Web Exclusives :Features

News from other Ivy League institutions, and Stanford

Posted March 14, 2002

Brown: The Corporation of Brown University has endorsed a multiyear Proposal for Academic Enrichment under which Brown will institute need-blind undergraduate admission. The university will also add up to 100 new faculty members, and the increase to the university's yearly budget will reach 36 million dollars by 2005.

Robert J. Zimmer, a mathematician and research administrator at the University of Chicago, has been named Brown's ninth provost, he will take up the position on July 15, 2002.

Columbia: Columbia alumnus Edet Belzburg has been nominated for an Academy Award for his film Children Underground, a documentary on the lives of five Romanian orphans. It is his first film, and debuted last year at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

On February 9-10, Columbia students spent 28 hours participating in the second annual Columbia University Dance Marathon to raise money for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS foundation. All the dancers were expected to stay on their feet the entire 28 hours.

Cornell: Bill Nye "The Science Guy" will visit Cornell from March 9-15 as a Frank H.T. Rhodes Class of '56 Professor. He will give a free public lecture entitled "Those are the Breaks, From Engineering to Entertainment". Bill Nye graduated from Cornell's Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in 1977.

W. Kent Fuchs, head of the School of Electrical Engineering and the Michael J.and Catherine R. Birck Distinguised Professor at Purdue University, has been named the Joseph Silbert Dean of the College of Engineering at Cornell University" He succeeds interim dean Harold Craighead.

Michael P. Hoffman, a prof. of Entomolgy at Cornell University has, with coworkers, been testing a "nonwoven system of fiber barriers" (of a consistency close to that of cotton candy) as a bug-prevention device. Hoffman says, "The best way to envision these barriers is to think of cotton candy just like you buy at the circus, except remove 99 percent of the givers and what remains is a nonwoven multidimensional barrier that can be strategically placed to ingerfere with insect behavior."

Dartmouth: 1978 Dartmouth graduate, Jim Newman, will take part in the seven person crew that rendevoused last Sunday with the Hubble Space Telescope. He belongs to Mission STS-109, which will repair the telescope. Taken from the Dartmouth Website

Harvard: Hilary Clinton spoke March 11 at Harvard in the Sanders Theatre. Tickets sold out for the address.

Harvard Business School: The 11th annual Women Student Association Conference, titled "Dynamic Women in Business," sells out; more than 800 woman participated.

Pennsylvania: A survey conducted in 2000 by the University of Pennsylvania reveals that 86 percent of Americans ages 11-18 believe religion to be a crucial part of their lives. The survey also revealed that parents' educational level played a role in religious belief; the more educated parents were, the more likely they were to want to provide a good influence in children's lives. Dr. Matthew Hartley, a lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at Penn has cowritten a study on the increasing level of grade inflation. His reported is titled "Evaluation and the Academy: Are We Doing the Right Thing?"

Stanford: "Undergraduate initiative to target overseas studies" Overseas Seminars, which will be small classes running for three weeks prior to the fall quarter will take place in China, Belgium, Russia, and South Korea. The seminars, which are open to juniors and seniors, are "part of a plan to expand opportunities for undergraduates to study overseas" states Irene Kennedy, associate director of the Overseas Studies Program.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice will speak at the 2002 Commencemnt. Rice is Stanford's former provost.

Stanford trustees raise tuition, room and board by a 4.9 percent for the 2002-03 school year.

Yale: Yale is investing $500 million in its science and engineering programs in order to add five additional buildings. "Yale researchers have determined the atomic structure of the ribosome's large subunit", a discovery which should help the medical industry find better drugs to fight infection. Thomas Steitz led the study, he is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale.

Yale's faculty of engineering is marking 150 years of teaching and innovation this year.

Yale president Richard C. Levin urges end to early application process in admissions. For stories, click below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/education/13YALE.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/opinion/16SUN1.html?searchpv=past7days