 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
From the issue dated October 7, 2005 |
|
Short SubjectsJUST ASKINGSteve Lake really likes college campuses. So far he's visited 324 of them, and he hopes to reach 500. GRATEFUL TO THE DEAD: Medical schools hold memorial services for those who donated their bodies. SENSE & CENSORSHIP: Students at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay protested a decision by the chancellor to ban from a campus art show a piece depicting President Bush with a gun aimed at his head. ASININE STUDIES: Pierce College is offering its first semester-long course in the basics of mule handling. IN OTHER NEWS: Items on fugitive, plague-carrying mice; FBI agents bunking in a fraternity house; an ill-fated hurricane-relief benefit concert; and an offer to lease a dorm window to advertisers The FacultyGENDER ASSIGNMENTA popular professor of political science at the University of Nebraska at Omaha left for summer vacation as a man and returned as a woman. Reaction on the campus has been instructive. POST DOCSFor some academics, blogging isn't a hobby but an integral part of their scholarly identity, writes Henry Farrell, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. BY THE NUMBERS, PLEASEAn assistant professor wishes someone would tell him what to say in his self-evaluation for tenure. ON THE MARKET IN ECONA Ph.D. candidate takes his best shot at a tenure-track job in a top-10 department. SCIENCE AND ANTI-SCIENCE: In response to a statewide debate about teaching creationism in public schools, the chancellor of the University of Kansas has declared that evolution is the "unifying principle of modern biology." 'PROFOUND MISMATCH': The lock-step nature of academic prevents young professors from enjoying their family lives and hampers women's efforts to advance, officials of 27 research universities say. PEER REVIEW: The journalism department at New York University has hired 12 new faculty members, including some major names in the field. ... The embattled president of Hopkinsville Community College has taken an eight-month leave of absence. ... Alan White is leaving Elon University's athletics department. ... Arkansas's governor will direct a public-policy center at Ouachita Baptist University after his term is over. SYLLABUS: In an English honors course associated with Habitat for Humanity at the University of Cincinnati, students build a house before they construct an essay. Research & BooksLESSONS UNLEARNEDSociologists are eager to study how the official responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita went wrong, but their findings about disasters have historically been ignored by policy makers. POLITICAL SCIENCEA key member of Congress has worried some researchers by vowing to keep a close eye on policy and spending at the National Institutes of Health. FROM GDP TO DNAA stint working in a biology lab fires up an economist's interdisciplinary synapses. Philip N. Jefferson, a professor of economics at Swarthmore College, describes the experience. RIGHTWARD MARCHPublished in 1950, The Authoritarian Personality was dismissed as politically one-sided and methodologically flawed. American politics since have also shown it to be astonishingly insightful and predictive, writes Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. THAMES FIGHTIN' WORDSThe British will go to the mat over literary prizes in a way that Americans never do, writes Jay Parini, a professor of English at Middlebury College. VERBATIM: An emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Vermont discusses the way American towns used ethnic cleansing in the early part of the 20th century to drive blacks away. WHO KNEW: Coffee provides Americans with more antioxidants than any other food or drink, according to researchers at the University of Scranton. ... Cow manure can provide electricity, two engineers at Ohio State University report in a journal article. ... A good education can bring a good night's sleep, but only for women, say researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and in Taiwan. ... A gray parrot named Alex has a head for numbers, says a psychologist at Brandeis University. Actually, just one number: zero. HOT TYPE: Haworth Press has canceled publication of an edited volume on homosexuality in classical antiquity because of complaints from conservative activists. NOTA BENE: The director of a gaming-research center at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas explores the Wire Act, past and present, in Cutting the Wire: Gambling Prohibition and the Internet. Government & PoliticsPOLITICAL SCIENCEA key member of Congress has worried some researchers by vowing to keep a close eye on policy and spending at the National Institutes of Health. A JUSTICE IS SERVEDThe Senate voted overwhelmingly last week to confirm John G. Roberts Jr., a federal judge steeped in higher-education law, as the next chief justice of the United States. LESSONS UNLEARNEDSociologists are eager to study how the official responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita went wrong, but their findings about disasters have historically been ignored by policy makers. A COMMITMENT TO ACCESSColleges and the federal government need to consider radical reforms in student aid, writes Rupert Wilkinson, a former professor of American studies and history at the University of Sussex, in England. SALARY DEBATE: The University of California system's Board of Regents is divided over whether it should use private funds to supplement top administrators' pay. APPEALING TO THE ARMY: Kansas State University is developing new programs to try to attract the soldiers at nearby Fort Riley. $36-MILLION: The House of Representatives has approved $36-million in additional aid for students affected by recent hurricanes, and Congress has also temporarily extended the Higher Education Act. THOUSANDS REFUSED: Between 17,000 and 41,000 drug offenders were denied federal student aid each year from 2001 to 2004, according to a new report. GRUDGING DECISION: Harvard Law School has reluctantly agreed to allow the military to use its Office of Career Services to recruit students into the Judge Advocate General's Corps. IN THE STATES: a round-up of higher-education news from the states Money & ManagementA QUESTION OF VALUESAn investigation into the personal spending of Benjamin Ladner, president of American U., has rocked the campus and divided the Board of Trustees. CLEANING UP, MOVING ONSome colleges in Texas and Louisiana that were hit by Hurricane Rita do not know when they will be able to reopen or what to tell their students. THE KNOWLEDGE MARKETEuropean universities, inspired by tales of financial windfalls from commercialization of inventions at U.S. institutions, are trying to overcome cultural barriers between business and the ivory tower. PICKING THE