From the issue dated November 7, 2003
THE FACULTY
FREE SPEECH OR HATE SPEECH?
The Weblog of a business professor at Indiana University says it's dangerous to hire gay men as schoolteachers, sparking a debate over academic freedom versus the comfort level in classrooms.
MISSED MANNERS
This professor is rude. Her only consolation is that, when she joined the faculty ranks, she discovered she wasn't alone, writes Jessica Burstein, an assistant professor of English at the University of Washington at Seattle.
BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL
After giving up on academe, a Ph.D. finds a satisfying career teaching at a private secondary school.
HIRED HELP
Should a doctoral student be allowed to hire an editor to help write her dissertation? Ms. Mentor has the answer.
-
- PUNISHED FOR PLAGIARISM: The U.S. Naval Academy stripped a professor of tenure and reduced his salary after finding that he had copied material from other books.
-
- BROADER HORIZONS: Although more colleges are requiring foreign-language courses, most fail to provide a sufficiently "internationalized" education, according to a report released last week.
-
- HARMONIC CONVERGENCE: Swiss postal officials loosened up at an annual meeting when a blues musician and lecturer at an American university taught them the harp.
-
- DR. LULLABY: An audiology professor helped some Montreal residents sleep through construction-related din by piping the sound of crashing waves into their neighborhood.
-
- PEER REVIEW: Duke University's business school drafts Coach K for its faculty. ... The president of SUNY at Albany is stepping down.
-
- SYLLABUS: In a biology course at Roger Williams University, students have the unusual opportunity to study, repair, and assemble a whale's skeleton for a museum exhibition.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
PRIZE FIGHT
A scientist's claim to a share of a Nobel that he was denied is marked by hype, hubris, and his own history.
WORDS AND MUSIC
A psychology professor at the University of California at San Diego studies "phantom words" and other tricks our minds play with sound.
IRRATIONAL THOUGHT
Reason is so reasonable that it seems only human that people are attracted to the unreasonable, writes David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington at Seattle.
POETRONICS
Poet Lisa Russ Spaar, the director of the creative-writing program at the University of Virginia, assesses the electronic age's effects on verse.
A RESOURCE AT RISK
If colleges continue to operate as they do now, the quality of academic-library collections will decline significantly, writes Richard C. Atkinson, the recently retired president of the University of California.
WAITING FOR THE 'BIG ONE'
A political theorist who is also a surfer mulls the similarities, and one major difference, between his two passions.
-
- VERBATIM: An anthropology professor who wrote The Battle That Stopped Rome talks about how the empire's ignorance of its barbarian foe led to a crushing defeat.
-
- NOTA BENE: The "bilingual muse" is examined in Tongue Ties: Logo-Eroticism in Anglo-Hispanic Literature.
-
- HOT TYPE: Linda G. Mills says automatic arrest and prosecution for domestic abuse may be a mistake. ... The journal Cell hires a replacement editor as controversy heats up over its owners' pricing policies.
-
- PRIME NUMBERS: The Scientist has ranked what it calls the "Best Places to Work in Academia" for researchers.
-
- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
UP FOR GRABS
As bidders consider whether to go after the contract to run Los Alamos and other national laboratories, some critics wonder if universities are right for the job.
-
- EXTENSION GRANTED: Researchers who are awaiting approval to work with materials on the federal government's "select agent" list may do so as long as their paperwork has been filed.
-
- PARTING SHOT: California's departing governor named a controversial nominee to the board of the California State University System.
-
- POLITICAL SCIENCE: The National Institutes of Health began a review of more than 160 academic studies after a conservative advocacy group gave a Congressional committee a list of the projects.
-
- CRITIC OF MULTICULTURALISM: President Bush's nominee to become the Education Department's statistics chief is likely to face a battle in the Senate.
-
- OUT OF SYNC: States should align their standardized tests for high-school students more closely with the skills and knowledge that colleges expect of freshmen, a report recommends.
-
- TRACKING FEE: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released draft regulations that would require foreign students to pay $100 apiece for the system that will monitor them.
-
- SETTLEMENT REACHED: A Boston College student has given up her legal challenge to a recording-industry subpoena, ending an important case for critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
-
- FREE EXPRESSION: Panelists at a Senate committee hearing on "intellectual diversity" at colleges argued that overbroad conduct policies are stifling free speech.
-
- IT'S A 'CARTEL': Weighing in on the Bowl Championship Series, U.S. senators complained that some major-college football teams are unfairly excluded from the lucrative games.
-
- WAR-ZONE SCHOLARS: The U.S. State Department will resume the Fulbright program in Iraq.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
STEPPING DOWN
The departing president of the United Negro College Fund reflects on the purpose of black colleges and the challenges that confront them.
AMBUSHED BY A PATENT
Acacia Research Corporation says it owns the rights to the "streaming" of sound and video on the Web, and is demanding money from colleges.
NO VACANCY
Colleges across the country reported record enrollments this year, a trend attributed largely to a bulge in the population of high-school graduates.
FIGHTING DATA WITH DATA
The best way for colleges to combat misleading, superficial rankings is to provide more salient information for prospective students, write Cullen Murphy, the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and James Fallows, the magazine's national correspondent.
-
- COOKING UP A GIFT: The Culinary Institute of America has broken ground on a campus plaza financed in part by $4.6-million from the owners of a company that runs airport restaurants.
-
- LOST AND FOUND: Greenville Technical College, which lost a $2-million gift last fall when its board objected to the donor's condition that the college send students to Cuba, has rebounded nicely.
-
- LAND GRANT: The president of Florida State University pledged to give the college his farm, valued at $7.5-million.
-
- BACK-BAY POWER STRUGGLE: Boston University's new president may be out of a job, reportedly because he won't share the reins with John Silber.
