It’s become a commonplace to say that young people get their news from John Stewart. Now some of them are getting their college history lessons from him, too.

Ryan Lee Tetten, an assistant professor of political science at Northern Kentucky University, told fellow instructors at a recent conference that traditional textbooks don’t work for students.

“They don’t read the textbook, ever,” he said, in a story at Inside Higher Ed.

So Tetten decided to use Stewart’s “America the Book” in his class.

When Teten received a copy of America the Book as a Christmas present, he started thinking about whether it could be a substitute for the textbooks. On one criterion for making the switch — would students read the book? — Teten said the choice was easy. But he stressed that he also wanted to consider whether the book would provide a good introduction to the key topics an intro course should cover, and whether it would encourage critical thinking.

On these questions too, he said Stewart’s book scores well. If you compare the table of contents of America the Book with those of traditional texts, Teten noted that they cover much of the same ground, with chapters on the presidency, Congress, the courts, the media, the world outside the United States, and so forth.

To be fair, Teten noted that traditional texts don’t have chapters like “Congress: Quagmire of Democracy” or “The Rest of the World: International House of Horrors,” but the content covered is similar. Teten also cited research finding that “The Daily Show” is as substantive these days as the traditional news shows that a traditional political science professor might encourage his students to watch.

Of course there is that little issue of factual accuracy. But Teten has given that investigation and thought, too. First, he said that a review he did of America the Book convinced him that it was 90 percent true, with the rest satire. He assigns his students to write short essays on each chapter identifying what is and isn’t true (it’s not always obvious, he said), so he’s drawing attention to places where things aren’t quite complete, and teaching them to question what they read.

At a presentation on his choice of text, Teten faced questions from some professors who questioned whether Stewart doesn’t reinforce an attitude that “the government sucks,” encouraging detachment from public life rather than engagement.

In the comments at the end of the piece, one college administrator argues that profs shouldn’t just roll over to the students’ lack of interest in reading textbooks.

Is it not Swiss cheese logic to make decisions based on students’ decisions not to take responsibility? What if they decide not to attend any class or take any test?

A review panel had harsh words for Virginia Tech administrators and counselors, in its investigation of the April 16 shootings there that left 30 dead.

The Virginian-Pilot followed the release of the report and today’s response closely.

"The university was not put on high alert by the actions of the university administration and was largely taken by surprise by the events that followed," the panel wrote. "Warning the students, faculty and staff might have made a difference.”

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and members of the review panel, pictured above, held a news conference this morning.

The late warning was just one area of weakness outlined in the report, which also directed sharp criticisms as the school’s counseling center. From the Washington Post’s story:

"Numerous incidents occurred that were clear warnings of mental instability," the report states. "Although various individuals and departments within the university knew about each of these incidents, the university did not intervene effectively. No one knew all the information, and no one connected all the dots."

…. The report levies particularly harsh criticism at the campus counseling center, which it says "failed for lack of resources, incorrect interpretation of privacy laws, and passivity."

Cho first contacted the center in the fall of 2005, after two female students complained about him. He made a third visit after a suitemate reported suicidal behavior and a judge ordered outpatient treatment. The center later received a psychiatric summary for Cho, but took no follow-up action. The panel's report said the center lost its records of the "minimal" treatment that Cho received there.

Though the report says the attack may not have been preventable, it criticized the university for failing to alert the campus after the first two shootings – and then for downplaying the enormity of the incident, the New York Times reported.

But if the university had issued an alert earlier or canceled classes after Mr. Cho shot his first two victims, before moving on to shoot the rest in a classroom building, the death toll might have been lower, the report said. It found that even after university officials had learned the full scope of the massacre, their messages to students played down the unfolding emergency as a “routine police procedure.”

“The events were highly disturbing and there was no way to sugarcoat them” in disseminating the news, the report said. “Straight facts were needed.”

The Roanoke Times published an interview with the head of the review panel. It describes the extent to which the shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, lived in isolation.

