From the issue dated July 6, 2001
THE FACULTY
UNION VICTORIES
The organizing of graduate students has reached unprecedented levels, but some universities continue to resist the movement.
HISTORY AS LITERATURE
For the writing of history to bloom, academic historians will have to prize powerful language as much as they do powerful arguments, explains Louis P. Masur, a professor of history at City College of the City University of New York.
A LOT BETTER THAN NOTHING
No, graduate admissions tests aren't perfect. They're just the most reliable measures that we have, argues Philip D. Shelton, the president and executive director of the Law School Admission Council.
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- CONFIRMING TRENDS: More faculty members are off the tenure track, and the pay gap between tenured and nontenure-track professors has widened, says a National Education Association report.
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- NO UNION: A National Labor Relations Board official ruled that professors at Sacred Heart University, in Connecticut, may not bargain collectively.
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- MOTIVES QUESTIONED: Faculty members in the University of Wisconsin System are furious over the firing of a tenured colleague.
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- TIGHT JOB MARKET: More history Ph.D.'s focus on gay and lesbian issues, but they have difficulty finding tenure-track positions, a study finds.
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- PEER REVIEW: The president of Mississippi University for Women resigned after tensions between her and the university staff and faculty couldn't be resolved. ... Duke University is raising the budget of its Primate Center to give it a chance to evolve into a more focused research institution.
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- PRIME NUMBERS: A new study has concluded that more women are teaching science at the college level than ever before.
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- RAISING THE BAR: A committee of the American Association of University Professors is considering establishing "best practices" for how college officials and faculty members should deal with college-sports issues.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
LOOK WHO'S LISTENING
New research shows that babies employ more than a few tricks when they learn language.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Scientists who once worked on nuclear research in a closed city in Russia are now being approached by Americans to help build titanium parts for sports cars.
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- VERBATIM: Lionel Casson, author of Libraries in the Ancient World, explains, among other things, why the reading rooms of antiquity were so noisy.
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- HOT TYPE: Two new books analyze the cross-gender empathies of writers like Robert Lowell and Flannery O'Connor. ... The University of Michigan Press has hired a new director with a new mission.
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- NOTA BENE: To write Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities, the British criminologist Simon Winlow went undercover to examine how de-industrialization has affected the working class and the underworld.
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- CLEARING A HURDLE: The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice approved a major deal involving a textbook publisher.
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- AUTHORS WIN: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that media companies may not republish freelance work in database form without writers' consent.
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
WHO PAYS?
Colleges and state agencies are divided over responsibility for the costs of helping students with disabilities.
CLINICAL TRIALS
Participants in medical studies are sometimes nicked by science's cutting edge. Researchers and journalists should be candid about the risks, writes Rebecca Dresser, a professor of law and of ethics in medicine at Washington University.
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- TURNING THE PAIGE? Rumors are circulating that the U.S. education secretary, Roderick R. Paige, is considering leaving his post.
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- SUNSHINE JOB: Gov. Jeb Bush gave Florida's top education position to the state senator who had sponsored legislation to revamp the state's education system.
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- NEW LEADER FOR OCR: President Bush has picked a critic of affirmative action to lead the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights.
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- WHITE HOUSE ROLE: President Bush has nominated John H. Marburger, director of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, to be his science adviser.
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- TUSSLE IN TALLAHASSEE: Florida State and Florida A&M; Universities are fighting over control of an engineering college.
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- REJECTED: The U.S. Supreme Court has again declined to review a case that led to the abolition of affirmative action at public colleges in Texas.
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- CHANGING THE REGULATIONS: Proposed changes in federal student-aid rules were praised at a House of Representatives hearing.
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- REQUESTS DENIED: Chinese students applying for visas to attend college in the United States are being rejected in greater numbers.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
COLLABORATION OVER COMPETITION
A growing number of top business schools, after years of trying to outdo one another, are joining forces in various academic programs.
UNION VICTORIES
The organizing of graduate students has reached unprecedented levels, but some universities continue to resist the movement.
WHO PAYS?
Colleges and state agencies are divided over responsibility for the costs of helping students with disabilities.
THE NEW PHILANTHROPISTS
Traditionally, donors gave to colleges and universities to leave a legacy. The new generation wants to change the world -- now, and with their advice. Mary Marcy, co-director and senior administrator of Antioch University's Project on the Future of Higher Education, explains.
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- PEANUTS AND CRACKER JACK: The University of Pittsburgh's business school stands on the site of the old Forbes Field, which has prompted a baseball-themed fund-raising pitch to pay for renovation of the cafeteria.
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- HOW THEY GOT THE GIFT: Students in the part-time executive M.B.A. program at Southern Methodist University, inspired by donations from the full-time program's graduating class, have made a $1-million gift to the business school.
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- DONATION DEBACLE: The University of Oregon faces tough questions about a gift from the co-chairman of its most recent capital campaign.
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- CLEARING A HURDLE: The antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice approved a major deal involving a textbook publisher.
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- CHECKERED FLAG: Fourteen universities are making money by sponsoring a racing car on the Nascar circuit this year.
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- PEER REVIEW: The president of Mississippi University for Women resigned after tensions between her and the university staff and faculty couldn't be resolved. ... Duke University is raising the budget of its Primate Center to give it a chance to evolve into a more focused research institution.
