From the issue dated August 13, 2004
THE FACULTY
DOCTORATES 101
A summer program prods minority students to consider careers in academe.
DISTANT MONEY
A growing number of faculty unions are seeking guarantees of extra pay or time off for developing online courses. Cash-strapped colleges are reluctant to agree.
BEACONS, BONDS, AND BOUNDARIES
Mentorship should be neither oversold nor demonized. The relationship between mentors and protégés is complicated and, like all such ties, can have powerful rewards and damaging consequences, writes Edward Tenner, a senior research associate at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History.
A DIVERSE DEPARTMENT
A former chairman had no problem managing affirmative-action procedures, but actually hiring minority candidates was not so easy.
DON'T BE THAT GUY
An English instructor finds that she has been shaped as much by the "bad" professors as by the "good" ones.
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- WATCHING FOR BIAS: Federal agencies need to do more to ensure that colleges do not discriminate against women in mathematics, engineering, and science, according to a report.
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- $3-MILLION AWARD: The University of California system has been ordered to pay a clinical instructor who sued for sex discrimination.
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- DOWN A DEGREE: Tulane University has fired an instructor whose doctorate came from a diploma mill.
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- LAWSUITS OVER RESEARCH: A medical school in Chicago faces two suits concerning projects that it discontinued.
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- PEER REVIEW: Three professors who had accepted job offers from Arizona State University West backed out. ... Three researchers will become eminent scholars at colleges in Georgia. ... The new president of San Jose State University resigned for health reasons. ... The director of a program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government will also become head of the Woods Hole Research Center.
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- SYLLABUS: In "Down at the Crossroads," students at Dominican University get a front-row view of rock 'n' roll and the blues.
RESEARCH & PUBLISHING
RELIEF FOR SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING
Universities are considering the use of subsidies for authors to help academic presses continue to publish scholars' books.
SOUND SCULPTURE
Christopher Janney, an architect who teaches at Cooper Union, thinks designs should be heard and not just seen.
AN ETHIC OF PLACE
The University of Utah has created a program designed to bring humanistic insights to environmental concerns, writes Malcolm G. Scully, The Chronicle's editor at large.
FORM'S FUNCTION
Should literary style enhance writing or reading? The answer "both" never seems to be in vogue, writes Ben Yagoda, a professor of English at the University of Delaware.
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- VERBATIM: Frank P. Harvey, of Dalhousie University, says that the U.S. campaign against terrorism will inevitably be unilateral -- no matter what John Kerry might believe.
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- NOTA BENE: Summer Stock! An American Theatrical Phenomenon traces the rise and fall of various troupes on the straw-hat circuit.
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- HOT TYPE: The authors of storybooks don't necessarily lead storybook lives, as new biographies of those who wrote the Hardy Boys series and The Secret Garden attest.
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- HOT TOPIC: A scholar at the University of Nevada's Cooperative Extension division is helping fire departments and residents take precautions against wildfires.
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- CULTURE WATCH: The physicist who directed the abortive Superconducting Supercollider Laboratory comments on Herman Wouk's satirical novel about the aftermath of the project's abandonment.
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- NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS
GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
OPENING THE BOOKS ON CRIME
A controversial proposal before Congress would force colleges to disclose the results of some campus judicial proceedings.
BLOOD, SWEAT, AND FEAR
On their own after 35 years of dictatorship and war, Iraqi colleges try to rebuild despite continuing violence and little financial help from the United States.
THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL
It's not that scholars are too political. It's that too many never consider the many ways in which they should be political, writes Michael Burawoy, president of the American Sociological Association.
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- GADFLY SWATTED: The president of the Wisconsin Technical College System's governing board, who also held a seat on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, lost both positions after objecting to a vote by the regents to raise the administrators' salary ranges.
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- FROM THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Bipartisan groups plan to mount an unprecedented drive to mobilize college-age voters in this fall's presidential election, at a cost of more than $40-million, a twentyfold increase over the 2000 election.
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- SAVINGS PLANS: Prepaid-tuition plans reduce eligibility for need-based aid, a report says.
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- TRACKING DEGREE COMPLETION: Republicans on the education committee of the U.S. House of Representatives defended their party's efforts to make colleges more accountable for their graduation rates.
