Untitled Document

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

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Total Clips: 10

	Date	Outlet
AHS students' proposals seek to promote art in city	12/13/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
Concerned about streams	12/13/2006	Daily Mountain Eagle, The
Tracking the germs that hitch a ride on food	12/13/2006	Austin American Statesman
You can safely splurge over holidays	12/13/2006	Brewton Standard
Airman: Pioneers, part 2 of 5	12/13/2006	Columbus Ledger-Enquirer
(Alabama) College desegregation case ends after 25 years	12/13/2006	Birmingham News
Unaffordable colleges	12/13/2006	Huntsville Times
Internal investigations a feather in AU's cap	12/12/2006	Opelika-Auburn News
Protecting Unhatched Poultry from Avian Flu	12/12/2006	Drug Discovery and Development
In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises With Price	12/12/2006	New York Times


AHS students' proposals seek to promote art in city 12/13/2006 Opelika-Auburn News Ginny Farmer		Return to Top
The project featured in this story was developed and facilitated by the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at AU. A class of Auburn High School students hopes to approach the Auburn City Council soon with plans to incorporate urban art into the city’s decor. As one student put it, "It's already the loveliest village, but we want to make it even more beautiful." Students in Sheryl Perry's Theory of Knowledge class prepared six different art proposals, from "Umbrellas in the Village" to "Our Cup Runneth Over," and presented them to a mock city council of AHS seniors Tuesday afternoon for recommendations. Perry said the class as a whole will develop one or two of the most promising art proposals in greater detail, in hopes of presenting the idea to the Auburn City Council soon. "Our real goal is art in the city," Perry said. "We at least want to raise some public awareness." Each of the six urban-art proposals incorporated water. They included one bridge, a reflecting pool and several types of fountains. The students outlined how the pieces of art they designed would benefit the community and addressed cost effectiveness, safety issues and aesthetics. "One thing that's important in public art is that people can appreciate and interact with it," said student Jennifer Yeh. The project was developed and facilitated by the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. Stephanie Burak, curator of education, said the intention of the project is not only to teach the students about both city government and public art, but also to raise awareness of creativity while taking the focus away from the university and sports. "Tigers are all over town," Burak said. "The basic idea is to do something different while trying to represent the community." While presenting "The Fountain of the Future in Our Fingers," student Jennifer Commander said sculpted hands supporting a public drinking fountain could represent how Auburn presents education to its citizens. "Auburn is an oasis for learning," she said. In the Theory of Knowledge class, 11th-grade International Baccalaureate students study the integration of "ways of knowing" like logic, perception and emotion, with "areas of knowledge" like the arts, math and science. The students presented models of their ideas through the help of the school's art students. They even spent time shadowing city officials and committee members, and attended city council meetings. Shelley Laband, a former museum intern who helped organize the project, said she hoped the students learned a lot about aesthetics and community. "The students who observed the city council meeting told me they never knew they had the power to affect their community," Laband said. "It opened their eyes to people having passion about their community." A class of Auburn High School students hopes to approach the Auburn City Council soon with plans to incorporate urban art into the city's decor. As one student put it, 'Its already the loveliest village, but we want to make it even more beautiful.' Students in Sheryl Perrys Theory of Knowledge class prepared six different art proposals, from 'Umbrellas in the Village' to 'Our Cup Runneth Over,' and presented them to a mock city council of AHS seniors Tuesday afternoon for recommendations. Perry said the class as a whole will develop one or two of the most promising art proposals in greater detail, in hopes of presenting the idea to the Auburn City Council soon. 'Our real goal is art in the city,' Perry said. 'We at least want to raise some public awareness.' Each of the six urban-art proposals incorporated water. They included one bridge, a reflecting pool and several types of fountains. The students outlined how the pieces of art they designed would benefit the community and addressed cost effectiveness, safety issues and aesthetics. 'One thing thats important in public art is that people can appreciate and interact with it,' said student Jennifer Yeh. The project was developed and facilitated by the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University. Stephanie Burak, curator of education, said the intention of the project is not only to teach the students about both city government and public art, but also to raise awareness of creativity while taking the focus away from the university and sports. 'Tigers are all over town,' Burak said. 'The basic idea is to do something different while trying to represent the community.' While presenting 'The Fountain of the Future in Our Fingers,' student Jennifer Commander said sculpted hands supporting a public drinking fountain could represent how Auburn presents education to its citizens. 'Auburn is an oasis for learning,' she said. In the Theory of Knowledge class, 11th-grade International Baccalaureate students study the integration of 'ways of knowing' like logic, perception and emotion, with 'areas of knowledge' like the arts, math and science. The students presented models of their ideas through the help of the schools art students. They even spent time shadowing city officials and committee members, and attended city council meetings. Shelley Laband, a former museum intern who helped organize the project, said she hoped the students learned a lot about aesthetics and community. 'The students who observed the city council meeting told me they never knew they had the power to affect their community,' Laband said. 'It opened their eyes to people having passion about their community.'
