Cigarette smokers living on campus might have to take their butts outside if a bill introduced last month in the state House of Representatives becomes law. The bill, introduced by Rep.
MSU is one of only seven universities in the nation to have an African American and African Studies program, university officials said. The program, which was implemented in 2003, will be discussed at a conference, "The Black Scholar and the State of Black America." The conference begins today to bring together faculty, students and the public to discuss the direction black studies programs are taking. "It will be a forum for dialogue on black studies programs and the future," said Gloria Smith, acting director of the program.
Speakers both for and against a controversial military recruiting amendment debated in front of about 20 people Tuesday at the MSU College of Law. The Solomon Amendment allows the federal government to deny federal funding to colleges and universities if they deny military recruiters access to campus. The military has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to the LBGT community, stating that recruiters and other military officials cannot ask or pursue any rumors about a person's sexual orientation. The Supreme Court ruled last month that the Solomon Amendment is constitutional after some schools challenged the amendment because they felt it is discriminatory. Gerald Walpin, a director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights, debated in support of the Solomon Amendment and Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan's LBGT Project, debated against it. The MSU Triangle Bar Association and the MSU College of Law Federalist Society cohosted the debate. Walpin said he believes having military recruiters on campus is a form of free speech and that they should not be banned from coming. "The federal government has the right to condition its grants or funds on universities not implementing military recruiting," Walpin said.
MSU will coordinate the Michigan arm of a national language initiative to teach more people to speak Arabic. The National Strategic Language Initiative, first announced at a conference of U.S.
Name: Professor Barbara Abbott Department: Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian and African Languages Type of research: Analyzing what words and sentences mean Date of research: Abbott started the research during graduate school in 1970.
Author Chris Mooney will speak on campus at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Wilson Hall Auditorium. The event will be open to the public. Mooney wrote the best-selling book, "The Republican War on Science." He also works for Seed Magazine and The American Prospect. Mooney's books will be for sale after the event, and he will do a book signing. The program is sponsored by MSU's Science, Technology, Environment and Public Policy Specialization.
Daniel Okrent, the former public editor for The New York Times and author of four books, will give the annual Neal Shine Ethics Lecture at 4 p.m.
Sparty's Convenience Stores will begin selling donation cards on Monday to raise funds for an MSU volunteer program in New Orleans. The program, called the MSU New Orleans Summer Project, will send about 30 MSU students, faculty and volunteers to four New Orleans-area school districts this summer, where they will tutor K-12 students and help rebuild the teachers' homes affected by Hurricane Katrina last August. "It's a new effort, and it really appears to be an effort that pulls together a number of issues that are important to the university and Sparty's," said Ken Deneau, Sparty's general manager. The projected cost of the project is about $800 per person, said Joyce Grant, an associate professor of teacher education who is coordinating the trip. Volunteers will drive down in rented vans on May 29 and return to Michigan on June 25, she said. "There are a lot of things that are going on to raise money," Grant said, including efforts to earn support grants.
Student government officials are working this week to transition ASMSU's organization into its next term, which begins today. ASMSU is MSU's undergraduate student government. The group is introducing new assembly members to the organization and preparing old members for their new positions, among other things, as this week is labeled "Orientation Week" by ASMSU officials. "We're going to have to get the organization functioning with the new positions that have opened as a result of the tax increase, integrate them and do that as quickly as possible," said Roger Ludy, vice chairperson for internal affairs for ASMSU's Student Assembly.
The MSU Vis Arbitral Moot team will participate in an international law competition beginning on Saturday. The 13th annual Willem C.
By Trey Scroggin For The State News Some professors say they have found the key to making traditional lectures more interesting — by turning them into games. At the Reacting to the Past conference for faculty held over the weekend at the Kellogg Center, professors learning about France in the 1790s took on the roles of figures of the era while gaining insight to a new teaching method. The Reacting to the Past program is a way of allowing students to take control of their education by participating in a role-playing game in which they assume the roles of people throughout history and argue about different issues from their characters' perspectives. All the professors involved with the game, called "Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791," were eager to speak for their characters' opinions and dig into the material. The purpose of the conference was to familiarize MSU faculty with the program and the structure of the games, as well as to put it in contact with professors who have previously taught the program. More than a dozen games have been developed for classroom use.
Issues such as how much negotiating power a person has when getting a warranty for a television and in contracts with insurance companies were addressed at a conference Friday at the MSU College of Law. Law students and professors listened to speakers at the conference, which was organized by the Michigan State Law Review and law Associate Professor Daniel Barnhizer.
