The director/sort-of-subject of the KU-focused ESPN "30 for 30" documentary that aired last fall is coming to campus for a screening next month, per a release from KU's Student Union Activities group.

Josh Swade will provide live commentary on "There's No Place Like Home" as it's screened at 2 p.m. Feb. 17 in room 130 of Budig Hall.

The documentary tells the story of Swade's quest to bring James Naismith's original list of the "Rules of Basket Ball" to KU, which he considered their rightful home. He also directed the film.

Not to spoil it for you, but he was ultimately successful, though KU donor David Booth actually did the bidding at an auction. KU plans to house the rules in a new student center near Allen Fieldhouse.

The event, organized by SUA, will be free and open to the public.

The depth of Swade's KU fanhood surely endeared him to some folks around here. But you can display your own KU affinity in another way: by sending your news tips to merickson@ljworld.com.

Joseph Steinmetz, a former dean of liberal arts and sciences at KU, is moving on up at Ohio State University, which he came to from KU in 2009. In July, he'll become the university's provost.

Steinmetz was also serving as interim provost at KU at the time he left for Ohio State, which was around the same time former Provost Richard Lariviere and former Chancellor Robert Hemenway also exited. He became executive dean of arts and sciences and vice provost at Ohio State, where he assumed leadership of a newly formed College of Arts and Sciences.

Steinmetz was announced as the new Ohio State provost in November, though Columbus Business First reported then that officials there had the promotion in mind when they first hired him.

He showed some apparent excitement about the job in an interview with Ohio State's student newspaper: "This place is hot and people around the country think this place is going places," he said.

I don't know if we can call this blog "hot," but between you and me, I think it's going places, too. But only with your help: Send those KU news tips to merickson@ljworld.com.

Update (8:40 a.m. Thursday):

Here's a clarification, courtesy of Don Steeples, a distinguished professor of geology who was serving as senior vice provost at the time Steinmetz left KU:

Steinmetz actually was not technically serving as interim provost when he left in 2009; he had been named interim provost after Lariviere announced his departure, but because he wound up leaving at the same time Lariviere did, he never actually took over the job. So, though stories from the time reflect that he had the title of interim provost, he never actually served in that capacity. The only acting provost between Larivere's departure and the arrival of Jeff Vitter was Danny Anderson, who's now KU's dean of liberal arts and sciences.

So, there's a lesson in KU administrative history for all of you (and me).

The change isn't coming for three-plus more years, but KU's athletics department has already been preparing for some time for higher NCAA eligibility standards coming down the road, Inside Higher Ed reports today.

In August 2016, the NCAA will raise the academic standards that incoming students must meet to be eligible for athletics, and administrators at the NCAA's annual convention last week were urging departments to quickly start getting the word out to high schools and parents so students coming to school at that time can be ready.

Inside Higher Ed cited KU's athletics department as one that has been thinking about the change for a while now. Cooperating with Kansas State and Wichita State universities, KU athletics officials have developed brochures to distribute to counselors and parents. They've also met with high school and community college officials to inform them about the changes.

The story quotes Theresa Becker, associate athletics director for compliance, saying getting the word out has been a "challenge," but "you have to get your attitude in check about it."

Fortunately, there are no eligibility requirements for submitting KU news tips to Heard on the Hill. So what's your excuse for not sending them to merickson@ljworld.com?

Sure, parking can be tricky on the KU campus, and it's pretty hilly. But hey, students, at least you don't have to pay to use the sidewalks.

That's what the students have to do at Worcester State University in central Massachusetts — sort of, anyway.

The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, Mass., reported in a story (which I found via Inside Higher Ed) about parking and transportation woes at Worcester State that each student must pay a $72-per-year "parking/pedestrian access fee."

So students aren't exactly paying a toll each time they step onto the sidewalk, but they are paying a fee that the university uses for maintenance of walkways. Instead of allowing students to purchase a parking pass if they want, the university charges all of them for access to campus, whether they park or not. (The reason has to do with financial aid, a spokeswoman said.)

KU, by the way, uses state funds for maintenance of its sidewalks, through the facilities services department, says Donna Hultine, KU Parking and Transit director.

Submitting KU news tips to us is just as free as the sidewalks on campus. We'll even say "Thank you." Send them to merickson@ljworld.com.