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Concerned about streams 12/13/2006 Daily Mountain Eagle, The Daniel Gaddy		Return to Top
AU and North Carolina State University collaborated in research on streams as ecosystems. Town Creek behind Maddox Middle School usually doesn't see much more than lost footballs from a gym class. However, it was recently the site of serious scientific study. A wide variety of people concerned about the waterways in the region held a stream restoration workshop on Monday and Tuesday. The workshop goal was to both educate those interested in studying the ecological factors of waterways as well as to identify areas for improvement in Jaspers streams. Three Jasper streams were studied during the Doctors Branch, Tanyard Creek and Town Creek. Representatives from Auburn University and North Carolina State University led discussions on the different factors that contribute to the streams quality. Rather than studying the chemical makeup or quality of the water, the workshop addressed how well the streams perform as ecosystems. The topics included such aspects as the number of insects as well as native and non-native vegetation. We wanted to come to a down and dirty estimate of what Jasper (streams) needed, said Paul Kennedy, a project coordinator from Cawaco Resource Conservation and Development. Dr. Greg Jennings, professor at NCSU, said the streams in Jasper are doing well for being in such an urban area. He said he was pleased with the number of insects in the streams. However, there are opportunities for improvement, particularly regarding non-native vegetation, he said. Jennings said the purpose of the collaboration between Auburn and NCSU was to put more eyes on the waterways of Alabama and the South. He said Jasper was selected to be the pilot town of a program that he hopes will be incorporated throughout Alabama. Jasper was chosen because of the immense interest in the project and the restoration of waterways from city officials and local organizations, he said. Kennedy said it was interesting to see such a wide variety of people involved. He said the workshop included geological consultants, coal miners and advocates for waterway preservation. Its kind of unusual to have the yin and yang here, Kennedy said. Chuck Kelly, a landscape architect from Birmingham, said he learned a great deal through the hands-on activities during the workshop. I think its important to be a part of something like this, Kelly said. Duane Wallace, city planner for Jasper, said he was happy to be working with the different representatives. He said the city planners are hoping to receive a grant from Cawaco RC & D to improve some of the areas identified in the workshop. Kennedy said he was tickled to death by the support of people from the community, particularly the Walker County Commission, the Black Warrior Clean Water Partnership and the Jasper City Planners. He said the representatives from the workshop plan to meet and generate ideas for potential projects to help restore the streams.
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Tracking the germs that hitch a ride on food 12/13/2006 Austin American Statesman Sanda Kleffman, Atlanta Journal Constitution		Return to Top
Bryan Chin, director of the Detection and Food Safety Center at AU, is quoted as a source for the story. The story originally appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and continues to be picked up by media outlets across the U.S. Sources of foodborne illness outbreaks are getting easier to trace. Eating raw fruits and vegetables is good for you, experts tell us. Then come unnerving reports of people sickened by bacterial contamination in baby spinach, tomatoes, green onions, sprouts, strawberries. The list goes on. Statistics back up the popular perception that the nation now has more illnesses linked to fresh produce. The number of such outbreaks has more than doubled in the past decade, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which found 639 produce-related outbreaks affecting nearly 31,500 people between 1990 and 2004. But that does not mean produce is more contaminated today than it was decades ago, or even that more people are getting sick, experts note. Scientists now have better technology that enables them to take a bacterium's "fingerprint" and link it to sicknesses in several states. As a result, they can discover an outbreak that would have been missed years ago. "I don't necessarily feel that there's more of it happening now," said Dean Cliver, a food safety professor at the University of California, Davis. "In all probability, it's less. But we sure know when it happens these days, and we didn't use to." Changes in the way the nation packages and distributes its produce, as well as a trend toward healthier eating, have also contributed to the rise in outbreaks. Years ago, consumers would go to the supermarket and buy a head of lettuce or spinach or a loose bunch of scallions. But today, such items often come in bags that contain leaves from numerous heads. "So if only one is contaminated, there's a good chance that the entire bag is contaminated," said Dr. Lee Riley, professor of epidemiology and infectious disease at the University of California, Berkeley. "They represent multiple farms, not just a single farm," he added. "So you have an increased chance of cross-contamination." The nation now has a centralized food system with large-scale farms and processing plants that ship items far and wide. A problem in one corner of the nation spreads rapidly. The outbreak of E. coli in prepackaged spinach in September was traced back to California's Salinas Valley. But it sickened more than 200 people in 26 states. A decade ago, it is doubtful that anyone would have connected the dots to identify that as an outbreak, Cliver said. But today, scientists use a technique known as PulseNet, which enables them to identify a specific strain of E. coli. When they discovered the same strain making people sick in numerous states, they knew they had a problem and most likely a common source of contamination. The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has improved its tracking methods in recent years. Through a program called FoodNet, microbiology laboratories across the country now send monthly reports on suspected foodborne disease agents they discover in their testing. Doctors have also gotten better about looking for and identifying foodborne illnesses. "The medical reporting system has been undergoing a fundamental change," said Bryan Chin, director of the Detection and Food Safety Center at Auburn University in Alabama. "Our system is getting better in warning the public about possible problems." But while the pathogens may have been in our food system for decades, no one is advocating complacency in tackling the problem. It takes on added urgency as Americans consume greater quantities of fresh fruits and vegetables as health experts advise. Contaminated meat has been dealt with successfully by ensuring that Salmonella or E. coli is cooked out. But that doesn't happen when fruits and vegetables are eaten raw, making it tougher to tackle problems in produce. The Center for Science in the Public Interest in October asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ban the use of raw manure as fertilizer during the growing season because of fears that it might contaminate crops. The group also requested additional restrictions on irrigation water, mandatory sanitation procedures and packaging that makes it easy to trace fruits and vegetables during an outbreak. "California's reliance on voluntary compliance with guidelines, education and awareness has not been effective in preventing foodborne illness from fresh produce," the group said in its letter to the governor. Several state lawmakers have indicated they plan to introduce food-safety legislation next year.
