Index of Medieval Medical Images --- http://digital.library.ucla.edu/immi/

Anatomy: The Foundation of Medicine: From Aristotle to Early Twentieth- Century Wall Charts --- http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/anatomical/index.html

Dubious Natural Art in Antarctica Ice --- http://snipurl.com/iceart  [www_metro_co_uk]

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys (great photos and Willie) --- http://www.greatdanepro.com/Western Stars/index.htm

Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

Poetry Foundation: Anne Sexton --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=6163 

Modern American Poetry: Anne Sexton --- http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/sexton/sexton.htm

Jews on the Moon (Science Fiction) --- http://avideditor.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/jews-on-the-moon-a-science-fiction-story/

Peter, Paul, and Barney: An Essay on 2008 U.S. Government Bailouts of Private Companies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

From the Scout Report on September 19, 2008

Friends and colleagues remember author David Foster Wallace David Foster Wallace, Influential Writer, Dies at
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html 

Wallace Invented 'New Style, New Comedy' http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94629055 

Author created 'Jest' in Syracuse ---
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/base/news-15/122155534751021.xml&coll=1

In Memoriam: David Foster Wallace --- http://www.pomona.edu/ADWR/president/dfw1.shtml 

Considering David Foster Wallace [iTunes] http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/pc/pc080916considering_david_fo 

David Foster Wallace: Harper's Magazine --- http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003557

David Foster Wallace: Commencement Speech at Kenyon College --- http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

 

Teach Philosopy 101  --- http://www.teachphilosophy101.org/
This site presents strategies and resources for faculty members and graduate assistants who are teaching Introduction to Philosophy courses; it also includes material of interest to college faculty generally. The mission of TΦ101 is to provide free, user-friendly resources to the academic community. All of the materials are provided on an open source license. You may also print as many copies as you wish (please print in landscape). TΦ101 carries no advertising. I am deeply indebted to Villanova University for all of the support that has made this project possible.
John Immerwahr, Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University

Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

An essay is presented discussing the decision by the U.S. to go to war with Iraq in 2003. The author believes that the military action taken by U.S. president George W. Bush had precursors in the policies of former president Bill Clinton, specifically in regard to the Iraq Liberation Act. The author argues that the Iraq War was inevitable since the Clinton administration was already planning for an invasion in 1999.
Arthur Herman, "Why Iraq Was Inevitable," Commentary, Jul/Aug2008, Vol. 126 Issue 1, p28-36

In this light — that is, in light of what was actually known at the time about Saddam Hussein's actions and intentions, and in light of what was added to our knowledge through his post-capture interrogations by the FBI — the decision to go to war takes on a very different character. The story that emerges is of a choice not only carefully weighed and deliberately arrived at but, in the circumstances, the one moral choice that any American President could make.

Had, moreover, Bush failed to act when he did, the consequences could have been truly disastrous. The next American President would surely have faced the need, in decidedly less favorable circumstances, to pick up the challenge Bush had neglected. And since Bush's unwillingness to do the necessary thing might rightly have cost him his second term, that next President would probably have been one of the many Democrats who, until March 2003, actually saw the same threat George Bush did.

IT IS TOO often forgotten, not least by historians, that George W. Bush did not invent the idea of deposing the Iraqi tyrant. For years before he came on the scene, removing Saddam Hussein had been a priority embraced by the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton and by Clinton's most vocal supporters in the Senate:

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas, or biological weapons…. Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: he has used them. Not once, but repeatedly…. I have no doubt today that, left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again. These were the words of President Clinton on the night of December 16, 1998 as he announced a four-day bombing campaign over Iraq. Only six weeks earlier, Clinton had signed the Iraq Liberation Act authorizing Saddam's overthrow — an initiative supported unanimously in the Senate and by a margin of 360 to 38 in the House. "Iraqis deserve and desire freedom," Clinton had declared. On the evening the bombs began to drop, Vice President Al Gore told CNN's Larry King:

You allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons. How many people is he going to kill with such weapons? … We are not going to allow him to succeed, [emphasis added] What these and other such statements remind us is that, by the time George Bush entered the White House in January 2001, the United States was already at war with Iraq, and in fact had been at war for a decade, ever since the first Gulf war in the early 1990's. (This was literally the case, the end of hostilities in 1991 being merely a cease-fire and not a formal surrender followed by a peace treaty.) Not only that, but the diplomatic and military framework Bush inherited for neutralizing the Middle East's most fearsome dictator had been approved by the United Nations. It consisted of (a) regular UN inspections to track and dispose of weapons of mass destruction (WMD's) remaining in Saddam's arsenal since the first Gulf war; (b) UN-monitored sanctions to prevent Saddam from acquiring the means to make more WMD's; and (c) the creation of so-called "no-fly zones" over large sections of southern and northern Iraq to deter Saddam from sending the remnants of his air force against resisting Kurds and Shiite Muslims.

