HOOPING IT UP | BEARS BASKETBALL EMERGES AS UAA POWERHOUSE | SPORTS, PAGE 8
STUDENT LIFE
THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER OF WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS SINCE 1878 VOLUME 128, NO. 44
WWW.STUDLIFE.COM
MONDAY, JANUARY 22, 2007
Wrighton likely contender for Harvard president position BY TROY RUMANS NEWS EDITOR Emerging as a contender for Harvard’s next president is the University’s own Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. Since the resig n at ion of Lawrence Summers at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year, there has been w idespread Chancellor Mark spec u lat ion as to who will Wrighton lead the nation’s premier educational institution in the upcoming year. In December, The Harvard
Crimson broke a story revealing 11 of the roughly 30 names the search committee presented to its Board of Overseers. Though Harvard is still considering him as a possible candidate, Wrighton denied any interest in the position when his name was fi rst mentioned last December. Dean of Arts & Sciences James McLeod was not surprised that Wrighton is one of the candidates. “I assume that they recognize what we recognize. He’s a great educational leader. He’s terrific. I’m assuming that everyone who knows him and knows Washington University knows what a terrific job he’s done,” said McLeod. While McLeod feels that it is
unlikely that Wrighton will decide to leave, he notes that the possibility exists. “I’m not a person who reads tea leaves like this—I have no way of judging what Harvard will do,” said McLeod. “I’m assuming we can show him we love him more than they do, but I’m assuming they all know what a great job’s been done over the past decade.” Senior Richard Zernickow, who holds the undergraduate student seat on the board of trustees, believes Wrighton has no intention of leaving. “In my interactions with him, he’s got plans for the University and seems dedicated to Wash. U.,” said Zernickow. “He has a vision, and wants to see that vi-
sion out. I don’t see him leaving at all. In some of the meetings, I’ve seen some of the plans he’s laid out and it looks like he’s put a lot into it.” When contacted last week, Wrighton was unavailable for comment, said to be traveling in Turkey. Final-round interviews for the position are currently being planned for the four frontrunners of the search—Stanford Provost John W. Etchemendy, Radcliffe Institute Dean Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard Law School Institute Dean Elena Kagan and University of Cambridge Chief Allison F. Richard. The committee is also planning on adding another name to that list from a scientific field, with
Wrighton being a key candidate. Harvard has not elected a president from any scientific field since James Bryant Conant, who was president from 1933 to 1955. Lecturer in Women and Gender Studies Barbara Baumgartner was impressed by Harvard’s inclusion of two women among the top candidates. “Harvard is one of the premier educational institutions in the country, and if Harvard chooses a female chancellor, that would provide a wonderful example and model for all other educational institutions,” said Baumgartner. Chancellor Mark Wrighton was elected the 14th chancellor of Washington University
Wash. U. awarded for productivity
SNOWBALL FIGHT
BY SARA RAJARAM STAFF REPORTER
DAVID BRODY | STUDENT LIFE
Around 150 students caroused on the Swamp in the wee early hours of the morning on Sunday, Jan. 21. Heavy snowfalls prompted students to erupt in spontaneous snowball fights with strangers while a few dozen men played a rather disorganized game of football.
Local college bans tobacco from campus BY DAVID TABOR MANAGING EDITOR St. Charles Community College made a special resolution this New Year’s. Starting Jan. 1, 2007, a prohibition on tobacco use became effective campuswide. It became the third school in Missouri to enact such a policy. The school’s Board of Directors, who passed the measure unanimously last year, cited the health risks of smoking both to smokers and bystanders who might breathe secondhand smoke. Littering and odor problems were also cited as secondary reasons for the policy. On the Washington University campus, smoking is prohibited in any building managed by Residential Life. In addition, all buildings on the Danforth Campus are smoke-free, unless otherwise indicated. In an e-mail to Student Life, Dean of Students Justin Carroll said that he was unaware of any plans to institute a campus-wide smoking ban. The University has focused attention on the issue but stopped short of calling for students to cease smoking. When a proposed amendment in last November’s elections would have increased taxes on cigarettes in Missouri, Chancellor Mark Wrighton highlighted the
subject in a letter to the University community. “As a leading research and teaching institution, Washington University is committed to improving the health and wellbeing of Missourians through education, cutting-edge research and access to the highest level of patient care,” said Wrighton. “Constitutional Amendments 2 and 3 further all these goals. I urge all members of the Washington University community to consider carefully these ballot measures, and to vote Nov. 7.” The University’s policy of banning smoking in nearly all of its buildings but permitting it in some reserved spaces mirrors that of many schools nationwide. According to the American Nonsmoker’s Rights Foundation, only 41 schools nationwide have campus-wide tobacco bans, but many more have significant restrictions on campus smoking. University of Missouri-St. Louis enacted a smoke-free policy in all buildings and some campus areas in 1991, and St. Louis University bans smoking in all non-residential buildings except for certain areas reserved for smoking. The two schools other than
JENNY SHAO | STUDENT LIFE
See SMOKING, page 2 Senior Alana Fields smokes outside Olin Library on Sunday Jan. 21.