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You can safely splurge over holidays 12/13/2006 Brewton Standard		Return to Top
Robert Keith, an ACES nutritionist and AU professor of nutrition and food science is the source for this story. If you're one of countless Americans concerned that a little splurging this holiday season will blow your diet, relax. Just remember that there is a right way and a wrong way to splurge, says one expert. So long as this splurging is confined to only a handful of meals - Thanksgiving, Christmas and maybe an office dinner - you'll be OK, says Dr. Robert Keith, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System nutritionist and Auburn University professor of nutrition and food science I tell people to go ahead and enjoy that Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, Keith said. Eat the food, enjoy it and don't worry about gaining weight on the basis of only one or two larger meals during the season. Studies have shown that Americans gain an average 3 to 7 pounds during the holidays, but it's not because of that lavish Christmas or Thanksgiving meal, Keith says. It's because many people don't apply the brakes after those first couple of holiday meals. As the holiday reveling reaches full throttle, the temptations also multiply. On top of the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are the lavish holiday parties strung in between as well as the food and beverages consumed on New Year's Day. We enter this six-week holiday season looking forward to all the parties with friends, family and coworkers and all the cakes, cookies and beverages that go with them, Keith said. These, rather than the two traditional meals, are where the problems occur - the reason Keith stresses why it's so important during the holiday season to track calories. He recommends the following: Avoid heavy breakfasts and lunches if you're planning on a big meal later that evening. You need to be thinking where all these calories are coming from, he said. If you're going out, keep track of calories you've previously consumed throughout the day. It's important to remain conscious of what's going on and to do a little dietary and weight correcting when needed. And finally, Dr. Keith believes that as long as you're following these general rules of thumb, you can enjoy those extravagant Thanksgiving and Christmas meals without the guilt. Here's a wonderful low calorie version of a favorite hors d'oeuvre. It looks impressive if you hollow a red or green cabbage or a round loaf of bread. Cube the bread that you remove and use it to spread the dip on. Source: Cooking Healthy for the Holidays by Dorothy C. Lee and Linda Bowman. Both ladies are County Extension Agents from Florida. 1 package (10 oz.) frozen chopped spinach* 1 /4 package (2 Tablespoon) dry vegetable soup mix 1 3/ 4 cup reduced calorie mayonnaise 1 can (8 ounces) water chestnuts, drained and chopped 2 tablespoon chopped green onion 1 /4 teaspoon dry mustard Thaw spinach, drain and squeeze until dry. Stir dry soup before measuring to mix evenly. Mix all ingredients. Chill and serve with raw vegetables or slices of French or sour dough bread. Yield about 3 1/2 cups (14 servings) One serving 1 /4 cup, calories per serving 40, Fat 2 grams, Exchanges 1 vegetable *Frozen and canned spinach are perfectly safe to eat.
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Airman: Pioneers, part 2 of 5 12/13/2006 Columbus Ledger-Enquirer Jerry F. Rutledge, Staff Writer		Return to Top
AU history professor Robert "Jeff" Jakeman is quoted as a source in this story. Charles "A-Train" Dryden was entering a new world. He could see the signs. Dryden --- who grew up down the street from Duke Ellington in Manhattan and got his nickname from an Ellington song --- was taking a train from New York to Tuskegee to follow his dream of being a fighter pilot. As the train snaked down the East Coast, he saw more and more signs. "Whites only" signs. On restaurants, rest rooms and water fountains. "My mother was absolutely terrified I was going South, being her first born and so forth," said Dryden, now 86 and living in Atlanta. "It was a foregone conclusion that if a kid from the North, with his customary social environment in the North relatively open as compared to the South --- where not to take your hat off when a white person addressed you, not to get off the sidewalk when he approached you, to grin when something was not funny or scratch when it doesn't itch could cost you your life --- it was reason to be terrified." So Dryden promised his parents that when he went South he would stay on the base, stay away from the people in town, and stay in prayer. "My parents were very devout, so they just prayed me through," Dryden said. In the Atlanta station he met two other cadets. Together they took the train to the remote station at Chehaw, outside of Tuskegee. Then they climbed into a station wagon headed for town. Training had begun. Tough training The first class, 42-C, began training in July 1941. Training was conducted in three phases --- primary, basic and advanced. In primary training, at Moton Field, cadets with no previous flight training learned the basics of piloting an aircraft on the grass and dirt runways. The instructors were black civilians. Basic and advanced training were taught at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, 10 miles northwest of town. The cadets learned to fly military planes, including P-39s, P-40s, P-47s and P-51s. They also learned to navigate, pull out of a stall, and perform the other skills they would use in battle. The instructors there were white. The pilots faced even more advanced training in air tactics at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle. Dive bombing and strafing were some of the skills they learned after receiving their wings. The training was demanding, testing the cadets' discipline, cognitive skills, and physical and mental abilities. In fact, Dryden's class, 42-D, the second class to train, started with 11 cadets --- and only three graduated. In the first class, 42-C, only five of 13 cadets got their wings. One of them was Capt. