---------- Original Message ---------------------------------- From: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education <[log in to unmask]> Reply-To: [log in to unmask] Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 10:20:09 -0400 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THE JOURNAL OF BLACKS IN HIGHER EDUCATION Weekly Bulletin October 23, 2003 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * QUOTE OF THE WEEK -- WAR OF THE IVIES: "My experience as Treasury secretary and World Bank chief economist was just the most partial preparation for attempting to negotiate with Skip Gates. . . . We like you right here in Cambridge, Skip." -- Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, stating his wish to a group of black alumni that Henry Louis Gates Jr., chair of the African and African-American studies department, will remain at the university. Gates is currently on leave at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Rumors persist that he will eventually take a position at Princeton University. __________________________________________________________________ * MIDDLEBURY'S EFFORTS TO BRING PROSPECTIVE BLACK STUDENTS TO CAMPUS PAYS OFF IN INCREASED ENROLLMENTS: Middlebury College is located in rural Vermont, not a climate attractive to many African Americans. Yet it saw a sharp rise in black freshman students this year. Blacks are 5 percent of the freshman class this year compared to 2.5 percent a year ago. Onis Cheathams, associate director of admissions at Middlebury, told JBHE that the primary reason for the improvement is that the college allocated funds to bring interested black students to campus. Financial assistance for campus visits is based on need, but Cheathams reports that the college picked up all expenses for a number of prospective black students to come to Vermont. This commitment demonstrates to prospective black students that the college is sincere in its desire to increase racial diversity on campus. __________________________________________________________________ * RICE UNIVERSITY RECOMMITS TO RACE-SENSITIVE ADMISSIONS: The board of trustees of Rice University has issued a "Resolution on Educational Diversity" which authorizes the admissions office to once again use race as a positive factor in the admissions process. Rice, under advice of counsel, had abandoned its affirmative action admissions program after the 1996 Hopwood federal appeals court decision which ruled that the admissions procedures at the University of Texas School of Law violated the U.S. Constitution. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Hopwood in its Grutter decision announced this past June, Rice will once again consider race in its admissions decisions. Rice's decision to reestablish race-sensitive admissions is good news for black students who are considering applying to the university. Prior to the Hopwood decision in 1995 blacks made up 10 percent of the entering class at Rice. This year, when the university operated under a strict race-neutral admissions policy, only 4.8 percent of the freshman class is black. __________________________________________________________________ * BLACK STUDENT DROPOUT RATES: THERNSTROMS FAIL TO TELL THE WHOLE STORY: In their new book No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom leave the impression that the main reason why only 40 percent of entering black students finish college is poor preparation in high school. They write, "The extraordinary high black dropout rate is no mystery. Students who leave high school with skills at the eighth or ninth grade level can't keep up in colleges that are not geared to teaching students what they have learned in high school." The fact of the matter is that 80 percent of all black students attend state-operated colleges and universities. Most of these public institutions do offer remedial classes that are geared to help black and other students who have not been adequately prepared for college. But of greater importance is the fact that the Thernstroms totally ignore the most common reason why black kids drop out: money. On average, black family incomes are only 60 percent of the incomes of white families and black families have wealth that is only one tenth that of white families. According to a study by Nellie Mae, the largest nonprofit provider of federal and private education loan funds in this country, 69 percent, or more than two thirds, of African Americans who enrolled in college but did not finish said that they left college because of high student loan debt. __________________________________________________________________ * HBCUs TOTALLY EXCLUDED FROM MAGAZINE'S LIST OF BEST VALUES IN PUBLIC COLLEGES: The current issue of Kiplinger's contains the magazine's annual listing of "The 100 Best Values in Public Colleges." The rankings are based on data submitted by 500 public colleges and universities nationwide. Academic criteria such as selectivity, graduation rate, student-faculty ratios, library resources, and funds spent per student make up two thirds of an institution's score. Cost factors account for one third of an institution's ranking. "The formula places greater weight on quality than cost," Kiplinger's says, "because 'value' is not synonymous with cheap." Leading the list for the fourth consecutive year is the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Also among the top five best values among public colleges are the University of Virginia, the College of William and Mary, the University of Georgia, and the University of Florida. There is no historically black college or university on the Kiplinger's list of best values in public higher education. It appears that the reason for this is not one of cost because many public black colleges and universities have tuition costs that are lower than institutions that did make the cut. Apparently the reason the black schools do not make