Guns on Campus

Back in 2016 when the Georgia legislature was considering "campus carry" I wrote about the irony of rules for faculty and staff that prohibit weapons on campus. I am updating that post as the latest "campus carry" bill awaits the governor's signature or veto.

(My money is on him signing it as the exceptions meet some of his concerns last year when he vetoed it)

Quite simply, if the governor signs into law "campus carry," UGA will have to think about its own rules that ban employees from having weapons on campus. There's probably a story here. Just saying.

UGA, in its employment section on workplace violence, says it's against the rules to "possess, use, or threaten to use an unauthorized weapon as defined by the Policy." What's a weapon? At the end of the page it defines a weapon as "any objects that may be used to intimidate, attack, or injure another person or to damage property" and then points you to a page that doesn't exist: http://www.police.uga.edu/weapons.html. Don't bother, it's a dead link. Here's an archived version or here is an updated version with a different URL that sums it up for you. I did all the work. Enjoy.

Take a look at that list of weapons. It includes bats. So you baseball and softball players, you're in technical violation of the law? Nope. There's an exception for "legitimate athletic purposes" and a whole long list of others the law doesn't apply to.

But the real point here is, if the governor signs into law "campus carry," I would think UGA will have to alter its rules some to allow faculty and staff the same access to concealed carry of a weapon that the law would allow for students who are over 21 and meet all the other requirements. That's a good question to ask the administration, I suppose, as if the governor signs the law it will go into force (I think) July 1.

UGA is #5 Top PhD Program

The hed says it all, our PhD program is ranked #5 among communications programs in the U.S. by something called PhDs.org. You can check out the page yourself, fiddle with the data and such, but I'm gonna sum up the important stuff below. Oh, and also note if you look at the list that UGA is #1 among those identified specifically as mass communications programs. Woot.

Here are the overall Top 5

1. Stanford
2. Cornell
3. Michigan State
4. UPenn
5. Georgia

How about that? We're #1 in the South, #5 in the nation, at least by these rankings. Our nearest SEC competition is Mizzou at #11 and I'm a bit baffled by the University of Florida's lack of appearance, at least early on in the list. Weird. UGA's speech comm program is further down the list too. Just so you understand, this list includes mass and speech comm, with in some places are together and in others far far apart. That's why UNC appears twice.

You can alter the list some depending on how you want to weight it, and we turn out high in terms of student outcomes (i.e., doc students getting jobs). If you order it by lower tuition, we're #2 in the nation. We drop when you order it by minority students and faculty, but not out of the Top 20, and our female to faculty ratio puts us at #3.

So what's this all mean? Not a lot, but it's comforting to see even if I don't deal a lot any more with doctoral students (I'm on, I think a couple of committees, but rarely if ever do I rate a class taught only at the doctoral level).

Students By State at UGA

There have been dramatic shifts in what states send undergraduates to the University of Georgia over the last several years. Looking at full-time undergrads from 2000 to 2016, South Carolina dropped from being the 2nd (only to Georgia itself) in 2000 to 8th in 2016. Tennessee dropped from 3rd to 7th, and Louisiana from 7th to 12th. But look at the growth states. North Carolina, up from 5th to 2nd, and Texas up from 9th to 4th.

Rank	2016	2000
1	Georgia	Georgia
2	North Carolina	South Carolina
3	Florida	Tennessee
4	Texas	Florida
5	Virginia	North Carolina
6	Maryland	Alabama
7	Tennessee	Louisiana
8	South Carolina	Virginia
9	New Jersey	Texas
10	New York	New York

In raw numbers, let's look at Texas. Back in Fall 2000, 107 full-time undergrads from Texas attended UGA. In Fall 2016, we have 227 Texans as full-time undergrads -- a 112 percent increase. And Maryland. Back in 2000 only 43 full-time undergrads hailed from there. This Fall, we have 164 students from Maryland -- a 281 percent increase.

When I have time I'll map it for you, but basically the border states send fewer students to UGA while populous, more distant, states send more students. Is it because students from nearby states are less competitive as UGA became over time more and more academically difficult to gain admission to? Or have schools in Maryland and Texas, among others, become harder to gain admission to, thus sending students this way? No idea, but it is interesting.