On this first day of spring semester classes at KU, I've got an assignment for everyone.

We need a Twitter hashtag for KU news.

In case that sentence was gibberish to you, here's an explanation. (If you know what I'm talking about, skip this and the next paragraph.) Twitter is the social network where users fire off messages of 140 or fewer characters, and if you're interested in seeing in real time what's going on in the world (or in Lawrence, or at KU) and what people are saying about it, you should really give it a try. (Here are some instructions I just found.)

On Twitter we use these things called hashtags. These are words proceeded by a pound sign (the tic-tac-toe one) used to classify tweets by subject. For instance, folks tend to attach "#kubball" to their tweets if they're talking about the KU men's basketball team.

If you search for #kubball on Twitter today, you'll probably see a lot of KU fans talking smack in advance of tonight's game against Kansas State. That's what's great about hashtags: They allow you to join in a conversation about a given topic with anyone else in the world who's talking about the same thing.

There's #kubball for men's basketball, along with #kufball and other KU sports tags. There's a certain other KU-related hashtag that's been getting some national media coverage recently but is not in line with this publication's standards or this blogger's tastes, so we won't mention it.

But what about a hashtag we can use when we talk about NON-SPORTS things going on with KU's campus? What if you see something crazy going on on Wescoe Beach and want to share a photo, or you've got an on-campus event you want people to know about, or you want to ask people where to find a parking spot at a certain time of day?

The tag #KU would seem to be the obvious solution. But try searching for the hashtag #KU and compare it with what you get with #kubball. Depending on how you search, you might get some stuff having to do with Kansas University. But if you try to search it in real time, you'll likely get a lot of stuff in other languages; it's only two letters, and it apparently means other things to other people.

Some of KU's Twitter presences have tried out other tags to spur conversation, including #kustudents. But couldn't we come up with a hashtag for anything newsy or notable going on at KU, of interest to students, faculty, staff and even alumni?

That's where you come in. Tweet your suggested tags at our LJW_KU Twitter account, followed up with the tag #FindTheKUHashtag. We'll take a look at the submissions over the next week or so, and if we find one we think is worth trying out, the submitter will receive the greatest prize we have to offer here at Heard on the Hill: We'll mention your Twitter handle, both on the blog and via Twitter.

So get cracking. Maybe try to #think #exclusively #in #the #form #of #hashtags until you get some inspiration.

And as always, send your #KUNewsTips to merickson@ljworld.com.

This is a story that I couldn't quite fit into last week's article on the death of former KU campus titan Francis Heller, but that I need to share with you in some form. It comes from Fred Morrison, a law professor at the University of Minnesota, for whom Heller was an adviser and an instructor while he was at KU as an undergrad during the late '50s and early '60s.

In addition to numerous other roles during his decades at KU, Heller at one time helped lead KU's famed Western Civilization program and taught the Western Civ courses. Morrison, a young man from a small western Kansas town who would go on to become a Rhodes Scholar, was a student in Heller's Western Civ course in 1958.

For some reason someone — Morrison cannot recall who — had the idea for a Kansas City TV station to broadcast part of one student's final exam of the Western Civ course, which was done in an oral format. Morrison was selected as the lucky student. Heller and two other professors were to pose questions to him.

But the exam was not EXACTLY going to be broadcast live; the three instructors and Morrison rehearsed their questions and answers a few times before the broadcast started.

Then the camera went live. Heller, as he'd done during the rehearsals, asked the first question. But this time, the question was completely different.

No one else involved expected this, Morrison said. For his part, Morrison says he recovered from the shock and gave him an answer. But when the camera shifted to the next professor who was to ask a question, he just stared, silent and dumbfounded, as Kansas City watched. He couldn't handle the deviation from the script.

It goes to show, Morrison said, that Heller always tried to push his students in a way few other instructors did. He did not favor taking the easy road.

"That's the way he liked to play it," Morrison says.

So, students, as you begin your semester tomorrow, take heart in one thing: At least none of your tests will be broadcast live on TV.

But if, for some reason, one of your tests IS broadcast live, or if you have any other KU news tips, please let me know at merickson@ljworld.com.

A few days after we found out what kind of state funding Kansas' public universities might receive next year, the Chronicle of Higher Education has a report (link can be accessed for free) on how much higher-education funding states across the country provided for THIS school year.

