| Tuesday, April 4, 2023 |
| MSU-Meridian PA student receives Montgomery scholarship | |
 | A 35-year-old former petty officer second class in the U.S. Coast Guard is this year's recipient of the G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery Physician Assistant Studies Scholarship at Mississippi State University-Meridian. Merwin "Win" Moore of Hattiesburg served seven years in the Coast Guard before he began the MSU-Meridian Physician Assistant Studies program in January. He continues to serve as a reservist. "The G.V. 'Sonny' Montgomery Foundation is proud to support the PA Studies program at Mississippi State by providing $12,500 to Win over the two-and-a-half years of the program," said Brad Crawford, president and executive director. Moore is the second recipient of the scholarship. Last year, the foundation awarded the first scholarship to a native of Gulf Breeze, Florida. Crawford noted the foundation's plans to "expand the scholarship to three students over the next three years are still on track with the addition of Moore. We see this investment as a win-win for MSU, the Meridian campus and veterans -- all done in the spirit of Sonny Montgomery," he added. MSU-Meridian's program is one of 254 accredited PA programs in the nation and is the only publicly funded program in Mississippi. "We are grateful to the G.V. 'Sonny' Montgomery Foundation for supporting yet another initiative aimed at addressing critical needs in the state and region," said Terry Dale Cruse, MSU-Meridian associate vice president and head of campus. "Sonny Montgomery was passionate about this state, education and our veterans. This scholarship serves all of those." |
| Nine sea turtles released after rehab at Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport | |
 | The Institute for Marine Mammal Studies and students from Mississippi State University's College of Veterinary Medicine released a group of Kemps-Ridley sea turtles back into the wild this weekend. Students from Lewisberg Intermediate School in Olive Branch also got to take part in the special release. Back in December, the turtles arrived at the Gulfport facility from New England and have been rehabilitating ever since. "So it's actually an amazing feeling seeing the turtles swim away from you and having the possibility to go out there and have a rehabilitated endangered species that you're reintroducing to the environment," explained Jenna Bordages, who is a vet student from Mississippi State. "Also just as important, I was educating some of the students on the sidelines of the event of their impacts on these animals. Because most of these animals are endangered, not because of their natural ailments, but because of human impaction, such as pollution and fishing, and things of that nature." |
| Remains of Nearly 5,000 Native Americans Will Be Returned, U.S. Says | |
 | The remains of nearly 5,000 Native Americans that were excavated long ago from earthen burial mounds by the Tennessee Valley Authority could soon be returned to their tribes, now that the agency has announced it is prepared to repatriate them after a decades-long wait. The T.V.A., the largest federally owned utility, said in a notice filed on Wednesday in the Federal Register that it had meticulously tallied the remains of at least 4,871 people of Native American ancestry, a process it had begun 14 years ago. The agency obtained the remains as it built dams near Native American burial grounds and later gave many of them to universities and museums across the South. Beginning on April 28, tribes across the country will be able to request that those remains be returned, the T.V.A. said. Tony Boudreaux, the director of curation and cultural resources management at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State University, said the T.V.A.'s order last week reflected a wider push among some archaeologists to complete repatriations. "There's lots of people that are very pleased with this situation," Dr. Boudreaux said. |
| Starkville police make two arrests in Saturday shooting case | |
 | Two suspects are arrested after a gas station shooting that injured a teenager this past Saturday. Starkville Police arrested 17-year-old Jordan Young of Starkville and 18-year-old Javion Rice of Crawford. Over the weekend, a shooting occurred at the Sprint Mart located at the intersection of Highway 182 and Old Mayhew Road. An 18-year-old was shot but is now in stable condition according to SPD. Police said both the victims and the suspects knew each other. The shooting remains under investigation. In the last two months, Starkville Police have seized nine illegal handguns from underage people. |
| Forecast warns of more severe storms in South, Midwest | |
 | Forecasters are warning of more severe weather, including tornadoes, Tuesday and Wednesday in parts of the South and Midwest hammered just days ago by deadly storms. That could mean more misery for people sifting through the wreckage of their homes in Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois. Dangerous conditions Tuesday also could stretch into parts of Missouri, southwestern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. Farther south and west, fire danger will remain high. "That could initially start as isolated supercells with all hazards possible -- tornadoes, wind and hail -- and then over time typically they form into a line (of thunderstorms) and continue moving eastward," said Ryan Bunker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Severe storms could produce strong tornadoes and large hail Wednesday across eastern Illinois and lower Michigan and in the Ohio Valley, including Indiana and Ohio, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The severe weather threat extends southwestward across parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas. Just last week, fierce storms that spawned tornadoes in 11 states killed at least 32 people as the system, which began Friday, plodded through Arkansas and onto the South, Midwest and Northeast. The same conditions that fueled last week's storms -- an area of low pressure combined with strong southerly winds -- will make conditions ideal for another round of severe weather Tuesday into early Wednesday, Bunker said. |
| Coast family farms oysters in Mississippi Sound | |
 | Mark Havard grew up on a cattle farm in rural George County and went on to have a career in business management, but his recent leap into oyster farming in the Mississippi Sound wasn't all that surprising. Havard and his family -- wife Anna and sons Hiram and Hudson -- make their home on the river in the Vancleave community of Jackson County, believe their best days are those spent together on the water. This shared appreciation of the coastal waters led to the establishment in 2019 of Two Crackers Oyster Co., their family-owned and operated off-bottom oyster aquaculture business that grows salty oysters off Deer Island. Havard's own attachment to the water led to his appointment by the governor as commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, representing recreational fishermen. "I wanted to give back, and I got the opportunity to do that," he said of his five years serving on the commission. Havard said oysters are part of the Mississippi Coast's culture but have declined as natural and manmade events such as hurricanes, flooding and oil spills have destroyed reef habitat. "You can't get Mississippi oysters anymore," he said. "You have to go to Louisiana and Texas. Why should people have to pay $3 for an oyster in a restaurant when they're rather grill them or eat them raw on their back porch." |
