 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
From the issue dated May 13, 2005 |
|
Short SubjectsALL OF THEIR FACULTIESSome professors find that teaching into their 80s and 90s -- even past 100 -- is the key to keeping their minds agile. BEETLEMANIA: Two entomologists named new species of slime-mold beetles after President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. THE NAME GAME: An accreditor may force Florida Community College at Jacksonville to drop "community" from its name. MOVE OVER, BENETTON: More than two dozen stores selling UCLA-branded products have opened in Asia during the past eight years. NOT YOUR USUAL JOURNALS: Some publications that pique our curiosity The FacultyORGANIZING PRINCIPLESTeaching assistants' unions lost a major legal battle last summer when the federal government ruled that their members were students, not employees, but spring finds activists continuing the fight. ALL OF THEIR FACULTIESSome professors find that teaching into their 80s and 90s -- even past 100 -- is the key to keeping their minds agile. THE PERK THAT RANKLESFaculty members often bristle when university governing boards grant instant tenure to incoming presidents. BRINGING A CLASS TO LIFEThe finest things are fleeting, daunting, and indescribable. Try working that into a writing lesson, writes Bonnie Friedman, an adjunct professor of creative writing at New York University. A MATTER OF DISCIPLINEThe cases of Larry Summers and Ward Churchill bring up a number of serious issues, but academic freedom and freedom of speech are probably not among them, writes Stanley Fish, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. SAYS WHO?When students complain about teachers, outside groups sometimes determine how the story is framed, writes Jon Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine. I WALK THE LINEAt a small college, the boundary between friendliness and friendship can get blurry when dealing with students. DON'T WASTE MY TIME!Why do so many community-college instructors find it tedious and unrewarding to go back to graduate school? WAKE US WHEN IT'S OVERA married couple, both assistant professors, await word on their promotions. NO BOTTOM LINE: An article in the Harvard Business Review excoriates M.B.A. programs for focusing on scientific research rather than real-life business practices. HE SAYS IT WAS CONSENSUAL: An 81-year-old professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz has been charged with sadomasochistic sexual assault on a 41-year-old student. SYLLABUS: In "Theories of Motivation," students at Ripon College learn the subject from within. PEER REVIEW: Two days after announcing her resignation, the president of Bennett College changed her mind. ... The director of Columbia University's Middle East Institute is a candidate for a newly endowed chair at Princeton University, but some alumni and Jewish students fear that his pro-Palestinian views will divide the campus. ... Irwin Goldstein has left the directorship of the Institute of Sexual Medicine at Boston University under disputed circumstances; the fate of the institute is uncertain. Research & BooksPUNK PHILOLOGYThe Downtown Collection, housed quietly at NYU's library, archives the sights and sounds of the city's raucous arts scene in the 1970s and 80s. NOVEL VIEWS ON BIOETHICSControversies over medical ethics are often stranger than fiction. Recent fiction has nonetheless tried to shed light on them, writes Martha Montello, director of the Writing Resource Center in the School of Medicine at the University of Kansas. BACK FROM THE 'DEAD': The ivory-billed woodpecker, a majestic bird long thought to be extinct, has been sighted in eastern Arkansas. HOT TYPE: Two recent books explore the sins of anthropologists past and present. VERBATIM: A former clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard University talks about her new book on "the sociopath next door." NOTA BENE: A professor at the University of Salerno, in Italy, explores the relationship between the Internet and visions of the Virgin Mary. Government & PoliticsDON'T ASK, DON'T RECRUITThe Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether colleges can ban military recruiters from their campuses. JUST THE TICKETTough budgetary times have led colleges to recruit politicians to be their presidents. GI BLUESMany military veterans find that the GI Bill does not live up to its promise of paying for college. FALSE SENSE OF SECURITYPlans to protect shopping malls and other public spaces in the United States from terrorist attacks are taking the wrong approach, writes Jiri (Art) Janata, a professor of chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. TRAINING SPECIALISTS: The Defense Department hopes to revive the National Defense Education Act, which would provide loans and fellowships to educate specialists in science, mathematics, engineering, and foreign languages. DEATHS AT A PUBLIC HOSPITAL: Los Angeles County has threatened to sever its ties with a historically black medical school amid accusations of harm done to patients by poorly supervised residents. $200,000 IN FINES: Salem International University has agreed to pay $200,000 to the U.S. Department of Education for failing to