Adjunct medical professors who volunteer to teach at Stanford University would be banned from giving speeches drafted and paid for by drug and medical-device companies under new restrictions being introduced today, The New York Times reports. The university's conflict-of-interest policy already bars full-time faculty members from delivering such company-paid speeches. It also bans them from accepting gifts, including drug samples for patients. "We welcome interactions with industry that are positive and collaborative," Philip A. Pizzo, dean of Stanford's medical school, told the Times. "But where I think the line should not be crossed and where we are not going to allow our full-time or part-time faculty to engage is in marketing." Stanford has also taken steps recently to keep its continuing-medical-education courses free of industry influence.

The U.S. Senate has passed legislation that would give tax breaks to colleges and other employers that hire unemployed workers, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. The measure, part of a jobs bill that has already passed the House of Representatives, follows a proposal in January by President Obama, who is expected to sign the legislation.

Federal prosecutors say they know who was responsible for stealing dozens of valuable letters from the archives of Drew University and putting them up for sale. It was a freshman at Drew who worked part time in the New Jersey university's archives, according to today's New York Times. Many of the letters were written by a founder of the Methodist Church (with which Drew is affiliated); others were by Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and other U.S. presidents. The alleged thief was arrested on Sunday as his lacrosse team returned from a spring-break trip. He faces up to 10 years in prison, if convicted. The university, which was tipped off by an alert antiques dealer, says it hopes to get all the documents back.

Officials at Fresno City College have concluded that a health-science instructor violated district policy when he taught overtly religious material and described gay people as suffering from a mental disorder, according to The Rampage, the student newspaper at the California community college. The instructor, who has defended himself by citing his right to academic freedom, had faced complaints from the American Civil Liberties Union and others accusing him of making antigay remarks. A college official did not specify how the instructor would be disciplined, writing only that the college would take "appropriate actions."

The next director of the National Science Foundation is the current dean of the engineering school at MIT, Subra Suresh, according to Science magazine. There's no word yet from the White House on a nomination, which would be subject to Senate confirmation. Professor Suresh, an expert in nanobiomechanics, would be a rare nominee in that he remains an active scientist, Science observes. If nominated and confirmed, he would succeed Arden L. Bement Jr., who is returning to Purdue University on June 1.

The University of California at Los Angeles failed to report a laboratory fire to state regulators that seriously injured a graduate student in 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported. A year later, a staff research assistant at UCLA died after she was was severely burned by air-sensitive chemicals during an experiment. The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health fined UCLA $23,900 last week for the earlier incident, the paper reported.

Three genetics researchers will share the 2010 Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, a $500,000 award that was announced on Wednesday by the New York institution. The winners are David Botstein, director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University; Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health; and Eric Steven Lander, president and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. They are being recognized for their roles in mapping of the human genome. The prize, created in 2000 with a $50-million gift from the Marty and Dorothy Silverman Foundation, is scheduled to be presented annually for 100 years.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported today that John A. Fry, president of Franklin & Marshall College, would be named president of Drexel University on Wednesday. Mr. Fry, who previously worked in Philadelphia as an executive vice president at the University of Pennsylvania, will reportedly meet with staff members and key university officials tomorrow afternoon.

Mr. Fry's tenure at Franklin & Marshall has been marked by his ambition and his interest in shaping the campus and city around it. He led an effort to acquire and redevelop an old manufacturing plant and rail line for new sports fields and hospital facilities.

Mr. Fry's selection at Drexel would not come as unexpected news. One rumor circulating on the F&M campus in recent months held that Mr. Fry would leave for Drexel after deals in the redevelopment projects had been wrapped up. In late February, a Drexel board member...

Phoenix -- Colleges should reach out to the veterans arriving on their campuses and help them make the transition from the combat zone to college, Eric K. Shinseki, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, told college leaders here today at the American Council on Education's annual meeting.

But admitting veterans with benefits from the new GI Bill is not enough, he said. Unless they graduate and go on to successful second careers, the United States and its taxpayers will not be getting a good return on the investment of those education benefits. "I'm looking at graduation rates," Mr. Shinseki said. "That's where my focus is."

Veterans especially need help in the first six months to a year, as they move from a high-stress, highly structured environment into a looser one at college. They may also suffer residual effects from combat that need special attention, he said....

A recently hired maintenance worker at Ohio State University who had already received a poor performance evaluation shot two other workers, one of them fatally, and then killed himself early this morning, the Associated Press reported, citing the campus's police chief. The gunman, 51-year-old Nathaniel Brown, had been on the job since October. He arrived at work this morning, sometime before 3:30 a.m., armed with two handguns, and killed the building-services manager, Larry Wallington, age 48. An operations-shift manager, Henry Butler, 60, was wounded and is now in stable condition at the university hospital. The shootings took place adjacent to a classroom building, but no students or faculty members were injured, and classes are meeting today as scheduled.

Update (5:18 p.m., U.S. Eastern time): The AP subsequently reported today that Mr. Brown was told last week that he would be fired...