| Sunbelt cities top the list of booming U.S. job markets | |
 | This is a big week for jobs data. On Tuesday, JOLTS -- the job openings and labor turnover survey -- will tell us how many positions employers are trying to hire for and how many people quit jobs recently. Then on Friday, we'll get the unemployment rate for March. But today, we're looking at which cities have particularly hot labor markets right now. A new analysis from the Wall Street Journal and Moody's Analytics finds that, for larger metropolitan areas, Nashville and Austin top the list. All politics is local, so the saying goes. Well, the same is true of job markets. And, in 2022, "the big picture story is just how persistent the strength of the Sunbelt, in particular, has been," said Adam Kamins at Moody's Analytics. That trend started before the pandemic, he noted. "And by most measures, those have remained the strongest performing economies in the U.S." Of the 10 hottest city job markets -- as ranked by Moody's and the Journal -- nine were in the South, in Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. The rise of remote work has been a big factor, said Glassdoor's Daniel Zhao. |
| Hosemann looks back on Senate successes in 2023 legislative session | |
| Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann met with reporters on Monday to talk about the recently ended 2023 Mississippi legislative session. He outlined what he considered successes from the Senate which includes major education and infrastructure funding as well as support for hospitals and disaster relief. In the last days of the session, a state budget for Fiscal Year 2024 was set at $7.6 billion, with $6.7 billion of that number coming from general funds. Last year, the state appropriated $230 million for infrastructure needs. This year, there was $620 million in new funding toward roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects. This included money for the Emergency Road and Bridge Fund, large-scale MDOT highway projects and $40 million in matching funds related to federal government funding. "Almost a billion dollars in water and infrastructure in Mississippi," said Hosemann. "Very, very pleased we were able to use our American Rescue Plan money that we got for long term results." Along with the additional education funding, Early Learning Collaboratives also saw a funding increase in the half day and full day programs. Lt. Governor Hosemann began the 2023 session pushing for incentives for schools to participate in modified school calendars. While those incentives did not pass, Hosemann maintains that the calendar change allows schools to hold intersessions for students, helping address any remedial or additional learning needed. Hosemann said in communities like Gulfport with a student population of 5,000, some 1,500 students returned for intersessions over the summer. |
| Mississippi House Speaker recaps his final legislative session, looks back on his time in the Legislature | |
| On Monday, Speaker of the House Philip Gunn spoke recapped the 2023 Mississippi legislative session and his twenty-year legislative career with members of the media. The Speaker announced in November that he would not be running for re-election in House District 56. Gunn's served as Speaker for the last 12 years and is the first Republican to wield the gavel since Reconstruction. Gunn said everyone wants to think their service makes a difference, and he does believe Mississippi has made significant strides during his tenure. "I think Mississippi is a better place today for a number of reasons," Gunn said. He noted high points in his legislative career, such as changing the state flag, overturning Roe v. Wade, last year's income tax cut, and the largest teacher pay raise in state history. Speaker Gunn said there are many things about his job that he will miss, mostly the opportunity to make Mississippi better and the opportunity to pass legislation that improves the state. Gunn said he certainly intends to be active in trying to help his members who have stood by him over the last couple of years to accomplish all they want to accomplish and that includes being sent back to the Capitol. He said as for himself, he will be evaluating other options that are available to him, but wants to remain active in the public sector. |
| Lawmakers leave Jackson without reinstating ballot initiative | |
| The Mississippi Legislature has adjourned its 2023 session without giving citizens a new process by which to directly change state laws. House and Senate leaders for a second straight year could not agree on a way to restore Mississippi's ballot initiative, leaving the issue up for future legislative leaders to figure out after statewide elections this year. The two chambers batted different proposals around, but Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, in March suddenly killed legislation to restore the initiative without letting senators debate or vote on the plan. Polk at the time said he killed the proposal because he thought Mississippi was better off without the initiative, marking a rare instance when a lawmaker bucked the wishes of his party's Capitol leader. "I was for a ballot initiative, and I didn't get it," Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told reporters on Monday. After Polk's surprise decision, Hosemann, the leader of the Senate, attempted to revive debate on the initiative process by pushing lawmakers to suspend legislative deadlines, but the House wasn't receptive to the lieutenant governor's offer. House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, told the media he did not want to spend time on suspending the deadlines without first having a final agreement with Hosemann on a way to restore the initiative. |
| See the winners and losers from the now finished 2023 Mississippi legislative session | |
