Faculty

Turmoil surrounding the leadership of Baltimore County's two-year colleges continued yesterday -- reaching as far as the General Assembly -- in the wake of the firing of Chancellor Daniel J. LaVista.Some frustrated faculty leaders began discussing other strategies to grapple with the board of trustees -- including unionization. At least one trustee, a LaVista supporter, is considering resigning from the board. A state senator is seeking legislation that would scrap the county's unified system, splitting it into three independent schools.

Academic, activity and leadership awards were presented to members of the Class of 1996, faculty and alumni May 5 at the annual Senior Investiture and Honors Convocation at Western Maryland College.Local honorees included art history Professor Julie Oeming Badiee of Westminster, who received the first Ira G. Zepp Distinguished Teaching Award for her inspired classroom work and dedication to her students.Badiee, who joined the WMC faculty in 1978, teaches courses emphasizing Western and non-Western traditions.

COLLEGE PARK - A $10 million gift from Philip Merrill announced yesterday will put his name on the University of Maryland, College Park's College of Journalism. School officials hope it will also help elevate the program to the best in the country. "This is one of the schools where we actually can be the best in the nation. It is within our grasp," says C. D. "Dan" Mote Jr., UMCP president. "That's not true in, say, engineering. We're not going to knock off M.I.T. anytime soon. But it is true in journalism."

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- If Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers was worried about how the undergraduates would greet him Wednesday night at his first scheduled event since announcing his resignation, those fears quickly were put to rest. He got a standing ovation after he walked in. He got a standing ovation before he left. A row of students with red paint letters on their chests spelled out "Larry." Sarah Bahan, 22, was wistful as she left the meeting. She had kind words for Summers' emphasis on hard sciences.

The state agency that oversees Maryland's colleges and universities has found questionable hiring practices and a culture of "pervasive paranoia" at Baltimore's troubled community college and recommends that state lawmakers limit the authority of the school's trustees. The findings are included in an audit by the Maryland Higher Education Commission, which has been reviewing Baltimore City Community College since summer. The school's president resigned in May after a report by the nonprofit Abell Foundation criticized BCCC's academic performance.

Persistent budget cuts have created turmoil at the University of Maryland, College Park this past fall, prompting a student demonstration over the removal of one administrator, complaints about a lack of clear explanations from the provost and a sense of dread among faculty who say they're asked to do more with less. The state university system has cut more than $100 million from its 2010 budget in response to shortfalls in the state budget. As the system's largest campus, College Park has taken the biggest hits and will have to cut about $48 million by the end of the fiscal year in June.

Laurence M. Katz, dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, announced yesterday that he will resign his post after 14 years.Mr. Katz, 52, said he will remain at the urban law school as a full-time faculty member and is willing to continue as dean until next spring while university officials search for a replacement.Mr. Katz said he needed a change of pace."Like any decision of this magnitude, there are lots of reasons," he said. "One of them is the realization that after 14 years as dean of the law school, when the average tenure is about four years, one gets to realize that it's been a long time."

Back in the 1970s, when minimalism started shaking up the music world in a big way, a common complaint against the repetitive, reiterative style was that it settled for effect and mood over genuine substance. That argument, weak to begin with, couldn't hold up as the three most prominent minimalists kept using the genre's persistent motor rhythms and supposedly confining melodic and harmonic ranges to propel very meaningful ideas in increasingly distinctive, provocative ways. The haunting, Gandhi-inspired opera Satyagraha by Philip Glass in 1980 is just one example; the stunning orchestral waves of Harmonielehre by John Adams in 1985 is another.

Naval Academy instructors and officials have begun to speculate this week on whether academy Superintendent Vice Adm. John R. Ryan would stay on for another four years after his first term ends a year from now. After faculty members passed a resolution Tuesday saying Ryan has provided the school with "extraordinary leadership" and asking the vice admiral to stay, many senior officials are wondering if he might become the first superintendent in more...

Dr. Alfred Sommer, who has steered the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health through an unprecedented period of growth, said yesterday that he would step down from his position as dean in September 2005. Announcing his decision in an e-mail to faculty and staff, Sommer said he plans to rejoin the faculty and devote more time to scholarly interests, ranging from nutrition to health policy. Sommer, who will have served 15 years as dean, said he originally expected to serve only five years, about average for a public health school head.