Fort William College

Fort William College (also called the College of Fort William) was an academy and learning centre of Oriental studies established by Lord Wellesley, then Governor-General of British India. The law to establish its foundation was passed on the 4th of May, 1800 to commemorate the first anniversary of the victory over Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam. It was founded on July 10, 1800, within the Fort William complex in Calcutta. Thousands of books were translated from Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu in English at this institution

Fort William College aimed at training British officials in Indian languages and in the process it fostered the development of languages such as Bengali and Urdu.The period is of historical importance. In 1815, Ram Mohan Roy settled in Calcutta. It is considered by many historians to be starting point of the Bengal renaissance. A establishment of The Calcutta Madrassa in 1781, the Asiatic Society in 1784 and the Fort William College in 1800, completed the first phase of Kolkata’s emergence as an intellectual centre.

Teaching of Asian languages dominated: Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Sanskrit, Bengali; and later Marathi and even Chinese were added. Each department of the college was staffed by notable scholars. The Persian department was headed by Neile B. Edmonstone, Persian translator to the government. His assistant teacher was John H. Harington, a judge of Sadar Diwani Adalat and Francis Gladwin, a soldier diplomat. For Arabic studies, there was Lt. John Baillie, a noted Arabist. The Urdu department was entrusted to John Borthwick Gilchrist, an Indologist of great repute. Henry Thomas Colebrooke, the famous orientalist, was head of the Sanskrit department. William Carey, a non-civilian missionary and a specialist in many Indian languages, was selected to head the department of vernacular languages. While notable scholars were identified and appointed for different languages, there was no suitable person in Kolkata who could be appointed to teach Bengali. In those days the Brahmin scholars learnt only Sanskrit, considered to be the language of the gods, and did not study Bengali. The authorities decided to appoint Carey, who was with the Baptist Mission in Serampore. He, in turn, appointed Mrityunjoy Vidyalankar as head pandit, Ramnath Bachaspati as second pandit and Ramram Basu as one of the assistant pandits.

Along with teaching, translations were organized. The college employed more than one hundred local linguists. At that time there were no textbooks available in Bengali. On 23 April 1789, Calcutta Gazette published the humble request of several Natives of Bengal for a Bengali grammar and dictionary.It was located at the corner of Council House Street. The house was subsequently occupied by Messrs. Mackenzie Lyall & Co., and known as The Exchange. Still later, it housed the offices of Bengal Nagpur Railway. In those days, it was at one corner of the parade ground, now known as the Maidan. The Raj Bhavan (then known as Government House) was opened a little later.

For teaching purposes the College of Fort William accumulated a library of old manuscripts (from all over South Asia) and added multiple copies of its own imprints. The list of books recommended later for preservation includes many books of historical value.Subsequently, when the college was wound up, it gave away the magnificent collection in the library to the newly formed Calcutta Public Library, now the National Library.The court of directors of the British East India Company were never in favour of a training college in Kolkata and as such there always was a fund crunch for running the college. Subsequently a separate college for the purpose, The East India Company College at Haileybury (England), was established in 1807. However Fort William College continued to be a centre of learning languages.with the British settling down in the seat of power, their requirements changed. Bentinck announced his educational policy of public instruction in English in 1835, mostly to cater to the growing needs of administration and commerce. He clipped the wings of Fort William College and the Dalhousie administration formally dissolved the institution in 1854.

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College of New Rochelle

The College of New Rochelle (CNR) is a private Catholic college with its main campus located in New Rochelle, New York. The College of St. Angela was founded by the Order of the Ursulines as the first Catholic women's college in New York state in 1904, a time when women were generally excluded from higher education. The name was changed to The College of New Rochelle in 1910. Building on its original commitment to women, the college reaches out to those who have not previously had access to higher education. It places particular emphasis on the concept of lifelong learning. The undergraduate program remains women-only but the nursing program, graduate school and adult learners program are now open to men.

The main campus is located in New Rochelle, a suburban Westchester city about 16 miles (26 km) north of Manhattan. In 1896, the college's founder, Mother Irene Gill, traveled to New Rochelle to explore the possibility of establishing a seminary there for young women. It was during this trip that she came across Leland Castle, an 1850s gothic revival structure and former vacation home of wealthy New York hotelier Simeon Leland. The castle was purchased in 1897 and became the first structure of the College. It has since been designated a National Historic Site. The castle is part of the campus quadrangle and currently houses the "Castle Gallery". The college's art collections include a Museum Set of 75 photographs by Ansel Adams"the campus consists of 20 main buildings including a $28MM athletic, recreational and educational complex called The Wellness Center (completed in 2008), including an NCAA competition-sized swimming pool, basketball court, fitness center, indoor running track, yoga studio, roof garden and meditation garden, and volleyball court; The Mooney Center with computer and photography labs, TV production studio and the Debra and Russel Taylor Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies; the 200,000-volume Mother Irene Gill Memorial Library; the Student Campus Center; the Rogick Life Sciences Building with many laboratories; four residence halls; and the Learning Center for Nursing.

