Short Subjects

A company that sells caskets adorned with college logos wants the University System of Georgia to rescind a policy that forbids the icons on burial items.

REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT: Math students at Saint Norbert College have designed a square-wheeled bicycle that rolls smoothly.

SHOCKING NEW VERB: "Tase" is runner-up for the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2007 Word of the Year.

SWEET HONEY IN THE BRICKS: The University of Houston found a large colony of bees in the walls of a campus building.

NO KIDDING: Musicians die young, kids hate vegetables, buff men are more popular with the ladies, and women are more partial than men to the color pink: the less-than-surprising results of four recent studies.

The Faculty

At a recent meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, scholars' concerns went far beyond their region of study.

PROFESSORS OF THE YEAR: Four instructors are recognized by a pair of major higher-education groups for bringing mathematics, science, and engineering down to earth.

PEER REVIEW: The new president of Florida Gulf Coast College has asked the provost to step aside. ... The University of Nebraska Medical Center has hired a husband-and-wife team of scientists away from Northwestern University to start a center devoted to breast-cancer research. ... And other comings and goings in academe.

SYLLABUS: In a course at the University of Utah, medical students explore media representations of psychiatry and mental illness.

Research & Books

Anthropologists who advise troops in Iraq and Afghanistan face criticism from colleagues.

CITATIONS: Two teams of scientists have reported success in producing human stem cells without destroying embryos.

HOT TYPE: The National Endowment for the Arts offers a grim assessment of Americans' reading habits.

NEW SCHISM: Scholars of religion express both intellectual and practical concerns about the American Academy of Religion's decision to start meeting separately from the Society of Biblical Literature.

NOTA BENE: A Cambridge classicist uses the ancient Roman "triumph" parade to demonstrate that warrior states "query most energetically" their own militarism.

NEW SCHOLARLY BOOKS

Government & Politics

When a skeptical federal agency reviews their performance next month, the nation's top regional agencies expect to feel increased pressure to demonstrate how well they judge student learning.

COMPROMISE AFOOT IN SENATE: The House of Representatives has failed to override the president's veto of the 2008 spending bill for education, labor, and health.

BALLOT MEASURE IN FEBRUARY: California's two public-university systems are opposing the state's community colleges over a plan that would guarantee more money for the two-year institutions.

ELECTORAL COLLEGES: Playing host to candidates and debates can pay dividends for colleges, but they must be wary of federal limits on the involvement of tax-exempt organizations in politics.

PATERNO'S PAY: Pennsylvania State University must make public the salary of its head football coach, the state's Supreme Court has ruled.

GOING BEYOND THE FINALISTS: Texas A&M University's Board of Regents was scheduled to meet by telephone last week to discuss a presidential-search process that has many faculty members on the flagship campus upset.

$33-MILLION IN QUESTION: An audit report released by the U.S. Education Department has found that the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency received improper federal subsidy payments on student loans.

Money & Management

Yale is spending $125-million to renovate and expand a famous building that many people never liked in the first place.

A FOREST FOR FOOTBALL: The University of Florida will try to offset carbon emissions caused by this year's game against Florida State by planting trees.

HEEDING THEIR OWN PLEAS: Three college presidents have hit the million-dollar mark in personal gifts to their institutions.

PARTIAL REIMBURSEMENT: Belmont University has agreed to pay $11-million to the Tennessee Baptist Convention to settle a lawsuit over the convention's past contributions.

BACK IN COMPLIANCE: Gallaudet University's accreditor has taken it off probation months earlier than expected.

Information Technology

A collaborative software project, led by the University of California at Berkeley, helps professors podcast course material.

LONG PLANNED, SOON ENDED: A proposed merger has collapsed between Internet2 and National LambdaRail, the leading high-speed networks for higher education.

LINKED IN: Sirin Tekiney leads a new program at the National Science Foundation to provide grant money for research that will apply "computational thinking" to real-world problems.

Athletics

Three new books on Title IX examine the debate over gender equity in college athletics, and one is poised to kick up some dust.

Students

As the presidential campaigns intensify their efforts to reach voters, colleges get ready for more requests for students' contact information under sunshine laws.

JOBS APLENTY: Large companies plan to hire more graduates in 2008 than they did last year, says a report.

STRIKE AT UMASS: Several hundred students on the Amherst campus stayed away from classes to protest what they view as administrators' indifference to their concerns.

ANNUAL HONOR: Thirty-two American students have been named Rhodes Scholars for 2008.

FOR SERVICE RENDERED: A new scholarship program is intended to help veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

International

Plummeting government spending and strikes by faculty members and students are threatening the stability of the country's universities.

VISA REVOCATION EXPLAINED: A South African scholar who was refused entry into the United States last year has been told that it was because of his involvement in unspecified "terrorist activities."

'SUN, SURF, AND SEX': Blaming a "long tail of mediocrity," a representative of Australian research universities says the country is ceding its role as a leader in international education.

Notes From Academe

A group that provides money for Haiti's brightest but neediest students to attend college was founded to prevent a young woman who wanted to be a doctor from choosing a career as a secretary.

The Chronicle Review

As the professoriate ages, colleges could be in for a surge of disability cases, write Barbara A. Lee and Judith A. Malone.

Criticism of Israel's policies is easier to voice at its own universities than at American ones. And that's not just because of pro-Israel lobbyists in the United States, writes Neve Gordon.

Kerry Soper describes the rebellion of the adjunct robot collective.

Anthropologists risk their reputation, and others' lives, by working with the armed forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, writes David Vine.

The reality is that we're in Iraq, writes Marcus B. Griffin, an anthropologist working with troops in Baghdad. Academics can complain about that in safety, or they can leave their comfort zone and do something to better the situation.

Steven M. Miska, a lieutenant colonel just finishing a tour in Iraq, explains how anthropologists and other social scientists help the soldiers they work with.

Our approach to disease is greatly influenced by pharmaceutical companies' approach to profit. That has benefits and risks -- but it should never be ignored, writes Jeremy A. Greene.

For more than half a century, Merce Cunningham's company has been transforming the world of modern choreography. Select writings, films, and other materials help explain how, writes Mindy Aloff.

Peter Gay's new book on modernism shortchanges America's role, writes Richard Pells.

In wolves, humans once saw a threat, but now we see fellow victims of unrestrained industrial expansion.

Technology won't solve copyright infringement and illegal file sharing. Shifting the ethical ground by changing industry standards might, writes Gregory A. Jackson.

CRITICAL MASS: The simmering debate over the Jewish IQ.

Letters to the Editor

• Female Faculty Members at North Dakota State
• Helicopter Parents Not the Whole Story
• Job Satisfaction in Nursing
• Multiple Choices on Diversity Issues
• Shortages and Gluts in Different Fields
• Doctoral Degrees in Art
• Academic Freedom in Fact and Myth
• Practical Education and the Liberal Arts
• Instructors' Manners and Support
• Cartoon by M. Nadler

Chronicle Careers

A fog of doom and gloom will not help you seize the prize and might even blind you to the best ways to achieve it.

A Ph.D. charts her history through academe by the kind of motorcycle she drove.

As a government-relations officer, you get used to being blamed when things go wrong in the capitol.

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