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the eventual commander of the 99th Fighter Squadron and, later, the 332nd Fighter Group --- the Tuskegee Airmen. Davis was the first black to graduate from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., where he spent four years in virtual isolation. The only words spoken to him by instructors or other cadets were orders. He lived alone, ate in silence and even had to take dancing lessons by himself. Life in Tuskegee In Tuskegee, social life for the cadets stayed within the confines of the army base and the Tuskegee Institute campus, with occasional trips to Montgomery. Once completed, the base had barracks, classrooms, a mess hall, Officers Club, theater, athletic facilities and the other basic amenities afforded military bases. The nearby campus had coeds and the kind of culture rarely found in small Southern towns in the early 1940s. "In those years, Tuskegee was a funny place," said retired Lt. Col. Herbert Carter, 87, of Tuskegee. "We called it an oasis, because Tuskegee Institute --- the university now --- the community and the campus was self-sufficient. It was independent of the city of Tuskegee. It was majority black. Its people were all at the middle economic level and all educated because the people were employees either of the Institute or they worked over at the Veterans Administration hospital. Therefore, they were doctors, technicians, nurses... "You had that community. We had our own post office. We had our own movie facilities. We had our own entertainment on the campus." Famous entertainers --- including heavyweight champion Joe Louis and the cadets' favorite pinup girl, Lena Horne --- began to visit the base on USO Tours. Hiram Little, 87, was an aircraft armorer at the Tuskegee Army Air Field. He would spend more than four years there, never deploying overseas. But the Eatonton, Ga., native, whose family moved to Atlanta when he was a teen, remembers his time in Tuskegee as the best of his life. For one thing, he lived part of his time there on the Tuskegee Institute campus in Emery 1 and Emery 4, old dormitories that can still be seen on the university campus. "All those girls up there, man --- pretty girls," he said. "They were from all over Alabama. Even ran into some girls from Atlanta. Loved it." And he was earning a living. "I loved it --- every month you got a paycheck," Little said, laughing. "You got all the dental and medical treatment for free. Three meals a day. I'm living the life of Riley, whoever Riley was. Meeting people from all over the U.S.A." They rarely ventured beyond the oasis. Leaving the base or campus meant risking problems with the white locals, a no-win situation for the aspiring pilots. None of the Airmen remembered any major incidents between the cadets or support personnel and the townspeople, but military police patrolled the city --- armed black soldiers in a racially segregated community --- a potentially explosive situation. When a soldier was arrested, he was generally turned over to the military authorities. On one such occasion, city law enforcement refused and a black military policeman pulled his gun. It was almost a nightmare scenario for those involved, but the incident ended peacefully. Great debate As they trained, cadets found themselves comparing their own experiences. Conversations in the barracks often turned to race, and who had the better lot --- blacks in the South or blacks in the North. Carter had grown up in a Mississippi town where ninth grade was as far as a black student could go. But his father was a supervisor in the utilities department, and his parents had encouraged him to follow his dreams. "I was acclimated," Carter said. "I had grown up in the South. It was not as pressing on me as it was on many of the cadets who made the transition from the Northern area or the Northwest area of America to Alabama." Carter says racism throughout America at that time was equal to apartheid in South Africa. While racism was more obvious in the South, he says, he believed that cadets from the North had grown up with the same root problem as he had. "The airmen, cadets and people who came here from the Northern area where they pretended --- and you have to listen to my language --- where they 'pretended' that they were free individuals... go where they want to go, do what they want to do, say what they want to say... I knew differently," Carter said. "I knew that you had just as much problem as a black man in Chicago, Detroit or Washington as you had in Tuskegee, Ala." That sparked some lively discussion. "Some of them called me a 'dyed-in-the-wool Southerner.' And I told them, 'You guys have your heads buried in the sand.' "I told them I was more comfortable walking down Dexter Avenue in Montgomery than walking down a street in New York or Chicago because there I know who my friends are and who my enemy is." Playing the game As the pilots trained, most of the nation still did not know that black people could fly planes --- and with world-class skill. Flight had become the rage in America in the 1930s after Charles Lindbergh's solo flight to Paris the decade before. Chicago's Midway Airport, according to historians, became a mecca for black pilots. Black newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier and the Amsterdam News chronicled the progress of African Americans in aviation --- but the boom went largely unnoticed by the mainstream white press. "Many Black Americans in urban areas read both papers and had a broader view of what was occurring," said Auburn University history professor Robert "Jeff" Jakeman. "White Americans were generally unaware of growth of flight among black citizens." But administrators at Tuskegee Institute were well aware, and the school was about to become a major player in black aviation. Founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington, the institute, now