William J. Pepicello will retire as president of the University of Phoenix after seven years in the job, the institution announced Wednesday. Pepicello, who has worked at the for-profit university since 1995, has navigated Phoenix through both strong growth and the contraction that much of his sector has encountered post-recession, and has been a visible presence at meetings of higher education leaders.
In today’s Academic Minute, Einat Lev of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University describes her research into the properties of flowing lava. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.
Cambridge University Press will power its learning management system with technology from Knewton to teach English to students around the globe, the two companies announced on Thursday. Knewton will work with the publisher to build a series of English Language Training (ELT) products for the Cambridge LMS platform, which serves about 250,000 students. As part of its expansion plans, Knewton will also open an office in London that will coordinate the company's work in Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
A Pennsylvania court on Wednesday refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by state officials who want to ensure that $60 million in fines Pennsylvania State University has agreed to pay the National Collegiate Athletic Association stays in the state, The Patriot-News of Harrisburg reported. The NCAA had asked the Commonwealth Court to dismiss a lawsuit, filed by a state senator and Pennsylvania's treasurer, asking that the hefty fine the university agreed to pay as part of a consent decree in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child abuse scandal go into a state-established endowment for child abuse victims, rather than going to the NCAA to spend on child abuse advocacy nationally.
A majority of the court's judges rejected the NCAA's arguments that the Pennsylvania officials did not have legal standing, that the case is moot because Penn State is not a party to it, and that the lawmakers' actions illegally interfere with the consent decree between the NCAA and Penn State, among other things, the newspaper reported.
The National Security Agency has doubled, to eight, the number of universities participating in a federal program to "cultivate more cyber professionals in an ever-changing global environment," the agency announced Wednesday. Air Force Institute of Technology, Auburn University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Mississippi State University join 2012 participants Dakota State University, the Naval Postgraduate School, Northeastern University, and the University of Tulsa in the program, in which some students and faculty members from the institutions participate in summer seminars at the agency. The news release clearly states: "Participating students and faculty members do not engage in actual U.S. government intelligence activities."
Stephen M. Ross, a real estate developer, has given the University of Michigan a gift of $200 million. The funds will be split between the business school and the athletics department. Gifts by Ross to Michigan now total $313 million, making him the largest donor in the institution's history.
Some of the nearly 100 undergraduate students in a new dormitory at Michigan's Cornerstone University will have an unusual view out of their bedroom windows -- and at least the passing risk of getting hit by a foul ball, MLive reported. Facing
a campus space crunch as its residential population grew, the university built a 48-room residence hall -- as the second and third floors of the facility ringing its new baseball stadium, above a ground floor that contains athletics offices and concessions, among other things.
“I’m going to sit on my bed and watch baseball games,” one student, Matt Lewis, told MLive. “You can’t do much better than that.”
Drexel University has hired Susan C. Aldridge, the former president of the University of Maryland University College, to lead its online learning efforts. Aldridge has been a highly visible leader in online education for nearly two decades; she led UMUC for six years after serving as vice chancellor of Troy University's Global Campus, and resigned from the Maryland post last year suddenly and under circumstances that were never fully explained. She has been a senior fellow at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, and will be senior vice president for online learning and president of Drexel e-Learning.
College enrollment fell by 467,000 in the fall of 2012, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday. The decline followed substantial increases in previous years. Most of the 2012 decline came from older students (those 25 and older). Their enrollment fell by 419,000.
In today’s Academic Minute, Dana Hawley of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University explains why diseases evolve more virulent strains that pose a greater threat to the host. Learn more about the Academic Minute here.
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