Swimming to the big finish The Bears swimming and diving finished up their season with the Washington University invitational, making an admirable finish to a successful season. Sports, Page 6
in St. Louis in 1995. His long academic career began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 as an assistant professor of chemistry. He became head of the department in 1987. He then held the position of MIT Provost from 1990 until his election to the position of Chancellor at the University. Wrighton has received a host of grants and fellowships in the field of chemistry, has assisted in writing 300 articles in professional and scholarly journals and holds 14 patents. He has also served on a wide array of boards, including the National Science Foundation, the Boston Museum of Science and the Editorial Advisory Board.
The campus big dig continues As students return to campus, a familiar sight greets them: construction. News has the update on what’s done, what’s close, and which projects have a way to go. News, Page 3
Washington University ranked seventh in a recently published ranking of research universities for faculty productivity in doctoral programs. The study, financed by the State University of New York at Stony Brook and published by the Chronicle of Higher Education, ranks individual departments along with the university’s overall research program. In individual programs, the study credited the University with a top 10 ranking in 19 doctoral programs, with a number one rank in its Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Political Science departments. James Cheverud is the graduate head of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department and professor of anatomy. According to Cheverud, the department has not received much attention in other ranking systems because it employs only 10 faculty members, which is small compared to the 40 or more professors in other departments. “The department is not so large but it is of very high quality,” said Cheverud. “It has very prominent senior faculty and good young faculty.” Cheverud said that the high rank of the graduate programs reflects a high quality of education that undergraduates receive because all of the department’s faculty teach undergraduate classes as well. The universities were ranked according to the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (FSP), which assesses a program’s merit by its faculty productivity. This is determined by aggregating the number of papers published, citations received, grant money received and awards accrued to the faculty of a particular program. This data is then divided by the number of faculty members within the program to level the playing field between large universities, which employ a large number of faculty and therefore produce more, and smaller ones, such as Washington University. Robert Thach, dean of the
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Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, said that the high rank is likely to attract more faculty members to work at the University. He also said that the rank will draw more applicants to both its undergraduate and graduate level programs. “It will change the way people think in ways we can’t even predict,” said Thach. According to Thach, the FSP is the first objective method of ranking universities because all other methods, such as the one used by the U.S. News & World Report, depend too heavily on the reputation or the size of a university. This places the University at a disadvantage, as it is too young to have a reputation on the scale of Ivy League schools and has smaller graduate programs. “When the general public thinks of Wash. U., they think of the great job we do with undergraduates and the great medical school even though we have excellence in many areas,” said Thach. “The people aren’t aware of that because the reputational surveys put them at 20 to 30. Reputations take decades to build,” said Thach. The University also gained a top 10 ranking in five of 11 field categories: third in social and behavioral sciences, fourth in biological and biomedical sciences, tied for fifth in public administration and social sciences professions, sixth in humanities and seventh in business. According to the FSP index reports, universities that rank high in faculty productivity also tend to rank high in undergraduate education. Thach said that the public will notice this correlation, thereby improving the University’s reputation. “It is the best job anyone has ever done in coming up with a honest, data based evaluation system,” said Thach. “It has caused a big stir and rightly so.” The FSP was developed by Lawrence Martin, dean of the Graduate School at State University of New York at Stony Brook. The recent index compiled nationwide data from 7,294 programs, 177,816 faculty members and 354 institutions to determine the rankings.
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