Does somebody who is on campus today (Friday, 10/31/14) have a powered USB hub for RPI with them that I might be able to borrow until early next week, when the one I’m planning to order arrives?
And do people have recommendations for purchasing a powered USB hubs for the pi that works well?
Thanks @noahcoleman for generously letting me borrow a USB hub!
Would still love recommendations for purchasing my own 
I’ve used many and as long as they have plug-in-power, they have all worked.
If you get the latest RPI B+ many o f the power issues have been resolved – though you’ll still need a powered USB hub for multiple peripherals.
If I’m just using a USB wifi adapter for the RPI B, and that’s more or less my only peripheral, would you recommend still plugging it in to a powered USB hub?
For others looking for powered USB hubs, these two links might be helpful:
http://elinux.org/RPi_Powered_USB_Hubs
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=46431
you should be fine with a single Wifi dongle if you don’t have a keyboard / mouse etc hooked up. But for a long term installation I might still consider a powered USB hub.
I’ll chime in here and say if you want to rest assured that you won’t have a power failure I’d recommend anything that outputs more that 1amp. The tricky things with hubs is the power can fluctuate between ports. // a dedicated supply is your best bet
In perspective: A standard iPhone charger outputs 1Amp and an iPad charger outputs ~2Amps. The iPad charger provides more than enough power for the RPi.