The Clarion
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Effing A.
SERVING THE BREVARD COLLEGE
Volume 74, Issue 26 COMMUNITY SINCE 1935 ^4, 2009
New budget will not include faculty raises
Board of Trustees to approve new budget at May meeting
by Joseph Chilton
Editor in Chief
When the Board of Trastees meets in
May, they will vote on a new school budget
for next year, one in which the salaries of
Brevard College faculty members have
been frozen.
“We usually have our budget approved in
February,” BC President Drew Van Horn
said Wednesday. “This year I told the board
we couldn’t give them a budget until May,
but by doing so we had to say that staff
would not see a pay increase. The staff has
already been notified of this.”
The salary freeze means that Brevard
College professor salaries will stagnate at
a level that is shghtly lower than most other
local liberal arts colleges.
In this issue...
FEATURES:
Earth Fest is here 2
Robo-boogie 3
Tennis advances in SAC tourney 4
Help the alumni house 5
Backo's plea 6
ARTS AND LIFE:
Cartoons 7
Ridiculous Rubik achievement 7
WTF? 5
ODDS AND ENDS:
American Hero 8
Crossword 8
According to chronicle.com, BC full
professors currently average $52,500 per
year, associate professors average $43,000
per year, and assistant professors make a
mean of $41,000 aimually.
At Mars Hill College, these rates rise to
$53,100, $47,400, and $41,900, respec
tively.
“According to our info as to how we fall
in with our peers, we are not doing great,
but we are okay,” Van Horn said.
“But we significantly lagged in other areas
so we decided to focus our budget on get
ting those up.”
When compared to larger state schools in
the area, Brevard is significantly lagging in
terms of faculty compensation. At Western
Carolina University, for instance, full pro
fessors make an average of $89,500 per
year. According to Van Horn, however, this
statistic is not cause for concern at BC.
“Laiger schools are usually research insti
tutions and they pay more than schools that
focus on teaching, like we do. In how we
Yale's Scaz probes
by Ethan Rodriguez-Torrent
Yale Daily News
U-Wire Content
Bright yellow, with a cartoonish nose and
pair of eyes and standing about 4 inches
tall above its base, Keepon looks like a
cross between a marshmallow Peep and
a snowman. And Keepon has become a
YouTube sensation — because this robot
can dance.
Keepon can improvise to any song with
a reasonable beat, said Brian “Scaz” Scas-
sellati, a Yale University computer science
professor who received tenure last week,
exposing the robot’s iimer workings while
putting him through his paces. Partially
built by former undergraduate Marek Mi-
market our jobs we have attracted profes
sors who are more focused on teaching.”
One statistic that Van Horn said the school
will need to address in the future is the fact
that assistant professor salaries have in
creased 3 3 % over the last nine years, while
full professor salaries have seen only a 5%
jump during that same time frame.
“The category of professor that we have
the fewest of is ‘Full,’ and when faculty
leaves who makes a lot of money and we
hire a new faculty member with not as
much experience, that changes those aver
ages,” Van Horn said.
According to BC’s Strategic Plan, re
leased in 2007, Brevard College plans to
address employee compensation in the near
future, although no quantitative terms were
attached to the document.
“We will revisit this issue again in the
fall,” Van Horn said. “But I don’t think
anybody could have predicted what hap
pened with the economy and how that
impacted us.”
humanity, robots
chalowski ’02 GRD ’03 and imported from
Japan, Keepon helps Scaz and his assistants
— four graduate students and about seven
undergraduates — study when and why
humans identify with object motion.
Scassellati splits his time between Kee
pon and two other robots: Pleo, a cat-sized
dinosaur that can be programmed to act
out an endless variety of movements and
behaviors; and Nico, a metalhc rephca of
the upper body of a 1-year-old child made
from motor cables and metal piping.
“The central focus of a lot of [my work]
is understanding how kids are able to learn
effectively from other people — from their
parents and from their peers,” Scassellati
said. “We use robots as a way to both model
See Robots, page 3