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Victor Aiyewa could barely speak during our interview. Instead of rushing over to talk with reporters after practice, Aiyewa stayed to do extra conditioning. When I finally spoke to him, we had to wait about five minutes so he could catch his breath.

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UW’s Victor Aiyewa helps to pull apart the pile after a Syracuse fumble Saturday at Husky Stadium.

It’s this unflappable work ethic on, and off the field, that’s helped Aiyewa transform himself from an unproven commodity who only played one season of football at his high school in Fresno, Texas, to the starting strong outside linebacker for the Huskies. Despite playing safety his first three years at the UW, linebackers coach Mike Cox decided to use Aiyewa, and has been impressed with the results.

“Every week he gets a lot better, because playing linebacker becomes more natural for him,” Cox said. “He didn’t even get to go through our spring practice because of injury and he’s getting a lot of work right now, and you can see the improvement really starting to carry over right now.”

Even more impressive than Aiyewa’s transformation on the football field has been his transformation in the classroom. Aiyewa currently holds a 3.67 GPA and has been twice honored as a member of the All-Pac-10 Academic Team.

“When I graduated from high school I wasn’t at the top of my class, and my family showed me what kind of percentile I was in,” Aiyewa said. “I was kind of, you know, embarrassed about it. I didn’t take [academics] seriously in high school, but I knew how important it was. So when I got to college, I made a personal effort to take the best advantage I can and try and be in that top percentile.”

It’s clear that Aiyewa has attacked his studies with the same passion that he uses on the football field. He is very proud of his academic prowess, and is able to put it in perspective.

“It’s just a personal ambition,” Aiyewa said. “It carries over all throughout life. Being able to learn the stuff in class helps you in the real world when you have to meet people, talk to people, social networking and all that kind of stuff. Over the years I’ve just realized how academics helps you in all aspects of life.”

Aiyewa’s natural intelligence has certainly helped him on the football field. He was able to make his switch from safety to linebacker thanks to his proficiency at picking up new schemes and assignments quickly.

“I learn defenses pretty well,” Aiyewa said. “It was easy for me to make that adjustment … I love the switch. I just want to play and help the team and continue to get better. Also, coach Cox is a great coach, spending extra time with me and helping me learn the stuff.”

Now, Aiyewa is playing at a higher level than he ever has before. In two games he has recorded 18 tackles, already matching his previous season-high.

“I feel like he’s really stepping his game up,” cornerback Quinton Richardson said. “That’s a huge transition, and I think he’s doing a hell of a job at it. He’s doing really good in run and pass support.”

This is Aiyewa’s final season of college football, and he’s already planning for the next step. He isn’t sure what it is exactly that he wants to do after he graduates, but another degree could be in store.

“Initially when I came here I wanted to do pre-pharmacy,” Aiyewa said. “But talking to people, I realized that I have great people skills. I know that after the season I’ve still got more schooling to do, so I’m just trying to work that out.”

Whatever life throws at him, if Aiyewa is able to adapt as well as he has on the football field and in the classroom, he should be just fine.

“I never really have to worry about him picking things up, because he picks things up very easily,” Cox said.

Monday’s “Oprah Winfrey Show” airs at 4 p.m. on Mobile’s WALA-TV10.
 
The show focuses on school reform efforts, and was taped in Chicago on Sept. 10 before an audience filled with educators.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Washington, D.C., schools Superintendent Michelle Rhee also appear on the show, as does Davis Guggenheim, producer of the education documentary, “Waiting for Superman,” set for release Friday. “Waiting for Superman” spotlights five children who are trying to get a chance at a good K-12 education.

“It was a pretty neat experience,” Willcox said of the Oprah taping. “A lot of people think really highly of Oprah, obviously. Something that really surprised me was the number of people who walked into the studio and started crying because they were so excited to be there.”

While 74 percent of Aspire’s 10,000 students come from poor families, more than half of its schools met California’s threshold for being high-performing. In fact, seven of the Aspire schools were rated as the top-performing public school within their district.

“That caught Oprah Winfrey’s eye,” said Willcox, who lives in Alameda, Calif., with his wife of 17 years and his three daughters. “We are an example of, ‘We can do this.’ There are many reasons to be optimistic. It takes adults standing up and doing what’s right for the kids.”

Willcox described his father as one of his inspirations. Charles Willcox served as chief financial officer in the Mobile County school system for nearly 10 years after retiring from First National Bank.

James Willcox, who has a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy and a master’s degree from Stanford University, served seven years in the Army, including flying a Blackhawk helicopter.

When he got out, James Willcox said that his father urged him to go into a field that he would love as much as the military.

“I enjoy public education and can’t imagine doing anything else,” said Willcox, who is 40. “There’s something special about being involved and helping shape the future of kids. If you do it well, you’re able to provide something that can never be taken away.”

Charles Willcox said he’s proud of his son.
 
“He’s really happy at what he’s doing,” Charles Willcox said. “Golly, Moses. He talks about low-income kids who are really excelling, about record attendance at PTO meetings, just the whole gamut of things.”

Stadium High School, with its grand architecture and bay views, is one of the most picturesque high schools in Washington.

ESPN RISE last month designated Stadium Bowl as having “the best view on and off the field” of any high school football venue in the country.