The problem, as Bill Clinton discovered at the start of his second term, was that this "containment regime" was collapsing. By this point Saddam was not just the brutal dictator who had killed as many as two million of his own people and used chemical weapons in battle against Iran (and in 1988 against Iraqis themselves). Nor was he just the regional aggressor who had to be driven out of Kuwait in 1991 by an international coalition of armed forces in Operation Desert Storm. As Clinton recognized, Saddam's WMD programs, in combination with his ties to international terrorists, posed a direct challenge to the United States.

In a February 17, 1998 speech at the Pentagon, Clinton focused on what in his State of the Union address a few weeks earlier he had called an "unholy axis" of rogue states and predatory powers threatening the world's security. "There is no more clear example of this threat," he asserted, "than Saddam Hussein's Iraq," and he added that the danger would grow many times worse if Saddam were able to realize his thoroughly documented ambition, going back decades and at one point close to accomplishment, of acquiring an arsenal of nuclear as well as chemical and biological weapons. The United States, Clinton said, "simply cannot allow this to happen."

BUT HOW to prevent it? An opportunity arose later the same year. In October 1998, Saddam threw out ten Americans who were part of a UN inspection team, and on the last day of the month announced that he would cease all cooperation with UNSCOM, the UN inspection body. On December 15, UNSCOM's director, Richard Butler, reported that Iraq was engaged in systematic obstruction and deception of the internationally mandated inspection regime. Although the UN hesitated to invoke the technical term "material breach," which would almost certainly have triggered a demand for a response with force by the world body, Clinton himself was determined to act. He had already received a letter from a formidable list of U.S. Senators, including fellow Democrats Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urging him to "respond effectively" — with air strikes if necessary — to the "threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its WMD programs." After consulting with Great Britain and other allies, Clinton ordered Buder to pull out the remaining inspectors. On December 16, he launched Operation Desert Fox.

For four days, American and British planes and cruise missiles bombarded Iraqi sites in an effort to degrade Saddam's programs. The key objective was to knock out communication-and-control networks — and in this, a Clinton official would assert, Desert Fox "exceeded expectations." But the attacks did virtually nothing to destroy facilities suspected of housing weapons, most of which were in unknown locations. The only way to find out where they might be was by reintroducing UN inspectors, something Saddam now adamantly refused to permit.

Thus, in the end, Desert Fox proved a failure, not because of insufficient American firepower but because of Saddam's defiance — and because of a lack of forceful follow-up. True, passage of the Iraq Liberation Act meant that the United States now had a regime-change resolution on the books and was providing a certain amount of money and aid for covert internal action against Saddam. True, too, Vice President Al Gore was a particularly strong supporter of these initiatives. But in the wake of Desert Fox, Saddam had conducted his own violent crackdown on potential opposition figures, which meant there was no hope for Iraqis to retake their country without massive outside help. As 1999 dawned, the choices narrowed. Inspections had failed. So had air strikes and covert action. So had international trade sanctions, which imposed a new level of misery on the Iraqi people without putting any pressure on Saddam himself. The UN's Oil-for-Food Program, created in 1996 in order to allow Iraq to sell some of its oil in exchange for food and other necessary supplies, appeared to be still another failure: Iraqis continued to starve, while Saddam seemed to grow only richer.

AND so, "starting in early 1999," as Kenneth Pollack, an official in Clinton's National Security Council, would later recount, "the Clinton administration began to develop options to overthrow Saddam's regime."

A plan for an actual land invasion of Iraq had been drawn up a few years earlier under the stewardship of Colin Powell, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was updated after Desert Fox. Although (Pollack writes) "no one thought the U.S. public would support such an invasion," this was now beginning to seem the only option.

Concurring with this judgment was Scott Ritter, an American who had served on the UN's weapons-inspection term and had become notorious for his aggressive approach to his job. In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in late 1998, Ritter castigated the Clinton White House for failing to confront Saddam with the threat of invasion. This hardly endeared him to the President, but it did win him two warm allies in the Senate. One was the Republican John McCain. The other was the Democrat John Kerry, who outspokenly declared that since Saddam clearly intended "to build WMD's no matter what the cost," America "must be prepared to use force to achieve its goals."

But nothing would happen in 1999. At the end of the year, the UN passed Resolution 1284 — an effort to get Saddam to accept a new inspection regime, called UNMOVIC, in exchange for lifting sanctions on all goods for civilian use. Yet, weak as the resolution was, it led to a split in the Security Council, with four members — including France, Russia, and China — abstaining from the vote. That split would become permanent. By 2000, life at the Security Council would turn into a constant battle of wills, with the U.S. and Great Britain in one corner and Russia, France, Germany, and China in another. Although George W Bush would later come to be blamed for wrecking the coalition that had fought the first Gulf war, the reality is otherwise: the wreck occurred three years before he became President.

All the same, as the military historian John Keegan has pointed out, Resolution 1284 did signal the beginning of the end of Saddam Hussein. By refusing to re-admit inspectors, even under a relaxed sanctions regime, Saddam made it unmistakably clear that only a credible threat of military force would make him budge, and only the exercise of military force would ever get him out.