report campus crimes in the late 1990s. RESOLVED FOR NOW: Congress has agreed on a proposed budget that would increase the maximum Pell Grant and save the Perkins Loan Program. DOUBLE WHAMMY: Dropouts have a harder time paying off their student loans, a report says. BACK TO THE CLASSROOM: Congress should use the renewal of the Higher Education Act to promote adult-learning opportunities, says the chairman of the Senate education committee. MODEST START: This year the National Academy of Science elected 19 women and 53 men to membership, its largest number of women yet. CHURCH AND STATE: The Freedom From Religion Foundation has sued the U.S. Department of Education over money earmarked for a Christian college in Alaska. STATEHOUSE DIGEST: A roundup of news from the state capitals Money & ManagementTHE PERK THAT RANKLESFaculty members often bristle when university governing boards grant instant tenure to incoming presidents. DON'T ASK, DON'T RECRUITThe Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether colleges can ban military recruiters from their campuses. A MATTER OF DISCIPLINEThe cases of Larry Summers and Ward Churchill bring up a number of serious issues, but academic freedom and freedom of speech are probably not among them, writes Stanley Fish, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. BOUNDARY ISSUESUniversities and their surrounding areas need to rethink their adversarial, distrustful relationships, writes Richard M. Freeland, president of Northeastern University. NEW FOUNDATION: The University of Georgia created a new foundation even as its old one voted not to disband. SEEN AND RAISED: The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has met a challenge to match a $300-million gift from the Walton Family Foundation. REPUTATION PRECEDES: The new chairman of the University of Texas Investment Management Company has battled accusations of stock fraud since 2002. TRUSTEE WANNABES: Two conservative alumni have petitioned successfully to appear on the ballot for Dartmouth College's Board of Trustees. WHO'S THAT YOU'RE HIRING? Colleges should conduct thorough background checks of all new employees, including faculty members, as well as of some professional-school students, an expert on risk management in higher education has recommended. RISKY SCRAMBLE FOR FUNDS: Public universities' growing assumption of some characteristics of private institutions may threaten the quality of their credit, says a report from the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor's. LAWSUIT FILED: The former interim president of Albright College has gone to court to accuse the chairman of the Board of Trustees of sabotaging his candidacy for the permanent job. RAPID EXPANSION: Just three years after Drexel University formally took over a medical school, the university's president has raised some faculty members' eyebrows by announcing plans to open a law school. GUILTY PLEA: An ex-president of William Tyndale College admitted using fraud to obtain thousands of dollars in federal financial aid for students at a technical institute he co-owned. PEER REVIEW: Two days after announcing her resignation, the president of Bennett College changed her mind. ... The director of Columbia University's Middle East Institute is a candidate for a newly endowed chair at Princeton University, but some alumni and Jewish students fear that his pro-Palestinian views will divide the campus. ... Irwin Goldstein has left the directorship of the Institute of Sexual Medicine at Boston University under disputed circumstances; the fate of the institute is uncertain. Information TechnologyCAMPUS CANDIDATES WHO CLICKCampaigns for student-government elections have become a largely online phenomenon at a growing number of colleges. BOOKS ONLINE: A French-led project to create a digital library of European works was endorsed by the European Union. WHAT'S THAT YOU'RE READING? A key member of Congress wants to renew a provision of the USA Patriot Act that would allow law-enforcement officials to examine the records of library patrons. 'CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE': The National Science Foundation has devised a strategy to improve the computing and data-analysis technologies used in academic research, but details are few. EXTRA CREDIT: The online database of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation has been expanded to allow searches of thousands of accredited programs. GREATER ACCESS: A $250-million program to help minority-serving institutions upgrade their campuses with wireless technology and new computers has won the support of a House of Representatives panel. THE WIRED CAMPUS: A roundup of higher-education news StudentsGI BLUESMany military veterans find that the GI Bill does not live up to its promise of paying for college. CAMPUS CANDIDATES WHO CLICKCampaigns for student-government elections have become a largely online phenomenon at a growing number of colleges. STANDARDIZED FAILURE? The National Council of Teachers of English has sharply criticized the new writing component of the SAT. DOLLARS OPEN DOORS: Scholarships from private sources play a disproportionately important role in achieving greater access to higher education, a