News in Brief

Peabody alumna named dean of the Conservatory

The Peabody Institute has appointed alumna Mellasenah Morris as the dean of the Conservatory and deputy director of the Institute.

Morris, who is also a former assistant dean for academic affairs at Peabody, will succeed Wolfgang Justen starting on July 1. Justen has served as dean since 2002 but he will retire from the position this year and continue teaching part time.

Currently Morris is a professor of piano and the director of the School of Music at Ohio State University. She received her bachelor and doctoral degrees from Peabody. Her New York debut recital was in Carnegie Recital Hall.

In addition to working at Peabody, she has been a faculty member at Baltimore City College and Villa Julie College. Her administrative posts include being dean of Alabama State University's School of Music and director of James Madison University's School of Music.

Aside from her academic positions, Morris is a member of the national music honor society Pi Kappa Lambda and is treasurer of the executive committee of the board of the National Association of Schools of Music.

New nursing program to draw more teachers

A new program providing financial support to doctoral students of the Hopkins School of Nursing will be offered to those who desire to teach student nurses in New York City.

The funding will be awarded by the Jonas Center for Nursing Excellence Nursing Scholars Program.

Those accepted will receive a maximum of $280,000 in forgivable loans for tuition and stipends for living expenses. One scholar from Hopkins will be accepted and must agree to complete the Ph.D program within four years, execute dissertation research in New York City and spend four years teaching in the metropolitan area after graduation.

The selected Jonas scholar will attend Hopkins from September 2008 until August 2010. Then, the student will go to New York until May 2012 to do the dissertation study.

The scholar will perform research within the areas of health disparities, geriatrics, violence or end-of-life care and will have access to many resources in the city through partnered offices. The application deadline for the program is April 21.

Sociology's DeLuca named William T. Grant scholar

The William T. Grant Foundation has selected Stefanie DeLuca, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, as a scholar for its fellowship for young scholars whose research is in the areas of social and behavioral sciences.

DeLuca will receive a $350,000 prize which she will use over the next five years to study to impact of moving on American youths in a project called "Moving Matters: Residential Mobility, Neighborhoods and Family in the Lives of Poor Adolescents." DeLuca's goal is to determine conditions that dictate whether moving is beneficial or detrimental to young people's development.

The new study will build on her previous study of families leaving poor neighborhoods, which she worked on with the Gautreaux and Moving to Opportunity housing voucher programs.

In "Moving Matters," DeLuca will speak with mothers living in poverty in Mobile, Ala. about their motivations for moving and how moving affects their families.

DeLuca graduated from Northwestern University's Human Development and Social Policy program and is one of just four scholars to be selected for the Grant fellowship this year.

Temple student convicted on child porn

charges

A doctoral student at Temple University in Philadelphia was convicted of possessing and attempting to possess child pornography.

A jury found Roderick Vosburgh guilty on one count of attempted possession and one count of possession after the student was identified in a 2006 FBI sting operation designed to find perpetrators of the crime.

Vosburgh's attorney has filed a motion for acquittal, but the prosecution responded with a detailed statement of the charges against Vosburgh, including his attempt to access a message board post created by an FBI agent. The post claimed to include a video of a 4-year-old girl engaging in sexual acts with her father. Instead, clicking on the links contained in the post sent the users' IP addresses to the agent's computer.

The FBI linked Vosburgh to three attempts to access the material.

During a warranted search of Vosburgh's residence, the FBI found two thumbnails of child pornographic photos on his hard drive.

Vosburgh is set to return to court for sentencing later this month.

Colleges urge NCAA to air fewer beer ads during televised games

More than 100 college presidents signed a letter addressed to NCAA President Myles Brand that criticized the organization for excessive beer advertisements during televised broadcasts of NCAA tournament games.

Washington, D.C.'s Center for Science in the Public Interest helped write the letter and said that the NCAA violated its own regulations concerning beer commercials.NCAA policy states that beer advertising must be limited to 60 seconds per hour and 120 seconds per telecast.

According to the Center, 200 seconds and 240 seconds of beer commercials were aired during last Saturday's two games, and another 270 were counted during Monday night's final. Signatories of the letter to Brand urged the NCAA to review its alcohol advertising policies.

Among the schools to sign the letter were Harvard, Georgia State and Abilene Christian, in addition to four schools that qualified for this year's NCAA tournament: Baylor, Winthrop, Cornell and University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

U. of Wisconsin, Madison student killed in home

Last week Madison, Wis. police found a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin junior dead in her apartment. The report issued by the Dane County coroner's office later declared the death of the student, Brittany Zimmerman, a homicide, citing "a complexity of traumatic injuries" as the cause of death.

Police believe the perpetrator to be one of the many homeless people who populate the downtown Madison area, and their investigation currently remains focused on that group. Zimmerman's boyfriend, a fellow UW student, is not a suspect in the murder investigation.

Other break-ins and burglary attempts in Zimmerman's neighborhood on the day of her murder led police to believe that a member of the transient population is responsible for Zimmerman's death, as the homeless are known to commit many such crimes in the area.

Zimmerman was a microbiology and immunology major who was considering applying to medical school. This week her family created a scholarship fund called "Dollars for Brittany" to honor the slain student's life.