The first mention of sports at CNR is in the St. Angela’s Quarterly in 1905. A coach was hired to organize a basketball team. By 1908, annual inter-class athletic meets began between the "odds" and "evens" (year of graduation). The meets became a focus of inter-class spirit and competition—often reaching a fevered pitch. Each class had its own colors, banners, and songs which were brought out for the meet. Ingenious ways and places of getting the class banner to the highest point on campus put lives in peril as students scaled trees, sneaked up to the Castle towers, or climbed onto roofs to place the class banner. Held in the fall and spring, the meets initially involved gymnastic drills as well as basketball. Later, track and field competitions were held and awards were given. The meets continued until the early 1940s. Intramural sports were popular—basketball, volleyball, golf, hockey, tennis, and riding. In 1916, CNR began playing basketball with other college teams.

In less than 30 years, the growing College needed a much larger and more modern gymnasium than the gym in Chidwick. In 1932, at the height of the Depression, the ultra-modern Art Deco Sports Building was completed—with a pool, gymnasium, social rooms, equipment, and exercise rooms. The Athletic Association was open to anyone interested in sports, as a team member or supporter. Dues paid for some new equipment, parties, prizes, and speakers. In later years, a full CNR scholarship was offered every four years, fundraised by the Athletic Association through sponsored games and dances.sports lost some of their appeal during the politically-turbulent late 1960s-1970s, but the annual Swimphony/Landphony water and land ballet competition begun when the pool was opened continued to spark class spirit and inter-class competition into the 1990s. Exercise equipment was added in the 1970s, and the pool was often opened in the summer to day camps and residents of Residence Park.

The College of New Rochelle joined the National Collegiate Athletic Association during the mid-1980s. CNR’s basketball team took the name "Blue Angels" and won a number of local championships, a state championship and a NCAA Tournament bid, losing in the Championship Game.the College also elevated the sports of volleyball, swimming, tennis, and softball to NCAA status. CNR athletic teams have produced many successful team and individual records during their NCAA tenure.today, the "Blue Angels" remain an NCAA Division III Member and compete locally in the Hudson Valley Women’s Athletic Conference and the New York State Women’s Collegiate Athletic Association. They have continued to place in the top echelon of the HVWAC, with the Volleyball Team winning the Championship.

Study Shows Preschool Reduces Need for Special Education

A study published this week has found that a high-quality early childhood program can reduce the number of children who are diagnosed with a variety of learning disorders by the third grade.
Conducted by Clara G. Muschkin, Helen F. Ladd and Kenneth A. Dodge of Duke University, the study is expected to play a part in reducing the burden that special education services place on municipal budgets.
Researchers looked at two early childhood initiatives in North Carolina and how they affected the probability that children would need to be placed in special education by the time they finished the third grade. The authors focused on a preschool program that serves four-year-children from at-risk families referred to as More At Four, and another program that offers child, family and health services to children from birth to age five, called Smart Start. Around 871,000 children born between 1988 and 2000 were observed during this study. The children all entered the third grade between 1995 and 2010.
Children from the More at Four program, which is now referred to as NC Pre-K, were found to be 32% less likely to be in special education by the third grade in comparison to their peers who were not enrolled in a preschool program.children enrolled in the Smart Start program were 10% less likely to be in special education by the end of the third grade.both programs together reduced the likelihood of needing special education services by 39%, according to the researchers.  This discovery could mean a significant increase in savings, as special education costs in the US are almost twice as much as regular classroom costs, writes Lyndsey Layton for The Washington Post.
“It shows a level of benefit not only in academic terms but also financially, because special education services are so expensive,” Muschkin said. “This gives policy makers useful evidence that investments in early childhood education are a source of significant cost savings for the state.”
Additional smaller studies have suggested that children who participate in high-quality preschool programs show lifelong benefits, including better jobs, higher wages, and a reduced probability of being in the criminal justice system or needing social services.
However, a large study performed in 2013 looking at almost 5,000 children enrolled in the federal Head Start program serving low-income children from birth to age five, discovered that any literacy progress made in those children faded by the third grade, causing many critics to believe Obama’s universal preschool proposal may not be as cost-effective as it is made out to be.


