Jennifer Matos, a former adviser to Latina students at Smith College and a current doctoral student who is working to complete a dissertation about the factors that affect the educational success of Latino students, began her new position as an adviser to Latino students in the OPAL office on Monday, according to Acting Dean of the College Sylvia Spears. Spears, the former Director of OPAL, said an internal search yielded a "tiny" pool of applicants, so the search committee was given permission to conduct a national search. Matos has worked at Clark University as the coordinator of African, Latino, Asian, Native American and GLBT Student Development and also studied at the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Social Justice Education department. "I was really excited about OPAL's mission and work and interest in social justice, how they use the language of social justice and how their programming really supports it," Matos said.
Dartmouth researchers proposed a new method for creating miniature black holes in a laboratory setting in a paper published last week in Physical Review Letters, an academic journal. Using superconducting quantum interference devices, or SQUIDs, which are sensitive instruments used to measure weak magnetic signals, the team hopes to be able create a system analogous to a black hole that can be controlled by the researchers, according to a College press release. While other mechanisms for replicating black holes have been proposed in the past, this method is unique as scientists may be able to investigate physicist Stephen Hawking's claim that black holes are not voids, but rather emit energy in the form of photons with the procedure, according to the press release.
For the first time in five years, the number of admissions offers made by U.S. graduate schools to foreign students has declined, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last week. The 3-percent drop is largely attributed to the decline in the admissions offers to applicants from India and Korea, the Chronicle said. Combined with China, the countries contribute almost half of the international graduate students in the United States. Graduate programs have also seen an increase in interest from American applicants, possibly due to the economic downturn, according to The Chronicle.
