The Princeton Review has named the US Air Force Academy one of the nation’s top 50 public colleges for 2009 in terms of value, based on surveys of administrators and students at hundreds of schools. “The Air Force Academy is honored to earn this distinction,” said academy dean Brig. Gen. Dana Born in a USAFA release Jan. 8. She continued, “It is further recognition of the great effort we are making in providing cadets not just with a world-class education, but a full spectrum of learning experiences.” (Link to list; requires free registration.) The Princeton Review has also crowned the academy the nation’s No. 1 college for professor availability for the past four years and has highlighted its academic strengths, such as a student-faculty ratio of 8:1.
Retired Col. Carlyle "Smitty" Harris, known for introducing the "tap code" by which American POWs in North Vietnam could surreptitiously communicate with one another, died July 6. Harris was brutalized by the North Vietnamese over almost eight years of captivity.