You’re confident that Cho truly had no friends at all?
None that we could find. His roommates and suitemates took him to parties and he’d sit in a corner. They finally gave up and stopped asking him. They also invited him to eat with them but he would never speak to them.

His roommate from his junior year told me that he asked Cho, “Who do you hang out with?”

Cho replied, “Nobody.”

The only acquaintance reported by his family was a boy who he would swim with sometimes at his apartment pool when he was 9.

Average SAT scores in reading and math dropped yet again, both in the Inland Northwest and nationally.

But even though Washington’s reading scores hit a 12-year low, and its math scores a six-year low, state education officials were proud to note that the state is not as bad as everybody else, in this Seattle Times story.

But among states in which participation was 30 percent or greater, Washington's average reading and math scores were the highest. "College readiness is a key measure of our K-12 education system," said Terry Bergeson, the state superintendent of public instruction.
"So I'm again excited and proud to hear that Washington students are among the best in the nation on this widely respected indicator of how well they're prepared for college."

Idaho’s scores also dipped by a few points in each category.

In the New York Times piece, College Board officials say one possible factor in the overall decline is the expansion of test-taking into groups of students who haven’t traditionally taken it.

The declines for the class of 2007 were not caused by a single factor, College Board officials said. But the increase in the number of traditionally underrepresented minority and low-income students taking the test played a role, they said. So did a new requirement in Maine that all high school seniors take the exam, including those who would not in the past have viewed themselves as college bound.

Gaston Caperton, the president of the College Board, said in a news conference, “The larger the population you get that takes the exam, it obviously knocks down the scores.”

From National Geographic:

European water spiders build underwater "air bells" that allow the arachnids to breathe, a new study says. This bubble nest also gives the spider a safe refuge from terrestrial predators and a nest to raise and tend young.

Here’s more.

Headline from this morning’s Daily Evergreen:

“Gonorrhea is nothing to ‘clap’ about”

A professor at Virginia Tech says he was publicly rebuked for criticizing, during a lecture, the school’s response to a mass shooting in April.

Vittorio Bonomo, a tenured associate professor of finance, tells the Chronicle of Higher Ed that he brought up the subject in a class on investment risk.

From there, he said, the discussion led seamlessly to one of the fundamentals of the class: how to evaluate risk when making investments. "Risk arises from a lack of good information," he said he told his students. For example, he said, locking the doors only diminished the class's risk if a shooter was outside the classroom, rather than inside.

Without knowledge of who or where the shooter was, he explained, the risk to students in a locked or unlocked classroom was the same.
Mr. Bonomo's example then took a more concrete turn, when he openly criticized the university's handling of the April 16 shootings, in which a gunman killed two students in a dormitory, then a few hours later killed 30 more students and faculty members in Norris Hall, a classroom building.

By waiting over two hours before notifying students of the initial shootings, the professor told his class, the university had increased the risk for students and others on the campus that morning. The same type of monitoring that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission conducts of companies' financial reporting should also apply to the university, he said. If his own grandson had been in Norris Hall because information about his risk had been withheld, he told his students, he would have sued the university.

One student complained, and at the next class, the university’s provost showed up and apologized to the class on behalf of the professor. Bonomo has stopped teaching the class and said the rebuke was a violation of his academic freedom.

The provost said it was a “minor” situation based on a single complaint, and that the professor is free to say whatever he wants. Others said that just by showing up, the provost sent the wrong message.

"That the provost saw fit to enter a classroom and deliver a message that was ultimately humiliating to the faculty member," said (one Virginia Tech professor), "is beyond my comprehension, as it was to many of the students who were present. To my mind, humiliating someone in public is a species of violence that we as a university community cannot tolerate under any circumstances."

Fisk College in Tennessee is thinking about selling one of the century’s most famous paintings to give its budget a boost.