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Rankings and AAU

I've written before, wondering aloud as to UGA's chances of ever being invited to the Association of American Universities, the big-kid club of research universities. I speculated in previous posts about whether UGA produces enough research -- and research dollars -- given it doesn't have a medical school. It takes big bucks to be asked to the academic prom. Today I approach this from a slightly different angle, comparing AAU membership to the world university rankings that came out this week.

Let's take a look.

The table below orders all the AAU members by their world rankings. Skim it. UGA would be in the bottom of the pile (I put it in the place where it'd sit, via rankings), but it's still better than seven other AAU members. What does this prove? Not much. AAU and the world rankings do rely on some of the same measures, so if you're pulling for UGA to get invited there's a little something here for you, but keep in mind the schools UGA beats in the world rankings (but are members of AAU) have been in for a long time. Missouri, for example, joined in 1908, Kansas in 1909, and the most recent being Buffalo in 1989.

Check on the list below with their respective world rankings. I have a little speculation at the bottom of the list.

SCHOOL	World Rank
Harvard University	1
Stanford University	2
Massachusetts Institute of Technology	3
Columbia University	6
University of California, Berkeley	7
The University of Chicago	8
Princeton University	9
Yale University	10
California Institute of Technology	11
Cornell University	12
University of Pennsylvania	14
University of California, Los Angeles	15
Johns Hopkins University	16
University of California, San Diego	17
University of Michigan	19
Northwestern University	21
New York University	22
University of Wisconsin–Madison	25
University of Washington	27
Duke University	29
University of Toronto	30
The University of Texas at Austin	32
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign	34
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	38
University of Virginia	40
McGill University	42
Rutgers University–New Brunswick	43
University of Southern California	44
University of Minnesota	45
Ohio State University	46
University of Pittsburgh	47
University of California, Davis	49
Washington University in St. Louis	51
The Pennsylvania State University	52
Purdue University	56
University of California, Santa Barbara	58
University of Florida	59
Boston University	62
University of Colorado Boulder	65
Carnegie Mellon University	67
University of Maryland, College Park	68
Vanderbilt University	71
University of Rochester	72
The University of Arizona	73
Emory University	79
Georgia Institute of Technology	86
Brown University	87
University of California, Irvine	88
Texas A&M University	98
Michigan State University	106
Case Western Reserve University	108
Rice University	114
Indiana University Bloomington	123
The University of Iowa	125
Stony Brook University	154
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA	204
Iowa State University	205
The University of Kansas	206
University of Missouri	209
Brandeis University	229
State University of New York at Buffalo	272
Tulane University	288
University of Oregon	342

Who ranks high but isn't a member? Good question, because I'd assume those schools would be competing for an invite with UGA.

Dartmouth isn't a member. Surprised me, but it's ranked #50 in the world. The University of Utah is ranked #66 but isn't a member. Those are far above UGA's #204 ranking, and there are several other schools who aren't in the club but rank higher.

My take? UGA is several years away from an invite despite it's #17 Forbes best public school ranking (also out this week). Medical and engineering programs generate lots and lots of research grant dollars, and UGA's small programs in each are nowhere close to that kind of success and prestige.

Slouching Toward a Curriculum

The UGA journalism department, now made up of the old j-dept. and broadcast news, voted earlier today on its new curriculum. I wrote about it some time ago and the latest version looks close enough to it to let earlier version be your guide. Basically it's heavy on skills classes, heavy on newsroom work, heavy on students getting exposure to lots of different skills, such as work in video. The old 3410 lecture-lab class, for example, will go away. Students will do capstone classes tied either to the broadcast of NewsSource or work to put stuff on its web site (plus, of course, still doing stuff for R&B, etc.). Specialties include investigative reporting and there are classes in data and coding.

There were two votes against it, perhaps due to the overly undergrad aspect to the curriculum and its lack of flexibility, both reasonable arguments. One of the negative voters asked three or four questions, but never offered explicit criticisms. The other "no" vote didn't say a thing. In full disclosure, I'm not as happy about the new curriculum as others are, but I think it's an interesting approach and worth a try. I worry we may be creating generalists, not specialists. But I may be wrong (words, by the way, you'd never hear uttered by our two "no" vote faculty who, best I can tell after all these years, are never wrong about anything. Nor do they ever laugh at funny stuff in meetings. Sheesh.).