the rankings is the magazine's heavy emphasis on selectivity. None of the public HBCUs are highly selective in their admissions policies and therefore were not even considered as a good value by the editors of Kiplinger's. __________________________________________________________________ * THE CONTINUING ATTACK ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: John J. Moores, chair of the board of regents of the University of California, has issued a report that was highly critical of the admissions procedures used at the University of California at Berkeley. The university is banned by state law from using race as a positive factor in the admissions process. Instead admissions officials at the university use what they call "Comprehensive Review," which considers an applicant's socioeconomic background and other obstacles the student has overcome that may have impacted his or her academic standing. The Moores analysis found that nearly 400 students who had combined SAT scores below 1000 were admitted to the Berkeley campus in 2002. The average for all admitted students that year was 1337. The Moores report also showed that more than 3,200 students who had SAT scores above 1400 were rejected for admission. Moores concluded that the admissions procedures at Berkeley "might not be compatible with the goal of maintaining academic excellence." Moores failed to point out that all students who are eligible for admission to the University of California finish in the top 12.5 percent of students statewide while in high school. As a result, all applicants are highly qualified. In fact, half of the nearly 400 students with SAT scores below 1000 who were admitted finished in the top 4 percent of their high school classes. __________________________________________________________________ * STUDENTS AT BLACK COLLEGES ARE ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS IN A NEW WEB SITE ALLOWING STUDENTS TO RATE COLLEGE PROFESSORS' PERFORMANCE: At http://www.RateMyProfessors.com, students can log in and rate the teaching performance of their professors in a particular course. Students rate the professor on a scale from 1 to 5 on a number of different categories. Students can also leave comments. The idea is to give information to other students who are considering taking courses from the particular professor. When JBHE logged on to the site this week, we found more than 1 million ratings for 240,000 professors at 3,435 different colleges and universities. Over 2,300 new ratings are added to the site daily. Students at black colleges are active participants in submitting ratings and comments at the site. There are ratings for hundreds of professors at dozens of black colleges. For example, there are ratings for 41 different professors at Xavier University in New Orleans. Four of the 41 faculty members are given perfect ratings of 5. Two professors received average ratings of 1.5. Michael Homan, a white man who teaches theology at the university, was rated by 28 different students and he received an average rating of 4.4. Comments ranged from "Homan kicks butt" to "A great teacher who adds humor to our dull academic lives." __________________________________________________________________ * DUKE DOES NOT PLAN TO COMPETE WITH THE CAROLINA COVENANT: In last week's JBHE Bulletin we told you of the Carolina Covenant, a new plan by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to do away with loans for low-income students with the substitution of outright grants. The new program will allow low-income students to graduate from Chapel Hill without debt. Students who benefit from the Carolina Covenant will be asked to work 10 to 12 hours a week at a campus job. In response, nearby Duke University, a private institution, said it had no plans to match the Carolina Covenant. Duke, which currently offers financial aid to 275 low-income students, offers a package of grants and student loans. "Overall, considering the cost of our tuition, it's probably not possible to eliminate the loan component," reports William Chafe, dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences at Duke. "We're already spending a significantly larger amount on financial aid than we were in the past in terms of overall budget. To push it even further might well create more problems." __________________________________________________________________ * BLACK FACULTY AT THE NATION'S HIGHEST-RANKED MBA PROGRAMS: A JBHE survey of the nation's 25 leading business schools has identified 80 black professors who make up 2.7 percent of the total of 2,940 faculty members at these schools. There are eight black faculty members at the business school at the University of Texas and eight also at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, the nation's premier business school for students in the field of marketing. There are seven black faculty members at Harvard Business School. There are no black faculty members at the business schools at MIT or the University of California at Berkeley. Dartmouth has the highest percentage of black faculty among the leading business schools at 6.7 percent. Fourteen of the 25 highest-ranked business schools have a black percentage of their total faculty that stands at 3 percent or less. At eight leading business schools, blacks make up less than 2 percent of the total faculty. ________________________________________________________________________ * STALKER OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN COLLEGE PRESIDENT NABBED BY POLICE: In a bizarre incident, a white man was accused of hate crime violations for stalking Shirley A. Jackson, the African-American physicist who is president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The man claims that he was targeted for murder by representatives of Federal Express, a company where Jackson serves on the board of directors. The man was arrested on the RPI campus after he was