And Kansas was more or less in line with the rest of the pack. The state's funding for higher ed — including both tax appropriations and other funds — rose by 2.7 percent in the 2013 fiscal year, or the 2012-13 academic year. But during the last five years, Kansas' state funding has still fallen by 8.1 percent.

That's about what most states have experienced; 30 states increased their higher-ed funding for this year, but 38 have reduced funding overall during the last five years. (In total, higher-ed funding decreased for the 2012-13 year, but that's largely because of some big cuts in some larger states, such as Florida and California.)

Compared with its neighboring states, Kansas' funding situation doesn't look too catastrophic: Missouri's funding fell slightly for 2012-13, and has fallen 8.9 percent for the last five years; Colorado levels sunk by 1.1 percent this year and 14.3 percent over five years; in Nebraska, though, funding has actually grown slightly during the past five years, including a 1.4 percent bump this year.

KU officials will certainly tell you that the funding situation since about 2008 has led to a host of challenges, though.

You can take a look at numbers from other states in that Chronicle story.

As for NEXT academic year, Gov. Sam Brownback's proposed budget last week would keep systemwide spending on higher education essentially flat for the next two years. It would recommend $35 million in bonding authority and $10 million in state funds to build a new education building at the KU Medical Center, though.

Money is tight everywhere these days, it seems. But you know what's free? Sending a KU news tip to merickson@ljworld.com!

KU today announced 58 students will receive Undergraduate Research Awards to work on projects during the spring semester. These awards have been given out for more than 20 years now, though this year they'll go through the new Center for Undergraduate Research.

The projects accepted for grants are many and varied, and because this is but a blog post, we can list only a few here. So, here are a handful that I found interesting:

• "Fallen Idols," by senior Stoney Weaver of Cherryvale, who's majoring in philosophy. This one "portrays the the complex philosophical ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche in a comic book format."

• "College Living Arrangements and Body Dissatisfaction: The Case for Males," by senior Cynthia Brown of Garnett, who's majoring in psychology. This one promises to explore how living arrangements affect college men's body image and related problems.

• "Case Study: The State of Homelessness and the Role of Social Networks in Lawrence, Kan.," by senior Daniel Nicholson, who's from Lawrence and is majoring in sociology.

• "Tipping: An Economic Anomaly," by Megan Nelson, a junior from Manhattan majoring in economics. This aims to explore what variables might lead to higher or lower tips for people working in the service industry.

• And from Magdalene Lee, a junior from Singapore who's majoring in journalism, a project investigating how watching "The Daily Show" might affect how much they pay attention to politics and distrust politicians.

The other winning students, of course, are no less admirable. And in the interest of fairness, I'll also include one project whose subject matter flies over the head of this journalist's scientifically lacking mind:

• From Tyler Darland, a senior from Haysville majoring in cell biology: "The Role of Mical Within the UNC-6/netrin Signaling Pathway."

You can read the entire list of winning projects here.

And to contribute to my research project, "Reporting on Various Stuff that Happens at and Around Kansas University of Interest to the General Public," please send your KU news tips to merickson@ljworld.com.

Everybody loves a nice list, so here's one: Per the journalism blog Romenesko, KU's School of Journalism ranks as the third-"most popular" in the country on a list released this week.

(In news that may be somewhat less popular with our audience, the University of Missouri finished on top by a mile.)

The list, from the site StateUniversity.com, uses enrollment numbers as a measure of popularity. Some Romenesko commenters have quibbled with that methodology. In fact, the discussion below the list may be more interesting than the list itself.

But still: It's a list. Just try not to click on it.

Please do remember to send all your KU-related lists, or your other news tips, to merickson@ljworld.com.

If you like glimpses into KU's history (and who doesn't?), you might keep an eye on the Spencer Museum of Art Twitter feed today.

The museum opened 35 years ago today, and it's promising to share photos from its history throughout the day via a medium that, back then, would have surely seemed quite incomprehensible: Twitter. It started with the poster advertising its Jan. 17, 1978, grand opening.

It's also inviting museum visitors past and present to share their Spencer memories, using the hashtag #SMA35.

So, send your art-gazing memories there. And send your KU news tips here: merickson@ljworld.com.