Now that the Big Ten Hockey Conference has become a reality, it’s become clear that the big story in college hockey over the coming months is how the rest of the college hockey world will realign itself in order to deal to with the new super-conference.

There’s been a lot of ideas thrown out there, most notably the “Secondary Six” conference. But so far, nothing has really moved past the early exploratory phase. The most important school to keep an eye on throughout the realignment process may be Notre Dame.

Why Notre Dame? In January, Texas signed a groundbreaking $300 million 20-year deal with ESPN to form their own television network. Notre Dame is rumored to be looking into their own TV network. I’m not sure exactly how the details of that would work out, given that Notre Dame football is obviously the big draw there, and Notre Dame’s contract with NBC runs until 2015. But keep in mind that the new Texas/ESPN network only has exclusive rights to one football game and eight men’s basketball games.

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Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has a big job. He’s responsible for the country’s largest local jail jurisdiction, which held more than 160,000 inmates last year alone.

But Baca isn’t interested in locking up criminals and throwing away the key; he wants to give them an education.

His Education-Based Incarceration initiative focuses on promoting intellectual growth in prisoners, he tells Guy Raz, host of Weekends On All Things Considered. Baca wants inmates to use jail time to study for success once their sentence is up.

Menial jobs aren’t the best way for inmates to spend their time in prison, Baca says, because “that’s not what gets you a job outside the jail.” What does is reliability, he says, and proving “you’re smart enough to be trained in a new job.”

The program launched this year and has about 2,000 inmates participating in the beta phase. Once incarcerated, individuals are given academic evaluations. Correctional personnel then create a personalized curriculum, which ranges from basic reading and writing skills to core subjects like science and history.

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Michigan senior-to-be Brandon Burlon has decided to give up his final year of eligibility to sign with the New Jersey Devils. Burlon hasn’t officially signed yet, but has made the decision to leave, and expects to sign “sooner rather than later.”

The Wolverines had three potential flight risks in the Devils system in Burlon, forward David Wohlberg, and defenseman Jon Merrill, but Burlon is the only one of the three expected to leave this off season.

Potential students with queries about Miami Dade College have an electronic alternative to the traditional open house.

MDC’s virtual open house takes place 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, May 11. There’ll be information on college programs, admissions, financial aid and scholarships. Instructors, students and academic and financial aid advisors will be available to answer questions via live chat.

To attend the open house, register at

Have you thanked a soldier today? Here in the US we have no trouble supporting our troops. Bumper stickers…politicians…pundits of all stripes regularly go on and on about our military.

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

But in education it’s different. When things go wrong it’s the teachers’ fault.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them b

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University of the Sciences Board of Trustees Chairman Delbert S. Payne has announced that he will retire from that position in May 2011. Payne, who has served on the USciences board since 1990 and chair since 2000, has helped steer the University’s dynamic growth from a single college with 1,630 students, to a vibrant university with five colleges and 3,000 students. The board of trustees will hold an election for its next chairman at its regularly scheduled meeting on May 12, 2011.

“I feel truly blessed to have been part of the wonderful transformation of this institution from Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science to University of the Sciences in Philadelphia—a full-fledged university with five colleges,” Payne wrote in his retirement announcement to the board. “I have met some very terrific people both on the board and at the University.”

Following a 20-year career in the military, Payne joined the Rohm and Haas Company in 1972 where he was the director of human resources at the Bristol, Pa., plant and later manager of corporate social investment before retiring in 1996.

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