Big name scientists are on the bill with headlining rock ‘n’ rollers in new ads aimed at getting kids and their parents jazzed about science. Premiering in December’s GQ magazine, the “2010 Rock Stars of Science” campaign pairs musicians such as Blondie ‘s Debbie Harry , Poison’s Bret Michaels and Timbaland , with scientists, including Nobel Prize winners. “All these people are doing great things,” says Harry, who took part in the campaign amid preparations for overseas shows. “We have to get the word out.” Rock stars are household names, but ResearchAmerica! polls suggest half the public can’t name a living scientist. A 2005 National Academies of Science report complained parents aren’t turning their kids on to science anymore. “I think being a scientist is like being a fighter pilot, it’s just as cool,” says Columbia University professor of surgery Mehmet Oz , best known as the host of the syndicated Dr. Oz S how . Oz appears with Timbaland and astronaut Bernard Harris in the campaign. “The juxtaposition of scientists with rock stars might jolt people a little, and open some minds,” Oz says. Scientists paired with rock ‘n’ rollers in the ads include Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn of the University of California, San Francisco , and cancer researcher Craig Thompson , chief of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center . “Scientists are really invisible to people now,” Thompson says. “We actually need to get rid of Marcus Welby and show scientists are real people, and just as much a part of our lives as rock stars.” Past years’ Rock Stars of Science messages, sponsored by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation, have paired scientists such as National Institutes of Health chief Francis Collins , an amateur guitarist, with Aerosmith ‘s Joe Perry , who actually played together. “I’m willing to pick up a guitar and get on stage with Joe Perry, if that’s what it takes,” Collins told fellow scientists recently.

The club of private college and university presidents earning seven figures is getting less exclusive. Thirty presidents received more than $1 million in pay and benefits in 2008, according to an analysis of federal tax forms by The Chronicle of Higher Education . More than 1 in 5 chief executives at the 448 institutions surveyed topped $600,000. Most of the pay packages were negotiated before the full force of the recession. But even if the numbers dip slightly in next year’s survey, executive pay is expected to keep climbing over the long term as colleges compete for top talent. And schools are rewarding executives while raising tuition, exposing themselves to criticism. At large research universities, the median pay was $760,774; it was $387,923 at liberal arts colleges and $352,257 at undergraduate and graduate colleges and universities. The highest paid executive in the Chronicle survey was Bernard Lander, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and sociologist who founded Touro College in New York in 1970. He died in February at 94. Lander received a compensation package of nearly $4.8 million. In a statement, the college said $4.2 million of that was retroactive pay and benefits awarded after an outside consultant determined Lander had been “severely underpaid.” Several deals reported the Chronicle survey, which covers the most recent available data, included deferred compensation or other unusual circumstances. Comparisons to past years aren’t possible because of changes in how data is reported to the Internal Revenue Service . Colleges were asked to report salaries by calendar year instead of fiscal year as in the past, so most dollar amounts overlap with what was reported the previous year. Another change: Perks including first-class air travel, country club dues and housing are now included in reported pay. In 2007-2008, 23 presidents received more than $1 million. As recently as 2004, no college president had broken the seven-figure threshold. While some presidents on the latest list lead ultra-selective schools such as Columbia, Yale and Penn, executives from schools such as the University of Tulsa and Chapman University in Orange, Calif., are on it, too. Not all the most elite schools are represented, either. The presidents of Harvard, Princeton and Johns Hopkins all were paid in the $800,000s. “Value is in the eyes of the beholder,” said Jeffrey Selingo, editor of the Chronicle . “Some boards think these presidents, even at small institutions, are worth it. On the flip side, the prestige of serving at other institutions is enough of a paycheck for some.” Still, numbers in the tax forms don’t always tell the whole story. Chapman University President James Doti’s $1.25 million compensation includes two “golden handcuff” deferred compensation deals worth almost $665,000, spokeswoman Mary Platt said. She said the board did not want to lose Doti, who since taking the job in 1991 has raised the school’s profile and overseen expansive building projects. He and other college presidents have donated a portion of the earnings back to the college. Doti gave a $1 million gift for an endowed chair in