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- ASPIRING ARCHIVIST: Members of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee last month grilled Allen Weinstein, the Bush administration's nominee to head the National Archives, questioning his commitment to public-records access.
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- ANALYSIS QUESTIONED: A watchdog group says a recent report assessing a federal law that allows the public to question scientific findings used by the U.S. government is riddled with inaccuracies.
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- SOUTHERN CAL AUDIT: A federal audit has recommended that the University of Southern California reimburse the government about $1-million for what the auditors deemed improper costs in an HIV-education project that failed.
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- WATCHING FOR BIAS: Federal agencies need to do more to ensure that colleges do not discriminate against women in mathematics, engineering, and science, according to a report.
MONEY & MANAGEMENT
A 'FOURTH CULTURE'
In Chicago, three colleges with distinct cultures have collaborated to build a dorm they will share.
OPENING THE BOOKS ON CRIME
A controversial proposal before Congress would force colleges to disclose the results of some campus judicial proceedings.
NOT MAKING THE CASE
A fund raiser's campaign "case statement" gets rejected by the only audience that matters.
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- PERMISSION SLIP: Regents of the University System of Georgia who want to do business with the institution must now get approval from the state's attorney general.
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- AMERICAN BEACHHEAD: Laureate Education, known for its international universities, is establishing its first domestic program, at a culinary institution in Chicago.
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- ALOHA AT LAST:
The University of Hawaii has reached a settlement with its departing president.
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- ARCHITECTURE & FACILITIES: The Coker Arboretum, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a carefully tended natural landscape.
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- KISSED AND MADE UP: The University System of Georgia and its fund-raising foundation mended fences and will re-establish ties severed in May.
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- ARBORING SUSPICIONS: A group of students at Indiana State University questioned a decision by administrators to spend $30,000 to spare a tree.
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- PEER REVIEW: Three professors who had accepted job offers from Arizona State University West backed out. ... Three researchers will become eminent scholars at colleges in Georgia. ... The new president of San Jose State University resigned for health reasons. ... The director of a program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government will also become head of the Woods Hole Research Center.
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- BOND-RATING UPDATE
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
DISTANT MONEY
A growing number of faculty unions are seeking guarantees of extra pay or time off for developing online courses. Cash-strapped colleges are reluctant to agree.
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- 'COMPUTER CLEAN-UP': A group of students at Grand Valley State University plans to stop viruses on arriving machines before the bugs can foul up the campus network.
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- NOT ALWAYS A BENEFIT: Students have mixed views on whether technology in the classroom has an impact on teaching, a study has found.
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- TAKE BACK THE NETWORK: Some colleges set caps on the amount of data students can download or send others in a given day.
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- DIGITAL POSTERITY: The National Archives and Records Administration has chosen two teams of companies to produce competing designs for a system that will preserve the federal government's electronic records.
STUDENTS
CLEAN AND SOBER, WITH HELP
More colleges are developing campus treatment-and-support programs for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts.
- A MATTER OF PERCEPTION? The controversial strategy known as social norms can be an effective tool for preventing high-risk drinking among college students, researchers have found.
DOCTORATES 101
A summer program prods minority students to consider careers in academe.
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- BOOZE IN NEWSPAPERS: A federal appeals court has ruled that a Pennsylvania law prohibiting student newspapers from publishing advertisements for alcohol is unconstitutional.
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- FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUE: The University of Oklahoma, settling a religious-discrimination lawsuit filed by two student editors of a Christian newspaper, has changed its policy on financing religious groups.
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- FLOOR TIME: Among the bloggers at the Democratic National Convention was Ezra Klein, a political-science major at UCLA who prefers the real world of politics to class.
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- BUSINESS IS DOWN: Applications to the nation's M.B.A. programs have dropped for the second straight year, a report says.
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- CULTURAL LESSON: A group of American students and recent graduates are learning about food service and the Greek work ethic while dishing food at the Olympic Games in Athens.
ATHLETICS
GOING PRO
More collegiate swimmers and runners are accepting lucrative contracts to pursue their sports.
- WHO'S WHO: A list of current college students competing in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Athens, along with their sports and colleges.
DON'T MOVE A MUSCLE
Viewing extreme risks in extreme sports bolsters our conflicted contentment in being extremely sedentary, write Mikita Brottman, a professor of liberal arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and David Sterritt, a film critic and teacher.
