College Shorts Two New Old Boys, Lots of New College Boys

Author: Andrea Gissing

Rutgers, Bates Name New Presidents

Richard L. McCormick was named the 19th president of Rutgers University and Elaine Tuttle Hansen was inaugurated as the seventh president of Bates College. Hansen is Bates' first female president.
Hansen earned a bachelor's degree at Mount Holyoke College, a master's at the University of Minnesota and a doctorate at the University of Washington. Her last position was as provost at Haverford College. She began her duties at Bates in July.
McCormick, a native of New Brunswick, N.J., where Rutgers' main campus is located, will take office Dec. 1. He received a doctorate in history from Yale University in 1976 and taught history at Rutgers for 16 years. From 1989 to 1992 McCormick was Rutgers' dean of the faculty of arts and sciences. In 1995 he became president of the University of Washington, a position he will hold until taking office at Rutgers.
McCormick was considered the leading candidate for Rutgers' presidency before temporarily withdrawing his name from consideration just before Gov. James E. McGreevey announced his proposal to merge Rutgers with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and the New Jersey Institute of Technology in an effort to improve the state's university system. McCormick reconsidered, however, and said he had always dreamed of becoming president of Rutgers.
McCormick's appointment ends a six-month search for a president of the university.

Source: The New York Times and The Boston Globe

Men Invited: Maryland Women's College Turns Coed

Hood College's board of trustees voted Oct. 17 to admit male students to its residential program beginning in the 2003/2004 academic year.
Sources from the 109-year-old private women's college in Frederic say that the board voted unanimously for the change after studying Hood's long history of decreasing enrollment and the potential costs associated with recruiting and changing the college to accommodate men.
College officials have downplayed the impact of the change to coed, stating that the school has enrolled men as commuter students for 30 years and that men make up about 13 percent of all undergraduates.
The College's decision to switch completely to a coed system was fueled by concerns that the school could no longer attract enough female students to sustain it financially. Since the late 1970s, enrollment has decreased from a first-year class of 300 to the 110 students admitted last fall.
Hood's change reflects a lengthy national trend of college's departing from the single-sex system. Fewer than 60 independent four-year women's colleges remain in the United States, a drop from 300 in the 1960s, and there are only three all-male colleges.

Source: The Washington Post

Newspaper Opinion Column Fires Up SDSU

An opinions column published in San Diego State University's (SDSU) The Daily Aztec on Oct. 10 resulted in controversy as a benefactor's reaction resulted with him cutting ties with the university.
San Diego Padres owner and SDSU benefactor John Moores called President Stephen Weber and Athletics Director Rick Bay requesting that his name be removed from all university property and informed them that he was withdrawing all future financial support after reading an opinions column entitled "Athletics should not be the beneficiary of corporate greed," written by staff writer Lenn Bell.
Bell cited a Fortune Magazine article, painting Moores as one of the nation's "greediest executives." In the column Bell also outlined lawsuits against Moores for allegedly dumping Perigrine Systems stock before the company fell on difficult financial times.
Most troubled and affected is the SDSU Athletics Department. Bay said that his concern is not simply monetary, and that the university's friendship with Moores "shouldn't be treated so shabbily."
However, Bay estimated that Moores's donations to SDSU athletics have amounted to almost $30 million. Without that support, it would be unlikely that SDSU would ever have been a Division I school.
The Daily Aztec's Editor-in-Chief Jessica Disco stood behind the article, and commented "universities are designed to be arenas of free speech and forceful debate. As [an independent] student newspaper, [they] provide the space for people to express their opinions — even if they are controversial opinions."

Source: U-Wire