I have been a lifelong moviegoer, and each holiday break I try to squeeze in as many films as is possible. I began writing brief movie reviews 20 years back, and over the years I have shared them with an increasingly long list of friends. This year I’m happy to share them with Brainstorm readers.

“Relationships” seem to be the predominant theme this season — but when is it not?

The number of films is shorter than usual this year due to the brief time frame between graduation ceremonies and Christmas. I’m missing a few important movies that will open in most theaters in the next few days. All except one of the listed movies was seen over the holidays.

These are on a scale of one to four stars. Most all of those listed are worthy of your ticket purchase, with many very highly recommended. I welcome your feedback.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — four stars. Sentimental …

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Today’s generation of college students has been extremely optimistic — one study claimed that three-quarters of our students predicted they would be millionaires. Most expected to become famous as well. But that was all before the economic crisis hit.

Today’s students are worried, and colleges and universities are worried too. After all, much of the newly minted workforce comes through our gates. We are responsible for preparing them for their futures. We support their dreams and ambitions. Until recently, many of these students felt relatively secure about their ability to finance their educations and then find a job.

What a difference recent circumstances make. The members of next year’s incoming freshman class see things a bit differently. Close to 70 percent are concerned about their ability to pay for college and have already considered strategies to help them manage the…

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The humorist Dave Barry once observed, “Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.”

Here’s another take on travel abroad…

“Consider the fact that the largest city I’ve ever lived in is State College, Pennsylvania (at a mere 44,000 people). The transition from life in a small, rural college town to an emerging urban super city that is experiencing growth so fast it threatens to tear the city apart has been one of the most incredible experiences of my life.” – Penn State student on his experience in Bangalore, India

And here’s another student after the bombings in Bangalore…

“It’s not every day that you hear about bombs going off in your city, and it’s not every day that you hear about bombs going off across your country,…

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Our nation will soon inaugurate a new president. Also this year, as every year, scores of new college and university presidents were installed.

New university presidents usually get a good deal of advice about insurmountable problems, using resources the institution doesn’t yet have, in order to address issues they don’t even know about yet.

When I first became a chancellor, one higher education commissioner told me “Being a university president is like being captain of a ship … where everyone mutinies … but no one jumps ship.”

It is the nature of educational institutions to have noise in the system. Discussion and debate are an essential part of university life. This contributes to the educational mission of higher education and has the power to shape intellectual discourse, ethical practices and civic participation. This can be exhilarating for those coming from academic roots…

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We spend a great deal of time at universities preparing for the very worst that man or nature might throw our way. Nowadays we worry not only about coping with the crisis but also about how to communicate about it. With the rapidity of communications, we are cognizant that the world is watching — and counting.

Counting? Yes, counting the minutes from when we first heard of an issue to when we alerted everyone. There is no argument about the need to communicate, but every crisis is different, and sometimes it is unclear what one should say, and when.

At Penn State we have a Foodborne Illness Committee and an Avian Flu Committee. There is a committee that plans for emergencies at our huge football stadium. There is another group that plans for emergencies at the local airport, one of the busiest in the state, which is located on university land.

The biggest potential problems a…

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It’s that time of the year for holidays … and that time when students aren’t on campus much due to breaks in classes. It reminds me of one of the most vexing issues faculty and administrators face: The Calendar.

Every few years or so we debate whether to reinvent the wheel, anguishing about when to start the Thanksgiving break — after classes on the Friday before, at the end of the day on Tuesday or Wednesday, or at noon on Wednesday. We’ve tried them all, often in a vain attempt to discourage students from missing the last day of classes before the holiday.

Christmas has its challenges as well. When do we schedule the winter commencement? How much time should the students have allotted to get home? Do we make the break long enough for a short winter educational experience? Do we start classes for the spring semester close to New Year’s, or later? Before or after Martin Luther King…

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I often ask students why they chose to come to Penn State. Perhaps much too often the answer is something like “The moment I set foot on campus, I knew this was the place for me.”

How so? As faculty and administrators we expect to hear that students choose college on the basis of academic reputation, the quality of the faculty, the match with their particular academic interests, or some other compelling explanation that goes beyond aesthetics.

But I’ve learned that how a campus looks and feels carries a lot of weight in the decisions of many students. The fact is that campus aesthetics are important to faculty and staff as well.

I’ve come to believe that people are happier and more productive when they work in a place that looks nice to them — a place that is well maintained and has no litter, graffiti, or vandalism. And it has become important to me as well.

To me, adequate …

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As a university president, you never know what is going to come across your desk. I get tons of invitations, plenty of advice about the football program, and lots of letters from parents. I never cease to be amazed at some of the letters I receive, and I thought I would share a few of the more memorable ones.

