By BILL SCHACKNER, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Penn State University said it has paid $3.2 million for legal fees, consultants and public relations firms to address the scandal that exploded with former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's Nov. 5 arrest on child sex abuse charges.

For faculty on the nation's college campuses, the end of the worst recession in generations hasn't led to any wholesale widening of their wallets.

In fact, faculty pay grew on average by 1.4 percent this year, less than the rate of inflation for the second consecutive year. It was the fifth year out of the past seven in which faculty purchasing power declined.

PAINTED-CHICKENS (Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) -- PITTSBURGH: Police have been assigned to investigate the case of the spray-painted chickens.250.

PITTSBURGH - A Carnegie Mellon University police detective has been assigned to help investigate the discovery on campus of nine malnourished farm chickens, some apparently spray-painted, the school says.

PITTSBURGH - Ticks. Flea bites. Snarling dogs.

The mail clerk making $9.72 an hour couldn't hack her stomach-turning workplace anymore, so she quit. To make matters worse, she was denied unemployment benefits.

Students in a lecture class at Carnegie Mellon University were packing up to leave when Elliott Curtis, their instructor, called them back to their seats, saying he'd forgotten a key part of the lesson.
It was time for them to come forward and show their sneakers.

As private colleges nationwide worry that the recession may drive students away to lower-priced public schools, one West Virginia campus is trying out a novel approach.
It's matching public campus prices.

Anyone who thinks computer-programming courses are as boring as binary code hasn't been to the University of Pittsburgh, where Daniel Mosse has enlisted Samurai warriors and ballerinas to help teach.These and other 3-D animations, culled from instructional software developed at Carnegie Mellon University, are helping the Pitt professor breathe life into an introductory course.

HUNTINGDON, Pa. -- Dr. Larry Johnson made no secret that, upon his death, he would give his alma mater, Juniata College, enough money to create full-ride scholarships.What was not as clear was what else he planned to leave behind -- a refrigerator with food, a .38 caliber Harrington and Richardson handgun, and a native America purse made from dried buffalo scrotum.

In two weeks, Neil Durco will don a cap and gown for his college commencement, pose for family photos and accept his school's congratulations on a job well done.And then days later, after the pomp subsides, the geography major at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania will head back to campus and actually finish his degree.

It took more than a century for Carnegie Mellon University to settle on an official mascot. Getting the living embodiment required far less waiting.That's because comedian Bill Cosby is giving Carnegie Mellon its first live mascot: a Scottish terrier.