The Chronicle of Higher Education published its list of Great Colleges to Work For 2013 on Thursday, highlighting the schools that bring the best out of their employees. Making the list for the second year in a row, UH was honored under the Tenure Clarity and Process category, which is a faculty-only recognition.

With almost 1,000 professors, 1,342 teaching assistants and 1,143 other faculty, UH is considered one of the best universities in the U.S. to work for. | Courtesy of uh.edu

Almost 300 universities surveyed its faculty for the list, but only a third of them passed the Chronicle’s criteria. The chosen schools excelled in any or all of the Chronicle’s criteria for what makes a great university. While UH was chosen based on its diversity and tenure clarity and process, the other categories included compensation and benefits, job satisfaction, teacher environment and work and life balance.

The Chronicle publishes an Honor Roll along with the full list, in a list that includes schools that meet anywhere from five to 11 of the 12 categories. UH met only one this year under the faculty only recognitions.

“There are a number of continuous improvement efforts underway to better support faculty teaching and research efforts,” said Robert McPherson, dean of the College of Education.

“Among them are the strengthening of the research infrastructure of university, construction of new state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories, and on-campus housing opportunities for faculty. I would also like to see continued strengthening of the faculty governance structure.”

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As the beginning of the semester approaches for kindergarten and college students alike, retailers are preparing for the rush of back-to-school shopping. Yet, this year’s sales tax holiday has been pushed a week ahead.

Senate Bill 485, led by state Sen. Rodney Ellis from Houston, has set the date to Aug. 9 through 11.

According to the Fort Worth Star Telegram, Ellis said he wanted the weekend moved up because some campuses in the Houston area will start school earlier this year, and the later sales tax date conflicted with the Dallas apparel market for August — when many small retailers buy inventory for the next season.

“SB 485 alleviated the burden of this tough decision for these retailers,” Ellis said. “Furthermore, it will give consumers more time to shop for their students.”

Texas shoppers will save an estimated $78.9 million this year, or 8 percent more than last year, because of the sales tax savings, said R.J. DeSilva, a spokesman for the Texas Comptroller, to the Star Telegram.

The Senate passed bipartisan legislation Wednesday that will tie the student loan interest rate to the financial market in an effort to mend loan rates that doubled this month, despite division among Democrats.

“This compromise is a major victory for our nation’s students,” said President Barack Obama in a statement. “It meets the key principles I laid out from the start: it locks in low rates next year, and it doesn’t overcharge students to pay down the deficit.

“I urge the House to pass this bill so that I can sign it into law right away, and I hope both parties build on this progress by taking even more steps to bring down soaring costs and keep a good education – a cornerstone of what it means to be middle class – within reach for working families”.

On July 1, student rates doubled  from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent because Congress could not reach an agreement on how to handle the loan rates. Under the new legislation, federal student loans will be calculated and fixed to the interest rates on the 10-year Treasury bill and will allow all undergraduates this fall to borrow at a 3.85 percent interest rate, graduate students at 5.4 and parents at 6.4.

The House approved a similar Republican bill in June to tie loan rates to the financial markets; yet, liberal Democrats were afraid that this motion could allow rates to rise higher than the 6.8 percent rate set by Congress.

The final deal was agreed upon after Democrats won a protection for students in the bipartisan debates that set certain ceilings on the interest rates — 8.25 percent for undergraduates, 9.5 for graduate students and 10.5 for parents.

The deal only secures these rates through the 2015 academic year. With higher rates still looming in the near future, the deal has attracted a great deal of criticism.

“I think Congress is just pushing the problem back, which will create a domino effect for future students,” said nutrition junior Breanna Larsen, who has student loans. “Instead, interest rates on loans should have a steady increase in order to solve the deficit”.

According to Fox News, students with subsidized loans could easily be paying higher rates than the average person paying off a car loan.

“The U.S. loans to big banks at less than 1 percent interest, and here we turn around and demand profits on the back of our kids. That’s wrong,” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and UH Alumna told The Boston Globe. “We need to invest in our kids, not make it harder for them to get an education.”

The latest figures from the College Board show that the price at public four-year colleges is up 27 percent beyond overall inflation during the last five years. This past year alone it rose nearly 5 percent to an average of $8,655 nationwide.

On the same day the deal was first announced, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also estimated outstanding student debt at $1.2 trillion — up 20 percent in just two years. According to Fox News, student loans are now the largest form of consumer debt behind mortgages.

Some senators, such as Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the top Republican on education issues, believe the bill is beneficial.

Alexander told Politico it would save students in 11 million families billions of dollars and the deal was estimated to reduce the deficit by $715 million in the next decade.

