Six JHU students named Gates Millennium Scholars

Six Hopkins students--four incoming freshmen, a junior and a SAIS graduate student--are part of the inaugural class of the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, a 20-year, $1 billion initiative aimed at reducing the financial barriers to a college education for 20,000 students.

The program, created last fall with a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, provides merit-based scholarships that cover the remaining college costs minority students face after universities award financial aid packages. Uel Alexis, Abeba Habtemariam, Na Mee Kim, Deepa Ramesh, Kristin Simpson and David Yu were among the 4,000 students selected from the more than 62,000 nominations.

The GMS program is administered by the United Negro College Fund, in partnership with the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and the American Indian College Fund.

Peabody Library exhibits works of writer John Dos Passos

John Dos Passos once commented that a writer was "an architect of history" whose job it was "to arrange the materials and enhance the outlines without weakening [the] structure." A collection of works by this prolific writer, titled "John Dos Passos: An Architect of History," will be on exhibit at the George Peabody Library through Oct. 31.

Dos Passos (1896-1970) was a chronicler of American social and political life who drew on personal experience as well as historical research. A pacifist, he experienced World War I as an ambulance driver and after the war traveled through the Far East returning to Paris, where the modernist movement in literature and art was centered. When he returned to the United States, Dos Passos was active in many left-wing causes.

This exhibit, which deals with his career through the 1930s, is based on the collection of works donated by Irene and Richard Frary to the university's Sheridan Libraries.

Development receives CASE Circle of Excellence Award

The Johns Hopkins development effort, led by Robert R. Lindgren, vice president for development and alumni relations, was honored this summer by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education with a Circle of Excellence Award for "overall fund-raising performance" for 1998-99.

During that period, a Hopkins record was set as cash receipts of $207 million came in, including new gifts and payments on pledges. (During fiscal 1999-2000, this record was smashed, as cash receipts totaled $304 million.)

Among universities considered in Hopkins' peer group, only five others were recognized in the 1998-99 Circle of Excellence: Columbia, Cornell, Duke, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania.

APL tests GPS-based survey system for roadways

Using a digital camera and a Global Positioning System antenna atop a 50-foot telescoping mast to gather data, an APL team surveyed a section of Union Bridge in Carroll County for the Maryland State Highway Administration. The test successfully demonstrated the accuracy of the APL-developed Multiple Image Coordinate Extraction technique applied to road surveying. MICE was initially designed to pinpoint target positions from Unmanned Aerial Vehicle images, using precision differential GPS, photogram-metry and estimation theory. The system, it is believed, can help the highway administration survey roadways more quickly and safely than by using conventional methods.

Evergreen Society announces fall lineup of courses for seniors

As part of the diverse fall course offerings of the university's Evergreen Society, Victor McKusick, a founder of modern medical genetics, heads a roster of distinguished scientists and experts who will provide seniors with insights into the medical, legal and ethical questions surrounding biological research today.

Evergreen's other part-time courses for seniors include explorations of once-famous leaders in U.S. history, American fiction and poetry, Shakespeare's kings, classical music and archaeology.

Classes begin Sept. 26 at Baltimore, Columbia and Montgomery County locations. For more information, contact the society's Baltimore/Columbia office at 410-309-9531 or its Montgomery County office at 301-294-7058.