University

THE ROLAND PARK Second Presbyterian Church looked absolutely stunning last Saturday for the wedding of Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer and Richard Matthew Dohler. Thousands of wildflowers, miles of lace ribbons and tulle, and window sills decorated with Singapore orchids set the stage for the nuptials of the daughter of pop music star Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmut Sommer,and the son of Dick and Bonna Dohler, he's an Ellicott City builder.The church was filled with the music of German trumpeteer Langston Fitzgerald and selections of Bach, Beethoven and Vivaldi, played by the church's music director Margaret Budd on the organ.

As part of a federal project aimed at better treating pain, the University of Maryland, Baltimore will begin revamping the way it teaches future doctors, dentists, nurses and pharmacists. Pain affects approximately 100 million Americans and their treatment and lost productivity are estimated to cost up to $635 billion, according to the National Institutes of Health, which recruited academic centers to help with the problem. A pain consortium of two dozen NIH agencies received 56 proposals and picked 11 universities to be Centers of Excellence in Pain Education.

North County High School freshman Jack Andraka stood on the auditorium stage, speaking about the invention that earned him the $75,000 grand prize at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Behind him stood Dr. Anirban Maitra, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of pathology who gave Jack use of his lab to craft his invention, a cheap and effective "dipstick-sensor" method of testing blood or urine to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer and other diseases.

A man was fatally shot a few blocks from the campus of Loyola University Maryland in Northern Baltimore on Thursday evening, police said. Police responded to the 4600 block of York Road, in the Guilford neighborhood, shortly after 6:30 p.m. The location is also close to the Guilford Elementary/Middle School. Homicide detectives were investigating. No other details were immediately available. krector@baltsun.com twitter.com/rectorsun

Haven't paid your city property taxes? Then you're on the city's list of owners whose properties could end up in tax sale this May, along with nearly 27,000 others who (as of last week) were behind on taxes, water bills or other city tabs. That's more than 10 percent of city properties, located in neighborhoods as varied as Poppleton and the Inner Harbor . If previous years are any judge, many owners will pay up quickly and avoid tax sale altogether. Here's an interactive map that shows where all the properties are. You can click on the dots for more details, including the address, who owns and how much the city says they owe. (Keep in mind that some may have paid already -- and at least one is an error .)

Four trucks laden with 100 slot machines arrived early Wednesday morning at the nearly completed casino at Arundel Mills mall. For the next two hours, workers wheeled banks of the gleaming new machines, one by one, inside on hand trucks. Installation of the first set of slots moved Maryland Live! Casino, the state's largest, another step closer to its scheduled opening in three months. That's progress for Maryland's lackluster gambling program, which has yet to be fully implemented more than three years after voters approved five slots locations statewide.

Police said a 24-year-old man walking home from a club was shot early Friday near the University of Baltimore campus in Mid-Town Belvedere. The victim suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the shooting, which police believe occurred some time around 1 a.m. in the 1400 block of Maryland Ave., at the intersection near Mount Royal Avenue. The victim walked in to an area aroudn 1:30 a.m. hospital for treatment, at which time police were notified of the shooting.  Police spokesman Jeremy Silbert said police believe the victim was walking home from a club on North Avenue, but he did not provide a motive or suspect description.

MOSCOW -- In the old days, the typical student at Patrice Lumumba University would be a young African, someone who could hope to become his country's first native-born doctor or engineer after graduation. The new graduate would be expected to take communism home with him and preach of its glories. That communist dream is gone, but the university goes on, struggling to survive in free-market style.Patrice Lumumba University -- alma mater of the terrorist "Carlos" and of hundreds of men and women who are government officials throughout the Third World -- now is a cheap and not so choosy institution.

A new recycling campaign at the University of Baltimore is urging residents to vote with their trash. University officials are inviting Baltimoreans to answer questions about the city by placing their recycled trash in one of four see-through bins on campus. The first question: "Who is Baltimore's greatest team sports icon?" The possible answers, each with his own bin, are former Baltimore Orioles Brooks Robinson and Cal Ripken Jr. , Baltimore Raven Ray Lewis and former Baltimore Colt Johnny Unitas . The campaign, "Talking Trash: UB Votes to Recycle," is part of a larger effort by the midtown institution to help preserve the environment by reducing energy, promoting public transportation, using sustainable building techniques, and pursuing other "green" initiatives.

Ronald Weich, an assistant U.S. attorney general and former aide to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, is to be named the next dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law on Wednesday, nine months after his popular predecessor resigned amid a public dispute with the university's president. Given his lengthy experience on Capitol Hill and his lack of time in academia, Weich, 52, is an unconventional choice to lead the law school. But faculty leaders, alumni and students said that's part of the reason they're excited about him after last year's tumult involving former dean Phillip Closius.

