Daily Herald the Brown
vol. cxliv, no. 28 | Tuesday, March 3, 2009 | Serving the community daily since 1891
Move to let Watson give tenure resisted By Sydney Ember Senior Staff Writer
Courtesy of Dartmouth College
Jim Yong Kim ’82.
Kim ’82 picked as Dartmouth president by Hannah Moser Senior Staff Writer
Jim Yong Kim ’82, a medical doctor and global health leader who graduated from Brown with a degree in human biology, has been elected to become the 17th president of Dartmouth, the college’s board of trustees announced Monday. Kim will begin his term July 1, succeeding longtime president James Wright. Kim, who was born in Seoul and moved to Iowa at age five, will become the first Asian-American president of an Ivy League institution and just the second-ever person of color, after Ruth Simmons, to hold such a post. “I feel so proud to follow in Ruth’s footsteps,” he said in a telephone interview Monday. “She inspired me to think that I can do this job.” A leader in the field of public health, Kim garnered international recognition as a senior official at the World Health Organization for working to fight diseases such as continued on page 2
A proposal that would allow the Watson Institute for International Studies to grant tenure to its appointees is on hold after a widespread negative response from faculty members. A final decision on the proposal — first suggested by the Watson Board of Overseers in October 2007 — was supposed to be reached this semester. But a fear that the tenure selection process would be used to attract non-traditional faculty — along with concerns about the University’s financial situation — has delayed a verdict on the proposal indefinitely. The Watson board’s proposal has suffered from a lack of support from faculty both inside and outside the institute. “I think we all felt more discussion was necessary,” said Vice President for International Affairs David Kennedy ’76, who is serving as interim director of Watson. “Some people felt we needed to do more planning.” The lack of a permanent director, as well as widespread differ-
ences in faculty opinion regarding the proposal, have made the issue “an open conversation,” Kennedy said. Tenure is a “necessary tool” for attracting and retaining the highest quality faculty, he said. As part of the institute’s longterm strategic planning process, there have been a number of committees that started meeting this past fall to discuss whether the proposal “makes sense,” Kennedy added. But a Watson faculty member, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity, said Kennedy and President Ruth Simmons pulled the plug on the proposal earlier this year because enthusiasm among faculty had remained “lukewarm.” Many people are unclear who would benefit from Watson’s ability to grant tenure to its professors, the person said. “This proposal was not initiated by the Watson faculty,” the faculty member said, adding that opposition among faculty is due to concern about departmental competition over resources and the perception that tenure would be used to continued on page 2
Kim Perley / Herald
A proposal by the Watson Institute’s Board of Overseers to let the institute hand out tenure offers has stalled, unpopular with faculty.
Over 1,100 take first-year seminars this year, highest ever By Emma Berry Staf f Writer
After falling slightly last year, firstyear seminar enrollment for the current school year has been larger than ever. Between the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years, the number of first-year seminars offered rose from 56 to 74, and total enrollment rose from about 800 to over 1,100 — the highest level since the program started in 2002, according
to Registrar Michael Pesta. “Things are back on the upswing,” Pesta said, adding that last year’s dip may have been due to “any number of circumstances,” including professors taking sabbaticals and significant turnover in the Dean of the College’s office when seminar offerings were being planned. According to Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron, an increase in the size of the faculty under the Plan for Academic Enrichment
enabled the program’s growth. Though the Corporation recently announced that it will slow faculty hiring to deal with projected losses of income, “the budget reductions in the College will not affect the First-Year Seminar program at all next year,” Bergeron wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. “Since we are expecting an additional modest growth in the faculty for next year, we anticipate that the (first-year) seminar program will remain on a strong footing,”
she wrote. Bergeron wrote that there will be 72 first-year seminars taught during the next school year — a slight dip from the 74 offered this year. She said the decrease would not affect the program’s goal of offering enough first-year seminar slots for the entire freshman class, typically numbering about 1400 students. But Pesta said it’s “hard to tell” continued on page 2
Med student R.I. senator’s personal guest at Obama speech By Brian Mastroianni Senior Staff Writer
inside
Lauren Goddard MD’11 found herself rubbing elbows with the family and friends of some of Washington’s most powerful political players last Tuesday, as she watched President Barack Obama’s first address to Congress from the Visitor’s Gallery of the House of Representatives. “I kept nudging people and saying ‘Look there’s Senator Feinstein, look there’s Nancy Pelosi, and no one was phased because they were probably related to these people,” Goddard said.
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A self-described “political geek,” a gastrointestinal disease for which Goddard attended the speech as there is no known cure. a personal guest of Sen. Sheldon “I took health insurance for Whitehouse, D-R.I. granted for my whole life, but then “I thought the speech was great I became too old to be covered by in that it exceeded my my mother’s insurance expectations,” she said. policy, and I didn’t have FEATURE “Obama set out very spehealth insurance for a cific goals and made the people a long time,” Goddard said. “I realized part of those goals and plans — he the contradiction that I was a med makes the public feel invested in the student, and yet I didn’t have health insurance.” process.” For Goddard, Obama’s focus on Goddard met Whitehouse early affordable health care had a particu- last month at a community dinner in lar resonance. After graduating from Warwick that focused on health care Barnard College in 2004, Goddard reform. The dinner was attended by was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, about 200 people who spoke about
their struggles in receiving health care, said Alex Swartsel, communications director in Whitehouse’s office. “Every one of the stories presented at the dinner was compelling,” Swartsel said. “The interesting thing about Lauren is that she is a medical student as well as a patient. As a student of medicine she knows that if you are scheduled to take medication regularly, you take it, but as a patient who struggled to afford health care … she is going to have a hard time finding affordable health care.” continued on page 2
Kim Perley / Herald Lauren Goddard MD’11 took a trip to Washington to hear Obama’s address.
Metro, 5
Sports, 7
Opinions, 11
state Stimulation Gov. Carcieri ’65 accepted R.I.’s portion of the federal stimulus bill last week.
Double heartbreak M. basketball lost two close games over the weekend to Ivy League foes
Bds is your pal Fatima Aqeel ’12 writes that Dining Services is about more than just food
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