Yale University may cut several of its smaller undergraduate classes to save money, the Yale Daily News reported on Friday. For the 2008-2009 academic year, 34.9 percent of Yale undergraduate courses had an enrollment of only two to nine students. Yale Provost Peter Salovey told the Yale Daily News, adding that his office is in the process of investigating if classes with low enrollments can be offered less frequently without "significant negative impact." Decreasing the number of times a course is offered would allow the university to hire fewer faculty members. The Committee on Yale College Education found that offering low-enrollment, specialized courses might force Yale to sacrifice valuable introductory courses in its annual report in 2003.
Lisle Carter Jr. '45, the first president of the University of the District of Columbia and a member of Dartmouth's Board of Trustees from 1983-1993, died at the age of 83 on Sept. 10 due to complications from pneumonia, The Washington Post reported on Friday. Before being appointed UDC president in 1977, Carter worked for the National Urban League and also as an assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, where he supervised numerous welfare initiatives, including the Model Cities urban renewal program. Carter was also a public policy professor and vice president at Cornell University, and served as chancellor of the Atlanta University Center, a consortium of historically black colleges. He is survived by his wife, five children, 18 grandchildren and a great grandson.
The United Food and Commercial Workers of Massachusetts union, which represents more than 40,000 workers, has endorsed Rep. Michael Capuano '73, D-Mass., in his bid for the U.S. Senate seat that was held by the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. The UFCW, in its endorsement, highlighted Capuano's record of aiding working families in Massachusetts and his efforts to reform labor laws though the Employee Free Choice Act. "I appreciate the confidence [UFCW] have shown in me and I will never stop fighting to protect the interests of working men and women so that they have access to affordable health care, a fair wage and equal opportunity under the law," Capuano said in a statement.
