The Campus Tech Connection (#CTCX) podcasters are making a list… and checking it twice on TOMORROW’s (12/23) podcast.

Join us as the #CTCX elves compare lists of gadgets, tech, past shows and MORE from 2011 from 12-1 pm CST. What’s on your “best of” list for 2011? 

University Offers Contest for Free Tuition for Life!

Not only would the winner of the competition at Cardiff University have their undergraduate degree fees of £27,000 paid in full, but they would also be funded to do MA, MBA, PhD and continuing professional development courses.

The total value of the scholarship is therefore at least £50,000, Cardiff said.

In order to win the prize, applicants will have to “undertake a series of tough challenges, which will increase in difficulty” between now and spring next year, the university said.

“The university will be looking for a student with outstanding passion, commitment and intelligence, reflecting its reputation as one of the UK’s leading academic institutions,” Cardiff said.

The first rounds will take place online, while the final will “bring the best students to Cardiff University for a live head-to-head challenge”, the university said.

College Presidents at White House Roundtable

Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and several domestic policy advisers met Monday afternoon with chancellors and presidents from 10 institutions, including public universities, two private nonprofit colleges, and one statewide community college. The discussion lasted about two hours, with the president in the meeting for more than an hour, and the conversation was wide-ranging, participants said. (Officials from various sectors, including public comprehensive colleges and for-profit colleges, complained that they had no, or insufficient, representation at the meeting.)

In general, Obama and the college leaders focused on a few key questions: how colleges can become more affordable while producing more graduates, and how new efforts in affordability or productivity can be “scaled up” from one college to large state systems or the nation as a whole.

Sexual Assaults at Chicago Area Colleges Rarely Prosecuted

Cook County prosecutors rarely file felony charges against students accused of sexual violence on college campuses, according to a Tribune analysis. A survey of 16 local colleges found that police investigated 109 reported sex crimes since fall 2005, with 12 resulting in arrests and five in convictions. Two of the arrests — including a 2011 rape allegation at Dominican University in suburban River Forest — have not gone to trial.

The most common type of assault in a university setting is a student-on-student attack, and only two of the five felony charges fit that description. The others were men who, in three incidents, were accused of raping a woman after breaking into campus housing.

Connecticut Overhauling Community College System

Connecticut’s community colleges now share both a governing board and a bad state budget with the Connecticut State University System.

State legislators created the new Board of Regents for Higher Education in July, merging the boards and system offices of Connecticut’s 12 community colleges, Connecticut State’s four universities and Charter Oak State College, an online institution. The flagship University of Connecticut will remain separate.

The consolidation will save money and encourage better coordination, say its proponents. But as the plan took shape earlier this year, some community college leaders worried about a loss of autonomy and identity under the new system.

Gary and Julie were back to discuss the recent events in student affairs.

DC Human Rights agency says “single-sex dorms” are not discriminatory 

Controversy over Shorter University faith statment

Fisk University wants to sell Georgia O’Keeffe collection

UC Davis run down:

Recap of Town Hall Meeting

Video of Chancellor Katehi Waking to her car amid silent student protests

Statement #1 from campus Reverend Kristin Stoneking (note: you have to log in to facebook to read, but they are both public posts)

Statement #2 from campus Reverend Kristin Stoneking

Prof Doesn’t Show to Classes; Gives Everyone an A
A George Washington Medical School professor has resigned after students complained she never taught required classes, but gave the students A’s. Venetia Orcutt, who was an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Department of Physician Assistant Studies didn’t teach two out of three semesters of a course on evidence based medicine. At least 3 students complained after receiving a grade of “a” but no explanation on why the course wasn’t taught or the reasoning for their course grade. The university is currently investigating the situation.

FBI Investigates grade Tampering
Santa Clara University and the FBI are trying to find out who hacked the university’s computer system. Someone gained access to the academic records system of the university between June 2010 and July 2011 and changed a small number of current and former undergrads grades. The University President has noted that there is no evidence that any other personal information of students, faculty or staff was compromised.

11 Majors with the Highest Unemployment
The Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal have identified 11 majors with the highest unemployment rate. Topping that list are those individuals with a clinical psychology degree who face a 19.5% unemployment rate. The remainder of the list includes degrees in Arts & Sciences (16.2%); US History (15.1%); Library Science (15%); Educational Psychology (10.9%); Military Technologies (10.9%); Architecture (10.6%); Industrial & Organizational Psychology (10.4%); Psychology (10.3%); Linguistics & Comparative Literature (10.2%); Computer Administration Management & Security (9.5%).

Enrollment Up for International Graduate Students
The Council of Graduate Schools released information that has reported an increase in graduate students from outside of the United States. The increase is the largest growth since 2006 and total growth is attributed in part to a trend of the continued influx of Chinese graduate students studying in the US. China has been a large contributor to graduate programs in the US but saw an increase of 21 percent over last year’s enrollment period.

Gary and Julie discuss Florida Governor Rick Scott’s recent plan to restructure Florida’s education system in order to increase support to majors with higher job productivity, campuses that use credit cards for student loan refunds, and the emergence of LGBTQ groups on military campuses after the repeal of DADT. We’ve also announced our new hashtag — #sacast. Keep the conversation going until our next podcast on 10.27!