The painting, “Radiator Building,” was donated by artist Georgia O’Keeffe as part of a larger collection. The move to sell the painting by the historically black college has prompted a debate about which matters more – the intentions of a donor or the financial shape of the institution, according to a story in the Christian Science Monitor.

When O'Keeffe handed Fisk a 101-piece collection that included everything from Cezanne sketches to photographs by her husband, Arthur Stieglitz, she wanted in part to show solidarity with African-Americans in the Jim Crow-era South. It also gave her an opportunity to have all the art permanently displayed in one place.

Yet as Fisk's endowment dwindled, maintaining the collection has become difficult, and many pieces are relegated to storage. A cash infusion would be used both to spruce up the museum and to bolster the school's endowment and general fund. "The major collection we're investing in is our students," Fisk President Hazel O'Leary has said about her push to sell the painting.

Professor Smalls?

A musicology professor writes at Inside Higher Ed that everything a new professor needs to know can be learned from the rapper Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls. Phil Ford, who is starting a new job at Indiana University, writes that Biggie’s “The Ten Crack Commandments” could serve as a blueprint for learning “professional deportment.”

Many of the late Dr. Smalls’ words of wisdom can’t be published in a family blog, but here’s one example.

Number ten: A strong word called consignment/Strictly for live men, not for freshmen/If you ain’t got the clientele say hell no/Cause they gon’ want they money rain sleet hail snow. Protect your time; don’t bite off more than you can chew; learn to say No. The academic equivalent of the guys who want their money rain sleet hail snow is your tenure committee, and what they’ll demand, with the same inflexible rigor as a Columbian drug cartel, is a good publication record.

Seems pretty clear. Some readers didn’t appreciate the connection, though. Here’s one tsk-ing comment:

I can’t believe Inside Higher Ed would subject the unsuspecting public to this outrageous profane diatribe with no warning or disclaimer! Disgusting! The decent thing to do would have been to put a disclaimer so that the reader could be warned that what follows is “profane and has absolutely no educational value.

Shameful!

From the Daily Evergreen, and photographer Kevin Quinn:

Second Lt. Russell, a May WSU graduate, rappels down the side of Holland Library on Wednesday. The demonstration was held to promote Military Science 120, a class on wilderness survival open to all students.

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual Almanac is online, offering a detailed statistical picture of higher ed in each state.

The Almanac includes a summary of the past year for each state, and then a long list of demographic information compared to national figures. Here’s part of Washington’s summary:

Spending will rise by 15 percent, or $443-million, from the previous biennium. Lawmakers provided $58-million to cover the cost of educating nearly 10,000 new full-time students. They also approved $82-million to expand need-based financial aid, a 36-percent increase.

The Legislature lowered or kept flat the caps on tuition increases over the next two years. They capped increases at the state's four regional institutions — Evergreen State College and Central, Eastern, and Western Washington Universities — at 5 percent, down from 6 percent in the 2005-7 biennium; and at community and technical colleges at 2 percent, down from 5 percent. The caps remained at 7 percent at the University of Washington and Washington State University. All of those institutions planned to raise tuition by the maximum amount allowed for the 2007-8 academic year.

The whole thing is here. And here’s the link to Idaho’s page, which includes the following:

With a strong state economy, Idaho's leaders were in a good position to set more money aside for financial aid. The budget that lawmakers approved for the 2007-8 fiscal year called for higher-education spending to increase by about $21-million, or about 8 percent, to more than $264-million.

Even so, Idaho students will still have to pay more out of pocket to attend college in 2007-8. The governing board for the state's public colleges approved tuition increases of at least 3.5 percent, with Boise State University's board calling for the biggest, 6.6 percent. In-state undergraduates there will pay $4,410 per year as a result.

Ah, connectivity.

A new posting at YouTube chronicles the drive from Seattle to Pullman in seven 30-second installments. That’s all it is – a low-tech view through the windshield of the road back to college.