economics. David Warren, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, said in a statement that salaries reflect supply and demand, and that presidents’ jobs have become more demanding. Presidential salaries make up a very small percentage of campus budgets and have virtually no impact on tuition increases, Warren said. Still, public confidence in higher education erodes when tuition and presidential pay are both rising, said Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. “People see higher education as another institution that takes care of the people at the top first,” he said. According to the College Board , average tuition and fees at private colleges and universities have risen almost 35% in the past decade, to $27,290. Many students, though, pay much less because of grants and tax benefits. The average net price at private schools was $11,320 this fall, less than what students paid on average a decade ago. Public college presidents generally earn less than their private counterparts. Only one public university president topped $1 million in 2008-09 — Ohio State University president Gordon Gee brought in $1.5 million. Then there are for-profit colleges, which are under fire for their heavy reliance on federal student aid money and high student loan default rates. Strayer Education Inc. paid chairman and CEO Robert Silberman $41.9 million last year, according to a Bloomberg report last week. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Colleges strive to create welcoming, inclusive communities for students from every background. But a new effort at George Washington University has scores of critics and supporters abuzz with heated comments that continue to pour in on various blogs and news articles. At the request of the university’s Muslim Students’ Association, George Washington began offering a once-weekly, female-only swim hour in March. But it only recently turned into an online debate over issues of religious and sexual discrimination and — though not always explicitly — racism, spurred by an article in the student newspaper, The GW Hatchet . The Lerner Health and Wellness Center pool closes to men for one of the 20 hours it’s open each week, with a tarp blocking the view through the glass door and a female lifeguard on duty. The university declined to comment for this article beyond a two-sentence statement that said its officials are reviewing the closure while they establish a formal recreational swim policy. ON THE WEB: Islam case still simmers MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Muslim college opens doors A few highlights from Internet comments on The Washington Post ‘s and TBD’s recent coverage of the swim hour: “Should a minuscule minority force the overwhelming majority [to] abide by their rules or should it be the other way around?” “Western society should not accommodate to Islam on this point; it is Islam that should change.” And in rebuttal: “Come on, folks. An hour a week — what’s the big deal?” “It’s not an unreasonable request. ‘Women’ is like half the population.” Many comments not quoted here could easily be considered racially offensive. Despite the naysayers, Sisters’ Splash, as it’s called, is not the only special accommodation that a college has made for Muslim students. George Washington already has foot baths for pre-prayer rituals, and a handful of other institutions — including the University of Michigan-Dearborn and George Mason University — have them as well. In 2008, at the request of female Muslim students, Harvard University ran a one-semester pilot program that reserved six hours a week for female students only at one of its lesser-used gyms, though the program was discontinued after that semester. There’s also Gamma Gamma Chi Sorority Inc., an Islamic-based sorority that has five regional chapters, though not all are active. Shelley Mountjoy, a doctoral student at George Mason who briefly attended George Washington as an undergraduate, doesn’t much care what goes on at private colleges. But she takes issue with the foot baths at George Mason and with other religious accommodations at public universities. She is afraid that policies like the female-only swim hour will have a domino effect and spread to other colleges. “I don’t want my tuition dollars paying to accommodate somebody’s religion,” she said. “It’s not the entire campus’s religion. We don’t all have to subscribe to Islamic law.” Because George Washington is a private university, there are no constitutional issues with the swim hour, said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Should a similar program start up at a public university, the presence of church-state issues would depend on the many facts of the situation, such as whether access is religion-specific, Khan said. Mountjoy, who serves on the boards of Atheist Alliance International and the national Secular Student Alliance, is also the founder and president of the Secular Student Alliance chapter at George Mason. She said that although some criticism of the swim hour and other services might stem from a bias against Muslim people, she takes issue with any type of religious