SPSU ranks 4th in Georgia in Businessweek College ROI report
When it comes to return on investment (ROI) among Georgia colleges and universities, SPSU ranked fourth, according to a special report by Bloomberg Businessweek.

Georgia Tech was the undisputed leader, with Emory University and the University of Georgia not too far behind, according to the report. But next in the magazine’s rankings was SPSU.

The magazine teamed with the Seattle-based compensation data company PayScale to measure the value of investing in a college degree. PayScale collected data on salaries reported by alumni earning bachelor’s degrees over a 30-year period and compared those earnings to high school graduates’ earnings. The dollar figure assigned to each of the 853 institutions – the ROI – represented the amount a college graduate could expect to earn over and above what a typical high school graduate earned during the same period, after deducting the cost of obtaining his or her degree.

According to the magazine’s ROI report, the net cost to graduate from SPSU for students paying in-state tuition was $50,610 and the 30-year net ROI for graduates – taking financial aid into account – was $557,500. For those in-state students who did not graduate from college, the ROI dropped to $156,100. For students paying out-of-state tuition, the net cost to graduate cited in the report was $100,900 and the ROI was $507,500 for graduates and $142,100 for non-college graduates.

The net cost for in-state students to graduate from the public institutions ranked in the report (including business, engineering, research and liberal arts schools) averaged $55,861 ($98,538 for out-of-state students) , and the average ROI for in-state college graduates was $122,987 ($100,155 for out-of-state graduates). The 30-year ROI for all higher education institutions studied averaged $152,114.

Nearly a third of the top 30 schools ranked by Businessweek were engineering schools, including the top three institutions for ROI: Harvey Mudd College (a private California institution that trains engineers, scientists and mathematicians), California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

To view the complete “Best College ROI” report and the list of all 853 institutions ranked, go to Businessweek.

CET hosting visiting professor from Turkey
The Civil Engineering Technology department is hosting a visiting scholar from Turkey for the next few months. He will assist Dr. Fatih Oncul with research related to the Rubble House project.

Dr. Mehmet Emin Oncu, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Dicle University in Diyarbakir, Turkey, will perform a variety of laboratory tests on the data collected from the Rubble House project and create numerical models for the seismic assessment of rubble houses.

Dr. Oncu obtained his bachelor’s degree in 1994 from Harran University, a master of science degree in 2000 from Ataturk University, and a Ph.D. in 2008 from Firat University’s Department of Civil Engineering. Dr. Oncu’s Ph.D. thesis is titled Seismic Performance Evaluation of Reinforced Concrete Structures. At Dicle University, he teaches courses in Dynamics, Nonlinear Analysis of Structures, Performance Based Seismic Design and Evaluation of Structures.

His stay in the United States is funded by the Higher Education Council of Turkey.

Center for Nuclear Studies receives NRC grant
The SPSU Center for Nuclear Studies (CNS) has been awarded a $435,000 grant from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to support faculty development in nuclear engineering within the School of Engineering. Dr. Mahmoud Ghavi, director of the CNS and the proposal’s author, said this grant recognizes SPSU’s accomplishments to date and plans for development of a program that addresses the nuclear industry’s pressing need for skilled technical personnel.

“SPSU’s goal is to be the school of choice for students seeking an applied, career-focused engineering education that will prepare them for rewarding occupations in the nuclear industry,” Dr. Ghavi said.

As the grant’s co-principal investigator, Dr. Ghavi is responsible for project implementation activities. He will work in close collaboration with the principal investigator, School of Engineering Dean Dr. Thomas Currin to ensure that the nuclear engineering program achieves its stated goals and standards.

Recent faculty activities
• Dr. Lourdes V. Abellera, assistant professor of surveying and mapping in the Civil Engineering Technology department, recently gave a talk on “Groundwater Modeling with Geographic Information Systems (GIS)” at a meeting of the Georgia Ground Water Association. The Water Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey in Atlanta hosted the program.

• Dr. Chih-Cheng Hung, coordinator of the Master of Science in Computer Science Program, coauthored a paper published in the February 2012 issue of Optical Engineering. The article was titled, “A Fast Weighted K-View-Voting Algorithm for Image Texture Classification.”

SPSU helps with Morehouse instructional video
Three SPSU professors helped Morehouse School of Medicine put together an instructional video on blood pressure monitoring and management that is about to be released.

Dr. Fred Hartfield, who retired in 2010 as an associate professor in Information Technology, was an actor in the video, which was funded by a grant from the Georgia Department of Community Health. In the production, Dr. Hartfield simulated a heart attack in his classroom – a scene that was filmed in one take by his friend, Dr. Keith Hopper, professor of information and instructional design.

Dr. Hopper, a former registered respiratory therapist, is now an instructional developer whose research focus is educational technology integration in the medical industry.
He offers those doing community-based medical projects reduced rates for his services as an instructional designer and multimedia developer. Dr. Hopper had previously completed a similar video project on asthma, and word of mouth led the Morehouse Blood Pressure Project Team to him.

In addition, Dr. Betty Oliver, an English, Technical Communication and Media Arts professor, produced several original graphics for the video and had students in her information graphics course create comical graphics related to high blood pressure for use in the project.

Your photo could win you a free iPad!
Just a reminder – the first 100 people to post a photo of themselves on the SPSU Alumni Facebook page (facebook/spsualumni) with the new SPSU tag on their vehicle will be entered into a drawing to win an iPad. So get your tag, and then get out your camera!

First SPSU Accounting Conference a success
The SPSU Accounting Club and the Department of Business Administration hosted SPSU’s first Accounting Conference last month, and by all accounts, it was a very successful event. The event attracted 73 students from SPSU and other Georgia institutions, along with 10-11 vendors and sponsors.

“This was the first event put on by our Accounting Club, and it was a great momentum-builder for our relatively new accounting program which now has over 200 total students at the bachelor’s and master’s levels,” said Dr. Don Ariail, coordinator of the university’s accounting programs, who crafted the program with Prof. Shannon Shummate.

The conference included a resume review, a panel discussion on careers in accounting, a keynote speaker and a case competition involving business ethics.

The idea of organizing a conference came from SPSU Controller Arthur Vaughn, the Accounting Club’s founder and co-advisor.

“It went extremely well. We have already secured a keynote speaker [self-made multimillionaire Daymond John, founder of the FUBU clothing line] for the next conference, which is scheduled for Feb. 27, 2013,” said Vaughn.

Have news to share?
If your department has an upcoming event or other news to share with the campus community, please send an e-mail with all the pertinent information to Diane Payne (dpayne@spsu.edu). To be considered for use in a specific issue of the SPSU Hornet’s Nest, a news item must be submitted no less than four weeks before the date of the issue.

Volume 5, Issue 16
April 25, 2012