Campus briefs
Billings to serve as interim director of honors program
English professor and Assistant to the President Simone Billings will take over as interim director of the University Honors Program and the Office of the Fellowships for the remainder of the 2007-2008 academic year.
Billings will take over the duties of former English professor and Director of the Honors Program Richard Osberg, who died of unspecified neurological problems on Oct. 17.
Billings, who has taught at Santa Clara since 1980, worked closely with Osberg while he developed the Office of Fellowships and expanded the UHP.
The UHP admits about 50 freshmen each year and provides its members with seminar-style classes, resources and support during their undergraduate careers.
The Office of Fellowships was established in 2005 to assist students in applying for highly competitive fellowships, grants, scholarships and other prizes.
Billings has served on the fellowships and Oxford Scholar committees and taught honors courses for several years.
In fall 2006, Billings became assistant to University President Paul Locatelli, S.J.
"Simone will continue and extend Dick's fine legacy," Provost Lucia Gilbert stated in a university-wide e-mail on Nov. 9.
The procedure to select the permament UHP and Fellowships directors has yet to be announced.
ROTC graduates receive first choice branch assignments
All nine of the graduating members of Santa Clara's Reserve Officer Training Corps Bronco Battalion received their first choice branch assignments last Thursday.
It is the first time in at least three years that all graduating members have secured their first choice assignments.
After graduation, students of the Bronco Battalion, which includes Santa Clara, San Jose State University and Stanford students, will start training as commissioned officers in their requested branches. These branches are sections of the army, like infantry and armor.
Senior Jordan Gebhardt and San Jose State senior Erika Garcia secured their assignments in the aviation branch, which has less than 100 slots nationally.
Both Gebhardt and Garcia made a minimum 10-year commitment to the army. Senior Chris vanBrenk and San Jose State senior Ken Nagata recieved spots in the infantry, which are equally difficult to get.
"It's definitely one of the highlights of the year for me," said Lieutenant Colonel Shawn Cowley, the head of the military science department.
In addition to the two aviators and two infantrymen, two Bronco Battalion members will enter military intelligence, one will join engineering, one will serve in the finance corps and one in the signal corps, which develops communications technology for the battlefield.
Three of the nine seniors will enter the National Guard and are guaranteed their requested branches.
For other members, the assignments are nationally competitive and based on a cummulative score. The score takes into account grades, leadership experience and how well the students did in training programs undertaken outside of school, among other feats.
For more information about ROTC at Santa Clara, contact Cowley at (408) 554-4033 or scowley@scu.edu.
From staff reports. E-mail news@thesantaclara.com.