Unfortunately, by this time Clinton had lost whatever limited appetite for armed confrontation he might earlier have entertained. According to Pollack, the lengthy campaign to dislodge Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo had given the White House a taste of might go wrong in open-ended military operations, and Clinton's advisers "were not looking to back into a war with Saddam the way they had backed into one with Milosevic." Besides, the proposed invasion plan called for 400,000-500,000 troops and six months of laborious preparation, which would stretch to the breaking point an American military that, thanks to Clinton-era cuts, was now little more than half the size of the one that had fought Desert Storm.

In his final year in office, Clinton decided that his contribution to Middle East peace would lie not in the removal of Saddam Hussein but in a grand attempt to resolve the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. With this, he missed his last chance to deal forcefully with the man he was publicly committed to overthrowing. Worse, by focusing his energies on a futile effort to placate Yasir Arafat, he diverted American attention not only from Saddam but from the mounting challenge represented by Osama bin Laden — not to mention the possibility that these two sinister figures might some day find common ground. As Clinton's administration ended and George W Bush's began, Iraqi defectors were claiming that Saddam had set up camps in which terrorists connected with bin Laden were training to attack the United States.

CONFRONTING THE same threat faced by the Clinton administration, and the same policy predicament, the incoming Bush team arrived at the same conclusion — namely, to do nothing. Bush's advisers, like Clinton's, were split. In the Defense Department, some, like Paul Wolfowitz, seemed (according to Pollack) "obsessed" with getting rid of Saddam — though in point of historical fact Wolfowitz's position was not strikingly dissimilar to Al Gore's. For others, like Secretary of State Colin Powell, Iraq "simply did not measure up" to China or Russia or Europe on the scale of international importance.

Most, like Vice President Cheney, were in the middle. They saw plainly enough that containment was not working, and they also saw the long-term benefits of regime change. But they recognized as well that (to quote Pollack again) "toppling Saddam was going to be difficult, potentially costly, and risky." The net result was that by the summer of 2001, despite the almost complete collapse of the sanctions regime, "it had become clear that the administration was not going to pursue a radically new approach to Iraq."

Then came September 11. A hitherto obscure terrorist threat emanating from the Arab-Muslim world had reached out to commit mass murder against Americans on their own soil, and in so doing had changed everyone's priorities. Hillary Clinton, the new junior Senator from New York, put it this way in an interview with Dan Rather two days after 9/11, using starkly confrontational language of the sort for which President Bush would soon be pilloried: "Every nation has to be either for us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price."

As for the administration, it had come to understand something else — namely, that its responsibility extended beyond the clear and present danger presented by nations, like Afghanistan, guilty of harboring terrorists. It had to prepare for future threats as well. In that regard, Iraq moved quickly to the head of the list.

As Douglas Feith explains in War and Decision, the recently published memoir of his days as Under Secretary for Policy in Donald Rumsfeld's Defense Department, there were several reasons why a post-9/11 strategy had to focus on Saddam Hussein. First among them was Saddam's ties to terrorist groups, of which the Clinton administration had been well aware and had repeatedly cited. Although no evidence existed that Saddam had been involved in al Qaeda's attack on New York and Washington — and no Bush official ever asserted otherwise — the White House learned after the liberation of Afghanistan that Abu Musab Zarqawi, one of al Qaeda's key operatives, had found safe haven in Iraq. There was also some evidence (cited by General Tommy Franks in his own memoir, American Soldier), that Zarqawi "had been joined there by other al-Qaeda leaders."

Continued in article

"Bush's Lonely Decision," The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2008; Page A22 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122143387192234073.html?mod=djemEditorialPage

No less remarkably, the surge continued to face entrenched Pentagon opposition even after the President had decided on it. Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went out of his way to prevent General Keane from visiting Iraq in order to limit his influence with the White House.

The Pentagon also sought to hamstring General David Petraeus in ways both petty and large, even as it became increasingly apparent that the surge was working. Following the general's first report to Congress last September, Mr. Bush dictated a personal message to assure General Petraeus of his complete support: "I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded," Mr. Woodward reports the President as saying. In this respect, Mr. Bush would have been better advised to dictate that message directly to Admiral Mullen.

The success of the surge in pacifying Iraq has been so swift and decisive that it's easy to forget how difficult it was to find the right general, choose the right strategy, and muster the political will to implement it. It is also easy to forget how many obstacles the State and Pentagon bureaucracies threw in Mr. Bush's way, and how much of their bad advice he had to ignore, especially now that their reputations are also benefiting from Iraq's dramatic turn for the better.

Then again, American history offers plenty of examples of wartime Presidents who faced similar challenges: Ulysses Grant became Lincoln's general-in-chief in 1864, barely a year before the surrender at Appomattox. What matters most is that the President had the fortitude to insist on winning. That's a test President Bush passed -- something history, if not Bob Woodward, will recognize.

