Category: Higher Education/System

Martha E. Peterson, a former president of Beloit College and Barnard College in New York City, died in Madison Friday.

(Peterson served as dean of women, assistant to the president, and dean for student affairs at the University of Wisconsin between 1956-67.)

U.S. Rep. Mark Green says he would press the UW Board of Regents to adopt new standards for hiring teachers if he becomes governor.

“I think there should be some basic scholarly standards that we ask of anyone who wishes to teach our young people, especially at taxpayer expense,” Green, R-Green Bay, said during a press conference in Madison on Monday.

In October, colleges feared the new regulations to make it easier for the government to monitor computer networks could have ended up costing institutions billions of dollars. But after a court ruling, lobbying and lots of lawyering, higher education lobbyists now believe most colleges will not end up being covered by the regulations.

University of Wisconsin Provost Patrick Farrell was given a virtually thankless task: responding to complaints from politicians who objected to the unpopular views of a UW faculty member.

Farrell handled it as an academic leader, guided by UW values and traditions, as well as his own courage and good sense, rather than political pressures.

At a time when few were willing to stand up for the principles that have made the UW one of this country’s greatest institutions of higher learning, the provost did just that when he rejected calls for the dismissal of controversial lecturer Kevin Barrett.

IN TUESDAY’S newspaper, one of the voices in “Voice of the People” – the letters section – came from Michael Meeropol, who in 1973 earned a Ph.D. in economic history from UW-Madison.

Meeropol, who today is chairman of the department of economics at Western New England College, wrote in defense of UW-Madison retaining instructor Kevin Barrett in the wake of Barrett’s controversial views of the 9/11 attacks being publicized.

….Many readers of Tuesday’s paper may not have realized it, but Meeropol knows more than most about “controversial topics.”

A controversial lecturer who was cleared Monday to teach a course on Islam at UW- Madison said he’s pleased with a review that found no fault with his plans for the class.
“I don’t blame them for taking a look,” instructor Kevin Barrett said after the university announced he would, as planned, teach a course this fall called “Islam: Religion and Culture.”

Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin-Madison lecturer who believes the Sept. 11 attacks were a conspiracy of the United States government, will be allowed to teach his course this fall.

Barrett will teach “Islam: Religion and Culture.” Politicians like Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, and later Gov. Jim Doyle and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Green, had cast doubt on Barrett’s ability to fairly teach the course.

After reviewing Barrett’s plans for the course, UW-Madison Provost Patrick Farrell said today that the course will go ahead as scheduled.

CINCINNATI – For Ron Chicken and other freshmen at Montclair State University, the new freedoms that presumably came with college age included a mandatory cell phone with which the school could pinpoint their whereabouts on or off campus.

Nearing graduation, Rick Kohn is not putting much energy into his final courses.

“I take the path of least resistance,” said Mr. Kohn, who works 25 hours a week to put himself through the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. “This summer, I looked for the four easiest courses I could take that would let me graduate in August.”

Nearly anything said, murmured or leaked by the Secretary of Education�s Commission on the Future of Higher Education draws close scrutiny these days, just months before the scheduled release of the independent body�s final report.

A few days before UC-Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton plunged to her death, she spent a day walking through the streets of San Francisco, talking to a friend on her cell phone

Denice D. Denton came under fire immediately and often during her 16-month tenure as chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, which ended with her apparent suicide late last month when she fell to her death from the roof of a San Francisco building.

The Department of Defense monitored e-mail messages from college students who were planning protests against the war in Iraq and against the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against gay and lesbian members of the armed forces, according to surveillance reports released last month. While the department had previously acknowledged monitoring protests on campuses as national-security threats, it was not until recently that evidence surfaced showing that the department was also monitoring e-mail communications.

Controversy surrounding the belief of a UW-Madison lecturer that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were orchestrated by the U.S. government is renewing debate about academic freedom.
Some faculty members said instructor Kevin Barrett should be able to present the belief that the attacks were planned by government officials and the CIA – which Barrett said is shared by hundreds of scholars and a growing number of people around the world – along with the “official” version that Islamic terrorists were responsible for the attacks, said Donald Downs, a professor of political science, journalism and law.

Contrary to earlier fears, colleges and universities nationwide likely won’t be forced to spend millions of dollars redesigning their computer networks to help the federal government monitor e-mail traffic for terrorist activity.

Instead, a June court ruling suggests the most those institutions will need to spend under the new federal requirement is $30,000 to $100,000 to modify equipment that connects their campus networks to the Internet – and they may not have to spend even that, depending on certain conditions, higher education experts said.

Larry Ellison’s decision not to fulfill a $115 million pledge to Harvard University may go down as the biggest gift that got away, but it’s not the only one.Donors have reneged on pledges to the arts and higher education for years.

As college officials, higher ed policy wonks and other interested observers digested
a draft report released late Monday by the federal higher education commission, some of them focused on ideas that should have been included but werenââ?¬â?¢t. Others analyzed the reportââ?¬â?¢s political prospects. But again and again, virtually all of them returned to the paperââ?¬â?¢s ââ?¬Å?toneââ?¬Â ââ?¬â? which partisans of higher education found distasteful (or worse) but others suggested was purposely designed to create a sense of public urgency about the problems facing academe and the country.