 | The 2023 legislative session in Mississippi has come to a close, and as lawmakers head back to their home districts, the smoke is settling and winners and losers from this session are beginning to become clearer. See the winners and losers from some of the biggest issues the legislature considered this year. Of course, who wins and who loses depends on your perspective. In one of the most controversial and discussed moves of the session, the legislature passed House Bill 1020 and an accompanying Senate bill that expanded the scope of the Capitol Police, sending them to the desk of Gov. Tate Reeves. Republican lawmakers, over the objection of Jackson's mayor, city council and their Democratic colleagues, passed the plan to create a new unelected court system within an expanded CCID that would oversee misdemeanors and preliminary actions in felony cases. The bill also creates four new temporary appointed judge positions within the existing Hinds County court system. The CCID, which was initially created in 2017 to help fund infrastructure projects in an area with a high number of state government properties that don't pay property taxes, will be expanded in its area and will also see an expansion in the amount of tax funds it receives for those infrastructure projects. The new CCID boundaries, which will take effect in 2024, include a large proportion of the majority-Black city's white population, and will likely see higher available funds for infrastructure development. |
| Amid technology worries, farm sector still eyes its potential | |
 | If GPS-guided tractors led the previous revolution in agriculture, the next generation of farming is likely to be marked by unmanned drones with onboard sensors that can spot weeds and decide when and how much herbicide to spray to control their growth. "We are thinking about technologies like drones, the integration of drones in a production facility that can spot out the weeds and where you specifically need to treat," said Chavonda Jacobs-Young, the undersecretary for Research, Education, and Economics at the Agriculture Department. Such technologies, collectively known as precision agriculture, would allow farmers "to reduce the amount of inputs, and it allows them to reduce the cost, and environmentally it allows us to minimize the amount of treatment that's needed," Jacobs-Young, who is also the department's chief scientist, said in an interview. The benefits of such technologies in combination with artificial intelligence-enabled tools, which combine vast quantities of sensor and satellite data on weather, water and soil conditions, can be presented on mobile phones and help small- and medium-sized farmers cut costs while boosting output, Jacobs-Young and other experts said. But as Congress takes up the quinquennial farm bill, lawmakers including Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., and others have been pressing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Jacobs-Young and other officials on funding and progress on precision agriculture efforts. |
| A Push to Turn Agriculture and Farm Waste Into Fuel | |
| Despite federal and state programs to convert corn into ethanol and soybeans into biodiesel to fuel cars and trucks, the United States has never before regarded farming as a primary energy producer. That changed when Congress in August passed the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides $140 billion in tax incentives, loans and grants to replace fossil fuels with cleaner renewable energy that lowers emissions of carbon dioxide. Along with the wind and the sun, the raw materials needed for a significant portion of that energy come from agriculture -- alcohol from fermenting corn, and methane from the billions of gallons of liquid and millions of tons of solid manure produced by big dairy, swine and poultry operations. Despite pushback from environmental groups concerned about increased pollution from farm waste, developers across the country see opportunities to build ambitious renewable energy projects to convert crops and agricultural wastes to low-carbon energy. "There is not a single renewable energy producer in the country that is not looking at or already taking steps to install new technology, expand their facilities, or thinking about building new plants in response to the federal tax incentives passed last year," said Geoff Cooper, the president and chief executive of the Renewable Fuels Association, an industry trade group. |
| 'We've seen this story before': Dems grow anxious of a Trump '16 redux | |
 | These should be celebratory times for Democrats. But as Donald Trump is set to get booked on Tuesday over a hush money payment he made to a porn star, a chunk of the party is growing anxious. An uneasy déjà vu has set in. "Last time people were rooting for Donald Trump, he ended up president of the United States," said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif). "We've seen this story before." The electoral potency of Trump is once more the central element of the Democratic Party's internal debates. Back in 2016, Trump was supposed to have been the perfect opponent: too crude and way too outrageous to win a general election. As Hillary Clinton's campaign geared up for that November's race, many were rooting for Trump to be the GOP nominee, believing that he'd be the easiest Republican to beat. It didn't work out as planned. And the shock many in the party experienced because of it compelled them to pledge that they'd take a more sober-minded approach to the possibility of a Trump revival. But with Trump once more eyeing the White House, the conventional wisdom is again forming that he would be the easiest Republican to defeat, owing to the myriad of legal problems he's facing. Inside the White House, a more bullish view of the race has come into focus. President Joe Biden's most senior advisors have watched Trump's GOP poll numbers surge, which have only reinforced their belief that the nation's 45th president will stand as the Republicans' nominee to be its 47th, according to four Biden allies not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations. |
| Trump arraignment may reveal dozens of charges over Daniels payments | |
 | Former President Trump is expected to face what could be more than two dozen counts across different charges as he makes his first appearance in court Tuesday, following an indictment in connection with concealing hush money payments to an adult film star. The charges will be revealed when Trump is arraigned in Manhattan. In the brief courtroom exchange, Judge Juan Merchan will read aloud the laws the former president is alleged to have violated, while Trump is expected to plead not guilty. The criminal charges stem from a $130,000 payment made to Stormy Daniels by Trump fixer Michael Cohen. Though hush money payments are not illegal, the manner in which Trump and Cohen concealed the payments could be, casting the reimbursements as legal expenses. Reports indicate Trump could face charges on more than 30 counts from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D). The potential for dozens of charges likely reflect Trump's lengthy payment history with Cohen -- spread out over about a year -- as well as the track prosecutors take in tying the misdemeanor records falsification to a felony that could include both tax fraud and campaign finance violations. The total number of counts could also mean serious work for the eventual jurors chosen in the case. |