Although an agreement has been reached to avoid a costly loan rate for students returning to campus this fall, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee, said he would revisit the deal this fall when his panel takes up a rewrite of the Higher Education Act, according to Fox News.

“Can we change it? Sure, we can change it,” Harkin said. “It’s not the Ten Commandments for God’s sake.”

Yet, Jorge Jerez, a recent UH graduate who is beginning to pay off his student loans, believes that students and senators are sitting in a gridlock for the moment.

“Politically they can’t accomplish anything more than that (deal),” Jerez said. “It will lower the rates for this year and the next, and hopefully by then we’ll have a Congress that is bold enough to side with the students. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

This story was updated at 10:20 p.m. on July 24, 2013.

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The following is a partial report of campus crime between July 8 and July 18. All information is selected from the files of the UH Department of Public Safety. Information or questions regarding the cases below should be directed to UHDPS at (713) 742-3333.

Theft: A visitor reported leaving a gym bag in the Moody Towers cafeteria, and when the bag was recovered, an electronic tablet was missing. The incident occurred between 12:25 and 12:40 a.m. on July 8. The case is inactive.

Driving While Intoxicated: A non-UH affiliated driver was arrested for driving while intoxicated at US 288 at South MacGregor Way and was released to Harris County Jail. The incident occurred at 1:32 a.m. on July 9. The case is cleared by arrest.

Terroristic Threat: A former student was arrested for making alarming statements in the M.D. Anderson Memorial Library, which forced the evacuation of the building. The incident occurred at 2:45 p.m. on July 9. The case is cleared by arrest.

Criminal Mischief: Two Hilton Hotel staff members reported that someone damaged their vehicles by the University Hilton hotel. A suspect has been identified. The incident occurred between 2:48 on July 9 and 2:40 p.m. on July 15. The case is active.

Driving While Intoxicated: A non-affiliated individual was arrested for driving while intoxicated following a traffic stop at 5000 Calhoun Rd. and was then transported to Harris County Jail. The incident occurred between 2:19 and 6:17 a.m. on July 14. The case is cleared by arrest.

Public Intoxication: A non-affiliated individual was observed asleep in his car in Lot 20C. It was determined the individual was intoxicated and unfit to operate a motor vehicle. The individual was released to the care of a responsible adult. The incident occurred between 3:15 and 4:04 a.m. on July 14. The case is inactive.

Theft: A student  reported that someone stole her unattended and unsecured cell phone from Melcher Hall. The incident occurred between 9:45 a.m. and 10:20 a.m. on July 15. The case is inactive.

Theft: Three students reported the theft of their unattended and unsecured property from a Campus Recreation and Wellness Center locker. The incident occurred between 4:25 and 5:15 p.m. on July 15. The case is inactive.

Theft: A staff member reported on July 18 that a leased golf cart has been missing for 10 months from the Athletics/Alumni Building and is possibly stolen. The incident occurred between 10 p.m. on Sept. 8 and 8 p.m. on Sept. 10. The case is inactive.

Traffic Offense: A student reported that her unattended vehicle was struck and damaged in the stadium parking lot, and the driver did not leave his or her information behind as required by state law. The incident occurred at 1:30 p.m. on July 17. The case is active.

Theft: A faculty member reported the theft of her unsecured and unattended cell phone from the Engineering 1 Building. The incident occurred between 3 and 6:30 p.m. on July 18. The case is inactive.

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Hundreds of distinguished professors from 73 universities like Rice, Princeton and Yale are contributing to the 395 massive open online courses Coursera offers.

When UH announced an agreement with Coursera in May, several UH professors joined those ranks and are contributing to select courses.

“There are a number of faculty members who are currently creating exciting MOOCs in a variety of areas, from the history of human space flight to the programing of handheld devices,” said Jeff Morgan, interim associate provost for education and technology innovation.

“At present, none of these are courses taught at the University of Houston, although a few of them are related to courses that we teach.”

The contribution will allow eager learners all around the world to experience an education for free — and for college credit in some cases, Morgan said. In addition, some of the learning materials will become supplements to kindergarten through 12th grade education worldwide.

Ioannis Pavlidis, professor and director of the Computational Physiology Lab in the Department of Computer Science, leads an instructional team creating a course for Coursera in ubiquitous computing and supports a team creating a course in science ethics. Pavlidis finds teaching for the web vastly different than in the classroom.

“There is need for a lot more visuals, think YouTube. There is need for formulating quizzes and problems for mass online delivery, ensuring effectiveness and fairness; and there is need to incorporate some sort of discussion and interaction via social media,” Pavlidis said.