The Duke study has now suggested that not only is a high-quality preschool program cost effective, and could greatly benefit children who may otherwise need special education services, it could also benefit other children as well.children who were also enrolled in the two preschool programs studied benefited because they are high-quality programs. “The state funding goes to the slots in the classroom, but because the quality has to be high, the other children in the classroom also benefitted, even though they didn’t qualify for More at Four,” said Muschkin.

Benefits of Pre-K in Tennessee Fade by 3rd Grade, Study Says

According to a recently released study by Vanderbilt University, children from low-income families greatly benefit from the pre-kindergarten program in the state of Tennessee, but that the gains quickly fade — and long-term results may be even worse.
The five-year study, which cost $6 million, looked into the effectiveness of Tennessee’s Voluntary Pre-K Program for low-income children.  In the end, researchers found that the children who participated in the program eventually perform worse academically than their peers who did not attend the program.
The results come as the debate continues across the state whether the $85 million program should be cut back or eliminated altogether.
“If kids are doing worse, then why in the heck are they going to spend millions of dollars on it?” said Rep. Bill Dunn, a state representative from Knoxville who has argued for years against state-funded pre-K. “Anybody who really studied the issue would have seen that the emperor had no clothes.”

As a joint effort between Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development and the Tennessee Department of Education, the study found that children who participated in the program for low-income families initially made gains over the students who did not attend, and were more prepared when they entered kindergarten.  However, those children who did not participate caught up by the end of the kindergarten year.


By second grade, the results found among the two groups of children were evened out, and by third grade, the group of students who had not attended the pre-kindergarten program were outperforming those who had.previous research on the topic, including a study released from the state Comptroller’s office, found a “negligible” difference between children who attended the program and those who did not by the time they reached the third grade.  In addition, these studies suggested the program came with a number of benefits, including higher graduation rates, and a greater likelihood of owning a home by the time they reach their mid-twenties.
“These programs are necessary, and if they’re not doing what we need them to do, we need to fix them. But we certainly need to keep them and we do need to expand them,” said Lisa Wiltshire, executive director of the Tennessee Department of Education’s Office of Early Learning at a panel discussion with Vanderbilt University researchers and early education experts last week.

Governor Bill Haslam has been waiting for the results of the current study to be released before announcing any decisions concerning what to do with the program.  He recently told reporters that he took the report to mean that “quality pre-K with good follow-up can have an impact.”  However, he needs to weigh the research against the money spent on the program.
“I would like for us to put more dollars into [K-12]. We have to do that in context of the budget and in the context of where we’ll get the best results,” Haslam said.

What Makes MA Different From Other States On Education?

Student achievement in Massachusetts handily demonstrates why treating the US as one undifferentiated mass when it comes to education policy may be wrong-headed. According to the latest data, if MA were treated as a separate country, it would have the second-highest levels of academic attainment in the world.

The state defies trends when it comes to science and mathematics. According to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, it ranked behind only Singapore in 4th-grade science and lagging only Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan in the same subject at the 8th grade level.

This puts the state a full 4 places ahead of United States as a whole, according to Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.

TIMMS might not provide a complete picture of student achievement, but the test offers an interesting insight into what happens when a state gets serious about improving its science and math education. Nearly 20 years ago, lawmakers, along with education advocates and experts, set this as a goal, developed a plan and – most importantly – believed in it enough to stick with it through early years of disappointment.while Massachusetts has a richer and better-educated population than most states, it is not uniformly wealthy. The gains reflected improvement across the state, including poorer districts.“I think we are a proof point of what’s possible,” said Mitchell D. Chester, the state education commissioner.

The goal was encapsulated in the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, a joint effort between the Democratic state legislature and Republican governor William F. Weld. The law attacked the problem of education on three fronts: allocating funding, adopting objective academic benchmarks and – a full decade before it become popular – rolling out a set of standardized exams all students had to pass before they could graduate high school. In this regard, the state seemed foretell the education reform movement that was to upend American education only a few years later. However, there were some parts of the movement that MA rejected outright – specifically, school choice.

Also noteworthy was what the reforms did not include. Parents were not offered vouchers for private schools. The state did not close poorly performing schools, eliminate tenure for teachers or add merit pay. The reforms did allow for some charter schools, but not many.then the state, by and large, stayed the course.the new achievement test, the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS for short), was given to 10th graders for the first time in 1998. (The graduation requirement of obtaining an acceptable score on the 10th-grade MCAS did not take effect until 2003.)

Six GOP Presidential Hopefuls Explain Their Education Platforms

As the 2016 Presidential election season continues to develop, Republican presidential candidates are talking more about their stances on education.

