The Stanford Daily:
The Internet revolution has created a new outlet for college students to encounter their professors outside of the usual academic setting: blogs. Stanford professors in many departments have taken up blogging about their academic expertise.
“I want to provide a little more information about economic issues than we [encounter] in the classroom or readings,” said economics Prof. John Taylor, who authors the blog “Economics One.” “I also want to share some of what we do in introductory economics at Stanford with a broader audience.”
Stanford professors from a myriad of academic disciplines have, over the years, turned their attention to blogging as a way to not only connect with students through technology, but also to convey much of their research, theories and overall thoughts to the world…
San Francisco Chronicle:
… This year, UC Berkeley’s Department of Intercollegiate Athletics – whose football team is in the Bowl Subdivision – is projected to run a deficit of nearly $6 million, rising to $6.4 million next year.
To make ends meet, Chancellor Robert Birgeneau expects to lend the athletes more than $12 million.
… The last time the athletes ran up a multiyear debt – owing the university $31.4 million by 2007 – the bill was forgiven…
[A] group of [Berkeley] faculty members who have dubbed themselves a Sports Grinch Club objects to the use of any university funds being spent on intercollegiate athletics.
“We ought to stop subsidizing this program,” said Michael O’Hare, a professor at Cal’s Goldman School of Public Policy. He and others say the loss to the school far outweighs any benefit because elite athletes generally have lower graduation rates and receive unfair benefits compared with regular students.
He said the Faculty Senate – the voice of tenured instructors in university governance – will consider a nonbinding resolution at its Nov. 5 meeting to end the subsidies.
O’Hare called “deeply depressing” the Knight Commission’s new report, in which university presidents acknowledge that they have little control over the escalating costs of their football programs.
[A] Cal spokesman … said, “There’s a reason that 10,000 students come to every home football game.
“They’re not just at Berkeley to attend class. They come to be part of a community.” …
And you know… you just know… with Berkeley’s notorious difficulty getting people to apply to that school, let alone decide to come, that without heavily funded athletics, the campus would have to shut down.
Arizona State University police say a graduate student fatally shot himself in a professor’s office.
ASU police commander James Hardina says the shooting occurred about 11:40 a.m. Monday.
Police say the student was apparently talking with a professor when he pulled out a gun and shot himself once on ASU’s main campus in Tempe.
The name of the student has not been released.
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Update: A little more information, from the Arizona Republic:
… The student apparently walked into the professor’s office [in the Architecture building], pulled out a gun and shot himself without warning… The student apparently had battled depression for most of his life… He was a third-year grad student [in architecture] on track to graduate. He had been a student of the professor’s, but [a police spokesman] said he was unsure if he was currently in the professor’s class.
Most suicides go off and do it someplace solitary.
Some, like this one, seem to seek out someone they care about or hate or whatever and do it in front of them.
A friend of mine in college — her father called her mother on the phone from work one morning, said a few words to her (the two of them were estranged) and then, into the phone, so the mother could hear it loud and clear, shot himself to death.
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Another Update: Details, from ASU’s newspaper:
A male graduate student committed suicide in front of a professor at around 11:40 a.m. Monday in the College of Design South building on the Tempe campus.
David Solnick, a 59-year-old student in the graphic design program, was talking with Associate Professor Mookesh Patel inside Patel’s office when the student pulled out a handgun and shot himself, ASU Police spokesman Cmdr. Jim Hardina said.
Solnick died instantly, police said, and he never posed a … danger to anyone around him.
“At this point, we have the weapon, the student is deceased and there is no threat to the campus,” Hardina said about 20 minutes after the incident was reported.
Hardina said the department will not release details of the conversation between Solnick and Patel until the investigation is complete.
Patel was unavailable for comment.
Solnick was preparing to graduate in December, according to his personal blog. He also received his bachelor’s degree from ASU.
According to the blog, he had worked as a visual designer since the 1980s in the areas of ceramics, print and paint and was working on a series of pictures of two of his friends…
Jane Mendillo, chief executive of the Harvard Management Co., eluded to the sale of some of Harvard’s private equity investments in Harvard University’s financial report for fiscal 2009, which was released earlier this month.
Forbes
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Oh poo. They fixed it.
Written and conceived by Samuel Beckett, this one act for two suits captures its moment in time with the concision and enigma of great art. Scroll down to video.
UD‘s got the impression that many American university students now routinely check Rate My Professors before taking a course. Despite RMP‘s obvious limitations, students really have to.
Why? Because unwise tenure decisions at some universities have wedged into place professors like this one.
Recently disciplined by the Ohio State University Office of Human Resources, the professor (this is his self-published book) has generated many student complaints about his teaching.
Here is a recent newspaper article about him.
The Korean guy who inspired this awful stamp
has been convicted of scientific fraud.
[A] senior colleague at his laboratory in Seoul,
South Korea claimed Dr Hwang had admitted
to fabricating key parts of a study that purported
to show the creation of the first human master
cells tailor-made to match individual patients…
A student writes a column in the University of Minnesota paper asking her fellow students to drink responsibly.