| At many Passover Seders, Israel unrest will be on the table | |
| Marc Slutsky has been leading Passover Seders for 40 years, taking on troubling issues that have included Soviet Jewry, racism in the United States, and war after war after war. This year, when the slavery-to-freedom story unfolds at his table in Highland Park, Illinois, the Israel of today will be top of mind after tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposed judicial overhaul. The plan, on pause after repeated mass demonstrations, unleashed the most intense social unrest in Israel in decades, just ahead of this week's observance of Passover. Slutsky, president of the independent synagogue Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living, in Glencoe, has Seder tweaks in mind for his 18 guests when they sit down for ritual readings, blessings and discussion. One big change will come at the end, he said, when "Next year in Jerusalem" is traditionally recited. "We're going to read from the Israeli Declaration of Independence," said the 76-year-old Slutsky, particularly a passage that promises the "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants." "We're going to read from the Israeli Declaration of Independence," said the 76-year-old Slutsky, particularly a passage that promises the "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants." |
| Finland joins NATO, doubling alliance's land border with Russia | |
 | Finland formally joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Tuesday, a historic shift for a country that once insisted it was safer outside the military alliance and a sign of how President Vladimir Putin's gamble in Ukraine is upending the post-Cold War order. Finnish membership will double NATO's land border with Russia, adding more than 800 miles. It will also bolster the alliance's presence around the Baltic Sea and enhance its position in the Arctic. To justify his unprovoked attack on Ukraine, Putin cited the possibility of NATO expansion. Now, his war has brought a bigger, stronger NATO to his door. "I am tempted to say, maybe this is the one thing that we can thank Mr. Putin for," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Brussels on Tuesday. Russia's invasion has caused "many countries to believe that they have to do more, to look out for their own defense and to make sure they can deter possible Russian aggression going forward," he said. Russia's response on Tuesday was muted. NATO officials and diplomats downplay the threat of significant Russian retaliation, noting Moscow's cautious response to Finland's bid, as well as the fact that its forces are tied up in Ukraine. |
| Ukraine Farms Attract Money and Help From Allies, Top Food Companies | |
 | Foreign countries and some of the world's largest agriculture companies are donating or lending hundreds of millions of dollars to Ukrainian farmers, marking an early push by Kyiv's allies to rebuild the country even as the war shows little sign of ending soon. Ukraine's farming industry has been hit hard by Russia's invasion. Equipment has been destroyed, land has been expropriated and mined and export routes choked off. Financing is hard to come by, and some of the industry's most basic imports, such as fertilizer, are in short supply. In response, Western nations and companies are pouring in aid. For Western allies, the funding represents a small down payment on what experts think will be hundreds of billions of dollars worth of reconstruction aid required over years. For many Western companies, the help could bolster crucial partners struggling during the war. It also could preserve or strengthen these companies' reputations with local farmers and their position in the country, which is an important agricultural exporter, analysts said. |
| Bill to revamp financial aid dies in 2023 session | |
| A bill to substantially overhaul Mississippi's college financial aid programs died in conference on the final day of the legislative session, joining a long list of failed efforts to update the decades-old grants. Instead, lawmakers funded Mississippi's state financial aid programs as-is, with a roughly $50 million appropriation. Had it passed, House Bill 771 would have ushered in wide-ranging changes to two key state programs that help Mississippians pay for college: The Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant (MTAG) and the Higher Education Legislative Plan for Needy Students grant (HELP). MTAG is the state's most accessible, and least generous, financial aid award, and HELP is the only college aid program for low-income students. The bill, proposed by Rep. Donnie Scoggin, R-Ellisville, was introduced following a closed-door process, led by a Mississippi-based nonprofit called the Woodward Hines Education Foundation, that was meant to create consensus. But the final version of the bill proved too unpopular for lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. |
| New president of Delta State to be introduced Thursday | |
| Dr. Daniel J. Ennis, who was announced as the school's ninth president last week, is coming to Cleveland after two decades at Coastal Carolina University. During his time in Conway, S.C., Ennis held a multitude of administrative positions, including provost, dean of humanities and fine arts, vice president of academic outreach, and co-director of the University Honors Program. While serving as provost from 2021-2023, Ennis helped Coastal Carolina in enrollment, retention, and fundraising -- three sectors Delta State needs drastic help in. Since 2014, DSU has seen a 29 percent drop in enrollment, leaving the public university with just 2,556 students. Ennis, who has also spent extensive time as a professor, will be introduced at E.R. Jobe Hall on the campus of Delta State at 11 a.m. CT. |
| Kathy Ireland inspires UM women in business | |
 | The Ole Miss Women's Council for Philanthropy held an open-to-the-public conversation with Kathy Ireland at the university's School of Business, on Friday, March 24. Ireland shared her personal life experiences through her transition from being a famous supermodel in the late '80s and early '90s to being named as one of America's most successful self-made business women in Forbes magazine. Philanthropy is just as important to Ireland. She puts her time and efforts toward the YMCA, Feed the Children, American Cancer Society and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation to name a few. Ireland shared her expertise in business and character-building tips with her audience. "When I was young, people would go to college and find a job, but the world is very different today. Today people graduate from college and many, if not most, will be inventing a job or a career and oftentimes not just one, but five or six throughout their lives," Ireland said. Ireland encouraged the audience to use the many tools the university offers to help them once they graduate, because those tools will give them what they need to succeed in life. |
