College campuses are becoming hot spots for the spread of mumps, whooping cough and tuberculosis, said an article in yesterday's Inside Higher Ed online magazine. While all three diseases have been on the decline in the United States for years, greater international populations at universities have partially led to an increasing number of cases. At the University of Virginia, 29 cases of the mumps were recently reported. All of the infected students had received the two-dose vaccination for the disease, which is only 90 percent effective. At Missouri Southern State University, a few students received positive test results for tuberculosis, a reminder of the disease's prevalence throughout the world. While all three diseases are treatable and do not pose a real threat to individuals, there is always the alarming possibility of it becoming plague-like and affecting the mass population.
Cow manure is the newest source of energy on the campus of Green Mountain College in Vermont. The environmentally-conscious school will now get half of its electricity from the methane gas extracted from cow manure. Central Vermont Public Service Corp.'s first cow-power generator is located at Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport, Vt. The company allows its customers, including Green Mountain College, to decide whether they will get 25 to 100 percent of their electricity from cow manure. The "cow power program" is working so well that a second generator has recently been installed and the power company's hope is to have 10,000 customers using this new energy source by 2010. While Green Mountain College will be paying more on its electricity bill after this change, it believes that reducing its reliance on non-renewable energy is worth the price.
The Tuck School of Business honored AT&T Inc. for its leadership in supplier diversity this past weekend at the 2006 National Minority Supplier Development Council Conference in San Diego, Calif. AT&T was awarded the Investor in Education Award by the Tuck School for its commitment to helping people improve their businesses. The award also honored AT&T for providing scholarships to minority business owners who want to attend the Advanced Management Education Program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. AT&T prides itself in supplier diversity and has spent more than $20 billion with "diversity owned" companies over the course of ten years. Similarly, the corporation has increased its spending with diverse suppliers by 180 percent, a feat that has not been achieved by any other company.
