January 15, 2009

Carnegie Foundation Calls for Overhaul of Engineering Education

The nation’s engineering schools are using outdated educational practices that focus too heavily on imparting technical knowledge and do not do enough to prepare undergraduate students for the profession, according to a new report issued by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

The report, “Educating Engineers: Designing for the Future of the Field,” argues that, in the midst of worldwide transformation of the engineering profession, undergraduate engineering programs in the United States continue to approach problem-solving and knowledge acquisition in an outdated manner. Moreover, engineering programs’ solution to improving the education they offer has been simply to add more courses, rather than reconsidering the design of their programs.

Instead of having a “jam-packed curriculum focused on technical knowledge,” engineering programs should be doing more to help students develop analytical reasoning, practical skills, and professional judgment, the report says.

“We are calling for a new model that will involve fundamentally rethinking the role and even the makeup of the faculty,” Sheri D. Sheppard, a co-author of the report who directed a long-term study of engineering education for the foundation, said in a written statement issued today.

“Among other things, the new model gives more importance to teachers and researchers who are sympathetic to professional concerns and have some interest in them,” Ms. Sheppard said.

“Educating Engineers” is the third in a series of reports on professional education issued by Carnegie’s Preparation for the Professions Program, which is conducting two- or three-year studies of training in various fields. The program also has issued reports on the preparation of lawyers and members of the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy, and it plans in the coming months to issue reports on the preparation of nurses and physicians. —Peter Schmidt

Gunman Robs English Class at College in Memphis

A man walked into an English class at LeMoyne-Owen College, in Memphis, this morning and robbed 18 students at gunpoint.

The gunman fired no shots, and he escaped from the campus, LeMoyne-Owen’s president, Johnnie B. Watson, said in an interview. Campus officials notified students and employees of the incident, he said, and asked that “no movement take place on campus whatsoever.”

The college canceled classes for the rest of the day to give law-enforcement officers full access to the academic building where the incident took place, Mr. Watson said.

It was not known on Thursday afternoon whether the perpetrator was a student. A surveillance camera at the entrance to the academic building recorded video that police officers are now reviewing, Mr. Watson said.

Classes will resume on Friday at the college. —Sara Lipka

Under New NCAA Rule, 7th-Grade Basketball Players Are 'Prospective Athletes'

National Harbor, Md. — They may be two years away from starting high school, but seventh-grade basketball players are now officially on the NCAA’s radar.

Under a new recruiting rule adopted this week, male basketball players in the seventh and eighth grades are now defined as prospective athletes, a move designed to prevent overeager college coaches from recruiting them.

NCAA rules previously defined a prospective basketball athlete as any student who had begun classes for the ninth grade. But in the intensely competitive world of Division I basketball recruiting, some coaches work in their off season at elite, privately run camps and clinics for seventh- and eighth-grade players to gain early access to talented young athletes.

The result was a recruiting advantage for coaches that the NCAA felt compelled to rein in, officials said today here at the group’s annual meeting.

“For the good of the sport of men’s basketball, this was something that needed to be implemented at this time,” said Joseph F. D’Antonio, associate commissioner of the Big East Conference and chair of the Division I Legislative Council. The council approved the new rule on Wednesday and gave it final approval today.

The measure, which takes effect immediately, had strong support from the National Association of Basketball Coaches, which has strongly opposed the recruitment of young athletes.

“It’s scary,” Mr. D’Antonio said. “The fact that we’ve gotten to this point is really just a sign of the times.” —Libby Sander

Federal Government Tightens Registration Rules for Human-Subjects Committees

Washington — The federal Office for Human Research Protections has tightened its registration requirements for campus committees that review research involving human subjects. Under a final rule published in today’s Federal Register, such committees — which are commonly known as institutional review boards, or IRB’s — must register with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services every three years.

The Office for Human Research Protections has operated a voluntary IRB-registration system since 2000. The new rule makes it mandatory, expands the range of information that must be reported, and harmonizes the registration system with that of the Food and Drug Administration.

