LehighWeek Volume 12, Issue 20

              High Technology
In teacher training
In golf club heads
See pages 3 and 6
Volume 12, Issue 20
LehighWeek
The campus digest for innovation, news and events with SouthMountaineer
Sports Update
Men swim and dive to
Patriot League title
See SouthMountaineer   8
February 17,1999
Faculty discusses salary
Three main issues were discussed at the university faculty
meeting earlier this month: the
lack of consultation with
faculty on the appointment of Don Bolle as
interim vice provost for
information resources;
faculty compensation
and the budget; and a
motion which passed to
reschedule a half-day of
classes for the Presidential Inauguration on
April 9.
Sudhakar Neti, interim chair of the faculty
personnel committee and professor of mechanical engineering
and mechanics, took the provost
and the administration to task
for not consulting the committee
before appointing Bolle. The faculty rules and procedures require the personnel committee to
be consulted before all appointments to positions at the rank of
dean or higher.
At the faculty meeting last
April, former committee chair
Colleen Callahan complained
about the lack of consultation on
several high appointments during the 1997-98 school year and
was assured the problem would
not occur again.
The disagreement this year is
whether the personnel committee needs to be consulted on interim appointments. Pres. Gregory Farrington suggested
Neti arrange a meeting with
him, the committee and Provost
Nelson Markley to resolve the
issue.
Ed Shapiro, chair of the Faculty Compensation Committee
and professor of education, presented the FCC's response to the
announced faculty salary increase of 5.5 percent. The increase is below the FCC's recommendation of 9.5 percent. The
FCC considers the raise "a modest beginning step to narrow the
gap" between Lehigh's faculty
compensation and that at comparison schools. The committee
urged the administration to develop a multi-year plan to address the compensation gap.
Shapiro also expressed the
FCC's concern about announcing
a salary increase and then providing only a portion of the funds
necessary to the deans, who
must find the remaining funds
by reallocating or generating resources in their college. The committee felt that increasing revenue was not a realistic option
in the short term, and that it
could tempt deans to solve the
budget gap by closing open faculty lines and replacing tenured
faculty slots with adjuncts.
The FCC is worried "the raise
will be funded by contracting the
size of the tenured faculty," said
Shapiro. The raise "is a step in
the right direction but the
mechanism is flawed."
Please see Faculty on page 6
Grads count on bright future
John Kish IV
Tara Mockler '96, a senior associate with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, accepts resumes from
students at the career fair in September.
Lehigh's reputation and a strong economy
have helped 96 percent of the Class of 1998
find jobs paying 10 percent higher than the
national average, enroll in graduate school, join
the military, or carry out other definite plans.
Donna Goldfeder, director of career services,
says 26 percent of the Class of '98 enrolled in
graduate or professional schools. That includes 23
percent of Lehigh's engineering graduates, many
of whom turned down job offers for grad school.
"This is up from 14 percent the year before,"
Goldfeder says. "Students are so confident about
their job prospects that they are deciding to go
right after advanced degrees they know they are
going to need down the road."
Beth Gilbert, who earned a chemical engineering degree, is pursuing a master's in biomedical
engineering at Columbia. She became interested
in cardiovascular research as a sophomore. "During my junior year, when everyone explored companies, I started looking at schools. I knew I
wanted to work in a lab and not a plant."
Nearly four out of 10 graduates in the College
of Ails and Sciences chose graduate or professional
school.
A trend that continues, says Goldfeder, is interest in internships. More than 9 out of 10 students complete an internship, externship (shorter
duration than an internship) or coop. All boost job
chances.
Michael Carberry '99, an accounting major, interned last summer at Deloitte & Touche
in New York City, and attended its Leadership
Conference in Arizona the summer before. He
will start work for the company's audit staff next
fall.
"If you have an internship, the chances are
you are going to be asked to work for the firm,
unless you really mess up," says Carberry.
Goldfeder says internships are especially important for liberal arts majors, because they show
students different careers and showcase their
talents to prospective employers.
Another trend is for liberal arts students to
work for non-profit organizations. Some of the
top fields chosen by the Class of'98 included education, research and government, while more
1997 liberal arts graduates went into banking
and computer fields.
Goldfeder believes this switch, like the increase in graduate school enrollment, is due to
students' confidence in long-term employment
prospects. "In both cases, I think students are
confident in their abilities and in the economy,
and so they have more faith in making choices
that are not based solely on dollars."
The career services office staff personally contacts each graduate to determine post-graduation plans.
-Bill Johnson and Penny Savakis
LEO gets $200G
The Lehigh Earth Observatory
(LEO) recently received
$199,938 from the Charles E.
Culpeper Foundation.
"The Culpeper award will significantly enhance our ability to
involve undergraduate students
in experiential learning opportunities and to expose them to new
technologies beyond what is possible in traditional lecture and
laboratory courses," said Anne
Meltzer, associate professor of
earth and environmental sciences and LEO director.
Meltzer said part of the award
money would be used for equipment and instrumentation for
undergraduate laboratories and
research (a teaching platform
with various instruments for doing water chemistry). Also with
the money, a Global Position System base station will be permanently installed near the seismic
station, which receives signals
from satellites orbiting the globe
and is used for accurate survey
ing and mapping.
The remainder of the award
will fund a technical position and
curriculum development.
LEO is an interdisciplinary
initiative by faculty in the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Applied Science, and
Business and Economics that
engages students in an integrated, experiential-learning
curriculum in earth and environmental sciences and environmental studies.
—Audra Gaugler
K31
Thomas
Anne Thomas to retire
Anne H. Thomas, who has directed the office of international
education since it was established in 1994, is retiring March 5.
A farewell reception
will be held for Thomas
on Monday, March 1,
from 4 to 6 p.m. in the
U.C. faculty lounge.
Thomas, who has a
B.A. from Oberlin in
English literature and
an M.A. from Lehigh in
government, joined the
university in 1990 after
teaching social studies
and English at Southern Lehigh High School
for 15 years.
During her tenure
here, Thomas helped
launch the Global Council, the Lehigh Global Alumni
Network (which met in 35 countries with faculty and staff), several short-term faculty-led programs abroad, and the first IILE
(International Inte-
grated
Learning Experience) in
Costa Rica.
She also
helped initiate the Beta
Pi Chapter of
Phi Beta
Delta International Honor Society, the International Administrators' Team, the Lyceum Undergraduate Academic Symposium, the Global Union, and orientations for international students.
In 1996 Thomas chaired the
faculty/staff committee that
wrote Lehigh's International
Plan 2000.
Thomas was also a member
of the Diversity Commission, the
International Strategic Plan
Task Force, the Lehigh Abroad
Faculty Board, the Women's
Agenda for the 25th Celebration
of Undergraduate Women at
Lehigh, the SAFHARIS Advisory Board, the ESL Advisory
Committee, the Enrollment
Management Team, the International Student Recruiting Committee, the ex officio Graduate
Research Committee, the Goals
and Priorities Board, and the
Global Council, which she served
as executive secretary.
Thomas's post-retirement
plans include the establishment
of an international affiliate and
fund-raising for Planned Parenthood of Northeast Pennsylvania,
the Global Nature Conservancy
Council, the Fulbright Alumni
Association, and the Lake
George Association where she
and her husband, David A.
Thomas, professor emeritus of
materials science and engineering, have a summer home. She
also plans to spend time with her
six grandchildren.
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