Oberlin College

A former college professor who became active in the battle to save ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest will lecture on his experiences in the environmental movement at Western Maryland College.Environmentalist Lou Gold's lecture, featuring personal anecdotes and a slide presentation, is sponsored by the WMC Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Sierra Club Catoctin Group of Frederick. The free event will be conducted at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Decker College Center Forum at WMC.Gold taught American government and politics at Oberlin College and the University of Illinois before deciding to leave academia for the wilderness Northwest.

Is the American body politic suffering from an autoimmune disease? The "hygiene hypothesis" is the scientific theory that the rise in asthma and other autoimmune maladies stems from the fact that babies are born into environments that are too clean. Our immune systems need to be properly educated by being exposed early to germs, dirt, whatever. When you consider that for most of human evolutionary history, we were born under shady trees or, if we were lucky, in caves or huts, you can understand how unnatural Lysol-soaked hospitals and microbially baby-proofed homes are. The point is that growing up in a sanitary environment might cause our immune systems to freak out about things that under normal circumstances we'd just shrug off. Hence, goes the theory, the explosion in asthma rates in the industrialized world, the rise in peanut and wheat allergies and, quite possibly, the spike in autism rates.

Dr. Barry S. Gold, a Baltimore internist and medical director of Maryland State Medicare, was elected to a fellowship in the American College of Physicians.*Polgeorge R. Mijares of Millersville recently received an appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.*Fred Weaver was presented with a governor's citation for his volunteer work at Owen Brown Middle School in Columbia.*Bronwen Lara Wickkiser, the daughter of the Rev. Bruce and Mrs. Mary Jane Wickkiser of Baltimore, has been elected to the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society at Oberlin College in Ohio.

On April 7, 2007, JAMES C. BOSTAIN, 85, of Baltimore, MD, passed away peacefully at home. Predeceased by his beloved wife Pat in 2002. Survived by a loving daughter; step-daughter; his brother's family and many wonderful friends. He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College, with a Master's Degree in Linguistics from Yale. He worked for the US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute for 26 years, helping design foreign language instruction curriculums. He gave ~8500 lectures on cross-cultural communication to government, military, academic and public audiences in 49 states (missed Idaho)

On April 7, 2007, JAMES C. BOSTAIN, 85, of Baltimore, MD, passed away peacefully at home. Predeceased by his beloved wife Pat in 2002. Survived by a loving daughter; step-daughter; his brother's family and many wonderful friends. He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College, with a Master's Degree in Linguistics from Yale. He worked for the US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute for 26 years, helping design foreign language instruction curriculums. He gave ~8500 lectures on cross-cultural communication to government, military, academic and public audiences in 49 states (missed Idaho)

Is the American body politic suffering from an autoimmune disease? The "hygiene hypothesis" is the scientific theory that the rise in asthma and other autoimmune maladies stems from the fact that babies are born into environments that are too clean. Our immune systems need to be properly educated by being exposed early to germs, dirt, whatever. When you consider that for most of human evolutionary history, we were born under shady trees or, if we were lucky, in caves or huts, you can understand how unnatural Lysol-soaked hospitals and microbially baby-proofed homes are. The point is that growing up in a sanitary environment might cause our immune systems to freak out about things that under normal circumstances we'd just shrug off. Hence, goes the theory, the explosion in asthma rates in the industrialized world, the rise in peanut and wheat allergies and, quite possibly, the spike in autism rates.

Western Maryland College officials are in the final stages of selecting a successor to Richard F. Seaman, vice president of institutional advancement.Seaman, who has been at the college since 1991, in January announced his plans to retire. He said he will remain at the school until a successor is found.The college has received applications from 85 candidates seeking the top fund-raising position at the school, according to Donald W. Schumaker Jr., spokesman for the liberal arts college.A search committee of faculty and staff members has been reviewing applications since April and has whittled the number of prospective candidates to "a handful of finalists," Schumaker said.

Retired Baltimore attorney Roger Alvin Clapp and his wife, Harriet Reid Clapp, died in their sleep within two weeks of each other at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. Both died of respiratory ailments.Mr. Clapp, 87, a lawyer who specialized in probate and estate work, and cultivated orchids as a hobby, died Dec. 10. His wife, 86, a volunteer who provided furniture and hospitality to newly arrived Johns Hopkins University graduate students, died Wednesday.A native of Roland Park who was a Baltimore City College graduate, Mr. Clapp spent his childhood summers on his grandfather's farm in Medina County, Ohio.

The achievements and spirit of Fanny Jackson Coppin, a pioneering African-American educator, missionary and advocate for women's rights and the homeless who began life as a slave, are remembered at Baltimore's Coppin State College, which was named for her in 1926. Born a slave near Washington in 1837, one of six children, it was rumored that she was the daughter of a slave and a "Carolina senator." Sarah Orr Clark, her aunt, managed to save the $125 necessary to purchase her niece's freedom and, because of better educational opportunities, Coppin settled in New Bedford, Mass.

Declaring a new day in the "greening" of the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital campuses, President William R. Brody convened a conference of experts, staff and students yesterday that considered ways the university could operate in a more environmentally sound way on its land in North and East Baltimore. Using less electricity, recycling more solid waste and reducing vehicle emissions were three conservation methods discussed by university officials. But, as Brody stated in a morning welcome to 45 participants in Shriver Hall on the University's Homewood campus, the idea also is to embark on a wider environmental worldview.

