Universities Weblog

I've said it before: financial aid is a complicated thing.

After you've gotten the money that is available from state & federal government sources, the trick to financial aid often becomes finding a foundation or scholarship that gives money to people like you – to the daughters of farmers in Wisconsin, or to the grand-daughters of women who worked in US factories during WWII, or to the students who can trace their ancestry an American Indian tribe.

So the question is, how do you find those scholarships? Scholarship search engines…

Ferrum College south of Roanoke, Va., is under lockdown this morning after school staff saw a man with a Handgun in a residence hall on campus, according to news sources.

The campus alarm system was sounded at about 8am. Lockdown procedures seem to have worked very well on the Ferrum campus.

The Franklin County, Va., sheriff's office and other agencies are on the scene and Ferrum College seems to have escaped harm for the moment. Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms are also on the scene, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff's office.

Sallie Schaaf Borrink over at Suite101 has a nice series of articles just published last week on joining a sorority.

There's a lot involved. And among the first issue for your to consider is the expense involved. You can be faced with a new member fee, and initiation fee, a badge or pin fee, local chapter dues, national dues, and (if you don't actually live in the sorority house) something called a "parlor fee." It can be expensive.

It can also be a great way to form a network of friends that will still be around long after graduation. Networking is one of the leading reasons that women and men join Greek campus organizations.

Ever wonder where you'd be most likely to run into marijuana on campus at a college in North America? Wonder no more, for the Princeton Review has that information.

In their 2008 Best Colleges Ranking, the Princeton Review looks at "refeer madness" as part of it's best party schools category.

The number one refeer school? Warren Wilson College a private college in Asheville, NC, with an enrollment of 838 students.

Bard College in New York, the University of Vermont, the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, were second through fifth for marijuana on campus, according to the Princeton Review.

Yale is planning two new residential colleges and a 700-student increase in enrollment, according to University Business and the Boston Globe.

The move is the biggest expansion at Yale since the 1960's.

In the words of the Boston Globe:

Yale University is moving forward with plans to build two residential colleges, an expansion that could generate the largest increase in enrollment since the Ivy League college began admitting women in 1969.

The decision comes after a study group completed a one-year evaluation of the idea. Yale is planning two new residential colleges.

The Chronicle of Higher Education's news blog reported on Friday that Southern Methodist University in Dallas has now firmed up a deal to become the site of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

The deal was fixed in a ceremony that saw SMU President R. Gerald Turner and Don Evans from the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation site-selection committee sign documents in a public ceremony at SMU Friday.

SMU beat out baylor university, Texas Tech, The University of Dallas and the City of Arlington among others to host the library.

Stanford has joined the club of top tier universities to revise their financial aid policies so that the most working an middle class students don't have to borrow money to attend the institution.

The new Stanford policy means that students from families with income less than $100,000 will not pay tuition. Students from families with income less than $60,000 will not be able to get room and board from the university as part of their financial aid awards.

Stanford's move keeps it competitive with universities like Harvard, Yale and Duke that have already change their financial aid policies.

Engineering Your Life is the latest in a long line of efforts to draw women into technical field – in this case, engineering.

The new website is designed to help make engineering seem appealing to women. Let's face it, engineering has something of an image problem: nerds with slide rules, or something like that. If I told you that the race car drive that won the Daytona 500 this year was an engineering major, you'd problem go look it up for yourself to make sure I wasn't pulling your leg. But Ryan Newman is just that: an engineer.

So the question for a while has been, "How can we break gender stereotypes and make more women into doctors and more men into nurses. And more women into engineers…"

On Thursday, 27 year old Stephen P. Kazmierczak, with at least two handguns under his coat and a guitar case in his hand, entered Cole Hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University, walked onto the stage of a classroom there, took a shoot gun from the guitar case, and shot 22 people. Seven died.

Kazmierczak took his own life after the shooting. It was the worst campus violence since the Virginia Tech tragedy exactly 10 months earlier.

The campus was closed on December 10 while police investigated washroom graffiti on campus that referred to the Virginia Tech massacre.

The News Blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education has become one of the best sources for news on the shootings at NIU. Their original story, Gunman Shoots 5 to Death at Northern Illinois U. Before Killing Himself, was published on the day of the shooting.

IvyGate pointed out last week that Sex Week was coming to Yale this week. Valentine's Day seemed like as good a time as any to mention it….

There's been a fascinating schedule of speakers and events. Monday was on relationships and Dr. Ruth spoke on campus.

Tuesday's theme was "What a Girl Wants." The day started with sexologist Logan Levkoff talking about the female orgasm. Then there were sex toys for everyone.

Wednesday was devoted to the art of seduction. Tonight is dedicated to love, since it's Valentine's Day, I guess.