Education

Alia Sabur, the child genius who was just 14 when she earned her bachelor's degree, is now the youngest college professor in history. The Guinness Book of World Records formally announced Alia Sabur of New York to be the youngest person to be a full-time professor.

Sabur was just 18 when she was hired on February 19 as faculty in the Department of Advanced Technology Fusion at Konkuk University in South Korea.

Mount Union College in Alliance, Ohio is gearing up to launch their first master's degree program in almost 100 years. In May 2009, the college will begin offering a physician assistant program, a specialty that is currently in high demand.

The small, private liberal arts college has approximately 2,200 undergraduate students, and is affiliated with the United Methodist Church. It's also the perfect place to add a physician assistant program as beginning this year, Ohio requires graduate degrees for physician assistants to practice in Ohio.

Officials at Mount Union have already begun seeking accreditation for the program, and aim to enroll 25 to 30 students per year in the two-year program. Half of the master's program will be in the classroom, while the other half will be conducted in clinical settings. Admissions to the program is expected to be competitive. Marietta College, who also have a P.A. Master's program, receive over 200 applications for 22 spots in their classes.

Right now this is the only graduate level program that Mount Union is adding, but more may be added in the future. The cost of the program has also not yet been determined.

Seton Hall University in New Jersey went into temporary lock-down mode last night after a man accidentally wounded himself with a gun while waiting in a vehicle. A spokesman for the Essex County prosecutor's office said that the man, Anthony Papalia, 22, was in stable condition in a Newark hospital with a stomach wound.

Papalia, of Aberdeen, NJ, was not a student at the university. Rather, he wanted to see a woman who was enrolled there.

The shooting occurred near the Xavier Hall dormitory on campus. No one else appears to have been injured.

The university promptly sent out e-mail and text messages to students telling them to stay in their rooms. After being shut down for about 40 minutes, the campus reopened.

As a result of the federally mandated "No Child Left Behind" program, the entire staff of William H. Taft Elementary in Cincinnati will be replaced. This marks the most dramatic move the Cincinnati Public School System has taken since the program was enacted in 2001.

Janet Walsh, a spokeswoman for the Cincinnati Public Schools, told local news crews that the staff found out the news on Tuesday afternoon. Staff will finish out the school year, and will be replaced for the start of the 2008-2009 school year. The school's principal is amongst those being replaced.

According to state results, Taft Elementary has consistently failed to meet goals mandated by the "No Child Left Behind" program, and scored about 20 points below the district average on standardized tests.

As detailed in the restructuring plan outlined Wednesday, the Mount Auburn school's traditional academic focus will be replaced by a "Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics" program, beginning in August.

Taft Elementary is currently rated "academic emergency" - the lowest of five possible ratings. Superintendent Rosa Blackwell promised that the reconfiguration will boost their rating up to "effective", the second highest rating.

Legendary quarterback Joe Namath is set to retire from Alabama after 4 decades. The quarterback, who was short by 15 credit hours when he left to play a lengthy pro career, has been working the last 5 years to complete his degree after a long hiatus.

"I'm proud for the university and proud for Joe Namath," said Robert F. Olin, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "This was a goal he aspired to and he accomplished it."

Namath led the Alabama Crimson Tide to National Championships and left in 1965 to sign the biggest professional football contract of that time going to the New York Jets.

Standard & Poor's, the financial services giant that analyzed data for U.S. News & World Report's inaugural ranking of America's top 100 high schools, admitted today that they made a rather gigantic math error and incorrectly ranked a Vermont high school. Montpelier High School was erroneously ranked the nation's fifth-best public high school in the list that was published on December 1.

The magazine now says that the school is amongst the top 500 of the 18,000 high schools in the U.S., but not in the top five.

Brian Kelly, editor of U.S. News & World Report, said:

"We feel terrible about having gotten it wrong in the first instance. We're in the business of getting these numbers right. It's particularly embarrassing that we're in the business of judging people based on their math scores, and we got our math wrong."

While the state of Ohio's minority student population continues to grow, there continues to be a lack of minority teachers in Ohio classrooms. According to a new study released by the Center for Teaching Quality at North Carolina, minority teachers are severely underrepresented in Ohio.

The study found that just 6% of the state's teaching force consists of minorities, while about 14% of the state's 2 million public school students come from minority backgrounds. With the number of minority students increasing each year, school districts are finding it difficult to fill the ever-widening gap between minority students and teachers.

Ohio's largest concentration of black and Hispanic teachers are in urban school districts, but even then the numbers are not even close to matching student enrollments.

Education experts believe that a better representation of minority teachers could help reverse the disproportionate numbers of black and Hispanic students that are suspended and expelled. Minorities are also underrepresented in honors and Advanced Placement classes, and over-represented in special education programs.

It's getting to that time of year when high school seniors are sending off their applications for college, and juniors are just starting to think about what schools they might want to apply for next year. And pretty soon, before you know it, it'll be time to make your final decision on where you want to go to college. But how do you decide?

How do you know whether to choose one over another? And is the college really all its cracked up to be in the brochures and on the tour? What do real students think about the school once they've been there for awhile?

Fortunately, there's a new site - America.edu - that recently launched which aims to answer these questions and more, as well as provide a forum for students, parents, and even instructors to get together and discuss issues related to college. In addition to the networking and discussion opportunities, the site also has a comprehensive collection of college reviews, which have been compiled from numerous sources and input. Both good and bad reviews and comments are taken into consideration for America.edu's college reviews, which gives you a more realistic look at the colleges.

The word of the year, according to dictionary giant Websters is grass station. The word, which is describes a a theoretical fill-up spot in the not-too-distant future, beat out iPodization, Freegan, and God particle for the annual word of the year. Last years word of the year was crackberry.

"Webster's New World editors and researchers constantly collect examples of emerging English – some 2,000 new examples per month," said Editor in Chief Michael Agnes, "and choose one word or phrase that captures our imagination."

Are you looking for a new career? Associated Training Services (ATS) is a great option for people who want to get in construction.. The school is a leader in heavy equipment operator training. ATS has locations throughout the United States including one in Columbus.

Classes are flexible as they start every three weeks and run year round and are offered in three different levels. Here is a rundown on what you will learn:

Level 1:
• Basic Safety
• Orientation to the Trade
• Equipment Preventative Maintenance
• Dump Trucks
• Tractors
• Loaders
• Backhoes
• Grades
Level 2:
• All Level I Courses
• Intro. to Earth Moving
• Scraper
• Bulldozer
• Rollers
• Forklifts
• Civil Blueprint Reading
• Grades, Part 2
Level 3:
• Level I & II Courses
• Advanced Operational Tech.
• Excavators
• Motor Graders
• Principles of HEO Leadership
• Finish & Grading
• Soils