Okay, so what's next? The package of classes is sent later today to the Grady College curriculum committee. Assuming no problems there, it'll go to the Dec. 10 meeting of the entire Grady faculty. Assuming no problems there (yeah, yeah, lots of assuming), it'll head "up the hill" to the university curriculum process.

We hope to have a new and improved curriculum in place by Spring 2015 2016. Nothing happens fast at a big university, unless of course the president or provost or athletic department really want it, then stuff happens really really fast. Funny how that works.

A Grad Class -- Maybe

I have a slot for Summer 2014 to teach a special topics graduate-level class at UGA. It can be about anything. In the past I've done summer seminars on the effects of social media, the intersection of humor and politics, and religion and media. This time I'm mulling over something less fun,  a course in secondary analysis. As Wikipedia notes, secondary analysis is "data collected by someone other than the user." The entry continues:

Common sources of secondary data for social science include censuses, organisational records and data collected through qualitative methodologies or Qualitative research. Primary data, by contrast, are collected by the investigator conducting the research.

There are a lot of reasons to like secondary analysis. Someone else has done most of the work, there are no pesky IRBs to deal with, and you get these great national or international samples and therefore terrific generalizability. So what's not to like? You don't always have access to concepts you'd like, measured in ways you'd prefer them measured, and there can be a learning curve when it comes to identifying, downloading, cleaning, and analyzing the data. A steep curve.

Hence ... my possible class, if it can attract students.

There is so much data available. Interested in health? Kids and health? Try getting IRB approval for that. But there's lots of data out there, some collected by the feds, some by others, that even dips into such sensitive topics as drug use. Interested in lifestyle stuff? Internet use? And politics, interested in politics? Oh man, we got your data right here. Well, not here, but at places like GSS, ANES, Pew, Census, and a bunch of federal data best found via ICPSR.

I'm still plotting this class, but basically it'd look something like this:

•  What is secondary analysis? How it differs from other methods.
• Read studies that use secondary analysis. Break 'em down.
• Limitations and strengths of the method.
• All the different places data exist.
• Identify concepts students are interested in.
• How to find your data. 
• Downloading and cleaning.
• Your friend, SPSS, for analysis.
• Recoding variables, getting it right.
• Running analyses.
• Writing up your results as a publishable paper.

Okay, that's what I have so far. Most of my scholarly work uses existing data. I'm particularly fond of Pew and ANES, but I've used others.  In fact, I have one dataset right now that must have 10 studies I'll never get around to.

Oh, and the dirty little secret we don't teach students in research methods -- sometimes you skim an interesting dataset and the study will jump out at you. This has happened to me a number of times, including a study that will soon be published in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, or the one I'm messing with now where I found a bunch of questions asking what language Latinos prefer to get their news. Having fun with that one and even found a good theoretical base having to do with ties to the ancestral country and political participation. Shhhh, don't mention this to our research methods instructors.

Will the class make? For the academically uninitiated, that means enough students sign up to justify holding the class. All you usually need is five butts in seats, and it's possible it might attract folks from other colleges (political science, maybe, or sociology, or public health).

And of course it all depends on my own single vocal cord getting repaired next month so I can croak out a lecture. Hell, everything rides on that. Luckily, I don't have to make a decision on the class until early Spring.

The Next R&B Publisher?

Soon after The Red & Black publisher Harry Montevideo resigned, people began to wonder who might take his seat high on Baxter Hill.

I have no candidates in mind and I'm unlikely to play a role in the search, which means from the safety of my "academic perch" (as one critic described it) I can offer all kinds of suggestions without any of those pesky responsibilities.

I expect the search will be inundated with the names of impressive pros looking to leave the industry. Searchers, fight the temptation of a splashy name or a splashy newspaper. One of those folks may very well turn out to be your best choice, but I'd prefer to see a young and hungry entrepreneur, someone not necessarily from the newsroom but someone who gets journalism.

Someone with ideas. Not someone with war stories.

In other words, someone who approaches the R&B like a startup, someone willing to reboot The Lady on the Hill. But -- and I can't emphasize this enough -- mindful of the R&B's storied past, its role in the University community, and of course the role journalism plays in society. Someone who can talk to townies and business leaders and university administrators and please talk to the students who spend countless hours at the newspaper because, dammit, they've gone and caught the journalism bug even though their momma warned them to practice safe studentdom and daddy insisted they get a degree in something that pays more.

