The University of Illinois has dropped plans to commission a $98,000 sculpture of its interim president, Stanley O. Ikenberry, after the Chicago Tribune inquired about the project. The newspaper took an interest after the three-campus university filed paperwork about the planned sculpture with the state, noting its board's intention to award a no-bid contract to the sculptor Peter Fagan, a retired professor at the university. Mr. Ikenberry, whom the Tribune described as one of the university's "most beloved" presidents, is stepping down after his second stint in office; he led the system from 1979 to 1995, then returned in an interim capacity this year after a scandal led the previous president to resign. His tenure has been dominated by budget crisis, as the state has fallen behind in financial support for the state's public colleges. A trustee said $98,000 was not much to spend for...

Amy Bishop, the former University of Alabama at Huntsville professor who is charged with fatally shooting to death three colleagues and wounding three others after a faculty meeting in February, now stands accused of murdering her brother with a shotgun at her family's home, in Braintree, Mass., in 1986. Citing an anonymous source, The Boston Globe reported this afternoon that Ms. Bishop had been indicted by a grand jury on one count of first-degree murder that, if she were convicted, would lead to a sentence of life in prison without parole. The 1986 shooting was dismissed at the time as accidental, but the mass shooting in Huntsville four months ago prompted local authorities in Massachusetts to reopen the case. The Chronicle will have more on this story later.

Indiana University is soon to open new schools of public health on two of its campuses, in a state that currently lacks one. According to The Indianapolis Star, one school will be located on the Bloomington campus and will open this fall. The other, financed in part by a $20-million grant announced on Tuesday by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, will be located in Indianapolis at the campus jointly operated with Purdue University, and could open as early as the fall of 2011.

Jack Copeland, the renowned heart-transplant surgeon who for 33 years has been what one official described as a "rock star" at the University of Arizona, is leaving Tucson for the University of California at San Diego. According to the Arizona Daily Star, Dr. Copeland will be a cardiac-surgery professor at the Sulpizio Family Cardiovascular Center, a $227-million facility in La Jolla, Calif., that is due to open next April. Another attraction to San Diego: Dr. Copeland's new wife, Hannah Zimmerman, is completing her general-surgery training at the university. In a written statement, Dr. Copeland played down the significance of budget cuts at Arizona as a factor in his move.

Two fraternity members at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo pleaded no contest to hazing charges on Tuesday and were sentenced to prison for their roles in the drinking death of a student in December 2008 at the campus Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, according to the Austin American-Statesman. The student, 18-year-old Carson Starkey, a native of Austin, Tex., died with a blood-alcohol level of 0.39 to 0.48 percent -- "the equivalent of surgical anesthesia," the newspaper reported. The defendants will serve 120 days and 45 days, respectively, in jail, and each will be on probation for three years. Cases against two other fraternity members are still pending.

College officials often complain that budget cuts, particularly those affecting faculty salaries and benefits, will hamper their ability to fend off raids on faculty talent staged by rich competitors. Most of the time, though, such complaints cite merely anecdotal evidence of lost professors. Now the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has compiled data to back up the anecdotes. According to today's News and Observer, Chapel Hill lost 53 of 77 professors who were recruited by other universities in the past academic year, a retention rate of just 31 percent, far below the campus's usual rate of 55 to 60 percent. The faculty members have decamped to top private and public colleges, like Cornell, Michigan, Virginia, and Yale. And Chapel Hill is facing even grimmer budget news this year from the state legislature, with a proposal that would cut 1,700 faculty and staff posts across...

Southern Utah University, a public college in a predominantly Mormon state, has raised questions with an advertising campaign that seeks to recruit Mormon students by describing the campus, in Cedar City, as an ideal place to prepare for the proselytizing mission that many young Mormons participate in as part of their faith. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, critics question whether a public institution should be appearing to cater to one religion but not others, a situation that led a Wyoming college to back away from an ad campaign last winter. Southern Utah's vice president for university relations called the college's ads a "smart marketing decision."

The Faculty Senate at Southern Connecticut State University has voted no confidence in the university system's chancellor and its board chairman, criticizing them for among other things their role in the recent firing of the campus's president, Cheryl J. Norton, who initially said she was retiring, but documents subsequently showed that she had been forced out. The no-confidence vote, which was expressed in the form of a letter to Connecticut's governor, M. Jodi Rell, was disclosed in the same week that state lawmakers planned to hold a hearing on Ms. Norton's dismissal. According to The Connecticut Mirror, the letter said actions by the chancellor, David G. Carter, and the chairman, Karl Krapek, had "harmed and embarrassed" the system and the state. Ms. Norton was fired shortly after the board gave Mr. Carter the rare authority to dismiss presidents "without cause or explanation" and...

Officials at a branch of Kaplan College, the nationwide for-profit education company, are apologizing to students after an instructor on the campus, in Chula Vista, Calif., told them that Spanish was banned in the classroom, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The instructor, Patricia Dussett, told students in two medical-assistant classes on May 3 that Kaplan policy barred the use of any language but English in class. When one student complained of the policy, she said his grades might suffer if he spoke Spanish. Kaplan officials have hastened to apologize and to clarify that the company's policy states only that classes are taught in English, but Spanish is not forbidden on the campus. Ms. Dussett, who was absent from the classes for a few days after the incident but has since returned, was not available for an interview with the newspaper.

The law schools at Yale, Harvard, and Stanford Universities topped the list in U.S. News & World Report’s annual law-school rankings, published today. The rankings have provoked heated debates about whether law schools "game" the system by, for instance, accepting students with lower Law School Admission Test scores and undergraduate grades into their part-time programs. On its Web site, U.S. News describes steps it plans to take to prevent law schools from manipulating their data. The magazine also ranks schools on specialties such as environmental law, intellectual-property law, and tax law.