John Glenn fires back --- http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/glenn.asp
More importantly read the anonymous quotation near the end about the Iraq war.

"Barney's Rubble," The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2008 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122161010874845645.html?mod=todays_us_opinion

Barney Frank didn't like our recent editorial taking him to task for his longtime defense of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Congressional baron defends himself in his signature style here. We'd let him have his say without comment except that his "whole story" is, well, far from the whole truth.

Mr. Frank contends that he favored "very strong reform" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even before Democrats took over Congress after the 2006 elections. To adapt a famous phrase, this depends on what the meaning of "reform" is. Mr. Frank did support a bill that he and others on Capitol Hill described as reform. But on the threshold reform issue -- limiting the size of the portfolios of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that the two companies could hold -- Mr. Frank was a stalwart opponent.

In fact, Mr. Frank was publicly arguing for an increase in the size of their combined $1.4 trillion portfolios right up to the day they were bailed out. Even now, after he's been proven wrong about a taxpayer guarantee, he opposes Treasury's planned reduction in the size of the portfolios starting in 2010, according to a quote attributed to him in this newspaper last week. "Good luck on that," he reportedly said. Mr. Frank's spokeswoman hung up the phone when we sought confirmation Tuesday.

Fannie Mayhem: A History A compendium of The Wall Street Journal's recent editorial coverage of Fannie and Freddie. The MBS portfolios have long been both the chief source of the systemic risk posed by the two mortgage giants and of the profits that so handsomely enriched shareholders and officers alike for decades. Without the extreme leverage inherent in those portfolios -- which the companies borrowed heavily, at taxpayer-subsidized rates, to accumulate -- their federal takeover might never have become necessary.

For years, Mr. Frank and other friends of Fan and Fred opposed not only bills written to limit the size of their portfolios, but any bill that in their view gave an independent regulator too much discretion to order a reduction. This was true of the reform that his House committee passed last year. Only when the White House caved to Mr. Frank and dropped its earlier insistence that a reform bill rein in the portfolios did Mr. Frank move his bill.

In his letter, Mr. Frank also repeats his familiar claim that Fannie and Freddie are vital because they support "affordable housing." This is political smoke. The awful irony of Fan and Fred is that they have done very little to assist affordable housing. Most of the taxpayer subsidy has gone to enrich shareholders and Fannie managers, as a 2003 study by the Federal Reserve shows.

Mr. Frank says he favored the disclosure of Fannie and Freddie compensation -- which is nice, but beside the point. The source of the rich pay packages was the Fannie business model that Mr. Frank fought so hard to protect. Instead of helping the poor, Mr. Frank was enriching Jim Johnson, Frank Raines, Angelo Mozilo and Wall Street.

If Mr. Frank thinks his "affordable housing" goals are so popular, he can always ask Congress to appropriate money for any housing subsidy he desires. But he knows those votes are hard to come by. It's much easier to have Fannie and Freddie take inordinate risks, even at taxpayer expense, so they can pay a political dividend called an "affordable housing trust fund" that politicians will disperse. In opposing genuine reform of Fan and Fred, Mr. Frank wasn't acting like a principled liberal. He was protecting corporate giants while hiding their risks from taxpayers until the middle class got stuck with the bill.

Peter, Paul, and Barney: My Evolving (Daily) Essay on 2008 U.S. Government Bailouts of Private Companies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/2008Bailout.htm

The F9 Toggle Key

Somebody who has been making Camtasia videos for sometime was surprised when I told her about the F9 (or some equivalent) toggle key that lets you pause while recording a video, take a break, bring up some new computer screens for the next segment of the video, concentrate on what you plan to say and do during the next segment, and then hit the F9-key to commence recording the next segment.

Most of my videos were recorded this way. I looked brilliant in the way I could record relatively long videos in one session. In truth, I recorded a succession of segments that allowed me to rehearse before commencing once again. To my students there was a continuous flow across all segments.

I’ve never been good about editing out bad segments unless there is no audio (I almost never record without audio). Editing the video part is easy, but synching the audio with it takes a pro --- I’m no pro.

If I really screwed up a segment of a video, I just rolled my eyes and commenced recording the entire video from scratch. But the F9-toggle key greatly reduced the probability that I would screw up a video (except for small screw ups that sometimes were educational when the students watched me in the video correct these little mistakes).

You can see some of my videos at the following two sites:

Excel and MS Access Helpers --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

 FAS 133 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

 It is important to compress (“produce”) the recorded avi files into something like mpg, wmv, mov, or flash files. This reduces over 90% of the file size for storing and downloading. It would take forever for my students to download the original avi files.

 If your college will still not give you enough space for all your recorded and compressed videos, why not put them on YouTube for free and share them with the entire world. This is the era for open sharing.

 You can read about free (and some fee) videos for accounting courses at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Scroll down to the free accounting textbooks, tutorials, and videos.