“A great challenge — to which no one has an answer right now — is to engage and maintain some modicum of personal connection with thousands of people you never met or saw.”

Both of the courses Pavlidis is contributing to are expected to go live in the Coursera program in Spring 2014.

Despite the different learning and teaching techniques necessary when working with MOOCs, Pavlidis said the transition to online learning has more perks than disadvantages.

“There are always good things and bad things with every transformation that the society undergoes. Overall, the balance is usually positive, and I think this will be the case with MOOCs,” he said.

“You can compare the MOOCs’ benefits to students with the benefits Internet shopping brought to consumers. We still go to the mall for some specialty items, but a lot of commodity items we prefer to order online. Beyond that, MOOCs (are) likely to instill a healthy competition in the instruction world.”

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Houston area students ages 7 to 17 will attend the UH’s Computer Camps, a series of week-long camps hosted by iD Tech Camps, to teach children the essentials of programming and design.

“We are the leading summer STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program. What’s great about it is it’s not like a regular camp where you set your kids off at the end of the week, they’re done and that’s it,” said Karen Thurm Safran, vice president of marketing and business development with iD.

“We inspire kids to keep learning and taking what they love to do, and showing them the passion and turn it into something much more, like a college degree or a career.”

iD began in 1999 in California’s Silicon Valley, and now is held at more than 60 universities nationwide, including Stanford, Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and MIT. This will be the program’s eighth year with UH.

Safran said the environment encourages kids to attend a university after high school and pursue a career after graduation.

“The camps are reaching a broad audience of kids, showing them that they can get involved with this and make it a career. Over the next 10 years, there will be over one million jobs that will be unfilled in STEM and coding,” Safran said.

“It’s a wonderful way to not only have students who will be immersed in what they love and get into a career that they absolutely love doing, but they will be going into a career that’s very lucrative and be able to get a job after college.”

The program at UH offers class in programming in scratch, Java, C++ and in game design in the RPG Maker, iPhone, iPad, Minecraft and the Unreal Development Kit. The teachers consist of college students and graduate students with experience in STEM.

“I think it’s better that they’re receiving the option to get into technology at an early age. I sure wish I had the option to get a better in-depth understanding of computers and how they work when I was younger,” said chemistry and computer science sophmore Martín Réyes.

The camps began June 10 and will conclude on July 26.

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When Rathindra Bose was selected as the vice president and vice chancellor for Research and Technology transfer, he had one goal in mind: to attract more money to research at UH. Ever since, he has been extremely successful at coming up with millions of dollars to pay for a “building and hiring spree” to attract newcomers to UH.

Bose

Bose received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1982. He received a master’s degree in chemistry from the Rajshahi University in Bangladesh in 1975 and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with honors from the same institution in 1973. He has one issued patent and three patent applications on cancer drugs and fuel cell electro-catalysts pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office. After overlooking 3,500 graduate students, a budget of more than $35 million, $68 million in research programs and a tech transfer office ith more than $8 million in royalties at Ohio University, Bose came to Houston.

“We are identifying our top 10 technologies out of all the patents we have,” said Bose in an interview with Xconomy. “We are doing well in health sciences and in the energy area. This year we’ll be getting over $15 million in royalty income and that will come from both pharmaceutical products and a variety of energy technology.

“My projection is that in the next five years we might be able to get $50 million a year. When I arrived here two years ago it was $8 million a year. We have had an almost 100 percent increase.”

Bose took the initiative to take a proposal to the board of regents to create more research buildings, and asked the chancellor to assign 60 new faculty positions for the science, technology, engineering, mathematics fields. He says that when you hire this type of faculty, you must spend money to set up their laboratories.

“We also want to create core facilities that many faculty members can come and share,” Bose said in the article.

In addition to spending his time and effort on coming up with ways to spend money wisely while still purchasing the best “tools and toys” for UH labs, Bose is working on superconducting technology developed by SuperPower, a subsidiary of Furakawa Electric Company of Japan. SuperPower is working with UH faculty as graduate students and postdocs perform mass production of superconducting wires and cable. This is a nine-layer technology and is 300 times more efficient than copper wire.

“Dr. Bose has an exemplary record in administrative and academic roles, but his achievements as a researcher are particularly noteworthy,” said President and Chancellor Renu Khator in a press release.

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The 25th annual Staff Council elections ended Friday with the induction of the fifteen members elected to represent UH staff in an advisory body to President Renu Khator and the administration.

The online elections, overseen by the Membership and Elections Committee, were held July 16 and 17 and were open to all UH staff members. For the staff’s convenience, public polling sites with computers were held around campus.