So it will be under that backdrop that Stadium Bowl will celebrates its 100th birthday Friday night when the host Tigers (1-1) play Bellarmine Prep (2-0) in what is being termed the “Centennial Game.”

It’s a celebration much bigger than just a football game with planning that started in April.

There will be a parade along St. Helens Avenue in Tacoma Friday and pancake breakfast Saturday morning, among other special things planned.

Northwest Harvest and the Centennial Foundation also are holding an ambitious food collection drive with the hopes of collecting 1 million pounds of food, which would break a world record, according to Jim Catalinich, Stadium athletic director and 1970 graduate of the school.

The emphasis is on canned goods. “In particular, they emphasize peanut butter,” Catalanich said.

The 7 p.m. game itself has intrigue in that Stadium hasn’t beaten Bellarmine Prep since 1968.

“There’s a lot of pressure on Bellarmine,” said Bishop Blanchet football coach Aaron Maul, a former Bellarmine Prep quarterback. “Stadium is freed up to go out and play as hard as they can and see what happens.”

After the game, two movies will be played inside Stadium Bowl: the 1986 comedy, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and the 1999 romantic comedy, “10 Things I Hate About You.” The latter movie was filmed inside, around and even on the roof at Stadium.

Catalinich said his black Honda is in the background of parking lots scenes. He also plays a track coach in the background of a scene filmed in Stadium Bowl.

“They had me standing with a stopwatch and polyester coaching shorts,” Catalinich said. “I was embarrassed.”

The centennial celebration will even include three presidential actors re-enacting the exact speeches delivered by former U.S. presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Warren Harding and Woodrow Wilson in Stadium Bowl.

Calalinich said he takes pride in his job working at the unique high school he attended. He’ll be able to catch his breath when this weekend’s festivities are over.

“I’m looking forward to Saturday night when I can sleep,” Catalinich said.

What’s this?

U of A Engineering Information Session

If you are interested in learning more about Engineering at the U of A, please attend Engineering Expo on Saturday, September 25, 2010 from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00p.m.  at the Maier Learning Centre, ETLC at the U of A.  For more information, visit www.engineering.ualberta.ca/Expo or Student Services.

Sam Dillon

In many of the nation’s middle schools, black boys were nearly three times as likely to be suspended as white boys, according to a new study, which also found that black girls were suspended at four times the rate of white girls.

School authorities also suspended Hispanic and American Indian middle school students at higher rates than white students, though not at such disproportionate rates as for black children, the study found. Asian students were less likely to be suspended than whites.

The study analyzed four decades of federal Department of Education data on suspensions, with a special focus on figures from 2002 and 2006, that were drawn from 9,220 of the nation’s 16,000 public middle schools.

The study, “Suspended Education: Urban Middle Schools in Crisis,” was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization.

The co-authors, Daniel J. Losen, a senior associate at the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Russell Skiba, a professor at Indiana University, said they focused on suspensions from middle schools because recent research had shown that students’ middle school experience was crucial for determining future academic success.

One recent study of 400 incarcerated high school freshmen in Baltimore found that two-thirds had been suspended at least once in middle school.

Federal law requires schools to expel students for weapons possession and incidents involving the most serious safety issues. The authors said they focused on suspensions, which often result from fighting, abusive language and classroom disruptions, because they were a measure that school administrators can apply at their discretion.

Throughout America’s public schools, in kindergarten through high school, the percent of students suspended each year nearly doubled from the early 1970s through 2006, the authors said, an increase that they associate, in part, with the rise of so-called zero-tolerance school discipline policies.

In 1973, on average, 3.7 percent of public school students of all races were suspended at least once. By 2006, that percentage had risen to 6.9 percent.

Both in 1973 and in 2006, black students were suspended at higher rates than whites, but over that period, the gap increased. In 1973, 6 percent of all black students were suspended. In 2006, 15 percent of all blacks were suspended.

Among the students attending one of the 9,220 middle schools in the study sample, 28 percent of black boys and 18 percent of black girls, compared with 10 percent of white boys and 4 percent of white girls, were suspended in 2006, the study found.

The researchers found wide disparities in suspension rates among different city school systems and even among middle schools in the same district.

Using the federal data, they calculated suspension rates for middle school students, broken down by race, in 18 large urban districts.

Two districts showed especially high rates. In Palm Beach County and Milwaukee, more than 50 percent of black male middle school students were suspended at least once in 2006, the study showed.

Jennie Dorsey, director of family services in the Milwaukee district, said the district had recognized that its suspension rate was too high and had begun a program aimed at changing students’ behavior without suspensions.

The program has brought only modest reductions in the suspension rate so far, but Ms. Dorsey predicted sharper reductions over several years.

Nat Harrington, a spokesman for the Palm Beach County district, disputed the study’s statistics, but acknowledged that “all the data show an unacceptably high number of black students being suspended.” He said the district was using several strategies to reduce suspensions.

The Graduate School of the College of Charleston now offers the opportunity to earn two master’s degrees in an abbreviated amount of time. Having both a Master of Environmental Studies (MES) and Master of Public Administration (MPA)  “will provide graduates with both the skills and the credentials to be successful in public and nonprofit organizations dealing with environmental issues” according to Kendra Stewart, program director of the MPA. To learn more about this opportunity, read the press release or touch base with Dr. Stewart or Dr. Callahan.