Wheaton College ranked second-most sober school in nation

By Elisabeth Mistretta | Daily Herald Staff

Published: 7/28/2009 3:30 PM

Whether Wheaton College's latest distinction is a good or not-so-good thing depends a lot on what you're looking for.

When The Princeton Review released results of its annual college rankings this week, the Christian institution in Wheaton was second in the nation in the Stone Cold Sober Schools category, right behind Brigham Young University in Utah.

BYU has held the top spot for 12 years and Wheaton is "a usual suspect" in that category, said Robert Franek, author of "The Best 371 Colleges, 2010 Edition."

The rankings are based on surveys of 122,000 college students, and any student with a college e-mail address can participate in the annual surveys at princetonreview.com.

Wheaton College officials say the ranking is a positive mark because it fits the school's moral philosophy.

"Part of our campus environment and goal is to cultivate an atmosphere that stimulates moral and intellectual growth," spokeswoman LaTonya Taylor said.

Wheaton College encourages all students to agree to a Community Covenant, which cites the school's Christian values and discourages behaviors officials believe are at odds with their religion and scripture, such as excessive alcohol consumption, any use of illegal drugs or anything deemed pornographic.

Taylor said many students are looking for such guidelines to help keep them true to their beliefs.

"The students who come to Wheaton are interested in growing their faith, as well as for challenging academics," she said.

In addition to being a the second-most sober school in the country, Wheaton also ranked in several other categories: first, Alternative Lifestyle Not an Alternative (low acceptance of gay community); second, Got Milk? (low beer consumption); second, Scotch & Soda, Hold the Scotch (low hard liquor consumption); third, Most Religious Students; fourth, Future Rotarians and Daughters of the American Revolution; fifth, Town-Gown Relations are Great (good relationship with Wheaton residents); sixth, Don't Inhale (low marijuana use); eighth, Most Conservative Students, 13th, Best Campus Food.

Last year the college was said to have the best food in the nation. This year it moved from fifth to first place for low acceptance of the gay community. Franek said the rankings vary from year to year based on the changing student body.

"Each list is an incredible resource because it reports so much information from primary sources, which is college students themselves," he said.

He added that there is no such thing as a bad ranking in the book. Instead, the categories are created simply to help prospective students make the best decisions.

"If you're a young, gay kid thinking of applying to any school, you want to know what the campus climate is," Franek said. "If the tolerance is low, you would at least want to understand that and prepare some questions. It doesn't mean you should stop your research there, but you should let that make your research that much more savvy. I don't want people to cross a school off their list simply because of our rankings."

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HIGH Executive Committee

HIGH Executive Committee Members

Steve E. Hyman, Chair
Provost; Professor of Neurobiology
Office of the President and Provost; Harvard Medical School

Steven E. Hyman is Provost of Harvard University and Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. From 1996 to 2001, he served as Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Before serving as Director of NIMH, Dr. Hyman was Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of Psychiatry Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the first faculty Director of Harvard University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. In the laboratory he studied the molecular biology of neurotransmitter action. Dr. Hyman is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He currently serves as Editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience.

Sue Goldie, Faculty Co-Chair
Roger Irving Lee Professor of Public Health
Harvard School of Public Health

Sue J. Goldie is a Professor of Health Decision Science in the Department of Health Policy and Management. Dr. Goldie’s research focuses on developing and validating computer-based models linking the basic biology of disease and its epidemiology to population-based outcomes. Dr. Goldie is a committee member of several organizations that focus on global health, including the Board on Global Health of the Institute of Medicine. She has received numerous teaching awards for her courses and mentorship in decision science methods as applied to public health. She was recently awarded a MacArthur grant “for genius and creativity” in applying the tools of decision science to combat major public health problems.

Allan M. Brandt
Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine; Professor of the History of Science
Harvard Medical School; Faculty of Arts and Sciences

Allan M. Brandt is the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He holds a joint appointment in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. His work focuses on social and ethical aspects of health, disease, and medical practices in the twentieth-century United States. Brandt is the author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America and No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880. He has written on the social history of epidemic disease; the history of public health; and the history of human subject research among other topics.

