In the news
Selected news clips from around the country
From the New York Times to U.S. News & World Report, from NBC News in Chicago to local television stations, from AOL News to Yahoo!, Wake Forest and its faculty are prominent in the national media.
U.S. News & World Report
"The accepted framework for college admissions is showing rust at the joints and no longer supports the right parts of the educational enterprise," writes Provost Jill Tiefenthaler in U.S. News & World Report. "It is time to rethink college admissions, and particularly the role of standardized testing."
Since becoming the first scientist to build a functioning organ from scratch, Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, has moved on to cobbling up bones, heart valves, muscles and some 20 other body parts. “Building organs such as bladders and blood vessels, which have only a few different types of cells, has become routine for Atala's lab,” reports U.S. News & World Report.
The New York Times
In the continuing battle between bats and tiger moths, score one for the tiger moths. The New York Times reported in July on research by Professor of Biology William Conner, doctoral student Aaron Corcoran, and Jesse R. Barber of Colorado State University, that showed that one moth species uses a different kind of defensive technique to avoid becoming bat fodder. Their latest research shows that tiger moths produce ultrasonic clicks, which jam the sonar of big brown bats.
BB&T Chairman John Allison, who joined the faculty of the Schools of Business as Distinguished Professor of Practice earlier this year, has emerged as perhaps the most vocal proponent of the dangers of government meddling in the markets, according to an article in The New York Times in August. The government's headlong rush to try to rescue and fix the economy is a horrifying realization of Allison's worst fears, the Times wrote.
Professor of Law Mark Hall says in The New York Times that his research shows that when people go to doctors and hospitals that are not part of their insurance network, they can expect charges that are double, triple, even quadruple the negotiated price within networks. And that, he said, is “price gouging, exploiting market power to charge prices virtually unrelated to actual cost or market value,” and is a factor in what drives people into medical bankruptcy.
The criminal justice system uses family status in a willy-nilly way, writes Professor of Law Jennifer Collins in The New York Times. “Sometimes defendants benefit and sometimes they are burdened by virtue of their family status, ties and/or responsibilities.”
CBS News
With the debate over health care continuing to rage, is it even constitutional for the government to require individuals or employers to pay for health insurance? Yes, says Professor of Law Mark Hall on CBS News.
National Public Radio
For over 50 million years, bats and moths have been engaged in an evolutionary arms race. National Public Radio reports on a study by doctoral student Aaron Corcoran and Professor of Biology William Conner that sheds new light on how moths can outfox bats to avoid being eaten.
NBC News
After losing his law school class ring in an airport in Gander, Newfoundland, more than 50 years ago, Lloyd Rector (JD '53) never thought he'd see it again — until someone in Gander tracked him down. Read the story from NBC News in Chicago.
AOL News
The video image of a young woman dying on a Tehran street became an instant symbol of the protests over the Iranian elections in June. "Icons work because they tap into our worries, our anxieties. They are something we can form our fears around," David Lubin, the Charlotte C. Weber Professor of Art, told AOL News. "We create the martyrs that we need at any given moment." Lubin is the author of the book “Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images.”
USA Today
In these difficult economic times, it's important to talk to your children about money and assure them that you have everything under control — but don't make promises you can't keep, says psychology professor Christy Buchanan in USA Today.
Dean of Business Steve Reinemund believes that true leaders effectively combine three distinct yet disparate human components. “I look at a leader in terms of head, heart, and hands,” he said in an extended interview on WGHP-Fox 8. “In the head, there are things like intellectual horsepower. How smart is this individual?” The foundation of the heart is the leader's moral compass. “Does the leader really know the right thing to do?” As for the hands, “It's perseverance, it's sticking with the mission, it's the ability to understand when you change course.”
Huffington Post
Sherry Moss, director of the full-time Wake Forest MBA program and an associate professor at the Schools of Business, has started a blog for The Huffington Post. She and Kevin Cain (MBA '09) are founders of HomeBy3.com, which connects people looking for flexible, professional positions with companies seeking employees for flexible job opportunities.
YAHOO! News
Employees often say they need to trust their boss. What about the boss trusting them? That's where the real impact lies, according to a new study by business professor Holly Brower ('83) that was featured on Yahoo! News in August.
The Economist
New regulations for failing large financial firms that technically are not banks face a host of problems since they usually span international jurisdictions, placing shareholders and creditors in a murky tangle of cross-border claims, says business professor Robert Bliss in The Economist.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
What lessons did we learn from the hype surrounding the confrontation between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge, Mass., police officer James Crowley? Among other things, that race relations between police and minorities remain tense. “These historical rifts are undeniable and will not be healed easily," Associate Professor of Law Kami Chavis Simmons said in South Florida's Sun Sentinel.
Slate
Can President Obama make you buy health insurance? Is that Constitutional? Yes, says Professor of Law Mark Hall, who bases his argument on the commerce clause, which since the New Deal has permitted the federal government to expand its power in various ways by defining various activities as "interstate commerce." Although health delivery is often local, Hall says in Slate, "most health insurance is sold through interstate companies."
Baptist Standard
Baptist denominational systems across the United States are in transition and being redefined, School of Divinity Dean Bill Leonard said in the Baptist Standard. “The once-formidable Baptist presence in the United States retains its significant numerical dominance in American Protestantism, but the demographics ... reflect a denomination in a considerable decline, torn by internal controversies on one side and megachurch competition on the other, held together by an aging constituency, faltering finances, and turbulent identity crises.”
Winston-Salem Journal
A deep abiding love of Wake Forest has persuaded Len Preslar Jr. to take on another health-care challenge for the University, he told the Winston-Salem Journal. In August, he was named the executive director of the health-management programs for the Schools of Business.
There are signs that North Carolina's unemployment rate may have leveled off, but it could be months before the employment rate improves, says economics professor Robert Whaples in the Winston-Salem Journal.
