Media Watch (Jan. 17-24, 2005)

"Media Watch" is a round-up of recent stories in the media about the University of Hartford, as well as significant stories about other local and peer institutions and news about trends and issues in higher education.

An Associated Press story noted that University President Walter Harrison was elected chairman of the NCAA’s executive committee and UConn President Phillip Austin was elected to chair the NCAA’s Division I board of directors. They will assume their posts, heading two of NCAA’s most influential committees, in April. In addition, President Harrison continued to discuss the NCAA’s new program of reforms aimed at improving student-athletes’ graduation rates. (Newsday, Jan. 22; Associated Press, Jan. 22; WFSB-TV Channel 3, Jan. 18; Idaho State Journal, Jan. 18)

Hartford Courant columnist Stan Simpson wrote about the University High School of Science and Engineering and one of its students, 12-year-old Jacob Komar of Burlington. A freshman at the magnet high school, Jacob is already taking two courses at the university–calculus and principles in design. “Jacob’s endeavors are a textbook example, albeit to the extreme, of how the average student could navigate the curriculum,” Simpson wrote. (Hartford Courant, Jan. 22)

Julie Wyman, assistant professor of cinema in the College of Arts and Sciences, was highlighted in the “Java” column in the Hartford Courant in advance of the Jan. 21 screening of her short film, Buoyant, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Buoyant is about the Padded Lilies, a troupe of overweight synchronized swimmers in San Francisco. It was featured in November at an exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum called “Large as Life.” (Hartford Courant, Jan. 21)

Warren Goldstein, chair of the history department in the College of Arts and Sciences, wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Chronicle Review” section about the difficulty of throwing away old files. (Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan. 21)

An item in the “Worth Noting” column of the New York Times’ “Connecticut Weekly Desk” highlighted the donation of a piano and memorabilia collection of the late Harry Sukman, a conductor, concert pianist, and Oscar-winning composer, to The Hartt School. “It’s a great and generous gift to generations of future students in the performing arts,” President Harrison told the Times. “They’ll be able to see, through the life of one notable composer, a model of a kind of life they can lead in the arts.” (New York Times, Jan. 23)

In a profile of Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who is exploring a run for governor of Connecticut, Bysiewicz touted the university’s Micro Business Incubator program that is helping enhance the skills of small business owners in Hartford’s Upper Albany Avenue neighborhood. “They [are doing] some amazing things,” she said of the program, citing a need to help nurture and develop small businesses in the state. (Middletown Press, Jan. 23)

David Desplaces, assistant professor of entrepreneurial studies and management at the Barney School of Business, was featured in a front page story in the Hartford Business Journal on the issues facing small business owners in Connecticut. (Hartford Business Journal, Jan. 17)

Dan Costello, who earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the university during his eight years as a Hartford patrol officer, was recently named finance director for the Town of Bloomfield. He had been serving as interim director since August 2004. (Windsor Journal, Jan. 20)

Other News

Antwoine Key, a 22-year-old senior at Eastern Connecticut State University and a graduate of West Roxbury (Mass.) High School, collapsed on the basketball court at Worcester State College and died at Saint Vincent Hospital at Worcester Medical Center. (Newsday, Jan. 20)

Robert Pomeroy, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at UConn’s Avery Point campus in Groton, is helping coastal and fishing communities in Thailand recover from the tsunami that hit southern Asia last month. He happened to be in Malaysia working with local fishermen when the tsunami struck. (Associated Press, Jan. 24; Hartford Courant, Jan. 24)

Thomas Saleh and James Petrillo, both of Brooklyn, have been arrested on charges related to the 2003 shooting of 19-year-old Fairfield University student Mark Fisher. The two men are not charged with taking part in the murder of Fisher, but are charged with tampering with a witness and hindering prosecution. (Associated Press, Jan. 21; WTNH-TV8, Jan. 21)

Sohaib Nazeer Sultan, 24, is Trinity College’s first Muslim chaplain. Sultan is a former freelance journalist in Chicago and began studying in the Islamic Chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary last year. (Hartford Courant, Jan. 23; The Christian Science Monitor, Jan. 18)

For the past 20 years, the tradition of getting a diploma in four years has slowly eroded at University of Connecticut and other colleges across the nation. Most colleges now measure themselves by their six-year graduation rate. (Hartford Courant, Jan. 23)

Princeton University decided to make it harder to earn an A. The crackdown on high grades, part of a national battle against grade inflation at elite schools, has increased anxiety and made friendly students wonder whether they should offer study help to their classmates. (Associated Press; Hartford Courant, Jan. 23)

Bob Jones III, 65, said he will retire as president of Bob Jones University, the Christian university that bears his name, ending a 34-year reign during which the school grabbed headlines because of its racial policies and fundamentalist views. Jones’ son will take over as president of the school in May. (CNN, Jan. 21)

The U.S. Senate celebrated President Bush’s inauguration by confirming Margaret Spellings as U.S. Secretary of Education on Jan. 20. Spellings was Bush’s domestic policy chief. “I believe Margaret Spellings has the knowledge, the commitment, and the leadership to improve the quality of education across our land,” said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, (D.-Mass.). (Boston Globe, Jan. 21)

President Bush told college students that he would propose a modest increase in Pell Grants, the nation’s primary scholarship program. Speaking at Florida Community College with his brother Jeb, the state’s governor, Bush said the 2006 fiscal year budget would increase the maximum Pell Grant award by $100 each year for the next five years, to $4,550. (New York Times, Jan. 18)

Boston University officials waited nearly two weeks to notify public health authorities that they had serious concerns that researchers might have been exposed to a potentially lethal bacterium while conducting experiments, a delay that could have violated laws requiring prompt reporting of suspected infectious disease cases. (Boston Globe, Jan. 20)

Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers, who offended some women at an academic conference recently by suggesting that innate differences in sex may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers, stood by his comments but said he regretted that they were misunderstood. (New York Times, Jan. 18)

A group of university presidents will work over the next two years to create guidelines for athletic departments to help them determine if they’re spending appropriately. NCAA President Myles Brand said that the issue is not cutting spending, but controlling the rate of growth. Spending on Division I sports increased an average of about 25 percent between 1995 and 2001, according to a report in USA Today last year. General university spending increased an average of 10 percent during the same period. (Indianapolis Star, Jan. 18)