Jamal Brown '08 was featured by the gay periodical Out Magazine as one of the "Men and Women Who Made 2008 a Year to Remember." Brown was recognized as a gay man who "moved culture" in the past year, according to the magazine's web site. While competing as a sprinter for Dartmouth, Brown was "a recognized leader" on the Dartmouth track team, representing Dartmouth at the 2007 NCAA Leadership Conference, according to the article. That same year, Brown helped organize the first annual PRIDE gay awareness week at the College, according to a previous article in The Dartmouth. Brown is now working in Boston, Mass., as a legal assistant at the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and plans to run competitively at the 2010 Gay Games in Cologne, Germany.
The number of American students attending study abroad programs in China has "skyrocketed" since the 2005-06 academic year, increasing by more than 25 percent, according to The New York Times. More students seek "an understanding of what's happening economically and politically" in China as that nation becomes more relevant in American foreign affairs, Allan Goodman, president of the Institute on International Learning, said in an interview with The Times. China is now the fifth-most visited country for American study-abroad students, after Britain, Italy, Spain and France. The number of American students per year who study in China has increased from 1,396 in the 1995-96 school year to 11,064 in the 2006-07 academic year, according to The Times.
University presidents who also serve on the boards of corporations may hurt the images of their respective institutions if those corporations fail, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Many of these university presidents receive six-figure salaries from these corporations and can gain wealthy corporate donors for their institutions. Nineteen of the presidents at the 40 public universities with the highest budgets have a seat on at least one corporate board, The Chronicle reported. While this practice is normally considered acceptable, recent accounting scandals and the current economic crisis have caused some presidents to reconsider serving on the boards of companies. Northwestern University's president, Henry Bienen, and St. John's University's president, Rev. Donald Harrington, both served on the Board of Directors of the investment bank Bear Stearns, which imploded in the current financial crisis. Associations with the Bear Stearns debacle provide "horrible publicity" for the university presidents, and can be embarrassments for the schools they represent, J Robert Brown, professor of securities law at the University of Denver's law school, said in an interview with The Chronicle.
