Higher Education : Buzz

Sending your kid to Johns Hopkins University will set you back $55,742 a year in room, board, fees and tuition.

That makes the Charles Village school the 7th most expensive university in the country, according to Business Insider. Sarah Lawrence College, New York University and Columbia University are the three most expensive colleges. You can see the complete ranking here.

US President Barack Obama? Check. That British crooner who swept the Grammy awards this year. Check.

Not surprising finds on Time's list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. 

There's one that Baltimoreans can be proud of. Freeman A Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, made the list that even Mark Zuckerberg was left out of. 

"But perhaps the most envied science program in the country is at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County," Time writes. "That's where Freeman A. Hrabowski III, 61, has spent 20 years as president turning a humble commuter school into one of the nation's leading sources of African Americans who get Ph.D.s in science and engineering." 

You can read more about him here.  

Esquire contributor John Mariani has featured Baltimore in a new section of his website that highlights good day-trip destinations.

He focuses on restaurants in Mount Vernon, Harbor East and Little Italy, including Tio Pepe, Charleston, Aldo's Italian Restaurant and Chazz: A Bronx Original. 

"A good deal of the charm of the surrounding neighborhoods are its townhouses, built along British lines, with their identifying marble stoops, and there is a thriving Little Italy, adjacent to the Inner Harbor," Mariani writes. 

You can read the rest of his description of Charm City here. 

We've heard the term metro applied to all things urbane -- think metrosexual.

Now higher education expert Evan S. Dobelle has ranked the top 10 "metroversities," or towns in which universities are a major economic engine driver. 

Dobelle puts Baltimore No. 3 on this list, after Boston and Raleigh. San Jose and Philadelphia round out the top five.  San Francisco, Seattle and Nashville (tied for No. 7), Atlanta, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. also made the top 10 cut. 

You can read the story in Baltimore Fishbowl here and find the press release here. 

Philanthropist William Polk Carey, who donated millions to Maryland universities, died Jan. 2 in West Palm Beach, Fla. Newspapers around the country remembered the investment firm owner who managed an $11.8 billion investment portfolio.
That includes the Wall Street Journal, which ran an Associated Press story remembering the late entrepreneur.

Last year, Carey gave $30 million to the University of Maryland law school and gave $50 million to found the Johns Hopkins University Carey School of Business in 2006.

This article highlights research from Johns Hopkins University. "A new study of the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality offers a glimmer of hope that a major pollution-reduction effort is improving the health of the nation’s largest estuary." Read the entire article here.

This article in the Towerlight gives a Towson University perspective on the proposed merger of UM-College Park and UM-Baltimore. TU mathematics professor Martha Siegel is quoted as saying,  "I think Towson University is working its way toward prestige and we are on a good path, and what concerns me is that the pie is only so big, and if we are trying to fund this larger institution, it could definitely have a negative impact on us.” Read the entire post here.

The Baltimore Sun's Joe Burris reports in this article that area community colleges are graduating students with Associate of Arts degrees who have a sense of completion and drive to finish four-year degrees at area universities and other four-year institutions. Given economic circumstances and the strength of Maryland's state public system, as well as private institutions like McDaniel College and Loyola, this is a promising trend. The University of Maryland-Baltimore County is among four-year colleges offering discounts to students who have completed two-year degrees. Read the entire post here.

In a program believed to be the first of its kind, Morgan State University has teamed with the Calvert County Watermen's Association to help watermen make the transition to aquaculture.

From the source:

A historically black college and Maryland’s designated “Public Urban University,” 140-year-old Morgan State’s campus is in Baltimore, where about 6,000 students are enrolled. The university offers graduate and postgraduate degrees and has programs in architecture, engineering and education, and other liberal arts programs.

And since 2004, Morgan State has run a marine research facility that is working with the Calvert County Watermen’s Association to provide equipment and training to help the watermen make the transition to oyster aquaculturists while preserving the culture and heritage of the profession.