| Anti-tenure Louisiana legislator wants to require annual college faculty reviews | |
| Sen. Stewart Cathey does not want to abolish tenure for professors at Louisiana's public universities. Yet. Cathey, a Monroe Republican known for his anti-tenure stance, is sponsoring legislation to put annual faculty review and tenure revocation processes in state law. His proposal, Senate Bill 174, does not go as far as many in higher education feared when Cathey announced he would file legislation despite never having called a meeting of the tenure review committee he created last year. In an interview with the Illuminator, Cathey stood by his belief that it's time to abolish faculty tenure, but said he stopped short of bringing legislation to do that because of the prevalence of tenure protections in other states that would make it difficult for Louisiana universities to recruit. "I would want the best and brightest talent. I also would not want to be stuck in a system where we would be mired by having teachers with substandard talent," Cathey said. "And so this legislation would help us make sure that we are retaining the... best faculty that we can retain." Cathey's bill codifies employment practices that many of Louisiana's institutions of higher learning already have in place, at times reading more like a faculty handbook than a state law. While the bill would not dramatically alter tenure practices in Louisiana, some higher education leaders have expressed concern that it amounts to a public relations problem that could impact faculty recruitment efforts, an at-times tenuous process made more difficult by comparatively low faculty pay in Louisiana. |
| What to know about UT's first basic needs survey | |
| For the first time, the University of Tennessee has partnered with the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University to gather information using the center's basic needs survey. The survey, which asks students about their access to resources like food, housing and mental health support, closes on April 12. The survey takes around 10-15 minutes to complete. Blake Weiss, program director for basic needs in the Office of the Dean of Students, said UT is joining over 500 other institutions which have used the survey to gather data that informs university policy. "If we're going to be an everything school, that requires us to invest in student basic needs support," Weiss said. "This survey informs the starting point at which we can measure how we're moving the needle as a campus community dedicated to supporting needs security." For Legna Soto-Gonzalez, a senior studying agricultural leadership and former president of the Student Basic Needs Coalition, the issues addressed in the survey are personal. Growing up, she said there were times when her family did not have electricity or hot water and was left without basic necessities after a house fire when she was in the fifth grade. The 2010 Nashville floods, which are estimated to have cost $2 billion in damages, also affected the basic needs of her community. |
| Texas A&M participating in 'SEC Food Fight' | |
 | The 12th Can, Texas A&M's on-campus, student-led food pantry, is facing fellow Southeastern Conference universities in the SEC Food Fight 2023, which runs through April 13. The SEC Food Fight is a food donation drive in collaboration with university pantries across the SEC. Auburn University established the fundraiser in 2021 for food pantries within the SEC experiencing an increased need for food assistance and a decline in support following the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first time The 12th Can is participating in the SEC Food Fight. Brooke White, The 12th Can's executive director, said in a release The 12th Can's pantry served the most clients in one semester during the fall of 2022 since being established almost 10 years ago. "We have had a difficult time keeping up with the increased need and keeping food on our shelves during pantry openings," White said. "We hope this year's SEC Food Fight campaign will bring awareness to the prevalent issue of food insecurity on campus and encourage Aggies to support a vital resource available to Texas A&M university students, faculty and staff. Support from SEC Food Fight will equip The 12th Can with the resources and support to keep up with the growing need. Although every university pantry wins this competition because we rally resources and raise awareness, we hope to take first place." |
| Survey: Missourians by wide margin think the state is better off with Mizzou here | |
 | Sixty-eight percent of Missourians think the state is better off with the University of Missouri, according a survey with results presented Monday on campus. "This is the single best number I have seen in the 31, 32 times I asked this," said Ken Goldstein, senior vice president for survey research and institutional policy at the American Association of Universities, of which MU is a member. The number also is better than that of all the other AAU institutions in their states, he said. Goldstein presented the survey results in Stotler Lounge in Memorial Union to an audience of MU administrators and faculty members and a few system curators. To the same question, 24% said they didn't know if the state was better off with MU and 8% said it was worse off. There were 999 respondents sampled for the survey. MU's reputation is excellent with 28 percent of Missourians, according to the survey. "I would like to see that 28 a bit higher, but there's opportunity to do that," Goldstein said. |
| STEM careers less likely for poor, rural students who lack access to advanced math courses | |
 | Rural high schools, small high schools and high schools that serve historically marginalized students don't provide the same access to advanced math classes as other schools, new research shows. As a result, students who attend those schools may be less likely to pursue future courses or careers in science, technology, engineering and math and miss out on admission or financial aid to college and higher-paying job opportunities. The findings are laid out in a new report from the RAND Corporation called "Getting Students to (and Through) Advanced Math: Where Course Offerings and Content Are Not Adding Up." The report is based on the results of nationally representative surveys of K-12 school principals and math teachers from the 2021-22 school year. The results of the survey -- supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation -- come near the close of the school year when students across the nation are preparing for state and national reading and math tests. Schools are under pressure to make up ground lost during remote teaching earlier in the pandemic and other COVID-related disruptions the last few years. Many schools are trying to catch kids up on the most basic math skills. |
| Colleges deploy new strategies to revive English programs | |
