Vol. 17, No. 14Dec. 11, 1997

A selection of items in the national and local media about the University-its faculty, staff and students:

Philadelphia Business Journal, Sept. 26. VoiceNet keeps a low profile. "VoiceNet subscribers are never more than two or three routers-network traffic computers-away from the actual global Internet. And those routers are all on VoiceNet's high-bandwidth network, said Carmen DiCamillo, VoiceNet's president, in a recent interview....DiCamillo touts two recent contracts-one with the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and one with the University of Delaware, as evidence that users are coming to see the value in a provider like VoiceNet. 'Their pricing was attractive, and their Newark topography was appealing,' said Dan Grim, executive director of the University's telecommunications department. These factors prompted the University to choose VoiceNet over such telecom giants as Bell Atlantic Corp. of New York, and MCI Corp. of Washington, D.C."

Reading Teacher, October. Rolling on down the electronic highway. "'Unlike any other education project I've done in the past 20 years, this has been something that has required almost constant experimentation,' This statement from Richard Venezky of the University of Delaware describes the evolution of the Alphabet Superhighway project, which began in 1995 with a grant from the U.S. Secretary of Education's Technology Fund to see how the World Wide Web could be used to help teachers. In just two years, the Alphabet Superhighway has grown into a sophisticated web site that has 2,000 pages accessed per day during the school year."

Greensburg, Pa., Tribune Review, Oct. 5/Arcadia, Fla., Sun Herald, Oct. 8/Staten Island Advance, Oct. 10/Kenosha,Wisc., News, Oct. 10. Universal Press Syndicate. Fashion sense may be in the genes: Brain chemistry may be the reason that some people dress so weirdly. "An article published this year in the journal Nature Genetics confirmed that a gene labeled D4DR accounts for 10 percent of novelty-seeking behavior, and researchers expect to isolate more genes that will account for more of it. And what is fashion but novelty seeking applied to clothing? In fact, two years ago, in the journal Perceptual and Motor Skills, Nancy Stanforth published the results of a study that found students who scored high in fashion innovation also tended to score high in sensation seeking. Why did humans evolve a taste for the new? Marvin Zuckerman, a professor at the University of Delaware, who did much of the basic work on sensation seeking, speculates that when our ancestors were struggling to succeed in a hostile environment by hunting and gathering, a willingness to explore and to approach novel stimuli would have had survival value. He thinks a lack of fear of the novel, or an actual attraction to it, may be the reason Homo sapiens spread all over the globe out of Africa."

Dover Capitol Review, Oct. 13. UD student met Israeli president. "University of Delaware sophomore Thomas Dodd, 18, of Dover, can add a meeting with Israeli President Azur Weissman to his list of political experiences. The Delaware Israeli Public Affairs Committee chose Mr. Dodd to represent them last Wednesday at a meeting at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. DIPAC is a nonpartisan political action group on campus. 'I want to see what Weissman has to say about the peace process,' Mr. Dodd said, 'anything new or enlightening I haven't heard before.'"

Bethlehem, Pa., A.D. Times, Oct. 16. Mission representatives 'chosen by God to do this ministry'. "'Thank you, to each and every one of you ... for being here today,' remarked Rudi Gorman. Mrs. Gorman's comments were offered during the annual HCA Mission Awareness Conference Oct. 8... Tome Gorman, who spent three weeks as a missioner in Brazil through the Massachusetts-based International Institute of Cooperation and Development (IICD), was the first speaker to share his thoughts with students. An alum of St. Thomas More and Allentown Central Catholic High School, the young missioner is a senior at the University of Delaware. 'They don't have much there at all,' Gorman said of those in Brazil. Without help from his parents, Gorman raised the $3,200 needed for him to make the trip and, together with other missioners in his group, raised money on the streets of Boston, Mass. to take to Brazil.'"

Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier, Oct., 23. Charleston police rate high in ethics. "'We tried to get some measure of the integrity of police departments' and their officers, Carl B. Klockars, a criminal justice professor at the University of Delaware, said Wednesday. Charleston was the only department in South Carolina included in the study funded by the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice. The study rated departments in a number of categories that seek to measure ethics and behavior, Klockars said. Charleston police officers were No. 1 in one category-how much discipline officers thought should result from unethical police behavior, he said."

Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 23. Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History. "The American genius would have liked this-his own web site. The detail in this profile of the public and private lives of Franklin is gleaned from the (gasp!) seven-volume biography by University of Delaware English scholar J.A. Leo Lemay, who still can't pick a date for Ben's kite experiment. http:/www.english. udel.edu/lemay/franklin"

Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 26. 'Every generation has had its movement....This is ours.' "Kerry-Ann Elliott was on the bus in Albany, N.Y., first thing Saturday, ready for the five-hour ride to Philadelphia. She was one of 94 members of the Albany State University Black Alliance who made the journey to the Million Woman March.... The march had a large contingent of college-age women. Members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority at the University of Delaware were there. Like their sisters of nearly a century ago who were active in the women's suffrage movement, 'Deltas are about positive change,' said Sharon Ebanks, a senior."

IEEE Power Engineering Review, November. Electric Cars: Power Source of the Future. "Zero emission vehicles, as mandated in California, New York and Massachusetts, have the potential to replace large central utilities as the major source of power generation in the U.S., a University of Delaware research scientist writes in Transportation Research. Willett Kempton, senior policy scientist with the University of Delaware's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, calculates that the U.S. passenger vehicle fleet has 10 times more potential to generate electricity than all the nation's electricity generating equipment combined."

Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 2. Murder, he teaches. " Rarely moving from behind his lectern, [John] Kelly lectures to 50 students at the University of Delaware in Newark. For some, the 67-year-old Kelly is a master of teaching about the world's great fictional and real crimes. For others, the former New York City cop is the antithesis of his grandfatherly appearance, frustrating students with tough exams and an elementary-school grading policy (he takes attendance in every class and advises college students that spelling counts). Kelly, who is in his 27th year teaching at the university, polarizes students and colleagues alike. His classes-The Study of Murder and Great Crimes, among many others-are unique in the university's Criminal Justice Department. He eschews standard sociology or criminal procedure textbooks and prefers to assign classics like The Godfather, All Quiet on the Western Front and Macbeth."

-Compiled by Barbara Garrison