Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier (Newspaper) - February 10, 2003, Waterloo, Iowa METRO Maggie Stewart stepping down as Democratic chairwoman PAGE B3 LIFESTYLES Single parents leam valuable dating lessons PAGE B4 WATERLOO CEDAR FALLS Teen mom inspires peers with B1 TOMORROW'S 27 8 WEATHER PAGE 86 Healing in hockey Players provide brighter outlook for cancer mom C1 MONDAY FEBRUARY 10 2003 NEWSSTAND PRICE GREG BROWN Courier Staff Photographer Evie Charles Pugh an althe University of Northern towa began college with one course iri 1989 He now has a master s degree and is assistant technical director of the school of music at the Performing Arts Center Sweeping change UNI janitor earns degree new career while raising 3 girls By TERRY HUDSON Courier Staff Writer CEDAR FALLS A month ago Evie Charles Pugh was mopping floors and emptying trash kets at the University of Northern Iowa Today he has his own office at the Performing Arts Center complete with a nameplate showing the assistant technical director school of On the career change seems sudden This happened so I dering if I'm going to wake a mop In my he said At several points the road he took to his new profession seemed endless In 1989 the decided to enroll in a single course at UNI Just to see if I could do he said The he received in the intro to psychology class spurred his dence to continue Little by little he racked up credits Sometimes he took as many as 12 hours a semester while continuing his custodial duties full tune In the meantime his wife of 20 years died from a pulmonary embolism ing behind three daughters to raise while he worked and school kept going I had he said I needed to show my daughters that a person can accomplish anything he puts his mind to Pugh graduated in 1997 with a degree in social behavioral science with hopes of working as a youth shelter assistant But that job proved hard to come by So he continued as a an but began taking graduate courses He finished a master's degree in tional technology in May 2000 with a average of 3.87 What he accomplished is a very amazing said Shawn Dubois technical director at the forming arts center Talking to him about it he says it's one of the most things he's done I can't imagine it Raising his kids plus holding down a full-time job and getting two degrees I See MASTER page A6 France Belgium block NATO plan to defend Turkey Donald Rumsfeld shameful Allies refuse to pledge help Iraqi missile attacks BRUSSELS Belgium AP France and Belgium today blocked the start of NATO military planning to protect Turkey against the threat of an Iraqi missile attack ther deepening sions in the alliance over the Iraq crisis NATO officials said France ly blocked the move an hour before alliance procedures would have auto- started the military ning at 3 CST As expected Belgium backed the French move The French and Belgian foreign held a telephone conference early today and said they still opposed the automatic start of military ning They had their talks and they will continue to said Belgian spokesman Didier Seeuws of the talks between his foreign minister Louis Michel and his French counter- part Dominique de The decision was a blow to the United States which has lobbied hard for more than three weeks for the alliance to start the military planning backed by 16 of the 19 NATO allies All NATO decisions require mous support from the allies On Sunday Michel had said it was too early for the alliance to take such decisions It would signify that we have already entered into me logic of war that any chance any initiative to still resolve the conflict in a peaceful Inspectors say Iraqis beginning to change BAGHDAD Iraq AP With more Iraqi documents and new ideas for tracking old weapons the chief inspectors said they sense a good beginning and a positive attitude in Baghdad toward their efforts of ensuring Iraq is free of banned arms In their two days of talks here however Hans Blix and Mohamed did not win immediate agreement as expected for reconnaissance flights over Iraq In Washington President Bush said there would be no more seek with Iraq The Baghdad meetings that ended Sunday were a prelude to crucial reports the two chief inspectors will give to the Security Council on Friday new assessments of Iraqi cooperation that will help the council decide on next steps in the long Iraq crisis The inspectors flew to Larnaca Cyprus on Monday and changed planes for Athens officials said was to fly to Vienna and Blix was to fly to Mew York The Iraqis gave the chief inspectors more documents to try to clarify gering questions about 1980s cal and biological weapons and said they would establish commissions to search for additional documents and any leftover weapons way was Michel said It was unclear if Germany which previously had backed French and Belgian hesitation also supported the latest delay of the planning to send surveillance planes teries and units specialized in dealing See NATO page A6 Plan to test Head Start participants fuels debate Early childhood experts say