College accreditation; Hurricane Helene recovery funds; Artist Bobbi Johnson

Well, I would a faculty member be concerned about intellectual diversity? I think one of the problems that's been there is there's been very little intellectual diversity. He points to the involvement of CPHE's founding chairman, Mark Becker, the highly regarded former president of Georgia State University. For its part, the older agency, SACC, is already making changes as colleges and universities shop around for creditors. Stephen Pruitt became its president last year. I called for our standards to be revised immediately. Pruitt says he's addressing concerns of some state leaders by reducing paperwork and pushes back on the idea that his agency is focused on liberal ideology. We were, I think, the only accreditor that didn't have DEI standards. I think all the other ones did, but yet somehow we got pegged with that. Another change, starting in September, SACCOC will be renamed the Commission on Colleges and Universities. The new CPHE could accredit its first institutions this fall and get U.S. Department of Education recognition next year. Meanwhile, underproposed federal rules that could go into effect next summer, all U.S. institutional accreditors must have in place the means to address, quote, intellectual diversity on campuses. For GPB News, I'm Orlando Montoya. An attorney for a Dominican baseball player studying in Georgia says immigration officers detained his client because of an administrative error between two colleges. The family of 22-year-old Johann Sandoval has been trying to get him released from detention since he was taken into custody in New York last week. Syracuse attorney John Jayha of the Harris Beach Murtha law firm says an error somewhere in Sandoval's transfer from Bryant to Stratton College to Savannah State University left a federal database thinking he wasn't a student. He's just picked up like this and detained is baffling to me. The issue here of the detention has no clear explanation. I mean, technically it is legal, but it really doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's not proportional to what's going on in the case. Lynn Tabaro is Sandoval's future mother-in-law and was at home with the student athlete when he was detained after coming home from the gym. It has been devastating that we had to lose a member of our family to such a small issue that it could be easily corrected for a kid who did everything that he was supposed to do legally, who came into this country legally. Tibero says the family receives phone calls twice daily from a Buffalo immigration detention center where a son of all is detained. Jay Ha says he's asked an immigration court for a bond for his release.

A brushfire on Wausau Island off the Georgia coast has persisted for nearly a week, GPB's Gillian Magtoto reports. Since lightning struck Wausau Island last Saturday, 12 acres of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service land have been burning. That's about the size of 12 football fields. However, no people or infrastructure have been harmed, says Georgia Forestry Commission Fire Management Officer Adam McCullough. What is burning right now is from previous hurricane and storm damage. It's very, very dry out of here right now. It's just a ton of amount of fuel and it's hard to get access in some of these areas. But he says that the burn is good for habitat and fuel reduction. It's been nearly two decades since a fire in the area. Rain later this weekend will likely quench much of the fire, now half contained. For GBB News, I'm Jillian Magtoto. Georgia is getting more federal aid to support disaster recovery after 2024's Hurricane Helene. The Federal Emergency Management Agency today announced $36 million in new funding. Among the recipients, Southeast Georgia's Excelsior Electric Membership Cooperative will get funds to repair its distribution system, and Southeast Georgia's Appling Healthcare will get funds to repair buildings.

Delta Airlines took in record second quarter revenues while also reporting its highest ever quarterly fuel expense. The Atlanta-based airline said today that its revenues jumped to $19 billion for the three months ending in June. That's 19% higher than the second quarter last year as consumers pay more for flights. Delta's profits dropped 24% per share as fuel costs rose about two-thirds. Governor Brian Kemp is leading an economic development mission to Scotland and Ireland. The governor's office said Wednesday that Brian Kemp plans to meet with the Irish Prime Minister and leaders of companies doing business in Georgia. The itinerary also includes a visit to Georgia's Southern University's campus in Wexford, an Irish community with strong cultural ties to Savannah. The University of Georgia's new School of Medicine is launching a mentorship program for student athletes interested in a medical career. GPB's Amanda Andrews has more. The Dogs to Docs Pathway program will offer networking, medical school exam prep, and clinical shadowing. Student athletes who meet the rigorous academic qualifications can apply after their sophomore year. The program will be tailored around athletes' training and competition schedules. Dr. Shelley Nuss is the dean of the medical school. She says some of the best medical students and physicians were athletes. It's that dedication, time management, shuffling your schedules, being flexible and adaptable to changing environments. that perseverance that's required to really be a D1 athlete, I think really sets the students up for success in medical school. Dogs to Docs will be open to five student athletes in this first year. For GPB News, I'm Amanda Andrews. The Georgia Council for the Arts is awarding $1.3 million in grants to organizations in 37 counties. The funding announced Wednesday is a lifeline for many nonprofits supporting arts-related economic development across the state, but the amount makes Georgia one of the least arts-supporting states in the nation. That's according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies.