Towson University will receive $2 million in state and private grant funds to start a new program designed to increase production of math and science teachers. The initiative will be based on the 15-year-old UTeach program, which more than doubled the output of math and science teachers at the University of Texas in Austin and is widely regarded as a model for training teachers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. UTeach offers financial incentives for math, science and computer science majors to train and enter the workforce as teachers.

All-America senior midfielder Catherine Kennedy scored five goals and added three assists to lead the 11th-ranked University of Mary Washington women's lacrosse team to a 16-8 victory over #14 Washington & Lee University on Wednesday afternoon in the first round of the NCAA Division III Tournament. The Eagles improved to 14-4 on the season. Anneslie resident Kennedy is one of six local players who have contributed to the Eagles' stellar 14-4 season. Mo Sunderland, Emily Atkinson, Maddy Miller and Kara Hogan, all of Towson High, and St. Paul's School for Girls' Addie Hawley are the others.

There is a food truck gathering today 11 a.m.-3 p.m., at the University of Maryland Medical Center. The event is being held in conjunction with the opening day of the University Farmers' Market. Expected to attend are Silver Platter, Kooper's Chowhound, Iced Gems Creations, Souper Freaks, Gypsy Queen, Chicken 'n' Waffle and Miss Shirley's. The trucks will circle near the plaza in front of 22 South Greene St. The University Farmers' Market is held every Tuesday from 10:00 a.m.-2:30 p.m., from May to November in University Park Plaza, across from the Medical Center's main entrance.

The University Specialty Hospital is expected to move its inpatient chronic care services to other hospitals in the University of Maryland Medical System in July, hospital and state officials said Tuesday. Hospital officials said they would move the traumatic brain injury program to Kernan Orthopedic and Rehabilitation Hospital and ventilator-dependent patients to Maryland General Hospital. The specialty hospital will provide only outpatient programs. The specialty hospital staff will be able to apply for open positions within the system, though it's unclear how many of the 350 employees will find jobs, according to state and hospital officials.

College students are gluttons for catching rays - now schools are getting in the act, too. In a bid to shrink its carbon footprint, Johns Hopkins University has put 2,900 photovoltaic panels on the roofs of seven of its buildings, on its Homewood and East Baltimore campuses and on the old Eastern High School building in Waverly that JHU has converted into offices. The JHU panels are expected to produce 997,400 kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, officials say.  Though that sounds impressive, it's about the same amount of power as 34 average homes consume in a year.

A website that helps people rent their tools to make money and another that offers a low-cost way for diagnosing causes of fevers were the top two winners of the TowsonGlobal business plan competition yesterday, the university announced .  The first place winner ToolSpinner, designed by two brothers -- Daniel and Steven Cole -- who graduated from Towson, bills itself as an online rental marketplace for tools. People who have tools -- i.e. a circular saw, a palm sander -- can rent them out for several dollars a day. ToolSpinner charges a 20 percent fee for facilitating the transactions.

The University of Virginia will announce a $3 billion fundraising drive in the fall. New York University is in the middle of a $2.5 billion campaign. And officials at Columbia University say they are moving ahead with plans for the largest university campaign so far, a push to raise $4 billion over seven years. These efforts are a sign of the fierce competition among major universities as they look to improve their rankings and images, attract students, and grab star faculty members. Officials at elite institutions nationwide say that simply to keep up they must build athletic facilities and science centers, pursue research grants and donors, court big-name faculty members and stave off raids, and lay the foundation for eye-popping fundraising campaigns.

THERE WAS A TIME in the late 1970s when Johannesburg's University of Witwatersrand was regarded as such a hotbed of anti-apartheid agitation that South Africa's security services had fewer than five agents watching one another as members of the student government's executive board.As the country's leading liberal and English-language university, privately operated Wits -- as it is commonly called -- was also an institution that found strict segregation laws distasteful. It admitted blacks, coloreds and Asians to its predominantly white student body and featured them as speakers.

Baltimore County police are making another plea for help in finding the killer of Joann "Jody" LeCornu, a 23-year-old Towson University student who was shot in the back near her car in a shopping center on York Road in 1996. Metro Crime Stoppers has upped an reward to more than $30,000 in the 15-year-old case. The student was killed about 3:40 a.m. March 2, 1996 in the back of the Drumcastle Shopping Center, and managed to drive across the street to what was then York Road Plaza, where she died.

The first crop of tech startups have launched at the new business accelerator program run by Silicon Valley-based Wasabi Ventures at Loyola University Maryland. The tech startups are varied. One is CodePupil , a website that teaches people how to build websites through exercises and games; PointClickSwitch.com , a site that helps homeowners easily switch their energy providers; and Vidstructor , a video platform for the sports and fitness training industries. The accelerator's office is in the Govans community of North Baltimore, a few minutes away from Loyola's campus.