Tuskegee University, had learned relatively early how to pick its battles, building a reputation for developing students with excellent skills while cultivating friends among liberal politicians from the North and the South. "In Tuskegee, you had an institution with the academic background and proven record of success to support flight training," said Jakeman, author of "The Divided Skies: Establishing Segregated Flight Training at Tuskegee, Alabama, 1934-1942." "Tuskegee also had a way of getting things done. A black training school founded in the 1880s in the Deep South? They knew how to play the game." In September 1934, Robert Russa Moton --- who had succeeded Booker T. Washington as Tuskegee president --- and the school's administration supported the plans of two black aviators to do a Pan American tour from Florida to the southern rim of the Caribbean, including stops in Cuba, Jamaica and Guyana. The plane was christened the "Booker T. Washington." Moton retired in 1935 and was succeeded by Frederick Douglass Patterson. Patterson would bring pilot training to the institute and town deep in the Heart of Dixie. Its inclusion as a land-grant university in the Civilian Pilot Training Program gave Tuskegee a foothold in a competition with Chicago to host the Army Air Corps pilot training for blacks. By the end of 1940, the Army Air Corps had sent plans for training and establishment of the black pursuit squadron at Tuskegee, the 99th Pursuit Fighter Squadron. Many of the white citizens of Tuskegee were not happy about their town's selection. Privately, some raised complaints about the spectre of armed black men in their town. Their public complaints centered on how building a large Army Air Corps base north of Tuskegee would inhibit the town's growth. Nevertheless, the base was built and training ensued. First lady visits In 1941, the world found out that black pilots could fly just fine. That's when first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Tuskegee in 1941 to check out a polio treatment center at the Veterans Administration Hospital for her husband, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While there, she saw all the planes --- piloted by black Civilian Pilot Training Program cadets --- dotting the skies over the town. And she saw 'Chief' Charles Alfred Anderson, an instructor in the primary training program who had taught himself to fly an airplane in 1929 when white instructors refused to train him. Dryden, who was from New York, recounts the story: "Inquisitive first lady that she was, she inquired who was flying these airplanes. Someone told her 'local people.' She replied, 'You mean, colored people? I always heard that black people couldn't fly.' At that point she pointed out Chief Anderson and said she wanted to fly with him." When the first lady made that announcement, the Secret Service man in charge of her protection rushed the telephone and called the White House, Dryden guesses. "Can you imagine what he said: 'Mr. President, are you aware what your wife is about to do? She's about to fly with a --- you fill in the blank,'" Dryden said. Anderson flew the first lady over the town and returned to Moton Field. The photo of her sitting behind Anderson in the plane was seen around the country. "She was so pleased when they landed," Dryden said. "There's a famous picture of the two of them, each with a big grin on their faces --- he because he just flew with the first lady of all the land, she because she had just exploded the myth that blacks can't fly." Washed out At Tuskegee, becoming a combat pilot wasn't easy. Retired Maj. Carrol Woods, who had to pass a rigorous college equivalency test to land a spot in pilot training, felt like his infantry training and discipline played a large role in his success. "You still had to perform, just like with anything else," said Woods, 87, who grew up in Valdosta, Ga., and now lives in Montgomery. "You could get an instructor who you got along easy with or you could get an instructor that was... hard to please." Woods believed that the way a cadet carried himself also had something to do with whether he was successful. "I wasn't aggressive like some people were," he said. "Some came in too cocky and washed out. They came in and had already soloed." Graduation rates hovered around 33 percent. Some still debate whether racism in the form of quotas played a role in the high rate of failure in the training. "We felt that there was a quota imposed," Dryden said. He points to the case of Charles Flowers, a member of the third class. "He had finished all of his requirements and the day before graduation he was told he was not going to graduate," Dryden said. "Which led us to believe the Air Corps had determined it was not going to allow more than a third of a class to get their wings. "The ironic part of that is Charlie Flowers later became an instructor in the program. Now you go figure. If he was good enough to teach it, he was good enough to graduate." Flowers, 87, is retired and now lives in Maryland. He prefers the term "reassigned" to "washed out." "Some call it washed out," he said. "I call it reassignment because I had completed all the courses and I was the highest ranking cadet on the base. What they told me after I went in the office is that they needed a military-trained flight instructor at the primary field... Some called it wash out; I call it reassignment." But why, Dryden asks, take your top cadet and turn him into an instructor during wartime? Looking back at the training, Carter does not believe racism played a role in the difficulty of the training at Tuskegee Army Airfield. "I've often wondered," Carter said. "But I think our instructors were simply within themselves determined that they were going to produce some quality pilots. Therefore their expectations and demands were unusually high and exacting. All of us to a man have said, at one time or another, that that was appreciated, because it made us some of the best pilots the Army Air Corps ever had in combat."
