Archive for category: UGA News

Students with intellectual or developmental disabilities will soon be able to enjoy the full UGA experience with the launch of a new inclusive post-secondary education program, Destination Dawgs, beginning in spring 2017.

The program, housed within the College of Family and Consumer Sciences’ Institute on Human Development and Disability, aims to assist those students’ transition into adulthood by fully immersing them in UGA life.

Destination Dawgs, still in development, aspires to have students reside in on-campus housing, audit classes and be supported by peer mentors who will assist the students in courses and on campus to improve their independent living skills.

“The goal is for Destination Dawgs participants to come out of the program with a platform for getting a good job and for leading a good adult life,” said Carol Britton Laws, an assistant clinical professor and coordinator of UGA’s Disability Studies Certificate program within the institute. “The unemployment rate for people with disabilities nationally is about 75 percent, and we’re trying to help students build skills and gain experiences that are marketable.”

Laws envisions a five-semester model with a small cohort of five students enrolling in the program in spring 2017.

Because students won’t enter the program through the regular admissions process, they will receive a certificate of completion rather than a degree.

The emphasis on developing and expanding post-secondary education opportunities in the state can be traced back to the founding of the Georgia Inclusive Postsecondary Education Consortium in 2011, which seeks to create opportunities for students who historically have not had access to postsecondary educational opportunities. The consortium is partly funded by the Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities.

“What’s changing is that the students we have here now are what we call the ADA generation,” she said. “They’re the first generation of Americans born after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, and due to that and other legislation, they grew up with peers with intellectual differences in their classrooms to a greater extent than any of us did.”

Acknowledging disability is really about understanding diversity, Laws said.

“Disability is just one characteristic that is possible in human beings, but it is often a characteristic that is used to discriminate against a person or to limit their opportunities,” Laws said. “FACS has created a plan to increase the diversity of students within the college, and this program will fit with that.”

Continue reading this story.

Today, the UGA Alumni Association is honored to recognize those Bulldogs who have served in the military. To highlight how UGA serves its student veteran population, Assistant Director of Communications Jamie Lewis (AB ’12, AB ’12) interviewed Ted Barco, the founding director of UGA’s Student Veterans Resource Center(SVRC).

Tell me about the history and mission of the SVRC. 

The SVRC was established in 2013 and is organized under the Office of the Dean of Students. Its mission is to serve as the go-to location for sensemaking, wayfinding and entry into an array of services provided by UGA and the surrounding community. We facilitate opportunities that enhance a student veteran’s ability to transition, perform, persist, graduate, and access a meaningful career path. The SVRC does this through a variety of methods and activities as shown in our operating model.

What are some barriers to success that veterans might encounter in school and how does the work of the SVRC assist in breaking down those barriers?

According to the Veterans Administration, only 48 percent of student veterans graduate from public universities and those that do take up to two years longer than traditional students. As non-traditional students, veterans face a myriad of obstacles to their success. Student veterans are:

• More likely to be a first-generation college student
• Less likely to participate in co-curricular activities
• More likely to have responsibilities outside the classroom
• Less likely to participate in experiential learning opportunities
• More likely than not to run out of VA benefits before they graduate
• More likely to perceive themselves to be more self-reliant than traditional students

The confluence of these factors creates a wickedly complex set of challenges to student veteran success that cannot be untangled by traditional stove-piped approaches.

How many student veterans do we have at UGA and what are the services they expect the SVRC to provide? 

Currently, we have more than 200 student veterans at UGA. The SVRC balances its role of being both a service provider and a facilitator of services. As a service provider, we offer specialized veterans orientation and activities, mentoring programs, work-study opportunities, awards, scholarships and more. As a facilitator of services, the SVRC offers connections to most services provided on campus and off, including admissions, financial aid, health care and career services.

UGA student veterans with President Jere W. Morehead (JD ’80)

How does private support help the SVRC?  

Financial support directly helps our student veterans succeed at UGA and beyond. About 65 percent of our student veterans are former enlisted service members who are using limited-duration VA educational benefits to pursue their degrees. About half support families while attending school, and a similar number work full- and part-time jobs. Many face the daunting challenge of exhausting their VA benefits before completing a degree, or managing an insufficient level of benefits that may not cover the cost of attending UGA. Others struggle to find a viable career path that includes financial aid, mentoring and job placement. Private support, which can also mean a donation of time, is able to bridge the gap created by these situations.

In response to these challenges, we are establishing a two-tier approach to private support. The first is financial. The SVRC offers many opportunities for naming rights of key SVRC spaces, establishment of scholarsips/programs and one-time awards, or contributions to support the SVRC’s emergency and/or operating funds. The second is experiential, which includes connecting students to meaningful summer internships and full-time career opportunities.

The SVRC recognizes every donor, regardless of the size of their gift, on a wall outside its facility. We can effectively leverage contributions ranging from $100 to $1,000,000 to assist in the success of our student veterans.

Finally, what are you most proud of about the SVRC and its students?

To their credit, our military-affiliated population competes on par with the general UGA population in terms of course load, GPA, completion rates and graduation rates.

In the last two years, UGA has been nationally recognized as Best for Vets, Military Friendly, and a Top Military College/University. This fall, for the first time, UGA gained national recognition as being in the top 15 percent of the nation’s student veterans programs.

To learn more about the SVRC, please visit its Facebook page. To support the SVRC, click here.

The University of Georgia has set a record in a key measure of student success: Its freshman retention rate increased by a full percentage point from 2014 to 2015 to reach 95.2 percent.

The freshman retention rate measures the percentage of a school’s first-time, first-year undergraduate students who continue at that school the next year. The national average for public, four-year institutions is 80 percent, and UGA’s 95 percent retention rate places it among the nation’s top universities in this measure.

“We continue to invest in faculty, staff and innovative programs to ensure that students at Georgia’s flagship university have an unparalleled learning experience,” said President Jere W. Morehead. “Our high retention rate is one sign that these investments are having a positive impact on student success.”

In addition to reaching a new height in freshman retention, UGA also saw its six-year graduation rate increase to 85.3 percent, another record that is well above the national average of 59 percent for four-year institutions. UGA’s four- and five-year graduation rates are 62.5 percent and 82.4 percent, respectively, which compare to national averages of 39.4 percent and 55.1 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

In fall 2016, UGA will become the largest public university in the nation to require that each of its students engage in hands-on learning-through internships, study abroad, service-learning, research and other forms of experiential learning-prior to graduation. Morehead noted that in addition to helping prepare students for careers or graduate school, experiential learning has been shown to enhance student learning and promote on-time graduation.

“Our graduation and retention rates are very strong, but we’re striving for greater success for our students in this important area,” Morehead said. “In addition to changing the lives of individuals, each additional UGA degree represents a significant contribution to the economic vitality of our state and nation.”

Continue reading this story.