News

No-Confidence Vote at Cal State Stems Partly From Chronicle Essay

11-22-2009

There are plenty of reasons for anxiety and perhaps even unrest at California State University-Stanislaus. The campus is coping this year with a $13.5-million budget cut, which has led to furloughs, reduced enrollment, and the elimination of a winter term. But when faculty critics explain why they voted no confidence last week in the university's president, Hamid Shirvani, Exhibit A is a commentary he wrote for The Chronicle.

The no-confidence resolution passed...

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32 Americans Are Named Rhodes Scholars for 2010

11-22-2009

The 32 American Rhodes Scholars for 2010 come from 23 universities and colleges across the United States, including one that has never before had a recipient of the prestigious awards, Truman State University, in Missouri.

The scholarships, announced by the American secretary of the Rhodes Trust on Sunday, provide all expenses for two or three years of study at the University of Oxford, in England. This year's winners...

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Latin America Looks to Europe for Teaching Reform

11-22-2009

Ten years ago, one of Jorge Balderrama's psychology students gave the following answer when asked to evaluate his professor's performance: "You pretend to teach, and I pretend to learn."

The student might have been describing the classroom experience today at most Mexican universities, says Dr. Balderrama, a physician and psychologist who has taught for more than 15 years.

Despite more than a decade of government-led higher-education reforms in Latin...

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Foreign Demand Drops for American M.B.A.'s

11-22-2009

The United States' dominance in graduate business education is slipping a bit as growing numbers of young foreign applicants choose to study elsewhere, according to an analysis of the number of students taking the Graduate Management Admission Test.

From 2005 to 2009, that important barometer of the demand for business education grew 75...

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Violinist Brings Global Experience to U. of Texas Classroom

11-22-2009

To get a violin lesson from Anne Akiko Meyers in the past, you'd most likely have had to go to her New York City apartment—if you could catch her there between the dozens of performances she gave around the globe—or be lucky enough to snag some personal instruction at one of her occasional master classes.

But starting this fall, 10 violin students at the University of Texas at Austin have Ms. Meyers as their regular instructor for weekly lessons. The Sarah and...

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Libraries Explore Big Ideas to Overcome Small Budgets

11-22-2009

At many university libraries, the toxic economy has eaten away at staffing levels and at collections-and-acquisitions budgets. It has deflated endowments and disrupted plans to build new facilities and upgrade equipment.

But in response, librarians are doing more than tightening their belts. Some see the crisis as a chance to change the way they do business. It has spurred efforts to dream up ambitious solutions to big problems, such as collaborative storage networks...

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Sallie Mae Fights for Student-Loan Role in a Campaign That's All About Jobs

11-22-2009

On a crisp November morning, hundreds of Sallie Mae employees gathered here in a scene reminiscent of a high-school pep rally. They filed into rows of folding chairs, wearing matching blue-and-white "Protect Indiana Jobs" T-shirts, as John Mellencamp's rock 'n' roll played over the speakers. They cheered as an official of the student-loan company praised their dedication and told them how important they were to the local economy.

For two weeks, at grocery stores, nursing homes, and...

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A Teaching Hospital Tries to Transform Urban Health Care

11-22-2009

In a bustling emergency room at the University of Chicago Medical Center, Lolita Smith checks on two patients separated by a thin partition.

One is cradling a finger she jammed during a brawl with another woman. The other is worried about a boil on his leg.

Meanwhile, two emergency medical technicians wheel an injured patient on a gurney into the hallway of a packed waiting room. He'll have to wait for a bed to open up.

As a patient...

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Mom's the President, and I'm Outta Here

11-22-2009

As Will Jeffery zeroed in on where he would attend college last spring, he concluded that the University of the Pacific was his dream school. That is, until his mother was hired as the president.

"He tried to be happy for me," says Pamela A. Eibeck. "But I still remember him looking at me and saying, 'You know, Mom, you ruined it for me.'"

Ms. Eibeck, 52, learned of the position while looking at Pacific's Web site with her son. At the time, she was dean of engineering at Texas...

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Sorry, Tom: We Have to Eat You for Your Own Good

11-22-2009

Sometimes the best way to save something is to eat it. That's why Emory University ordered 1,600 pounds of "heritage turkeys" for this year's pre-Thanksgiving feast.

The poor birds can't be expected to buy the argument, but the college is helping save Standard Bronze and Bourbon Red turkeys, two breeds that date back to the 1800s but are in danger of dying out for lack of demand. Emory has struck a deal with Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch, in Tampa, Kan., one of the few farms that still...

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Incendiary Videos, Knucklehead Students

11-22-2009

In dorms throughout the land, boredom + video cameras = hijinks. But what happens when you add fire to the equation?

Ed Comeau went looking for answers on YouTube. He found that some college students enjoy setting one another's scalps ablaze, kicking flaming tennis balls down hallways, and lighting latex gloves filled with butane (see http://www.campus-firewatch.com/video-kids.html). One video depicts the incineration of a...

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Campus Risk Managers Extend Their Turf

11-22-2009

When Christine L. Eick began her job as a risk manager at Auburn University, in 1996, she had one employee and was known, mostly just in the business office, as the woman who handled insurance issues.

Now, nearly 14 years later, she directs a department with more than 30 staff members, who deal with not only insurance but also crucial environmental, health, and safety issues, like handling hazardous chemicals generated by research laboratories and managing crowds of 90,000 at football...

