Grain & Chaff

Conference calls

First-year quarterback Matt Guice is earning some respect in the Atlantic 10 Conference after throwing five touchdowns and completing 23 of 47 passes for 332 yards versus James Madison last Saturday at McGuirk Alumni Stadium to give the Minutemen their first win of the season against five losses. The stellar performance earned Guice the A-10 Rookie of the Week honors. ... His teammate, junior punter David Sanger, was named Special Teams Player of the Week after setting a school record of 50.3 yards per punt as he totaled 402 yards on eight punts in the JMU game. In the second quarter, he booted a career-high, 71-yard punt, the eighth longest in team history. ... Meanwhile, two other campus athletes won conference honors for the week: field hockey goalkeeper Ashley Egland was honored as Player of the Week for a second straight week after compiling a 3-0 record, all of them shutouts. ... Men's soccer player Ptah Myers was also named Player of the Week after scoring four goals in a 5-0 win over Temple last Sunday.

Something to say

Professor Sara Lennox of Germanic Languages and Literatures presented a luncheon talk on "Globalization, Gender, and German Studies" at the annual conference of the German Studies Association held Oct. 5-7 in Washington, D.C. ... Tom Braden, Paul Gun-nells, Sanja Hukovic, James Humphreys, Eyal Markman, Andrea Nahmod, Eric Sommers and Maxim Vybornov of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics gave invited talks at the fall sectional meeting of the American Mathematical Society held Oct. 13-14 at Williams College.

Down on the farm

Nearly half of the campus's 358-acre dairy farm in South Deerfield is being preserved for conservation and agricultural purposes under an arrangement with the state Department of Environmental Management. The protective covenant applies to 148 acres of the parcel that were previously used as pasture but are now reverting to forest. Under the agreement, only research-related buildings will be allowed on the tract.

Bookkeeping blues

Roxbury Community College faces a cutoff of $3.5 million in federal student aid funding after a state audit documented mismanagement by school officials. The U.S. Department of Education has already limited RCC's eligibility for federal financial aid to two years, four below the norm, and warned campus officials to straighten out its management problems or be ordered to pay student aid from its own coffers and seek federal reimbursement. That possibility could wreak financial havoc on the school, which enrolls 2,400 students, the majority of whom are black and immigrant residents of Dorchester and Roxbury. In a related move, the Department of Education also leveled a $201,000 fine against RCC for giving Pell grants to ineligible students between 1993 and 1995. RCC officials say the state audit is flawed and that the college needs more funding to do its work properly. Meanwhile, RCC faculty voted no confidence in the board of trustees for not exercising oversight of the administration.

Footnotes

Last week's article on Norman Sondheimer joining the Strategic Information Technology Center may have had some readers wondering what happened to former director Les Ball. He has moved to Northeastern University, where he is senior executive professor and management information systems director for the college of business administration.