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- LIMITING EXCESSES: Colleges will face new restrictions on the lavish perks that many have provided to athletes they are recruiting.
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- GRIDIRON SOAP OPERA: A rash of lawsuits involving the head football coach at the University of Tennessee, boosters and ex-coaches at the University of Alabama, and a variety of other figures and groups has amounted to a tangle of accusations.
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- GEORGIA PENALIZED: The NCAA placed the University of Georgia men's basketball program on probation and ordered it to forfeit scholarships because of misconduct by an assistant coach.
INTERNATIONAL
BLOOD, SWEAT, AND FEAR
On their own after 35 years of dictatorship and war, Iraqi colleges try to rebuild despite continuing violence and little financial help from the United States.
- RULE OF LAW: One partnership between Iraqi and foreign academics that is moving ahead is a degree program for members of Iraq's reconstituted security forces.
- 'STREAM OF ASSASSINATIONS': A petition asking the U.S. to prevent killings of Iraqi academics has been circulated by a group of professors and administrators.
HOW IONIC
Contemporary Greece is unfairly slighted in our emphasis on the ancients, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle.
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- SPY CASE: The Auckland University of Technology, in New Zealand, says it will stand by a professor who disappeared as an espionage scandal erupted.
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- FREE AT LAST: An Iranian professor who was twice sentenced to death and twice saw his sentence reversed has been released from prison.
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- POLICY REVERSAL: India scrapped a controversial order that required that all private donations to public universities be routed through a special government agency.
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- THE LEARNED JOBLESS: A glut of Ph.D.'s in Japan has left many of them unemployed.
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- PATH TO PROFESSOR: Germany's highest court has struck down a law that was intended to streamline the process of becoming an academic.
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- ICE PRINCESS: A fashion student at Ryerson University in Canada has created Inuk Barbie, a doll based on her Inuit heritage.
NOTES FROM ACADEME
SOUND SCULPTURE
Christopher Janney, an architect who teaches at Cooper Union, thinks designs should be heard and not just seen.
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
Boxing well, like thinking well, demands courage, control, and experience, writes a former boxer, Gordon Marino, who is a professor of philosophy and assistant football coach at Saint Olaf College.
BEACONS, BONDS, AND BOUNDARIES
Mentorship should be neither oversold nor demonized. The relationship between mentors and protégés is complicated and, like all such ties, can have powerful rewards and damaging consequences, writes Edward Tenner, a senior research associate at the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History.
SCARED STIFF
If fear initially inspires alertness and solidarity, it eventually cows us into obedience. For all its vitalizing effects, it is not an emotion to be desired, writes Corey Robin, an assistant professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.
HOW IONIC
Contemporary Greece is unfairly slighted in our emphasis on the ancients, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle.
AN ETHIC OF PLACE
The University of Utah has created a program designed to bring humanistic insights to environmental concerns, writes Malcolm G. Scully, The Chronicle's editor at large.
FORM'S FUNCTION
Should literary style enhance writing or reading? The answer "both" never seems to be in vogue, writes Ben Yagoda, a professor of English at the University of Delaware.
DON'T MOVE A MUSCLE
Viewing extreme risks in extreme sports bolsters our conflicted contentment in being extremely sedentary, write Mikita Brottman, a professor of liberal arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and David Sterritt, a film critic and teacher.
TRADITIONAL MEANS, MAVERICK ENDS
An exhibit of works by Hans Friedrich Grohs highlights German Expressionism's second generation.
THE POLITICS OF SURVIVAL
It's not that scholars are too political. It's that too many never consider the many ways in which they should be political, writes Michael Burawoy, president of the American Sociological Association.
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- THE SHORT LIST: What are educators reading for pleasure this summer?
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- MELANGE: Selections from recent books of interest to academe.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
CHRONICLE CAREERS
NOT MAKING THE CASE
A fund raiser's campaign "case statement" gets rejected by the only audience that matters.
A DIVERSE DEPARTMENT
A former chairman had no problem managing affirmative-action procedures, but actually hiring minority candidates was not so easy.
DON'T BE THAT GUY
An English instructor finds that she has been shaped as much by the "bad" professors as by the "good" ones.
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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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