What's so great about this news??? Doctors make horrible football players, just ask UAb.

Congrats on the new school, always good to see growth on campus.

That's great! ASU will see a lot of growth because of this I would imagine.

(04-24-2015 08:11 PM)Eagles Cliff Wrote:  Great news for stAte! Virtually impossible for us to get med or law school below the Yankee/Gnat Line in Ga, but it's on the agenda.

Would love to see a med school at Georgia Southern in my lifetime, but not worried about getting a law school. A med school would make too much sense, given the immense need for rural support. Mercer was supposed to fill that gap when they were permitted to start their program nearly 30 years ago, and not surprisingly after their first decade they strayed from that mission.

I don't know about the Arkansas climate for physician training and post-doctorate placement, but wouldn't imagine it to be much different than Georgia's. To that end, it sounds like a wonderful opportunity for Arkansas State and to have that depth of education attached to Jonesboro is fantastic and can only bode well for the healthcare in the surrounding area.

I am beginning to see why administrators at schools like James Madison do not want to be associated with programs like Arkansas State and NMSU .... they might be exposed for not making superior strides while under employment (/ snarky comment)

Arkansas State is not the sort of school old time academic powers or academic power wanna be's like.

The med school deal was structured to make sure we didn't deal with state oversight.
We entered into a private partnership for the Mexico campus and didn't need state approval but asked for it after we signed all the contracts to do it, and got it.
We took over various state vocational technical schools and made them into jucos, you get an associates in business or become a certified welder or earn a CDL at some of the juco campuses. Other than learning to be a barber, most anything that requires certification to do in the blue collar world you can learn at one of our jucos.

AState on July 1 takes over Mid-South Community College, the main reason AState wanted it was their industrial training program, if a major factory comes in the program contracts either with the factory or Arkansas Workforce Services to train workers for the factory.

Most universities think their mission is to attract the highest qualified students possible and award them a four year degree. We do that, UArk is the only public college in Arkansas with admission standards as high as the Jonesboro campus but, our board feels that only being a college with high admission standards betrays the mission that the school was chartered with. AState was created to teach people to farm better and use better ways maintaining a household. To stay true to that the junior colleges exist to teach conventional college classes to students who might not meet initial admission standards, but they are also there to offer technical training and skills training for people who don't want a college degree but do want to learn things that can make them more competitive in the economy. So we have juco campus opportunities to become a certified diesel mechanic, or certified John Deere mechanic, or learn to do body work on cars or become an auto mechanic or certified welder.

I suspect the academic snobs rolled their eyes and snorted in disgust when our system president was sending tweets about a student at one campus who made it to the top level of a national student welding competition.

I think the snobs can shove it. I'm proud AState is devoted to giving a wide range of people the chance to improve their life.

(04-25-2015 09:35 AM)Usajags Wrote:  What's so great about this news??? Doctors make horrible football players, just ask UAb.

They make even worse presidents.

(04-25-2015 02:23 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Arkansas State is not the sort of school old time academic powers or academic power wanna be's like.

The med school deal was structured to make sure we didn't deal with state oversight.
We entered into a private partnership for the Mexico campus and didn't need state approval but asked for it after we signed all the contracts to do it, and got it.
We took over various state vocational technical schools and made them into jucos, you get an associates in business or become a certified welder or earn a CDL at some of the juco campuses. Other than learning to be a barber, most anything that requires certification to do in the blue collar world you can learn at one of our jucos.

AState on July 1 takes over Mid-South Community College, the main reason AState wanted it was their industrial training program, if a major factory comes in the program contracts either with the factory or Arkansas Workforce Services to train workers for the factory.

Most universities think their mission is to attract the highest qualified students possible and award them a four year degree. We do that, UArk is the only public college in Arkansas with admission standards as high as the Jonesboro campus but, our board feels that only being a college with high admission standards betrays the mission that the school was chartered with. AState was created to teach people to farm better and use better ways maintaining a household. To stay true to that the junior colleges exist to teach conventional college classes to students who might not meet initial admission standards, but they are also there to offer technical training and skills training for people who don't want a college degree but do want to learn things that can make them more competitive in the economy. So we have juco campus opportunities to become a certified diesel mechanic, or certified John Deere mechanic, or learn to do body work on cars or become an auto mechanic or certified welder.

I suspect the academic snobs rolled their eyes and snorted in disgust when our system president was sending tweets about a student at one campus who made it to the top level of a national student welding competition.

I think the snobs can shove it. I'm proud AState is devoted to giving a wide range of people the chance to improve their life.