 | For students in Sarah Blackwood's How to Read Moby-Dick class at Pace University, learning about Herman Melville's work isn't confined to lectures, essays or classroom discussions. Blackwood's syllabus includes a tour of Lower Manhattan locations featured in the author's novels and stories: the Wall Street law offices where Bartleby, the titular scrivener of one of Melville's best-known stories, worked, as well as the streets that Ishmael walked in the opening chapter of Moby-Dick. The 90-minute class period prevents students from following Ishmael's exact trajectory "from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall northward." Instead, they pass by Coenties Slip and continue to the Battery, where they gaze from the park out over New York Harbor as they read the chapter aloud together. If Blackwood's course sounds like a divergence from the humdrum small-group discussions that college English courses bring to mind, well, you probably haven't taken a college English class recently. With the discipline facing a surge of scrutiny in the wake of a viral New Yorker article published in late February called "The End of the English Major," English faculty are employing a range of efforts to give their field new relevancy and pizzazz. |
| A Plagiarism Detector Will Try to Catch Students Who Cheat With ChatGPT | |
 | As faculty continue to debate how artificial intelligence might disrupt academic integrity, the popular plagiarism-detection service Turnitin announced on Monday that its products will now detect AI-generated language in assignments. Turnitin's software scans submissions and compares them to a database of past student essays, publications, and materials found online, and then generates a "similarity report" assessing whether a student inappropriately copied other sources. The company says the new feature will allow instructors to identify the use of tools like ChatGPT with "98-percent confidence." There is no option to turn off the feature, a Turnitin spokesperson told The Chronicle. The company has made an exception to suppress the AI detection for a select number of customers with unique needs or circumstances, but it didn't specify for whom such exceptions would be made. The tool is available to more than 10,000 institutions, including many colleges and K-12 schools, and 2.1-million educators, according to the company. Sarah Eaton, an associate professor of education at the University of Calgary who studies academic integrity, said detection software could soon become "futile" as artificial intelligence is increasingly used to draft and edit human writing -- or the other way around. "Really soon, we're not going to be able to tell where the human ends and where the robot begins, at least in terms of writing," Eaton said. |
| Why some college professors are adopting ChatGPT AI as quickly as students | |
| It's no longer news that one of the first professional sectors threatened by the rapid adoption of ChatGPT and generative AI is education -- universities and colleges around the country convened emergency meetings to discuss what to do about the risk of students using AI to cheat on their work. There's another side to that evolving AI story. Recent research from professors at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, New York University and Princeton suggests that educators should be just as worried about their own jobs. In an analysis of professions "most exposed" to the latest advances in large language models like ChatGPT, eight of the top 10 are teaching positions. "When we ran our analysis, I was surprised to find that educational occupations come out close to the top in many cases," said Robert Seamans, co-author of the new research study and professor at NYU. Post-secondary teachers in English language and literature, foreign language, and history topped the list among educators. While evidence has been growing in recent years that work within highly skilled professions -- for example, lawyers -- may be influenced by AI, typically the jobs expected to be most affected by technology are routine or rote jobs, while highly-skilled labor is considered more protected. But this study finds the opposite to be the case. "Highly-skilled jobs may be more affected than others," said Manav Raj, co-author and professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. |
| How Accreditors Are Measuring Colleges' Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Efforts | |
| By some measures, California Lutheran University has become a place where historically underserved students are finding success. The six-year graduation rate for its Hispanic students, who make up 40 percent of its 2,800 undergraduates, is equal to that of white and Asian American students, at about 75 percent. That sets the university apart from most others: Nationally, about 54 percent of Hispanic students graduate within six years. Despite that accomplishment, the university received from its accreditor in early 2021 a "notice of concern" finding that it wasn't truly inclusive. Academic outcomes hadn't similarly improved for Black students, for whom the six-year graduation rate is 69 percent, according to a report by the WASC Senior College and University Commission, formerly the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, one of the nation's major institutional accreditors. That group includes accrediting agencies that were previously called "regional" accreditors, because federal regulations defined them by the states where they were allowed to oversee colleges. The scrutiny of Cal Lutheran, which lasted more than two years and ended in March, when the notice was lifted, is one example of a major shift in how accreditors are now holding colleges accountable. Today, six out of the seven major institutional accreditors are developing ways to assess how colleges serve historically underrepresented students, by examining institutions' mission statements, the disparate outcomes between white students and students of color, the diversity of their faculties, and testimonies of community members about discrimination they face at the colleges. |
| Political polarization is sorting colleges into red and blue schools | |
| Florida's public universities, unlike most others, require an SAT or ACT score for freshman admission. Republicans in the Sunshine State are seeking to purge diversity and equity programs from those schools, weaken tenure protections for professors and limit the teaching of concepts such as "critical race theory" and "radical gender theory." By contrast, California's public universities ignore the test scores and avow the importance of diversity. The Democratic-led state requires them to offer abortion medication through student health centers. Tenured faculty wield immense clout within the University of California. Gender studies is not under threat in the Golden State. With their competing visions, the two megastates spotlight an emerging red-blue divide in higher education: The culture wars are breaking public universities into polarized camps. At stake is who goes to college, whether those students feel welcome on campus and who decides what gets taught there. The divide has deepened in recent years. Nearly all colleges shuttered their campuses in early 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But those in red states were generally faster to reopen dormitories and classrooms. Those in blue states were faster to mandate coronavirus vaccines for students and employees, and they stuck longer with mask requirements. |
