People who make it through the notoriously difficult two-year core curriculum at the California Institute of Technology often speak with pride of the feat as part of the Caltech mystique. But now that mystique might be in for a bit of an overhaul. According to the Pasadena Star-News, the university's faculty is reviewing proposals that would include in the core a broader diversity of science courses and would emphasize hands-on teaching and writing, not just physics and mathematics lectures. In short, the proposals would inject some liberal-arts values into the hard core. The changes, if approved, would take effect this fall.

The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee has agreed to release uncensored records of a campus committee's meetings in order to settle a lawsuit filed last year by The UWM Post, the campus's student newspaper. In the lawsuit, the newspaper said the university was violating public-records laws by providing redacted versions of the records of the meetings, which were open to the public. Under the settlement, which the Post reported today, the university will turn over all the records and pay nearly $12,000 in legal fees run up by the newspaper. The university initially defended its actions by asserting that an unredacted release of the records would invade the privacy of student members of the committee, and would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a key federal privacy law.

Bowling Green State University has suspended an associate professor who was arrested 10 days ago for making threats to colleagues, according to today's Toledo Blade, which cited a university spokesman. The faculty member, an associate professor of astronomy and physics named Bruno Ullrich, is barred from the campus pending an investigation. The spokesman refused to describe the alleged threats, the Associated Press reported, but noted that the suspension was effective January 22 and so was not a response to last Friday's mass shooting of faculty members at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. Neither the Blade nor the AP could reach Mr. Ullrich for comment.

C.D. (Dan) Mote Jr., the University of Maryland at College Park's president since 1998, announced today that he planned to retire as president on August 31 and, after a leave of absence, return to the Maryland faculty as a professor of engineering.

The top-paid president of a private college is also among the top-paid directors of corporate boards. She is Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who in the 2007-8 fiscal year, the most recent with data available, had a pay package at RPI totaling $1,598,247, according to a Chronicle survey published last fall. Ms. Jackson was also the eighth-highest-paid director in 2008, taking in a total of $1,346,648 from service on six corporate boards, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which cited Securities and Exchange Commission data. The data appear in an article noting that, thanks to the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, board service is "a job now," with the average director spending 225 hours a year on board duties and attending six meetings a year. Ms. Jackson was unavailable to comment to the magazine.

Three people were killed and at least three were injured in a mass shooting this afternoon at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, according to The Huntsville Times. Information about the shooting, which took place in the university's Shelby Center for Science and Technology, is still sketchy. But the newspaper cited a university spokesman as saying that a female suspect, possibly a university employee, was in custody. The Decatur Daily said the victims were all faculty members, and the shooting occurred during a biology faculty meeting.

Ivor van Heerden, a former deputy director of Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center, today filed a lawsuit accusing LSU officials of wrongfully terminating his position as part of a campaign of retaliation for his criticism of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, a major source of the university's federal grant money. Mr. van Heerden, who led a state team that investigated the damage done by Hurricane Katrina, has argued that much of the flooding of New Orleans following that storm can be blamed on the Corps of Engineers because, he says, it poorly designed and built the levees around the city.

Physical attacks against professors, schoolteachers, students, and education institutions are on the rise in many parts of the world, according to a report issued today by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Among the motives it cites for violence against academics are their participation in political activities, attempts to expose crimes by their government or other actors, research about minority groups or religions, and efforts to interact with scholars in other countries. Many of the incidents the report cites occurred in Africa or the Middle East.

A dozen people were arrested at the University of California at Irvine on Monday evening for disrupting a lecture by the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, according to a blog run by The Orange County Register, which also has photographs and video of the event. Mr. Oren was interrupted repeatedly by shouts from protesters irate over Israel's treatment of Palestinians and by the university's decision to play host to the talk. Mr. Oren was also occasionally interrupted by applause. The campus's Muslim Student Union had early condemned Mr. Oren's scheduled appearance. The university's chancellor, Michael V. Drake, told the audience he was embarrassed by the disruptions. An Irvine spokesman told the Associated Press that those arrested were students at his campus as well as at UC-Riverside. All were cited and released.

After fighting for nearly a year against NCAA penalties, Florida State University announced on Sunday that it would vacate wins and other records for its football and nine other teams from the 2006 and 2007 seasons, when the NCAA said 61 athletes benefited from an academic-fraud scheme. According to a report by the McClatchy Newspapers, Florida State told the NCAA it would give up a national title in men's track and field. The university also forfeited a bowl-game victory and other games that had enabled the head coach, Bobby Bowden, to match Penn State's coach, Joe Paterno, among the winningest coaches in college-football history. Florida State appealed the NCAA's penalties, blaming the cheating scandal on a "rogue tutor," but the appeal was rejected last month.