Chapman University

As housing prices continue to tumble in most regions, forecasters from Chapman University said Tuesday that the U.S. economy had fallen into a recession that wouldn't ease until next year. Even worse, California's recovery may not start for two years. "At a local level, we are in a recession," said Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University in Orange. "For the state economy there is no clear label of a state recession.

The nation's worsening economy will continue to hemorrhage jobs next year, prolonging a deep recession that won't recover until at least 2010, forecasters at Chapman University said Tuesday. The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to climb from an estimated 5.7% this year to 7.8% next year as consumers pull back their spending, sending businesses already hurting from the credit crunch into further despair.

Rueben Martinez is known for his many callings: Barber. Longtime bookstore owner. MacArthur award winner. Speaker at high schools, colleges and universities across the country. Holder of more honorary degrees than he can count. And now Martinez, 68, is a college professor. A presidential fellow, to be exact. Starting next month, Martinez will be responsible for Chapman University's efforts to recruit first-generation students, especially Latinos, into science and math programs.

About 2,000 copies -- virtually the entire press run -- of Chapman University's student newspaper, the Panther, were stolen from racks around the campus, authorities said Thursday. "This act served to deprive the campus community of the right to read the weekly newspaper that students pay for and the ... newspaper staff work[s] very hard to produce," Joseph Kertes, the university's vice president and dean of students, said in a written statement.

The lowly Post-it note was the star of a global warming ad campaign that won its Chapman University student creators first place in a national competition held this month by EntrepreneurshipWeek USA. Today, the students from the small school's highly ranked entrepreneur program will compete in another challenge, the Los Angeles regional phase of an international competition held by the nonprofit group Students in Free Enterprise.

The morning sky was battleship gray and the air chilly, but not even the weather could dampen the mood Saturday at Nancy Christiano's college graduation. Other graduates of Chapman University's Department of Communication Studies cheered when her name was called. She stood out from the 1,000 undergraduates also receiving degrees because she was at least twice their age.

Chapman University has chosen John C. Eastman, an expert on constitutional law who teaches at the law school and appears frequently as a legal commentator on radio and TV, as new dean for its law school, university officials said Tuesday. Eastman, who has been on the law school's faculty since 1999 and is the school's interim associate dean of administration, replaces Parham Williams, who has announced his retirement.

In the latest and most dramatic move to elevate a small Orange liberal arts campus to a world-class institution, Chapman University announced Thursday that it had hired a cutting-edge Nobel laureate in economics and his entire research team. "This is a defining moment," university President James L. Doti said in announcing the appointment of Vernon L. Smith, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 and is known internationally as the father of experimental economics.

Chapman University is starting a campaign to raise $80 million for a new science center, university officials announced Tuesday. The center will replace Hashinger Science Center, a cinder-block building built in the 1960s, spokeswoman Mary Platt said. The project is part of a major effort to modernize the private liberal arts school established in 1861, she said.

Chapman University officials violated the constitutional rights of students who were trying to form a Jewish fraternity when they ordered the men not to recruit on campus or wear T-shirts promoting Sigma Alpha Mu, according to a letter the ACLU sent university officials Tuesday. "Chapman, we have a problem," said Hector Villagra, director of the Orange County office of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "These students have free speech rights."