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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
GAINING THE UPPER HAND
Colleges, frustrated by students who use the Internet to plagiarize, are going online to enable professors to fight back.
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- TO MARKET, TO MARKET: The University of Washington plans to offer free, short versions of some of its online courses in an effort to attract students to the full-length originals.
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- LINKING UP: A new list offers contact information for the virtual universities or statewide distance-education organizations in more than 35 states.
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- ETHICS INVESTIGATION: A panel in Washington State is examining a community college's online-bookstore deal.
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- AUTHORS WIN: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that media companies may not republish freelance work in database form without writers' consent.
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- CHAPTER 11: The online bookseller ecampus.com has filed for bankruptcy protection.
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- FOLLOWING THE MONEY: An audit found that Indiana State University's financial-aid program had trouble tracking students as they switched from traditional and online courses to correspondence courses.
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- BACK FOR MORE: Indiana University at Bloomington faced a security breach in its computers for the second time in four months.
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- GUBERNATORIAL INFLUENCE: The National Governors Association released two reports that strongly endorse distance education.
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- CHANGING THE REGULATIONS: Proposed changes in federal student-aid rules were praised at a House of Representatives hearing.
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- BOOKMARK: The Harvey Project offers free online tools for teaching physiology.
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- GEEK CHIC: A computer scientist at Mills College won the second annual Sexiest Geek Alive contest.
STUDENTS
DEBATE OVER DUE PROCESS
Columbia University is rethinking its judicial code after being embarrassed over criticism led by a civil-liberties group with a flair for public relations.
GAINING THE UPPER HAND
Colleges, frustrated by students who use the Internet to plagiarize, are going online to enable professors to fight back.
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- LOOK, NO HANDS: To protest what they said was the deterioration of the newspaper program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, some graduates refused to shake the dean's hand at the convocation.
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- LEARNING WELL THE LESSON: A law student sued Pace University and a law professor who had illustrated a legal concept by unseating her from a chair.
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- FALLING STARS: Only 20 of 31 students made it through the first year of studies at Kepler College, which bills itself as the hemisphere's only college granting degrees in astrology.
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- PITCHMEN ON CAMPUS: Two students have signed a deal with a credit-card company that will pay for their freshman year in college in return for their service as corporate spokesmen.
ATHLETICS
TEAM STRATEGY
The Knight Foundation commission's report on college athletics calls for campus presidents to form a coalition and to bring about academic integrity, cost containment, and decommercialization.
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- RAISING THE BAR: A committee of the American Association of University Professors is considering establishing "best practices" for how college officials and faculty members should deal with college-sports issues.
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- WOOING RECRUITS: The National Collegiate Athletic Association put two universities on probation for offering improper inducements to athletes from junior colleges.
INTERNATIONAL
HINDU FASCISM?
Many academics in India fear the rising influence of a right-wing group that consolidated its political power in 1998 and has turned its attention to education.
- STAR-CROSSED STUDIES: Some Indians believe that the government's decision to authorize university degrees in Hindu-related astrology will make the country a laughingstock.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
Scientists who once worked on nuclear research in a closed city in Russia are now being approached by Americans to help build titanium parts for sports cars.
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- REQUESTS DENIED: Chinese students applying for visas to attend college in the United States are being rejected in greater numbers.
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- WORLD BEAT: Students in nine African countries suffered a range of human-rights abuses last year, says an Amnesty International report. ... Forty Ethiopian students who fled to Kenya are resisting transfer to a refugee camp.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
A LOOM WITH A VIEW
In a weaving class, Deni Elliott, a professor of philosophy at the University of Montana, relearns what learning is, and adapts her teaching style accordingly.
A FRESH GENERATION
Despite the crippling nostalgia of its eulogists, Jewish-American literature has new voices, with preoccupations different from those of its grandfathers, writes Andrew Furman, an assistant professor of English at Florida Atlantic University.
HISTORY AS LITERATURE
For the writing of history to bloom, academic historians will have to prize powerful language as much as they do powerful arguments, explains Louis P. Masur, a professor of history at City College of the City University of New York.
FRIEND OR FOE IN THE FOREST?
Conservationists debate whether indigenous peoples are vital, or a threat, to preserving tropical forests. That's a good question, but the trees may be gone by the time it's resolved, writes Malcolm G. Scully, The Chronicle's editor at large.
CLINICAL TRIALS
Participants in medical studies are sometimes nicked by science's cutting edge. Researchers and journalists should be candid about the risks, writes Rebecca Dresser, a professor of law and of ethics in medicine at Washington University.
THE NEW PHILANTHROPISTS
Traditionally, donors gave to colleges and universities to leave a legacy. The new generation wants to change the world -- now, and with their advice. Mary Marcy, co-director and senior administrator of Antioch University's Project on the Future of Higher Education, explains.
A LOT BETTER THAN NOTHING
No, graduate admissions tests aren't perfect. They're just the most reliable measures that we have, argues Philip D. Shelton, the president and executive director of the Law School Admission Council.
BONEYARDS OF CONCEPTION
Mother Earth's time-pounded diary is written in rock. The painter Barbara Page set out to illustrate it.
ROSES, SEA SALT, AND VELLUM
In summer reading, she escaped her life and, in doing so, was able to rebuild it, writes Carolyn Foster Segal, an assistant professor of English at Cedar Crest College.
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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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