Regional

Virtual library To Host World’s Oldest Texts Online

A handful of historians are using the Internet to assemble a virtual library of thousands of clay tablets inscribed with the world’s oldest written language, cuneiform. Started in 1998, the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative has recently taken on new urgency as experts fear the texts could be lost forever if they aren’t electronically cataloged soon.

Some 120,000 cuneiform, or “wedge-shape,” tablets from the third millennium BC alone are scattered throughout the world, and thousands more are plundered each year in Iraq and dumped on the world antiquities market. Some have been sold over eBay.

Robert Englund, professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. believes the only solution to get control of the tablets is to put them on the Internet. Over the next year or two, he plans to finish gathering, cataloging and photographing 120,000 tablets, which will then be posted on the Web.

The project, which is being conducted jointly by UCLA and Germany’s Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, is funded in part by a $650,000 grant from the National Science Foundation through its Digital Libraries Initiative.

When completed, the virtual cuneiform library will include publication, excavation, and collection information about each tablet where available, as well as images and a description of its content. About 60,000 texts are already online.

— The Union Tribune
May 17, 2002

Canada

Online Service Speeds Transcript Exchange

To save time and money, several universities in British Columbia recently unveiled a new service that allows them to transfer student transcripts online.

The first phase of the project has seven of the 27 universities participating; most of the others will likely join later in the year. It cost nearly US$100,000 to set up, but some say the future savings in postal stamps will recoup those expenses – there are about 250,000 requests for transcripts every year in the province, all of which were formally transported via snail mail. As transcripts can now be sent electronically, officials say admissions decisions will take place at a much faster pace.

The seven institutions included in the first phase of the project are British Columbia Institute of Technology, Douglas College, Kwantlen University College, Malaspina University-College, Okanagan University College, Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 30, 2002

Web-Based Learning Initiative to Debut at LaSalle College

LaSalle College, Canada’s largest multilingual private technical training establishment, has selected Centra and its CentraOne™ eLearning platform to introduce a new distance-learning initiative known as iLasalleCampus.

The program will enable instructors and students to connect from remote locations and engage in an interactive classroom environment. LaSalle will also offer self-paced training modules so students can go at their own speed.

The LaSalle College Group, comprised of 23 educational institutions in Canada, serves more than 10,000 students a year, is based in Montreal and offers its instruction in English, French and Spanish. LaSalle expects that by fall 2003, more than 200 students will be participating in its distance-learning program.

— La Salle College
May 14, 2002

The United States

Schools Get First Look at System for Tracking Students

Some 100 university administrators and advisers responsible for ushering foreign students through the visa process at their respective schools visited the University of Minnesota in May to witness a demonstration of the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). Created by the Justice Department, SEVIS will connect 74,000 U.S. colleges, universities, trade schools and other institutions to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and give them instant and detailed information about the foreign students.

Before a foreign student can apply for a visa, he or she will have to be accepted by a school, which will enter the student’s name and identifying information into the database. The student then must pay a $95 registration fee and be issued a paper receipt. That receipt will have to be presented, along with the school’s acceptance letter, to a U.S. Embassy or Consulate when the student seeks a visa. SEVIS will monitor a foreign student’s arrival in the country, if the student enrolls and shows up for class at the beginning of the term and it will also track whether the student takes a required course load, drops out, is expelled or commits a crime.

Starting the system will cost nearly $37 million, and there is speculation as to whether SEVIS will be ready by the proposed Jan 30 deadline. Schools will be able to use the new system voluntarily as early as July 1. All institutions that admit foreign students will be required to use it by Jan. 30.

— The Star Tribune
May 21, 2002

Portrait of U.S. College Students is Changing

Students who go straight from high school to college and leave the same campus four years later with a degree paid for by their parents are quickly becoming a minority according to a new study.

A report entitled “Access & Persistence“, published in May by the American Council on Education reveals that about three-quarters of all students currently work while earning a four-year degree. A quarter of all students hold full-time jobs.