In this clip, the least reassuring part comes when the person behind the camera – who is also the person behind the wheel – takes a video inventory of the car’s interior.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5O57DSvyaA

Here’s a reminder about the relationship between college football and the other sports offered at universities.

One Sunday morning every fall, members of the Penn State fencing team spend hours scraping nacho cheese, chewing tobacco, peanut shells and cigarette butts off the floor of the university’s 107,000-seat football stadium.

That’s the lead of a New York Times story about how low-profile college athletes pay for their sport – in contrast to the big revenue earners and spenders, football and basketball.

At N.C.A.A. Division I universities, football and basketball generate most of the revenue that comes from teams, and even some of those programs cannot make ends meet. For other sports, universities often leave it up to players and coaches to find other sources of funding.

For Butler softball players, that has meant working the gates at football games and cleaning the basketball arena. At Utah, that has led to having swimmers serve as hospitality workers in the suites at football games. And in the case of Penn State’s fencing program, that has involved cleaning the trash left behind by the crowds that attend home football games at Beaver Stadium.

“It’s one of the grossest things I’ll ever have to do — hopefully — in my life,” said the Penn State senior Megan Luteran, (above), a captain of the fencing team, which last season won its 10th national title in 18 years.

UI student Pete Husmann of Post Falls – the young man who stopped watching “Die Hard” to take his gun to a shooting rampage in downtown Moscow in May – recounts his memories of the event in the new issue of the Argonaut.

Husmann took his .45 out into the streets to “help” when he heard the shots; he wound up shot himself by gunman Jason Hamilton, who also killed his wife, a church rector and a police officer.

“The first thought that went through my mind is that this is what a deer feels like,” said Husmann, who hunts at least once a year. “It was an odd feeling. I fell to the ground and started praying.”

More shots came, hitting Husmann in his leg, his neck and his shoulder.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘What a jerk. I’m on the ground already. What is he doing?’ ” he said. “As I lay there I kept praying. I cried out to the Lord to help me. My lung had collapsed and it was really hard to breathe.”

Husmann, 20, said he wasn’t “stupid” about his involvement, arguing that he’s experiences with guns and military tactics.

Police, though, don’t want that kind of help from civilians. A sidebar in the Arg details the concerns that public officials have about the vigilante impulse.

“It becomes more of an issue of concern for the officer because he doesn’t know who the citizen who is trying to help is,” said Moscow Police Lt. Paul Kwiatkowski. “We don’t want everyone running in with firearms and trying to assist the officers because then it becomes confusing.”

Moscow Mayor Nancy Cheney also doesn’t encourage citizens to get involved in these kinds of situations.

“Husmann was critically wounded and people’s lives were imperiled trying to save him,” she said. “In the dark when that situation was unfolding people didn’t know who the good guys and the bad guys were. He could have been shot by law enforcement.”

A lot of people assume that financial factors are the reason that poor students don’t make it to college or drop out at a higher rate than their wealthier counterparts. Give them more aid, the assumption goes, and they’ll stay in school.

A new study calls that into question, according to this piece at Inside Higher Ed.

The study, conducted by researchers at Berea College and the University of Western Ontario and available (for $5) through the National Bureau of Economic Research, examines the extent to which “credit contraints” — a lack of access to loan funds — factored into the decisions to drop out of college by a group of low-income students who had had most of their direct college costs paid for.

The answer: Not very much. The researchers conclude that more than 80 percent of the students who dropped out had done so for reasons other than financial ones. “The large majority of attrition would remain under the generous policy in which direct [college] costs are zero and students are given access to loans” that could be used to pay their other costs of living.

So why do these students drop out? The researchers can’t answer that -- and many people in the comment section argue that these other reasons may still boil down to the way economic circumstances play out in students' lives.

