Triangle, North Carolina.  Average Pay For Full Professors At Duke And UNC Ranks High Nationally.  There is no doubt about it: top dollar draws the top talent in any field or business you care to name.  Academia is no different.  Top professorial pay is important to universities for their ability to draw top talent, to business and industry for the products and quality of students they produce, to the cities and immediate areas they serve for the business and quality of people they attract and, in many cases, the business they produce and businesses they draw to their respective states.

The average pay for full professors at Triangle universities during 2007 was: Duke - $152,600, University of North Carolina - $138,500, North Carolina State University - $110,800, North Carolina Central University - $99,300 and Meredith - $72,500.  Since 2000 these figures represent a 34.3 percent increase at Duke, a 37.3 percent increase an UNC, and a 21.1 percent increase at NCSU.  UNC now ranks third in the nation, for public schools, for average full professor pay behind the University of Maryland at Baltimore and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

It is a tough job to try and remain competitive with the top private schools such as Harvard and Stanford.  Harvard’s average was $184,400 and Stanford’s was $173,700.  While a number of private universities may pay more than the Triangle universities, the cost of living in North Carolina is enough less than the cost of living in California and in East coast communities to make the overall pay at Triangle universities about equal to them.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com 

Raleigh, North Carolina.  This area’s educational needs will get a further shot in the arm with the opening of Wake Tech’s Northern Wake campus on August 15.  Even the names of the streets it is on speak of what it will deliver: Success Way and Excellence Drive.  Initially the school will offer classes for the Associates in Arts degree in majors including English, math, accounting and religion.  Next Spring it will add an Associate in Science degree.

The first of the two buildings opening on August 15 is a 52,700 square feet building that will house classrooms, facilities for Student Services and multi-purpose lab areas. The second is a 64,500 square feet building that contains computer labs, classrooms, faculty offices and work areas, science labs, an individual Learning Center and a student lounge.  These two buildings will hold all classes while other buildings are under construction.  Northern Wake Tech will be the first community college campus in the state to earn a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification.

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: Marvmax@mindspring.com   Website: www.JohnFish.com  

Siemens National Competition. This morning’s Raleigh News and Observer has an article in it that I find particularly pleasing.  Now that I am 39 and counting, and counting - it seems that most of what I read about high school age young people is less than thrilling.  Since most of what the newspapers seem to want to print and most of what the TV stations want to show concerns the bad things of life rather than the good, about anything let alone teenagers, it was enjoyable to see what some bright young minds are doing.

Siemens has a national competition in math, science and technology for high school students.  Through this competition, students have an opportunity to achieve national recognition for science research projects that they compete in, in high school.  It is administered by the College Board and funded by the Siemens Foundation.  There are Regional winners and from them are selected the six National Finalists.  These finalists can be either individuals or teams and are selected from a field of 1,660 students. The national finalists from this area are Nicholas Tang and Sagar Indurkhya from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.  Their work is in the field of Synthetic biology.  If you go to www.siemens-foundation.org/competition you can see, in detail, what this competition is all about.  You might find it interesting to see what the fields of the finalist individuals and teams are. If you understand any of them - good for you!

Individuals:  Elizabeth Monier - Keystone School - San Antonio, Texas - The Effects of Gene Suppression and Exposure to MPTP on Dopamine Neurons of C. elegans as a Model for Parkinson’s disease.

                  Dmitry Vantrob - South Eugene High School - Eugene, Oregon - The string topology BV algebra, Hochschild cohomology and the Goldman bracket on surfaces.

                  Dominic Ludovici - University High School - Morgantown, West Virginia - A search for radio pulsars using the GMRT

                  Arjun Ramamurti - Lexington High School - Lexington, Massachusetts - Exploring the Guenon Mystery: An evolutionary analysis using phylogenetic trees

                  Madhavi Gavini - The Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science - Columbus, Mississippi - Engineering a novel inhibitor of biofilm-encapsulated pathogens

                  Guannan (Roger) Wang - Horseheads High School - Horseheads, New York - Thin Film Assemblies of Gold Nanoparticles: Correlation between the Nanostructural Parameters and Conductivity Properties

Teams:  Jenny Yeh and Mary Catherine Wen - Archbishop Molloy High School - Briarwood, NY - Proliferation and Alignment of Osteoblasts on Oriented Magnetic Nanocomposites

            Lucia Mocz and Philip Mocz - Mililani High School - Mililani, Hawaii - Computer-Aided identification of Caner from Photomicrographs by Entropy Analysis

            Catherine McCarthy, Lily Roberts and Rochelle Rucker - Hathaway Brown School - Shaker Heights, Ohio - International Space Station Experiment to Measure Effects of Atomic Oxygen on Spacecraft Materials

            Scott Molony, Steven Arcangeli and Scott Horton - Oak Ridge High School - Oak Ridge, Tennessee - Linking supercomputing and systems biology for efficient bioethanol production

            Sagar Indurkhya and Nicholas Tang - The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics - Durham, North Carolina - Engineering synthetic oscillatory gene networks at the population level

            Jinju Yi - Plainview Old-Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School - Plainview, NY and Vijay Jain - Herricks High School - New Hyde Park, New York - Surface molecular imprinting of a nanoscale transducer for the rapid detection of bioterrorist agents and early diagnosis of cancer.

How in the ever lovin’ blue-eyed world do you pick a winner out of those individuals and teams?!!  From this area the individual runner ups included Abhiram Chivukula of Enloe High School and Hae Rhee Chung of the School of Science and Math. Team runner-ups included Bing Tan, Anusuya Ramasubramanian and Benjamin Wang of Enloe High.  I salute all of these young people and the parents who saw to it that they had their priorities in order.

There is a young man who just started to college this year who, during his high school years, has been assisting the people in our office with computer problems and needs. I am quite certain he will do very well.  His chosen field is EE.  As I think of him and these other young people I suggest that the next time you see some teen agers in the mall or elsewhere and you wonder what he, she or they are up to you might do well not to ask.  They might tell you and then what would you do?  

John Fish (919) 696-3474   Email: marvmax@mindspring.com  Website:  www.JohnFish.com