If you've ever been through difficult seasons in your life, you are not alone. That's the message visual artist Bobby Johnson wants you to take away from a new exhibit of her work, opening this afternoon in Millageville. Hosted by Allied Arts, the exhibit titled Becoming features abstract mixed media that invites you to reflect on the tough times that have made you who you are. I stopped by earlier this week to speak with Johnson about her work. Bobby Johnson, thank you so much for showing me your art. It's my pleasure. So let's look at this first one, pressure point. Pressure point was made after a very difficult season in my life, just a lot of hard things that came along. And what pressure point is is basically about when life comes in on you and you feel almost broken, but there's still hope and resilience afterward. So we're looking at something that looks kind of like it could be an eye, it could be a spiral. What elements were you reaching for when you were trying to translate a difficult moment into something visual, something that would make someone feel something? I thought immediately about a seed. And when a seed starts to grow, it almost looks like it's all chaos. It's breaking apart. And it feels like it's coming undone. And that's what I tried to represent in like the cracks in the painting. But that's when it's actually being remade and you find new growth. And that's what I tried to convey in this. What about texture? It seems like this is not just a flat piece of art. The spirals in it, the black spirals in it, seemed to lift off the canvas. Can you tell us about the textures that you were going for? I'm a big fan of texture. I feel like there's something basic and primal about it. So when I graduated from school, my focus was in ceramic sculpture. So clay and charcoal are all very like... tactile very hands-on and so I wanted to when I transitioned into painting I wanted to bring those elements with me and so I feel like they help connect us on a very basic level. What can you tell me about the difficult season in your life that inspired this one? It was actually a series of difficult events. I came from not a great childhood and I was in a couple toxic relationships and just a couple of other, like I said, series of events that just kind of like really came in on me. But... My faith is basically what brought me out of that. And it's a big inspiration in all of my work. Every time I paint, every time I create anything, I try to convey that through all of my artwork. And to some extent, the particulars don't matter, right? The thing that made me hurt might be different from the thing that made you hurt. But you can still empathize. And to some extent, abstract work like this is the perfect way to communicate and connect over that.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't want people to feel like they're alone because I feel like that's like the biggest lie that we tell ourselves when we're going through things is like nobody gets this. Nobody's been through this. Nobody else has experienced this. But we have. We all have to some degree. And that's really what I want to like say in this. You've mentioned that faith is a part of your work. How would one see faith appearing in either pressure point or another piece of art in this exhibition? I would hope that they don't necessarily see it, but that they feel it. You know, I feel like God's presence is all around us, and especially in those hard-to-see moments when we feel like we're all alone. And I want to try to convey that in my work. So we're not necessarily going to see specific religious imagery? No, not at all. Not at all. It's more of a feeling, right? That's why it's abstract, you know, because I feel like we're inherently abstract creatures. We think abstractly. We love abstractly. We grieve abstractly. One thing I love about abstract work in general is that it bypasses the analytical part of our mind and goes straight to the heart of matter. You wanted to pursue art at an early age, didn't necessarily grow up an environment where that was supported, and yet here you are. How did you manage to become an artist in spite of not having the support at an early age? I really feel like it was the divine gift, like only because I have such a passion for art, and it's something I have to do. I've always had to do it, whether it was drawing or painting or sculpting or writing poetry. I... I used to look up to like the Renaissance artists because I felt like they did everything. There was no limit to what they could create. I know that's a lofty goal, but it's something that I aim for myself as being kind of a modern day Renaissance artist. Can you show me another piece of art? Absolutely. This one is called Come Closer. So. My husband, when he saw me getting ready for this show, he said, you paint all these dark things. Paint something light. So this was my first attempted painting something light. It has a yellow background with a lot of textual elements. And it looks a little bit messy, right, at first when you come and you see it. But then as you come closer, you start to see all these different colors and highlights in there. You know, even though I know it's probably against the rules, I almost want people to touch it so that they can see it. Actually, if you want to. You want me to touch this? I can? Yeah. Okay. I'm glad you invited me because I was tempted.

It's cool. I mean, it has this like feeling of a topographical map of mountains. Yes. So even though it has negative connotations, I would like to say that it's kind of representative of scar tissue. So it's like even though we, you know, when in your happiest moments, you're more than what you're made of, but it's still a part of who you are. So. I'm definitely in a happy place now. I feel like, but the things that have happened to me or to people that I've known throughout my life, it still is a part of who they are. It still is part of their makeup. Well, Bobby Johnson, thank you so much for showing me your art. I really appreciate it, and congrats on the exhibit. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed the interview, Peter. Thank you. That's artist Bobby Johnson, whose exhibit titled Becoming is on view today through July 30th at Allied Arts on North Wayne Street in Millageville. You can find some photos of Johnson's art as well as a link to the exhibit at gpb.org. Braves' first baseman Matt Olson is set to break a record tonight. Olson has played in 874 consecutive games, 740 of those with Atlanta. During last night's game, he tied Dale Murphy's record for the most consecutive games played in the Braves' uniform. He will surpass that record when the Braves play the Cardinals in St. Louis tonight. Olson has the longest active consecutive game streak in the majors, dating back to May 2, 2021. On the all-time consecutive game list, he's behind Cardinals' legend Stan Musial. whose streak lasted 895 games. That's all we've got for the podcast today. Thanks so much for choosing GPP as your source of news. I'm going to take some time off next week. I'll be back the week after. You can learn more about any of these stories at gpb.org slash news. And if you've got feedback for us, please do send it our way. The address is Georgia today at gpb.org. I'm Peter Bielo. Thanks again for listening and have a great weekend.