Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.
• Two of those old labs in Malott Hall could be getting a facelift sometime soon, so I have some good news if you’re someone who ever comes in contact with rooms 4043 and 4046 in Malott.
KU is asking the Kansas Board of Regents that a project to design and remodel those two labs be placed on KU’s list of projects it’s undertaking this year.
The work includes installation of two new fume hoods, chemical storage cabinets, new flooring and ceilings, along with other improvements.
The project will be funded using $500,000 in tuition funds. The regents have the item on their consent agenda for their meeting next week, indicating its likely approval.
• Lectures abound at KU these days, so you can go around and hear other people talking about interesting things to your heart’s content.
Here are a few options in the coming days for you.
Tonight, you can join me at the School of Business’ Anderson Chandler lecture. New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin, author of “Too Big To Fail” will deliver his lecture on the future of the global economy at 7 p.m. at the Lied Center. I’ll have an entire row to myself there, I’m told by the fine folks at the KU School of Business.
I’ve also heard word of two different events next week at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.
First, you can go to Woodruff Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday to hear the Hall Center for the Humanities’ second lecture in its ongoing series. It features education historian and policy analyst Diane Ravitch, who will be delivering her lecture, “Will School Reform Improve the Schools?” She’s a critic of teacher accountability concepts, particularly when tied exclusively to test results. She is also a critic of the rise of philanthropic capital in education reform — “questioning why we allow these organizations that embrace a market-model of education and are accountable to no one to drive the agenda for public schools.”
Ravitch is a research professor at New York University and a nonresident senior at the Brookings Institute, a policy organization in Washington. She’s also a former assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush.
That might be good for some fiery discussion.
An informal question-and-answer session with Ravitch is set for 10 a.m. Wednesday at the Hall Center for the Humanities’ Conference Hall, 900 Sunnyside Ave.
Or, if that’s not your thing, you can hear about chocolate cake — or how you convince yourself you deserve that piece of chocolate cake (someone’s been reading my mind) — at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Free State Brewing Co., 636 Mass.
As part of the “Science on Tap” series sponsored by the KU Natural History Museum, Cary Savage, director of the KU Center for Health Behavior Neuroscience at KU Medical Center, will talk about the role of the brain in evaluating the rewarding properties of food, and how we make decisions on what to eat and how much. No word on if chocolate cake will be served.
• And lastly (but certainly not least), I heard from a tipster who read my post yesterday about the cancer survivor and KU alumnus who completed the Ironman triathlon last Saturday in Hawaii.
Another KU alumnus, Jerry Skillett, also completed the race, my tipster told me. I certainly don’t want to leave anyone out, so if you know of people who are more talented than me who completed this race that’s frankly a little crazy, feel free to let me know.
• In fact, if you send me a tip for Heard on the Hill at ahyland@ljworld.com, I’ll even let you sit in my row at the Anderson Chandler Lecture. But if not, you’ll just have to sit somewhere else.
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Made_in_China (Paul R. Getto) says…
Ravitch should be fun. She has evolved over the years and become more supportive of new ideas. She is brilliant and worth listening to. "Third, and for me of great importance, is the fact that there is no reason that the sanctions delineated in the law will necessarily produce better results. Will a school get better if the staff is replaced? Maybe, maybe not. Will it get better if it is turned into a charter school? Maybe, maybe not. Will it get better if it is handed over to a private management company? Maybe, maybe not. Will it get better if the state takes it over? Here we can say with certainty that no state has any track record of taking over low-performing schools and turning them into high-performing schools. So, I question why the federal government has written a law imposing sanctions that have no basis in experience." From: Diane Ravitch: The Future of NCLB