LehighWeek Volume 13, Issue 31

              For exemplary efforts
Nine professors honored
at annual faculty dinner
See Page 3
—
Volume 13, Issue 31
LehiehWeek
South Mountaineer
B-ball's Danielle Baldwin
named top scholar athlete
See page 8
The campus digest for innovation, news and events
May 17, 2000
Pension "gross-
up" added to
base salary
Change is in store July 1 for the
418 faculty and exempt staff who
joined Lehigh before July 1,1989,
were "grandfathered" then when
Lehigh changed its pension plan
to comply with changing federal
laws, and are still working here.
Before 1989, Lehigh contributed an increasing percentage of
salary for faculty and exempt
staff to TIAA/CREF as retirement savings. This amount,
based on individuals' ages, was
10,12,14 or 16 percent. In 1989,
this contribution was changed to
a flat 10 percent of salary for
employees 30 years of age and
older. The 2-, 4-, and 6-percent
differential over 10 percent was
given to eligible employees in
1989 as additional salary above
the benefits-base salary and was
called the "pension gross up."
Employees were encouraged to
apply the funds themselves to
retirement savings through payroll deductions.
The retirement plan for non-
exempt staff was also changed
in 1989 from a service-based plan
with 8-, 9- and 10-percent contributions, to the unified plan that
now covers all employees. All non-
exempt staff over 30 years of age
were immediately raised then to
the 10-percent contribution.
Keeping track of the benefit
base salary and pension gross up
salary for grandfathered individuals was confusing for many
supervisors and researchers, and
will be difficult under the "plain
vanilla" (standard) version of
Banner being implemented for
the payroll and human resources
component of LEWIS.
Therefore, the pension gross-
up is being eliminated and that
money will now be added or
"rolled in" to the benefits-base
salary for employees. By increasing the benefits-base salary, employees will enjoy larger life insurance, disability and pension
values.
To keep grandfathered employees from losing out on the 2-
percent increases in contributions at ages 35, 45 and 55, each
person's pension gross-up
amount will be adjusted by an
equivalency factor based on that
person's age. Employees will be
receiving the same percentage of
gross up by the time they are 65,
but will receive it at an earlier
age under the new plan.
For example, a 40-year-old
individual is currently receiving
a 2-percent gross up, which will
increase to 4 percent at age 45
and 6 percent at age 55. Under
the new formula, that individual
will receive a permanent pension
gross up of 4.4 percent on July 1,
which will be added to his base
Please See PENSION Page 4
Photo by John Kish IV
Molly Burckhardt '99 and graduate student Bart Adamczyk produced broadcast documentaries on urban sprawl for WDIY-FM.
Students team with
local radio station WDIY
Five Lehigh students have joined
forces with Bethlehem's public
radio station WDIY (88.1 FM) to
produce broadcast documentaries on the problem of urban
sprawl, which will air May 17-
19,23-26 and 30 at 7:06 and 8:06
am on WDIY (88.lfm).
A class called "Paving Paradise?: (Sub)urban Sprawl and the
Public Interest," taught by Al
Wurth, associate professor of
political science, got the students interested in the topic.
"Our idea was for the students
to get real-world experience,"
Wurth said. "It's important to
thank WDIY for giving this opportunity to students."
Led by Molly Burckhardt
'99, now a graduate teaching assistant and producer of the series, the students did the research and developed scripts for
the radio programs. The broadcasts of their features will air as
a local supplement to "Morning
Edition," which is NPR's national
morning news show. The student
productions will be added to a
Web site where those who miss
the local broadcast can replay
them and get additional information.
"Through class readings they
learned a lot about the academic
side of urban sprawl,"
Burckhardt said. "What they are
learning through journalism is
how to put together a story by
going to the people."
Students composed reports on
such aspects of land use and
sprawl as transportation, urban
renewal, population growth and
migration, and opposition to development.
"I was interested in the
'American Dream,'" said Sherry
Antoine '01, a political science
major. "I figured that sprawl is a
by-product of that so I focused my
report on why people moved to
the suburbs."
After a workshop at the radio
station on how to report, edit,
interview, and use equipment,
the students talked to area residents.
Please See WDIY Page 2
The invisible nanoparticle
flexes its clean-up muscle
Leaching from landfills, runoff
from pesticides and factories,
nuclear waste - the scope of soil
and groundwater pollution is
huge, but the solution might lie
with cleaning agents whose size
is infinitesimal.
So says Wei-xian Zhang, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, who
uses iron-based particles 1,000
times thinner than a human hair
to detoxify or immobilize underground contaminants.
Zhang recently became one of
four environmental engineers in
the U.S. to receive a Career
Award — one of the top honors for
young engineers in this country —
from the National Science Foundation.
Zhang has a patent pending
on his clean-up technology, and
Lehigh has licensed his technology to two environmental
remediation companies. Yesterday (Tuesday, May 16), field tests
using Zhang's nanoparticles were
conducted in Trenton, N.J., on
water wells contaminated with
organic solvents used in cleaning
and de-greasing.
To clean up waste, Zhang uses
nanoparticles, which measure
tens of nanometers (1 nm is one
one-billionth of a meter) in diameter and are about 100 times
more effective than larger, conventional clean-up agents.
Because of their smaller size,
nanoparticles have a greater surface area, per unit mass, than do
larger agents, says Zhang. Particles on the nanoscale have
Please See FLEXES Page 7
Confucian
scholar to give
baccalaureate
address
Tu Weiming, a professor of Chinese history and philosophy and
Confucian studies, and director
of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, will deliver the baccalaureate address at the university's
132nd commencement exercises
on Sunday, June 4. He will receive
an honorary doctorate of Humane
Letters.
A scholar whose work has
helped revive Confucian traditions in East Asia and in the
West, Tu's research and writings
illustrate how Confucianism has
significant political, economic,
social, moral and spiritual implications.
"Tu's deeply engaged scholarship accentuates the Confucian
commitment to responsible public service and the moral-spiritual cultivation of human nature," says Norman J.
Girardot, professor of religion
studies.
Lloyd Steffen, university
chaplain professor of religion
studies, calls Tu a "gifted and internationally renowned philosopher, religious thinker and public intellectual.
"Tu has interpreted Confucian values for the West and connected this ancient tradition to
contemporary issues in human
spirituality," says Steffen. "He
addresses economic issues, human rights and moral education,
and is a wonderfully articulate
speaker whom Lehigh is proud
to be honoring."
Born in Kumming, China, Tu
earned his B.A. degree in Chinese
studies from Tunghai University,
and both his Master of Arts degree in religion studies and his
Ph.D. in history and East Asian
languages from Harvard University.
After lecturing in Taiwan, Tu
was appointed assistant professor in East Asian studies at
Princeton. He served as a professor of history at the University
of California at Berkeley before
being named professor of Chinese
history and philosophy at
Harvard in 1981. He has taught
there for nearly 20 years and, in
1999, earned the distinction of
being the first professor of Confucian studies in the English-
speaking world.
Tu's publications in English
include more than 100 articles
and book chapters, including an
article that was included in "Creative America," an official report
on the U.S. President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
His publications in Chinese
include four monographs that
were translated from English,
Please See ADDRESS Page 7
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