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Web Exclusives: Features News from other Ivy League institutions, and Stanford
Posted April 17, 2002 Brown: The 22nd annual Brown/Providence Journal conference, which runs April 14-19 is entitled The City: No Limits. The conference is meant to "examine the spirit and contemplate the future of the city by drawing together the leaders and visionairies....who are forging its renaissance...will attempt to answer such questions as to what possibilities do city residents aspire?". The conference is free and open to the public. The Starr Foundation has donated $15 million to Brown for financial aid. It is the largest donation for financial aid the university has ever received. "Education has traditionally been the largest area of giving for The Starr Foundation" Maurice R. Greenberg, chairman of The Starr Foundation, (and father to two Brown graduates) stated. He continued, "We are delighted to show our support for Brown's need-blind admission policy with this gift and hope it inspires others to give as well". Cornelius Vander Starr founded the Starr Foundation in 1955, C.V. Starr Scholarship Funds have been endowed at over 80 colleges and universities since then. The Corporation of Brown University has endorsed
a multiyear Proposal for Academic Enrichment under which Brown will
institute need-blind undergraduate admission. The university will
also add up to 100 new faculty members, and the increase to the
university's yearly budget will reach $36 million by 2005. Columbia: The school of Journalism at Columbia
University and Nieman Foundation at Harvard (cosponsors of the award)
anounced their 2002 Lukas Prize Project Because of an increase in enrollment in Arabic/Islamic courses over the past five years, Columbia University has decided to create a new Arabic Summer Program. In two six-week programs, students will have the opportunity to learn Arabic at the elementary, intermediate, or advanced level. Michael M. Crow, the exectuive vice provost has been named president of Arizona State University. Crow had been with Columbia since 1992 Robert Kasdin ’80, executive vice president and chief financial officer of the University of Michigan, has been named to the newly created position of senior executive vice president of Columbia University by President-elect Lee C. Bollinger. Kasdin, who will assume his new position in July 2002, previously served as treasurer and chief investment officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as vice president and general counsel of the Princeton University Investment Company. As Columbia's senior executive vice president, Kasdin will help Bollinger shape his new administration and apply his management and financial expertise to a variety of departments and programs including areas in the health sciences and university computing. As new initiatives begin, Kasdin's portfolio will expand. Cornell: Cornell President Hunter Rawlings *70 announced on April 9 that the hiring freeze for "externally funded positions" was to be lifted on April 15, and for all other positions will be lifted June 30. The decision to lift the freeze was made by Rawlings after recommendations by the Workforce Planning team and Provost Biddy Martin, and Harold Craft, vice president for administration and chief financial officer as well. Martin is quoted as saying "The freeze was intended to be a first step in a longer-term planning process examining nonacademic staffing requirements". Brian Crane, an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell has been honored as the recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program Award and a Searle Scholars Program Grant. Crane hopes to develop and apply "new photochemical methods for studying the structural basis of oxidation-reduction chemistry and long-range electron transfer in biology", in part by using money from his awards. Hunter R. Rawlings III *70, who has been president of Cornell University since 1995, has announced he plans to retire on June 30, 2003, assuming instead the position of professor in the university's Department of Classics. Rawlings stated that he has announced his plans at this time because it "will allow the board to being a deliverate and systematic search for a new president and will provide time for an orderly transition" Dartmouth: Male Daughters, Female Husbands by Ifi Amadiume, a professor or religion at Dartmouth, was named amoung the 100 best books by African authors in the 20th century. The list is sponsored by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, Amadiume's book was one of only 10 "scholarly" books included in the list. She is quoted as saying "I am delighted and honored to receive this award...I feel particularly pleased with this wide expression of happiness and solidarity across borders, cultures and gender." Dartmouth Junior Carly Haggard, who plays forward on the Dartmouth women's hockey team was voted to the first team of the 2001-02 JOFA/AHCA women's university division All-America team. Only two other players have won this honor in women's hockey history at Dartmouth: Sarah Hood '98 and Correne Bredin '02 A junior at Dartmouth, Heidi Williams, was named a 2002 Truman Scholar by the S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. The award finances 2 to 3 years of graduate study for students pursuing studies in government or nonprofit careers. She will receieve $30,000. Williams based her Truman application on "improving women's access to math and science education". Darthmouth Medical School cancer researchers have identified a gene that triggers the death of leukemia cells. Their findings were reported in the March 19 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ethan Dmitrobsky, professor and chair of pharmacology and toxicology headed the research team which identified the gene. Dartmouth Medical School cancer researchers have identified a gene that triggers the death of leukemia cells, opening a novel target for anti-cancer drugs. This new genetic switch, reported in the March 19 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, turns on a program to destroy certain leukemic cells and possibly other tumor cells. It is activated by treatment with retinoic acid, a vitamin A derivative used in cancer therapy and prevention. Finding a mechanism that sets a cell death program in motion paves the way for developing new cancer-killing drugs, according to Ethan Dmitrovsky, professor and chair of pharmacology and toxicology. He headed the research team that included Sutisak Kitareewan, Ian Pitha-Rowe, Sarah Freemantle, and David Sekula. Harvard: Robert E. Rubin, former U.S. secretary of the Treasury is scheduled to become a Fellow of Harvard College on July 1, 2002. Rubin's election by the Corporation, "marks the conclusion of a search launched after Robert G. Stone, Jr., announced plans to step down." The Harvard Law School Jessup International Moot Court team won the U.S. Championship of the 2002 Phillip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. The team was defeated