PANELA new college-foundation director prepares to invoke that fundamental force of nature: the search committee. CONFERENCE ISSUES: The rising costs of employee health care and the increase in sexual-harassment cases on campuses were discussed at the annual meeting of the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. PEER REVIEW: The journalism department at New York University has hired 12 new faculty members, including some major names in the field. ... The embattled president of Hopkinsville Community College has taken an eight-month leave of absence. ... Alan White is leaving Elon University's athletics department. ... Arkansas's governor will direct a public-policy center at Ouachita Baptist University after his term is over. Information Technology'DIGITAL NATIVES'A new generation of college students has arrived, and many of them have no interest in long lectures. How much should colleges change to accommodate so-called Millennials? PODCAST LECTURES, FOR A PRICE: Five dollars is the going price for a lecture, according to a service that plans to charge students for MP3 files of their classes. STEP ASIDE, PIRATES: New software makes peer-to-peer technology a useful tool for professors, say researchers at Penn State. DOWNLOADING UNDER SCRUTINY: Colleges' antipiracy practices will be under scrutiny from the Government Accountability Office if two key members of Congress get their way. LITERARY 'KALEIDOSCOPE': A new report reveals that a growing number of American-literature scholars are putting their research on the Web, with or without support from their colleges. THE WIRED CAMPUS: A roundup of higher-education technology news StudentsADVICE FOR THE ADVISERSAt the annual conference of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, attendees discussed the best ways to serve students whose educations were interrupted by Hurricane Katrina. 'DIGITAL NATIVES'A new generation of college students has arrived, and many of them have no interest in long lectures. How much should colleges change to accommodate so-called Millennials? FEDERAL CASE: On the nation's first officially enforced Constitution Day, some students try to remember what the document is all about. ANTIWAR PROTEST: College students were among the protesters who marched past the White House to call for an end to the war in Iraq. AthleticsON THE OFFENSE: A law professor at the University of Iowa says she received death threats after complaining that pink locker rooms for visiting football teams at the university's stadium are demeaning to women and gay men. PENALTY APPEALED: The NCAA has banned the football team at Division III's Ohio Northern University from postseason competition this year because coaches there held illegal practices in the summer of 2003. 'WILLFUL VIOLATIONS': The NCAA has placed the men's and women's track teams at Texas Christian University on probation for two years after an investigation uncovered a pattern of bad behavior by coaches. InternationalTHE KNOWLEDGE MARKETEuropean universities, inspired by tales of financial windfalls from commercialization of inventions at U.S. institutions, are trying to overcome cultural barriers between business and the ivory tower. NOT THE KING OF QUEEN'S: One of Canada's leading universities has decided to remove a donor's name from a wing of its business school and return nearly a million dollars after he pleaded guilty to fraud. NO PUNISHMENT: A Mexican judge has refused to issue arrest warrants for a former president and other former officials accused of genocide in the 1968 massacre of student protesters in Mexico City. AN AGENDA ON GENOCIDE: Despite legal maneuvering by Turkish nationalists, an academic conference on Turkey's controversial "Armenian question" took place in Istanbul. NEW LANGUAGE TEST: An emphasis on speaking ability marks the new version of the English exam for foreign students. PROTEST PUNISHED: A student leader in Iran has been sentenced to six years in prison for organizing student opposition to the government. $1.8-BILLION IN BRITAIN: The University of Cambridge has launched the largest fund-raising drive in the country's history. BAN ON HIZB UT-TAHIR: Britain's Middlesex University has canceled an event featuring a controversial Muslim organization and suspended the student leader whose group was to sponsor it. Notes From AcademeSHAKESPEARE, 'SURVIVOR' STYLEStudents and professors from the University of New Hampshire's drama department mounted a one-time performance of The Tempest on a rocky island. The Chronicle ReviewFROM GDP TO DNAA stint working in a biology lab fires up an economist's interdisciplinary synapses. Philip N. Jefferson, a professor of economics at Swarthmore College, describes the experience. A COMMITMENT TO ACCESSColleges and the federal government need to consider radical reforms in student aid, writes Rupert Wilkinson, a former professor of American studies and history at the University of Sussex, in England. INCOME AND OUTCOMEAmerica's egalitarianism has always been in conflict with its individualism. Katrina showed how out of balance those impulses have become, writes Lynne M. Adrian, an associate professor of American studies at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. RIGHTWARD MARCHPublished in 1950, The Authoritarian Personality was dismissed as politically one-sided and methodologically flawed. American politics since have also shown it to be astonishingly insightful and predictive, writes Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. POST DOCSFor some academics, blogging isn't a hobby but an integral part of their scholarly identity, writes Henry Farrell, an assistant professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. DUST OFF THOSE CONSCIENCESMost of what we call "women's issues" are really people's issues that men have palmed off on women. If men did their fair share of housework, that would be a start toward restoring equality, writes Daniel S. Cheever Jr., president of Simmons College. ANCIENT WINGSWhen he watches sandhill cranes, the photographer Michael Forsberg's imagination takes flight. THAMES FIGHTIN' WORDSThe British will go to the mat over literary prizes in a way that Americans never do, writes Jay Parini, a professor of English at Middlebury College. MELANGE: Excerpts from recent welcome addresses by faculty members and administrators Letters to the EditorChronicle CareersPICKING THE PANELA new college-foundation director prepares to invoke that fundamental force of nature: the search committee. BY THE NUMBERS, PLEASEAn assistant professor wishes someone would tell him what to say in his self-evaluation for tenure. ON THE MARKET IN ECONA Ph.D. candidate takes his best shot at a tenure-track job in a top-10 department. DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS, including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe Gazette |