Locks of love

Diana DeCampli of Wilmington, AS 2000, recently had her long hair cut short for the first time in years. Her stylist, Belynda Dalecki at Shear Expressions, and the two friends DeCampli brought along for moral support were enthusiastic about her new look.

But, the excitement over DeCampli's haircut was not mere vanity. She donated a full 12 inches of her long, wavy hair to Locks of Love, the Florida-based charity that manufactures prosthetic hairpieces for children under the age of 18 who have lost their hair for a variety of medical reasons.

DeCampli says her motivation for donating came from a personal connection. Three of her relatives, including a teen-aged cousin, have all lost battles with cancer in recent years. All three underwent chemotherapy at some point in their treatment, which caused them to lose their hair.

"This is for them," DeCampli says, "because I saw how hard it was for them to lose their hair, especially for my aunt."

Alumni who loved Newark during their college days will not be surprised to find the Newark/ Wilmington area named one of the top 50 metropolitan areas in the U.S. when it comes to quality of life.

Expansion Management, one of the world's leading site and facility location magazines, recently gave the area its Five-Star Community rating.

In determining its rankings, the magazine considers such factors as income, housing costs, quality of public schools, crime rate and transportation.

The Morris Library has finalized plans to restructure its DELCAT online catalog system by incorporating ALEPH 500, a new, web-based product that is more user-friendly.

DELCAT is used to find call numbers, locations and descriptions of materials held by the Morris Library
and its four branch libraries.

Conversion to the new catalog, which holds more than 2.4 million records, is under way and is expected
to be available to library users in the summer of 2002.

A sculpture of a pair of bronze Nubian nanny goats by internationally known sculptor André Harvey of Rockland, Del., is the focus of a small cul- de-sac adjoining the main walkway though the Grove, near Alison Hall. The goats--Lucinda (reclining) and Chloe (standing)--are complete with nametags and goat bells with clappers that ring. Benches complete the small retreat.

The work of art was given in memory of Peter and Graham Jefferson, the sons of Naomi and Edward Jefferson, and brothers of Charles and Andrew Jefferson and his wife, Heather. Edward Jefferson, a longtime member of the University of Delaware Board of Trustees, is now trustee emeritus. He and Naomi, his wife, donated the Jefferson Organ at Bayard Sharp Hall. The sculpture is the gift of the Graham Foundation, founded by the Jefferson family.

Harvey has been working as a sculptor for 30 years and is known for his highly realistic bronze sculptures of animals and people. He actually creates portraits in bronze and carefully researches his subjects, even flying to a remote island in the Pacific to study endangered Hawaiian monk seals.

According to Harvey, goats have a special capacity for friendship and companionship and their "distinct personalities and peculiarities along with their fickleness and delightful individualism give them character and makes us like them." The real Lucinda and Chloe live in a barnyard with other goats, chickens and a cat in rural Pennsylvania. Harvey made clay "sketches" of them with some difficulty because they chewed on his sculpting stand and ate his pencil sketches.

A graduate of the University of Virginia and a fellow of the national Sculpture Society in New York, Harvey has had his work exhibited here and abroad, and his sculptures are in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States and the world.

The University of Delaware's Laboratory Preschool received two important honors during October. It received reaccredidation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), an honor achieved by only seven percent of early childhood programs nationwide, and it received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Early Care and Education at Oct.18 ceremonies in Dover.

UD's 2001 Heart Walk team raised $11,000 in contributions for the American Heart Association--a 12 percent increase over last year--maintaining its position as one of the top 10 fundraisers for the event.

Matthew Frawley, AS 2002, a criminal justice major, brought in $560, the second highest amount contributed. Frawley said he and his family were motivated since his father, Daniel Frawley, mayor of Wilmington for eight years, died of a heart attack in 1992. He walked with his wife, Katherine, AS 2003, his mother, Bonita, and his 2-year-old son, Daniel Franklin,

The fundraiser this year was held Sept. 9 along the Riverfront Walk in Wilmington.

The University of Delaware again is counted among the nation's premiere public universities, according to rankings released Sept. 7 in U.S. News and World Report's special issue "America's Best Colleges 2002."

