November 15, 2007
Peer portfolio
OPEN KIOSK: Most university employees work at computers all day, but not all. Custodians and maintenance crews, landscape crews, food workers, for instance, don’t have easy access to computers, and so have less chance to receive information available only online. The University of Missouri has a pilot program designed to help that — free-standing computer kiosks available for such employees to improve their access to the online world.
The pilot project comes at a time when the university, like many others, is starting an emergency communication system that includes e-mail notices. A campuswide committee designed the pilot program, which includes five computer stations at different campus locations. Eventually, the hope is to expand to other locations and groups of staff with limited or no computer access. “We’re really just scratching the surface of what this program could finally be,” an MU assistant vice chancellor for facilities told the newspaper, Mizzou Weekly. “We’re really talking about making a change in workplace culture.”
TASEE CONTRITE: The University of Florida seems to have accepted the multiple apologies offered by Andrew (“Don’t tase me, bro!”) Meyer, the student whose interruptions of John Kerry on Sept. 17 got him tazed and arrested by campus police.
“Andrew has told university officials he has learned from this experience and is sorry,” wrote a UF vice president for student affairs on the university’s Web site recently. Meyer has sent apologies to the campus police, the university president and the larger university community. Meyer will serve 18 months of probation rather than be prosecuted, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
“I’m so sorry I lost my cool in that auditorium,” Meyer wrote. “I stepped out of line and broke the rules of the forum. It was my actions that forced the officers there into a position where they needed to take action.”
The vice president added, “While this incident never should have occurred, the university is engaged in a conversation regarding events policies and the use of Tasers on campus. Students, faculty, campus police, staff and the entire academic community are participating in this discussion.”
VIEW FROM ORBIT: Scientists at the University of Arizona are planning to build a prototype version of a satellite-borne remote sensing system with the ability to measure water vapor, temperature and ozone anywhere on Earth with unprecedented accuracy. The plan is to test-fly the Active Temperature, Ozone, and Moisture Microwave Spectrometer (ATOMMS) on high-altitude jets within the next three years. The university’s Web site stated, “The proposed system is designed to give global climate change scientists benchmark data that is critically needed for research and policymaking.”
M-WHO?: An initiative is afoot to drop the word “Columbia” from the title University of Missouri-Columbia, as a way to clarify that the institution is the state’s leading university.
MU’s chancellor, Brady Deaton, called the potential change “name restoration,” and told the campus newspaper, Mizzou Weekly, “This is a very important symbolic move that clarifies our communication with the public about what the role of this university is. Including Columbia in our name simply adds an additional communication barrier. There really should be no question as to whether this campus is the flagship.”
The proposal got its start from university alumni, who feel that the regional name Columbia hinders fundraising. Some faculty and administrators on the system’s other campuses — such as the University of Missouri-Kansas City and University of Missouri-St. Louis — feel that changing the name of the flagship campus might make others look like satellite campuses rather than distinct schools.
CIGS BARRED: Don’t plan to smoke if you visit the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Come the new year, smoking will not be allowed within 100 feet of all outdoor areas controlled by the university, according to its newspaper The Gazette. The ban includes any facility in which the university leases the entire space, and all state-owned vehicles, too. And there will be no designated smoking areas anywhere on campus.
Peer Portfolio is a column reporting on activities at the University’s peer institutions.
