CAMPUS BUZZ
BY SANDY SMITH
Alternatively tops - again: For the fifth year running, Penn's listener-supported radio station wowed the judges at the annual Gavin Seminar, run by The Gavin Report, a leading music-industry trade magazine. The station picked up its eighth, ninth and 10th Gavin Awards at the New Orleans event. The station was named Non-Commercial Station of the Year in the "A3" (adult, acoustic, alternative) category, and Program Director Bruce Warren picked up two awards, for Non-Commercial Program Director/Operations Manager of the Year and the Gavin/Zimmerman Ear of the Year Award.
Consultant at the bat?: Now that the Phillies have signed on to the idea of a new stadium at Broad and Spring Garden streets, we wonder if they consulted outfielder Doug Glanville (EAS'92) during their analysis of the pros and cons of the various proposed sites. While at Penn, Glanville wrote his senior thesis on the transportation issues surrounding a proposal to build a new ballpark near 30th Street Station.
Who were the first Americans? Recent archaeological discoveries in South America of artifacts predating the famous Clovis, N.M., expedition in the 1930s have made this question relevant again. The late John L. Cotter, curator emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and a member of the original Clovis team, completed a book shortly before his death in February that examines the Clovis artifacts in light of recent technological advances and some startling new theories about where the first Americans came from. The book, "Clovis Revisited: New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from Blackwater Draw, New Mexico," written with Anthony Boludrian of the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, has just been released by University Museum Publications.
English envy: It appears Duke University is in a hurry to rebuild its tattered English department. The school has actively recruited faculty from a number of other top-flight departments, including Houston Baker ("Campus Buzz," Current, April 15), and now it's dipped into Penn's pool of talent again. Professor Maureen Quilligan recently announced that she will become Duke's undergraduate English chairperson as of next Jan. 1. In related news, Eliza New, professor and chair of Penn's undergraduate English program, has accepted a position at Harvard.
Penn in ink: America's retailers are on a spending spree, building more and more stores - more than demand justifies, according to an article in the May 16 Record of Bergen County, N.J. Professor of Management Emeritus Edward Shils chalked the phenomenon up to irrational exuberance, saying, "It's consumerism run amok." ...Getting forgetful as you get on in years? It's a normal part of the aging process, but many aging Baby Boomers worry it's something worse. It's not. "A good rule of thumb is that if you think you have Alzheimer's, you almost never do," said Christopher Clark, assistant professor of neurology and director of the Memory Disorders Clinic, in a May 16 Las Vegas Review-Journal story on age-related memory loss.
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