study has found. MAKING THEIR POINT: Students at the University of Puerto Rico ended their three-week walkout after administrators agreed to postpone a 33-percent tuition increase. AthleticsOF REVENUE AND EQUALITYThe NCAA's Division I Board of Directors added a 12th regular-season game to the Division I-A football schedule and urged colleges to ignore new federal gender-equity guidelines. ACADEMIC REFORM IN ATHLETICSChallenges lie ahead in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's academic-reform effort, but prospects for success are encouraging, writes John P. Evans, a member of the NCAA's Committee on Academic Performance. $540,000 VERDICT: A men's basketball coach who lost his job at California State University-Stanislaus has won his lawsuit claiming reverse racial discrimination. 'A' PLUS 'AA'? College presidents in the NCAA's Division I have voted to examine the idea of reshuffling major football programs by doing away with the distinction between Division I-A and I-AA. NO 'ARMS RACE': The building boom in big-time college sports is hardly proof of an "arms race" among athletics departments, says an NCAA-commissioned report. InternationalUNIFIED BY STRIFEIn Nepal, a government crackdown has brought together pro-democracy student groups from different political backgrounds. MAY DAY GONE BAD: During a celebration at the University of Oxford, about 50 students injured themselves, some seriously, jumping off a bridge into shallow water. WAR OF WORDS: Many Japanese academics and other intellectuals are up in arms over growing political pressure to change the language in the Japanese Constitution that forbids the country to maintain armed forces. RELIEF EFFORTS: A U.N. report cites continued chaos in Iraqi higher education, and Unesco is stepping in to help. CAMPUS KIDNAPPINGS: Former employees at a Philippine university are being blamed for a series of abductions of students and faculty members. PROTESTERS SHOT: In Cameroon, two students were killed while marching in sympathy with strikers at another university. 'THEY DON'T SEE WHAT WE SEE': Physicians in Nigeria have criticized Harvard for delaying a program -- now under way -- to treat AIDS patients. WHOSE ACADEMIC FREEDOM? Opponents of a British faculty union's boycott of two Israeli universities have forced a follow-up meeting to reconsider the decision. 'LIVELIER' ATMOSPHERE: A few men are taking undergraduate classes at all-female universities in South Korea, mainly through course-sharing agreements. Notes From AcademeWORDS OF THE IMAM AT TRINITY COLLEGESohaib Nazeer Sultan, the first Muslim chaplain on the Connecticut campus, tries to bridge the distance between the cultures of Islam and the campus. The Chronicle ReviewBRINGING A CLASS TO LIFEThe finest things are fleeting, daunting, and indescribable. Try working that into a writing lesson, writes Bonnie Friedman, an adjunct professor of creative writing at New York University. NOVEL VIEWS ON BIOETHICSControversies over medical ethics are often stranger than fiction. Recent fiction has nonetheless tried to shed light on them, writes Martha Montello, director of the Writing Resource Center in the School of Medicine at the University of Kansas. A MATTER OF DISCIPLINEThe cases of Larry Summers and Ward Churchill bring up a number of serious issues, but academic freedom and freedom of speech are probably not among them, writes Stanley Fish, dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. SAYS WHO?When students complain about teachers, outside groups sometimes determine how the story is framed, writes Jon Wiener, a professor of history at the University of California at Irvine. SINS OF OMISSIONThe American news media have largely dismissed Pope Benedict XVI's Nazi past. It deserves a closer look, writes Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle. FALSE SENSE OF SECURITYPlans to protect shopping malls and other public spaces in the United States from terrorist attacks are taking the wrong approach, writes Jiri (Art) Janata, a professor of chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology. ACADEMIC REFORM IN ATHLETICSChallenges lie ahead in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's academic-reform effort, but prospects for success are encouraging, writes John P. Evans, a member of the NCAA's Committee on Academic Performance. DARK TINTSBoris Mikhailov's photographs capture the hopelessness and desolation of Ukraine in the 1990s. BOUNDARY ISSUESUniversities and their surrounding areas need to rethink their adversarial, distrustful relationships, writes Richard M. Freeland, president of Northeastern University. MELANGE: Selections from books of interest to academe Letters to the EditorChronicle CareersI WALK THE LINEAt a small college, the boundary between friendliness and friendship can get blurry when dealing with students. DON'T WASTE MY TIME!Why do so many community-college instructors find it tedious and unrewarding to go back to graduate school? WAKE US WHEN IT'S OVERA married couple, both assistant professors, await word on their promotions. DETAILS OF AVAILABLE POSTS, including teaching and research positions in higher education, administrative and executive jobs, and openings outside academe Gazette |