My Professor the Plagiarist
The Human Decoder Ring
Chromosome 22 has been almost completely decoded by an
international team of scientists. As reported in a recent issue of
Nature , the very first sequenced chromosome may offer new insights into
many human diseases, including schizophrenia. (The human species has 23 pairs
of chromosomes.) The researchers, who hail from Australia, Britain, Japan, New
Zealand, Sweden, and the United States, discovered that Chromosome 22 contains
33.4 million different letters of genetic code and at least 545 genes. Thanks
to the Internet, the data has reached other scientists around the world, many
of whom are using it in their own studies.
Milestones in
PR
The
chairman of the department of mass communication, advertising, and public
relations at Boston
University stepped down from his administrative post after being accused of
plagiarism. In a lecture delivered to 400 undergraduates, John Schulz used a
64-word sentence from a recent Nation article by Alexander Stille
without attribution. The line was identified by a student, who publicized the
transgression in an Internet chat room and sent a letter to the school of
communications' dean. According to the Boston Globe , Schulz says that he
didn't give the proper citation for the quote because he was pressed for time.
Still, he insists that his "ethical lapse" must be punished.
… and a Two-Year
Supply of Cheese
Did
Lakeshore
Technical College in Cleveland, Wis., over-prepare for Y2K? The public
school's $130,000 general disaster-recovery plan, in the works for two years,
provides enough food, water, fuel-oil tanks, and electrical generators to
sustain 500 people for a week. Lakeshore President Dennis J. Ladwig insists
that the program was designed for other contingencies, such as bad weather. But
the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel disputed this, publishing a story headlined "College preparing for worst from Y2K." Wisconsin
state senator Bob Jauch denounced the planning as "nutty behavior that isn't
fitting of a public institution."
East Meets
West
Last
year, Duke University
students and professors debated the value of studying Eastern cultures instead
of Western ones when a call was made to establish a new curricular
concentration in Hindi. Editors of the Duke
Review , a
conservative campus periodical, avowed that Western values are "superior to the
values of a primitive, impoverished country like India." Now that the academic
concentration has been approved, Anand Shah, co-president of Diya, Duke's South Asian
student organization, told the Raleigh News and Observer , "I don't
foresee further debate about the issue." But Jay Strader of the Duke
Review complained, "This is another example of Duke administrators
bowing to the interests of special-interest groups."
Buying the
Court
New York University School
of Law--a k a "The Global Law School"--is supplying the International Court of Justice
at the Hague with its very first batch of law clerks. The intern program, which
will send five NYU graduates to the Hague for a year, is fully funded by money
raised by NYU from (as yet) anonymous sources. Court President Stephen
Schwebel, an American who once taught at Johns Hopkins, told the
American
Lawyer that NYU's assistance was appreciated because
"the United Nations is in poor financial shape."
But Will He Bring
Back the Football Team?
The
University of Chicago
has chosen a new president--but the debate over the ongoing shake-up at the
school continues. Don Michael Randel, currently provost at Cornell University,
has been selected to succeed Hugo Sonnenschein, who stepped down in June.
Sonnenschein had --increasing enrollment, scaling back the school's "Great
Books" core curriculum, reducing overall stuffiness--changes that many alumni,
faculty, and students feared would compromise the school's identity. The New
York Times notes that the Renaissance musicologist is expected to continue
with the former president's plans, though in a more harmonious manner.
UC Santa Cruz To
Make the Grades?
For
the last 24 years, students at the University of
California, Santa Cruz have been able to ask their professors for written
evaluations instead of the standard grades. But in November 170 faculty members
asked the academic senate to adopt a more conventional grading system. A vote
on the proposal by the 588-member senate was postponed in early December after
nearly 1,000 grade-hating students showed up to protest the change, reports the
Associated Press.
They Shoot
Students, Don't They?
In
early December, a Princeton University student complained in an Internet discussion
forum that his religion thesis prep class was a waste of time, adding that one
professor in the department agreed with him. But Shaun E. Marmon, the professor
in question, says that she never agreed with the student and proceeded to post
a message suggesting that complaining students were lucky not to be in the
Marine Corps and quipped that it was true that the Marines "do not shoot people
at dawn anymore." The chair of the religion department told the Chronicle of
Higher Education that some students were "a little agitated" by the
professor's message but added that no disciplinary action would be taken.
LegalEducation.com
Concord University
Law School, which is located in cyberspace, is probably the only law school
whose dean of students lives in Boston, whose dean of faculty lives in Denver,
and whose students attend class in their bathrobes. Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg put the school into the news this month when she expressed her
dismay about online legal education to the San Jose Mercury News .
Ginsburg decried the lack of "face-to-face interaction," to which Concord
student William Boletta responded, "I suggest that she might want to take a
Tylenol or two and get ready for the 21 st century."
More Catholic Than
the Pope
The
National
Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a controversial set of guidelines
for the country's 230 Roman Catholic institutions of higher learning in
November. The guidelines (click here to read
them) call for a majority of faculty members and trustees to be Catholic, for
new Catholic university presidents to publicize their commitment to their
faith, and for professors of theology to receive a general approval from their
local bishop. In the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education , Santa
Clara University President the Rev. Paul Locatelli warned that if the
guidelines are "interpreted too rigidly, we could look like seminaries and not
universities."
Preschool for
College Freshmen
The New York State Regents
have tightened admissions for applicants to the City University of New
York. Incoming students who test poorly on math and English placement tests
will no longer be allowed to attend CUNY while taking remedial classes to
improve their skills. Instead, they'll be redirected to other institutions to
prepare them for college-level work. The measure will affect 10 percent of
applicants. Supporters say the move will improve CUNY's standing. Critics worry
that it will discourage students from applying to the school.