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Teaching With Twitter: Not for the Faint of Heart

11-22-2009

Maybe Sugato Chakravarty should wear a helmet to class. The professor of consumer sciences and retailing at Purdue University repeatedly attempts the instructional equivalent of jumping a motorcycle over a row of flaming barrels.

OK, asking 250 students to post questions on Twitter during a class doesn't risk life or limb. But it can cause ego damage if the mob of students in his course on personal finance gets disorderly online.

He has given them the power to do just that. As...

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A Crusader for Cannabis

11-22-2009

For more than 30 years, the federal government has classified marijuana as a highly dangerous drug with no medical uses, and for more than a decade, the American Medical Association has endorsed that classification. But this month, the association called on the government to reconsider the drug's current status alongside heroin and LSD, and to consider its medicinal potential. That move came after Sunil K. Aggarwal, who is in his final year of an M.D.-Ph.D. program at the University of...

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Nebraska Regents, Just Barely, Endorse Research on Embryonic Stem Cells

11-20-2009

The University of Nebraska's Board of Regents, despite heavy lobbying by religious groups, narrowly voted on Friday to uphold the expansion of research on human embryonic stem cells, as permitted by the Obama administration.

The regents, meeting at the university's Lincoln campus, voted 4 to 4 on a proposal that the system observe limits on stem-cell studies imposed by the Bush administration, a tie vote that meant the resolution failed.

The regents, an elected body, were...

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Lincoln U. Requires Its Students to Step on the Scale

11-19-2009

At Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, students who are deemed too heavy must pass a physical-fitness course.

As part of the university's core curriculum, campus health educators weigh and measure all freshmen during the fall semester, and later calculate each student's body-mass index, or BMI. Those with a BMI above 30, which suggests obesity, must enroll in a one-credit course called "Fitness for Life" before they graduate. Students can satisfy that requirement if they "test...

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Friends and Colleagues Search for a Missing Scholar, Philip Agre

11-19-2009

Philip Agre was an associate professor of information sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles, and for years he ran a popular technology e-mail list with thousands of subscribers. But one day the 49-year-old scholar just stopped showing up on the campus, and now colleagues have deployed Twitter, Facebook, and the Web to try to find him.

Last month the university police department put out a missing-person alert for...

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Video: At UCLA, Tuition-Hike Protests Turn Raucous

11-19-2009

Tempers flared and Taser guns came out when students at UCLA protested a decision to raise tuition throughout the University of California. Josh Keller, The Chronicle's California correspondent, explains what happened in Los Angeles....

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Report Highlights Characteristics of Colleges With High Transfer-Success Rates

11-19-2009

A new report by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education may provide clues on how best to shepherd students from two-year to four-year institutions.

The findings come at a time when the Obama administration has put out a clarion call to community colleges to educate an additional five million students by...

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Professors of the Year Are Celebrated for Innovative Teaching

11-19-2009

One professor of geology drove his students into the wilderness of Montana so they could put lessons from textbooks to work evaluating government policy. A psychologist encouraged students to generate their own ideas for research, even if that meant he had to investigate pick-up lines to vet one of the projects.

Those professors and two others are being recognized for excellent teaching by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and...

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Number of Doctorates Rose Slightly in 2008, in Summary of Delayed NSF Report

11-19-2009

Exactly 48,802 people, a number equal to the population of East Brunswick, N.J., were awarded doctoral degrees in the United States in 2008, according to a brief report released on Thursday by the National Science Foundation.

That figure was up 1.4 percent from 2007 — the smallest increase in the last several years.

The NSF brief summarizes...

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Federal Audit Faults Universities Over Researchers' Financial Conflicts of Interest

11-19-2009

Universities involved in federally sponsored medical research rarely take steps to investigate, reduce, or eliminate financial conflicts of interest among their scientists, a government audit report said Thursday.

The report, by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, is the latest in a series of audits over the years that have criticized both universities and the National Institutes of Health, which distributes $24-billion a year in research money, as...

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Bishops Discuss Ways to Strengthen Relationship with Catholic Colleges

11-18-2009

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops was scheduled to discuss ways to strengthen the relationships between bishops and Roman Catholic colleges and universities on Wednesday, following on the heels of the controversy around the University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama at its commencement last May.

The group was set to hear recommendations from a committee appointed in June during a closed-door session at its fall meeting today, said...

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Chart: College Athletes' Graduation-Success Rates: Highest and Lowest

11-18-2009

The National Collegiate Athletic Association's "graduation success rate" differs from federal graduation statistics because it accounts for students who transfer. The NCAA's figures, unlike the federal ones, do not penalize an institution for athletes who leave to attend other colleges, as long as they depart in good academic standing. Here are the Division I colleges with the highest and lowest graduation-success rates for athletes who entered college

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Chart: Sport-by-Sport Graduation-Success Rates

11-18-2009

The overall graduation-success rate for all NCAA athletes who entered college from 1999 to 2002 is 79 percent. The overall federal rate for athletes is 64 percent. Here are the graduation-success rates and federal graduation rates for athletes who entered college from 1999 to 2002, in all NCAA sports:

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International Engineering-Education Group Rejects India's Bid for Membership

11-18-2009

India's bid for full membership in the Washington Accord, an elite international association focused on standardizing engineering education, was turned down this week because of concerns over the quality of faculty members and students in Indian engineering programs.

The group, which includes accrediting agencies from the United States and twelve other countries, agreed to extend India's provisional membership as it works toward alleviating these concerns.

Raman Unnikrishnan,...

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