Tax credit may ease students' tuition burden

Nine campuses in the University of Hawai`i system have pushed back spring tuition deadlines so students can take advantage of the 1998 tax credit. UH-Manoa's deadline is Jan. 26.

UH West O`ahu students do not qualify for the tax credit because the campus only enrolls upperclassmen and the credit is only for freshmen and sophomores.

Though details on the elusive credit are still sketchy, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Department of Education have announced that a guide for families will soon be availible.

The guide will be posted at http://www.ed.gov, or call (202) 822-5900 for more information.

Interviews scheduled for College of Education dean

One finalist has ties to Hawai`i.

Edward Kame'enui, professor and former associate dean at the University of Oregon, was born in Hilo and raised in Kalihi. Kame'enui graduated from the Kamehameha Schools.

Kame`enui then did his undergraduate work at Pacific University. He received his master's and doctoral degrees in special education from the University of Oregon.

In addition to teaching at the University of Montana and Purdue University, he has served as a consultant to the Kamehameha Schools and has worked for the U.S. Department of Education. Kame'enui's research interests focus on teaching strategies in reading, language arts, and mathematics.

Randy Hitz, the other finalist, is the dean of the College of Education, Health and Human Development at Montana State University.

Hitz, who received his doctorate in elementary education from Indiana State University, has been an educator for 23 years. He has worked as a teacher in Indiana, and as a specialist for the Oregon Department of Education. His research interests are in early childhood education and teacher education.

The position has been vacant since John Dolly resigned in the Summer of 1995 after accepting the same position at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa.

Charles Araki, professor of educational adminstration, has served as interim dean.

Probe of Jupiter moon reveals elements of life

Thomas B. McCord of the Hawai`i Institute for Geophysics and Planetology said data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft suggest that the Jovian moon may have three things required for life: an energy source, liquid water and organic molecules.

"This doesn't mean there is life on Europa," McCord said. "But Europa may have all the ingredients."

Galileo's mapping spectrometer also detected organic molecules on moons Callisto and Ganymede, but unlike Europa, those moons do not have liquid water.

The possibility of life elsewhere in the galaxy excites the public imagination, and news organizations from around the globe have been calling McCord since he published his findings in the journal "Science" last week.

He stresses that these latest findings do not prove the existence of life on Jupiter's moons, but they do suggest that life there might be more likely than had been previously supposed.