Among other things, institutions must now report the name and mailing address of the administrator who supervises the IRB and the approximate number of research protocols that the IRB has reviewed during the previous 12 months.

If an institution fails to keep its registrations current, the Office for Human Research Protections has the authority to restrict or revoke the institution’s permission to receive federal research support.

In an interview today, the office’s director, Jerry A. Menikoff, said that the new rule should not be burdensome. “There will be one Web site, and you can register for both FDA and our system at the same time,” he said. “All of this is really designed to, to the extent possible, make things easy for everyone.”

An official with the Council on Governmental Relations, a university coalition that is often skeptical of new federal regulations, said in an e-mail message today that the rule seems fine to her. “We appreciate the efforts of OHRP and FDA to create a single system,” said Carol Blum, the council’s director of research compliance and administration.

The rule will officially take effect on July 14, and all committees must be registered by September 14. —David Glenn

Do Drugs Help Psychiatrists Tune Out Patient Voices?

Washington — If psychiatrists keep hearing voices — from corporate backers — does that mean they actually listen to them?

Disputes over that question are growing as the American Psychiatric Association works toward the publication, in 2012, of the next edition of the mental-health bible known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

The APA’s reference book, known simply as the DSM, plays a critical role in determining the recommended treatment for known types of mental disorders, including what treatments are covered by health-care providers. Development of the planned fifth version, or DSM-V, is being led by a 27-member panel of experts formed in July 2007 by the APA.

But it is not developing without controversy. Last July, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, wrote to the APA’s chief executive, James Henry Scully Jr., asking a series of questions about suspected conflicts of interest involving psychiatrists and drug manufacturers.

Senator Grassley cited a New York Times article saying that drug companies provided about 30 percent of the APA’s budget, and that commercial ties between doctors and drug companies are more common among psychiatrists because of their low pay.

That debate is now being stoked by a pair of articles, in a point-counterpoint format by four psychiatric professionals, in this month’s issue of Psychiatric Times magazine. Lisa Cosgrove of the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Harold J. Bursztajn of Harvard University’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston point out that 70 percent of the experts serving on the APA’s panel for writing DSM-V have reported direct financial ties to the pharmaceuticals industry.

That figure, 14 percent higher than the percentage of those with industry connections who served on the previous DSM-IV panel, shows that disclosure requirements alone aren’t sufficient to prevent patient diagnoses from continuing to be affected by industry drug-marketing campaigns, Dr. Cosgrove and Dr. Bursztajn argue.

They’re rebutted by David J. Kupfer of the University of Pittsburgh and Darrel A. Regier of the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education, who complain that honest psychiatrists are being impugned by “those whose ideological beliefs about mental disorders do not include a role for medication.” Dr. Kupfer and Dr. Regier also assert that Senator Grassley, for all his criticisms, hasn’t alleged any actual wrongdoing. —Paul Basken

Black-College Fund to Benefit From Inaugural Ball

UNCF, formerly known as the United Negro College Fund, will be the beneficiary of the Inaugural Purple Ball after the actor Louis Gossett Jr. and his foundation pulled their support of the event.

Mr. Gossett’s nonprofit organization the Eracism Foundation was supposed to play host to the ball, which organizers said was created to honor bipartisanship and diversity. According to The Washington Post, Mr. Gossett had complained that the membership of the ball’s entertainment and host committee, which includes the actors Ashley Judd, Kate Walsh, and Ed Harris, was not diverse enough.

The switch should provide a sizable benefit to UNCF. Tickets for the ball range from $500 to $5,000, and 600 people are confirmed to attend, the Washington City Paper reported. —Kathryn Masterson

Professor Who Plagiarized Retires After University Suspension

James B. Twitchell, an English professor at the University of Florida, has retired after it suspended him for five years for plagiarism.

The university’s decision, first reported by Inside Higher Ed, would have required Mr. Twitchell to provide evidence that he had not committed further plagiarism in order to be reinstated to the faculty. But Mr. Twitchell’s retirement has made that provision moot.

