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Volume 52, Number 32   May 2, 2005         

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Newsmakers

In the interest of full disclosure
U.S. House of Representatives Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, has recently come under fire for not filing a disclosure form for the cost of a recent trip to South Korea. Similar charges have been brought against House Majority leader Tom Delay, R-Texas. Political science Professor Gerard Heather offered his perspective to ABC 7 on April 26. "This now clouds her own reputation and suggests that she may, in fact, be guilty of hypocrisy if she is even remotely guilty of the same kind of violation of the ethics as Delay is," he said.

The future of interdisciplinary courses
KQED radio talk show host Michael Krasny, professor of English, discussed the current state and future for interdisciplinary courses and curriculum with NEXA program director and English Professor Geoffrey Green, English lecturer Herman Haluza and sophomore Presidential Scholar Jamie Molaro on the April 26 edition of Forum.
"People's outlook on the world is changed by being able to have a broader, boundary-crossing examination of the world," said Green. "People [who went through our program] have told us that their ability to understand information is intensified and clarified by means of these boundary-crossing courses." A conference on the same topic was held on campus April 29-30.

College-bound legislators
In an April 17 article in The Plain Dealer, experts debated whether having a college degree can affect how members of the House and Senate treat higher education. Gilda Bloom, assistant professor of secondary education, said that a college education can provide skills pertinent to the job. "If your education is limited, it doesn't indicate that you're not knowledgeable or that you're stupid, but I think it limits your lens in terms of looking at issues," said Bloom, who also serves as president of the Sociology of Education Association. "People elect these politicians to make decisions that affect every person in the state. They need to have the ability to take an issue that they don't know anything about, to research it and to understand it."

In search of a lost cathedral
Jeff Bury, assistant professor of geography and human environmental studies, is one of about 200 people to ever visit the Cathedral in the Desert, a little-seen sandstone amphitheatre in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in southern Utah. Since the 1960s, the cathedral and many miles of slot canyons and rolling sandstone cliffs have been underwater, hidden by Lake Powell. A six-year drought has dropped the lake's water level, attracting desert aficionados like Bury to explore routes that do not exist on maps. "This is the kind of place that words and pictures just do not do justice," he said in an April 8 article in The New York Times. "You need to see it for yourself, while you can, that is."

Two jobs in education
Eric Mar, lecturer of Asian American studies, also serves as president of the San Francisco Board of Education. He discussed the joys and challenges of both jobs in a San Francisco Chronicle Magazine profile published April 5. When asked to give his opinion of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mar said: "He's betrayed the schools and the education community. He's wiped away programs that serve urban school districts."

For more SFSU people and programs in the news, see the SFSU in the News page on SF State News.

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