Departments
In the News
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Week of 16 October 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 10 |
In the News
Noting the rising need nationwide for more -- and more competent -- teachers, Chancellor John Silber, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, proposes a novel plan to provide higher salaries and thus attract better qualified candidates in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal ("Good Teachers Deserve a Tax Break," October 5). "Were the government to make the first $30,000 of a teacher's salary tax exempt, it would in effect be providing the equivalent of a $9,000 raise," he writes. He suggests that the exemption be made available only to the best teachers, and estimates that if half of all teachers qualified, the amount would be just over half a percent of the federal budget.
The September 30 Boston Herald reports on a busy day following Rhett, BU's 76-year-old mascot, on his daily rounds of cheerleading and community outreach. Ron D'Innocenzo, Rhett's keeper and BU's coordinator of sports promotions, explains that the BU icon is stepping up his public appearances in the area this year as an ambassador of goodwill. The top Terrier admits in an interview that Northeastern University's mascot, Mister Husky, gets under his skin. "Three years ago, the husky started getting real, real fresh," he says.
"Before you transfer technology, you have to develop it," says ENG Professor Andre Sharon, explaining the importance of advanced manufacturing technologies to business success in a profile in the October 1998 Mass High Tech. "In the U.S., large companies would rather acquire new technology unless it's part of their core business, and few of them see manufacturing as part of their core business." Sharon was recently appointed director of the Fraunhofer Resource Center at BU, part of a worldwide nonprofit network of 9,000 people in 47 countries that focuses on bridging the gap between academic research and the needs of industry.
CAS Associate Professor of History Bruce Schulman puts Bill Clinton's presidency in a historical context in a September 13 op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times. "Whatever his fate on Capitol Hill, Clinton's principal historical role has been to consolidate the Reagan revolution of the 1980s . . . to make conservatism palatable to the Great American Middle," he writes. Of Clinton's legacy, he says, "Long after Americans have forgotten Linda R. Tripp and the stained cocktail dress, history will remember Clinton as a consolidator, the president who completed the right turn first signaled by Reagan and Bush."
According to a September 30 op-ed piece in the Boston Globe by MED Professor Judith K. Gwathmey and Marie T. Oates of Bayridge, a Boston center for university and professional women, the recent tragic death of Olympic track star Florence Griffith Joyner calls attention to the little-known fact that cardiovascular disease claims the lives of more than 500,000 women each year. "With all the attention breast cancer and AIDS receive in the media," they write, "many Americans don't realize that heart disease continues to be the number one cause of death in the United States, with a disproportionate rate of mortality affecting African-Americans."
"In the News" is compiled by the Office of Public Relations.