Champlain Ranked in Top Tier of Online Colleges by US News

We are very excited to announce that US News & World Report has ranked us in the top 25% of online colleges in the country!

It means that of the 237 colleges participating in the survey we ranked 54th.  

They ran the gamut from

·      private to public;

·      for-profit and non-profit;

·      small and large;

·      and all are regionally accredited.

US News considered the following factors:

·      Retention rates;

·      Graduation rates;

·      Indebtedness of students upon graduation.

And then ranked each college in three different categories:

·      Student engagement

·      Faculty credentials and training

·      Student services and technology.

We are so proud of our hard working staff, faculty and students who helped make this ranking a reality.

You can see the entire ranking, including the subcategories in each of those three main categories, at usnews.com/online-education.

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Google, Microsoft tighten online searches to combat child porn

LONDON Mon Nov 18, 2013 7:49am EST

A Google search page is seen through the spectacles of a computer user in Leicester, central England July 20, 2007.

Credit: Reuters/Darren Staples

LONDON (Reuters) - Google and Microsoft unveiled measures to block online searches for child sex abuse images on Monday as part of a bid by British authorities to crackdown on Internet pedophiles.

The companies said as many as 100,000 search terms will now fail to produce results and trigger warnings that child abuse imagery is illegal while offering advice on where to get help.

The world's two largest search engine operators' move was a rare display of unity ahead of an Internet safety summit on Monday hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron.

Cameron welcomed the progress to block illegal content but said far more still needed to be done.

"If more isn't done to stop illegal child abuse content being found, we will do what is necessary to protect our children," he tweeted ahead of the summit that will announce a new trans-Atlantic task force to tackle online child abuse.

The summit comes after Cameron this summer called on Internet firms to do more to stop access to illegal images.

Now both companies have introduced new algorithms that will prevent searches for child abuse imagery.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt wrote in Britain's Daily Mail newspaper that these changes had cleaned up the results for over 100,000 queries that might be related to the sexual abuse of children.

"As important, we will soon roll out these changes in more than 150 languages, so the impact will be truly global," he wrote, adding the restrictions would be launched in Britain first then expanded to other languages in the next six months.

Both Google and Microsoft, who were due to join other Internet companies at the summit on Monday, have also agreed to use their technological expertise to help in the identification of abuse images.

Schmidt said Google planned to provide engineers to give technical support to the Internet Watch Foundation in Britain and the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and to fund internships for engineers at these organizations.

Conservative parliamentarian Claire Perry, who is Cameron's adviser on childhood, said British and U.S. law enforcement agencies would back up this effort by tracking pedophiles using the "hidden Internet" or so-called "dark web" of encrypted networks to distribute images of child abuse.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by William Hardy)

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'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taubes; teen smoking prevention online

Science journalist Gary Taubes rejects the mainstream medical assertion that overeating causes obesity. In his convincing new book "Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It," Taubes argues, with careful citations of scientific studies, that sugars and refined carbohydrates are to blame. This isn't a new message; Who could forget all of those Atkins-inspired meat-and-cheese dinners of the early '00s? Taubes's 2007 book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" contained the same message, and those who digested all 640 of its pages need not pick up this slimmer, more accessible volume.

Smoking

Good advice, this time in Spanish ASPIRE, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center

A Web-based smoking prevention and cessation program for teens is now available in Spanish. ASPIRE (A Smoking Prevention Interactive Experience) features quizzes, videos and stylish animations to appeal to its target audience of middle and high school students. The evidence-based program was developed a decade ago by a research team at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Program Manager Lauren McCoy says MD Anderson created the Spanish curriculum because the percentage of Hispanic teens who use tobacco is increasing slightly (though still lower than the figure among whites) and Hispanics are the nation's fastest-growing minority group, according to the new census figures. "The program has really evolved over the years, and we expect that the new Spanish version will be successful in increasing our reach to Hispanic teens," McCoy says.

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