Some of the report’s other findings include:

• Among 9 million students earning bachelor’s degrees, 40 percent came straight from high school, attended classes full time and worked part time — or not at all — while their parents paid the cost of school.
• While 64 percent of students earned a bachelor’s degree within five years, another 16 percent were still enrolled five years later. The remaining 20 percent had left school.
• Less than half of college students, 47 percent, stayed enrolled at the school where their studies began and earned a degree there within five years.

— The Pioneer Press
May 06, 2002

New Policy Bars Part-Time Students from Mexico, Canada

Under a new federal policy, Mexicans and Canadians are now prohibited from enrolling part time at colleges in the United States. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) announced the policy on May 22 in a memo to INS field offices and to the Association of International Educators (NAFSA), a nonprofit organization that supports international education and exchange in higher education.

Officials at some institutions complained about the lack of warning with regard to the announcement. Under the new policy, part-time students in continuing education programs that started before May 22 may be allowed to complete their courses through the end of their current session, but will not be permitted to sign up for courses on a part-time basis after that.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 29, 2002

‘New Mindset’ Needed to Help Latino Students

Latinos, the nation’s fastest-growing minority group, continue to fall through the cracks in the current education system, says a report from the Hispanic Border Leadership Institute.

The report asserts that despite enormous increases in Latino populations in the United States, Latino students continually lag behind in everything from high school-graduation rates to college enrollment. It proposes a need for widespread adoption of “a totally new mindset” among policymakers and educators alike, a mindset that sees Latino students not as disadvantaged and deficient, but as capable of learning.

The report also suggests the situation is getting worse, and that the Southwest is no longer an isolated hotbed of Latino students but a beacon for the entire country. Between 1990 and 2000, the Latino population in Arizona grew 88 percent. Latinos now make up one-third of the state’s school-age population. The state also has the highest high school-dropout rate in the country, led in large part by Latinos — of last year’s 26,000 dropouts, 42 percent were Latinos.

— The Arizona Republic
April 2, 2002

Mexico

Graduate Program Teaches Educational Technology Online

The University of British Columbia (UBC) and Mexico’s Tec de Monterrey have teamed up to offer a joint master’s degree. Applications are now being accepted for the new Master of Educational Technology (MET) Program, opening in September. All courses will be delivered online.

The MET Program is a professional development program aimed at education professionals working in technology-supported learning environments and/or interested in exploring issues related to education and technology. The program was designed to allow students to focus on their area of teaching/education expertise — either the adult/postsecondary sector or the primary/secondary (K-12) sector. Students can choose between the 10-course master’s degree or one of two five-course certificate programs: the postgraduate certificate in technology-based distributed learning, or the postgraduate certificate in technology-based learning for schools. Students can also opt for individual courses, as well.

Not only will students have access to knowledge from two institutions, they will be able to participate in the course regardless of their location. Classes will be offered in both English and Spanish.

— UB Faculty of Education
April 15, 2002

Peru

Campus Officials Say Maoist Rebels are Back

Peruvian authorities fear that the country’s public universities are becoming breeding grounds for terrorists.

In May, a government official announced he had credible evidence that members of the Shining Path guerilla movement, a militant Maoist group, are attempting to organize on college campuses. Terrorism experts and university officials share the government’s concerns.

Sources familiar with the Shining Path movement say the guerrilla group is attempting to make inroads with students at several institutions, including San Marcos National University, where Shining Path pamphlets and graffiti have turned up recently. Other institutions mentioned were Daniel Alcides Carrión National University in Cerro de Pasco, in the central highlands, and the National University of the Altiplano, in Puno.

Shining Path, which declared war on the Peruvian government in 1980, was a powerful force on campuses around the country in the early 1990s. The rebel group began losing its grip on students in 1992, when most of its leaders were arrested. The Peruvian military occupied San Marcos and several other campuses for most of the 1990s.

— The Chronicle of Higher Education
May 29, 2002