| Full funding for MAEP Gunned down | |
| Syndicated columnist Bill Crawford writes: Outgoing Speaker of the House Philip Gunn does not like the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) formula. "This formula has failed to ensure that money reaches the classroom," Gunn said way back in 2016. "It has failed because it allows spending on administration to be abused." He has continued his harsh criticisms of MAEP, but during his 12-year reign as Speaker he has not been able to get a new formula adopted by the Legislature. Thus, MAEP continues to be the official funding vehicle for Mississippi's public schools. This year the Senate, led by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, proposed to tweak the MAEP formula, then fully fund it at an additional cost of $181 million. "We compete with the world," Hosemann said in support of MAEP. "We fully intend for our kids to be competitive." That attempt was quickly Gunned down. Speaker Gunn said he was willing to increase funding for schools, but not via the MAEP formula. Last week he allowed the House to agree to add $100 million for school funding but forced it to be divvied out using a separate formula. |
SPORTS
| Diamond Dawg Gameday: Grambling State | |
| The Mississippi State Bulldogs closes out a nine-game home stand on Tuesday night when they host Grambling in non-conference action. The game is set for a 6 p.m. start. The midweek matchup will be broadcast on SEC Network+. The games will also be carried on the Mississippi State Sports Network powered by Learfield, along with a live audio stream via HailState.com/Listen. Second-year head coach Davin Pierre leads Grambling. Pierre has a career record of 36-48 as the head coach at Grambling. The Tigers are 12-15 on the season with an 8-1 in the SWAC, including sweeps against Alcorn State and Arkansas Pine-Bluff. Grambling has won its last three games. The Dawgs and Tigers will meet on Tuesday night for the fifth time in program history. This will be the first matchup since March 1, 2022, and the third straight season they have played. Mississippi State leads the all-time series 4-0. The first matchup between these two programs was during the 2013 season. |
| Lemonis, Bulldogs rue missed chances against South Carolina | |
 | It's fair to say that the South Carolina series was a case of mixed results for Mississippi State baseball. The Bulldogs (16-13, 1-8 SEC) won game two in dominant fashion, and went toe to toe with the Gamecocks (26-3, 8-1 SEC) for nearly the entirety of the first and third games. Game one was lost 6-4 with a chance to walk off on the final at bat, while the third game snowballed out of control as they disastrously conceded 10 runs in the final two innings, losing 14-5 after leading 5-4 at the start of the seventh. In an emotional post-game press conference, head coach Chris Lemonis rued the missed opportunity to take the home conference series. His voice was raspy as he talked about his team giving it away too easily after fighting so hard all weekend. "Seventh inning, we're winning," he said. "We have a chance to have a great series win, but we don't make them have to earn it. We freaking give it to them. It's frustrating. We're this close to getting this going and being a good team, and we lack aggression." The collapse at the end of game three was indicative of the Bulldogs' biggest problems this year: Finding consistency on the mound. Simply put, the Bulldog bullpen has been a critical weakness in the team, and was at the heart of the collapse in game three. |
| Bulldogs In Top 3 After Suspended Second Round | |
| No. 21 Mississippi State finished the first day of the Mossy Oak Collegiate in third place after the second round was suspended due to darkness. The Bulldogs shot 24-under as a team through 30 holes, just four strokes back from No. 4 Auburn and No. 15 Tennessee, which are tied for the lead (28-under). Hunter Logan is the frontrunner for the Bulldogs going into the final day, sitting tied for sixth at 8-under. Logan totaled 12 birdies for the day, carding four consecutively on the final four holes of the second round with a bogey-free front nine before play was suspended. Garrett Endicott is one stroke behind Logan in a tie for eighth. The freshman carded eight birdies on the day and made an eagle on the 17th green. Three of his eight birdies came on consecutive holes in the second round. Ford Clegg is tied for 11th at 6-under. He has shot par or better on 18 consecutive holes, going bogey-free on the back nine of the first round and front nine of the second round. Clegg also sank three straight birdies on holes No. 5-7 in the second round. The field will resume the suspended second round at 8 a.m. CT on Tuesday and play continuously through the final round. |
| Bulldogs look to right the ship early in conference play | |
| A four-game Southeastern Conference losing streak looked all but over for Mississippi State softball heading into the top of the seventh inning on Sunday. Down 3-2 in the bottom of the sixth, Matalasi Faapito gave the Bulldogs a 4-3 lead with a massive two-run homer into right-center field. It was the jolt this team had been looking for, but that jolt lasted all of five minutes as No. 10 Arkansas took the lead back and won, 5-4, with a two-run homer in the seventh from Raigan Kramer. From salvaging a game to getting swept, the Bulldogs now are on a five-game SEC losing streak, searching for consistency in the early going, but spirits are still very high. "This series was definitely a learning lesson for us," Faapito said Sunday. "It doesn't feel good, but we just have to turn the page and push forward for next weekend. It's good that we lose. We learn from things, learn from our mistakes and work for each other." The Bulldogs (23-13, 3-5 SEC) twice faced reigning SEC Pitcher of the Year Chenise Delce in the series. |
| Jill Biden wants champions LSU -- and Iowa -- at White House | |