(Associate professor Todd) Stinebrickner is careful to say that the study does not aim to undermine in any way the significant efforts that are being undertaken to make college more affordable for low-income students, such as the push, after several years of flat federal funding, to raise the maximum Pell Grant. But what’s striking about the students in the NBER study, he and others note, is that they’re at a college, Berea, that, because of its distinctive religious and service mission, charges no tuition and largely covers students’ other direct educational costs.

The fact that even there, the proportion of first-year students who drop out by the start of the second year is about 23 percent, suggests “it’s got to be something else” other than financial need or lack of access to borrowing.

Exactly what those other things are, Stinebrickner acknowleges, the research so far has not uncovered (future studies on Berea’s rich longitudinal database are planned). But possibilities include such things as academic struggles, their satisfaction in college, how comfortable they feel in the environment, or just a feeling of “mismatch,” he says. Each of those factors may require different tactics or solutions, and if college officials or policy makers are focused entirely on financial issues, “they may miss other things,” Stinebrickner says, that would require examining campus culture, for instance.

The comments on the article include one from a USC dropout.

I was a low income student (just below the poverty line), and I dropped out. My first year at USC I had no tuition to pay; the California State Scholarship and some assistance from USC covered it in full. The second year I could not figure out how to go back, because my parents couldn’t afford to stay in the Los Angeles area, and I was on my own. Living expenses were the problem, not tuition.

At the time, I couldn’t get a part-time job anywhere. I was able to get a job at Jet Propulsion Labs writing telemetry software for the Voyager mission—but I couldn’t get a job in a burger joint.

At least my experience was that there weren’t enough job opportunities for students like me. I could have easily worked 10-15 hours a week, and even at minimum wage, it might have been enough to keep me in school.

A community theater production at WSU’s Beasley Coliseum is learning to fly.

The Lewiston Tribune reports on the production of “The Wizard of Oz” opening tonight. The photo above shows two “flying monkeys” practicing their technique.

GU's Big Bing Theory is an a cappella choir that might surprise you. Here, selected from a range of YouTube postings, is their take on "Sweet Home Alabama."

Link.

This proposal came at the graduation ceremonies of the Asian American Pacific Islander club at WSU's French Ad building.

Here's a link.

Professors are becoming a force in the political money race.

As a sector of the economy, academia is having a big impact in presidential fund-raising – exceeding $7 million and surpassing such fields as pharmaceuticals and computers, the Boston Globe reports.

Of the more than $7 million that academics donated in the first half of this year, more than $4.1 million went to presidential campaigns, particularly Barack Obama's, according to a study released this month by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Illinois senator brought in almost $1.5 million, while Hillary Clinton received nearly $940,000.

Republican Mitt Romney was in third place, with about $448,000, but overall, three-quarters of contributions went to Democrats.

Donors from Harvard University top the list, with nearly $280,000 in contributions from individuals in the first half of the year. More than 80 percent of the donations went to Democrats, and about 40 percent to Obama, who graduated from Harvard Law School.

The article notes that a lot of big donors aren’t typical profs.

While many academics are modestly paid, those with tenure at the top private institutions often earn six-figure salaries, and those in business, medical, and law schools are especially well compensated. A university like Harvard also includes professors and fellows who do not fit the usual Ivory Tower mold, having made fortunes elsewhere or spent part of their careers in politics.

At Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, for instance, professor Stephen Goldsmith is the former mayor of Indianapolis and a former policy adviser to President Bush. He has already given $4,600 -- the maximum allowed for the primary and general election -- to Republican Rudy Giuliani. Professor Graham Allison, who gave $1,000 to Obama this year and $2,000 to Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut in December, was an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration.

The University of Oregon has a visitor that won’t leave its football stadium.

Maintenance crews tried – and failed – to remove an osprey nest from Autzen Stadium on Wednesday, according to a story in the Register-Guard.

… one osprey isn't ready to leave: As the workers in the high-lift tried and tried again, the bird repeatedly circled overhead, scolding them - eee-eee-eee - and then alighting, triumphant, in the nest just beyond the reach of man.

