Archive for June, 2008
Ann Arbor bars receive mixed marks on latest health inspections
By Andy Kroll, written on Jun. 29, 2008
A number of popular campus bars throughout Ann Arbor have had their 2008 health inspections from Washtenaw County’s Environmental Health department and the results for these campus haunts have been mixed.
BTB Cantina, Conor O’Neill’s pub, Necto and Rush Street were among the most cited of the more than 10 local bars that had undergone inspections by the county so far this year.
Conor O’Neill’s, Necto and Rush Street were all cited for having facilities that were in disrepair, such as floor tiling in need of immediate replacement. For Necto and Rush Street, citations for disrepair have become as recurring theme, as Necto was cited by the county in November of 2006 and October of 2007 for subpar facilities. Rush Street was previously cited in August of 2007.
Health inspection reports listed pest problems at both Conor O’Neill’s (dead cockroaches in the kitchen) and Necto (flies in several bars, restrooms and in bottles of opened liquor). Necto was also cited for pest control problems in the club’s previous inspection report in October of 2007.
Health inspectors also cited the relatively new BTB Cantina for unsanitary dishwashing practices in the kitchen and by the Cantina’s cooks. The bar’s latest report also stated there were uncovered and exposed containers of food in storage, among other citations.
For access to Washtenaw County’s public health inspection database for restaurants, click here.
More commuter colleges are adding residence halls, including the University of Michigan at Flint
By Julie Rowe, written on Jun. 29, 2008
Georgia State University, once populated solely by commuter students, built dorms on campus to increase enrollment. It worked. The school built luxury residence halls, added to their athletic programs and increased student activities.
”Students say it makes it a ‘real university,”’ Georgia State President Carl Patton told the Associate Press while sitting in the campus’ airy student center. ”What they mean is, ‘You have sports, you have an honors program, you have fraternities and sororities, you have freshman housing, you have places to eat on campus and you have a theater to go to.”’
University of Michigan administrators hope the first residence hall on the Flint campus, approved last year and scheduled to open this fall, will have similar effects. Administrators want to increase enrollment in Flint from 6,500 to 8,000 students by 2010.
“This beautiful, state-of-the-art housing for students will enhance the campus, while helping U-M-Flint achieve its goal of increasing enrollment,” University President Mary Sue Coleman said in a press release.
Increasing enrollment would add revenue to the University’s purse and could have a positive effect on the poor economy of Flint, which is still suffering the loss of automotive manufacturing jobs.
As GSU transitioned to a more traditional campus, restaurants and other businesses followed. When Temple University in North Philadelphia more than doubled the number of enrolled students because of the addition of residence halls, an $80 million complex with student housing, a movie theater and a shopping center was built in what was once a “decaying neighborhood” according to the Associated Press report.
“University housing in downtown Flint will be a part of the vitality of downtown and beyond,” said Regent Olivia Maynard, who lives in Flint, in a press release.
Plans for single proton therapy center in state vetoed
By Charles Gregg-Geist, written on Jun. 28, 2008
For several months the University Health System has been leading a group of health systems in an effort to build a facility for proton beam cancer therapy in southeast Michigan. But Governor Jennifer Granholm, citing antitrust laws, has vetoed the Department of Community Health’s decision to authorize a single proton therapy facility.
The Department of Community Health originally approved a single collaborative to bring the new therapy to the state, in order to eliminate competition and keep prices low. A single facility could cost about $160 million dollars to build.
Besides the University Health System-led collaborative, the William Beaumont Hospitals in Royal Oak has also expressed interest in a proton therapy facility. It would partner with ProCure Treatment Centers a for-profit health technology company based in Indiana.
All the members of the collaborative are non-profit health systems.
Though the collaborative’s proton beam center may not be the only one in the state, it intends to proceed with its plans to construct the center, said UHS Spokeswoman Nicole Fawcett.
The members of the collaborative “still believe in and support the value of working together, despite their disappointment in Governor Granholm’s recent veto,” Fawcett said in an e-mail interview.
Two members, the Henry Ford Health System and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center, have filed for approval to build independent proton beam centers. The University Health System has formally expressed its intent to file such an application.
Proton beam therapy is an alternative to traditional cancer radiation, which uses photons. Proton therapy is thought to be more effective at treating cancerous tumors in sensitive parts of the body and in children, though it hasn’t been proven to be. Equipment for proton therapy can cost about eight times as much as photon therapy equipment.
Fingerle Lumber up for sale
By admin, written on Jun. 27, 2008
The land owned by Fingerle Lumber Co. – after 77 years and three generations in the Fingerle name – is now on the market. Located along South Fifth Avenue, south of Madison Street, the 7.2-acre site is in a prime location for redevelopment, private investors, or the University. It’s close to Main Street and rests just north of the University’s athletic complex.
University spokeswoman Kelly Cunningham said the University has no plans to acquire the Fingerle property, priced at $21.925 million, at the moment.
“The University’s Master Plan for campus development does not contemplate use of that property,” Cunningham said.
My liberal arts degree is worth how little?
By Andy Kroll, written on Jun. 27, 2008
A recently departed Education Department official fired a parting shot at her former employer, saying the department is controlled by advisers who don’t care about the liberal arts and instead judge colleges on their ability to produce students who can get out into the world and…well, produce.
