From the issue dated March 2, 2001
THE FACULTY
THE JOB NOBODY WANTS
Department chairmen were once treated with respect; these days they face piles of paperwork and constant complaints.
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- LOYALTY OATHS? The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is questioning a college's policy of asking job applicants about diversity.
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- CONTROVERSIAL VIEWS: A Montana professor says her academic freedom is being violated because of her research about tourism.
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- SHEEPISH AWARD: A professor at Amherst College has started a petition to ask the college's president to stop using real sheepskins for diplomas.
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- PEER REVIEW:
Marc Trachtenberg, University of Pennsylvania history professor, is being courted by the University of California at Los Angeles and by Harvard, but Penn is also in the battle. ... Juliet B. Schor, an expert on consumerism and work issues at Harvard, will become a professor of sociology at Boston College.
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- SYLLABUS:
Students at Pacific Lutheran University gain a personal understanding of contemporary America by performing community service as part of "Twentieth Century U.S. History."
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE?
Researchers say their studies raise serious questions about the tests that many states are using to try to improve their public schools.
ALIEN LANDING
A small, unmanned spacecraft defied the odds and landed on a 21-mile- long asteroid, and is providing information about Earth's early history.
- A SMACK FROM SPACE: New evidence supports the theory that a comet or an asteroid caused extinctions on Earth 250 million years ago.
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- FOLLOW HER LEAD: After mastering the steps, a Rice anthropologist returns to Buenos Aires to attempt to decipher the complex culture and etiquette of the tango.
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- VERBATIM:
An anthropologist who returned to her middle school in her 30's found that middle-class whiteness thrives on its invisibility.
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- HOT TYPE:
A new history book examines how attitudes toward cremation in the United States have changed. ... Wesleyan University Press has broken away from the University Press of New England.
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- NOTA BENE:
Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" explores a strange, anonymous volume that theorized evolution and preceded Darwin's Origin of Species by 15 years.
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- SMILE PRETTY: A study based on women's yearbook photos reveals that those with the biggest smile have led the happiest lives.
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- WHAT THEY'RE READING: on college campuses a list of best-selling books
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
ADMISSIONS REVAMP?
The president of the University of California system has proposed dropping the SAT as a requirement.
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- A BIGGER PIE: The president of the Association of American Universities asks the chairman of the House science committee to balance the federal research portfolio by enlarging it, not by reducing the portion of the National Institutes of Health.
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- LOBBYIST WATCH: A coalition of 100 education organizations will campaign to increase federal spending on education, including an increase in the maximum Pell Grant to $10,000.
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- WIDESPREAD PREFERENCE: Many colleges favor black and Hispanic applicants in admissions, according to a new report.
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- MINNESOTA FACE-OFF: Mark Yudof, the president of the University of Minnesota, is campaigning against the governor's higher-education budget.
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- POLITICAL PRESSURES: A draft report urges trustees of public colleges to maintain their independence from the governors who appoint them.
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- STATE IMMUNITY: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees may not sue public colleges for violating a federal disabilities law.
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- DISMANTLING A SYSTEM: A plan to give each public university its own board of trustees will ensure the complete reorganization of higher education in Florida.
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- THE ACCESS GAP: The lack of federal and state need-based financial aid keeps many students from low-income families out of college, says a new report.
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- PARTNERSHIP PLAN: U.S. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige called on colleges to help improve elementary and secondary education.
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- ETHICS TRAINING HALTED: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said last week that it would suspend a new policy requiring universities to educate researchers about federal rules concerning scientific fraud.
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- NOBEL-WINNERS' ADVICE: Eighty Nobel Prize-winners sent President Bush a letter recommending that he change his stance against embryonic stem-cell research.
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- IN FEDERAL AGENCIES
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- NEW BILLS IN CONGRESS
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
BREEDING BUSINESSES
University-based incubators are booming, as campuses try to help professors and students bring their ideas to the marketplace.
- 'LIKE A TOP-OF-THE-LINE CONDO': The University of Illinois at Chicago's incubator, once a bust, is now thriving because of collegiality and top-notch service.
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- LAY LEADER: Georgetown University's appointment of its first nonpriest president highlights a trend among Catholic colleges to look beyond the clergy for their officials.
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- COLLEGES AT RISK: The departing president of the American Council on Education says market forces are threatening to make higher education a mere commodity.
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- SETTING A RECORD: The University of Virginia law school has raised $202.8-million in a campaign that began in 1993.
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- LOVE AND LEAVE: The dean of the law school at the University of Chicago has resigned in the midst of a controversy over his romantic relationship with an associate dean.
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- SURPRISE DEPARTURE: Fisk University's president announced his resignation after only two years in office.