Jeb Bush, at a panel discussion sponsored by the American Federation for Children, a group that advocates school vouchers, and The 74, an education news website launched by former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, said the kids who are left behind tend to be young people who live in poverty, mostly African-American and Hispanic kids. When they fail, he said, we blame it on the “social circumstances of their lives.” Bush also stated that he supports annual standardized tests for public school students just as his brother President George W. Bush did.

The New York Times’ Motoko Rich writes that Bush, a former governor of Florida, used one of his brother’s signature phrases when he said, “And that is what a former president called the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations,’ and we should reject that out of hand.”gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said he did not support the federal government overseeing public schools.“The federal government doesn’t have a very good track record of holding anybody accountable,” he said. “My solution is, I would like to take the money and the power from Washington in education and send it back to the states.”

By saying this, he added, he would be going against some in his own party.

Republicans in the race for president have been divided on the subject of education, and the panel was a testimony to that fact as participants tried to explain how little they would have the federal government involved in public schools; that they were on the side of high standards for the country’s schoolchildren; and that some were backing away from the Common Core, the educational guidelines that have become extremely controversial among teachers, parents, and conservatives.both Walker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie are critical of teachers unions. And for years, Republicans have wanted the federal government to get out of the education business, even as far as abolishing the federal Education Department. But President G. W. Bush’s education law, No Child Left Behind, greatly expanded the role of the federal government by requiring annual standardized tests and ordering interventions for schools that were judged to be failing.

The summit on education took place at a Londonderry, NH high school and was moderated by CNN anchor-turned education reformer Campbell Brown. The American Federation for Children and Brown are backers of expanding access to charter schools and overhauling teacher tenure laws that they say make it too hard to fire a bad teacher.

Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich were the only backers of Common Core in the group. Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, says she does not support the Common Core, however, five years ago she praised President Obama for initiating the “internationally benchmarked standards.”

Obama’s Race to the Top called for states to use higher quality, more stringent academic standards, which did not necessarily have to be the Common Core, in exchange for federal dollars. Most states did choose to add Common Core, according to Stephanie Condon of CBS News.bush and Fiorina endorsed school vouchers to push competition and innovation in the nation’s school systems. Fiorina touted Nevada’s new law that permits parents to open a K-12 education accounts which would allow their children to take their public funding to whichever school they and their parents choose. The plan is strongly opposed by Democrats and several education organizations, as opponents say this will leave struggling and low-income students in lower-funded schools.

Caitlin Emma of Politico writes that Louisiana Gov. Jindal was behind the Common Core at the start, but is now suing the federal government over the standards. Gov. Chris Christie agreed to the Common Core in 2010, but now denounces the curriculum. The GOP candidates speak often of restoring local control, but Brown asked whether education could be improved if there is no federal role.

College of the Holy Cross

The College of the Holy Cross or Holy Cross is a private, undergraduate Roman Catholic, Jesuit liberal arts college located in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1843, Holy Cross is the oldest Catholic college in New England and one of the oldest in the United States. U.S. News & World Report ranked Holy Cross 25th in the U.S. among liberal arts colleges in 2014. Holy Cross is the only Catholic college among the top 50 liberal arts schools on the U.S. News list.opened as a school for boys under the auspices of the Society of Jesus, it was the first Jesuit college in New England. Today, Holy Cross is one of 28 member institutions of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) and is part of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium (COWC). Holy Cross sports teams are called the Crusaders, and their sole color is purple; they compete in NCAA Division I as members of the Patriot League. As of 2014, the Holy Cross endowment was valued at $726,053,000.

In 1998, Holy Cross initiated an eight-year capital campaign, "Lift High the Cross," with a three-year quiet period. The campaign for Holy Cross ended in fiscal 2006 with $216.3 million raised, surpassing its original goal of $175 million. The funds allowed Holy Cross to establish an additional 12 new faculty positions, along with more than 75 newly endowed scholarships for students. The campaign provided support for the renovation of the Mary Chapel as well as construction of new facilities on campus, including Smith Hall, which houses the new Michael C. McFarland Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture; a five-story apartment-style residence housing 244 seniors; and a new 1,350-seat soccer stadium. During the history of the campaign, the College's endowment grew to more than $544 million.on July 1, 2000, Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. became the president of the college. On February 3, 2011, Fr. McFarland announced his resignation as President of the College, and a national search, led by the Board of Trustees, was conducted to find his successor. On May 7, 2011, Rev. Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., the Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Georgetown University, was named as McFarland's successor.

