Brown and White Vol. 99 no. 42

              fc •* — — i b&w photo by jack schneider all of the greek week competitions were held despite the rain and cold weather pi kappa alpha fraternity and delta gamma sorority were the week's champions v 01.99 n0.42 lehigh university msa selects lu for study tuesday april 26 1988 bethlehem pennsylvania 215 758-4181 average starting salaries of lu grads compared byaoriennetsang brown and wnte news writer see salaries page 4 lehigh's college of engineering and applied sciences graduates of the class of 1987 earned slightly less than national averages for 1988 while those from the university's other colleges earned salaries slightly higher than current national averages according to comparisons of studies done by u.s news & world report and lehigh university career services the highest average yearly starting salary reported by lehigh's class of 1987 in the engineering college was 30,600 , for engineering physics the next highest average was for chemical engineering at 30,024 computer science-electrical engineering was the next highest at 29,244 followed by material science and engin eering at 28,452 mechanical engineering at 27,996 indust rial engineering at 27,672 and civil engineering at 23,616 however the national average starting salaries for 1988 engineering graduates with a bachelor of science degree are 30,768 for chemical 29,388 for mechanical 29,316 for electrical 28,248 for industrial and 24,948 for civil according to u.s news & world report the demand for new engineers has been soft the past five years as corpora tions have trimmed their staffs but the bureau of labor statistics expects engineering to be one of a handful of occupations to prosper increasing by 32 percent by 2000 bymattaresery brown and white news writer as part of the middle states association accreditation process lehigh was selected to conduct a course on planning for college administrators april 17-20 according to assoc iate provost patti ota the course topic based on a case study done by the university was suggested by msa they msa offer this opportunity to institu tions rarely and only when they are assured that the accreditation process is quite rout ine ota said they must also feel that the institution has something important to talk about which would be useful to other people in the higher education community we feel it is an honor to be asked to do a case study she added the msa advertised lehigh's planning cour se nationally to institutions which sent admin istrators to lehigh for three and a half days to attend the course the case study is run by an outside director appointed by the msa three additional evaluators and other administrators attend the course and later submit a report to the msa one main advantage of sponsoring the cour se is that administrators who attend provide feedback as to how they think the planning ideas presented are working if we had done a self study instead of the case study almost every area of the university would have to spend a long time just putting together facts and figures and we really wouldn't learn much ota said i think this way we did something that was beneficial to other people and in turn we learned some things the msa process takes place once every 10 years it is a routine university-wide accredita tion of all the academic and non-academic programs and is coordinated by the president of a university without accreditation a col lege is not eligible for federal funding vice president for academic services eric ottervik said for a school like lehigh being accredited is not really a question but it is an important process because they make specific comments about improving the university most students do not want to go to a school that is not accredited he added during the two-year accreditation process evaluators specializing in different academic and non-academic areas observe their respec tive areas of the university for example one person may study the athletic department and see accreditation page 8 by robyn suriano brown and white news writer i'm not much of a novelist but i'm the only lehigh graduate who's made a living of it les whitten 50 said in his lecture thursday night in sinclair auditorium whitten's speech books and the active life was the final event of his stay at lehigh during which he visited journalism classes and other groups and opened a linderman library exhibition of the les whitten papers whitten said his experiences at lehigh taught him how to say yes to life the feeling that it was ox-even desirable-to say yes to life carried over to other areas in my life he said according to whitten as a journalist he has said yes to vietnam to nighttime meetings with mafia hit men to pending felony charges for refusing to reveal his sources and to battlegrounds and crashes where legs lay around like fire logs whitten said he began his years at lehigh as a misplaced engineering student and a theoretical commu nist he said he is now only a parlor pink but added if you've never known a communist you're missing something whitten said he realized he was even less of a communist than an alum speaks of life as novelist reporter he said his work resulted in close scrutiny by the fbi and cia this surveillance included being trailed and taped by undercover agents who whitten characterized as ivy league cia types who misspelled everything whitten said although the agents uncovered minor details of his childhood they never discovered i had been in the open embrace of marx whitten has written novels and poet ry and translated the work of the poet baudelaire whitten refers to his books as the children of a man's womb and said writing is a wonder ful way to make a living the pursuit of art he said even see whitten page 4 engineer when he was told by commu nist youths that it was a great sin to read ernest hemingway commun ism in practice is no place for dedicat ed writers and readers he added after leaving lehigh to spend 18 months in the army whitten returned to lehigh switched majors and grad uated in 1950 with bachelor's degrees in journalism and english whitten said his dream at the time was to be a poet but after his marriage he gave up all hope of writing poetry probably wisely whitten instead became an inves tigative reporter and has worked with syndicated columnist jack anderson dukakis campaigns in lv massachusetts gov michael dukakis told lehigh valley residents saturday at bethlehem steel corporation's grace auditorium that full employment would be the most import ant domestic priority of his administration speaking confidently in a region he is supposed to carry dukakis attacked the reagan administration for economic failures and said he would re-create the governemnt's partnership with business the governor who was on the podium with lehigh president peter likins said he understands the evolution occurring in the lehigh valley's service and manufacturing economy he spoke on the statewide ben franklin partner ship program and similar bipartisan initiatives in new york and massachusetts according to the morning call dukakis said i don't see how we can build a strong vibrant country without a strong vibrant steel industry he said repeating the same for the textile and automobile indutries i don't think we can compete unless we build a partnership...with our basic industries the brown and white