“I believe we’re the first historically black college with this kind of facility,” said Kelton Clark, director of the Morgan State University Estuarine Research Center.

Read the whole story here.

The Maryland Terrapins' new uniforms generated a ton of national conversation last week, largely due to their outlandish nature. The Baltimore Sun takes a look at a less-reported aspect of the story: how much the new helmets resemble those worn by Baltimore's Charm City Roller Girls.

From the source:

When the Terps’ revealed a new uniform and helmets before Monday’s game, there was much oohhing and ahhing over the all-white look with the Maryland state flag motif.

But at least one corner of Baltimore reacted with a dismayed pang of recognition: for the Charm City Roller Girls All-Stars team, the Terps’ new helmet looks much like the one they’ve been using for the past three years.

“They’re not identical, but they’re shockingly similar,” said Hillary “Rosie the Rioter” Rosensteel, the roller derby team’s captain.

Read more here.

MICA has found itself on the receiving end of a $10 million gift, its largest ever.

From the Sun:

The Maryland Institute College of Art announced Wednesday that it has received a $10 million gift, the largest in its history, which will be used to expand graduate programs and research.

The gift was bestowed by longtime college trustee George L. Bunting Jr. and his wife, Anne Bunting.

"Once again, George and Anne have redefined what true leadership can do to propel the college ahead," said Michael Franco, the college's vice president of advancement. "Not only was Mr. Bunting instrumental in helping MICA see the important role of graduate study in its future, he and his wife also stepped forward with this wonderful gift of endowment to help ensure the college will have the necessary resources to pursue this path."

Read the full story.

Johns Hopkins University's engineering department started the New Year with a big bang, accepting a $30 million gift from John C. Malone, chairman of Liberty Media and a Hopkins alum, to build a new research building.

Here's an excerpt:

"The gift will finance construction of a 56,000-square-foot building for studying social and industrial systems and individualized health-care treatment, the university, in Baltimore, said in a statement on its website today. The building will be named after Malone."

Read the story.

University of Maryland College Park offers students a good bang for their buck according to Kiplinger's latest list of the 100 Best Values in Public Colleges. The flagship of Maryland's university system climbed three spots up the list, taking the no. 5 ranking in 2011. Joining College Park in the ranking are St. Mary's College of Maryland, Salisbury University, Towson University, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Here's an excerpt:

"Virtually all of the schools we list raised their price in 2010-11, but the University of Maryland, which maintained a tuition freeze for four straight years, kept this year's total cost increase to less than $600. The first-class flagship continues its march up our rankings, moving from number eight last year to number five in 2010-11."

Read the article.

It's no secret that Towson University offers students a quality education. What people may not know is that the liberal arts university is one of only a handful of higher education institutions in the country that consistently graduate as many white students as black students.

Here's an excerpt:

"In 10 years, according to school data, Towson has raised black graduation rates by 30 points and closed a 14-point gap between blacks and whites. University leaders credit a few simple strategies: admitting students with good grades from strong public high schools, then tracking each student's progress with a network of mentors, counselors and welcome-to-college classes.

"Regardless of your background, there's people here for you who understand what you're going through," said Kenan Herbert, 23, an African American Towson senior from Brooklyn, N.Y."

Read the entire article.

Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, has worked tirelessly to boost the university's reputation as an educational powerhouse in mathematics and science. He's taken his work further to help students from around the nation, as highlighted in a recent New York Times op-ed.

Here's an excerpt:

"Right now only about 6 percent of young college graduates in this country have degrees in science or engineering, as opposed to about 10 percent in many developed nations. The numbers are far worse for minorities: only 2.7 percent of young African-American college graduates and 2.2 percent of Latinos.

This is the problem that keeps Freeman Hrabowski awake at night. Mr. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, led the committee that produced "Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation," an eye-opening study issued by the National Academies, the country's leading science advisory group."

Read the entire op-ed.