Profs Elected to National Academy
Six UCSD professors were elected into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences late last month, two for contributions in political science, two for medicine and one each for engineering and biochemistry.
The academy elected bioengineer Shu Chien, the founder of the Jacobs School of Engineering’s bioengineering department, for his extensive research on blood flow. Chien’s selection gives him membership in all U.S. national academies, one of less than 10 scholars worldwide to have such an honor.
Professors of medicine Don W. Cleveland and Kenneth Kaushansky, political science professors David A. Lake and Keith Poole and biochemistry professor J. Andrew McCammon were also elected.
The academy was created in 1780 to honor those who have made significant contributions to their fields or to society at large.
More Bad News for Standardized Tests
Standardized tests, including the SAT, should be given less consideration in college admissions, according to a new study by UC Riverside psychologists.
The study results found that “success in college is much more related to a student’s work ethic and self-discipline than to absolute intelligence or excellent test-taking ability.” The study data also showed direct correlations between family income levels and achievement on standardized tests, stating that students whose parents make a lot of money are more likely to do better on the tests.
The results were obtained through examinations of student SAT scores and personality tests, and the researchers noted that hard-working students of all backgrounds were more likely to succeed than those who simply had high test scores.
Colleges Bolster
Transfer Options Institutions of higher education around the country are implementing programs to ensure that more students are able to transfer from community colleges in an attempt to bypass historically snobbish notions that regard transfer students as unfit for four-year colleges.
Responding to lagging transfer rates, many colleges have introduced guaranteed-transfer programs, including the University of Virginia, which has established a program that ensures admission for community college students with GPAs of 3.4 or better.
Challenging the idea that transfer students are not as smart as “traditional” students, research commissioned by the Cooke Foundation has shown that transfer students at selective institutions, including UC Berkeley, tend to graduate at similar rates and have similar GPAs as those students who begin as freshmen.