"Finding a College That Suits Students With Special Needs," by Susan Shallenbarger, The Wall Street Journal, September 17, 2008 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122160388151245179.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal

"Case Study," TechSmith Promotion Release, September 2008 --- http://www.techsmith.com/morae/casestudy/landmarkcollege.asp?NLC=edu57

Landmark College in Putney, Vermont, is one of the only accredited colleges in the United States designed exclusively for students with dyslexia, attention deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD), and other specific learning disabilities.

In 2001, the college started the Landmark College Institute for Research and Training (LCIRT). The Institute promotes understanding and support for the needs of individuals with learning disabilities at the regional, national, and international level, working with college and high school systems and educators to help students realize their academic potential. The Institute develops and disseminates educational research and theory-based teaching practices that set the standard for educating students with learning disabilities and attention deficit disorders.

The Institute also houses several significant federal grant projects that support the continued development of innovative practices, publications, and research projects.

Before we had the Universal Design and Usability Lab, much of our work was anecdotal – now that we have Morae, it’s undeniable. Morae has enabled us to conduct research and communicate results in ways we never thought possible, and we are able to have a positive impact in the way other organizations design learning content and technologies.

You can read (and watch a video) more about Morae at http://www.techsmith.com/morae.asp

What is the Landmark Act?
What is the Landmark College? 

"Reaching Students With Learning Disabilities," by David Epstein, Inside Higher Ed, October 25, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/10/25/landmark

According to a report by the American Council on Education, the number of full-time college freshmen with learning disabilities — dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactive disorder are among the most common — more than doubled in the decade leading up to 2000, to nearly 27,000.

Betit said the spike is because more of those students are being identified than in the past, and that, now that colleges are recognizing their own students with learning disabilities, it is time to learn more about educating them. A large part of Landmark’s intent is to use the grant to make information about teaching techniques available online, so teachers at colleges that do not cater only to students with learning disabilities can easily access information. If it works at the five partner colleges, Landmark hopes to share its wisdom more widely. “We’ll never be a big college,” Betit said. “But we want to share what we know.”

Many of the shared techniques will focus on expanding the available types of sensory input a student can use for learning. “I don’t know how many college classrooms have boxes of Legos” like Landmark classrooms, he said, noting that some students “are more tactile, and need to grasp an idea literally, rather than intellectually.”

But Betit said other colleges don’t necessarily need to go to Legos to better accommodate students with learning disabilities. He said sometimes easy adjustments, such as using more graphics, can help students who are visual learners. And other strategies that focus on basic skills that students with learning disabilities often have not developed — such as time management, and study skills — can benefit all of the students in a conventional college classroom.

One of the systems that Landmark uses, “master notebooks,” gives students a separate notebook for each course that is divided into sections like “ideas,” and “curriculum.” In the “notes” section, students use a two-column note-taking system that uses paper with a large left-hand margin, for students to organize major ideas of a course, and then they can fill in details pertaining to each idea on the right.

Betit encourages techniques as simple as a daily checklist to help teach time management. “Better time management is something all students can use,” he said, so it shouldn’t be difficult to incorporate into a conventional college classroom.

It isn’t clear yet exactly which new teaching methods will be carried out in classrooms beyond Landmark, but the partner colleges will start by educating their own employees. Charles Blocksidge, vice president of organizational development and the Frieda G. Shapira Center for Learning, which works with students with learning disabilities at Allegheny County, wants to adapt some of the training techniques of Landmark personnel to develop a training program for “our support services personnel,” he said, but also for faculty members.

Susan Trist, disabilities support coordinator at Western Nevada, said she works with around 100 students with learning disabilities, and hopes that, through contact with Landmark, she can be kept up to date on prevailing thought about teaching methods, “and especially on assistive technology,” she said. The students Trist works with are mixed in with other college students, and she will sometimes “have the exam read to them if they have a visual processing disorder, or get them textbooks on CD,” she said. Trist said she “is anxious to hear about” the techniques Landmark faculty use to accommodate students. “We need to start a community of people to share best practices,” she said.

The Landmark Disabilities Act is celebrated at http://www.eeoc.gov/press/7-27-99.html

The Landmark College site is at http://www.landmarkcollege.org/

I might add the following from accounting education:
Sherry Mills and Cathleen Burns won the American Accounting Associations Innovation in Accounting Education Award by using a Lego project to teach cost accounting --- http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads  on technology to aid special need students at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

Question
Once you make the admission tests optional (SAT and ACT), what do you put in its place to filter out acceptances versus rejections from all the applicants with virtually straight-A high school records (when you do not have the capacity to admit every applicant to campus)?

"After You Go SAT-Optional," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, September 25, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/25/wake

Jensen Comment
There may be a clever strategy for dealing SAT/ACT optional admissions after the $700 million bailout is in place. Admit every applicant on probation for one semester. Then at the end of the semester sell all the flunk outs under achievers to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. If the government waits long enough and spends billions more for remedial education, taxpayers might eventually make a profit like President Bush promises that taxpayers will profit from buying up all the banks' bad debts. We've got to build up momentum behind this bailout idea --- it can work for more than just challenged (submerged) mortgage investments.