One mother wrote to me after a Thanksgiving break because her son hadn’t made his bed the entire weekend. Not once! She wondered what we were actually teaching students at college. Apparently it was NOT housekeeping.

Another mother was appalled by the state of her daughter’s off-campus apartment on move-in day, so she sent me an irate letter and a bag of dirt she had swept up that day.

One father recently sent me a letter to complain about a parking ticket he received downtown while he and his son were having coffee at Starbucks. Just in case you fail to see the connection …

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What’s selling at the campus convenience store? As one who likes to keep up with student tastes, I recently visited one of our campus stores. We have them scattered throughout the residence halls. I realized I didn’t have a clue what some of the new items were. And who knew that microwavable food had become so popular and, apparently, so appealing?

So I spoke with the manager of one of our campus convenience stores and asked for the inventory list. Although the most popular items being sold today include some products I had never heard of, students I interviewed assured me that most of these products are excellent.

The 20 items below alone account for more than 837,000 sales last year.

First (drum roll, please), the top 10 non-drink convenience items:
1. Dannon Light & Fit Strawberry Yogurt
2. Bagel Bites 3 Cheese
3. Stouffers Mac & Cheese meal
4. Bagel Bites Pepperoni
5….

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During the time it takes me to write this post, there will be roughly half a million attempts to break into my computer and others at Penn State. In any given month, as many as 350 million probes reach Penn State alone. Multiply that by every other college and university and the number (and security risk) will be ginormous, as my daughter used to say.

When it comes to security, technology can be an asset and a liability. It is a tool and a target. And although technology can help us safeguard information, it can also expose our sensitive information.

Consider this: one study found that in a six-month period, nearly 12,000 electronic devices — mobile phones, laptops, and PDA’s — were left in taxi cabs in the San Francisco, Oakland, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas. These devices collectively had the capacity to stores millions of documents, pictures, e-mails, and contacts. …

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If you listened to all of the analysis, discussions, debates, rumors, Internet legends, and late-night jokes, one would believe that leadership was the key to this election victory. But of the many government, business, and academic leaders I know, the path to leadership is decidedly unpredictable, even unexpected.

I’ve never met a university president who will admit to starting out his or her career with the goal of becoming a university president. The majority of us started out as academics, as professors who wanted to teach, do research, and publish our work. We wanted to excite our students and contribute to knowledge.

Somewhere along the way we were lured into administration. Usually, with the first couple of administrative posts, we retained our professorial identity, fooling ourselves into believing that the administrative assignment was a short-term endeavor and that we…

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With the election upon us, I have been fascinated by the media’s recap of important issues to the American public. I believe voters’ guides provide an excellent snapshot into the top concerns of the American public. Unfortunately, that picture is not pretty for those in education.

The New York Times “Election Special Issue” covered “Where the candidates stand on what matters most to Americans.” Education was not among those 11 issues featured in the Sunday print edition (although it appears here). And the Times is not alone: It wasn’t until the third debate that we heard the candidates touch on educational policy.

Obviously, education is having a tough time competing for attention with the current financial crisis, global security concerns, the health-care crisis, and wardrobe-gate. But as a lifelong educator, I am concerned about the state of education in this country.

The United…

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University presidents have the current economic crisis very much on our minds. Higher education is affected less severely by these difficult economic times than other enterprises in our society. Even so, we are affected more than most may realize.

At a recent meeting with presidential colleagues I summarized the many ways in which the financial downturn impacts higher education. Most of the impacts turn out to be similar from one institution to another irrespective of geography, size, or public/private status. Here is a recap of the top concerns.

• Liquidity: The availability of cash for payroll and other operating expenses due to The Commonfund’s restrictions on access to funds being held by Wachovia bank.

• Student Aid: As families feel the financial crunch, we can expect an increase in requests.

• Lending: Some banks are getting out of the student loan business, and others …

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School spirit is a wonderful attribute for a university. We certainly have it in abundance at Penn State.

There are few things that make me prouder than seeing 110,000 cheering students and alumni on football Saturdays, proclaiming their love and loyalty for the university, or the thousands who attend basketball games, volleyball matches, homecoming parades, and our dance marathon, the world’s largest student-run philanthropy.

But there can be a dark side. Over the weekend Penn State beat Ohio State in a football game with possible implications for the national championship. I helped stir the crowd of alumni and students at a pep rally in Columbus beforehand, even playing the bass drum with our pep band. It was good, clean fun, as they say. How could a president be prouder of our fans, not to mention the team and coaching staff?

Yet I suspected what was coming. After we…

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