Students And Faculty

Students at Century High School yesterday packed the main lobby, media center and nurse's office for help from a crisis support team as they struggled to comprehend the death of a popular junior who died Wednesday night in a car accident. Gretchen Martina Brandt, 16, of Woodbine was killed when her car crossed the center line into eastbound Liberty Road and was struck by a sport utility vehicle, state police said yesterday. Crisis counselors were at three Sykesville schools yesterday to help students and faculty deal with the loss.

Harford Technical High School is no longer the Rodney Dangerfield of the school system.It has finally earned some respect.The school, which started as a part-time "vo-tech" center at Harford Community College in the 1970s, has blossomed into its own campus of 615 students -- with a waiting list of more than 100.It has been recognized recently by county and state organizations for a business partnership program, and just last weekend was one of four groups...

Using her inauguration speech to set goals, Dr. Martha A. Smith yesterday called on the students and faculty of Anne Arundel Community College to "turn the leadership process inside out."In a short talk before about 500 faculty and visitors in the David S. Jenkins gymnasium, Dr. Smith urged a "shift from a system which prepares knowers to a system which prepares learners."Developing people who continue learning, she said, "is a very different objective than preparing people who can remember information or systematically repeat skills.

Recent racial incidents at Western Maryland College have RTC sparked a peaceful demonstration against racism and plans for a second.College officials say the first incident was Nov. 1, when maintenance workers found a racial epithet burned into the eighth green of Western Maryland's golf course."

This week's mail brought a question from a reader whose granddaughter will be graduating from high school in a couple of months.He wants to buy her a present to take away to college and thinks a computer would be a good idea. But he wants to know what kind -- IBM-compatible or Macintosh? He's also worried about crowded dorm rooms and wants to know which is better, a laptop or desktop model? And he wants to know what kind of printer to buy.They're all good questions, and with college acceptance time just around the corner, it's not too early to think about the issues.

Stung by a series of violent and brazen campus crimes this year, Johns Hopkins Hospital has begun a total overhaul and expansion of its security force.The overhaul, which includes hiring a new class of well-trained officers to supplement the current corps of guards, is the university's latest effort to keep the hospital reasonably safe in the midst of a crime-ridden neighborhood.The stakes are high for campus officials, who say crime poses a serious threat to the hospital's world-class ranking.

The sly smile on Herbert Smith's face tells you he's figured out something you missed. After all, while you're slipping on the ice this week, he's taking 20 Western Maryland College students on a snorkeling and fishing expedition in Central America. Not bad work for a political science professor. "Fishing and Diving in Belize" is what's known as a January Term course at Western Maryland, one of the school's 35 offerings during this month between the end of the Christmas holidays and the beginning of the second semester.

Even with early warning signs and multiple campus interventions - as in the case of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui - a university's options for dealing with mentally ill students are limited by privacy laws and medical ethics. Despite two encounters with campus police in 2005 after harassment complaints by female students, and a brief commitment at a psychiatric hospital because of fears that he was suicidal, Cho remained a Hokie in good standing even as he plotted the massacre of 32 students and faculty Monday in Blacksburg, Va., authorities said yesterday.

On a crystalline October afternoon, the upper quad at Johns Hopkins University looks unusually desolate. At 4 p.m., a weary anthropology professor sorts his notes, ambles across the grass to a chemistry department lecture hall, takes his place beneath a post of the Periodic Chart and stares out at an eager audience of almost 200. Vintage tools of the Vietnam Generation - "teach-ins" and impromptu political forums inspired by the nightly news - are back....

William R. Brody says he would like to teach undergraduates at the Johns Hopkins University, where he has been president since 1996, but it is a little difficult to carve out time for thrice-weekly lectures for an entire semester. So Brody came up with the idea of teaching a course in the intersession, the monthlong term in January, between semesters, when a variety of courses, many off the beaten academic track, are offered. The course is called "Uncommon Sense: A Practical Approach to Problem Solving for your Personal and Professional Life."