Many-NEA Members Currently Working
Part-Time Would Prefer a Full-Time Position

World & Nation

Faculty & Staff

Professional News

World & Nation

The new chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities plans to set up regional NEH centers.

His new program, "Rediscovering America: The Humanities and the Millennium," notes William R. Ferris, Jr., would broaden the public's awareness of and participation in the humanities.

Activities at the centers, which would probably be located at colleges and universities, would include preparing encyclopedias on a particular region culture, playing host to annual meeting of scholars, developing oral-history collections, and promoting cultural tourism within the region.

A request for $5 million to begin the program was included in the $136 million President Clinton sought for the agency in the fiscal 1999 budget.

Wage gains in the U.S. were moderate last year, with first year wage gains averaging under 3 percent.

The Bureau of National Affairs reported the gain was identical to the 1996 advance.

According to BNA, 56 percent of contracts reported in 1997 called for first-year raises in the 2 to 4 percent range, 21 percent called for increases of more than 4 percent, 12 percent called for increases of up to 2 percent. Ten percent called for wage freezes.

British students are protesting government plan to start charging tuition next fall.

Leaders of the National Union of Students said that 2 million protesters responded to its call for a mass walkout last month.

Notes Douglas Trainer, the union's president: "Student anger demonstrates our depth of feeling that the introduction of tuition fees cannot be allowed to happen."

Faculty & Staff

A federal judge has struck down a Virginia law that prohibited the use of state-owned computers to view sexually explicit materials.

Six professors at state colleges and universities took the state to court, arguing that the law violated their academic freedom by limiting their use of the Internet for research and teaching.

An arbitrator has ordered California University of Pennsylvania to reinstate a former professor.

The arbitrator said the state institution wrongfully fired the faculty member for failing a student involved in a dispute over sexual harassment. The ruling said that adequate academic reasons existed for the professor to have failed the graduate student. Last June, an arbitrator overruled the university's firing of another faculty member for alleged sexual harassment.

Professional News

Girls don't learn any better in all-girl classrooms than they do in coed classes.

Even though some studies found that girls perceive all-girl classrooms to be superior, a report from the American Association of University Women finds that this has not led to measured improvement in performance.

Duke University, home of the Blue Devils, has taken a strong stand against the use of sweatshop labor.

The university has announced a code of conduct aimed at ensuring products bearing its name are not made by child labor. The code also requires licensees to provide a safe workplace, pay the minimum wage, and recognize their workers' right to form unions. Licensees must also identify all the factories making the products and allow unimpeded visits by monitors.

Many-NEA Members Currently Working Part-Time
Would Prefer a Full-Time Position