LehighWeek Volume 14, Issue 5

              Vote of confidence
Newly   endowed   profs
to be honored
at   Founder's   Day
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Volume 14, Issue 5
LehighWeek
The campus digest for innovation, news and events
A perfect weekend
V-ball  evens  record;
FB still unbeaten
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October 4,2000
Photo Courtesy of Tina Richardson
Teachers on Prof. Richardson's tour enjoy a cafe break.
Richardson leads
Ghana tour
Tina Richardson, associate
professor of education, recently
received a Fulbright-Hays Group
Projects Abroad grant to take 12
teachers on a trip to the west African country of Ghana in July.
Also leading the group was
Samuel Quainoo, a professor of
political science at East
Stroudsburg University.
The teachers from eastern
Pennsylvania schools and universities visited businesses and industries and toured cities and rain
forests. They saw forts and
castles .built by Europeans, now
used as museums, farmers growing crops and herding livestock,
businessmen talking on cell
phones, people surfing the
Internet at a "cyber cafe," and
one of the world's largest man-
made lakes, where a hydroelectric plant generates power used
by several African nations.
"Ghana is a young democracy
with a stable government,"
Richardson says. "The economy is
growing rapidly, with tourism one
of its fastest-growing industries."
Ghana is an ideal laboratory
for African studies because its
population includes many ethnic
groups. Its location on Africa's
west coast made for easy access
to the Western Hemisphere during the slave trade. Richardson
says an estimated 85 percent of
African slaves taken across the
Atlantic were brought to Ghana
for transport.
Today, Ghana is a model for
other African nations, having
evolved from a military regime
into a modern state without the
bloodshed that plagues other
African nations.
Richardson has made four
educational trips to Ghana, including one in 1992 also funded
by a Fulbright grant. She has
also taken Lehigh students to
Ghana for study abroad. Htr
next study-abroad program
there runs Dec. 26 to Jan. 14.
-Rich Harry
$75 million for academics:
A historic commitment
President Farrington (middle, at left) discussed the new initiative with Profs. Neal
Simon and Jack Lule after addressing faculty and staff in Zoellner (above).
Lehigh will invest $75 million in the next five to seven
years to strengthen key
academic areas, to attract faculty and students, and to develop
promising proposals from faculty
and staff, President Gregory
Farrington said Monday (Oct. 2).
The investment, the largest in
academics in Lehigh's 135-year
history, has been approved by the
executive committee of Lehigh's
Board of Trustees, Farrington told
400 faculty, staff and students in
the Zoellner Arts Center.
"These are good times for
Lehigh," Farrington said. "We are
nationally recognized as a leading
research university. We are enjoying record numbers of undergradu
ate applications, the quality of our
student body is the best ever, and
we are being even more highly selective in admissions.
"Good times are the times
when we should make the most
progress.
"We have one overall objective: a Lehigh that is as intellectually powerful as all of us working together can make it."
Funding for the initiative will
come from internal reallocation
of funds, the critical moment
fund, new income, designated
gifts, and special investment
funds made available by trustees, Farrington said. Tuition will
not be raised to pay for the investments.
A memo describing the proposal process for accessing the
new funds will go out Oct. 16.
Provost Ron Yoshida will hold
open meetings with faculty to
discuss that process on Monday,
Oct. 9, in UC 408; Thursday, Oct.
19, in UC 409, and Tuesday, Oct.
24, in UC 306. All meetings will
start at 4:10 p.m.
Farrington listed five goals of
the new initiative:
• To improve areas "in which we
simply must be much stronger
than we are," including computer
and information science, optoelectronics, and biosciences/bio-
technology;
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Photos by John Kish IV
"Watchers" (1960, bronze), is
one of 22 sculptures of
England's Lynn Chadwick
patrolling the Packer Campus. Ricardo Viera, curator of
the university's art galleries,
gave a guided tour recently
of the sculptures, which have
been loaned to Lehigh by the
Berman Museum of Art at
Ursinus College. Curators
from Ursinus, members of
the Berman family, and faculty, staff and students joined
Viera.
COE professors
get $1.8 million
to study ADHD
George DuPaul and Asha
Jitendra, professors of education,
have been awarded $1.8 million
from Hie National Institute of Mental Health to study the academic
performance of elementary-school
students with Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
The five-year study, to take place
in Lehigh Valley public schools, is
one of the few investigations designed to improve the academic
achievement of ADHD students.
The disorder - characterized
by inattention, hyperactivity, or
both — afflicts approximately 3-
5 percent of elementary-school
children in the United States.
Students with ADHD are at
higher-than-average risk for
poor relationships with peers
and for antisocial acts such as
lying, stealing and fighting.
Most ADHD research has
sought to decrease disruptive
behavior. To improve academic
performance, teachers usually
read ADHD literature, consult
with school psychologists or physicians, or place ADHD students
in special education programs.
At this time there is no proven
model for schools to effectively
improve the academic performance of students with ADHD.
The Lehigh study will seek to create a model by focusing on individually tailored instructional
programs that use academic assessment data.
"Studies suggest that, if the academic performance of students with
ADHD improves, their behavior will
improve as well," DuPaul said.
The new study, to be completed by DuPaul, Jitendra and
graduate students in school psychology and special education,
will involve 180 ADHD students
in grades 1-4. Sixty students
without ADHD or severe academic problems will be placed in
a control group.
Lehigh researchers will meet
with teachers of ADHD students,
collect classroom and curriculum-
based data, and develop an intervention plan in reading or
math for each child. The researchers will observe each student in
the classroom and evaluate and
modify intervention plans, based
on the child's performance in
class, homework assignments
and exams. The plan will include
the input of parents and peers
and the use of computer software. Students with ADHD
themselves will use "self-management" strategies to enhance
their academic performance.
The researchers will evaluate
the overall effectiveness of the
intervention plans.
-Rich Harry
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