SPORTS Through a defensive struggle, the men’s basketball team has won three games in a row by one point.
temple-news.com
VOL. 91 ISS. 19
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2013
TRANSPARENT TEMPLE, p. 5
Bri Bosak supports making state-related schools fully under Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know law.
Interim provost appointed to permanent spot Hai-Lung Dai is working to fill four interim deanships by summer. SEAN CARLIN News Editor Not much has changed for Hai-Lung Dai. Days after he dropped his interim title and was formally appointed provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs, his most prevalent thought didn’t seem to be about his new role or a feeling of relief that he was chosen. “I think this week my biggest challenge is answering all of the emails,” Dai said. In his first major move as president, Neil Theobald named the former dean of the College of Science and Technology and senior vice provost for International Affairs provost after Theobald said Dai “earned the trust of his colleagues” during his tenure as interim provost throughout the last year. “His broad experience in teaching, research, and education makes him an outstanding choice to be provost, and I am confident that he will be an outstanding contributor to the university leadership team,” Theobald said in an email announcement. While Dai is described by his peers as an excellent researcher and administrator, the depictions of Dai give little credence to the Taiwan native’s accomplishments across the country and his more than 20 years of experience at the University of Pennsylvania before he came to Temple.
UPBRINGING
Dai was born in Taiwan and graduated from National Taiwan University in 1974 where he majored in chemistry and mi-
nored in physics, when he was 20 years old, before serving two years in the military. After his service in the military, Dai came to the United States for graduate school and received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1981. He did three years of post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before he moved to Philadelphia in 1984 to work at Penn. Dai was promoted to full professor in 1992 and then served two terms as the chair of Penn’s department of chemistry. Interim Dean of CST Michael Klein was at Penn when Dai became department chair and lobbied for him to become the head of the department. “I have enormous respect for his passion for research and education and this coupled with his exemplary interpersonal skills make a formidable leader,” Klein said in an email. “I recognized his rare talents early and campaigned for him to be the chair of chemistry at Penn when he was relatively young and the rest is history.” In 2002, Dai was named a Hirschmann-Makineni Professor of Chemistry and he also served with the Penn Science Teacher Institute during his tenure at Penn.
HIDDEN CITY, p. 9
A student worker in the library’s Urban Archives uses work experience and film interest to assist in the documentary storytelling of Philadelphia in the early 1900s.
Lessons in Faith
After coming to Temple, some students may question their faith. Others find it near campus. JOHN MORITZ Assistant News Editor
F
or Christian Matozzo, the decision to move into the apartments at Temple’s Newman Center was more than just the typical housing selection. “I was being called,” Matozzo, a freshman journalism major, said. Matozzo, who formerly commuted to Main Campus, said that moving into the Newman Center, which serves as Main Campus’ Roman Catholic Church, provided more than the
relationships fostered at Temple’s residence halls, it helped him connect with his religion on a community level while living the already hectic life of a college student. The Newman Center is one of two centers devoted to religious life on Main Campus, along with the Edward H. Rosen Hillel Center. In addition, local churches around Main Campus provide service opportunities for Temple’s worshipping population. Nationwide, a growing number of young people identify themselves as not belonging to any organized religion.
According to a 2012 survey of 192,000 incoming freshmen by the Cooperative Institution Research program at the University of California-Los Angeles, 23.8 percent of freshmen reported having no religious affiliations, up from 11.95 percent in 1990. According to a Temple News Web poll of 80 readers, 8 percent indicated they attend religious services at centers or churches around Main Campus. Still, the predominate number of respondents, 66 percent, said they do not attend religious worship. “One of the changes is that
students, young people of that age, are sort of uncertain of the direction that they want to head religiously,” Phil Nordlinger, director of Hillel at Temple said. “At Temple, it’s tough to engage students in religious activities, it is tough to find an entry point,” said the Rev. Renee McKenzie-Hayward of Church of the Advocate, an Episcopal church located several blocks from Main Campus on the 1800 block of North Diamond Street. McKenzie-Hayward said that it has been difficult to re-
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Debris catches fire at high-rise Small fires occurred on the 18th floor of Morgan Hall. JOHN MORITZ Assistant News Editor Fire in the high-rise of the Morgan Hall complex yester-
day, Feb. 11, halted work in the building and caused gridlock at the intersection of Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. At least three separate fires were reported in the building, all caused by burning construction debris, said Ray Betzner, assistant vice president for university communications.
The fires caused workers to evacuate and sections of Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue to be shut down, although reports indicated no injuries or damage to property. Betzner said Temple is still awaiting the full report by the fire marshal. Fire radio reports indicated
that the fire was placed under control at about 12:45 p.m. Workers on the ground said that there was fire in the electrical room on the 18th floor of the building. A worker on the tower, John Brown, said he was work-
FIRE PAGE 2
TRANSITION TO NORTH BROAD
In 2007, Dai came to Temple as the dean of CST and a Laura H. Carnell Professor of Chemistry. He was later named senior vice provost for International Affairs in 2010. When asked what the major differences are between the two schools, Dai called Temple the “best value in town.” “Often people ask me, ‘Is it worth it to go to Ivy League [schools]?’” Dai said. “I say, ‘Come to Temple.’ It’s a much lower tuition and you receive
PROVOST PAGE 2
Bystanders look on as firefighters contain a fire on the 18th floor of Morgan Hall. The $216 million, 27-story residence hall apparently received little damage from the fire.| ANGELO FICHERA TTN
TSG aims to foster higher education The program promotes importance of college to teens. LAURA DETTER The Temple News
Ofo Ezeugwu is implementing an initiative to encourage college for local teenage students. | ABI REIMOLD TTN
NEWS DESK 215-204-7419
Temple Student Government Vice President of External Affairs Ofo Ezeugwu is implementing a new program aimed to show local middle school and high school students that higher education is a viable option for them. The program, Kids-toCollege, will allow panels of five university students to visit seven local schools and organizations, including Women’s Christian Alliance, People for People Middle School and Cross Roads High School, to speak about campus life and higher education.
“The goal is to open up their eyes to higher education overall. We just want them to realize that higher education is a viable opportunity and is definitely available to them. We are willing to help them realize that,” Ezeugwu said. The program is fulfilling a promise Temple Advocating for Progress made in its platform last spring. Ezeugwu originally designed the program to bring the middle and high school students to Main Campus to attend classes or sporting events, but was forced to adapt due to new child clearance requirements. Ezeugwu said that obtaining child clearances is too expensive and time consuming for the scope of this program. “We kind of took a different approach to it. So what I
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NEWS@TEMPLE-NEWS.COM
Little headway on Right-to-Know law Nothing came of legislation introduced in December 2011. AMELIA BRUST The Temple News More than a year after an amendment was proposed in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives to the state’s Rightto-Know law, no change has been made. State Sen. John Blake plans to formally introduce a new amendment to the law, one that repeals the special requirements for state-related institutions. The senator’s Chief of Staff Luc Miron said the senator hopes to achieve “a balance of
what information is disclosed.” Blake introduced the bill informally last fall. In the wake of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal in 2011, light was shed on the law when reporters and police said they were denied requests for a 1998 abuse complaint filed against Sandusky, a former Penn State coach, as well as information on Sandusky’s severance package from Penn State and emails exchanged between university officials. However, Terry Mutchler, executive director of the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records, said the debate over the law dates as far back as the
LAW PAGE 3