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- D.W.I.: The chancellor of Southern University at New Orleans was arrested on charges of driving while intoxicated, according to police in Baton Rouge, La.
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- CAMPAIGN UPDATES: Eleven colleges have announced new fund-raising goals.
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- MARC RICH'S FRIENDS: Some of the letters submitted by lawyers requesting a presidential pardon for the fugitive financier came from college presidents and other officials.
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- TWO GRAPHS DEPICT trends in faculty pay and the cost of living and pension money invested in the stock market.
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- FOUNDATION
GRANTS; GIFTS AND
BEQUESTS
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
NO MORE MODEM POOLS
Colleges are increasingly requiring off-campus computer users to arrange their own Internet connections.
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- AN AUTOMATIC PROFESSOR: A technology critic has created a prototype of a fictional device that would dispense knowledge like an A.T.M.
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- ONLINE MBA: DeSales University and a technology foundation team up to develop an unusual program for deaf students.
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- GO SLOW:
Five unions have urged a worldwide consortium of universities to delay a distance-education project with Thomson Learning.
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- BONSAI KITTEN: A Web site created by M.I.T. students has them chuckling, but animal-rights groups are fuming.
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- EXTENDING ITS BORDERS: Nebraska officials hope distance education can help the low-growth state draw students from elsewhere.
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- BOOKMARK: A digitized Beowulf offers scholars a new way to study the manuscript.
STUDENTS
FILLING THEIR CLASSES
Pharmacy schools, which have increased the rigor of their programs, are trying to reverse a decline in applications.
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- CUBAN QUESTION: Some American health officials are concerned about the quality of a free medical-education program that is recruiting low-income students from the United States.
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- MARC RICH'S FRIENDS: Some of the letters submitted by lawyers requesting a presidential pardon for the fugitive financier came from college presidents and other officials.
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- BAND BANNED? Columbia University cracked down on its marching band's annual midnight roast of college officials, which takes place in the library's reading room, and may require it to move to another building.
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- FREEDOM OF SPEECH: An editor of the student newspaper at the State University of New York at Stony Brook got a visit from the Secret Service after he published a letter asking Jesus to "smite" President Bush.
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- WHAT THEY'RE READING: on college campuses a list of best-selling books
ATHLETICS
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- TITLE IX DISPUTE: The University of California at Los Angeles will reinstate women's rowing as a varsity sport.
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- RUNNING THE NCAA: The association has created a committee of four college chief executives to review its governance structure.
INTERNATIONAL
FACING UP TO AIDS
Africa's universities are beginning to confront their enormous losses, and the challenges they face in dealing with the epidemic.
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- MORE BRITISH SCIENCE: Thanks to backing from privates sources and the government, universities in Britain will get a multimillion-dollar increase for scientific research.
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- IRISH BIDDING WAR: Universities in Ireland are vying for top academics from all over the world as research spending grows.
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- BIAS COMPLAINT IN ISRAEL: Bar-Ilan University has been charged with discriminating against non-Orthodox Jews in hiring and promotions.
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- WORLD BEAT:
Charges against Austrian skinheads will be dropped in exchange for their attendance at a university course on democracy. ... A security spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin says the London School of Economics and Political Science has been used by Islamic fundamentalists to recruit terrorists to fight in Chechnya.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
RAINBOW ON THE RIGHT
No, multicultural conservatism is not a Republican marketing ploy. It's real and it matters, because it affects the public dialogue on race, gender, and sexual preference, writes Angela D. Dillard, assistant professor of history and politics at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.
REALITY BYTES
The information age is a miracle, unless you need to move a comma, writes Carolyn Foster Segal, an assistant professor of English at Cedar Crest College.
TALK IS CHEAP, AND INVALUABLE
Good academic advising may be the single most underestimated component of a successful college experience, writes Richard J. Light, professor in the Graduate School of Education and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
ECOSYSTEM UNDER SIEGE
The Galapagos Islands have become the lab for a different, and dicey, kind of evolutionary struggle -- this one cultural and economic, writes Malcolm G. Scully, The Chronicle's editor at large.
THEY ARE WHAT THEY EAT
Hannibal Lecter is just the latest in a long line of big-screen cannibals feeding our alimentary fears, writes Mikita Brottman, an adjunct assistant professor in the English department at Shippensburg University.
BUNKER MENTALITY
Debates over office hours and grade inflation show just how unconvincing academics can be when defending their own interests, writes Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
ALGO-RHYTHMS
Roman Verostko combines computer coding with drawing and brushwork to explore the tension between chaos and order.
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- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
GAZETTE
BULLETIN BOARD JOB NOTICES
DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS,
including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe
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