Students Overwhelmingly Prefer Interactive Online Lectures to Onsite Classroom Lectures
"I’ll Take My Lecture to Go, Please," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/23/capture

It looks like students can be open-minded after all: When provided with the option to view lectures online, rather than just in person, a full 82 percent of undergraduates kindly offered that they’d be willing to entertain an alternative to showing up to class and paying attention in real time.

A new study released today suggests not only a willingness but a “clear preference” among undergraduates for “lecture capture,” the technology that records, streams and stores what happens in the classroom for concurrent or later viewing.

The study, sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s E-Business Institute, tackles the much-discussed question of students’ preferences for traditional versus online learning with unusual rigor. Based on a survey of more than 29,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the university, the study had a response rate of over 25 percent. Almost half of the undergraduates — 47 percent — had taken a class with lectures available for online viewing.

The responses potentially address two of the biggest obstacles some observers see to more widespread adoption of lecture capture technology and other elements of distance education: a willingness to learn remotely, and the cost barrier.

Students who responded to the survey clearly understood the benefits of lectures that are available as Webcasts, such as making up for missed classes — which, at 93 percent, ranked as the top advantage — and “watching lectures on demand for convenience” (79 percent) or other reasons, such as reviewing lectures before class.

Over half, moreover, said they saw value in having access to course materials (such as lectures, potentially) even after the semester was over, much in the same way that some students keep their old textbooks for future reference.

At the same time, the survey addresses potential cost concerns, which have given pause to administrators who worry about the financial strains of scaling up their educational efforts as well as to students who would bristle at added technology fees for all of their classes. Over 60 percent of respondents said they would pay for lecture capture capabilities, and of those, 69 percent said they would be willing to pay on a “course-by-course” basis rather than bundled fees.

“I think one of the things that surprised us a bit was the undergraduate preference,” said Sandra Bradley, practice director at the university’s E-Business Consortium and co-author of the study. “I think we were maybe anticipating that we would see it a bit higher with graduate students,” whose preference was only slightly lower, at 79 percent.

Sean Brown, vice president of higher education for Sonic Foundry, which specializes in rich media and lecture capture applications for higher education, said the study was a validation of his company’s internal research. He will be featuring the study’s results in a live Webcast to higher education professionals today. As a member of the E-Business Consortium based at the university, he added, the company’s marketing department initially supported some of the study’s administrative costs, but those did not in any way influence the outcome.

“There’s a lot of positive feelings ... but to have empirical evidence that it’s having an impact and about how students feel about” lecture capture, he said, was valuable feedback.

Continued in article

Jensen Question
What are the advantages of onsite lectures?
Coed watching?
Opportunity to daydream?
Chit chats face-to-face after class?
Cannot procrastinate watching a live lecture as opposed to a video lecture?
Can feel the instructor's enjoyment of being in front of a face-to-face class?
Instructor is more likely to notice my confusion, pain, happiness, boredom, etc.

Jensen Comment
Outcomes may vary a great deal with class size (e.g., 20 students vs. 600 students in the class)"
The response rate seems rather low for a student survey and outcomes could be biased

Note the more scientific SCALE experiments summarized at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois

In one century we went from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to offering remedial English in college.
Joseph Sobran as quoted by Mark Shapiro at http://irascibleprofessor.com/comments-11-27-07.htm

Most Students in Remedial Classes in College Had Solid Grades in High School Nearly four out of five students who undergo remediation in college graduated from high school with grade-point averages of 3.0 or higher, according to a report issued today by Strong American Schools, a group that advocates making public-school education more rigorous.
Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 15, 2008 ---
http://chronicle.com/news/article/5145/most-students-in-remedial-classes-in-college-had-solid-grades-in-high-school-survey-finds 

College Admissions Officers Urge Dumbing Down of College Admissions Tests (e.g., the SAT and ACT tests)

"Admissions Group Urges Colleges to 'Assume Control' of Debate on Testing," by Eric Hoover, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 22, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/daily/2008/09/4685n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Also see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/09/22/testing

With just a few words, William R. Fitzsimmons could start a revolution. He is, after all, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard University.

Imagine if he announces one day that his office no longer requires applicants to submit standardized-test scores. Within weeks Harvard's competitors go test-optional, too. Soon less-selective institutions do the same. College admissions is transformed, and high-school students everywhere rejoice.

At least that's what happens in the daydream shared by some testing critics. Reality, however, looks a lot different. ACT and SAT exams support a complex ecosystem in which colleges' needs vary according to size, mission, and selectivity. Even Harvard cannot change that.

Still, people listen to what Mr. Fitzsimmons says. And this week, he plans to say a lot about tests.

Last year the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or Nacac, asked Mr. Fitzsimmons to lead a panel that would examine testing issues and recommend how colleges might better use entrance exams. The dean and his fellow panelists are to present their findings on Friday at the association's annual conference, in Seattle.

