smemmt trojan
Volume XCI, Number 7	University of Southern California	Friday, June 18, 1982
Pings assumes provost title
Cornelius J. Pings, the university’s senior vice president for academic affairs, has been assigned the additional title of provost.
Dr. Pings has been given the new and expanded title in recognition of his dual role at the university — as both intellectual leader and administrator -- said university President James H. Zumberge when he announced the title change last Wednesday.
Dr. Zumberge explained, “Neal Pings has in the last year proved himself the chief academic, officer of USC. He has moved rapidly, with clarity of thought, wisdom and fairness, to establish new directions for management. He has also sustained a strong vision of academic excellence and of u'hat is required to keep USC in the front rank of American universities,” Zumberge said.
As senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. Pings will continue to administer all of the university's academic programs, research and student affairs, including the graduate and professional schools and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He is currently serving, too, as interim senior vice president for development and university relations while the univers-
ity seeks candidates for that post.
Pings, 52, came to the university last July after serving as vice provost and dean of graduate studies at Caltech since 1970. He joined Caltech in 1959 as a professor of chemical engineering and chemical physics. He served on the faculty at Stanford University from 1955 to 1959.
Pings, a newly elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, has consulted widely in the fields of chemical engineering and chemical physics.
During the 1977-78 academic year, he was president of the Association fo Graduate Schools. From August 1978 through June 1980, he directed the National Commission on Research, headquartered in Washington, D.C.
He is currently a member of the board of directors of the Council of Graduate Schools and the Council on Governmental Relations.
Pings has been involved in local civic and government activities. He has been a member of the Pasadena Redevelopment Agency since 1968 and served as chairman of that body from 1974 to 1981. He has been a trustee of the Mayfield Senior School of Pasadena since 1979.
Study shows dislike of scanners in markets, yet benefits defended
Photo by Dan Canales
AND YET ANOTHER — And yet another new building goes up on campus. This structure will be the Hedco Petroleum and Chemical Building.
Despite customer resistance, scanners are invading supermarkets across the nation.
The first close encounters between scanners and the public have been studied by a university researcher, who concludes that supermarkets must share the cost savings if they hope to win greater consumer acceptance for the new technology.
“Scanners have an image problem that supermarkets must work to improve,” says Brian Harris, an assistant professor of marketing at the business school and director of research for the Food Industry' Management Program.
Harris and Michale Mills, another assistant professor of marketing at the university, conducted a study in w’hich
SOCIOLOGIST SAYS ECONOMY FORCES CHANGES
Men seen as more involved in families
Economic pressures are plunging more fathers into a nurturing parent role, whether they like it or not, says a university professor.
“With so many mothers working now, fathers can’t depend on their wives to do all the child rearing,” says Carlfred Broderick, a professor of sociology.
“The two-paycheck family is forcing fathers to perform more than a provider role — even more than a ‘Let’s play ball’ role,” says Broderick, a marriage and family expert.
“Men are having to get into the nitty gritty parenting part of fatherhood. They’re preparing meals, changing diapers, bathing children, and providing basic nurturance.”
Whether the responsibilities are assumed by choice or necessity, fathers usually have mixed feelings about their expanded roles, Broderick finds.
“On the one hand, they feel
more hassled and tied down,” he says. "They think, ‘My father never had to do all this. I never seem to play golf anymore. Or read or watch TV.’
“On the other hand, they get more tender moments and other good things that mothers experience but fathers usually don’t. In short, fathers become more like mothers.”
Although many men have no problems with taking a direct hand in child rearing, some can become uncomfortable when parallels are drawn to mothering, says Tom Jablon-sky, associate director of the university’s Program for the Study of Women and Men in Society.
“References to ‘nurturing’ alienate a lot of men — especially those who are troubled about the changing roles of men and women,” Jablonsky says.
“We may need to use other words to describe men who
Letters welcome
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Material submitted must include the writer’s name, year in school (or postion held at the university), major, and a telephone number at which the writer may be reached during the day.
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want to be more sensitive, more caring, and more committed in dealing with their children.”
Increasingly, though, society is giving men permission to act more fatherly, Jablonsky says.
Organizations are springing up to help fathers with parenting problems as well as their own identity,” he says.
“Television and movies, like Kramer vs. Kramer, are dealing with the issue.”
Fatherhood is also becoming a more common topic among men, Broderick adds. “Women were usually the ones who talked about diapering children. Now fathers are having these conversations with other fathers.”
Although husbands have commonly pitched in and helped their wives with child rearing, a growing trend is for fathers to "go solo,” Broderick says. Either a father is a single parent, or a husband and wife agree to work alternate shifts so that someone is always home for the children.
While the shift arrangement may solve financial and childcare problems, it can create conflicts between a husband and wife, Broderick notes.
“His style of parenting might be quite different from hers,” he explains.
“She might still have the traditional view that the
mother sets the style and that, in her absence, the father is a surrogte her.
“Or, the father might feel that he invests a lot of effort in parenting and then the mother undoes all his work when it’s her shift.
“One advantage to a division of labor between men and women is that responsibilites are clear cut. The husband doesn't tell the wife how to cook and take care of the kids, and the wife doesn’t tell the husband how to do his work.
“When both husband and wife are parenting and bringing home paychecks, they each have a greater investment in those activities and are less willing to relinquish control.”
But for families that can’t live on one salary, the alternative is for one parent — typically the father — to work two jobs.
“Not as many families are making this choice, but when they do, there’s a heavy penalty,” Broderick says.
“In order to keep the wife home with the children, the husband is never home. In effect, he abandons the father role altogether.
“These fathers are hardly fathers at all. They’re mostly only meal tickets.”
485 shoppers were interviewed at various Southern California supermarkets.
Half the stores were equipped with scanners — those electronic devices that “read” package codes and tabulate prices at check-out cout-ners.
Less than 60 percent of the shoppers believed that scanners benefit shoppers in any way, Harris reports. Even in the scanner-ectuipped stores. 23 percent of he respondents said they prefer not to shop where their purchases are scanned.
According to Harris, electronic scanners can mean substantial savings for supermarkets, because they eliminate the need to mark the price on each item. But an overwhelming majority of the shoppers interviewed (88 percent) said they need item pricing to shop effectively.
The larger the shopper’s family, the findings indicate, the greater the perceived need for item pricing. Of the customers shopping for five or more, 92 percent wanted item prices, compared to 90 percent of those shopping for three or four, and 70 percent of those shopping for themselves alone.
Opponents of scanners have argued that item pricing is especially important to the poor, including many of the nation’s elderly and minority-group members, who must spend their limited shopping dollars carefully.
The university study results indicate that minorities do tend to prefer item pricing. Hispanics were most likely to insist on the need for item pricing, while blacks and orientals were significantly less likely to do so. Harris reports. Even so, more than 60 percent of all ethnic-group members indicated a desire for item pricing.
Somewhat surprisingly, the age group least likely to insist on item pricing was the elderly. Among respondents age
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