College President

St. Mary's College of Maryland President Jane Margaret "Maggie" O'Brien, who is widely credited with developing and promoting the highly regarded public honors college, announced yesterday that she would step down by 2010. In her nearly 13 years as president, O'Brien intensified the school's curriculum and elevated its recognition nationwide, landing the college a spot on several magazine lists of the nation's top public colleges. When O'Brien, 55, became president in 1996, the college was on the cusp of becoming better known for academics than partying.

LOS ANGELES -- At Hamilton High School, a grand old building in a gritty slice of West Los Angeles, Ruth J. Simmons surveyed a roomful of 35 black and brown female faces and saw her own.Striding through the Hamilton library, with its posters of Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg announcing "Reading is Power" in Spanish and English, Simmons shook each hand and introduced herself as the president of Smith College. "You're the president?" one girl asked, incredulous.Called the Jackie Robinson of higher education when she became the first black woman to head a top-tier college or university in 1995, Simmons has embarked upon what she calls a "personal crusade" to bring more disadvantaged students to her campus and similar institutions nationwide.

In August, Ann Ivester, chairwoman of the board of the Howard Community College Educational Foundation, decided she'd like to take an art or music appreciation course at the college. A recent retiree, she was eager to learn about things she didn't have time for as a businesswoman.She tried to get into one art class that combined lessons with museum visits, but all three sections were full. Then she tried to sign up for a music appreciation class, but those sections were full, too. That's when she realized the college is facing a serious problem: It's crowded, and getting more so, and unless something is done soon, the college will keep having to turn away potential students.

Carroll Community College will graduate 247 students during commencement exercises at 7: 30 p.m. Wednesday in the physical education learning center at Western Maryland College.Robert R. Furman, a civil engineer and owner of Furman Builders Inc., will be the keynote speaker. He has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Princeton University.Furman was his company's president from 1946 to 1986. He was executive officer for the construction of the Pentagon and staff officer for the Manhattan District, the organization in charge of developing the atomic bomb in World War II.Ralph Vaughn, president of the Student Government Organization, will give the student greeting.

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- Not long ago, Smith College English professor Patricia Skarda was walking behind two students deep in conversation. A strict grammatical constructionist, Skarda took note of their syntax."

In August, Ann Ivester, chairwoman of the board of the Howard Community College Educational Foundation, decided she'd like to take an art or music appreciation course at the college. A recent retiree, she was eager to learn about things she didn't have time for as a businesswoman.She tried to get into one art class that combined lessons with museum visits, but all three sections were full. Then she tried to sign up for a music appreciation class, but those sections were full, too. That's when she realized the college is facing a serious problem: It's crowded, and getting more so, and unless something is done soon, the college will keep having to turn away potential students.

Vacant buildings at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville could soon get a new lease as college campuses.The town, which hopes to annex the property known as the Warfield Complex and renovate the buildings, has interested Carroll Community College and Touro College, a multinational school based in New York, in the century-old buildings along Route 32.The state found no use for the 131-acre property and offered it to the town a year ago. Sykesville organized...

BERKELEY, Calif. -- The journey for Dan Mote will be a long one, clear across the country, from a shabby little office building by the University of California to the spacious president's office at the University of Maryland, College Park.He has yet to pack his bags, but in many ways his journey began more than three decades ago."It was 1964, or thereabouts, and I was an assistant professor at Carnegie Tech," the 61-year-old engineer recalled in his office here this week."A mechanical engineer became president of the university, and that's when I really started to think about what I wanted to do."

After four months on the job as president of Howard Community College, Mary Ellen Duncan is beginning to make her mark.Today, at her official installation, Duncan is to announce a major initiative that will involve community leaders in the future of the college. The event is scheduled from 12: 30 p.m. to 2 p.m. at Smith Theatre.Duncan said she will announce the creation of the Commission on the Future of Howard Community College, a group of 12 to 20 community members who will create a blueprint of an ideal community college as it heads into the 21st century.

At high noon yesterday at Baltimore's College of Notre Dame, the tower clock started chiming to celebrate the inauguration of the new president, Mary Pat Seurkamp, resplendent in a bright blue robe.The 51-year-old Seurkamp (pronounced "sircamp") is the first laywoman to become president of the 102-year-old college in North Baltimore.No one on the Roman Catholic women's college faculty could have ordered better weather for the pomp and circumstance. Marching in the academic procession behind professors were Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and the archbishop of Baltimore, Cardinal William H. Keeler.

