Fruits of Fidelity

WMTW.COM, Feb. 25 — After a decade of rising enrollments, St. Joseph's College in Standish, Maine, will start work soon on the college's first new academic structure in 47 years — a $10 million office, classroom and meeting facility, reported the Web site of Portland, Maine's all-news radio station.

St. Joseph's enrollment has grown by a remarkable 54% since 1990 and stands at 970.

Though not mentioned in the report, St. Joseph's administrators have attributed much of the recent growth to a renewed emphasis on its Catholic identity.

Bow Tie Heaven

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, March 2 — Retiring Mount St. Mary's basketball coach Jim Phelan set a record March 1 for the most games coached in Division I college basketball with a 60-56 victory over Central Connecticut State University — his 1,354th game, the wire service reported.

Fans, announcers and opposing coaches showed up at the game in Emmitsburg, Md., wearing bow ties in imitation of a Phelan trademark, the AP said.

Coaches in at least six other games played that day around the country also sported the ties.

Phelan, 73, moved to the top of the most-games-coached list in 2000.

He won 830 games, trailing only Dean Smith of North Carolina and Adolph Rupp of Kentucky among Division I coaches. He lost 524.

Less Choice

NATIONALREVIEW.COM, Feb. 18 — The fact that the feminist play “The Vagina Monologues” was welcomed by smaller colleges — including Catholic institution the Dominican University in San Rafael, Calif. — is a sign of how American higher education has become increasingly less diverse, argued Winfield Myers on the Web site of National Review magazine.

“As small liberal-arts colleges adopted the pedagogy and scholarship of the big schools, they have traded away their birthright,” Myers said.

“Why should anyone choose to attend a small, relatively unknown school, Myers argued, “whose primary goal is to ape the worst features of its intellectual betters?”

Pieces of Silver

THE SOUTH END, Feb. 25 — Mercy High School for girls in Farmington Hills, Mich., decided to drop a private lunch with Gov. Jennifer Granholm in a fund-raising auction after an outcry from parents and alumni.

They objected to the governor's well-known pro-abortion views, reported Eric Czarnik in a column for the official undergraduate newspaper of Wayne State University.

In the face of media outcry over that decision, Czarnik said, the school “flinched” and reinstated the Granholm lunch as a prize.

“When the gavel fell,” said the student-columnist, “the value of Mercy High School's courage and dignity amounted to a grand total of $3,750.”

College Vouchers

CNN.COM, Feb. 27 — Under a bill recently introduced in the Colorado Legislature, the state would award each high school student about 66% of the average public college tuition, or $4,600 annually up to four years.

State Treasurer Mike Coffman said the plan — which directs resources toward students and not to institutions — would encourage competition and could set up the framework for state money to assist students at private colleges in the future.

Former Register Assistant Editor Joe Cullen writes from New York