-
- BIG BEQUEST: The University of Notre Dame gets a $50-million bequest from the widow of the founder of McDonald's.
-
- PEER REVIEW: Duke University's business school drafts Coach K for its faculty. ... The president of SUNY at Albany is stepping down.
-
- COPYRIGHT CASE: Swarthmore College briefly shut down the network connections of two students who publicized company memos that the students said revealed security lapses in an electronic-voting system.
-
- A GRAPH DEPICTS pension money in the stock market.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
AMBUSHED BY A PATENT
Acacia Research Corporation says it owns the rights to the "streaming" of sound and video on the Web, and is demanding money from colleges.
POETRONICS
Poet Lisa Russ Spaar, the director of the creative-writing program at the University of Virginia, assesses the electronic age's effects on verse.
A RESOURCE AT RISK
If colleges continue to operate as they do now, the quality of academic library collections will decline significantly, writes Richard C. Atkinson, the recently-retired president of the University of California.
-
- SUPERSIZED: Engineers at Virginia Tech assembled 1,100 new desktop computers into a supercomputer that they expect to be among the world's 10 fastest.
-
- SETTLEMENT REACHED: A Boston College student has given up her legal challenge to a recording-industry subpoena, ending an important case for critics of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
-
- COPYRIGHT CASE: Swarthmore College briefly shut down the network connections of two students who publicized company memos that the students said revealed security lapses in an electronic-voting system.
STUDENTS
NO VACANCY
Colleges across the country reported record enrollments this year, a trend attributed largely to a bulge in the population of high-school graduates.
FIGHTING DATA WITH DATA
The best way for colleges to combat misleading, superficial rankings is to provide more salient information for prospective students, write Cullen Murphy, the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and James Fallows, the magazine's national correspondent.
-
- FREE EXPRESSION: Panelists at a Senate committee hearing on "intellectual diversity" at colleges argued that overbroad conduct policies are stifling free speech.
-
- ALL ARE WELCOME: Immaculata University's undergraduate college will admit men for the first time in its 83 years.
-
- IN MEMORIAM: A Yale graduate wins The Chronicle's first annual David W. Miller Award for Student Journalists.
-
- BROADER HORIZONS: Although more colleges are requiring foreign-language courses, most fail to provide a sufficiently "internationalized" education, according to a report released last week.
-
- OUT OF SYNC: States should align their standardized tests for high-school students more closely with the skills and knowledge that colleges expect of freshmen, a report recommends.
ATHLETICS
-
- MEMBERSHIP SCRAMBLE: Sports realignments continue, as the Western Athletic Conference and Conference-USA gain colleges from other leagues.
-
- FOULED OUT: The NCAA placed the men's basketball program of Tennessee State University on three years' probation for rules violations under the former head coach.
-
- TO BE CLARIFIED: A former basketball player at Sacred Heart University settled a lawsuit accusing the institution of rescinding her scholarship because she was pregnant.
-
- IT'S A 'CARTEL': Weighing in on the Bowl Championship Series, U.S. senators complained that some major-college football teams are unfairly excluded from the lucrative games.
-
- MASCOT WATCH: Retirements, replacements, revelations, and wrangling on the sidelines.
-
- ALMA MATER IN POCKET: Web sites are offering college fight songs as ringtones, the tunes that make cellphones so distinctive.
INTERNATIONAL
STAGNANT GROWTH
The number of foreign students enrolled in the United States increased by less than 1 percent for the 2002-3 academic year.
-
- MIXED DECISIONS: Japanese courts take different actions on the refunding of prepaid tuition.
-
- WAR-ZONE SCHOLARS: The U.S. State Department will resume the Fulbright program in Iraq.
-
- FASTER VISAS: The visas allowing some foreign students to come to Alberta to study will be processed faster, Canada says.
-
- LONG-TERM BENEFITS: Study abroad is good for you, a survey finds.
-
- REPRESSED SCHOLARSHIP: Prominent Arab academics have criticized Arab higher education.
-
- PROFESSOR ARRESTED: South Korea has charged a scholar with spying for North Korea.
-
- TRACKING FEE: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released draft regulations that would require foreign students to pay $100 apiece for the system that will monitor them.
NOTES FROM ACADEME
WORDS AND MUSIC
A psychology professor at the University of California at San Diego studies "phantom words" and other tricks our minds play with sound.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
MISSED MANNERS
This professor is rude. Her only consolation is that, when she joined the faculty ranks, she discovered she wasn't alone, writes Jessica Burstein, an assistant professor of English at the University of Washington at Seattle.
IRRATIONAL THOUGHT
Reason is so reasonable that it seems only human that people are attracted to the unreasonable, writes David P. Barash, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington at Seattle.
POETRONICS
Poet Lisa Russ Spaar, the director of the creative-writing program at the University of Virginia, assesses the electronic age's effects on verse.
FIGHTING DATA WITH DATA
The best way for colleges to combat misleading, superficial rankings is to provide more salient information for prospective students, write Cullen Murphy, the managing editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and James Fallows, the magazine's national correspondent.
'EXHIBITING SIGNS OF AGE'
You're as young as you feel society feels you should feel.
A RESOURCE AT RISK
If colleges continue to operate as they do now, the quality of academic library collections will decline significantly, writes Richard C. Atkinson, the recently-retired president of the University of California.
-
- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
CAREER NETWORK
BACK TO HIGH SCHOOL
After giving up on academe, a Ph.D. finds a satisfying career teaching at a private secondary school.
HIRED HELP
Should a doctoral student be allowed to hire an editor to help write her dissertation? Ms. Mentor has the answer.
WAITING FOR THE 'BIG ONE'
A political theorist who is also a surfer mulls the similarities, and one major difference, between his two passions.
GAZETTE
|