Is there such a person out there?  If so, please apply.  If so, search committee, please hire.

Lack of Transparency

Not only is UGA searching for a new president, but the Grady College where I work is also seeking a new dean.

Interesting stuff.  I'm gonna talk about the latter.

Grady is a college of journalism and mass communication, a place where transparency -- at least theoretically -- should be the standard, the default, the go-to position.  The reality has always been, at best, disappointing.  But in the search for our new dean, thanks to the fuzziness of Georgia's okay-but-not-great sunshine law, the present search manages to be as non-transparent as possible.  They're following the letter, but not the spirit, of the law.

Let me explain.  Georgia law allows searches for the "executive head of an agency" in Georgia, including "units" of the University of Georgia, to operate pretty much in the black.  In other words, the public's business is not exactly conducted in the public eye (the spirit of the law).  As O.C.G.A. 50-18-72(a)(7) outlines, a search can choose to keep secret who applies for a wide assortment of jobs in local and state government, including UGA, until such time the search chooses to name the finalists.

The theory is that by having a search open to the public, good people won't apply.  Never mind how bullshit that argument really is.  Show me the evidence this is true, not just that you think it is.  If you're applying to a journalism and mass comm school and you're afraid of transparency, don't apply to a journalism and mass comm program.  Try the business school.

The news hook?  Last Thursday and Friday a group of candidates for the Grady deanship, somewhere between seven and 10 folks, went through "Skype interviews."  From that pool the search committee will probably recommend three or four to publicly visit and pitch their wares to Grady and the UGA administration.  We may know the "finalists" in the next few days. Stay tuned.

A word about "finalists" and Georgia law.  Often, searches for a school superintendent will name only one "finalist" for consideration, keeping all the other names secret.  In other words, violating not just the spirit of the law but taking behind the schoolhouse and beating the ever-living crap out of it.   

They'd never get away with this kind of bullshit in a UGA dean or president search, or at least you'd like to think so.  And there's no reason why a dean search cannot be transparent.  The law allows you to be completely open if you choose to be.  The recent search for the dean of the University of Florida's journalism school was completely open, as required by state law, including details on every person who applied and complete transparency along the way.  Whether or not you're happy with the outcome (full disclosure: Diane McFarlin, a former boss of mine a million years ago, got the job), is another matter.  Let's give her the benefit of the doubt.  She needs it.  The point is just down south at a similar program they conducted a completely open search and, best I can tell, it suffered not at all in its pool of applicants.

It's a friggin journalism and mass comm program.  We can do better, especially when our motto has to do with something about training democracy's next generation.

Or perhaps democracy should be in quotation marks.

F$%&@ing Furlough

Yep, today (Wednesday) is a furlough day, one of six my university requires to help balance the budget.  Essentially, that's a pay cut, so I wrote this post on Tuesday (and set it to post today) because technically I'm to do no work or go anywhere near the office on a furlough day. 

With the Thanksgiving holiday stretch coming, I will not be posting much at all -- furlough or not -- for the next few days.

Civic Literacy

A report suggests that students at elite universities are either dumb or not getting their money's worth, at least when it comes to the ability to answer basic civics questions accurately. The questions focus on America's history and institutions, the kind of stuff we ask in surveys to discover what people know, their basic "civics" or "textbook" knowledge.

Who sucked? Yale, Duke, and Cornell.

Who kicked ass? Eastern Conn. State University, Marian College in Wisconsin and Murray State in Kentucky.

The appendix to this study is damned confusing. What the hell is "value added" and why are the numbers lower for the supposedly bad performers? It's not explained very well and like a lot of pr releases, the quality is -- ahem -- missing. And there is probably some political axe to grind her, one I don't have the time or energy to chase down. And there is the question of how well those Yale, et al., kids might do compared to those Marian College grads in synthisizing a lot of information and composing arguments.

In other words, it's unclear what we're measuring here other than ability to answer straightforward factual questions. Still, you'd think those Ivy guys and gals would do better. Wassup with that?

Take the quiz yourself if you want to be humbled.

Oh, and my school, The University of Georgia, scored #32. Beat out again by the University of Florida, at #22.

At least we beat Duke.