Higher-ed funding model gets tweak
The Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board has approved a few revisions to the state's productivity-based funding model.
On Friday, board members, via conference call, approved changes to both the two-year college and university funding models.
For two-year colleges, "effectiveness" will now be 90%, not 80%, of the formula, and "affordability" will now be 10%, not 20%. Effectiveness refers to credentials awarded, student progress, success of transfer students and success of early-level degree program courses, called "gateway courses." Affordability refers to the time students take to complete their degrees and how many credits they have when they complete them. "Adjustment" for diseconomies of scale and "efficiency" of expenses and administrator-faculty salary ratios will continue to be plus-or-minus 2% of the funding formula.
Within the effectiveness metric, the credentials awarded will now be 45% of that formula, not 40%, and "high demand" credentials will earn more points. Progress of students will now be 20%, not 30%, of that formula. Gateway course success will be 10%, not 15%, of that metric.
The funding formula will also change adjustments for colleges in areas too rural to have large enrollments. It will adjust the comparative year's productivity score by 1% for colleges with less than 30% of the average number of students, up to 3% for colleges with less than 70% of the average enrollment.
The only change to the university funding formula addresses a "research adjustment" metric. That metric will now adjust a university's productivity score based on a three-year average percentage of expenses on research.
ASU-Beebe, UCA enter new accord
Arkansas State University-Beebe students who are pursuing associate degrees will now have access to University of Central Arkansas' academic resources and campus activities, per a new agreement, UCA announced in a news release last week.
The schools already have 67 "2+2" agreements that allow ASU-Beebe students to transfer to UCA for specific degree programs without losing credit, an increasingly common agreement across higher-education institutions, according to the release.
Under this new agreement, ASU-Beebe students will get UCA identification cards, according to UCA's "Bear Partners" website.
Additionally, they'll have access to more transfer scholarships, should they transfer to UCA, and will not be required to pay application fees when applying to transfer.
ASU gets grants for history efforts
Arkansas State University at Jonesboro has received two Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council grants that fund two projects preserving northeast Arkansas history, the university announced this week.
A $512,050 grant will pay for renovation of ASU property to be used as the Dyess Colony Rural Life Research Center.
The Dyess Colony was created during the Great Depression in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal economic recovery plan, according to the university's website.
One of the nearly 500 impoverished Arkansas farm families that resettled in the agricultural community was that of Johnny Cash, the Historic Dyess Colony: Johnny Cash Boyhood Home website states.
The Research Center will house "research materials, including original colony documents, photographs, farm objects and Dyess colony papers from the National Archives and the Library of Congress." It also will house archival materials and photos of Cash donated by his daughters. Those include "report cards, Boy Scout records, drawings and poems, school programs, elementary and secondary permanent records, and other items," the university's announcement reads.
Another grant of $126,000 will go toward documenting the last remaining farmstead of the Pfeiffer family. That effort is "an emergency" attempt to save the farmstead "by documenting, deconstructing, tagging and storing the buildings until they can be reconstructed in a new location that would serve major needs" at the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center, the news release states.
The Pfeiffers were an influential Piggott family that helped build schools, a library and a hospital in the first half of the 20th century, according to the museum's website. "Hemingway" is the famous author, Ernest Hemingway, who was once married to a Pfeiffer and frequently visited Piggott during their 13-year marriage.
Anne Frank's life discussion focus
The University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College will commemorate what would have been Anne Frank's 90th birthday with a panel discussion, coinciding with exhibits related to Frank's life, the college announced last week.
Marianne Tettlebaum, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Arkansas, which is partnering with the college, will moderate the panel. Panelists will be: Aniko Diamant, a Holocaust survivor; Dorian Stuber, the Isabelle Peregrin Odyssey professor at Hendrix College; and Yosef Kramer, a rabbi and program director of Lubavitch of Arkansas.
The discussion will be held at 6 p.m. June 12 in the Center for Humanities and Arts Theater. The event is free and open to the public.
The college's Windgate Gallery will also host "Anne Frank: A Private Photo Album," an exhibit of Frank family photographs, according to a college news release.
The Center for Humanities and Arts Theater lobby will show "Anne Frank: A History for Today," an exhibit that's touring worldwide and places Frank's life in the context of the Holocaust and World War II.
Both exhibits are on display through June 29, the college's news release states.
Metro on 05/26/2019