The new additions to the 2013-14 Staff Council will be Rebecca Szwarc for At-Large; Elsie Myers, Kimberly Williams, Anne Ness, Chris Foster, Jessica Zoronia and Mary Barrera for Academic Affairs; Kimberly Barras, William Ashley, Clausezette Davis and Stephen White for Administration and Finance; Karl Hearne and Sandra Dahlke for Office of the President; Elyse Davis for Research and Michelle Blair for University Advancement.

The new members are all staff members in their respective departments, and the terms last for one to three years, depending on the department.

The new staff council members will take office and join the returning members for the first general meeting on September 12.

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A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal Wednesday to offer college students better rates on loans in the coming academic year with higher rates to be held off in an attempt to battle Congress’s decision made on July 1 to double student loan interest rates to 6.8 percent from 3.4.

According to USA TODAY, the agreement came one day after lawmakers met with President Barack Obama at the White House.

Although the deal will offer students lower interest rates through the 2015 academic year, rates will likely climb higher than they were before after the deal has run its course.

The interest rates would be linked to the financial markets, yet Democrats won a protection for students that rates would never exceed 8.25 for undergraduate students in the bipartisan debate.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the top Republican on education issues, told Politico the proposal would apply to students who have already taken federal loans at higher rates.

It would save students in 11 million families billions of dollars, Alexander said.

Yet according to Fox News, liberal advocacy groups are criticizing the plan.

“Instead of making student loans more affordable for both today’s students and tomorrow’s, this deal locks in long-term changes that provide short-term benefits for current students by increasing long-term costs for future students,” said Lauren Asher, president of the Institute for College Access and Success.

Under the deal, all undergraduates this fall would borrow at 3.85 percent interest rates, graduate students at 5.4 and parents at 6.4.

The agreement was estimated to reduce the deficit by $715 million throughout the next decade.

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On Friday, the Texas Legislature passed a controversial bill that puts stricter regulations on abortion clinics and could force most abortion clinics in the state to shut down.

House Bill 2 prohibits abortions at or after 20 weeks, unless the life of the mother is in danger, and requires that abortion facilities meet the minimum standards for ambulatory surgical centers.

HB 2 also requires doctors to have the ability to admit a patient at a hospital no farther than 30 miles from the abortion clinic and allows only doctors to administer abortion-inducing drugs.

Out of 42 clinics in Texas, the Planned Parenthood clinic near UH, known as Prevention Park, is one of the six that are currently compliant under the law and will continue performing abortions. The rest of the clinics have until September 2014 to upgrade their operations to meet the new standards.

Supporters of the bill, such as electrical engineering sophomore Dominic Mak, claim that the measures will make abortion procedures safer for women and protect the lives of the unborn.

“This bill is geared towards enforcing common medical standards on surgical institutions for the sake of the women having the procedures, which I believe should be a concern of everyone regardless of their stance on abortion itself,” Mak said.

However, abortion providers like Planned Parenthood claim that the bill is designed to make abortions inaccessible to women by imposing impossible-to-meet regulations that will force dozens of providers to shut down.

“The passage of this bill effectively ends access to a safe and legal medical procedure in this state, which is harmful for women’s health,” said Alejandra Diaz, a spokeswoman at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

Kinesiology junior Kiernan Cobb opposes the bill and says that surgical center standards are not necessary.

“Abortion clinics are already set up to provide abortions,” Cobb said. “They don’t provide open heart surgery or invasive body cavity surgeries.”

Clinics that do not have the funds to meet the new regulations or have a hospital within 30 miles will be forced to shut down.

“The clinics that are going to be left are only located in major cities,” Cobb said. “That limits the entirety of west Texas and most of north Texas from having access to safe, legal abortion procedures, leading them to resort to different abortion methods that are completely unsafe.”

Supporters of HB 2 argue that clinics should be held to high standards regardless of where they are and should have a hospital nearby in case of complications that could arise.

“No medical facility should be allowed to operate below medical standards on the basis of convenience for nearby patients,” Mak said. “If a particular facility is critical to a population, all the more reason to ensure that it is up to standards.”

Mak said he doesn’t believe the argument that women will resort to dangerous methods of terminating their pregnancies, such as using a coat hanger, if they don’t have access to a clinic.

“Without the possibility of clinical abortion, there are many support groups and non-violent alternatives, like adoption, for women who are struggling with their pregnancy,” Mak said.

Gov. Rick Perry is expected to sign the bill this week, but the bill could quickly wind up in court. The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit after Alabama passed similar legislation in June.

“Our primary concern is for the women of Texas,” Diaz said. “Here at Prevention Park, we will continue to do everything we can to help protect Texas women’s access to quality health services.”

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