October 16, 2008
Peer Portfolio
NOW SEE THIS: The University of Michigan has installed videophones in several locations on its campus to serve the needs of deaf students, faculty and staff, reports the campus newspaper, The Record. The phones also are available as bedside units for the U-M’s University Hospital. There are nine locations in all.
IN THEIR NAME: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has renamed its school of public health the Gillings School of Global Public Health after receiving a $50 million gift from Dennis and Joan Gillings. Dennis Gillings was a biostatistics professor for 17 years before founding his own company, called Quintiles Transnational Corp. The donation is the largest single gift ever made to the university.
THEY’RE BACK!: It scared millions when Orson Welles produced a radio play of H.G. Wells’ famous novel The War of the Worlds in 1938. The University of Wisconsin at Madison performed the same script in late September and early October — 70 years after the original — and even broadcast one performance live over Wisconsin Public Radio.
HAPPY AS HEF: After four years of research and hundreds of interviews, Steven Watts, a professor of history at the University of Missouri, is finishing a biography of Playboy chief Hugh Hefner. Watts told the campus newspaper, Mizzou Weekly, “With the exception of maybe one person, everyone I talked to — from past wives to people who work for Hefner, seem to adore him … he is truly happy being Hugh Hefner.” Watts previously wrote biographies of Walt Disney and Henry Ford.
DISASTER CENTER: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced plans to open a new Center for the Study of Natural Hazards and Disasters. The new center, according to the campus newspaper The Gazette, “will address issues including hazards law and policy, environmental hazards management and the role of information technology.” The location seems appropriate — the newspaper stated that “between 1980 and 2004 … North Carolina responded to more billion-dollar disasters than any other state in the country.”
MAYBE THIS WILL HELP: The Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh has opened a new 3,000-square-foot, $2.3 million, state-of-the-art financial laboratory. “This new resource will give our students a real-world laboratory where they can use advanced data to study and understand worldwide financial markets,” said James V. Maher, senior vice chancellor. A business administration professor noted, “We know that as major news stories come out about the economy, markets react to them. The lab allows us to show students a breaking news announcement and its effect on the market in real time.”
Peer Portfolio is an occasional column chronicling activities at the UW’s peer institutions.
