An "e-True Blue" e-mail newsletter today from the UM Alumni Association includes the item that the Baits I (but not the Baits II) housing complex on the North Campus will close down. I lived in one of the Baits I buildings (Parker House) during my first year of graduate school (1984-85), before moving to a series of apartments in the Central Campus area for years 2 through 5 of my graduate training.

This Michigan Daily article on the closure includes a picture of the complex. The article alludes to one of the current Baits residents being a sophomore. Back in the day, as I recall, Baits was a primarily, if not exclusively, graduate-student complex (apparently, it also accommodated upper-level undergrads, as I've now discovered). According to the article, Baits I would have required at least $6 million in renovations, which the powers-that-be do not feel is a prudent investment. Also, Baits I does not meet the university's goal of having "complexes within five minutes of a residential dining hall."

The last claim is totally valid. The nearest dorm with a dining hall was Bursley, which I recall being a lot longer than a five-minute walk. As shown on this map, Baits II is a lot closer to Bursley than is Baits I. Usually, I would have dinner at one of the restaurants in the Central Campus area on my way home, after a day of work at the office.

Lee Jussim, a 1987 Ph.D. recipient from the social psych program at Michigan, was quoted this past week by Bloomberg News, regarding how academic programs at Rutgers University in New Jersey are facing major budget cuts while the athletic department continues to furnish what many would consider lavish benefits to its coaches.

With specific regard to the Rutgers Psychology Department, which Lee chairs, he told Bloomberg that: “The cuts are sufficiently severe... that our ability to accomplish our core missions are, for the first time in my career, under serious threat.”

Sadly, Lee's department is not alone in having to watch things such as the number of photocopies made and provision of Scantron forms for multiple-choice exams. My department at Texas Tech is dealing with similar issues, as are many other institutions (just do a Google search on "university budget cuts").

Not that it came as a surprise, but yesterday it was announced that the Borders bookstore company had filed for bankruptcy. Borders, of course, was founded in Ann Arbor 40 years ago, before going national around 20 years ago. Not only was Borders a great place for UM students and other Ann Arborites to hang out. For myself (and perhaps others whose careers took them away from Ann Arbor), visiting a Borders in any city provided a little reminder of Michigan days.

Many, though not all, Borders locations have been closed in recent years. My home base of Lubbock, Texas has never had a Borders (at least in the 14 years I've been on the faculty at Texas Tech University), so I've mainly visited locations in the Los Angeles and Chicago areas for the past decade and a half. No longer will that be possible, as L.A. and Chicago seem to have had all their Borders stores wiped out.

The current flagship Borders on Ann Arbor's Liberty St. (which is where the store settled after moving between State St. and other nearby locations) remains open. I hope that even if the national company goes belly-up, the Ann Arbor location can survive.

Today's New York Times features the research of Paula Niedenthal, who received her Ph.D. at Michigan in 1987 and since the late 1990s has been on the faculty at Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France. The focus of the Times article is a new theory of smiling developed by Paula and her colleagues, which "[t]hey believe ... can account not only for the source of smiles, but how people perceive them."

From the December issue of the Ann Arbor Observer comes word that Village Corner, a mainstay for 40 years at the corner of S. University and S. Forest, closed in early November and is now in "hibernation," pending a move to a still-to-be-found new location. VC's website details the situation and notes that "The December 2010 issue of Ann Arbor Observer misquoted Dick [Scheer, the owner] as stating we're 'shooting for a reopening in a new location sometime in 2012.' In fact, we plan to reopen in a matter of weeks, not months or years." VC and the adjacent bicycle store are giving way to a new high-rise student apartment complex.

For those not familiar with VC (and it's hard to imagine many Ann Arborites would fall into that category), it was a store that defied easy labels. It was like a convenience store, but much bigger, or like a supermarket, but much smaller. It was also said to have one of the Midwest's finest and most extensive wine collections. My memories of VC include always seeing copious supplies of flyers for upcoming campus-area events tacked up by the entrances, and the local public radio station playing world music in the background.

Living in the South U area my second year of grad school, I frequently popped into VC, either to pick up a snack of, say, orange juice and a brownie, or for a few days' groceries. Along with VC, other South U neighborhood establishments of my grad-school days, such as Pizzeria Uno, the Bagel Factory, and Community Newscenter (bookstore), are gone.

Back on May 13-14 of this year, a conference was held in Warsaw, Poland to celebrate the career of the late Bob Zajonc. The conference organizers now have videos, still photos, and abstracts from the event up on a website. Several Michigan faculty (current, relocated, and retired) and graduates of the Ph.D. program participated. There's also a Facebook group honoring Bob, which is where I learned of the conference page.

I recently finished reading the book Whistling Vivaldi, by Claude Steele. Claude's brief stint as a professor at Michigan (1987-1991) overlapped partially with my cohort's time and I consider myself very fortunate to have gotten to know him as part of my graduate training.

Though Claude spent the better part of the last 20 years at Stanford (before recently moving to Columbia University to become provost), he writes at considerable length about his time in Ann Arbor. It was at UM, in fact, that his interest in, and initial research on, stereotyped group members' college underperformance (relative to these students' entering academic credentials) really crystallized.

This research is well-known within social psychology (and beyond) under the rubric of stereotype threat. In the book, Claude details several stages of stereotype-threat research he, his students, and outside investigators have undertaken over the past 20 years. In discussing research from his own lab, Claude talks about many of the graduate students who've worked with him, including Steve Spencer. Now a professor at Canada's University of Waterloo, Steve was in on the ground floor of stereotype-threat research at Michigan and remains very active in this area. Chris Crandall, who completed his doctoral studies at Michigan shortly before Claude's arrival and has independently done research pertinent to stereotype threat, is also cited throughout the book.