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TODAY'S LOCAL HEADLINES
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TODAY'S NATIONAL HEADLINES
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TODAY'S OPINIONS
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LOCAL HEADLINES
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NAU cutting jobs, closing campuses
Northern Arizona University will eliminate 45 jobs and close
four satellite campuses as a result of cuts in state funding.
The positions eliminated are primarily in the distance learning
and enrollment departments. The university is awaiting a report
due out in mid-April to determine whether any faculty members
would be laid off. University spokeswoman Lisa Nelson says no
tenured or tenure-tracked faculty would lose their jobs.
(Arizona Daily Star:
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/metro/286393.php)
(Sierra Vista Herald:
http://www.svherald.com/articles/2009/03/28/news/state/doc49cdd97438bb4550609178.txt)
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Phoenix light rail lost $235K in February
Metro light rail lost about $235,000 in revenue last month,
mostly because of problems with fare-card readers, according to
officials. Many riders are using the Platinum Pass Program, in
which Metro and employers work together to encourage employees
to commute via light rail; Arizona State University offers the
program
(Arizona Daily Star:
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/metro/286390.php)
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UA fees increase; possible programs cuts
By Anthony Cabrera. It's another big week for the Arizona Board
of Regents as they discuss and vote on some hot topics.
Wednesday, UA administrators had a committee meeting with the
board to talk about adding, removing and merging programs. The
University hopes to add 10 programs, get rid of 26 programs and
merge eight. Although they're small in size, it's a big deal to
some faculty and students.
(The Arizona Republic:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/03/30/20090330tuition0330.html)
(KVOA-TV (NBC) Ch. 4:
http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=9991997&nav=menu216_2)
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UA solar car competing nationally
By Jeff Beamish. The University of Arizona solar car will
compete in the Shell Eco-Marathon in California. The car has
three teams of senior designers tasked to make the most
efficient and fastest solar powered car possible. This is not
your average senior project. "We'd like to be able to show that
solar energy is in fact a viable way of powering a car", says U
of A student Collin Mechler. By the time the last of the 2000
solar panels are in place, they will take the green flag in
Fontana, California for the Shell Eco-Marathon.
(KVOA-TV (NBC) Ch. 4:
http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=10086378&nav=menu216_2)
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Experts look to balance desert-river flows
By Shaun McKinnon. Since early February, millions of gallons of
water have flowed down the lower Salt River through Phoenix,
spilling out of Roosevelt Lake, swollen with melted snow about
90 miles upstream. The water, released by Salt River Project to
keep the reservoir below a federal flood-control limit, has
filled a channel that most of the year, most every year, sits
dry except for an occasional burst of storm runoff. On the San
Pedro River in southern Arizona, students and professors from
Arizona State University embarked on a mapping project to figure
out what vegetation survives under varying conditions. The San
Pedro runs dry for long stretches, but researchers have seen
areas where underground flows can support some vegetation.
Overuse has also dried up much of the Santa Cruz River, but
effluent from the International Wastewater Treatment Plant
outside Nogales provides a flow north through Tubac. Researchers
from the Sonoran Institute and the University of Arizona are
studying the effects of the flow in a limited stretch.
(The Arizona Republic:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/03/29/20090329rivers-runoff.html)
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New teachers can expect tough job search
By Michelle Reese. The Valley’s colleges and universities will
produce a new crop of teachers this spring. But with local
school districts announcing teacher cutbacks, upcoming graduates
are wondering where they’ll find jobs. ASU, Ottawa University,
Grand Canyon University and the community colleges have always
been major suppliers of new teachers to East Valley school
districts. But this year, all school districts in Arizona are
awaiting news from state lawmakers about how they plan to
balance the 2009-10 state budget, which could have a $3 billion
deficit.
(East Valley Tribune:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/137247)
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7 to be hailed for community service
By Carmen Duarte. The League of United Latin American Citizens
is honoring seven community leaders at its 20th annual
Educational Awards and Scholarship Banquet Wednesday. Nicholas
I. Clement Superintendent of Flowing Wells Unified School
District, and adjunct professor in the graduate program at
Northern Arizona University. Clement has been a leader in
developing and expanding after-school programs, and since 2001
he has written and received more than $3 million in 21st Century
Community Learning Center grants.