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(Alabama) College desegregation case ends after 25 years 12/13/2006 Birmingham News Tom Gordon, staff writer		Return to Top
After 25 years, Alabama's higher education desegregation case is over except for some court-ordered expenditures that the state will have to meet for several more years. U.S. District Judge Harold Murphy issued a final order Tuesday approving the various agreements to settle the case. Murphy said the state of Alabama, its historically white universities and other defendants had eliminated, "to the extent practicable and consistent with sound educational practice, the vestiges of de jure segregation remaining in their institutional conditions, policies and practices and have demonstrated their commitment to continuing to operate in a constitutional and non-discriminatory fashion." "We worked hard to have a court ... say those kind of things about higher education in Alabama," said Robert Hunter, who has represented the state during much of the case. "That's quite an accomplishment." Alease Sims of Birmingham, a retired public school teacher and one of the lead plaintiffs in the case, said the lawsuit had accomplished much. "It has been a privilege and an honor for me to do something to help my people and all the citizens of Alabama," she said. Murphy has issued the two major orders in the case and has approved agreements by the parties to settle other issues. Out of those orders and agreements have come or will come additional courses, new money for classroom buildings, diversity scholarship and endowment funds for the state's historically black universities, the creation of a unified Extension Service, increased funding for a need-based scholarship program, and agreements by the historically white universities and some of the state's two-year schools to work to boost their numbers of black faculty and administrators. So far, the state has appropriated or set aside nearly $210 million to carry out Murphy's orders, and most of that has gone to the historically black schools, Alabama Agricultural & Mechanical University in Huntsville and Alabama State University in Montgomery. State Rep. John Knight, D-Montgomery, the lead plaintiff in the case, has said that by 2014, when the last of the court-ordered requirements expire, A&M and ASU each will have received more than $200 million. Knight also said he expects that by 2014, $100 million will have gone into the state's need-based financial aid program. "The struggle now shifts from the judicial arena to the political arena," Knight said in a hearing before Murphy last week. "We are convinced that much more can be accomplished by pursuing the goals of desegregation through the processes these settlement agreements mandate for each of Alabama's college campuses, each of their boards of trustees, the Alabama Legislature and the Governor's Office." Six objections were filed to settling the case. In his Tuesday order, however, Murphy said that in "substance and amount," the objections were not enough to justify his disapproval of the agreements. Murphy said the agreements "serve the purposes" of the remedial decrees that he issued after the case's longest trial in 1991 and after its second major trial in 1995. The case, which began in 1981, was based on the assertion that the state's higher education system, though officially desegregated, still had vestiges from the segregation era. Among them, plaintiffs alleged, were a lack of high-demand academic programs and facilities and few white students at ASU and A&M, and not enough black students, faculty and administrators at the state's predominantly white schools. By late 2005, the parties to the case were close to settling it, but negotiations stalled, and the prospect of another hearing loomed on three unresolved issues. Over time, however, the historically white universities and the plaintiffs began reaching agreements on plans to hire and retain black faculty and administrators. Auburn University and A&M, now part of the same Extension System, also settled some Extension-related funding issues. In addition, a surplus in the state education budget made funds available to help meet Alabama A&M's request for additional building and repair funds, as well as the plaintiffs' request for a meaningful need-based scholarship program. In September, Murphy set aside almost $46 million from the education budget surplus. Of that amount, $10 million will go to the Alabama Student Assistance Program, the need-based financial aid program administered by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education. Almost $26 million will go to ASU for new classroom buildings and $7.3 million will go to A&M for new classrooms and some needed repairs on dormitories. An outgrowth of the higher education case has been the plaintiffs' claim that Alabama's property tax system is a barrier to higher education for many black and low-income students because it doesn't generate enough revenue. Murphy rejected the claim after a hearing in 2004, and the plaintiffs have appealed his ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
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Unaffordable colleges 12/13/2006 Huntsville Times John Ehinger, editorial board		Return to Top
This editorial is about the cost of attending Alabama colleges and universities. Tuition is rising too fast, and aid to students is sorely lacking Time was, a college education - or any formal education after high school - amounted to a luxury. It was geared toward the professions or the academic life. People who got "real" jobs didn't need it. That day has long passed. And while Alabama in the 21st century provides ample postsecondary opportunities in the form of four-year universities, community colleges and technical colleges, a dark cloud has formed over the higher-education landscape. The colleges are simply getting too expensive, and the results soon will be such that the issue must be addressed. A study released Friday by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education gave the state a failing grade in the category of providing affordable higher education. More to the point, tuition at the state's two- and four-year institutions has been rising at an alarming rate. At the University of Alabama and Auburn University, tuition increases the past two years have exceeded $1,000 per academic year. Auburn is now the state's most expensive public university. Tuition on the Plains is $5,496 for the academic year - or two semesters. Because Alabamians are on average paid less than Americans as a whole, the impact of the steadily rising tuition is significant. Low- and middle-income families must spend 36 percent of their disposable income to send a child to a two-year college. Those same families must spend 39 percent of their income if the child enrolls at a four-year university. Although college officials note that tuition in this state is still below the national average, the reality is additionally problematic because Alabama's aid to college students is low or nonexistent. Students and their families often have to borrow. But at some point, if tuition continues to rise, some families will find it not only difficult to educate their children but financially impossible. The state desperately needs a form of college assistance based on need. If it isn't practical to cap tuition increases - colleges, too, must meet rising expenses - then relief must come on the other side of the equation. If the state fails to