Briefly Mentioned

Campus

Spring break later than usual

UMKC's spring break will come three weeks later than in previous years.

Spring break begins at the end of the day on March 25, and classes resume April 2.

At last week's faculty senate meeting, Professor Cory Beard, computing and engineering, asked Provost Bruce Bubacz why the week of spring break changed. Beard said many faculty and staff try to coordinate spring break with their kids' breaks.

Bubacz explained there had been an attempt for several years to coordinate spring breaks at the four University of Missouri (UM) System campuses.

"The Columbia campus, due to the large number of students, needed the break between fall and spring to process student records. Rolla has their spring recess. The spring break was set to be the same for all four campuses and we worked around the UMR spring recess," Bubacz said in a March 9 e-mail.

"We (UMKC) wanted to have the spring break earlier in the semester, but that did not work for anyone else in the System," Bubacz said. "One of the main issues was to have the same calendar across the system, especially for students who are in cooperative programs."

The UM System's Collected Rules and Regulations mandates the timetable for the academic calendar and can be accessed on the UM System Web site. -Emily Iorg

Podcasts inform students

Students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Henry W. Bloch School of Business and Public Administration are taking advantage of podcast technology to provide students with important news they can access anytime through what they have named "BlochCast."

BlochCast, available in MP3-format audio files, are published weekly. It was developed by undergraduate business students David Derendinger and Daniel Allegri.

"We started the BlochCast as part of a class project in Dr. Sidne Ward's Introduction to Management Information Systems class," Allegri said. "It's a great way to make information accessible to people at their convenience. It's like having a radio or news station at your command."

Currently, BlochCast recordings include things like news, information and internship opportunities, but Derendinger and Allegri say they hope to broaden the scope to include interviews with business and civic professionals in Kansas City, as well as student testimonials.

BlochCast can be accessed at http://bis.bsbpa.umkc.edu/student/blochcast.

Neo-Nazis visit Columbia

A neo-Nazi march Saturday afternoon in Columbia forced University of Missouri-Columbia Chancellor Brady Deaton to create a diversity-promoting community event. Deaton urged students not to attend the event because it doesn't support university values.

"I am concerned that the views of this organization certainly do not support our campus values, especially those of respect and responsibility," Deaton said last Wednesday in a campus letter, according to The Kansas City Star. "Our hope is that all members of the University community will simply ignore the event."

The route of the march ran along the north side of campus. Volunteers from the community organized an afternoon of food and music at Douglass Park for students and others.

Local

Superintendent partners with UMKC

Kansas City Missouri School District (KCMSD) Superintendent Anthony Amato kicked off a new partnership with the University of Missouri-Kansas City's Department of Geosciences and School of Education.

The event, held at Southwest High School's planetarium, included an information session about GEOPATHS, and a tour of the planetarium. Amato spoke briefly about the new partnership.

"This kind of program enhances the goals that we have set forth to increase academic standards in science and mathematics," said Amato. "We are looking forward to this partnership with UMKC and its faculty."

Efforts in the program's first two years will focus on increasing the number of KCMSD high-school teachers certified to teach advanced-placement environmental science courses, as well as adding to the number of schools participating in UMKC's High School/College Program.

The final two years of GEOPATHS will be aimed at direct recruitment of minority high-school students to the geo- and environmental-science fields through paid summer research internships and scholarship offers.

UMKC will receive $500,000 over four years to fund the program. UMKC's College of Arts and Sciences is offering 75 percent tuition reduction to KCMSD teachers who participate in GEOPATHS.

Nation

Bush begins Latin American tour

President George Bush announced a deal Friday to boost development of ethanol in Brazil.

Bush and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil spoke to reporters in São Paulo, after the meeting about their deal.

"We are very pleased with the growing awareness of the international community," da Silva said. "[W]e need to overcome dependency on fossil fuels at a time when we are called upon to act urgently to confront global warming."

Bush discussed the growing need for energy independence and agreed with da Silva.

"If you're dependent upon oil from overseas, you have a national security issue," Bush said. "In other words, dependency upon energy from somewhere else means that you're dependent upon the decisions from somewhere else."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez planned a protest of Bush's visit in nearby Buenos Aires later that afternoon. This was the first stop on Bush's "We Care" Latin America tour.

'FBI misused USA Patriot Act'

The FBI improperly used portions of the Patriot Act when "obtaining telephone, business and financial records without prior judicial approval," according to inspector general of the Justice Department.

A report released Friday found the "bureau lacked sufficient controls to make sure that its agents were acting properly when they obtained records using administrative subpoenas" and "the bureau does not follow some of the rules it does have on the matter."

"How could this happen?" FBI Director Robert Mueller asked. "Who is to be held accountable? And the answer to that is, I am to be held accountable."

The bureau issued more than 20,000 requests for information through national security letters. The report concluded the "program lacks effective management, monitoring and reporting procedures," according to The New York Times.

jpearson@unews.com