Rick Scott Doesn’t Like Anthropologists

Student Speaks Out Against Higher One Credit Card Company (Learn more about Higher One.)

Norwich University Starts LGBTQ Allies Group

Jay T. Kimbrough, former Texas A&M System Chancellor

Gary and Julie chat about some of the topics that caught our eye this week.  You’ll need to fast forward to 45 seconds because of a few technical difficulties, but it’s worth it!  It’s also the 150th BreakDrink podcast! Woohoo!

Or Click Here for: Podcast

• Bursting Bubbles: Study Abroad
• Knife Wielding Chancellor
• Antioch College: They’re Back!
• The Irvine 11 & Free Speech
• Nontraditional Students the New Traditional Student?

Remember, you can nominate your favorite BreakDrink Podcast for a People’s Choice Podcast Award.  Join us next time on Thursday, October, 13.

Well that is all up to you listeners!

Nominations are currently being accepted (until September 30th) for the 7th Annual Podcast Awards. BreakDrink has experienced tremendous growth the last few months with the addition of several area specific podcasts and over 25,000 listens (that’s right 25,000).

Your support is very much appreciated, and we are glad you continue to be an active part of the BreakDrink community. If you have taken the time to download a podcast, be a part of the conversation by calling in live, tweeting, hanging out in the meebo rooms, or attending a free-online conference I would like to ask you to “pay it forward.”

As you know, our community here at BreakDrink is volunteer lead and driven and we can’t afford to pay our contributors much (or anything really) but it would be great for them to be recognized for their hard work by our loyal listeners.

Here’s the task at hand:

Why not nominate your favorite BreakDrink podcasts for the podcast awards? You can nominate once daily and there are a number of different categories. Nominate our podcasts here: http://podcastawards.com

I see a natural fit for the following noms; but feel free to nominate any you would like:

People’s Choice: Open (Student Affairs, Jamie & Ed On Duty, CUAD)
Education: (Student Affairs/Higher Ed, Jamie & Ed On Duty, CUAD)
Technology: Campus Tech Connections
Sports: Edu Sports

I would recommend some uniformity to nominations so they can count accurately and would suggest using Breakdrink followed by the specific podcast. For example: BreakDrink: Edu Sports Podcast. You could also link the specific page for that podcast as the URL (http://breakdrink.com/edu-sports-podcast/).

Additionally, there is a lot of other great content out there that you may listen to so feel free to nominate your faves all across the board.

Happy Nominating…have your friends and other listeners do it…It’s fun!

Please also share on facebook, tweet, and retweet…let’s get this done folks!

Thanks for your time and consideration!

 Guest Blog Post by Leslie Dare which is also cross-posted at Leslie Dare’s Blog.

I had the pleasure to serve as a guest co-host on the great BreakDrink Campus Tech podcast series this week. Thanks to Laura Pasquini for the invite. She and Bruce Mann are delightful hosts, and Eric Stoller jumped in to the conversation as well (with a very nice recap of @saTechBOS, which, as you have heard, I missed to do a delayed flight. I may blog on my bitterness later.)

An interesting side note: Don’t know if you can hear it or not on the podcast, but there is a lot of background noise coming in at the beginning from my end. My office is in a residence hall. I don’t work for our University Housing department; I just happen to have an office space that’s off the lobby of one of our many residence halls on campus. The Resident Advisors had just moved in the weekend prior. Just as the live broadcast started, a whole gang of RAs congregated in the lobby and were fairly loud. I loved it! I’m one of those Student Affairs professionals who doesn’t usually work directly with our students (anymore); I work behind the scenes to make sure our in-the-trenches folks have the technology they need to be successful. But the location of my office is always a treat this time of year as the staff returns to start training and prepare for the onslaught of the students and the fall semester. As a former RA and hall director, it brings back fabulous memories. As I think about it, most folks probably could not hear this over the loud clicking of Eric Stoller’s keyboard. 

I have no idea how many folks tuned in live, or have/will listen to the podcast. But it’s always fun to just blather on when others are required to listen. In this case, I did not feel that what I had to say was very coherent. Mostly because I just currently have some general thoughts on the topic of the intersection of technology and communications in the student affairs profession. I don’t have any conclusions — good, bad or indifferent — at this point. Just some observations that I think are worth noting. What follows is mostly a copy/paste of my notes in preparation for the program. Maybe some day it will start to gel and I’ll revisit the topic on this blog.

EDUsports focuses on stories, news and issues related to sports on college campuses. This week we talked about the winds of change in the NCAA:

Should the NCAA bring the Death Penalty back?
There’s a lot of big talk from the BCS commissioners: Are they forcing the NCAA’s hand and is it hurting smaller programs in the process?
More Longhorn Network and the possibility of schools leaving the NCAA (Texas?) and what that might look like
And yet another solid edition of “Who’s Bad” featuring Duke.

Streaming from PC/Mac. You can go to http://breakdrink.com/live/ to listen to the show live.

You can download the podcasts the following ways.

Apple: iTunes Store 
Android: download the app Listen. Then subscribe 
BlackBerry: download the Podcast app. Then subscribe 
Facebook. You can also listen from the Facebook Fan page.