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier Ishmael Beah Sarah Crichton Books / Farrar, Straus & Giroux / 229 pages / $22 New York --Ishmael Beah thought he'd seen enough miracles in one lifetime when U.N. officials helped him move at age 17 to America, far from the African civil war where he'd been a 13-year-old soldier. Settled with an adoptive mother in New York City, he did well in high school and graduated from Oberlin College. But his good fortune was only beginning: Not only did Beah find a publisher for his subsequent book about his childhood, A Long Way Gone, but the memoir attracted enormous media attention, including an excerpt that became a New York Times Magazine cover article.

The achievements and spirit of Fanny Jackson Coppin, a pioneering African-American educator, missionary and advocate for women's rights and the homeless who began life as a slave, are remembered at Baltimore's Coppin State College, which was named for her in 1926. Born a slave near Washington in 1837, one of six children, it was rumored that she was the daughter of a slave and a "Carolina senator." Sarah Orr Clark, her aunt, managed to save the $125 necessary to purchase her niece's freedom and, because of better educational opportunities, Coppin settled in New Bedford, Mass.

Declaring a new day in the "greening" of the Johns Hopkins University and Hospital campuses, President William R. Brody convened a conference of experts, staff and students yesterday that considered ways the university could operate in a more environmentally sound way on its land in North and East Baltimore. Using less electricity, recycling more solid waste and reducing vehicle emissions were three conservation methods discussed by university officials. But, as Brody stated in a morning welcome to 45 participants in Shriver Hall on the University's Homewood campus, the idea also is to embark on a wider environmental worldview.

Western Maryland College officials are in the final stages of selecting a successor to Richard F. Seaman, vice president of institutional advancement.Seaman, who has been at the college since 1991, in January announced his plans to retire. He said he will remain at the school until a successor is found.The college has received applications from 85 candidates seeking the top fund-raising position at the school, according to Donald W. Schumaker Jr., spokesman for the liberal arts college.A search committee of faculty and staff members has been reviewing applications since April and has whittled the number of prospective candidates to "a handful of finalists," Schumaker said.

Retired Baltimore attorney Roger Alvin Clapp and his wife, Harriet Reid Clapp, died in their sleep within two weeks of each other at the Blakehurst Retirement Community in Towson. Both died of respiratory ailments.Mr. Clapp, 87, a lawyer who specialized in probate and estate work, and cultivated orchids as a hobby, died Dec. 10. His wife, 86, a volunteer who provided furniture and hospitality to newly arrived Johns Hopkins University graduate students, died Wednesday.A native of Roland Park who was a Baltimore City College graduate, Mr. Clapp spent his childhood summers on his grandfather's farm in Medina County, Ohio.

WESTMINSTER -- Richard F. Seaman, most recently vice president for Development at Bowdoin College in Maine, has been chosen vice president for institutional advancement at Western Maryland College.Seaman, who has had a distinguished career at some of the country's most prestigious institutions as well as with the nationally recognized Council for the Advancement and Support of Higher Education, will begin his duties at Western Maryland Dec. 1.He was chosen from a crowded field on the basis of his broad and deep knowledge and understanding of how liberal arts colleges work.

WESTMINSTER -- Richard F. Seaman, most recently vice president for Development at Bowdoin College in Maine, has been chosen vice president for institutional advancement at Western Maryland College.Seaman, who has had a distinguished career at some of the country's most prestigious institutions as well as with the nationally recognized Council for the Advancement and Support of Higher Education, will begin his duties at Western Maryland Dec. 1.He was chosen from a crowded field on the basis of his broad and deep knowledge and understanding of how liberal arts colleges work.

ESCALATING costs are endangering our colleges and universities. Lauro F. Cavazos, former secretary of education, declared bluntly before his resignation that "future increases [may make] college unattainable." But few have focused on reducing widespread campus waste as one way of keeping hTC American higher education open to all qualified.Too many campuses have come to see their main function as attractively packaging their image. They find it easier, if more expensive, to advertise substance than build it in or maintain it. They play with nomenclature to dazzle clientele.

A former college professor who became active in the battle to save ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest will lecture on his experiences in the environmental movement at Western Maryland College.Environmentalist Lou Gold's lecture, featuring personal anecdotes and a slide presentation, is sponsored by the WMC Student Environmental Action Coalition and the Sierra Club Catoctin Group of Frederick. The free event will be conducted at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Decker College Center Forum at WMC.Gold taught American government and politics at Oberlin College and the University of Illinois before deciding to leave academia for the wilderness Northwest.

Dr. Barry S. Gold, a Baltimore internist and medical director of Maryland State Medicare, was elected to a fellowship in the American College of Physicians.*Polgeorge R. Mijares of Millersville recently received an appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis.*Fred Weaver was presented with a governor's citation for his volunteer work at Owen Brown Middle School in Columbia.*Bronwen Lara Wickkiser, the daughter of the Rev. Bruce and Mrs. Mary Jane Wickkiser of Baltimore, has been elected to the Phi Beta Kappa national honor society at Oberlin College in Ohio.