Nacac gave The Chronicle an early look at the long-awaited "Report of the Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission," which stops well short of condemning admissions tests. Nonetheless, it delivers the association's strongest statement to date on one of higher education's most controversial issues. It affirms that colleges and other interested parties have overinflated both the real and the perceived importance of the exams—and proposes how to let some of that air out.

The report urges colleges to regularly scrutinize their testing requirements, to stop using minimum scores for scholarships, and to ensure that admissions policies account for inequities among applicants, including access to test preparation. Moreover, it anticipates a future when admissions tests better reflect what students learn in high school.

"We want to get the word out more clearly than before that tests should not be used in a rigid way," Mr. Fitzsimmons says. "A couple decades ago, people associated testing results with so-called ability. We have come to a clearer understanding that those scores have more to do with opportunities."

'Center of Gravity'

Creating the 58-page report was a test itself. The 21-member panel included admissions deans from an array of institutions, such as Central Lakes College, in Minnesota; Georgetown University; and the University of Connecticut.

"The challenge was to find a center of gravity," says David A. Hawkins, Nacac's director of public policy and research. "We were looking to the collective wisdom of colleges, which have their own proprietary interests and are not always consistent."

High-school counselors, independent consultants, and education-policy experts rounded out the panel, which met four times and communicated frequently via e-mail. Mr. Hawkins had the unenviable task of synthesizing more than 20 hours of notes with the panelists' written contributions.

The commission crafted recommendations that echoed the association's big-tent spirit. "We were realistic," says Mr. Hawkins. "We weren't going to tell people to abolish tests or that they were the greatest thing since sliced bread."

The report does encourage more colleges to consider dropping their test requirement if they find that they can make appropriate admissions decisions without the ACT and SAT.

Each college, the report says, should use its own validity studies to judge whether the tests have enough predictive value to justify their use. Admissions offices should not rely only on national data compiled by testing companies—or on tradition.

The panel encourages Nacac to become an "unaffiliated clearinghouse" of testing information. It recommends that the association create a program to train admissions officials in the ethics and standards of testing. It also asks Nacac to create a way for colleges to share testing research, and to annually publish sample validity studies of the ACT and SAT.

Judgments of the value of such statistics, however, often divided the committee. All members agreed that test scores reliably predict freshman-year grades, but some said that did not justify requiring the tests.

Steven T. Syverson urged his fellow panelists to reach a broader definition of success in college. "We need to start paying better attention to our language," says Mr. Syverson, vice president for enrollment at Lawrence University, in Wisconsin, which does not require standardized-test scores. "Success isn't a grade-point average. I've got lots of students who get C's but who have a fabulous college experience. They develop social skills and leadership skills. Being a good citizen is a successful outcome."

Randall C. Deike agrees. Even so, he brought a more practical view of tests to the discussion.

Vice president for enrollment at Case Western Reserve University, Mr. Deike holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology. He believes that the ACT and SAT are solid tests that help admissions officials do their jobs, especially at large universities with waves of applicants. He repeatedly told the commission not to discount the statistical significance of the exams.

"Why," he recalls asking, "would you throw away good information?"

Mr. Fitzsimmons, the chairman, dubbed Mr. Deike "the canary in the coal mine." When panelists proposed language that struck him as too critical of tests, he would speak up and try to steer them to more-inclusive recommendations.

In the spirit of collaboration, Mr. Deike ended up writing a key passage in the report that encourages more colleges to at least explore the possibility of going test-optional. But he remains unconvinced that such a move is advisable for many. "Too often standardized testing is condemned," he says, "when it's really test misuse that's at issue."

Beyond Numbers

The report takes gentle swipes at several third parties for "possible misuses" of test scores. It urges the National Merit Scholarship Corporation to stop using minimum PSAT scores as a requirement for its awards. It questions why the College Board "appears to condone" that practice. The report also criticizes the use of test scores in U.S. News & World Report's college rankings, as well as in college-bond ratings.

The booming test-preparation industry prompted a vigorous debate among panelists. Some participants say they had hoped that the report would dismiss test prep's value to students. Others, however, argued that the issue looms too large in students' lives to reduce to a short statement. They wanted the report to confront the complexity of what they see: that test prep benefits some applicants but not all.

"I'm not against preparing for tests, but there's now an obsessive compulsion to get the best scores you can," says Marybeth Kravets, a counselor at Deerfield High School, a public school in Illinois. "Therein lies the inequity—those who can afford it can better prepare themselves."

The commission concluded that while test prep is inevitable, its effects remain too mysterious. Could it add 30 points to a student's SAT score, or 100? What distinguishes good prep from bad?

Continued in article

Even without dumbing down the admissions tests, too many admitted students need remedial tutoring--- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#RemedialNeeds

Our underachieving colleges --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Bok

"Stanford U. Engineering Courses Offered Online -- for Free," by Scott Carlson, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 17, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3324&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en 

Stanford University is offering 10 online computer-science and electrical-engineering courses for free. The content will be offered through a variety of media and formats, including video on YouTube and podcasts on iTunes, and will present an introduction to computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, and linear systems and optimization.

