Nancy Zimpher to end tenure as SUNY chancellor on June 30, 2017

Dear SUNY Family,

Serving as chancellor of The State University of New York during a time of such change and challenge, and of wonderful opportunities and possibilities, is a great honor. The strides we have made together to improve the delivery and quality of public higher education in New York State are the highlights of my career.

Today, I write to tell you that I will end my tenure as chancellor on June 30, 2017. My hope is that by sharing this news now, Chairman McCall and the SUNY Board of Trustees will have ample time to find my successor, someone who will continue to carry out our collective vision for SUNY.

When I came to SUNY seven years ago, New York was in a period of major transition. You know better than anyone the serious toll the Great Recession took on our state’s finances, creating challenges for our campuses and SUNY System Administration alike. As this university has done throughout its 60-plus year history, we rose to the challenge and met our responsibility to students, faculty, staff, and taxpayers. SUNY came together and worked in a more unified way than ever before. In realizing our full potential for systemness, we brought together SUNY’s 64 campuses to serve as an engine of economic revitalization and life-enhancing opportunity throughout our state.

Georgetown, Texas, saw its population rise 7.8 percent between July 1, 2014, and July 1, 2015, making it the nation’s fastest-growing city with a population of 50,000 or more, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Census Bureau. Georgetown is part of the Austin-Round Rock metro area, which crossed the 2 million population threshold in 2015 for the first time, according to statistics released earlier this year. This metro area is also home to Pflugerville, the nation’s 11th fastest-growing large city. Austin itself added more people over the period (19,000) than all but seven other U.S. cities. Texas was home to five of the 11 fastest-growing cities (New Braunfels, Frisco and Pearland were the others), and five of the eight that added the most people (Houston, San Antonio, Fort Worth and Dallas were the others). New York remained the nation’s most populous city and gained 55,000 people during the year ending July 1, 2015, which is more than any other U.S. city.

Scammers push people to pay with iTunes gift cards

By Amy Hebert, Consumer Education Specialist, FTC

One thing we know about scammers — they want money, and they want it fast. That’s why, whatever the con they’re running, they usually ask people to pay a certain way. They want to make it easy for themselves to get the money — and nearly impossible for you to get it back.

Their latest method? iTunes gift cards. To convince you to pay, they might pretend to be with the IRS and say you’ll be arrested if you don’t pay back taxes right now. Or pose as a family member or online love interest who needs your help fast. But as soon as you put money on a card and share the code with them, the money’s gone for good.

If you’re not shopping at the iTunes store, you shouldn’t be paying with an iTunes gift card. Other payment methods scammers might ask for include Amazon gift cards, PayPal, reloadable cards like MoneyPak, Reloadit, or Vanilla, or by wiring money through services like Western Union or MoneyGram. Government offices won’t require you to use these payment methods.

If you get targeted by a scam like this, report it to the FTC at ftc.gov/complaint.

Want to know more about avoiding scams? Read 10 Ways to Avoid Fraud.

Don't Pay to Self-Publish

From J A Konrath:

DON'T PAY ANYONE TO PUBLISH YOU.

Now you can certainly pay people to help you publish. Freelancers such as editors, cover artists, book formatters, proofreaders, and so on.

But when you hire a freelancer to assist you, you keep your rights.

That's very important.

When you write something, you own the copyright. That's automatic, even if you don't register with the copyright office.

Copyright means exactly that; you have the right to copy it, to distribute it, to give it away, to sell it. You own those rights.

But if you pay someone to publish you, you GIVE THEM YOUR RIGHTS.

NEVER GIVE ANYONE YOUR RIGHTS.

NYS Earned Income Tax Credit

NYS Tax Department Issues Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC): Summary of Credit Claims through Tax year 2014

Each type of EITC is explained, and the specifics provided. For information on claiming these credits, see the links.

Husband and wife employed in 48% of married-couple families in 2015

In 2015, the share of families with an employed member was 80.3 percent, up by 0.2 percentage point from 2014. Families maintained by women with no spouse present remained less likely to have an employed member (75.0 percent) than families maintained by men with no spouse present (82.9 percent) or married-couple families (81.4 percent).

Among married-couple families, both the husband and wife were employed in 48.0 percent of families; in 19.8 percent of married-couple families only the husband was employed, and in 7.1 percent only the wife was employed.

Time Spent with Facebook Still Growing, but Not by Much

From eMarketer

This year, Americans will spend more than half of their social networking time on Facebook, according to eMarketer’s latest forecast of time spent with media. Going forward, however, growing competition from other social networks will make it increasingly challenging for Facebook to significantly grow engagement time.

In 2016, US adults will spend an average of 22 minutes a day on Facebook. By comparison, they will spend an average of 43 minutes a day on social networks in general. By 2018, US adults will be spending three more minutes each day on social networks, but just one additional minute on Facebook.