Study says UA president one of the highest paid among public institutions

UA President Peter Likins is one of the highest-paid public university presidents in the nation, coming in at No. 15, according to a study released by the Chronicle of Higher Education Nov. 19.

Likins' total compensation package is $503,394, but Likins said he does not believe the president of a public university should make more than half a million dollars. [Read article]

The UA College of Nursing is taking steps to help relieve a national shortage of nurses. Along with an accelerated nursing program implemented last year, officials in the college say they are lobbying to expand the resources in the school to provide room for more students.

Jayne Matte, a nurse recruiter at University Medical Center, said the shortage is due mainly to an aging nursing population. [Read article]

After this school year, journalism professor Jim Mitchell will end a chapter in his extensive print and broadcast career. This spring semester at the UA will be the last for the former radio broadcaster, news anchor and lawyer, who will retire from teaching to write novels, learn to fly a helicopter and travel to New Zealand.

"I'm just clicking things off the list," he said.

Professor Mitchell has been the sole instructor of media law and writing for television news courses at the UA since 1995, when he accepted the teaching job a week before the semester began. Mitchell said his news experience and five years of law school qualified him to take up the class despite the short notice. [Read article]

Students sitting through long lectures might find their eyes wandering toward the clocks on their classroom walls, only to discover those clocks are often wrong.

But students may no longer have to be frustrated with the off-time clocks in many classrooms if a new Global Positioning System is installed by Facilities Management.

All clocks on campus are wired to a master clock that controls all clocks on the main campus. But as the master clock gets older, more classrooms clocks are off. [Read article]

A group of UA students will compete in a national racecar competition demonstrating their prowess to engineer and race a formula-style racecar in May in Detroit.

Each year, a team of UA engineering students design and build a racecar for the international formula competition sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers featuring more than 150 different teams from colleges and universities around the world. [Read article]

Things you always never wanted to know