identified as the author of several e-mails sent to members of the RPI community that contained racist remarks about Jackson. When he was arrested, the man had in his possession a flier that included a threat against the RPI president. __________________________________________________________________ * COLONEL REB GETS A MAKEOVER BUT OLE MISS DECIDES TO DO WITHOUT A MASCOT: Sixty-six years ago, in the 1937 yearbook, Colonel Rebel made his first appearance as the official mascot of the University of Mississippi. In his early days, Colonel Rebel was a uniformed Confederate officer complete with saber and his white stallion "Traveller," the name of Robert E. Lee's horse. Later, Colonel Rebel morphed into a caricature of an old southern white gentleman with black string tie, walking cane, large brimmed hat, and big, bushy white moustache. Now the University of Mississippi has disposed of Colonel Reb, at least in human form. No longer will a student, dressed up as the colonel, patrol the sidelines at Ole Miss football games. "The Confederacy is behind us," said Pete Boone, athletics director at the University of Mississippi, when announcing the decision to drop Colonel Reb. "I think it's time for us to change our whole thought process, our whole image, our whole look and feel." A New York-based design firm was hired to create a new mascot for the university. The firm came up with two alternative mascots. The first was called "Bruiser Rebel." This is a younger version of the old Colonel with bulging muscles, a thick neck, and a bare midriff. The second proposed mascot was called "Rowdy Rebel." This image resembled a football-playing Mr. Clean. The university held an online election to determine student, alumni, and Ole Miss fans' reactions to the proposed mascots. After two days, the athletic director ended the online election saying there was no interest from fans in either alternative, although Bruiser Rebel had outpolled Rowdy Rebel by more than five to one. Chancellor Robert Khayat said that the matter was closed and that there simply would no longer be a mascot that patrolled the sidelines of Ole Miss football games. __________________________________________________________________ * BLACK COLLEGE STARTS AFRICAN STUDIES PROGRAM: The University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, a historically black state-operated university, announced that it will be launching a program in African studies and African languages. The program was made possible by a two-year, $150,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education. __________________________________________________________________ * APPOINTMENT: Barbara Ross-Lee, dean of the New York College of Osteopathic Medicine at the New York Institute of Technology, was named chair of the board of directors of the Association of Academic Health Centers. __________________________________________________________________ * APPOINTMENT: Andrew Williams was appointed director of multicultural affairs at Carleton College. He was a member of the department of sociology and anthropology at DePauw University. __________________________________________________________________ * APPOINTMENT: Linda Florence Callahan, an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, was named chair of the minority and communications division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. __________________________________________________________________ * AWARD: Luther D. Robinson, associate professor of psychiatry emeritus at the Howard University School of Medicine, received the 2003 McDonald's Award for Black History Makers of Today in the field of science. __________________________________________________________________ * AWARD: Robert L. Harris Jr., vice provost for diversity and faculty development and associate professor of African-American history at Cornell University, received the 2003 Carter G. Woodson Scholars Medallion from the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. The award is presented annually to a scholar with a distinguished record of more than 10 years of research and scholarship in the field of African-American history. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ STATISTIC OF THE WEEK: · Percentage of the white adult population over the age of 30 who are grandparents who live with their grandchildren: 2.5% · Percentage of the African-American adult population over the age of 30 who are grandparents who live with their grandchildren: 8.2% Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ * YOUR ADVERTISEMENT CAN GO HERE: Want to reach thousands of decision makers in higher education with a timely message? Do you have a notice of an employment opportunity at your college or university? Place your advertisement in the JBHE Weekly Bulletin at very reasonable rates. There are also package deals for advertising here, at JBHE.com, and in the print version of our journal. For more information, contact Elaine Kursch at (212) 399-1084. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: For an in-depth analysis of the status and progress of African Americans in higher education, subscribe to the quarterly print version of The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. To subscribe, simply log on to http://www.jbhe.com and click on the "Subscribe Online" button on the top left-hand corner of the home page. __________________________________________________________________ To contact The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, e-mail us at [log in to unmask] or call (212) 399-1084. To unsubscribe from this e-mail newsletter, simply send a blank e-mail with the word "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. __________________________________________________________________ © 2003 The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education All rights reserved. <!-- saved from url=(0022)http://internet.e-mail -->