internationally by the eventual world champion, South Africa, yet won the award for best combined memorials. This is the fourth year in a row that a Harvard Law School team has attended international competition. A new discovery by a scientific team headed by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has found that a group of white blood cells demonstrates previously unrecognized “memory” characteristics that enable them to launch a sustained immune response against tuberculosis bacteria. This finding, described in a study in the March 22 issue of the journal Science, offers an important new piece of information on how the immune system combats infection, as scientists around the world continue to work on developing a more effective tuberculosis vaccine. A highly contagious bacterial infection that primarily affects the lungs, tuberculosis is responsible for two million deaths each year and affects an estimated 16 million people around the world. “Tuberculosis is a huge killer internationally,” says study co-author Norman L. Letvin, M.D., chief of viral pathogenesis at BIDMC and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Worldwide, the major targets for vaccine development are the HIV virus, tuberculosis and malaria. Anything that moves us even a little closer to these vaccines is very important.” Rising carbon dioxide levels associated with global warming could lead to an increase in the incidence of allergies to ragweed and other plants by mid-century, according to a report appearing in the March Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology by Harvard University researchers. The study found that ragweed grown in an atmosphere with double the current carbon dioxide levels produced 61 percent more pollen than normal. Such a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide is expected to occur between 2050 and 2100. Harvard Business School: HBS announces an exclusive program
for HBS alumni. The program, starting in May, is entitled "Breakthrough
Insights" and is structured in five half-day sessions. Class
titles include "Strategic Advantage: Winning Against All Odds"
and "Frontier Technologies: Revolutions or HBS has announced the formation of the Service Leadership Fellows Program, which will encourage students hoping to make a contribution to society in the early years of their careers to apply fror one or two year postgraduate Service Fellowships. HBS plans to subsidize the graduates' salaries so that it compares to those s/he would normally make from for-profit businesses. Pennsylvania: Applicants for the Class of 2006 at the University of Pennsylvania were able to learn of their acceptance not only through the traditional mail system, but also online. Applicants, who still receive snail mail, are able to log on to the university's admission's website to find out their destiny. The decision to rework the admissions system was made in early January, and it went "live" on the third of April. More than 11,000 students logged on. UPenn alumnus J. Peter Skirkanich and wife, Geri, have announced they will donate $10 million to build Skirkanich Hall, Penn's new center for bioengineering. It is the largest donation given by a single donor in the history of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Skirkanich is founder and president of Fox Asset Management, an investment management and counseling firm in New Jersey. Jim Lehr, host of "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" will deliver the 2002 commencement address on May 13. Lehr has "moderated nine presidential debates in the last four elections and served as the sole moderator for all presidential debates in both 1996 and 2000". Penn will award Lehrer an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. Total undergraduate charges at UPenn are scheduled to increase 4.6 percent during the 2002-2003 school year. These charges include tuition, fees, and room and board. Penn's vice provost for information systems and computing, James J. O'Donnell, will become Georgetown's next provost. Stanford: The Stanford Yachy Research initiative has been established by a group of Stanford scientists to "bring high tech to the high seas." Cofounder Margot Gerritsen, an assistant professor of petroleum engineering at Stanford said, "We use advanced computational techniques to analyze the performance of sails and hulls and help improve their design."A talk by Burns Fallow, on April 17, is the first public event sponsored by the group. For Stanford's freshman class of 2006, admission was once again competitive. 12.4% of applicants were admitted, compared to 12.7% the year before. For the first time in Stanford history, more than half the admitted students are people of color, 13% African American, 24% Asian American, 10% Mexican American, 3% Latino, 2% Native American/Native Hawaiian. Almost 3/4 of the admitted students had a 4.0 or higher GPA in high school. Yale: On April 29 a symposium on "recent neuroscience advances that hold promise for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mental illness" will take place in Harkness Auditorum, at the Yale School of Medicine. The program is designed to reach both a lay audience as well as proffessionals in the field. It is free and oepn to anyone who works with people with mental illness, and also to mental health consumers and their families. Ernest Zedillo, the former president of Mexico will become the director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Richard C. Levin, Yale's president, said, "Alleviating poverty in third world countries is an issue very dear to Ernesto's heart. He wants to make sure that globalization process improves the welfare of the poor as well as the rich." The purpose of the center is to help the univeristy become more international as well as "sponsor potential leaders from around the world to study" at Yale for a semester. The Sterling Professor Emeritus of Economics at Yale, James Tobin, who also won the 1981 Nobel Prize in Economics, died March 11. He was 84. Tobin won his Nobel Prize for "creative and extensive work on the analysis of financial markets and their relations to expenditure decisions, employment, production and prices" (quoted from the Royal Swedish Academy of Science) Yale is investing $500 million in its science and engineering programs in order to add five additional buildings. "Yale researchers have determined the atomic structure of the ribosome's large subunit", a discovery which should help the medical industry find better drugs to fight infection. Thomas Steitz led the study, he is the Eugene Higgins Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale. Yale's faculty of engineering is marking 150 years of teaching and innovation this year. Yale president Richard C. Levin urges end to early application process in admissions. For stories, click below. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/education/13YALE.html http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/16/opinion/16SUN1.html?searchpv=past7days
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