Diane Auer Jones, the department’s former assistant secretary for postsecondary education, told the Chronicle of Higher Education this week that her departure “reflected the intensity of the Education Department’s internal and external battles to force colleges to do a better job of proving the value they provide to their students and the taxpayers who finance their operations.”
Alas, we find ourselves back at the question of how to quantify and put a value on a liberal arts degree—a degree in English or Art History or American studies (my major) or History, among many, many others—a task much harder to do than for a degree in, say, economics or business administration.
As the Chronicle reports, the Education Department has recently developed new standards for college accreditors, which the colleges themselves have to meet in order to maintain federal recognition and so their students can be eligible to receive federal aid. Which basically means that the Education Department wants colleges to show greater proof of student achievement.
And while it may be easy to prove student achievement with students’s grades and graduation rates, liberal arts accreditors like the American Academy for Liberal Education—which accredits a number of private, religiously affiliated liberal arts colleges and tries to measure more than just test scores and graduation rates when accrediting its schools—have felt the Ed. Dept.’s wrath.
Jones told the Chronicle that the AALE is being penalized “because department officials don’t sufficiently appreciate the academy’s efforts to verify quality outside of objective measures such as graduation rates or test scores.” So an attempt by a liberal arts accrediting agency to rightly measure more than cold, hard statistics goes punished.
The Ed. Dept.’s penalization of the AALE “was really the essence of what I saw as a misguided attempt to really narrow the focus of higher education and to almost vocationalize all of higher education,” Jones said.
Not that higher education isn’t slouching towards vocationalization anyway.
A couple weeks ago, a perky little press release turned up in my inbox from the folks at collegegrads.com. The release had a list of the “Top Entry Level Majors Announced for 2008 College Grads”—and not surprisingly, liberal arts were absent from the top of the list.
The top five majors were as follows:
- Accounting – 23%
- All Engineering – 13%
- Marketing – 11%
- Computer Science – 10%
- Business Administration – 9%
(The complete list can be found here.)
According to the site, liberal arts comprised only 2.75% of the top entry level majors, and journalism (gulp) only 0.36%. But at least it beat out Zoology (0.06%)!
Then again, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the liberal arts are so far down the list when the top entry level employer for 2008 was Enterprise Rent-A-Car.
Social Work Dean to lead University of Illinois at Chicago
By Charles Gregg-Geist, written on Jun. 19, 2008
The dean of the School of Social Work at the University, Paula Allen-Meares, will be the next chancellor of the University of Illinois’s Chicago campus, UIC announced Tuesday. As chancellor, Allen-Meares will oversee a campus of about 25,000 students, the largest in Chicago.
In announcing Allen-Meares’ selection Lawrence Eppley, chair of the University of Illinois board of regents, spoke at length about her success leading the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan.
“Over the last 15 years Paula Allen-Meares as dean led a professional school at the University of Michigan that ranked at the very top of the very best,” he said. “The school has done so because of her vigorous leadership, scholarship, ability to acquire resources necessary for excellence and an affinity for mentoring faculty and students alike.”
Eppley also stressed Allen-Meares’ connections to the University of Illinois. Until she came to Ann Arbor in 1993, Allen-Meares was the dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Masters in Social Work and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and her husband and three daughters all earned degrees from the institution, as well.
In moving to UIC, Allen-Meares leaves behind a number of major research projects she leads. She is also the principal investigator for the Global Program on Youth, an initiative based at the School of Social Work that aims to make research on social work more useful for practicing social workers.
Obama personally apologizes to University alum denied seating during Detroit speech
By Julie Rowe, written on Jun. 19, 2008
After two Muslim women were told they weren’t allowed to sit behind the stage at a campaign speech because they wore headscarves Monday, Sen. Barack Obama called the women to personally apologize today.
One of the women, University alum Shimaa Abdelfadeel, said volunteers told her no one with anything on their heads — including scarves and baseball caps — were allowed to sit behind the stage.
Abdelfadeel and her friend who was also told to sit elsewhere, Hebba Aref, sent The Michigan Daily this statement:
At the rally for Senator Obama in Detroit on Monday, June 16, two volunteers denied us seating behind the stage the Senator would soon take. The volunteers informed us that we were not allowed to sit in that area due to the hijab, the headscarf that each of us was wearing.
This incident was unfortunate and extremely disappointing. Senator Obama has called us each to personally convey his deepest apologies and acknowledge that this was inexcusable. We both immensely appreciate the Senator’s phone call and his commitment to remedy this issue. We commend him for displaying qualities befitting an effective President. We acknowledge that this injustice has been taken seriously and that Senator Obama does not tolerate discrimination against Arabs, Muslims or any community. We are assured that he and his staff are committed to upholding the principles of justice for all peoples and bringing about change we can believe in. The infringement on our rights occurred and has been addressed; now we are ready to move forward. We will continue to support Senator Obama in his campaign and wish him the best as the race continues.
Regards,
Shimaa Abdelfadeel
Hebba Aref
Obama released the following statement:
I reached out to Ms. Aref and Ms. Abdelfadeel this afternoon. I spoke with Ms. Abdelfadeel, and expressed my deepest apologies for the incident that occurred with volunteers at the event in Detroit. The actions of these volunteers were unacceptable and in no way reflect any policy of my campaign. I take deepest offense to and will continue to fight against discrimination against people of any religious group or background. Our campaign is about bringing people together, and I’m grateful that Ms. Abdelfadeel accepted our apology and I hope Ms. Aref and any who were offended accept my apology as well.