I'm so thankful we're in a conference now where we have peers who operate philosophically on the same level.

While the technical colleges in Georgia are partitioned off into a different system, the public university system has had a long lineage of having appropriate entry points for a variety of students. Where Georgia Southern was on that continuum 25 years ago was a different place, and over time we've steadily made progress to the point that we've risen and grown within the state while others have contracted or grown more slowly.

Many of our former conference mates in the SoCon looked down their nose in the same fashion you have just described. So glad we got out when we could.

(04-25-2015 02:23 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Arkansas State is not the sort of school old time academic powers or academic power wanna be's like.

The med school deal was structured to make sure we didn't deal with state oversight.
We entered into a private partnership for the Mexico campus and didn't need state approval but asked for it after we signed all the contracts to do it, and got it.
We took over various state vocational technical schools and made them into jucos, you get an associates in business or become a certified welder or earn a CDL at some of the juco campuses. Other than learning to be a barber, most anything that requires certification to do in the blue collar world you can learn at one of our jucos.

AState on July 1 takes over Mid-South Community College, the main reason AState wanted it was their industrial training program, if a major factory comes in the program contracts either with the factory or Arkansas Workforce Services to train workers for the factory.

Most universities think their mission is to attract the highest qualified students possible and award them a four year degree. We do that, UArk is the only public college in Arkansas with admission standards as high as the Jonesboro campus but, our board feels that only being a college with high admission standards betrays the mission that the school was chartered with. AState was created to teach people to farm better and use better ways maintaining a household. To stay true to that the junior colleges exist to teach conventional college classes to students who might not meet initial admission standards, but they are also there to offer technical training and skills training for people who don't want a college degree but do want to learn things that can make them more competitive in the economy. So we have juco campus opportunities to become a certified diesel mechanic, or certified John Deere mechanic, or learn to do body work on cars or become an auto mechanic or certified welder.

I suspect the academic snobs rolled their eyes and snorted in disgust when our system president was sending tweets about a student at one campus who made it to the top level of a national student welding competition.

I think the snobs can shove it. I'm proud AState is devoted to giving a wide range of people the chance to improve their life.

Yep. Our mission is to provide higher education to residents of some of the poorest places in the United States. Some of these poor places have had some of the worst school districts in the United States (because they are poor). These are the people we serve and I'm proud of it. Prior to our JUCO system we had to do a lot of remediation work at the college level....we got slammed for that a lot....but it was really a badge of honor.

(04-25-2015 10:52 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  

(04-25-2015 02:23 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Arkansas State is not the sort of school old time academic powers or academic power wanna be's like.

The med school deal was structured to make sure we didn't deal with state oversight.
We entered into a private partnership for the Mexico campus and didn't need state approval but asked for it after we signed all the contracts to do it, and got it.
We took over various state vocational technical schools and made them into jucos, you get an associates in business or become a certified welder or earn a CDL at some of the juco campuses. Other than learning to be a barber, most anything that requires certification to do in the blue collar world you can learn at one of our jucos.

AState on July 1 takes over Mid-South Community College, the main reason AState wanted it was their industrial training program, if a major factory comes in the program contracts either with the factory or Arkansas Workforce Services to train workers for the factory.

Most universities think their mission is to attract the highest qualified students possible and award them a four year degree. We do that, UArk is the only public college in Arkansas with admission standards as high as the Jonesboro campus but, our board feels that only being a college with high admission standards betrays the mission that the school was chartered with. AState was created to teach people to farm better and use better ways maintaining a household. To stay true to that the junior colleges exist to teach conventional college classes to students who might not meet initial admission standards, but they are also there to offer technical training and skills training for people who don't want a college degree but do want to learn things that can make them more competitive in the economy. So we have juco campus opportunities to become a certified diesel mechanic, or certified John Deere mechanic, or learn to do body work on cars or become an auto mechanic or certified welder.

I suspect the academic snobs rolled their eyes and snorted in disgust when our system president was sending tweets about a student at one campus who made it to the top level of a national student welding competition.

I think the snobs can shove it. I'm proud AState is devoted to giving a wide range of people the chance to improve their life.

Yep. Our mission is to provide higher education to residents of some of the poorest places in the United States. Some of these poor places have had some of the worst school districts in the United States (because they are poor). These are the people we serve and I'm proud of it. Prior to our JUCO system we had to do a lot of remediation work at the college level....we got slammed for that a lot....but it was really a badge of honor.

