College Shorts Thirteen-Year-Old to Receive Bachelor's Degree

Author: Andrea Gissing

Bowdoin Awarded Grant for Ecological Study

The Henry Luce Foundation's Environment and Public Policy Program has awarded Bowdoin College $365,000 to set up a long-term ecological study of Maine's Merrymeeting Bay.
The bay is a large freshwater tidal ecosystem located close to Bowdoin's campus. The Environmental Studies faculty at Bowdoin pay particular attention to Merrymeeting Bay because "it is a living laboratory ideal for participatory learning and teaching."
The Luce funds will go towards establishing a fundamental scientific study of the hydrology, biogeochemistry and aquatic ecology of Merrymeeting Bay and the lower Kennebec River. Right now, the plan is to collect water and plankton samples weekly from key locations during the ice-free season, and quantify seasonal variation in water properties and chemistry, and plankton abundance and composition. The data will provide baseline information about the health of the ecosystem. Additionally, studies will be done to understand the dynamics of the plant communities in the area, as well as research to reconstruct the environmental history of the bay.
Bowdoin students working in independent study and honors projects, as well as summer research fellowships, will do much of the research.

Source: The Bowdoin Sun


UC Professors to Vote on Relationships

This spring, faculty at the University of California campuses are scheduled to vote on rules regarding faculty-student relationships, completing a process that started a while before the dean of UC's top law school departed amidst a sex scandal last fall.
Though UC does not have a formal no-dating decree, there has always been an unwritten rule against getting involved with students. Faculty recommended drafting a policy in 1983, but it was not made official. Recently, work has been done on a dating policy since late 2001.
The proposed policy would make having a romantic relationship with a student a breach of the code of conduct for faculty members.
Some UC campuses already have guidelines on dating students. The proposed system wide policy is more strongly worded.
The policy would make UC the latest school to ban faculty-student relationships, along with such schools as the University of Iowa, University of Michigan, the College of William and Mary and Yale University.

Source: CNN.com


13-year-old to Receive College Degree

Gregory Robert Smith, a 13-year-old, will receive his bachelor's degree in mathematics on May 31 from Randolph-Macon College, a private Methodist school located outside of Richmond, Va. Smith was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and will graduate cum laude.
Smith started college in September 1999, after completing 10 grades of school in three years. He graduated with honors from high school when he was nine yeas old and has been twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
At this time, he has not announced where he will attend graduate school, though he plans to earn PhDs in math, aerospace engineering, political science and biomedical engineering.
While Smith could have entered practically any college in the country, his parents, Janet and Bob Smith liked the size of Randolph-Macon and felt that it would be the best environment for their young son.
Along with his schoolwork, Smith founded International Youth Advocates, an organization that champions nonviolence and human rights.

Source: CNN.com


Tribal Colleges Popular Among Students

The 58 tribal colleges in the United States are drawing more students than ever before.
Established in the late 1960s to provide poverty-ridden residents of Native American reservations with skills for the U.S. job market, today the colleges are educating more than 30,000 full and part time students each semester. The majority of the campuses are located in the Great Plains states and the Southwest.
Along with nearly doubling their enrollment in the past decade, these specialized community colleges have also sparked interest among students in courses teaching about Native American culture, language and art. Seven of the institutions have expanded into four-year degree granting colleges recently and several now offer master's degrees.
Twenty percent of the students at colleges are non-Native American, and although many college administrators say that their primary focus is helping Native Americans recover their cultural past, others say they are determined to build rigorous academic programs for students of all ethnic backgrounds.

Source: The Washington Post