A group of university-contracted janitors, union supporters and community members gathered on campus June 22 to show their support for workers’ rights as thousands in the city prepare to negotiate new contracts. The union, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615, represents 18,000 property service workers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, according to its website. In a statement released prior to the rally, SEIU Local 615 officials argued that the rate of pay for contracted workers did not improve in step with tuition increases at Northeastern.
Nadine Aubry, a former engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn., will take over as dean of Northeastern’s College of Engineering this fall. Northeastern announced her hiring last week in a statement on its website. Aubry previously headed Carnegie Mellon’s mechanical engineering department.
Fern Flaman, a hockey Hall of Famer and the longest tenured Northeastern men’s hockey head coach, died Friday night. He was 85. As head coach of the Huskies between 1970 and 1989, Mr. Flaman amassed a record of 255–301–23 and brought four Beanpot championships to Huntington Avenue.
The cycling accident that killed 28-year-old Kelsey Rennebohm earlier this month has prompted city officials to intervene on a notoriously hazardous and oft-maligned stretch of Huntington Avenue. In the last week, the city has rolled out improvements at the intersection of Huntington Avenue and Forsyth Street, which Mayor Thomas M. Menino vowed to take a serious look at following the accident.
Shelli Jankowski-Smith, the director of spiritual life at Northeastern, announced in an email Wednesday that she is stepping down from her position at the end of the month. In the announcement of her resignation, Jankowski-Smith said the Spiritual Life Center will be renamed the Center for Spirituality, Intergroup Dialogue and Service.
As Northeastern’s entrepreneurship program rises in national rankings, an upstart student group dedicated to the cultivation of business ideas is helping to lead the way. The Princeton Review ranked Northeastern the nation’s ninth best college for undergraduate entrepreneurship last fall. IDEA, a student-run and operated organization, is a key asset to that program. It provides students, faculty and alumni with resources to design and develop their own business ventures.
The MBTA detailed plans earlier this month of how it will improve the Route 39 bus, a key connector of Mission Hill and the Northeastern campus and a staple of many students’ daily routines. The proposal is part of the authority’s broader Key Bus Route Improvement Program, and calls for reduced stops, added bus shelters and more reliable service, according to a slideshow posted on the MBTA’s website.
The man charged with murder for the 2008 shooting of Rebecca Payne, a Northeastern student, was ordered held without bail Monday, the Suffolk district attorney’s office said. Cornell Smith, Payne’s suspected killer, was arraigned on a first-degree murder charge in Suffolk Superior Court, according to the office of Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.
On May 21, the Associated Press ran a correction. It appeared across several major news outlets, from Salon to Fox News. “CAIRO — In a May 20 story about the Egyptian elections, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Egypt expert Denis Sullivan was with Northeastern University in Illinois. The university is in Massachusetts.” Yes, Illinois. Home to that other school -- the one in Evanston with a similar name that begins and ends with “N.” Northwestern. Whether or not the AP made the same mistake that is all-too-familiar to many Northeastern students is unknown. But the correction certainly seems like an example of the age-old mix-up of the two universities.
The National Security Agency (NSA) selected Northeastern to be one of four universities to participate in a new cybersecurity initiative, the agency announced. The NSA named Northeastern a National Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) in Cyber Operations on May 25. The program was launched as a part of President Barack Obama’s National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education to “broaden the pool of skilled workers capable of supporting a cyber-secure nation,” according to the NSA’s website. As part of the program, undergraduate computer science students can now focus their studies in a new cyber operations concentration, according to a university press release.
A cyclist died after a crash on Huntington Avenue near the Northeastern campus Friday night, police said. The Boston Globe reported that Kelsey Rennebohm, a 28-year old Boston College graduate student, was involved in an accident shortly before 10:30 p.m. near the intersection of Forsyth Street and Huntington Avenue. The Boston Police Department said in a statement on its website that detectives from an accident reconstruction team were working with Transit Police to investigate the incident.