David Cutler
Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

David Cutler is Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Cutler has developed an impressive record of achievement in both academia and the public sector. He served as Assistant Professor of Economics from 1991 to 1995, was named John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences in 1995, and received tenure in 1997. He is currently Professor of Economics in the department of economics and Kennedy School of Government.

David Edwards
Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences

David Edwards is a biomedical engineer and writer actively involved in the translation of ideas from the university through novel medical technology, and the writing, performing and visual arts. His scientific research concerns the mathematical design of novel physical parameters that allow nanostructured materials to efficiently deliver drugs and vaccines to the lungs and other human organs, with a special focus on infectious diseases in developing world nations. Current work in his laboratory includes the development of novel antibiotic therapies for tuberculosis and a new delivery platform for needle-free childhood vaccines. Medicine in Need, or MEND, is an international not-for-profit organization that translates research from Dr. Edwards' lab to clinical practice in South Africa and other developing world environments. Dr. Edwards is the co-author of numerous scientific publications in the fields of fluid mechanics, interfacial transport phenomena, drug delivery, and aerosol science. A member of the National Academy of Engineering since 2001, David has won many national and international awards. Dr. Edwards' artistic work includes his founding and direction of Le Laboratoire, a new innovation space in downtown Paris, where artists and scientists perform collaborative experiments.

Jim Yong Kim
Director, François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard School of Public Health
Chair, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Chief, Division of Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Jim Yong Kim holds appointments as François Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health and Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is Chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a major Harvard teaching hospital; Director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights; and Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kim returned to Harvard in December 2005 after a three-year leave of absence at the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Kim has more than 20 years of experience in improving health in developing countries. He is a founding trustee and the former Executive Director of Partners In Health, a not-for-profit organization that supports a range of health programs in poor communities in Haiti, Peru, Russia, Lesotho, Rwanda, Chiapas, Malawi, and the United States.

Paul Ridker
Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School

Dr. Ridker is the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, a translational research unit at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston which focuses on the molecular and genetic epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases with particular focus on inflammation. As a graduate of Brown University, the Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Ridker's primary research brings together classical tools of large-scale, population based epidemiology with emerging genetic and molecular techniques designed to improve our ability to predict and prevent thrombotic occlusion. Dr Ridker is also the Principle Investigator or Trial Chairman of several multi-national clinical trials including the ongoing JUPITER trial investigating interventions for CRP.

Bruce Walker
Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School

Bruce Walker is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Partners AIDS Research Center at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard University Center for AIDS Research (HU CFAR). In addition, Dr. Walker is adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in Durban, South Africa. He obtained his undergraduate training at the University of Colorado and the Swiss Federal Technical Institute, and graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Dr. Walker’s research centers on the cellular immune response to chronic viral infections, including HIV and hepatitis C virus. In 1987 his group discovered that HIV infection induces a strong virus specific cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) response in infected individuals, and have subsequently shown that these cells are extremely efficient at controlling virus replication in vitro. In addition to these efforts in Boston, Walker and colleagues have collaborated with the Nelson Mandela School of Medicine in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa to build a fully functional biomedical research facility to study the viruses fueling the extensive epidemic there, and to capacitate African researchers and clinicians to become involved in the global fight against HIV.

Dyann F. Wirth
Richard Pearson Strong Professor and Chair, Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases
Harvard School of Public Health

Dr. Wirth graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Wisconsin, spent one year as a Fulbright Fellow, and then completed her Ph.D. in cell biology and virology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was awarded a Helen Hay Whitney Fellowship for her postdoctoral work in molecular biology at Harvard. She joined the faculty of Harvard School of Public Health in 1982 and was promoted to full professor in 1990. She is the recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Award in Molecular Parasitology, the Bailey K. Ashford Award from the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. She was elected President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (1998-1999). She is Senior Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and co-director of the Broad’s Infectious Disease Initiative. At the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Wirth is the Richard Pearson Strong Professor and Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases. Professor Wirth’s research is focused on tropical disease, primarily malaria (which affects 200-300 million people, mostly children, worldwide). Dr. Wirth is an expert in molecular microbiology and has developed many of the molecular genetic tools used in the investigation of malaria and leishmania. Her work has focused on the mechanisms of drug resistance and her group was the first to discover multidrug resistance mechanisms in these organisms.