Over the past decade, Mr. Twitchell became well known for his writing on American consumerism, with books like AdCult USA and Branded Nation. He also has contributed to The Chronicle Review. Last spring The Gainesville Sun reported that he had lifted multiple descriptive passages in several of his books. Mr. Twitchell acknowledged at the time that he had “cheated.” —Thomas Bartlett

Team of U.S. and Japanese Scientists Wins $500,000 Crafoord Prize

Three scientists from the United States and Japan have been awarded the Crafoord Prize for discoveries leading to the development of drugs for rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and Still’s disease, the Associated Press reported today. The $500,000 prize will be presented to the three scientists — Tadamitsu Kishimoto and Toshio Hirano of Osaka University, and Charles Dinarello of the University of Colorado at Denver — by Sweden’s Royal Academy of Sciences on May 11. —David Shieh

AAUP Faults Cedarville and Olivet Nazarene Universities Over Personnel Moves

The American Association of University Professors has issued investigative reports criticizing Cedarville University, in Ohio, and Olivet Nazarene University, in Illinois, over their treatment of tenured professors.

For its part, Cedarville, a Baptist institution, has returned fire, issuing statements denouncing the AAUP report as riddled with errors and reflecting a “historical bias against religious schools.”

Officials at Olivet Nazarene were unavailable for comment on Wednesday, but plan to respond to the report on their institution today.

The AAUP investigation of Cedarville focused on its July 2007 termination of David M. Hoffeditz, a tenured professor who was removed from his job in the biblical-studies department at a time when it was deeply divided over theological questions. The AAUP report concludes that Cedarville dismissed Mr. Hoffeditz without having demonstrated cause for its action in an adjudicative hearing, and says the university’s stated procedures for contesting dismissal denied him due process by, for example, placing the burden of proof on him and not allowing him a hearing before a body of faculty peers.

The report faults the administration of Cedarville more broadly. It says a lack of “meaningful shared governance,” combined with the administration’s bypassing of established channels of academic decision making and the lack of procedural safeguards against dismissal, “has resulted in a sense of insecurity and mistrust among faculty that is inimical to academic freedom.”

In its response, Cedarville calls the AAUP report “a prime example of a flawed document that does not contribute in any constructive manner to a sensitive and difficult issue.” It accuses the association’s investigators of relying on misstatements of fact to support predetermined conclusions, and argues that religiously affiliated institutions account for a disproportionately large share of the colleges the association has censured.

The AAUP report on Olivet Nazarene focuses on its May 2007 decision to suspend Richard Colling, a tenured professor of biology, from his usual responsibility of teaching a general biology class for nonmajors. The report concludes that the university took Mr. Colling out of the classroom and prohibited a book he had written from being used on the campus in response to objections by members of the Church of the Nazarene to his efforts to argue that belief in evolution is compatible with belief in God as creator.

The report says the university administration “placed a higher value on what the president calls ‘constituent relations’ than on the principles of academic freedom to which the university itself claims to subscribe.” —Peter Schmidt

January 14, 2009

Thai Professor Is Threatened With Jail for Questioning Monarchy's Neutrality During Coup

A prominent Thai political-science professor who is being investigated on accusations of insulting the monarchy, a crime known as “lèse-majesté,” says that the complaint against him is politically motivated and that he is the victim of a witch-hunt, Channel News Asia reports. Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a professor at Chulalongkorn University, is calling for an international campaign to end the law, which prescribes jail terms for those who criticize the royal family.

Mr. Giles, who was summoned to police headquarters on Monday, is under investigation for his book, A Coup for the Rich. He asserts that during the 2006 military overthrow of the former premier, who was popular among the poor, the Thai monarchy was not as politically neutral as claimed. The professor says lèse-majesté is being used by military and authoritarian elites to protect their own interests.

Insults against the monarchy are taken seriously in Thailand, where the royal family is highly revered. An Australian professor remains in a Thai jail for writing a novel in which a brief passage portrays a crown prince’s private life in an unflattering light.

But rights groups now accuse Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajivam, who recently took office after months of unrest, of using the law to muzzle his opponents. Earlier this month, several thousand Web sites were blocked after the courts ruled they had insulted the king. —Martha Ann Overland