February 24, 2005
Peer Portfolio
FORD DIGS IN: Former President Gerald Ford was the featured shoveler when the University of Michigan broke ground in November on its new Joan and Sanford Weill Hall, which will be the new home of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, according to the university’s newspaper, The Record.
The five-story, 80,000-square-foot building will include a library, faculty offices, classrooms, a computer lab and areas for public conferences and lectures. The building was partly funded by a large contribution from the Weills, who are longtime friends of Gerald and Betty Ford.
The groundbreaking was part of a two-day series of events celebrating the U-M’s 90th anniversary. Ford told the crowd he used to walk by the lot where the new building will be when he attended the U-M in the 1930s.
THE WRITE STUFF: Journalists, it turns out, are moral creatures after all, according to a study at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Most times, that is.
Polls in recent years have shown that the American public is not as enamoured of the press as it was during the journalistically heady days of Watergate. Many believe that journalists are just plain morally-challenged.
But Lee Wilkins, a professor of broadcast news at MU, and a colleague at Louisiana State University, have research that belies that belief. They administered what is called the Defining Issues Test — said to be a test of moral development — to 249 print and broadcast reporters nationwide, and they scored fourth highest among professionals tested, behind only seminarians, physicians and medical students.
“Thinking like a journalist involves moral reflection, done at a level that in most instances equals or exceeds members of other learned professions,” said Wilkins.
RABBIT, RUN!: Research in robotics is blooming everywhere, particularly at the UW. But a robot created by researchers at the University of Michigan in cooperation with French scientists, has a remarkable sense of balance, and is even learning to run.
RABBIT, as the robot is called, will right itself if nudged, can walk gracefully and has even run six steps, according to The Record, U-M’s newspaper. Most ambulating robots are built with large feet to aid in stability, but they tend to give the device a stomping-style gait. Built with stilts instead of feet, this robo-RABBIT pivots on a point when it moves forward and maintains its balance well.
The robot, the U-M newspaper states, could have myriad practical applications, including use in prosthetics, physical rehabilitation, domestic service or even exploration of rough terrain where humans can’t easily go.
CHILD’S PLAY: Making up and telling stories is a key element to virtually every childhood. The University of Utah’s Child and Family Development Center (CFDC) is creatively blending that with reading readiness studies in a program where preschool students invent, write and dramatize stories by themselves.
“A lot of kids dictate stories, but the powerful, highly motivating part for the children is that they get to act out their stories,” Cheryl Wright, CFCD director and a professor of Family and Consumer Studies, stated in a press release on the UofU’s public relations Web site.
Children dictate stories to program instructors, who take them down, listening along the way for “what children are interested in and how they express themselves at specific ages.” The preschoolers are allowed to depict aggressive acts in their stories and even act them out, so long as they do not touch each other. Stories the instructors believe might be upsetting are dictated but not dramatized, with a full explanation given.
The work, based on MacArthur Foundation winner Vivian Paley’s research on children’s storytelling and imagination, helps the children make the connection between oral and written language. The program was started as a pilot last year, but was continued due to its success.
Peer Portfolio is a compilation of news from the UW’s peer institutions.