act, the consequences could be lasting. Alabama's entry into the national economic mainstream rests in great part on its ability to educate its people to qualify them for modern jobs. The education infrastructure - our multitude of two- and four-year institutions - is already in place. Now our challenge is to take steps to make sure that every qualified student gets a chance to learn a trade or a profession or acquire other skills that lead to gainful employment for a lifetime. Missed opportunity? Under the last governor, Alabama had a chance to use a state lottery to pay for college tuition for deserving students, poor or otherwise. State voters said no. And while the lottery proposal had its drawbacks, nothing has emerged to achieve the same goals. When the Legislature convenes in March and takes up a package of tax cuts, it may well want to consider whether it's more important to cut taxes in an already low-tax state or to divert money to where it's clearly needed. If we fail to educate our young people, the economic impact could be negative and long-lasting. By John Ehinger, for the editorial board. E-mail: john.ehinger@htimes.com
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Internal investigations a feather in AU's cap 12/12/2006 Opelika-Auburn News		Return to Top
Whether it was deserving or not, negative light was shed yet again on Auburn University's athletics department when the New York Times reported Sunday in an article that a grade was changed from incomplete to an 'A' within the Sociology Department for a student-athlete. The Times reported that one of the grades being probed was listed as given by sociology professor Paul Starr, who was confounded by the claim. More times than not, where there is smoke there is fire. And considering the Sociology Department's recent reputation and accusations, one cannot perceive this as anything other than a black eye whether the accusation is legitimate or not. It's disturbing that these things happen. But to Auburn University's credit, this latest glitch was found during an internal investigation. There have been policies put in place to prevent this, with a system of checks and balances. While the thought of a student getting a freebie is disturbing, the good thing is Auburn University realized the potential for these problems and addressed it long before this story came out. Starr told the Opelika-Auburn News that these audits are designed to find irregularities and often help shape new policies. He said now any grade changes done by professors are followed up with paperwork asking for an explanation and verification. "If this were to happen now, I would know immediately," Starr said. "Academic integrity is vital. These students work so hard to get those credit hours that you don’t want to think that someone may have gotten a freebie." To the Times' credit, they brought this situation to light with breaking reports last summer. However, the Times chose to use athletics as its ticket to turning a small story into what it perceived to be a major one. Making this about athletics is not a valid argument. Athletics was used by the newspaper to sell the story from the get-go. The story had headlines only because some student athletes were involved. Every great university looks within itself to identify problems. When a problem has been identified, it is the university's responsibility to move quickly to correct this problem. That is what Auburn did. If indeed there is someone who gave students grades that were not deserved and used another professor's name to do it, that person should be fired. Tenure or not.
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Protecting Unhatched Poultry from Avian Flu 12/12/2006 Drug Discovery and Development		Return to Top
Investigators at Auburn University, Auburn, Ala., in collaboration with researchers at Vaxin Inc., Birmingham, have developed the first in ovo, or egg-injected, vaccine to protect chickens against avian influenza, which could provide 100% protection once the flu strain is identified. NOTE: The Web link to this story provides a link to the news release distributed by AU Communications and Marketing.
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In Tuition Game, Popularity Rises With Price 12/12/2006 New York Times Jonathan D. Glater and Alan Finder		Return to Top
This story on higher education is about how some colleges and universities make decisions on tuition cost. AU is not mentioned in the story. COLLEGEVILLE, Pa. — John Strassburger, the president of Ursinus College, a small liberal arts institution here in the eastern Pennsylvania countryside, vividly remembers the day that the chairman of the board of trustees told him the college was losing applicants because of its tuition. It was too low. So early in 2000 the board voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 (and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then it waited to see what would happen. Ursinus received nearly 200 more applications than the year before. Within four years the size of the freshman class had risen 35 percent, to 454 students. Applicants had apparently concluded that if the college cost more, it must be better. "It's bizarre and it's embarrassing, but it's probably true," Dr. Strassburger said. Ursinus also did something more: it raised student aid by nearly 20 percent, to just under $12.9 million, meaning that a majority of its students paid less than half price. Ursinus is not unique. With the race for rankings and choice students shaping college pricing, the University of Notre Dame, Bryn Mawr College, Rice University, the University of Richmond and Hendrix College, in Conway, Ark., are just a few that have sharply increased tuition to match colleges they consider their rivals, while also providing more financial assistance. The recognition that families associate price with quality, and that a tuition rise, accompanied by discounts, can lure more applicants and revenue, has helped produce an economy in academe something like that in the health care system, with prices rising faster than inflation but with many consumers paying less than full price. Average tuition at private, nonprofit four-year colleges — the price leaders — rose 81 percent from 1993 to 2004 , more than double the inflation rate, according to the College Board, while campus-based financial aid rose 135 percent. The average cost of tuition, fees, room and board at those colleges is now $30,367. Many charge much more; at George Washington University, the sum is more than $49,000. But aid is now so extensive that more than 73 percent of undergraduates attending private four-year institutions received it in the school year that ended in 2004, not even counting loans. "We can cushion the sticker "We focus on both middle-income and low-income families." So net prices vary widely on a given campus. On some, as many as 90 percent of students receive support, primarily from the college itself or the federal government. And financial need is not the only basis for it. Many colleges, competing for the students with high grades and standardized test scores that help a college rise in rankings guides, offer merit aid ranging from a few thousand dollars to a full scholarship. But officials of private colleges and universities say they fear that unless other steps are taken, the middle and upper middle class could ultimately be squeezed out. "Eventually, if we're going to keep raising tuition at rates much more than the increase in family incomes, then something