… The University of Minnesota doesn’t offer classes on how to be a decent human being because it’s assumed you’re pretty solid on that by now. Vandalism that occurs in neighborhoods around campus is not the work of University students alone , but the blurred lines of affiliation are not doing our school any favors. You never know, the woman you expose yourself to in the street may write legislation for community or University funding…
Yes. Good point.
But then why, in the same article that quotes this university scientist, is he described as having “published articles in nearly 500 scientific journals”?
Note: Not having published 500 scientific articles, which already strains credulity. Having published articles in 500 different journals.
For $1, … computer design and graphics students allowed Purdue students, faculty and staff 30 seconds to take whacks at computer hardware set up on the Engineering Mall.
Journal and Courier
… it’s a very bad idea to refuse to do so. It only makes people suspect you’ve been misbehaving. Take the case of Australia’s University of Newcastle.
The University of Newcastle has refused to reveal details of how much it is paying senior executives in bonuses and is ignoring a recommendation from the NSW Ombudsman who says there are no grounds for withholding the information.
In his latest report, the Ombudsman, Bruce Barbour, reveals the university refused to release the information sought under a freedom of information request even though it had legal advice it had few grounds to do so.
”Our investigation found that, as part of their internal review, the university had obtained legal advice that most of the FOI exemptions they relied on would be likely to be overturned by the Administrative Decisions Tribunal or questioned by us if reviewed,” he said. ”Despite this, they continued to maintain that the documents were exempt.”
… In an effort to get the information, the Ombudsman wrote to the Department of Premier and Cabinet proposing a change to the reporting regulations but had received no response despite a recommendation of an upper house inquiry into university governance this year that found “the disclosure of this information is in the public interest” .
Last year the Ombudsman again criticised some universities for ”contracting out” of disclosure requirements by including confidentiality clauses in salary packages paid to vice-chancellors to make disclosure of the details a breach of the contract.
After that, all universities apart from the University of NSW disclosed details…
And why doesn’t the University of New South Wales disclose?
It costs them a lot, but there’s one thing Duke University’s got, and that’s Homme Hellinga. A repeat fake-research offender, Hellinga should have been dumped long ago, but Duke’s still investigating claims made against him in 2004.
… Hellinga was the senior author of a celebrated Science paper in 2004, claiming his team had been the first to design and synthesize a novel enzyme, called novoTIM. It was a scientific first, but after an independent researcher was unable to replicate his results, Hellinga retracted it along with a follow-up paper in the Journal of Molecular Biology. Initially, he directed the blame at his student, lead author Mary Dwyer, who Duke investigated and cleared of research misconduct. Then, as his own behavior came under scrutiny from his critics, he publicly invited Duke to begin an investigation of his role in the disputed work.
Duke representatives said that the investigation is still ongoing. “It would be inappropriate for Duke to comment on any specific proceedings due to confidentiality and other restrictions,” Doug Stokke said.
Maybe Doug could comment – not specifically, but generally – on why it’s taking Duke five years and counting to check on a couple of scientific papers.
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UD thinks it’s simply because Duke loves its man. He isn’t true he beats me too what can I do? Oh my man I love him so…
And now things are even worse. Duke’s going to need another half decade before it gets back to us on Homme.
… Hellinga has [again] been under investigation for possible research misconduct, following the retraction of a Science paper on computational design of enzymes in February 2008. This week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Hellinga’s former postdoc Birte Höcker and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany dispute the conclusions of his studies on ligand-binding proteins, which appeared in Nature in 2003 and PNAS in 2004…
Longtime readers know that UD is a ‘thesdan. She wasn’t born in Bethesda, Maryland — she was born in Baltimore, at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. Her father was a grad student in immunology at Hopkins at the time.
But since her father went on to spend his career at ‘thesda’s National Institutes of Health, UD was definitely raised in ‘thesda and became in due course a ‘thesdan.
Type the term thesdan in UD‘s search engine to get a sense of what that means. Here’s the Wikipedia page.
Or – here’s an even better way to get a grip on la condition ‘thesdanienne.
[Charley Cooper, a nineteen-year-old Georgetown University student, has] posted an ad for someone to tackle “some of my everyday tasks,” such as organizing his closet, dropping him off and picking him up from work, scheduling haircuts, putting gas in the car and taking it in for service, managing his electronic accounts and doing laundry (although the assistant will be paid only for the time spent loading, unloading and folding clothes, not the entire laundry cycle).
The successful applicant can expect to work three to seven hours a week and make $10 to $12 an hour, although “on occasion it will be possible to work additional hours and/or receive bonuses at my discretion.” Preference will be given to Georgetown undergraduates, Cooper says in the listing, and the assistant can spread his or her tasks throughout the day.
“As my PA you will receive an email once a day by 9:00 am with a task list for that day and a time estimate for each task,” Cooper wrote in the job listing, which was first reported by the student newsmagazine, Georgetown Voice. “Important tasks will be bolded on the list and must be done that day (even though everything on the list should theoretically be finished on a daily basis). At the end of the day you will send me an email telling me what tasks are incomplete or that all tasks have been completed.”… [Cooper] grew up in Bethesda…