News Briefs

Gilson no longer with Registrar

Associate Registrar Ken Gilson recently left Oberlin to become Registrar of Western Oregon University. Gilson came to Oberlin in 1998 for a three-year term after working in Development and Admissions at Wheaton College in Illinois.

Students were surprised to discover that Gilson had left, as he had been working for the College as recently as orientation, demonstrating PRESTO and running an advising session for transfer students. Registrar Lori Gumpf said that Gilson's departure was not unexpected. He notified the office of the registrar of his move to Oregon two months ago, and agreed to stay on to help with Orientation. While serving as Associate Registrar, Gilson supervised the staff of the registrar's office and oversaw day-to-day operations while Gumpf converted all student records to the new Banner System.

Gilson plans to pursue a Ph.D. in higher education while at Western Oregon. The office of the registrar is conducting a national search for a replacement, set to conclude on Sept. 24. Presently, no candidates have been selected for the interview phase of the search.

-Mark Engleson

SCOLA system upgraded

The Satellite Communications for Learning Association website, used by many Oberlin students and professors as a language study resource, now boasts a variety of new features, including links to more of the 55 countries that comprise the SCOLA family. More importantly, the site now offers up-to-date international news coverage 24 hours a day via live video streaming.

"With the advent of online video and the accessibility of video distribution over the World Wide Web, it is imperative for SCOLA to take advantage of world-wide distributions," said SCOLA President Lee Lubbers. "We use the latest technology at our antenna farm and world headquarters in McClelland, Iowa to bring foreign nations and their languages to over 10 million North Americans every day."

While SCOLA currently features three satellite channels that receive and re-broadcast news, arts and entertainment programming from countries like Russia and the People's Republic of China, it is planning to introduce two new channels in the near future. The first will offer diverse courses ranging from French philosophy and Chinese Confucianism to Japanese mathematics and Russian physics; the second will offer classes in less commonly taught languages like Swahili, Arabic and Lakota Indian. In the meantime, its present roster of channels has been greeted by positive feedback from students who use live streaming to research for classes in political science, cultural diversity, sociology and anthropology. "SCOLA has been very useful to me," said Gardner Swan, a Politics and East Asian Studies major. "It's certainly the best international news site on the web. It's better than Cats. I've used it again and again."

SCOLA is a non-profit educational consortium that re-transmits television programs from countries throughout the globe in their original languages.

-Rossiter Drake