Daily Debriefing
By Jen Buchholz
Published on Thursday, January 22, 2009
Dartmouth's Sustainability Initiative has received a $135,000 grant from the Morgan Family Foundation of Los Altos, Calif., as well as a $65,000 donation from Mary Morgan Finegan '86, according to a College press release. The grant from the Morgan Family Foundation will fund sustainability assessments of the College and programs to create goals for reductions in the College's energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste. Finegan's gift will support workshops and programming at the Sustainable Living Center, where 19 students reside. The gifts follow College President James Wright's September announcement that the College is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 percent by 2030.
The Utah State University Press, known for its contributions in folklore, poetry, environmental studies, English composition and regional studies, may be discontinued due to budget cuts by the Utah state legislature, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. The final decision will not be made until March, when the fiscal allotment for higher education for 2010 is formally established. The legislature is debating two proposals that would slash university budgets by either 11 or 19 percent, respectively. The Utah State University Press publishes 20 books each year on a relatively small budget and is one of 125 university presses nationwide.
University of Florida professor James Twitchell decided to step down upon receiving a five-year suspension without pay for plagiarism, Inside Higher Ed reported on Jan. 15. Twitchell confessed last spring after he was accused of plagiarism in an April article in The Gainesville Sun, which cited approximately 20 examples of passages taken from other authors without attribution. Twitchell would have been allowed to return to work in five years if he demonstrated that he did not plagiarize future writings. Twitchell, who has often been referenced in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, was allowed to continue teaching as a tenured professor until the penalty was handed down.