accommodation. “I actually think that it’s in everybody’s best interest to keep religion out of our public schools,” she said. “I would react the same if this was a Christian-only swimming hour.” Students say the criticism is mostly coming from off-campus. Shaeera Tariq, a sophomore at George Washington and vice president of the Muslim Students’ Association, helped initiate the swim hour. She said nobody really knew about it until the Hatchet article came out — and as it happens, she is a reporter at the paper and she pitched the article to her editor. “It definitely sparked a lot of debate amongst people, but it seems to me there is a definite positive sentiment on campus and people are in favor of it,” she said. “We’re not closing down the mall or something for an hour. We’re just closing down a pool that wasn’t used very often in the first place.” John L. Esposito , an Islamic studies professor and founding director of Georgetown University ‘s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said many of the negative reactions undoubtedly stem from an “Islamophobia.” “It’s very clear that there’s a good chance many of them have a real problem accepting Muslims or Islam, and we’ve got to deal with that. In a pluralistic society, that form of bigotry and racism — we’ve dealt with it before and we’ve got to deal with it now,” Esposito said, referring to civil rights struggles. “It seems to me this is a perfectly understandable thing that we should be doing. All of these members of the community pay tuition and so faculty and administrators have to always be open to responding to and accommodating the needs of people.” Esposito cited numerous other ways institutions serve different groups: parking for people with disabilities, campus chapels for various religions, and excusing attendance for students celebrating religious holidays other than the traditionally recognized Christmas or Easter. “If there’s a segment of the community that can benefit from an accommodation, you make it when you can,” he said. “The fact is, they have rights and you have to accept it.” Zahin Hasan, president of the Muslim Students’ Association, said the number of women — Muslim and non-Muslim — who attend the swim hour varies. But the point is that the college is serving more students, better. “What I can’t understand is how utilizing an underused service, such as a gym pool, is a bad thing,” Hasan said in an e-mail. “Very few people know about the pool, and even fewer use it. The benefits of Sisters’ Splash far outweigh the few inconveniences it may present.” But, he added, a “great majority” of George Washington students have shown support for the swim hour. According to a 2005 Gallup report, gender inequality is one of American women’s top concerns about “the Muslim or Islamic world.” (Notably, many Muslim women perceive the promiscuity, pornography and public indecency portrayed in Hollywood images as mistreatment of women in the Western world, the report says.) It’s an issue that is mentioned frequently in online comments about the swim hour. One person wrote, “If Muslim women are too modest to wear ordinary swimsuits when they swim, then maybe they should stop swimming and go see a psychiatrist. Teaching sexual repression is wrong; making women feel that they are bad and wicked merely for having female bodies is wrong.” Another wrote, “If because of religious convictions they chose not to exercise that freedom, the rest of society should not validate it by accommodating it.” But the swim hour’s proponents — and there seem to be many — point out that about half of the student population can participate. And accusations of racism are not difficult to come by. “We’ve seen a number of these kinds of programs around the country. I think it goes way beyond Muslim women; I think there are enough women who would be more comfortable swimming in a same-sex environment that it would be of interest to women of all faiths in America,” said Ibrahim Hooper , a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “There is a cottage industry of Muslim-bashers that look for any opportunity to marginalize American Muslims or to demonize Islam, and any denomination of Islam in our society is going to be targeted by these people.” There is more to the issue than religion, though. Erin E. Buzuvis, an associate professor of law at Western New England College and co-founder and contributor to The Title IX Blog, said it’s unclear whether barring men from the pool constitutes a violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law requiring gender equity in educational programs at federally funded schools and colleges. Men can still swim 95% of the time, so they’re not completely excluded. And if the program’s purpose is to accommodate a religious group, rather than women in general, that could work in the university’s favor. “The university might have a plausible defense that while this would technically be a form of gender discrimination, that they’re doing it to accommodate a student’s religion,” Buzuvis said. “If that weren’t an issue, I would say a female-only swim hour would be highly questionable under Title IX.”