has to be done to make the places more accessible to the middle class," said Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. As it is, some students may not even apply to private colleges, scared away from the start by tuition and unaware of the available discounts. After all, tuition and fees at public colleges and universities — though growing recently at a faster pace than those at private institutions — remain vastly lower, at an average of $5,836, the College Board says. It can be argued that everyone studying at a private liberal arts college is getting a discount. At institution after institution, officials say they offer an education costing tens of thousands of dollars more than even the college's "sticker price." Take Swarthmore, the elite college half an hour's drive from Ursinus. With an annual budget of $106 million to educate just under 1,500 undergraduates, Swarthmore spends about $73,690 a student. But its tuition, room, board and fees in the last academic year were little more than $41,000. "The half of our student body whose families are paying the full sticker price are paying $41,000 for something that costs $73,000," said Suzanne P. Welsh, the treasurer. "So they're getting a great discount." The other students receive a bigger subsidy: on average, aid totaling more than $28,500, most of it from the college itself. (Swarthmore limits its aid to students with financial need, but that can mean those from families earning $150,000 a year if, for instance, there are circumstances like having multiple children in college.) What makes it all work is Swarthmore's $1.3 billion endowment, which throws off enough income to cover 43 percent of the operating budget. The biggest expenditure at liberal arts colleges is for salaries and benefits. With competition for big-name professors becoming more intense, faculty salaries have increased. So has the pay of college and university presidents, more than 100 of whom now receive at least $500,000 a year. Then there are the amenities sought by students: coffee bars, lavish new dormitories, state-of-the-art science laboratories and fitness centers. "You're trying to create the best educational experience for your students, and that costs money," said Tom Tritton, president of Haverford College. "I sometimes say to parents, 'I can make it cheaper if you want.' " Still, none of this explains why colleges like Swarthmore and Ursinus — with different student-faculty ratios, endowments and reputations — end up with tuition and fees only a few hundred dollars apart, or less. Or why Harvard's tuition and fees, at $33,709, are virtually the same as theirs. One big reason is that institutions of higher learning watch one another. In November, the finance committee of Swarthmore's board of managers gathered at a Manhattan law firm and pored over a chart of tuition, room and board at more than 30 prestigious colleges and universities. They were pleased to see that Swarthmore was charging somewhat less than most of its competitors. That kind of scrutiny led Bryn Mawr to a contrary sentiment, causing the college to raise tuition and fees this year by about 9 percent, their biggest jump in several years. Bryn Mawr officials say they made the decision after their research showed that the college charged less than its rivals and awarded more aid. The officials concluded that raising tuition would not deter applicants, because prospective students already assumed that Bryn Mawr cost the same as comparable colleges. "The question was, Does that make sense?" said John Griffith, Bryn Mawr's treasurer and chief financial officer. "Have we benefited at all from being the low price point? And the answer was no." Some of the nation's bigger institutions have also found an incentive to raise prices. As part of an effort to improve its academic offerings and transcend its renown for football, the University of Notre Dame has raised tuition and fees by an inflation-adjusted 27 percent since 1999, to $32,900. In setting tuition, Notre Dame watches 20 other colleges and universities, including the University of Chicago, Emory and Vanderbilt. "We're setting it by our competitors," said the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the institution's president. But Notre Dame's financial aid has increased even more over the same period, with undergraduate scholarships up 107 percent after adjustment for inflation. This year the university is distributing $68 million. Facing stiff competition, Hendrix College, a small liberal arts institution in Conway, Ark., decided two years ago to bolster its academic offerings, promising students at least three hands-on experiences outside the classroom, including research, internships and service projects. It also raised tuition and fees 29 percent, to $21,636. Most of the increase went back to students as aid. As a result, 409 students enrolled in the freshman class this year, a 37 percent increase. "What worked was the buzz," said J. Timothy Cloyd, the Hendrix president. "Students saw that they were going to get an experience that had value, and the price positioning conveyed to them the value of the experience." Other colleges have tried the opposite. Muskingum College in New Concord, Ohio, cut tuition and fees drastically in 1996, to $10,285 from $14,240. "We believed that if we lowered tuition, we would open access to the middle class" and "that we would continue to serve the higher socioeconomic-background students by becoming a best-buy institution," said Anne C. Steele, Muskingum’s president. Revenue increased, with enrollment of more students who could pay full price. Muskingum has also grown, to 1,600 undergraduates from about 1,000. Yet the same strategy proved disastrous for North Carolina Wesleyan College. Ten years ago that college cut tuition and fees by 22 percent, to $7,150. But it attracted fewer wealthy applicants and more poor ones, who needed more aid even as the revenue generated from tuition declined. "It didn't work out the way it had been hoped," said Ian David Campbell Newbould, the college's president. "People don't want cheap." But they do apparently want a deal, or at least the perception of one. Lucie Lapovsky, a consultant who was once president of Mercy College in New York, conducted a study asking students to choose between a college charging $20,000 and offering no aid, and one charging $30,000 and offering a $10,000 scholarship. Students chose the pricier option. "Americans seem to like college on sale," Dr. Lapovsky said. Many administrators say that without raising prices, they could not maintain or expand economic diversity among the student body. In other words, making college more expensive for some enables less well off students to go. But Brian Zucker, president of the Human Capital Research Corporation, a consulting firm that works with colleges, is suspicious of that argument, particularly given the growth of merit aid. He points out that many middle-class students borrow tens of thousands of dollars to attend liberal arts colleges and that at some, they may be helping defray the cost of a merit scholarship to a wealthier applicant." "It's not a given that the subsidy is going in any predetermined direction," Mr. Zucker said. "We don't know." TOMORROW: Students, recent graduates, college presidents and others talk about whether they think a private college education is worth its cost. Jonathan D. Glater reported from Collegeville, Pa., and Alan Finder from New York.
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