In Brief
College Launches UR Here
A Martin Luther King Jr. Day conference on student leadership and urban education signaled the launch of the College’s UR Here initiative, a model for community leadership that has been developing over the past six years. The effort combines existing civic engagement and service learning models and draws on the strengths of the unique Rochester Curriculum to provide undergraduates with opportunities to gain leadership skills and experience in the community while pursuing their academic and extracurricular interests. A keynote speaker for the daylong conference, “Critical Issues in Leadership: Urban Education,” was Malik Evans ’02, a member of the Rochester City School Board.
Baby Planet Makes Top Ten List
A science Web site devoted to astronomy news has selected work by Rochester researchers as among the most important of 2004. In its top ten list for the year, the site RedNova.com included work led by Dan Watson, professor of physics and astronomy, that detected the youngest planet ever discovered, orbiting a star more than 420 light years away. The discovery was made using the new infrared Spitzer Space Telescope, which was partially developed by Rochester astronomers.
Education Programs Earn Accreditation
Programs at the University that prepare teachers, counselors, and educational administrators have been accredited under the performance-oriented standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. The organization is responsible for professional accreditation of teacher education and other programs preparing preschool to grade 12 school personnel. Programs at the Warner School as well as music education programs at the Eastman School were assessed.
Plosser Predicts Economic Growth
The economic growth of 2004, coupled with a gradually declining unemployment rate and a rise in payroll employment, will increase the odds of 2005 being “a very good year,” according to Charles Plosser, the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and Public Policy and former dean of the Simon School. Plosser, who delivered his annual economic outlook last December, predicted real GDP growth of about 3.5 percent in 2005.
Strong Opens New ICUs
Adults, children, and families who need intensive care will benefit from state-of-the-art services from three enhanced units at the Medical Center. Opening last winter, the new facilities include the Kessler Family Burn/Trauma Intensive Care Unit at Strong Memorial Hospital, a new unit for pediatric intensive care, including pediatric cardiac intensive care, at Golisano Children’s Hospital at Strong, and a new Ronald McDonald House located within Golisano Children’s Hospital, only the fourth such service established in a hospital in the United States.
Novel Wins University-Sponsored Prize
Kate Moses, whose novel Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath has received acclaim for its fictional account of the last months of the poet’s life, has been named the recipient of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. The prize is awarded annually by the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies and the Department of English.