Daniel Remold, a journalism professor at the University of Tampa, says his passion is campus media. Can he help it if the big story over the last decade is about sex? His new book, Sex and the University: Celebrity, Controversy, and a Student Journalism Revolution (Rutgers University Press), provides insights gleaned from reading more than 2,500 student sex columns. He tells USA TODAY why they matter. Q: What conclusions can we draw about students’ sex lives from these columns? A: These are wonderful sociological treasures in defining this sexual generation. The quote I love most is, “We’re not Baby Boomers. We’re not part of Generation X . We’re generation sex.” They’re speaking to students in their own language. They cover every extreme possible but primarily grapple with how confusing the current social, sexual landscape is on campus. The general sentiment seems to be that all rules have been thrown out the window. Chivalry is gone, dating is pass?, gender roles reversed. There’s no blueprint for how students are supposed to act with each other. The columnists are asking, “Is this really good for us?” Q: Extremes, huh? Do you believe everything you read? A: I would truly say with full confidence that the columns are giving attention to issues students are engaged in. They’re compressing the campus culture into 600 to 800 words a week. They’re trying to be sarcastic to retain readers. There is an element of the exaggerated or sensational embedded in some of the pieces. But it’s coming from students themselves. Q: Did you find censorship ? A: It’s unfortunately fairly common and still tends to happen behind closed doors. In most cases, students are realizing they can and do fight back. The censorship comes into play 99% of the time when a single outside reader, an alumni or parent or administrator, sees the word “sex” and simply reacts. They don’t take time to really read the pieces. In a lot of cases, they would find they’re on the columnists’ side. Q: What would you say to parents who are surprised or concerned by what they read? A: I’ve told parents there are three things all students tend to have in common: They complain about parking. They figure out how to coordinate sleep and school. And they have to make choices related to sex. Students, whether we want to admit it or not, are wrestling with these issues. We all have sex in common, even those who remain chaste. And the columns deal as much with the abstinence side of things. I’d much rather put my kid on a campus in which discussion about it is allowed openly among peers. Q: What has changed since the first campus sex advice columns appeared a decade ago? A: Sex columns are truly no longer thought of as novelty items. They’re in all 50 states, all across Canada and in parts of Asia. They continue to cause controversy. As for the columnists, a growing camp seems to be using pseudonyms. In my interviews with columnists, the first wave never expressed regret over the writing but at times had moments of regret that their names are so easily searchable — by graduate schools, by potential employers, even first dates. It’s not something they can escape.

What if tiny “nano-bots” could autonomously travel though a person’s bloodstream to find and kill cancerous cells, eliminating the need for surgery? Or what if you could hop into a flying car for your morning commute? No science fiction here: “These are real,” say commercials for Planet Green’s new show, Dean of Invention , which premieres Friday at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Dean Kamen , the show’s host and inventor of various medical technologies as well as the two-wheeled self-balancing personal transporter, the Segway, says he wants the show to get kids excited about STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), although the series is not aimed just at children. Demolishing stereotypes Inspiring and engaging kids in STEM has long been one of Kamen’s goals, which he largely pursues through his FIRST robotics competition, a series of hands-on robotics contests culminating in a large international championship, something of a robot Olympics. “I think the biggest stereotype of all that hurts the world of science and technology is that kids think of scientists as a ‘they.’ Kids think, ‘It’s those scientists who will cure cancer. It’s those weird geniuses. It’s them, those scientists, not me,’ ” says Kamen. Kamen says that he hopes his show will wipe out the image of the crazy or boring scientist by showing kids fascinating technology and fun, exciting scientists of all races, genders and ages. In each show, Kamen takes his audience on “field trips” to labs and other research sites to investigate breakthrough inventions, including a trip to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point to study robotic prosthetic limbs, a feature on the first episode. “We want the opportunity to present this information in a way that is broadly interesting and accessible from kids to adults. We want kids to say, ‘I wanna get involved,’ or ‘I wanna build that reality.’ We want to build the army of kids who are going to be the next generation of saviors,” he says. There are educational TV shows that are effective, such as Cyberchase , a science cartoon on PBS Kids that must prove it is reaching kids because the National Science Foundation funds it, says Joe Blatt, Harvard University Graduate School of Education senior lecturer and director of the Technology, Innovation and Education program. Blatt adds, however, that educational shows succeed best when geared toward the appropriate age group. He has not seen Dean of Invention yet, but Blatt says it is not unreasonable to assume that older kids might watch because “teens and tweens” often turn to shows designed for adults as they grow out of kids’ shows. “A lot of the show, from what I can see, is very technically oriented,” says Tony Murphy of St. Catherine University’s National Center for STEM Elementary Education in St. Paul. Murphy watched preview clips of the show on Planet Green’s website. “But it is also done in a way that’s interesting and easy to understand, with graphics and great visuals, that help people to gain an understanding of what’s being done in science and technology,” Murphy says. “It’s very, very exciting, and could be great for parents and kids to watch together.” The show is designed to be accessible to the average adult viewer but stimulating for kids, and informative for professionals in STEM, says Kamen. Although entire episodes may not appeal to some younger kids, Murphy says teachers from elementary to high school could use clips from the show as part of a lesson to get kids thinking about technology, which is vital because by middle school, some children already have negative feelings about those subjects. Outside the typical lab Murphy adds that bringing this show into the classroom could “start kids off with an understanding that we live in a technological world,” and expose kids to scientists and engineers of all cultures and outside of the typical laboratory setting. Kamen says future episodes will feature a range of innovations such as computer programs that can transfer information from the human brain, and the development of human waste as an energy source to be burned like coal.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — National leaders of a fraternity accused of directing Yale University pledges to chant obscenities against women as they marched through campus have scheduled a meeting with the Ivy League school’s chapter. Delta Kappa Epsilon International Fraternity says its director will visit New Haven this weekend to discuss the incident, which it condemned as “deeply offensive.” It also ordered the Yale chapter to stop pledge activities. Some students and the Yale Women’s Center board complained after pledges were videotaped last week, chanting about necrophilia and a specific sexual act. Michael Jones, a Yale senior who also is a New Haven alderman, said the DKE fraternity has apologized. Local DKE leaders referred calls to national headquarters. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Investors fled for-profit college stocks on Thursday after the sector’s bellwether predicted a 40-percent drop in student enrollment next quarter and withdrew its forecast for next year. The news chilled an industry facing increased government scrutiny over concerns about soaring student loan defaults. Enrollments at for-profit schools surged during the recession. Big advertising budgets drew students trying to bolster their resumes as a hedge against high unemployment. But critics claim the schools are not helping students find better jobs and say enrollment counselors sign up many students who are unprepared for higher education. When they drop out, they are still stuck paying back their student loans. CLOSER LOOK: For-profit colleges under fire over value, accreditation Apollo Group Inc ., which runs the University of Phoenix , attributes its expected enrollment decline to changing practices aimed at satisfying new government regulations. Apollo will no longer pay its counselors bonuses based on how many students they enroll. It also will provide new students with a free three-week trial program to see if they are ready for school, weeding out those at risk of leaving school before earning degrees. Meanwhile, the industry is facing a proposed new rule from the Department of Education that could limit schools’ access to federal financial aid — the bulk of their revenue — if graduates’ debt levels are too high or too few students repay loans. And, many schools are close to maxing out how much revenue they can receive from federal financial aid resources. Federal regulations cap that amount at 90%. The industry averages 83%, largely because they focus on recruiting lower-income students who qualify for federal Pell Grants . “Now, they have to slow down enrollment and be less active in targeting these students. They have to go back to the more traditional students who are working adults,” said Matt Snowling, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets. In afternoon trading, shares of Apollo tumbled $12.64, or 26%, to $36.86. The rest of the sector followed suit. Education Management Corp. shares lost $2.70, or 20%, to $10.57. DeVry Inc . fell $8.67, or 17%, to $41.90; Corinthian Colleges Inc . decreased $1.16, or 19%, to $4.86; ITT Educational Services Inc. dropped $10.58, or 16%, to $55.34; Career Education fell $3.29, or 16%, to $16.898; Strayer Education Inc. declined $21.21, or 14%, to $135.84. Shares of newspaper publisher Washington Post Co., which owns the Kaplan school chain, slumped $34.61, or 8.1%, to $394. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Hide the chocolate milk behind the plain milk. Get those apples and oranges out of stainless steel bins and into pretty baskets. Cash only for desserts. These subtle moves can entice kids to make healthier choices in school lunch lines, studies show. Food and restaurant marketers have long used similar tricks. Now the government wants in on the act. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced what it called a major new initiative Tuesday, giving $2 million to food behavior scientists to find ways to use psychology to improve kids’ use of the federal school lunch program and fight childhood obesity. CHEFS: Help craft healthy school lunches BREAKFAST FOR ALL: Kids’ hunger fight starts in class A fresh approach is clearly needed, those behind the effort say. About one-third of children and teens are obese or overweight. Bans on soda and junk food have backfired in some places. Some students have abandoned school meal programs that tried to force-feed healthy choices. When one school district put fruit on every lunch tray, most of it ended up in the garbage. So instead of pursuing a carrot or a stick approach, schools want to entice kids to choose the carrot sticks, figuring children are more likely to eat something they select themselves. “It’s not nutrition till it’s eaten,” said Joanne Guthrie, a USDA researcher who announced the new grants. The initiative will include creation of a child nutrition center at Cornell University , which has long led this type of research. ON THE WEB: SmarterLunchrooms.org Some tricks already judged a success by Cornell researchers: Keep ice cream in freezers without glass display tops so the treats are out of sight. Move salad bars next to the checkout registers, where students linger to pay, giving them more time to ponder a salad. And start a quick line for make-your-own subs and wraps, as Corning East High School in upstate New York did. “I eat that every day now,” instead of the chicken patty sandwiches that used to be a staple, said Shea Beecher, a 17-year-old senior. “It’s like our own little Subway,” said Sterling Smith, a 15-year-old sophomore. (Hint to the school: Freshen up the fruit bowl; the choices are pretty narrow by the time Smith gets to his third-shift lunch period.) Last year, the USDA asked the Institute of Medicine for advice on its school lunch and breakfast programs, which provide free or subsidized meals to more than 31 million schoolchildren each day. The institute recommended more fruit, vegetables and whole grains with limits on fat, salt and calories. But it was clear this wouldn’t help unless kids accepted healthier foods, Guthrie said. “We can’t just say we’re going to change the menu and all of our problems will be solved,” she said. The agency requested proposals from researchers on how to get kids to actually eat the good stuff. Cornell scientists Brian Wansink and David Just will get $1 million to establish the child nutrition center. Fourteen research sites around the country will share the other $1 million. “Findings from this emerging field of research — behavioral economics — could lead to significant improvements in the diets of millions of children across America,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement. Cornell’s focus will be developing “smart lunchrooms” that guide kids to make good choices even when more tempting ones are around. “We’re not taking things away from kids,” Wansink said. “It’s making the better choice the easier, more convenient choice.” Wansink is a prominent food science researcher, known for studies on the depiction of food in paintings of the Last Supper and how the placement of a candy jar can affect how much people eat from it. Christine Wallace, food service director for Corning City School District near Cornell University, met him a few years ago and invited him to use her 14 schools as a lab. “We tend to look at what we’re offering and to make sure it’s well prepared and in the correct portion size, and not the psychology of it. We’re just not trained that way,” Wallace said. For example, some Corning schools had express lines for a la carte items — mostly chips, cookies and ice cream. The idea was to reduce bottlenecks caused by full tray lunches that took longer to ring up. But the result was a public health nightmare. “We were making it very convenient for them to quickly go through the line and get a bunch of less nutritious items,” Wallace said. After studies by Wansink, they renamed some foods in the elementary schools — “X-ray vision carrots” and “lean, mean green beans” — and watched consumption rise. Cafeteria workers also got more involved, asking, “Would you rather have green beans or carrots today?” instead of waiting for a kid to request them. And just asking, “Do you want a salad with that?” on pizza day at one high school raised salad consumption 30%, Wansink said. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Despite an increased understanding that kids learn differently, a majority of Americans still do not completely understand what conditions are related to learning disabilities, a new poll says. The report by the Tremaine Foundation, which supports programs in arts, environment and disabilities, is based on a telephone poll of 1,000 adults. The report says that 79% of parents and 80% of non-parents incorrectly associate mental retardation with a learning disorder. A majority of Americans also incorrectly associate attention deficit disorder (ADD), emotional disorders and autism with learning disorders, all of which are unrelated to learning disabilities. “We still see a great confusion among the public and among the teachers as to what learning disabilities are and are not,” says Tremaine Foundation president Stewart Hudson. A learning disorder does not affect a person’s intelligence but rather “affects the brain’s ability to process, store, and respond to information,” according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Dyslexia, difficulty reading and processing language, and dyscalculia, difficulty processing math, are two common learning disabilities. These misconceptions may lead to shortcomings in addressing learning disabilities in schools. “It makes us wonder — if there’s a lack of understanding at this level, how does this play out in the classroom where the rubber meets the road?” says James Wendorf, executive director of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Signs in children, like language difficulties and trouble with letters and numbers, do not always indicate a learning disability, but parents should address problems early, says Virginia Buysse of the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. — In her senior year, when Joanne Johnson-Shaw was named Miss Football at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, she envisioned wearing a ball gown fit for a princess. Her hopes were dashed, though, when her classmates voted for a ceremony featuring traditional African dress. Johnson-Shaw ended up wearing a long, patterned skirt and matching head wrap, and her football-player escort, instead of a suit and tie, wore a loin cloth. “I look back at the queens in ball gowns, and I’m still envious,” Johnson-Shaw says now. She graduated from college in 1972 and lives in Ahoskie , N.C., where she retired following a career with the Internal Revenue Service . In the past week, Johnson-Shaw has been reliving her collegiate memories because she can now access a digital archive of the Hawk yearbook back to 1959, the inaugural edition. THE HAWK: Browse issues online Scanned images are available for free online and let readers browse through a yearbook cover to cover or search by name. The grainy images from the yearbooks are full of period hairdos and clothes. They also show the school’s evolution from a tiny, historically black college into an institution that now offers doctoral programs and enrolls 4,500 students. “It’s fascinating when you look back, not just at the changing hairstyles but also at who was in the classrooms, the activities people were involved in and the new buildings,” said Jennifer Neumyer, the college’s special collections and outreach librarian. The 1960 yearbook includes a picture of Martin Luther King Jr . He spoke at commencement and is pictured in a cap and gown with a procession of soon-to-be graduates strolling behind him. Nationwide movement Colleges across the United States have been making digital copies of old yearbooks, student newspapers and course catalogues, said Laurie Gemmill, program manager of the Mass Digitization Collaborative at LYRASIS. The Atlanta-based group for libraries and information professionals has helped 100 colleges and universities create digital archives of materials that include yearbooks. Preserving the documents is only part of the benefit, she said. “Institutions are more interested in sharing their materials. So many materials are hidden from people. You have to go in and request it. The special collections are there for people to use, but it can be intimidating to some,” Gemmill said. Among the colleges that have created digital archives of yearbooks: Penn State University in State College, Pa.; Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte; St. Mary’s College of Maryland in St. Mary’s City, Md.; and the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. Penn State’s yearbook, La Vie , goes back to 1890. Kimberly Conway Dumpson, director of alumni affairs and planned giving at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, said digital yearbooks are another way for her to connect with alumni and raise money for the school. This week while meeting with alumni in Florida, she pulled out her laptop and showed one man his yearbook photo from 45 years ago. “He was just blown away, so excited. He couldn’t stop reminiscing about friends and alumni,” Dumpson said. Sandra Odoms Hawkins, a 1976 graduate, said she checked out her old yearbook online and isn’t the least bit embarrassed by her clothing choices. The 56-year-old lives in Edgewater, Md., and works in the information technology department for the U.S. Senate Office of the Sergeant at Arms and Doorkeeper. “Some of the styles have started coming back around. You should have kept those platform shoes,” Hawkins said. Horatio William “Bill” Jones III graduated in 1978 and is now an employee of CBS News in Charlotte He finds it neat that one photographer, Thomas Wiles, took almost all of the yearbook pictures from 1959 to 1989. The 60-year-old Jones said he grew up in Princess Anne and remembers when jazz greats Lionel Hampton , Count Basie and Duke Ellington played at the college. He said he’s been so busy clicking through the yearbook online to see how the college has changed and to see old friends and faculty members, that he hasn’t looked at his own picture. “I don’t need to. I know what I look like,” he said.