Howard Community College President Kate Hetherington promised this week to return $1.7 million in surplus public funds used without county government knowledge to help buy the historic Belmont Conference Center in Elkridge. The college was supposed to rely on donated cash for its half of the $4.4 million purchase. But sufficient contributions didn't materialize, and college officials disclosed earlier this month that they instead had used money left over from last year's budget to complete the transaction.

St. Mary's College of Maryland President Jane Margaret "Maggie" O'Brien, who is widely credited with developing and promoting the highly regarded public honors college, announced yesterday that she would step down by 2010. In her nearly 13 years as president, O'Brien intensified the school's curriculum and elevated its recognition nationwide, landing the college a spot on several magazine lists of the nation's top public colleges. When O'Brien, 55, became president in 1996, the college was on the cusp of becoming better known for academics than partying.

Goucher College President Sanford J. Ungar has sent an e-mail to nearly 1,500 undergraduate students at the private liberal arts college in Towson, warning about allegations of a string of date rapes and urging any victims to come forward. Three "very serious allegations" of sexual assault both on and off campus were reported to the campus public safety office, and date-rape drugs may have been used in all of those cases, Ungar wrote in the message sent out Friday. Kristen Keener, Goucher's media relations director, said yesterday that a student who did not witness the incidents but heard about them from friends reported the information.

Roger H. Martin was striding purposefully around the St. John's College campus on the sort of sunny, gentle fall day that makes the brick buildings and grassy quads of academia look like nirvana. He stopped in his old seminar room - complete with a huge wooden table and diagrams on the board - and pointed to the very chair he sat in during a freshman seminar. Then he was off to the river, where he spent many cold mornings learning to row crew. In the boathouse, he found the eight-person boat he raced in, the Harriet Higgins Warren, and knocked on its side.

James Lee Fisher, former Towson University president, has no spring break. This week he was in the Charlotte, N.C., airport on yet another consulting job. He was heading to a college whose administration is paying for his advice and recommendations. Fisher is now 76 and says he feels like 56. He still plays basketball with his grandson. From 1969 to 1978, he was the president of Towson University and saw its enrollment nearly double. "Towson was the best decade of my life. We did a lot of things and I didn't know any better," he said.

Florida State's president is blaming the athletic department for a less-than-candid response to the test-taking scandal that might involve as many as 50 students. Among the accusations is that at least one academic tutor was giving answers to the questions of a music course exam while the test was in progress and that tutors took tests for athletes. But here's the best part. The pool of questions for the exams didn't change from semester to semester, said college president T.K. Wetherell.

After a career journalist without a Ph.D. was appointed president of Goucher College in 2001, Sanford J. Ungar's peers in the ivory tower were calculating the former National Public Radio host's chances of survival. "When they chose him, I thought people like that last either three months or a long time," said Dr. William R. Brody, president of the Johns Hopkins University. "Managing an academic institution takes a certain amount of patience. ... And if faculty don't view you as a serious academic, it makes your leadership more difficult."

The president of the Johns Hopkins University received nearly $2 million in pay and benefits in the 2006 fiscal year, making him the third-best-compensated college president in the country, according to an annual survey published today by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Dr. William R. Brody's compensation more than doubled since 2005 -- in large part because of a $920,000 check for deferred salaries dating to 1998, Hopkins officials said. The survey's private-college data are based on tax returns covering July 2005 through June 2006, the most recent available for private universities.

Jeffrey A. Bishop, a St. John's College official who helped enlarge the school's endowment and overhaul its fundraising, died of kidney cancer Saturday at his Arnold home. He was 59. In nearly two decades at the Annapolis liberal arts college, Mr. Bishop became the architect of large capital campaigns that brought the school new dormitories and renovated buildings, including a library. He helped raise more than $140 million and set a goal of having the college's endowment reach $100 million -- which it did in 2006, up from $10 million when he started working in 1987.

For some St. John's College students who gathered yesterday at the college president's house for dinner, it was their first Thanksgiving away from home. And for others it was their first Thanksgiving - period. But for almost all of the 50 or so who gathered, it was a different kind of Thanksgiving. There was no football and no fussing about who should set the table or who sits where. Instead, the dinner hosted by Christopher Nelson at his West Annapolis home was a feast with meaning, enhanced by lofty readings about the nation's early history.