georgia offers its first doctoral program
 

	NGCSU physical therapy students get hands-on experience in the classroom. The master of physical therapy program will become a doctoral program next summer.

DAHLONEGA - For the first time in its 132-year history, NGCSU is offering a doctoral program on its campus.

The doctor of physical therapy degree will be offered in collaboration with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, beginning next summer. Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah also is part of the consortium offering the doctoral-level degree.

"We are very pleased with this collaborative effort to provide our outstanding physical therapy program," said NGCSU President David Potter. "We appreciate the cooperation of our partners. We now have the ability to prepare therapists at the highest level of education needed for this critical profession."

"This is an innovative approach to move physical therapy education in Georgia to the doctoral level," said Dr. Shelley Mishoe, dean of the MCG School of Allied Health Sciences. "The agreement allows AASU and NGCSU to offer doctoral degrees without losing the identity of their existing physical therapy programs."

The American Physical Therapy Association has endorsed the doctor of physical therapy degree as the profession's entry-level degree. The MCG physical therapy program was upgraded from a master's to a doctoral-level program in May. The doctor of physical therapy programs at AASU and NGCSU will begin in the summer 2006 semester, with plans to "teach out" the universities' remaining master's degree candidates over the next two years. North Georgia's long-established master's program in physical therapy has been recognized regionally and nationally, and has consistently had far more applicants than the number of graduate students it can accommodate.

"This consortium will allow three seasoned programs, each very successful in their own right and with their own unique strengths, to collaborate, in ways never before really attainable, toward a common goal of better serving the continued development of our profession and the rehabilitative health care needs of the citizens of Georgia," said Dr. Robert Laird, head of North Georgia's physical therapy program. " I believe the consortium will yield tremendous benefit to all of our constituents."

"I look forward to the admission of our first DPT students on NGCSU's campus and hearing of their success as they move through the curriculum," said Vice President for Academic Affairs Linda Roberts-Betsch. "Our physical therapy faculty have designed an excellent program for them."

Each institution will provide a curriculum under consortium-approved guidelines. The Consortium Curriculum Review Committee, comprised of faculty and administrators from all three programs, will handle admissions, curriculum, administration and faculty affairs. Faculty members of each program will remain employees of their original institution, but will have the opportunity for additional appointments with the MCG School of Allied Health Sciences.

"The consortium multiplies the expertise of our physical therapy faculty threefold," Mishoe said. "With the collaboration that will result, I truly feel these programs will evolve into something unique and ideal."

Record number of students enrolled at North Georgia

DAHLONEGA - With 4,765 students now attending North Georgia College & State University, the institution has the largest enrollment in its history.

The fall 2005 enrollment of North Georgia has increased by 4.7 percent over fall semester last year, the second highest growth rate of the 13 state universities plus the four research universities and two regional universities in the University System of Georgia.

"We are pleased to be able to serve the increasing educational needs of our region and our state," said NGCSU President David Potter. "And we are grateful that students turn to North Georgia for their education.

Only Savannah State University increased by a larger percentage than NGCSU, 10.4 percent for a total of 3,091 students.          

The 3,488 students enrolled full-time at North Georgia make up 73.2 percent of the total "head count" enrollment.

"We appreciate the support our state legislature has provided to meet these enrollment increases through its funding for higher education," Potter said. "The state's recognition of the importance of higher education for Georgia's future is most heartening."

The University System of Georgia fall enrollment report shows a seventh consecutive year of growth in attendance at the state's public colleges and universities.

'Echoes of Appalachia,' tapestry and fabric art exhibit, at NGCSU, Nov. 10-Jan. 20
 

Tapestry by Tommye Scanlin
Tapestry by Pat Williams
Fabric collage by Diane Getty

DAHLONEGA - "Echoes of Appalachia," an art exhibition featuring tapestries and fabric collages centering on motifs and themes from Appalachia, is on display Nov. 10 through Jan. 20 at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega.

Artists Tommye Scanlin, Pat Williams and Diane Getty will be at an opening reception on Nov. 10, 5-7 p.m., in the Hoag Student Center fine arts gallery. The exhibition is free and open to the public. Contact Pamela Sachant, NGCSU Department of Fine Arts, at psachant@ngcsu.edu or 706-864-1512 for more information.

Artists:

Tommye Scanlin is professor emerita and part-time instructor of weaving at NGCSU. She says of her work, which has been exhibited nationally and internationally and featured in numerous publications, "[It] is mainly pictorial. I weave images based upon ideas, images and events relevant to my life."

Pat Williams, who lives and teaches in Habersham County, is inspired in her tapestries by scenery and people she encounters in her daily life. "For a number of years, it has been my practice to arise early to meditate, journal and then weave. Perhaps as a result of this routine my work often has an autobiographical quality."

Diane Getty began her artistic career as a metalworker and jeweler; she now creates hand-painted and stitched-fabric collages and teaches workshops in fabric and fiber arts, collage, and other media. "I work with both natural images and abstract symbols," Getty says, "to explore themes ranging from games, politics, and humorous aspects of life [to] my fondness for coffee."

NGCSU cadets earn good conduct ribbons

DAHLONEGA - Members of North Georgia College & State University's Corps of Cadets were awarded Good Conduct Ribbons this semester. These cadets completed their first year in the corps, achieving at least a 2.0 grade point average, or a grade of a "C," for each semester, and maintained good standing within the military program.

Students and the cadet units to which they are assigned:

NGCSU new Southeastern site for certifying death investigators
 

DAHLONEGA - North Georgia College & State University has become the new Southeast region's site for the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators national testing certification. Joseph Morgan, a new NGCSU assistant professor of criminal justice, is the proctor and coordinator of the program, which he brought with him from Atlanta to his faculty position at North Georgia.

"Medicolegal death investigators are involved in cases ranging from homicides to accidental industrial deaths," said Morgan. "They work with law enforcement and other agencies in processing death scenes, post-mortem examinations and very broad range of other related issues."

Joseph Morgan

In cooperation with ABMDI and the St. Louis University School of Medicine, the MDI certification testing will now be provided at NGCSU, one of only two higher education institutions nationwide to administer the specialized certification, Morgan said. Medical examiners' offices and Texas Tech University also provide the testing.

Police officers, medical examiners, coroners and professionals from other fields take the certification test. Military personnel seeking certification include officers from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

"About 100 people nationwide have obtained the highest board certification," said Morgan.

Morgan himself is ABMDI certified and holds a master of forensic sciences degree from National University in LaJolla, Calif. Morgan was the senior investigator for the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office for 13 years, where he administered the test. Previously, he was a forensics investigator in New Orleans.

He plans to administer the first ABMDI certification test at North Georgia this year. Morgan said MDIs who have ABMDI certification are becoming increasingly important for testifying in court cases and also for having the best-qualified professionals in the field.

This page last modified on: Tuesday, 03 January 2006 17:09:36 -0500 by University Relations    

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