Universally accessible and affordable public higher-education systems have become an economic and social necessity for all advancing nations. Unfortunately, however, on the whole, many policy makers in this country have not demonstrated much interest in providing the requisite financial support for public colleges and universities. Many state institutions are coping with rapidly growing numbers of applicants, as well as increasing legislative demands for greater performance and productivity. Yet the gap between such expectations and the resources to meet them is creating a looming crisis.

SANTA CRUZ ââ?¬â? On the University of California’s quiet campus here and throughout the UC system Monday, friends and colleagues of Denice Dee Denton struggled to find answers to a question that may ultimately be unknowable:

Denice D. Denton came under fire immediately and often during her 16-month tenure as chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz, which ended with her apparent suicide on Saturday.

Friends and former colleagues are mourning the death of Denice Denton, a pioneer in engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who went on to become chancellor of the University of California-Santa Cruz.

Denton, 46, died of an apparent suicide on Saturday. Police and university officials said she appears to have jumped from an apartment building.

Denton was one of the first female engineering faculty members at UW-Madison. She came to UW in 1987, and was the only woman in the department of electrical and computer engineering at the time. She was known for mentoring and encouraging other female assistant professors in engineering and the sciences.

Did you see the story the other day that the debt owed by college graduates this year averaged $19,000 before they began earning a single penny on a job?

In fact, according to USA Today, a growing number of graduates particularly those who go on to get master’s and higher degrees are facing debts of more than $100,000, which could take them 30 years to repay (about the time when they’re supposed to start helping their own kids pay for college).

But that’s what we get as universities are forced to raise tuition and other fees and the state and federal governments continue to reduce the amount of student aid that can help reduce the load.

SAN FRANCISCO, June 24 (AP) � A chancellor at the University of California died Saturday in a jump from a 43-story apartment building, the authorities said.

The chancellor, Denice Dee Denton, 46, of the University of California, Santa Cruz, apparently jumped from an undisclosed section of the Paramount luxury apartment building around 8 a.m. and landed on a parking garage, the police and university officials said.

Denice Dee Denton, chancellor of the University of California-Santa Cruz, apparently jumped to her death Saturday morning from the 44th floor of a San Francisco building where she shared an apartment with her partner.

Colleagues and longtime friends of UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice Denton were struggling on Sunday to make sense of her apparent suicide jump off the roof of a 42-story San Francisco apartment building, describing a woman who had been having a difficult time in recent months but who was known to be resilient in the face of adversity.

While thousands of college graduates are starting careers this spring, some of their peers from across the USA are going back to the same hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast areas they helped rebuild only months ago.

They are joining countless other volunteers in recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

The chancellor of the University of California at Santa Cruz fell to her death on Saturday morning from a high-rise San Francisco apartment building in an apparent suicide. Denice Dee Denton, an engineer, had been chancellor since February 2005.

University of Wisconsin-Green Bay senior Emily Ellis had a moment of panic earlier this month.

After hearing that student loan interest rates were set to increase considerably July 1, the human biology major began to consider her own loans.

With the cost of consolidating student loans set to spike on July 1, college students and recent graduates are rushing to refinance their debt, and consolidation companies are scrambling for their business.

The goal of colleges in the admissions process is a little like the goal of an NFL general manager preparing for the draft.

The general manager is looking for players who will succeed at the pro level. How they succeeded at the college level plays a big part of that evaluation, but so do other factors.

Selective four-year colleges enroll a smaller percentage of transfer students than they did 20 years ago, despite the growing number of students who start their postsecondary education at community colleges, according to a report on a national study released on Monday by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

NORTHFIELD, Minnesota (AP) — In the shadow of Carleton College’s majestic wind turbine, Daniel Pulver has cooked up an idea for creating even more renewable energy: turning used cafeteria oil into fuel for cars.

Women on Faculty Still Lag at Harvard, Report Finds

A year after Harvard’s president, Lawrence H. Summers, promised a major effort to make the faculty more diverse amid a controversy about his remarks about women in science, a university report released yesterday indicated that most of the work remained to be done.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor John Wiley says he’ll give back any pay raises he receives from now until the time he retires.

Wiley said he told UW System President Kevin Reilly he would return in the form of donations any raise awarded to him on Friday by the Board of Regents. The board, meeting in Milwaukee, split $246,000 in raises over two years among 13 other chancellors, 15 provosts and several top UW System executives, including Reilly.

Many students at four-year public colleges and universities face a gap between their ability to pay for college and the cost of attending, even with money from financial aid, and the gap is largest for students from lower-income families, according to a new report from the Southern Regional Education Board.

Within the halls of higher education, nearly everyone has heard of David Horowitz’s “academic bill of rights.”

Every student will soon be a blogger at the University of Pennsylvania�s College of Arts and Sciences � and the authors won�t just be filling their pages with party anecdotes.

In five turbulent years as president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers has endured often brutal media coverage, with critics labeling him “patently ignorant,” “divisive” and in need of “diplomatic potty training.”
And that’s just in the pages of his school’s own alumni magazine.