From the issue dated July 2, 2004
THE FACULTY
PUBLISH AND PERISH
The ouster of Kansas State University's newspaper director is the latest flare-up in a continuing clash over the role of such advisers, who walk an academic tightrope.
BALANCING ACT
If professors lean left -- and that's a big if -- it's only to counter colleges' fundamentally conservative and business-oriented structure, writes Donald Lazere, a professor emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.
THE PROVOST AS GATEKEEPER
A former provost offers advice on managing the minefield that is the tenure process.
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- PEER REVIEW: The new University of California at Merced is finishing up a long first round of hires, pushing to build its faculty to 30 by the beginning of July. ... David M. Schizer, 35, will be one of the youngest law deans in the country when he takes over at Columbia Law School. ... The two tenured professors at the University of Southern Mississippi who became a cause célèbre when the president tried to fire them are moving on.
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- SYLLABUS: At Chatham College, students trace Pittsburgh's transformation from sooty industrial giant to center of "green" awareness.
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- HE WAS PROMOTED: Eight current and former students have sued the University of Texas-Pan American and one of its professors, arguing that it did not adequately discipline him after finding him guilty of sexual harassment.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
BONANZA IN BELIZE
The Central American nation's expansive marine sanctuaries are creating rich opportunities for researchers.
PUBLISH AND PERISH
The ouster of Kansas State University's newspaper director is the latest flare-up in a continuing clash over the role of such advisers, who walk an academic tightrope.
CRITICAL CONCERNS
George Cotkin, a professor of history at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, asks, is cultural criticism today dumber, snarkier, and more commercial than that of the 1940s and '50s?
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Scientists and humanists studying art may come at the subject from different perspectives but can offer each other valuable findings and insights, writes Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College.
HISTORIC LINES
Pablo Neruda died in 1973, but on his 100th birthday, his verse is very much alive, writes Ilan Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College.
LICHTENBERG'S FLOWER GIRL
A novel conveys the physical challenges, personal attachments, scholarly pursuits, and sharp wit of a too-little-known 18th-century German polymath, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle.
FENDING OFF A PLAGIARIST
An assistant professor found herself having to prove that her dissertation was really hers.
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- VERBATIM: The author of The Gardens of Emily Dickinson explains the connection between the poet's writing and botanical pursuits.
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- BOYCOTT: Authors writing on the health effects of the electronics industry are boycotting a special issue of a journal because its publisher, Elsevier, refuses to publish a paper about IBM.
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- NOTA BENE: Changes in state laws covering statutory rape are analyzed by an assistant professor of politics at the State University of New York College at Old Westbury.
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- HOT TYPE: A new edition of SCUM Manifesto shows the continued fascination with Valerie Solanas, radical feminist and failed assassin of Andy Warhol.
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- AVERTING CONFLICTS: The director of the National Institutes of Health seeks a ban on cash prizes to officials of the agency who are in a position to pick grant recipients.
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
'TOO PARTISAN'
The Higher Education Act will not be renewed this year, a top Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives education committee said last week.
NO ROOM IN THE CLASS
As student populations surge in some states, public colleges struggle to find enough places, even for high achievers.
- LOOKING INTO THE SUNSET: In South Dakota, on the other hand, public colleges look far west to stabilize enrollments as the high-school population shrinks.
AN ADMISSIONS ROADBLOCK
With the mounting wave of applicants and diminishing government support, more state colleges are shutting out even good, well-rounded students, writes Gordon Davies, a senior adviser to the Education Commission of the States.
SURGE OF IDEAS
America needs engineers trained in technology, markets, and communication to radically redevelop the country's power grid, write Rob Pratt, a staff scientist and manager of the GridWise Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Steve Hauser, a vice president at Utility Automation Integrators and executive director of the GridWise Alliance.
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- AVERTING CONFLICTS: The director of the National Institutes of Health seeks a ban on cash prizes to officials of the agency who are in a position to pick grant recipients.
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- SYSTEMWIDE ASSESSMENT: The State University of New York will require each of its 64 campuses to regularly test a representative portion of its undergraduate students in an effort to track how the institutions are meeting the system's education standards.
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- NAACP SUIT DISMISSED: A Florida court has upheld the actions taken by Gov. Jeb Bush and the state-university system to dismantle race-conscious admissions at Florida's public universities.
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- IMPROPER CLAIMS: Harvard University agreed to pay the federal government $3.3-million to settle an overbilling case involving the National Institutes of Health.