In three weeks, students will have their last opportunity to take the paper version of the Medical College Admission Test. Upcoming changes to the exam, commonly known as the MCAT, will transform it from a paper format into an electronic format — allowing more opportunities for students to take the exam each year, and faster turn-around time for students and universities to receive scores. But the transition won't have a large impact on MSU's medical schools, which use the exam during the admissions process, university officials said. The colleges of Human Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine require the MCAT for admission, and the College of Veterinary Medicine accepts both the MCAT and the Graduate Record Examination, or GRE. The College of Veterinary Medicine would be the least affected of the three colleges, because most of their applicants take the GRE, said Hilda Mejia Abreu, director of admissions for the college. "It doesn't impact us as much as it would the other medical schools," Abreu said. But Kathie Schafer, director of admissions for the College of Osteopathic Medicine, said the change in format would help in processing applications. "It'll be more efficient for us if the applicants get their results quickly, too," Schafer said.
When Timothy Vitollo found out he won a drawing that would send him to a national rock, paper, scissors tournament, he first thought it was a scam. But Vitollo, a second-year law student, soon learned it was legitimate — complete with a trip to New York. "I didn't even remember entering my name in the drawing," Vitollo said.
Christy Curtis' voice tensed as she talked about her late mother and the care she received in her last years. Curtis' family decided to hire a home health care worker to take care of her mother after the family had difficulty providing the care themselves.
A search is underway to fill the position of senior associate provost, with plans to have a candidate selected by the end of this semester, university officials said. The senior associate provost will assist Provost Kim Wilcox in implementing university initiatives and managing academic colleges, departments and units. A committee, comprised of three deans, one school director, a faculty member and an administrator, already has met once to begin looking at about 12 possible candidates, said Donna Zischke, MSU's associate director for academic human resources. But rather than looking nationwide, the search is only open to faculty and administrators within the MSU community, Wilcox said. "I'm interested in someone who understands Michigan State — understands the campus, the organization and the goals," Wilcox said. Qualifications for the position include effective communication skills, the ability to work collaboratively and having tenured status, which is an indefinite faculty appointment with MSU. "The person in this role needs a very broad view of the university and a capacity to learn and address issues across a broad scope," said Bob Banks, assistant provost and assistant vice president for academic human resources. Banks added that the candidates come from several different areas within the university. The search committee will continue to meet over the next several weeks to review candidates' credentials, including their strengths and weaknesses for the position, before submitting a report to Wilcox by the end of this term, Wilcox said. He then will make a recommendation for the position to MSU President Lou Anna K.
Driving along Grand River Avenue the morning of March 22, MSU police Officer Lorrie Bates typed the license plate number of the car in front of her into a computer in her police SUV. The plate had expired in January. Bates pulled the motorist over and wrote him a ticket.
Now that an additional $237,000 will be made available because of a student tax increase, ASMSU officials plan to expand their organization to compensate workers for their efforts during the year and create new jobs to equalize the workload. The funding was made available to ASMSU officials after voters passed a $3 tax increase in last week's student government election, but now a new budget must be passed and finalized by ASMSU's Student Assembly before any extra funding goes into effect. The extra money gives student government officials a cushioned budget of about $1.1 million to work with for the year. The tax increase, which raises the current tax from $13.75 per semester to $16.75 per semester, will be effective during the summer and is necessary to "enhance the characteristics and qualities" of the organization, said Meg Wolocko, ASMSU's comptroller. "(We want) to be able to give back to students," Wolocko said.
MSU researchers are working to develop a more potent version of a powerful cancer-fighting drug, while making its production more environmentally friendly. MSU Assistant Professor Kevin Walker is heading up research to develop a biosynthetic way of producing the drug Taxol — a popular anti-cancer agent — and make stronger versions of the drug that would reduce treatment dosages. Taxol is known as a "spindle poison" that targets quickly dividing cancer cells and prevents them from dividing, according to a University of Bristol Web site.
A scoring error in SAT exams administered in October has granted new scores to more than 4,400 high school students nationwide, including about 50 students who applied to MSU. After two high school students requested their exams be rescored by hand in December, the College Board, a New York-based organization that administers the test, stumbled upon a larger problem — student scores were both underscored and overscored, said Brian O'Reilly, executive director of SAT information services at the board. All 495,000 exams taken on Oct.