UD ranks 24th among the top 50 public national universities, a distinction it shares with the University of Iowa and Rutgers University, moving up two slots from last year's ranking. The University of California at Berkeley continues to be ranked first among the nation's public universities, a position it also held last year.

Also, UD's Department of Chemical Engineering was ranked fifth in the nation in a list of top engineering specialty programs featured in the publication. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was ranked first in this category.

For its rankings, U.S. News categorizes colleges by mission and region, gathering data on 16 indicators–such as academic reputation, retention, faculty resources and student selectivity–and then ranks colleges against their peers in each category, based on a composite, weighted score.

Complete rankings are available on the magazine's web site at [www.usnews.com].

The staff and management of 91.3 WVUD radio, the voice of the University of Delaware, broadcast from the station's new studio for the first time during a special open house in the Perkins Student Center on Nov. 5.

The studio, made possible by listener contributions during the station's annual Radiothon fundraiser, is being called "The Studio That You Built" in honor of all donors. As part of the celebration, Newark Mayor Harold Godwin proclaimed "WVUD Day," and a ribbon cutting ceremony was held.

In addition, programming from WVUD is now simultaneously broadcast for about 18 hours a day on Comcast cable channel 66, a leased access channel. The service began in August so fans of the Fightin' Blue Hen football team were able to listen to away games and the contract runs through the end of May 2002.

"This agreement gives WVUD a stronger voice in the greater Wilmington area, since our signal dies out in north Wilmington. Now those residents will be able to listen to WVUD's jazz, blue grass and classical music that you can not listen to anywhere else," says sports director Rob Gregory. "Plus, Delaware alumni will be able to listen to a broad variety of sports that only WVUD covers."

For more information, contact Gregory at (302) 559-8021 or via e-mail at [rgregory@udel.edu].

President David Roselle cautioned faculty members attending the semiannual general faculty meeting in October that the University's budget outlook for 2002-03 and beyond "is more uncertain than at any time during the last decade."

Roselle said he sees the next fiscal year as difficult from a financial point of view and the year following that as "very difficult." He asked for the "cooperation, hard work and ideas of the faculty and staff to help our University come through this period of uncertainty and emerge an even stronger institution."

Although the University's endowment lost value during the trading week immediately after the Sept. 11 tragedy, Roselle said it has since recovered a portion of the loss. He also said the University received no new programmatic funding from the state for the current year. "The state set a zero growth target for the next fiscal year, before the likely negative economic impact of Sept. 11," he said.

The University expects increased costs for health care, which could increase by as much as 20 percent for the next fiscal year. The cost of oil and natural gas has moderated somewhat, he said, but the cost of electricity and water in Newark is up significantly.

Despite the prospect of difficult budgets for the next interim, Roselle pointed out that the University is currently in good financial health and that the economic conditions in Delaware remain more favorable than those in certain other states.

Roselle also noted that in the early 1990s, UD was successful in reducing costs while streamlining the administrative processes. "More of the same will be necessary to meet the economic challenges ahead," he said.

Move over Antiques Road Show. This fall, the Delaware Geological Survey (DGS) sponsored its own Rock 'n' Fossil Road Show at Coast Day, held Oct. 7 on UD's Hugh R. Sharp Campus in Lewes.

Members of DGS were on hand to identify and appraise rocks and fossils brought to their tent. Local collectors could bring in entire rock and fossil collections and see how many items DGS staff members could identify.

The Rock 'n' Fossil Show and other DGS displays and programs at Coast Day helped to mark the 50th anniversary of the Delaware Geological Survey, which makes its home at UD.

Official DGS 50th anniversary posters that show the historic shorelines of Cape Henlopen from 1800 to the present, complete with a rendition of the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse, that was destroyed in the 1920s, are still available by calling (302) 831-2833 or (302) 831-8083.

In its October issue, Yahoo Internet Life magazine named UD the eighth most technologically advanced university in the nation in its fifth annual "100 Most-Wired Colleges" report.

Although UD officials, along with those at numerous other colleges and universities, opted not to participate in this year's Yahoo Internet Life survey, the campus still was ranked in the top 10. Last year's top-rated school, Carnegie Mellon University, held on to its number-one ranking.