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- SPIT HAPPENS: A new Colorado law allows underage culinary students to taste wine but not swallow it.
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- PRIME NUMBERS: American college students' views on same-sex marriage are significantly different from those of the public at large, according to a pair of polls.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
ALL HUSH, NO MONEY
Some venture-capital firms, fearing the disclosure of sensitive information, are shunning investments by public universities that abide by open-records laws.
PUBLISH AND PERISH
The ouster of Kansas State University's newspaper director is the latest flare-up in a continuing clash over the role of such advisers, who walk an academic tightrope.
OFFERS THEY CAN REFUSE
As more college applicants use "wait lists" to their advantage, admissions offices find it harder to predict how many students will enroll.
TWO-PART HARMONY
After 25 years, the president of the Berklee College of Music is leaving the job he inherited from his father, who founded the institution.
REMAINS OF THE DAY
Here come those reunion oldsters in business suits, sipping from plastic wine glasses and invading our dorms. Oh no! We are those oldsters, writes Rachel Toor, a former admissions officer at Duke University.
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- FROM HARVARD TO THE HOOSEGOW? A former co-chairman of the Harvard Parents Fund was convicted on 22 counts of fraud in a scheme that was said to have bilked investors of $13.8-million.
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- THE $24.8-MILLION BARGAIN: Miami Dade College, in need of land to expand its downtown campus, bought an entire city block out from under real-estate developers and investors who also coveted the property.
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- A FOUNDATION GOES TO COURT: New allegations in a lawsuit charge that Princeton has systematically misused donors' gifts.
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- DOUBLE TROUBLE: As an amended lawsuit against Career Education Corporation accuses the proprietary-college chain of manipulating records to inflate its stock price, a federal agency has begun looking into the company.
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- BETTER DAYS IN SIGHT: A report from the Commonfund Institute said foundations are on a financial comeback, suggesting to experts that their giving to higher education may not be far behind.
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- MUST MAKE RESTITUTION: A former chief financial officer of the University of Florida Foundation has pleaded no contest to embezzling $850,000 from foundation accounts.
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- WIDENING ITS MARKET: The for-profit University of Phoenix, which has grown to be the country's largest college by enrolling only adult students, has announced that it will begin admitting students as young as 18.
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- AFFIRMATIVE REACTION: A college-preparatory school for low-income and minority students holds its first graduation this week.
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- MONEY & MANAGEMENT IN BRIEF: Albany State University is criticized in an audit; trustees at the University of Alabama approve a record bond issue; employees of Barber-Scotia College complain about lagging salary payments; TIAA-CREF will weigh providing more money to community investments.
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- PEER REVIEW: The new University of California at Merced is finishing up a long first round of hires, pushing to build its faculty to 30 by the beginning of July. ... David M. Schizer, 35, will be one of the youngest law deans in the country when he takes over at Columbia Law School. ... The two tenured professors at the University of Southern Mississippi who became a cause célèbre when the president tried to fire them are moving on.
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- SHARES FOR SALE: Blackboard Inc., which provides course-management software and services, has gone public.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
DORM POTATOES
Some colleges are setting up cable-television networks that students can watch on their computers.
- SHARING THE SHOWS: Student-run programming like Hoosier Date? and Missionary Positions could be coming to a campus television station near you.
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- DIGITAL RENAISSANCE: Two art-history professors at Lafayette College have used Adobe Photoshop to digitally reconstruct altarpieces by the renowned painter Fra Angelico, and are teaching their students the same skill.
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- FALLEN SHORT: The boom in educational technology has not lived up to its promise of revolutionizing the classroom and making higher education more profitable, two professors concluded in a report.
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- PHISHING FOR FOREIGNERS: International students are the targets of an illegal online scheme to collect credit-card numbers.
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- ARCHIVAL ANALYSIS: Four colleges will take part in a study of how data change when stored digitally.
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- SHARES FOR SALE: Blackboard Inc., which provides course-management software and services, has gone public.
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- BOYCOTT: Authors writing on the health effects of the electronics industry are boycotting a special issue of a journal because its publisher, Elsevier, refuses to publish a paper about IBM.
STUDENTS
OFFERS THEY CAN REFUSE
As more college applicants use "wait lists" to their advantage, admissions offices find it harder to predict how many students will enroll.
NO ROOM IN THE CLASS
As student populations surge in some states, public colleges struggle to find enough places, even for high achievers.