Head Start students too young to take meaningful exams By ANDREW WIND Courier Staff Writer and the Los Angeles Times The tests will be simple Preschoolers probably will be asked to identify letters squares triangles and count to 10 The exam to be instituted this year for about children enrolled in Head Start programs throughout the United States represents the first time children as young as 4 years old will be tested on such a grand scale education researchers say But it is not being everywhere Trie Bush administration in ing the test says the Head Start program should join the movement in 12 grades to test youngsters academic skills as a way to assess schools tency Head Start a national child-care program that serves low-income children up to 5 years of age receives billion in federal money and should not be exempt from such scrutiny al officials say There's no reason to panic about said Wade F Horn assistant tary for children and families at the U.S Department of Health and Human Services Let's be clear This is not going to be used as an entrance exam for kindergarten However the plan has been met with skepticism by sortie Head Start officials and early childhood experts who say and are developmentally too See HEAD START page A6 Hundreds of millions of dollars cut by Congress 3 presidents left no money for upgrades Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON Under relentless pressure to cut costs NASA has scrapped hundreds of millions of lars hi safety upgrades for the space shuttle program celed efforts to equipment and laid off thousands of workers performing maintenance or safety inspections Since 1990 the space agency's ing on the shuttle has been cut by Congress three presidents and NASA itself even as they touted it as an important national undertaking and proclaimed a policy of safety first As a result the shuttle program is left with aging or obsolete equipment experts say The loss of Columbia followed years shrinking safety The percentage of the space budget allocated to safety and performance upgrades has decreased over in jeopardy 1988 NASA steps up fact gathering I Safety and performance upgrades Operations 1993 1999 National Research Council NASA of warnings from outside advisors aerospace executives lawmakers and even NASA officials that the program was underfunded and that another crash was growing more likely It is not like this is completely said John Pike a longtime THE WASHINGTON POST space expert in Washington You can't do this on the cheap There was a hallucination that reduced spending would actually improve safety Not even the most strident critics blame the budget cuts and shelved upgrades for the demise of Columbia and its crew With NASA still mystified by the cause of the eldest destruction they say it's impossible to know whether the zeal to control the agency's budget contributed to the disaster After the up in 1986 a massive investment into safety was made with a 50 percent increase in spending on the space shuttle that peaked in 1990 at billion By 2002 the shuttle budget had shrunk 40 cent to billion In the process major upgrades were killed or delayed endlessly New details about these abandoned upgrades and their ramifications for safety surfaced last week in Interviews with dozens of experts and in reviews of more than a decade of NASA safety reports and budget documents Among the upgrades that were never A safer replacement for three iary power units which use highly See SAFETY page A5 Army building robots to support replace combat soldiers in future Knight Bidder Newspapers WASHINGTON So far legions of robot soldiers march into battle only in movies such as Star Wars But the U.S Army is hurrying to catch up Under orders from Congress and the Pentagon's high command the Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Md is developing an array of robotic machines to support or replace troops made of flesh and blood One little robot scout the and the CIA's unmanned spy plane the Predator are already in use in Afghanistan Far more ed machines are in development Ultimately we want to have multi- ple robots under the control of a single said Chuck Shoemaker unmanned ground vehicle project manager at the Aberdeen lab The soldier will remain in a ed environment while the robots maneuver out in the hazardous before the soldier gets involved Robots are sacrificial ple are not Such a dream is years according to an analysis of the Army's unmanned ground vehicle program by the National Academy of Sciences Making robots smart enough to replace human skills even on simple tasks is an mous and challenge Despite the difficulties Congress passed a law two years ago making it See ROBOTS page A5 KNIGHT RIDOER PHOTO One of the Army's experimental unmanned XUV is tested in difficult terrain at Ft Indiantown Gap near Harrisburg Penn The four-wheeled robot Meets and avoids trees rocks ditches and walls TUESDAY IN THE COURIER Jarvic Green is a focused teen who leads by example Comics C6 Iowa A3 Theaters Crossword D4 02 Metro sports TV D2 B5 B6