(Arizona Daily Star:
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/metro/286558.php)
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UA's imager shows soil appearing on Martian ice-covered surface
By Alan Fischer. As spring arrives on the Martian southern
hemisphere, weblike patterns of soil are appearing on the area's
ice-covered surface. Images from the University of Arizona's
High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment orbiting above the
planet show intricate fans of material spewed by carbon dioxide
gas escaping into the atmosphere, said Candice
Hansen-Koharcheck. During the six-month Martian winter, the
arctic region is covered with a frozen layer of CO2 - dry ice -
between a half meter and a meter thick, said Hansen-Koharcheck,
the HiRISE mission's deputy principal investigator.
(Tucson Citizen:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/all_headlines/113147.php)
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Universities may regain funds through stimulus
By Adam Sneed. Arizona's universities may regain money stripped
away in this year's budget cuts, but only if the state provides
enough education funding to qualify for the federal stimulus
package. Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said state
officials need to understand the U.S. Department of Education's
guidelines to make sure Arizona qualifies.
(ASU State Press:
http://www.asuwebdevil.com/node/5462)
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County paying $1 million to settle missing-drugs case at Kino
Hospital
By Fernanda Echavarri. Pima County will pay $1 million over five
years in a settlement of a 2004 case of missing narcotics at
Kino Hospital, a federal spokeswoman said Friday. Shirley
Thompson, then director of pharmacy at Kino, was fined $4,000
and put on probation for one year by the Arizona State Board of
Pharmacy because the painkillers disappeared under her watch,
according to Citizen archives. Thompson no longer works for the
county. Months later, Pima County contracted with University
Physicians Healthcare to run Kino. The nonprofit corporation
oversees the medical practices of physicians who are faculty
members of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. The
hospital is now called University Physicians Hospital.
(Tucson Citizen:
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/113080.php)
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New teachers can expect tough job search
By Michelle Reese. The Valley’s colleges and universities will
produce a new crop of teachers this spring. But with local
school districts announcing teacher cutbacks, upcoming graduates
are wondering where they’ll find jobs. Amber Dvorak is one of
them. The current student teacher at Chandler’s Galveston
Elementary School will graduate in May from Arizona State
University with a degree in special education.
(East Valley Tribune:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/137247)
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NATIONAL HEADLINES
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Colleges' Billion-Dollar Campaigns Feel the Economy's Sting
By Kathryn Masterson. The economy's collapse has caught up with
the billion-dollar campaign. In the past 12 months, the amount
of money raised by a dozen of the colleges engaged in higher
education's biggest fund-raising campaigns fell 32 percent from
the year before, according to a Chronicle analysis. The decline,
which started before the worst of the recession, has forced
colleges to postpone expansion plans, readjust their budgets,
and ask better-off donors to expedite pledge payments. If the
slump continues, experts say, more serious cutbacks could come.
It's a situation institutions can't ignore as they look to
private giving to make up for huge endowment losses and
declining government support.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i30/30a00102.htm)
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YouTube Creates New Section to Highlight College Content
By Jeffrey R. Young.More than 100 colleges have set up channels
on YouTube, and this week the popular video service unveiled a
new section that brings together all of that campus content in
one area.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3684&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en)
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Ph.D. Admissions Shrinkage
By Scott Jaschik. If ever there was a year that colleges were
anxious about enrolling new and continuing students, this is it.
Whether dependent on tuition revenue or state appropriations
formulas, colleges are doing everything they can think of in
this economically challenging year to attract students -- and
the dollars that follow them. But there is a notable exception:
Several colleges have recently announced that, regardless of
application quality, they plan to admit fewer Ph.D. students for
this coming fall than were admitted a year ago.
(Inside Higher Education:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/30/phd)
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Peru v. Yale: A Battle Rages Over Machu Picchu
By David Glenn. Arguing that Yale improperly holds thousands of
objects from all three of Bingham's Machu Picchu expeditions,
the government of Peru filed a federal lawsuit against the
university in December, just over a year after the parties
appeared to have settled the dispute. Yale now has moved to
dismiss the case, saying that Peru filed in the wrong court and
that its claims would be "stale and meritless" in any venue.
Yale also makes a more audacious claim: In the end, Peru's 1912
and 1916 decrees don't really matter, because they are
outweighed by the country's 1852 Civil Code. That argument does
not persuade Dale B. Furnish, an emeritus professor of law at
Arizona State University, who wrote a paper in 1971 titled "The
Hierarchy of Peruvian Laws."