Because they are part of a culture that does not value education. It doesn't cost much to read books and work math problems, or to want to learn. There needs to be leadership that values education. There need to be kids who are willing to work to become educated. I'd buy disenfranchised. Being poor is just a convenient excuse, not a root cause.

Winston I hate to disagree with you, but as a person in education I must tell you that you are dead wrong. While you are right that the drive to learn is important, it is hard to focus when you wonder when the next time you are going to eat is (hint the answer is to often whenever the next time the school can give me food) or thinking about whether your water will be on in the house when you get home, or you have to go to work to help support your family, or wonder where mom or dad or whoever the hell is responsible for you is going to park the car tonight. The list is endless. The cause of students in these situations isn't directly because they are poor, but because of the distractions caused by being poor.

(04-26-2015 12:41 PM)WinstonTheWolf Wrote:  Because they are part of a culture that does not value education. It doesn't cost much to read books and work math problems, or to want to learn. There needs to be leadership that values education. There need to be kids who are willing to work to become educated. I'd buy disenfranchised. Being poor is just a convenient excuse, not a root cause.

Sure. Go look at Bentonville High School and then head over to West Helena and tell me which is a better learning environment.

We should do an experiment. Let Bentonville and Helena trade resources for a few years and see which culture improves and which one regresses.

A-State has had students from these areas who obviously wanted to come to college and learn but were ill-prepared for it. It wasn't a lack of desire or they wouldn't have been at A-State. A-State had to do remediation on a lot of these students.

A lot of people at the state level wanted to punish colleges who had to do a lot of remediation by reducing their funding and giving more funds to those who didn't have to do remediation. As if it were a crime or something shameful.

Hell the biggest battle is visual.

If the only people you see on a regular basis that you know are college educated are teachers and social workers, it is hard to see that a college education does much for you. If you don't know people making a good living in plumbing, electricity, welding or mechanics, it is hard to see that those are careers where you can make a good living.

If you are poor chances are the closest thing you've seen to an accountant is the guy or lady with a bit of training to work the Jackson-Hewitt cubicle at Wal-Mart.

Just seeing the opportunities is the challenge.

(04-24-2015 12:53 PM)chiefsfan Wrote:  They are just dissappointed. University of Arkansas system wanted a monopoly on medical schools in this state, and didn't get there way.

Shouldn't that be their? I only mention because I'm trying to get my post count up...and because you are the self-appointed grammar police on the board or whatever, lol

Congrats to A-State! Good job.

(04-24-2015 12:48 PM)ark30inf Wrote:  I try not to use "butthurt" much. But in this case, the butthurt displayed by some in central and northwest Arkansas today is immemse, deserved, and welcome.

You would think the least healthy state getting its second medical school for FREE would be good news...but at apparently it means the end of civilization and the triumph of satan.

Being under a board that seems to only care about two schools in our state I am amazed you were able to get a medical school. That is huge. Unfortunately our board of regents thinks middle and south GA does not exist. Congrats.

(04-26-2015 05:45 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  Hell the biggest battle is visual.

If the only people you see on a regular basis that you know are college educated are teachers and social workers, it is hard to see that a college education does much for you. If you don't know people making a good living in plumbing, electricity, welding or mechanics, it is hard to see that those are careers where you can make a good living.

If you are poor chances are the closest thing you've seen to an accountant is the guy or lady with a bit of training to work the Jackson-Hewitt cubicle at Wal-Mart.

Just seeing the opportunities is the challenge.

To your point . . . here is an excerpt from an editorial in the Jonesboro Sun today. Rennell Woods is a former A-State football player.

Quote:Rennell Woods called Tuesday morning to see if The Sun would be interested in providing some coverage of his at-risk youth mentoring program that afternoon at Sage Meadows Country Club.
The Jonesboro City Council member is trying to match male role models with boys to open their eyes to a better life. Golf, Rennell told The Sun during a recent interview, is a great way to introduce youngsters to a game that's all about respect, integrity and honesty — a game that's about building relationships as well as dealing with frustrations and anger management.
I had started writing a column about the riots in Baltimore when Rennell called, so I took the opportunity to pick his brain about the troubles in the black community in towns and cities across our nation.
I told him what I thought as a middle-aged white man who'd grown up playing golf at the country club in a predominantly white Midwestern town.
I told him I didn't think the riots in Baltimore were necessarily about the tragic death of a black man in police custody, that they were more about the desperation of people who have no future, no hope, who used a bad situation as an excuse to let their anger boil over by looting and setting fire to their own communities.
They have so little to lose.