| First lady Jill Biden said Monday that she wants the defeated Iowa women's basketball team to be invited to the White House in addition to the national title winner Louisiana State University. She watched LSU's 102-85 victory over Iowa from the stands on Sunday night. Biden, speaking at the Colorado state capital in Denver, praised Iowa's sportsmanship and congratulated both teams on their performance. "I know we'll have the champions come to the White House, we always do. So, we hope LSU will come," she said. "But, you know, I'm going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game." The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about whether President Joe Biden would also extend a White House invite to Iowa -- and whether it would be a joint visit with LSU or a separate engagement. In her remarks, Biden also marveled at how far women's sports in the U.S. have come since Title IX in 1972 gave women equal rights in sports at schools that receive federal funding. "It was so exciting, wasn't it," the first lady said. "It was such a great game. I'm old enough that I remember when we got Title IX. We fought so hard, right? We fought so hard. And look at where women's sports have come today." |
| LSU's Angel Reese calls Jill Biden's idea to also invite Iowa to White House 'a joke' | |
 | First Lady Jill Biden said she wants the Iowa women's basketball team to be invited to the White House in addition to the national title winner LSU. She was in attendance for LSU's 102-85 victory over Iowa from the stands on Sunday night. Biden, speaking at the Colorado state capital in Denver, praised Iowa's sportsmanship and congratulated both teams on their performance. "I know we'll have the champions come to the White House, we always do. So, we hope LSU will come," she said. "But, you know, I'm going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game." LSU star Angel Reese wasn't having it. She tweeted a link to a story on Jill Biden's remarks on Monday. "A JOKE," she wrote, along with three rolling-on-floor-laughing emojis. Stephen A. Smith, the ESPN host of "First Take," took to social media to agree with Reese. "I mean absolutely zero disrespect to the First Lady, but you are 1000% correct," Smith said. "That is a bad suggestion. Runner-ups don't get invited to the White House. Why are we trying to change it now? I completely agree with you, Angel." |
| As 2023 Masters practice rounds begin, will LIV-PGA Tour feud continue at Champions Dinner? | |
| There was plenty of talk about golf -- How did Tiger look? And how about what that change on No. 13? -- as the field for the 87th Masters Tournament turned out in force for Monday's first official practice round. There was also the inescapable shadow that the LIV Golf tour has cast over the tournament, and the different ways it might impact the tournament. There are 18 players, most of them formerly from the PGA Tour, in the field from LIV Golf, which has disrupted the sport as nothing ever before at the professional level. LIV, which didn't start its first season until June 9, 2022, used multi-million dollar contracts and purses to lure away a number of PGA Tour stars. Some of them took verbal shots at their old tour on the way out the door, creating hard feeling with their former mates. There is a possible scenario that a PGA Tour star could be battling a LIV golfer for the green jacket on Sunday. Six LIV players are former Masters champions and are expected to be among the 33 people at tonight's Champions Dinner. Some champions, such as Mark O'Meara, believe the dinner "is going to be fine, totally fine." Ben Crenshaw, the moderator of the dinner, isn't sure how it will go. "It's going to be difficult," Crenshaw recently told Golf Channel. "It's probably going to be tense in a few moments, I would suppose. "But you know, we're all champions in that room," Crenshaw said. |
| The Masters Is Feeling the Shockwaves of LIV Golf | |
| Ahead of last year's Masters, an Englishman named Paul Casey was ranked as the No. 25 golfer in the world and there was no reason to believe that would dramatically change anytime soon. Casey was thriving on the PGA Tour. There was no indication that a new Saudi-backed golf league called LIV Golf would upend the sport's professional landscape or Casey's career. LIV had been declared "dead in the water" by none other than Rory McIlroy, one of the game's pre-eminent stars. But the upstart circuit didn't die. Casey joined it. And now he's proof of how LIV Golf's tremors are being felt at this year's Masters. Casey is absent at Augusta this year because he has fallen so precipitously in the sport's official ranking system after joining a tour whose tournaments aren't being counted. Casey is an example of core tensions in the fight for the future of golf, and how they are already affecting the game's highest-profile event. LIV has accused the golf establishment of illegally colluding to quash it by shutting it out -- centering its case on the refusal of the PGA Tour to allow LIV players to participate in its events. The Tour has countered that its bylaws are fair and the players who left had broken them, while also accusing LIV of interfering with the Tour's business. At this Masters, there will still be 18 LIV players who qualified through a number of different criteria. Past champions at the event, including the likes of Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia and Dustin Johnson, are granted lifetime entry. Bryson DeChambeau will be there because the last five U.S. Open winners are admitted. |
| Love Augusta National? These golf fans built mini Masters paradises in backyards | |
 | Andrew Augustyniak has won the Masters more times than he can remember. It goes like this: He rolls a perfectly struck putt across the undulations of the 18th green, lifts his Scotty Cameron putter to the sky and waves to the gallery as the ball trickles into the cup. Sometimes, there's even a witness. In fairness, Augustyniak does enjoy a home-course advantage. He need only walk out the sliding-glass door in Gilbert, Ariz., and he's in a miniature Masters paradise. His backyard is like the back nine at Augusta National through the wrong end of a telescope. It's a replica of the holes from tee to green, a masterpiece in flawless artificial turf, complete with an authentic-looking leaderboard, a stone Hogan Bridge on No. 12, and a Rolex-style golf clock that reads "Augustyniak National." "My wife and I were blessed with the opportunity to watch the Masters in 2018, and it absolutely changed my life," he said. "It validated the passion and love that I have for Augusta National. When we were figuring out what to do with our backyard here ... I wanted to re-create that feeling where you walk through the gates at Augusta to watch the Masters." Augustyniak is the Pete Dye of the DIY crowd. And he's not alone in channeling his inner golf course designer. NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick built a scaled-down rendition of Augusta's 12th hole in the backyard of his North Carolina home. And CBS announcer Jim Nantz, voice of the Masters, is putting the finishing touches on No. 13 at his home in Tennessee. "There's something about Augusta and the whole Masters experience, it's visual poetry. It's a piece of art," Nantz said. "People spend a lot of money on art in their homes and on their properties. It just happens to be a very big canvas." |
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