February 28, 2005
President Chosen to Chair National Association
The next year promises to be an especially busy time for Earlham President Doug Bennett. As Congress prepares to take up re-authorization of the critically important Higher Education Act, and as arguments continue to rage in Washington and the media over the so-called “College Cost Crisis,” Bennett figures to have an active role in those debates and others involving post-secondary education, having recently been elected chairman of the nearly 1,000-member National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
February 26, 2005
WMUB Forum: Natural Disasters and Climactic Change
In the aftermath of the devastating Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, Earlham Assistant Professor of Geology Ron Parker appeared as a guest on the Feb. 25, 2005, broadcast of WMUB Forum, a production of WMUB-FM, the regional National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. While explaining the mechanics and some of the potential long-term consequences of the twin disaster — one of the most destructive in Earth history — Parker also cautioned listeners that “there’s really kind of a huge danger in regarding events like this as being unique, because when we do so we tend to forget that this kind of process is how the Earth functions… The Earth has a relatively slow pulse, and so human memories fade. We tend not to remember that tsunamis [in terms of geologic time] are commonplace on planet Earth.” Also sharing time on the program was regional meteorologist Steve Norris, who engaged Parker and program host John Hingsbergen in a further discussion of global climate change.
February 18, 2005
Pioneering Program Marks 50th Anniversary
Founded well before the concept of early childhood education became popular in contemporary American society, Earlham’s Pauline Trueblood Child Development Center in 2005 celebrates 50 years of starting young minds on the path of knowledge.
February 16, 2005
National Public Radio (NPR): Sophomore Quizzed on 'Whad'Ya Know?'
Recently home to Madison, Wisconsin, for early semester break, second-year student Chris Hughes was in the audience for the weekly broadcast of the National Public Radio program Whad’Ya Know and was selected by host Michael Feldman to be a contestant in the show’s regular quiz segment.
February 14, 2005
Annual Survey of College Freshmen Points Up Major Differences Between Earlham First Years and National Peers
According to the results of the 2004 Comparative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) survey — administered to nearly 290,000 freshmen at more than 400 U.S. baccalaureate colleges and universities — first-year students at Earlham have markedly different views than their national counterparts on many issues, including the purpose of a college education.
Morning Edition (NPR): A New Take on Outsourcing
A major subject of coverage by the media during the last U.S. presidential campaign, the issue of outsourcing high-tech U.S. jobs is back in the news as a result of efforts by start up companies like Rural Sourcing Inc., which seeks to persuade American business executives thinking about shipping high-tech work overseas to direct it, instead, to smaller cities and towns in this country. The movement recalls a period during the middle of the last century when lower wages and other operating costs in rural areas first attracted manufacturing jobs, in particular, away from higher-priced cities in the industrial North East and Midwest. As part of a story on outsourcing high-tech jobs to rural America, National Public Radio correspondent Howard Berkes spoke with 1977 Earlham alumnus Mark Drabenstott, Federal Reserve Bank economist and executive director of the Bank’s Center for the Study of Rural America.
February 06, 2005
The New York Times: "Paper Sets Off Debate on Environmentalism's Future"
Leaders of the environmental movement are “livid” with Earlham alumnus Michael Shellenberger, The New York Times reports on the front page of its Feb. 6 editions, because of a paper co-authored recently by the 1993 graduate and a colleague, Ted Nordhaus, called “The Death of Environmentalism.” Asserting that the environmental movement has become “just another special interest” and proposing that the entire idea of environmentalism as a political concept should be abolished in favor of a wider spectrum of liberal issues promising to “release the power of progressivism,” the paper has kindled a heated debate in the eco-community and on the Internet over the relative merits of Nordhaus’ and Shellenberger’s views, alternately described by persons quoted in the Times article as “ridiculous and self-serving” and “fascinating.”
February 03, 2005
The Scientist (U.K.): Earlham Professor Comments on Open Access Issues Before British Parliament
Earlham Senior Research Professor of Philosophy Peter Suber (see Experts section), one of the world’s leading proponents of open access publishing of scientific findings, was asked recently by the British journal The Scientist to comment on Parliament’s refusal to support the concept, despite a recommendation by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology “that the UK government fund the establishment of a network of institutional repositories where all research articles originating in the United Kingdom would be deposited and available to read for free.” While acknowledging Parliament’s reversal of the select committee’s recommendation, as well as a similar action taken in this country late last year by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), as being setbacks, Suber insisted the mood among open access supporters is upbeat. “Open access has worldwide momentum and makes new gains everyday,” said Suber. “Even if these two initiatives ended there, they would not diminish all the other initiatives that are moving forward.”
February 01, 2005
Discover: Evolution in a Digital World
In a cover story for the February 2005 issue of Discover magazine titled “Testing Darwin,” freelance writer Carl Zimmer reports on a group of scientists at Michigan State University that is studying evolution without examining a single fossil or biological specimen. Instead, the group’s research subjects are all computer-generated, “made up of digital bits that can be mutated in much the same way DNA mutates.” Because the virtual organisms reproduce so much faster than organic creatures, the MSU researchers can more easily study long-term evolutionary changes. Quoted in the article, available at the author’s Web site, is Robert Pennock, a 1980 Earlham graduate who now is an associate professor of philosophy at the university and a member of the research team. After more than a decade of development, Pennock says, the digital creations are getting closer all the time to the biological definition of life.