Top Stories
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Family Weekend wrap-up and survey
Bucknell’s first-ever Family Weekend attracted over 2,000 attendees last month, more than doubling the number who attended Parents Weekend last year. [full story]
Several new events featured an academic focus, including lectures by three professors and a book discussion hosted by Dean of Students Susan Hopp. The Saturday night "family dinner" at Gerhard Fieldhouse drew 900 guests.
In his Future of the University address, President Brian C. Mitchell provided Bucknell families with an update on The Plan for Bucknell, academic initiatives, and campus improvements.
President Mitchell emphasized that "Bucknell students appreciate from their own experience what the University has long said of itself: It must aim to be the best." He noted that The Plan builds on the "blessed inheritance provided to today’s generations of Bucknellians."
One tactic of The Plan will reduce the teaching load from six courses to five, allowing faculty more time to "work with students and on research and scholarship," President Mitchell said.
Other highlights of the address included the campus master plan, a new emergency cell phone notification system, a national search for a new provost, and the Bucknell Forum speakers series.
Those who attended Family Weekend are invited to fill out a brief survey to help Bucknell plan next year’s event, set for Sept. 26-28, 2008.
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NSF grants to benefit engineering faculty, students
The University has received two new grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling nearly $700,000. [full story]
- A $200,000 nanotechnology grant from the NSF will help create dedicated lab space at Bucknell for working with nanoscale materials. Students and professors will be able to produce and analyze materials with features approaching one nanometer (100,000 times smaller than a human hair). Experiments and demonstrations will have applications relevant for mechanical, electrical, chemical, and biomedical engineering.
- Three professors will share in the bulk of a four-year, $500,000 undergraduate education grant from the NSF to study and devise educational solutions to counter misconceptions in the engineering sciences.The program seeks to fill misperception gaps in eight areas of the thermal and transport sciences, including heat transfer and fluid mechanics, through the development of educational materials
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Bucknell Forum brings more national names to campus
Bucknell’s speaker series recently held its final two events of the semester, hosting a panel of national political correspondents as well as an internationally renowned democracy scholar. [full story]
"Media and the Citizen’s View of the Presidential Campaign" featured panelists from influential media outlets: David Chalian of ABC News, Nedra Pickler of The Associated Press, John Harwood of The Wall Street Journal, David Greene of National Public Radio, Karen Tumulty of Time Magazine, and Roger Simon of ThePolitico.com.
During the packed October 18 event, the six journalists said that the Iraq war and national security will continue to be the key issues, and agreed that candidates have felt new pressures to be more careful about what they say on the campaign trail due to blogs and YouTube.
News as commodity
While the journalists commented on the issues, democracy scholar Benjamin Barber commented on the journalists, specifically the way that media is increasingly controlled by a focus on profits.
In his November 5 talk, "News as Commodity in an Interdependent World: Can Citizenship Survive?," Barber argued that a free media is a critical part of the machinery that creates functioning citizens, and that commercialism has become a ruling force that hampers democracy.
See lectures online
Video of Barber’s lecture, as well as a recent lecture by renowned social psychologist Philip Zimbardo, are now available on myBucknell.
Zimbardo’s lecture, "The Lucifer Effect," addressed the human capacity for evil famously demonstrated by his 1971 mock prison experiment at Stanford, which had to be halted prematurely, and which he drew upon to discuss the Abu Ghraib scandal.
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Bucknell 5th in national Chem-E Car Competition
A multidisciplinary team of Bucknell students took fifth-place honors in the national Chem-E Car Competition on November 4. [full story]
With student team entries from 29 colleges and universities from around the United States, the Salt Palace Convention Center competition featured small car-like vehicles powered by chemical reactions of alternative fuels created by the students.
The shoebox-size cars are powered by alternative fuels and must carry a small payload a specified distance. The payload and distance are not revealed to the competitors until one hour before the contest begins, requiring teams to make last-minute fuel calculations and adjustments.
Each of the teams had earned a spot in the national competition based on a series of eight regional competitions. Bucknell finished first in the Mid-Atlantic Regional competition that was held on the Bucknell campus in April.
In Salt Lake City were junior Brian Smith of Freeburg, Pa., junior Nicholas Hanes of Wilmington, Del., and senior Peter Baughman of New Cumberland, Pa. Two additional team members remained in Pennsylvania.
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Bison recognized for academics, sportsmanship
Bucknell was recently ranked 10th among all Division I institutions in student-athlete graduation rates, and received a national sportsmanship award. [full story]
- According to federal data released by the NCAA Tuesday, Oct. 30, Bucknell’s student-athlete graduation rate for individuals entering school in 2000-01 ranks 10th among all Division I institutions, while its four-class average for student-athletes entering between 1997-98 and 2000-01 ranks fourth nationally. Sixteen Bucknell varsity programs, including men’s basketball, boasted perfect 100 percent Graduation Success Rates.
- Bucknell is one of four Division I institutions in the nation to be named an "All-American Sportsmanship School," the Institute for International Sport recently announced. The award honors schools that have implemented exceptional sportsmanship programs, such as the Univeristy’s “Bison Good Sports!” initiative.
Other athletics news
- Video webcasts of men’s and women’s non-league basketball home games, as well as non-league home wrestling matches, are available for a fee.
- Bucknell basketball single-game tickets went on sale October 23 and may be purchased online, by phone at 570-577-1000, or at the Campus Box Office.