(The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i30/30a00103.htm)
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Surge of college students pursuing 'clean energy' careers
By Jim Tankersley. In what could be an encouraging sign of
change in the long-standing shortage of Americans preparing for
"clean energy" careers, the subject is suddenly hot on college
campuses across the nation -- a surge of interest largely
stimulated by the specter of global warming. The rising interest
in renewable energy is so new that it's not clearly reflected in
the latest enrollment figures, educators say. But leaders from a
range of schools -- including Arizona State University, Indiana
University and the University of Colorado -- say energy and
sustainability are the hottest topic for their students.
(LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-energy-students29-2009mar29,0,362299.story)
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OPINIONS
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Covance opening moves bioscience industry forward
By Joe O'Neil. Covance, a multibillion-dollar world class
company, celebrated Thursday the opening of its early-stage
medical research facility in Chandler. The government of
Luxembourg announced a $200 million bioscience initiative
linking Nobel laureate Lee Hartwell of the Fred Hutchinson
Cancer Research Center in Seattle with TGen and the Biodesign
Institute at Arizona State University in the Partnership for
Personalized Medicine. A comprehensive list of accomplishments
over the last eight years can be found at
www.flinn.org. Arizona’s
Bioscience Roadmap progress report for 2009 will certainly
include Covance’s new research facility as a major step in
Arizona’s becoming a bioscience hub.
(East Valley Tribune:
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/137221)
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We Need a New Kind of Institutional Aid
By Charles B. Reed and F. King Alexander. Instead of promoting
the same old arguments, we recommend a new direction - one that,
ironically, has been excluded from federal policy dialogue for
over 30 years, despite being an important component of the
original Pell Grant or BEOG legislation in 1972. In 1972, the
cost of education allowances program was authorized to achieve
the same objective by providing supplemental resource support to
colleges and universities in order to provide essential
educational assistance to Pell Grant recipient students. The
time has come to resurrect this idea. If we are going to change
the way colleges and universities approach economically
disadvantaged students, we need to provide actual federal
funding for these "cost of education allowances."ť
(Inside Higher Education:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/03/30/reed)
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March Money Madness: The Coaches vs. the Professors
By Thomas Cottle. College basketball's March Madness has come at
a time when one prominent coach's salary has been held up for
inspection. Apparently, the fact that the $1.6-million annual
income of the University of Connecticut's Jim Calhoun makes him
the highest-paid public employee in his state has rankled some
people. Or are they more upset that he was caught off guard at a
postgame news conference and appeared somewhat haughty? His
elevated income, he argued, was more than offset by the fact
that he raises almost $12-million each year for his university.
Point well taken. Not too many university professors could make
that claim. In fact, that has always been the argument for
justifying what some people would deem exorbitant salaries for
football and basketball coaches at Division I institutions. As a
university professor myself, I surely wouldn't dare argue with
the coach's logic. After all, my salary of some $73,000
represents slightly more than 4 percent of the coach's salary.
That means that the students whom I influence will produce a
total annual income of almost $575-million. I calculate that the
government can count on almost $115-million in annual payments.
(The Chronicle of Higher Education:
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i30/30a02201.htm)
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For Top Colleges, Economy Has Not Reduced Interest (or Made
Getting in Easier)
By Jaques Steinberg and Tamar Lewin. The recession appears to
have had little impact on the number of applications received by
many of the nation’s most competitive colleges, or on an
applicant’s overall chances of being admitted to them.
Representatives of Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Yale, and
Brown, among other highly selective institutions, said in
telephone and e-mail exchanges in recent days that applications
for the Class of 2013 had jumped sharply when compared to the
previous year’s class. As a result, the percentage of applicants
who will receive good news from the eight colleges of the Ivy
League (and a few other top schools that send out decision
letters this week) is expected to hover at – or near – record
lows.
(New York Times:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/for-top-colleges-economy-has-not-reduced-interest-or-made-getting-in-easier/?ref=education)
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Research Universities
Letter from Michael M. Crow, President, Arizona State
University. Re “State Colleges Also Face Cuts in Ambitions”
(front page, March 17): Arizona State University may indeed face
unprecedented fiscal challenges, but I disagree that a decrease
in legislative appropriations raises “questions about how many
public research universities the nation needs.”
(New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/opinion/lweb29arizona.html)
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