Stanford University is offering 10 online computer-science and electrical-engineering courses for free. The content will be offered through a variety of media and formats, including video on YouTube and podcasts on iTunes, and will present an introduction to computer science, artificial intelligence and robotics, and linear systems and optimization.

The courses will be covered under a Creative Commons license, which means that professors and students can download and use the courses for noncommercial purposes, as long as they give Stanford credit.

Stanford officials said the program could be expanded to include more courses if it proves popular and successful.

So, if you’re Stanford, why do this? To test a potentially lucrative market? To extend the brand? David Orenstein, a spokesman for Stanford, says that the college already offers online courses for tuition, so money is not a motivation here. Spreading Stanford’s brand name might be a benefit, he says. “At this point, there is not a grand motive,” he says, noting that similar projects have been offered by Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing of courses are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

See one of my heroes, Bernie Milano, on Video --- http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3150.cfm

Minority Hiring Success Varies Greatly by Discipline:  Law, Business, and Sciences Have the Worst Records
The major cause lies in the supply chain of PhD graduates

One of the reasons for the shortage of minority undergraduate students in accounting has been the lack of role models teaching accounting courses in college.

"Whatever Happened to All Those Plans to Hire More Minority Professors?" by Ben Gose, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 26, 2008
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i05/05b00101.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Duke U.: Success rates vary by discipline

The black faculty Strategic Initiative began in 1993, on the heels of the failed effort to add at least one black professor to every department.

As of the fall of 2007, Duke had 62 tenured or tenure-track black professors, accounting for 4.5 percent of the faculty. But while the raw number is double that of 20 years ago, it masks tremendous variation within the university. Black professors remain rare in the law school, which has one black professor, the business school, with two, and the natural sciences, with three.

Karla FC Holloway, an English professor who served as dean of humanities and social sciences from 1999 to 2005, says each unit of the university should be held accountable for its record on diversity. "There has been growth in arts and social sciences, and medicine, but in some ways that growth has arguably allowed other schools or divisions not to work as aggressively with this effort," she says.

Mr. Lange, the provost, concedes that some parts of the university have fallen short. He says he is working closely on the issue with the law school's dean, David F. Levi, and other officials. "They have made offers and have not been successful at times," Mr. Lange says. "They're putting in a lot of effort to do better."

Duke makes sure that when black job applicants visit the campus, they meet other black faculty members — and not just potential colleagues in the department to which they're applying. The university also is taking small steps to widen the pipeline. Duke has financed two postdoctoral positions for minority candidates each year, with the hope that it will eventually hire some of them for tenure-track faculty positions.

In 2003, Duke started yet another faculty initiative related to diversity — but this time the scope was expanded to include women and all underrepresented minority groups. "We needed to recognize that diversity had come to include a substantially broader set of concerns," Mr. Lange says.

Ms. Holloway worries that the broader focus may give deans and department chairs an out: "People can say, 'I've hired enough women, and that makes up for the lack of minorities.'"

Harvard U.: Uneven progress on racial diversity

Harvard created an office of faculty development and diversity, to be headed by a senior vice provost, in 2005, shortly after announcing that it would spend $50-million to help diversify the faculty.

In the more than three years since that commitment, the university has made modest progress in diversifying its faculty, and some professors believe that the new office deserves some of the credit. Kay Kaufman Shelemay, a professor of music and of African and African-American studies, says the office has done a good job compiling statistics related to diversity and working with deans and department chairs to ensure that they cast a wider net in their searches. "There is no doubt that the office established by former President Summers both invigorated and centralized our institutional efforts," Ms. Shelemay says.

Women now make up 16 percent of tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the natural sciences, up from 12 percent in 2004-5. In the humanities, 32 percent of the professors are women, up from 30 percent, and in the social sciences, 31 percent are women, up from 28 percent.

The changes for the professional schools over that period varied — law, engineering, and government all saw significant gains for women, while the proportion of female faculty members actually dropped in the schools of divinity, dentistry, and education.

The university's progress on racial diversity, meanwhile, has been uneven. More than 6 percent of the tenured and tenure-track faculty members in the social sciences are black, but black professors make up 1 percent or less of faculty members in the natural sciences and the humanities. Hispanic professors make up no more than 2 percent of faculty members in each of those three areas.

In 2006, Harvard committed $7.5-million to improve child care on the campus — a primary concern of female faculty members. The university also just completed its third year of a summer program aimed in part at improving the pipeline for female and minority professors. The program allows undergraduates to spend 10 weeks in the research laboratories of science and engineering faculty members. More than half of the 400 participants have been women, and more than 60 percent have been minority students.

Judith D. Singer, a professor of education who became senior vice provost for faculty development and diversity in June, says she was willing to take on the job because the climate "feels different" under Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's first female president. But Ms. Singer acknowled