News
Quick Takes: 3 Delaware State Students Shot, Coach vs. Admissions, B-School Accreditation Plan, Settlement of Battery Charge, More Women at Caltech, Dispute on Possible Sale of Art, St. Ambrose Drops Name of Bishop From Library, Building Boom in Mass.
August 6, 2007
- Three Delaware State University students were among a group of four people shot in the head at close range in a school parking lot in New Jersey, the Associated Press reported. Three of the four -- including two of the students -- were killed. The New York Times reported that the fourth victim planned to enroll at Delaware State in the fall and that officials in Newark, N.J., where the students lived and were shot, are unsure of how "good kids" ended up victims in an execution-style shooting.
- The University of South Carolina is looking for ways to streamline its admissions process amid a threat from its football coach, Steve Spurrier, to quit if the university doesn't admit all recruits who meet basic eligibility requirements set by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, The State reported. Spurrier is angry because the university rejected two recruits this year. "As long as I’m the coach here, we’re going to take guys that qualify," Spurrier said at a press conference. “If not, then I have to go somewhere else because I can’t tell a young man, ‘You’re coming to school here,’ he qualifies, and not do that. And we did that this year.”
- AACSB International: the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, has released for comment a report calling for the accreditation process for business schools to evaluate whether faculty research improves the learning process. The report expresses the concern that accreditors have noted the volume of research, but not whether it is making business schools better from an educational standpoint.
- Michael Mace, president of Rocky Mountain College, in Montana, has agreed to see a counselor about anger management and to complete 40 hours of community service to resolve battery charges that he faced in Indiana, The Billings Gazette reported. Mace spent a night in jail over the incident in June. In a statement to the Billings paper, Mace acknowledged a conflict with the man who made the battery charge, a developer of a project in which Mace owns property. "A growing list of construction corrections, omissions and development site improvements had been ignored by the developer. I did not punch him. I did not knock him down. In frustration, I pushed him. I meant him no harm," Mace said. The Rocky Mountain board has backed Mace throughout the legal process.
- The incoming undergraduate class at the California Institute of Technology is 37 percent female, the highest percentage ever, the Los Angeles Times reported. Six years ago, the figure was as high as 36 percent, but female enrollments subsequently dropped and only 28.5 percent of last year's new undergraduates were women.
- Ellen Agnew, the associate director of the Maier Museum of Art, at Randolph College, has resigned in protest of plans under consideration by the college to sell some of the art, The Lynchburg News & Advance reported. Randolph, until recently Randolph-Macon Woman's College, has been facing financial problems, which played a role in the controversial decision to start admitting men. For months, rumors have also been circulating that the college might also sell part of its collection and Agnew said such a sale would be unethical. College officials confirmed that they might sell part of the collection or work out arrangements to share it with other institutions, but said that no decisions had been made and that they would seek to avoid a sale. Several colleges -- most notably Fisk University -- have been in the news this year over plans to sell art to deal with financial difficulties.
- The board of St. Ambrose University voted Friday to remove the name of the late Bishop Gerald O'Keefe from the Iowa institution's library because of requests that it act "because of the bishop's failure to take the necessary precautions to protect children from clergy sexual abuse that occurred during his tenure as bishop of the Davenport Diocese." A board statement said that the decision was "very difficult," but that board members "felt it was the right thing to do for the university, as well as a step taken in the spirit of promoting healing within the diocese and, in a larger sense, for all victims of abuse." A Web site called Bishop Accountability, which has records on numerous cases of abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy, notes numerous incidents in Bishop O'Keefe's diocese while he led it from 1966 to 1993.
- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat, is planning today to propose a five-year program that would provide $750 million for higher education facilities, The Boston Globe reported. Half of the funds would go to University of Massachusetts campuses and half to community colleges and four-year institutions outside the UMass system.