Holy Cross has 240 faculty members who teach 2,817 undergraduate students. It offers 28 majors mainly focused on a liberal arts curriculum, each of which leads to the completion of the Bachelor of Arts degree. All B.A. candidates must successfully complete 32 semester courses in eight semesters of full-time study to graduate. Common requirements include one course each in arts, literature, religion, philosophy, history, and cross-cultural studies; and two courses each in language studies, social science, and natural and mathematical sciences. As of 2010, Holy Cross is in the top 3% of four-year colleges in the number of students going on to earn doctorates in their fields.the top five majors for the 2008-2009 school year were Economics, English, Psychology, Political Science, and Sociology. Holy Cross also offers multidisciplinary concentrations, pre-professional programs, and the option to create a major or minor through the Center for Interdisciplinary and Special Studies. Holy Cross students who apply to medical school have an 91% acceptance rate and for law school an 91% acceptance rate. The College notes that the medical school acceptance rate is more than twice the national average.

Of particular interest is the Classics department at Holy Cross, which has ten faculty members, making it the second largest Classics program at any American liberal arts college (after St. John's College (Annapolis/Santa Fe), where Ancient Greek is a required subject). D. Neel Smith, one of the department professors, is a primary collaborator on the Perseus Project, the multimedia database of Greek antiquity created by several college and universities. During the 2006-07 academic year, Holy Cross will specifically be editing the Homer Multitext Project, a long-term analysis and electronic presentation of all the many variations of Homer’s epic poetry.

Holy Cross has traditionally drawn many of its students from a pool of historical Catholic high schools and private boarding schools, though a majority of current undergraduates come from public schools. Holy Cross' overall undergraduate acceptance rate for the incoming 2014 class was 43.3 percent. In 2013, the middle 50% SAT score range for those who submitted a score was 1220-1380 out of 1600. Even though Holy Cross did not first admit women students until 1972, its student population is currently majority female, as with most liberal arts institutions, with this majority continuing to grow with the most recent entering classes.in May 2005, Holy Cross announced that it would no longer make standardized test scores an admissions requirement. College officials said this policy would reduce the importance of the tests and place greater weight on the academic experience of a candidate, as demonstrated through the high school transcript and recommendations. As of October 2006, more than 730 four-year colleges and universities of varying rank do not use the SAT I or ACT to admit bachelor degree applicants. Tuition for full-time students for the 2012-13 academic year is $55,130.

Holy Cross' campus, a registered arboretum, has won national awards for its landscaping. In 1977, Holy Cross was cited by the Professional Grounds Management Society (PGMS) for having the best-maintained school or university grounds in the United States[45] Holy Cross is marked by an irregular layout as its 175-acre (0.71 km2) campus is situated on the northern slope of a very steep hill named Mount Saint James which offers it a panoramic view of the city of Worcester. The Princeton Review ranked the campus as #5 most beautiful campus in the nation in 2010 and consistently ranks the campus in the top 15. The design and landscape is ingrained into many themes and nicknames for the school which is commonly known as The Hill.

Today, some 37 college buildings are divided primarily with residential housing and academic buildings located in the middle sections of the campus, with athletic and practice facilities on the outskirts of the campus on its northern and southern ends. Holy Cross also owns 6 non-campus properties.anchoring the traditional campus gateway of Linden Lane are Stein and O’Kane Halls, the latter of which is marked by a clock tower. The oldest part of campus lies in this area, as O’Kane is connected to Fenwick Hall, the first building which was designed in 1843; it also houses the admissions offices and the Brooks Concert Hall. This area contains manicured trees and landscaped greens which include three nude bronze statues by Enzo Plazzotta, Georg Klobe, and Welrick on the hillside. This is a popular spot for pranks as students take turns dressing up the statues. The area around Fenwick and O'Kane Halls is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Notable buildings north of this area are Dinand Library; Smith Hall, the Hogan Campus Center; the scientific complex housing O'Neil, Swords, and Haberlin Halls, and Beaven Hall, home to an assortment of academic departments. Smith Hall, opened in 2001, was financed in large part by Holy Cross alumnus Park B. Smith, and is architecturally impressive as it is built into a hillside of the campus. Smith Hall connects the lower campus, where much of the academic life occurs, and the upper campus, where much of the social and residential life takes place on campus due to its design which incorporates Fenwick Hall. A plaza outside Smith Hall, named Memorial Plaza, commemorates seven Holy Cross alumni who perished in the September 11, 2001 attacks.to the western end of campus lies Millard Art Center, St. Joseph Memorial Chapel, the Chaplains' Office (Campion House), and Loyola Hall, which served as the Jesuit residence in the past, but has since been converted into another hall for student housing. The Jesuit residence Ciampi Hall is now located in the Northeast corner of the campus.