University

Arcadia University's board of trustees has abruptly terminated its president of less than two years, sending a wave of concern among faculty and students who are away this week on spring break and heard the stunning news from afar. At a board meeting Friday, the trustees voted to oust Carl "Tobey" Oxholm III without cause and have remained silent on their reasons, according to sources. University spokeswoman Laura Baldwin would not comment on Oxholm's departure, calling it a confidential issue between the board and Oxholm.

On Sunday afternoon, enjoy folktales and songs as the Kennett Symphony Orchestra presents its children's concert "Jack and the Beanstalk and Other Orchestra Favorites" at West Chester University. The annual show will begin at 2 p.m. under the direction of Australian-born composer Melissa Dunphy. Movements to be performed are "Entrance of the Queen of Sheba" from Solomon by Handel; "Hoe-Down" from Rodeo by Aaron Copland; and "Jack and the Beanstalk," composed by Dunphy in 2010.

Universal Health Services Inc., a King of Prussia operator of hospitals and behavioral health facilities, said 10 of its locations in Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Virginia had received subpoenas last month from the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The subpoenas requested documents from January 2008 to the present, UHS said in its annual report filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission last week. The company, which did not respond to a request for comment, said in the filing that it did not know what the government was examining.

GETTING YOUR SKULL split with an armored baseball bat is bad enough, but it can get real messy when the attacker has an appetite for human brains. According to a lawsuit, Joshua Ceasar, 23, of Egg Harbor Township, N.J., was visiting friends in a dormitory at Morgan State University in Baltimore last May 19, when he was struck in the head with a bat wrapped in barbed wire and chains by his friends' roommate, Alexander Kinyua. Ceasar's friends heard screams and found Kinyua dragging Ceasar's body down a hallway with a knife in his hand, the suit says.

Mark Hickman knows about speech impediments; he has a lisp. Rather than impede him, however, that lisp helped lead him to a career in oratory. Since 1997, he has been director of forensics in the communication studies department at West Chester University, where he is in charge of its highly accomplished speech and debate units of the forensic team. Last month, the team won the 2013 Pennsylvania Forensics Association competition, held at West Chester. "My tongue is a little longer than normal, so it causes me to press against the back of my teeth on S sounds," he said.

The University of Pennsylvania exceeded its recent fund-raising goal by almost $1 billion, bringing in $4.3 billion in its "Making History Campaign," officials announced Thursday. Penn surpassed the $3.5 billion target, announced in 2007, 16 months before the official end of the campaign in December. That's especially noteworthy considering that the campaign was launched just before the country plunged into recession. The university has used the money to increase financial aid, support research and interdisciplinary programming, and boost its endowment.

Universities nationally are grappling with ways to establish a global presence: Some are building campuses abroad. Some are opening centers for alumni interaction and faculty research. Others are fostering study-abroad programs and international enrollment. And some are trying a combination. Over the last 17 months, Ezekiel Emanuel, the University of Pennsylvania's first vice provost for global initiatives, has been studying the landscape and plotting a coordinated, cohesive course for the Ivy League campus.

Computer mistakes like the one that produced incorrect prescriptions for thousands of Rhode Island patients are probably far more common and dangerous than proponents of electronic medical records believe, says Drexel University's Scot Silverstein. Flawed software at Lifespan hospital group printed orders for low-dose, short-acting pills when patients should have been taking stronger, time-release ones, the Providence-based system disclosed in 2011. Lifespan says nobody was harmed.

Can you teach creativity to business students? Can colleges prep graduates to go out on their own, instead of Working for the Man? To be founders, innovators, industry disrupters - in a word popularized by 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter, entrepreneurs ? Two schools are trying extra hard. In Philadelphia, Drexel University last month announced a new college, the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship, backed by a $12.5 million gift from the late chairman of Compudyne Corp., a 1936 Drexel engineering graduate.

Christopher Thomas still has the recruitment letter the University of Pennsylvania sent him when he was a senior at Philadelphia's Central High School in 1993. But Thomas would not actually get to the Ivy League campus for 19 more years - three children, several jobs, and a lot of life filled the interim. He finally arrived through a route some might find unusual - the local community college. Thomas, 37, graduated from the Community College of Philadelphia last year and entered Penn in the fall with the goal of becoming a teacher.