Graduate School

Shirley L. Tansey, a retired mental health counselor and licensed clinical social worker who had worked at Taylor Manor Hospital and the Johns Hopkins University, died Saturday of Alzheimer's disease at the Charlestown retirement community. She was 92. The daughter of a letter carrier and a homemaker, she was born Shirley Llewellyn and raised in Anaheim, Calif., where she graduated in 1936 from Union High School. After graduating in 1939 from the University of California at Berkeley, she did graduate work at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Churchill Davenport received the Davis & Elkins College Spirit award for outstanding achievement in student life during the Davis & Elkins College 2011 Honors Convocation. An environmental science ands sustainability studies major, Davenport is from Owings Mills, and is the son of Churchill Davenport and Laurie Fader. Mariya Makhlyagina, of Reisterstown, is among 40 juniors and seniors inducted into the McDaniel College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa at a May 1 ceremony held on campus.

Katie Blaha leaves her job in Hunt Valley at 5 p.m. every day to return to a house in Catonsville she shares with roommates who are a good bit older than her and ask a lot of personal questions. Even though she's got solid employment and has weathered the worst of the economic downturn, Blaha, like so many in her generation, is back living with her parents. "I want to save money, so I'm not just getting by," said the 22-year-old who graduated from Washington College in 2009, and spent nearly a year working internships — paid and unpaid — before she could put her degree to use in a marketing firm.

My wife and I and our dog attended my aunt's funeral recently. We drove from our home in Washington early Sunday morning to the funeral home and then joined family and friends at the cemetery. My wife and I were both born in Baltimore (delivered by the same obstetrician), but she left when she was 1. I have deeper roots. I left Baltimore for college over half a century ago, then went on to graduate school and a career in universities in the United States and abroad. But I know Baltimore - my parents were born there and lived their whole lives there; my brother and I both grew up in Baltimore; my sister and her family, and my son and his family, and other relatives live there.

ALEXANDER HEARD, 92 Education adviser for 3 presidents Alexander Heard, the chancellor of Vanderbilt University in the 1960s and 1970s and an education adviser under three U.S. presidents, died Friday. He was 92. The university said Heard died at home after a long illness. As head of the private university in Nashville, Tenn., Heard helped guide it through turbulent political conflicts that struck many other schools. He defended students who organized a slate of speakers that included Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, a supporter of black power.

WASHINGTON - In what could be an encouraging sign of change in America's long-standing shortage of graduates prepared for high-tech careers, the hottest subject on college campuses across the nation right now seems to be renewable energy - a surge of interest driven largely by the specter of global warming. Concern about climate change is apparently galvanizing more students to turn toward a subject involving science and engineering, educators suggest, in much the way that Moscow's launching of the Sputnik satellite jolted baby boomers to turn their eyes to the stars.

Thousands of seniors graduating from Maryland colleges this spring will be guaranteed the right to stay on their parents' health insurance until they turn 25, thanks to a law that went into effect this year. In the past, many lost coverage when they finished their studies, making the group - especially those who attend graduate school - among the most likely in the country to lack insurance, according to studies of the issue. "I know this will help a lot of students, including me, especially considering how expensive health insurance has become," said Jenny Haley, 21, a political science and economics major from Towson University who will begin graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University in the fall.

Alison Gaylin, author of the mystery thriller Trashed, proves not only that you can go home again, but also that you can return a success. Gaylin says Trashed involves a tabloid reporter who covers a grisly series of celebrity murders in Hollywood. Along the way, the reporter winds up solving the crime and becoming a target herself. Gaylin, who also works as a freelance writer for In Touch Weekly, lives in Woodstock, N.Y., with her filmmaker husband, Mike Gaylin, and daughter, Marissa.

In an era when women were generally not accepted in the workplace or higher education, several Baltimore women defied the odds and changed the course of medical history. The year was 1893. Mary Elizabeth Garrett, M. Carey Thomas, Mary Gwinn, Julia Rogers and Elizabeth King knew that the board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University was having trouble getting the money together to open a school of medicine. The four doctors who were going to start the school were receiving offers from other universities and were getting antsy.

Naval Academy seniors have taken two of the 20 slots on USA Today's 18th annual All-USA Academic Team. Sean A. Genis and Christopher L. Marsh, both of Western Pennsylvania, were honored for their grades, leadership and extracurricular activities. The contest began with applications from about 600 students nominated by their schools, said program coordinator Tracey Wong Briggs. This is the third year in a row that the Naval Academy has had two students make the list. It is the only school to place more than one student on the list.