DORM POTATOES
Some colleges are setting up cable-television networks that students can watch on their computers.
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- NO MORE FUNDS, NO MORE FOOD: The student-government president at the University of Maryland at College Park went on a hunger strike at the state Capitol to protest the governor's veto of a bill that would have increased appropriations for higher education.
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- STRUCTURAL PROBLEM: A professor at Clemson University says his team was unfairly disqualified from the National Student Steel Bridge Competition.
INTERNATIONAL
SYMBOL OF HOPE
Rows of rusted-out army barracks, transformed into a college campus, give Guatemala's majority Maya people a place to learn, but their education is still hindered by poverty and ignorance.
BONANZA IN BELIZE
The Central American nation's expansive marine sanctuaries are creating rich opportunities for researchers.
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- IRISH QUOTAS: Trinity College Dublin has become the first university in that country to create a quota system for nontraditional students.
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- $7.5-MILLION PROGRAM: Taiwan plans to substantially increase the number of government scholarships it offers to foreign students, as a way to build diplomatic relations with other countries.
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- BRITISH ADVANCE: The University of Cambridge said it would create the world's largest center for the study of stem cells.
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- 'BASED ON EXCELLENCE': Thirty places in the entering class at Tel Aviv University's law school next year will be reserved for top-ranking students from high schools in underprivileged areas of Israel.
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- OIL FOR MEDICINE: In what is likely to be the largest gift ever made to a hospital, the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science, and Community Development announced that it would donate $900-million to build a teaching hospital on the Qatar campus of Cornell University's Weill Medical College, and would create an $8-billion endowment to support the project.
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- CLASSES TO RESUME: The government of Nepal has agreed to demands made by the student group allied with the country's Maoist rebels, ending a two-week strike that had kept millions of students in schools and colleges from attending class.
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- WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE ... : The Thai government is encouraging students to report friends who gamble on soccer matches.
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- PHISHING FOR FOREIGNERS: International students are the targets of an illegal online scheme to collect credit-card numbers.
NOTES FROM ACADEME
TWO-PART HARMONY
After 25 years, the president of the Berklee College of Music is leaving the job he inherited from his father, who founded the institution.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
REMAINS OF THE DAY
Here come those reunion oldsters in business suits, sipping from plastic wine glasses and invading our dorms. Oh no! We are those oldsters, writes Rachel Toor, a former admissions officer at Duke University.
CRITICAL CONCERNS
George Cotkin, a professor of history at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, asks, is cultural criticism today dumber, snarkier, and more commercial than that of the 1940s and '50s?
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Scientists and humanists studying art may come at the subject from different perspectives but can offer each other valuable findings and insights, writes Ellen Winner, a professor of psychology at Boston College.
HISTORIC LINES
Pablo Neruda died in 1973, but on his 100th birthday, his verse is very much alive, writes Ilan Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino culture at Amherst College.
LICHTENBERG'S FLOWER GIRL
A novel conveys the physical challenges, personal attachments, scholarly pursuits, and sharp wit of a too-little-known 18th-century German polymath, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle.
BALANCING ACT
If professors lean left -- and that's a big if -- it's only to counter colleges' fundamentally conservative and business-oriented structure, writes Donald Lazere, a professor emeritus of English at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo.
SURGE OF IDEAS
America needs engineers trained in technology, markets, and communication to radically redevelop the country's power grid, write Rob Pratt, a staff scientist and manager of the GridWise Initiative at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Steve Hauser, a vice president at Utility Automation Integrators and executive director of the GridWise Alliance.
SURREALITY CHECKS
In the paintings of Julie Speed, the figurative doesn't always figure.
AN ADMISSIONS ROADBLOCK
With the mounting wave of applicants and diminishing government support, more state colleges are shutting out even good, well-rounded students, writes Gordon Davies, a senior adviser to the Education Commission of the States.
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- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
CHRONICLE CAREERS
FENDING OFF A PLAGIARIST
An assistant professor found herself having to prove that her dissertation was really hers.
THE PROVOST AS GATEKEEPER
A former provost offers advice on managing the minefield that is the tenure process.
IS GRADUATE SCHOOL A CULT?
If it is, perhaps former academics should refashion themselves as "exit counselors."
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- ACADEMIC JOB FORUM: A discussion forum on the job search in higher education.
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- DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS, including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe
GAZETTE
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