WSU is having a public forum about the new 18-hole golf course under construction on the edge of campus, after opponents of the course focused public attention on estimated water use at the course.

The S-R reported last week that the school has for a couple of years understated the growth in water use expected to occur when the new course opens. WSU officials announced this morning that they would host a community forum on the course on Wednesday, Aug. 29, at 7 p.m. at the Neill Public Library Hecht Room.

Here’s the full announcement.

There’s a new destination in Second Life: WSU Island.

A story at the Moscow-Pullman Daily News notes that WSU is using Second Life, the online role-playing community, as a part of four courses this fall.

The story describes possible uses for a class:

The class can get together whenever students are logged on to Second Life. They can fly together to explore other parts of the virtual world and take virtual field trips to explore places classes could never go before - or in real life. A class could explore a gnat's brain, the digestive system of a clam, allow students to experience an earthquake, enter a live volcano or explore the aftermath or experience a nuclear blast.

Second Life enthusiasts will tell you that it’s a model for the future of the web – a three-D environment that more closely mimicks life. But it’s not necessarily widely available, since running it takes a big computer processor – similar to that needed for World of Warcraft, the story notes.

If this caught on, classrooms could start to look a whole lot different. Since people select their “avatars” in Second Life, there is a high fantasy quotient to people’s appearances.

(Instructor David) Cillay's avatar is as bald and tall and lean as he is and otherwise resembles him physically. It's as simple to design an avatar's physical features as it is to choose the clothing they'll wear. As he demonstrates the environments that have been created in Second Life, goth-looking avatars fly by with wings and walk by wearing fanciful out-of-this-world clothes. No one is fat.

The UW is opening an office in China.

The Seattle P-I reported on the announcement by UW President Mark Emmert.

"China remains the most prominent international partner for many of our faculty and their programs," Emmert said. "As in so many other places, continuous personal contacts are vital to doing business with the government, educational institutions and businesses of China."

The rich get richer: Harvard’s huge endowment grew by 23 percent to $34.9 billion last year, according to the Boston Globe.

The growth of Harvard's endowment in a single year, $5.7 billion, dwarfs similar gains in the academic world. Other than Harvard, only six American universities held entire endowments larger than $5.7 billion at the end of the previous fiscal year, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

Beloit College’s annual “mindset” list is out, detailing the generation gap between students and professors. It’s apparently intended as a reminder that the 1980s are over – emphasizing to professors that the kids won’t understand their references to Gorbachev or Johnny Carson.

The list includes items from technology and pop culture:

Rap music has always been mainstream.

They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”

High definition television has always been available.

MTV has never featured music videos.

They never “rolled down” a car window.

There are also entries from politics and world affairs:

Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.

Russia has always had a multi-party political system.

Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.

And then there’s this, no doubt an all-consuming topic for students and profs alike:

Burma has always been Myanmar.

With the return of the students comes the return of student newspapers.

On the Palouse, that means the Daily Evergreen at WSU and the Argonaut at the UI.

Today’s issue of the Daily Evergreen leads with a story about new President Elson Floyd’s first-day-of-class news conference.

“We are convinced at this point, [it will] perhaps be the largest class, entering freshmen class, in the history of the university and one of the most talented classes,” Floyd said at the conference.

Across the border in Moscow, UI President Tim White painted a picture of a university adding new instructors and resources – a welcome change from the austerity program of recent years. The Arg covered his presentation to the faculty.

“When you think about this university, you can think of years where the introduction of faculty was pretty short,” White said. “But what we have now is an opportunity to renew … the academic fabric of this institution. Everybody is bringing skill, care and experience to this university.”

In addition to welcoming new faculty, White announced plans to begin a bonding initiative in order to chip away at UI’s deferred maintenance bill totaling more than $200 million.

“We feel a responsibility for the next century,” White said. “One of the ways we’re going to fulfill that obligation is considering bonding.”