Dartmouth College has settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the parents of a student who died after a skiing accident at the Dartmouth Skiway in 2004. According to the Associated Press, the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, with one of the parents of Christina M. Porter saying only that the dispute had been "settled amicably." Ms. Porter was neither accompanied nor wearing a helmet when she skied into a tree during a lesson to fulfill her physical-education requirement. Her parents had sought $40-million in damages.

Following up on a December vote to ban concealed weapons at Colorado State University, the institution's Board of Governors unanimously approved a plan today to put the new policy into effect, according to The Coloradoan, a newspaper in Fort Collins. The decision has split the two-campus system, with faculty and staff members supporting the ban and students opposing it. Pro-gun groups have vowed to challenge the new policy in court, asserting that it represented a violation of the Second Amendment.

A faculty panel at Brandeis University, a nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored research institution, recommended today that it terminate its undergraduate major in Hebrew language and literature, as well as its undergraduate minor in Yiddish and East European Jewish culture, as part of efforts to deal with a multimillion-dollar long-term budget gap by "reducing academic commitments in the arts and sciences," according to a statement posted today by the Brandeis 2020 Committee. Those programs would be merged into the existing program in Near Eastern and Judaic studies. The panel's suggestions, which also include terminating the theater department's graduate design program and cutting back or eliminating other programs, will be reviewed by various faculty and student groups and then considered by the university's board in March.

The cuts will be carried out over a number of years and will...

The president of Binghamton University, Lois B. DeFleur, acknowledged on Friday that there were "missteps" in the university's quest to build an elite Division I athletics program, The Ithaca Journal reported. The admission came one week after the release of a 99-page report detailing widespread problems in the State University of New York campus's athletics department. The report, based on a four-month investigation, raised concerns about how athletes were admitted to the university and how they performed in and out of the classroom once enrolled. "It is now obvious that there were missteps in developing this program," Ms. DeFleur, who steps down in July, said in an e-mail statement to people on the campus. She added that top officials at Binghamton "intend to address" those missteps but did not specify how.

Playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" at intercollegiate sporting events in the United States is as commonplace as, well, apple pie. But until now, the national anthem has never been performed at Goshen College, a small 116-year-old institution in Indiana whose ties to the pacifist Mennonite Church led it, among other things, to ban the song because of its martial lyrics. According to the Associated Press, the college has agreed to allow the anthem's performance in order to be more welcoming of visitors and students from outside the faith (only 55 percent of the enrollment is Mennonite). But the decision has split the college, with hundreds signing an anti-anthem petition and some 900 joining a Facebook page called "Against Goshen College Playing National Anthem." The college has compromised, however: The version of the song to be performed starting next month will be instrumental.

A former law dean at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, Karen H. Rothenberg, received $410,000 in what a state legislative audit this week described as "questionable compensation" for unused sabbatical time and research stipends, The Baltimore Sun reported today, citing university records. The audit did not identify the official, and neither did the university. Her identity was disclosed by a state lawmaker who predicted that university officials would face tough questions at coming hearings. Ms. Rothenberg, who received the payments on top of a base salary of more than $371,000, has since stepped down as dean and returned to the faculty. She did not respond to the Sun's requests for comment.

The University of Virginia has become the latest college to drop its printed undergraduate yearbook, a victim of rising costs, dwindling interest, and perhaps most important, the sense among students that Facebook and other social media will serve, now and in the future, to recall to life their experiences, friends, and memories of alma mater. The trend, which dates back years, has only intensified with the recession. One option for Virginia's 123-year-old yearbook, Corks and Curls, is to go online, as have yearbooks at the University of Missouri and other institutions.

Tenure has been in relative decline for years as colleges have sought to save money and attain maximum flexibility by hiring many more adjuncts than tenure-track professors. But one college is bucking the trend. Cornerstone University, an independent Christian college in Grand Rapids, Mich., that stopped offering tenure to new hires in 2007, will once again hire for tenure-track positions. According to The Grand Rapids Press, the university's board voted unanimously to reverse itself at the urging of the Faculty Senate. Two-thirds of the faculty has tenure under the old system, and it's unclear if the elimination of tenure three years ago has had any effect on recruiting the handful of professors hired since then, the provost, Rick Ostrander, told the newspaper.

The National Institutes of Health has proposed expanding the types of human embryonic stem cells eligible for financial support from the agency, helping both university scientists and biomedical companies whose clinical trial depend on academic researchers. According to today's New York Times, the NIH is proposing to include research on stem-cell lines created from blastomeres, which are cells developed after a fertilized eggs has divided several times. The NIH has taken a series of steps to encourage stem-cell research, which was restrained by sharp limits imposed in 2001 by President George W. Bush, since President Obama lifted those restrictions last year.

Grinnell College, one of the richest liberal-arts colleges in the United States by endowment, announced this afternoon that its new president would be Raynard S. Kington, who is deputy director of the National Institutes of Health and a prominent researcher on the role of social factors in health. Dr. Kington will take office on August 1, succeeding Russell K. Osgood, who served 12 years as Grinnell's president.