Penn may have bested Columbia yet again in the U.S. News rankings, but one of their longtime teachers and administrators has been tempted to Morningside.  President Bollinger announced today that Kristine Billmyer, Penn’s Executive Director of the College of Liberal and Professional Studies and Associate Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, will be the new Dean of the Faculty of Continuing Education, effective November 1, 2009. She replaces Peter Awn, who has been the interim dean of the school for three years while also overseeing GS.

Billmyer received her B.A. in Psychology and Spanish Literature from Vassar College, her M.Ed. in English Education from Temple University, and her PhD in Educational Linguistics from Penn, where she has served since 1987.  As Bollinger boasts, she is “a nationally recognized scholar in her field” who has “published widely on cross-cultural variation in language use and the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by second language learners.”  Sociolinguistic competence, indeed.

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JustJared claims to have uncovered proof that Emma Watson, aka Hermione Granger/face of Burberry, will be attending Columbia University. This follows rumors linking the actress to Yale, Harvard, and Brown, but, using knowledge of Ms. Watson’s many other names (“her birth name is Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson”), they say that the directory entry at right corresponds to her.

We know what you’re thinking: “The School of Continuing Education? That’s not an undergraduate college!” Well, yes and no: the School of Continuing Education (the youngest of Columbia’s schools) does not offer any undergraduate degrees. It is, however, open to non-matriculated students, including students who want to take classes between high school and the start of college; these students can effectively take whatever courses they want while enrolled. If this is Watson’s entry, though, she would have to enter another school to get a degree. Somehow, though, we doubt this “degree” issue would prevent Wikipedia users from claiming her for Columbia.

UPDATE: A commenter points out that there is already a Charlotte Watson on LinkedIn who is enrolled at the School for Continuing Education. Sigh.