Web Exclusives: Features

News from other Ivy League institutions, and Stanford

Posted April 29, 2002

Brown: Evelyn Hu-DeHart, professor and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, has been named a professor or history and the director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown. Ms. Hu-Dehart will begin July 1.

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.

Robert J. Zimmer, a mathematician and research administrator at the University of Chicago, has been named Brown's ninth provost, he will take up the position on July 15, 2002.

Columbia: Physicists at Columbia plan to join with others from the Brookhaven National Laboratory in order to build a "supercomputer capable of 10 trillion arithmetic operations per second for explorations of sub-atomic particles". RIKEN, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, located in Japan, has agreed to sponsor $5 million dollars in funding for the project. The computer is planned to be finished in 2003, and then utilized by physicists at all three institutions in order to study gluons and quarks, "the subatomic particles from which the atomic nucleus is constructed."

Serge Przedborski, the associate professor of neurology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia, has been honored by the American Academy of Neurology to receive the 2002 Sheila Essey Award. The award recognizes Przedborski's work on amoytophic lateral sclerosis ( Lou Gehrig's disease).

The school of Journalism at Columbia University and Nieman Foundation at Harvard (cosponsors of the award) anounced their 2002 Lukas Prize Project
Awards for Exceptional Works of Nonfiction. The winners are Diane McWhorter, Mark Roseman and Jacques Leslie, who will be presented with their award on May 9 at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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: The Cornell University Presidential Search Committee, elected to conduct a search for the next president of the university, will hold four open meetings beginning April 30, in order to hear the opinions of the community. The committee, which plans to work with members of the Weill Cornell Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences, will allow students, facult, and staff from these departments at the open meetings. The first meeting is open to students, the second to faculty, the third to staff and the fourth for all three sub-categories.

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".

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:Cancer specialists worldwide are meeting from April 21-23 at Darthmouth in order to attend the Ewing's Sarcoma (the second most common type of bone cancer) symposium. Topics include "the latest news about the disease itself, how it's detected and the options for treatment."

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: On Tuesday, April 30, the Kennedy School at Harvard will host a forum entitled "Colombia: Struggling against Terrorism, Working Towards Peace". Rev. Francisco de Roux, winner of the 2001 Colombian National Peace Prize, will speak about his experience working in "one of Colombia's most violent regions, Magdalena Medio, overseeing more than 70 different development projects." The event is free and open to the public.

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."

Harvard Business School: The Harvard Business School plans to open a European Research Center, located in Paris, France, next fall. The ERC is expected to help HBS strengthen bonds with European business executives and companies. It is also hoped to aid HBS in forging partnerships with faculty at the leading business schools in Europe. HBS has already opened centers in Hong Kong and Buenos Aires.

David A. Wan, currently the president of Pengiun Group, a global trade book company, has been named the next president and CEO at HBS Publishing Corp. He will succeed Linda Doyle, who announced her decision to leave so she can take a faculty position teaching at HBS.

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
Replays?"

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: The director of the Institute for Human Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, James Wilson, will step down from his position in July. Wilson, and the Institute, were criticized after a 1999 research trial ended in the death of 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger. Wilson had kept his position until now "despite procedures currently underway by the Food and Drug Administration that would bar him from ever conducting further research on humans." The Medical School dean, Arthur Rubenstein, says that Wilson's resignation is not related to Gelsinger's death.

Researchers at UPenn have discovered that a boy's height when he is 16 years old can be seen as a significant determinant of his salary as an adult. The report, entitled "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height," discusses the economic differences between the short and tall. It was written by economics professors Nicola Persico and Andrew Postlewait and graduate student Dan Silverman. "In any given field, the worker who was taller as a teen earned a "wage preuium as much as 15 percent more than the worker who was short as a teenager."

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: Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Center have found a way for patients with kidney transplants to live without having to take immune-suppressing drugs for the rest of their lives. Because of the new method, the donor kidneys don't even have to be from a blood relative, "a restriction that has severely limited kidney availability to sick people in need." The research results were presented on April 28 at the American Transplant Congress in Washington, D.C. The work will also be published in Transportation, a medical journal, on May 15.

On April 23, the life of Cesar Chavez (Founder of the United Farm Workers of America) will be celebrated in a speech by Jesse Jackson in Kresge Auditorium. Other events on the Stanford campus to celebrate Chavez's life include a film screening of A Fight in the Fields, which chronicles Chavez's life and work."

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: The Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale, William D. Nordhaus, has been honored by the Glaser Foundation with renewed funding to continue his research. Nordhaus's research deals with developing and inplementing more efficient techniques for "tracking the nation's progress and economic activity in areas that are outside the boundary of the marketplace." The Glaser Foundation was established by Rob Glaser, a Yale College alumnus, for the purpose of awarding grants to nonprofit organizations developing innovative ways to measure progress. In 2002, Nordhaus plans to use his grant to investigate the state of time-use statistics in the U.S.

Yale Admits Class of '06 with the Friendliest College Application Process to Date: Rather than check the mailbox each day for news, this year's applicants to Yale College were able to learn from Yale's website whether they had been accepted. An overwhelming majority of the applicants used the Internet to determine their status, logging in to the interactive site beginning at 9 a.m. on April 3 and receiving a response almost instantly. More than 3,000 applicants visited the site in the first hour. By 9 p.m., more than 9,700 applicants had logged on to the web page, including 1,190 of the nearly 1,500 admitted students. "It really was quite flawless," Richard H. Shaw Jr., dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid, said of the new system's debut. He noted that the flood of phone calls the admissions office usually receives from applicants never came this year. "We are proud of the site because it makes the admitted students feel like they are part of the Yale community right away," said Nathan Gault, the project's manager, who said the idea for the website grew out of a conversation he had with Yale sophomore Alexander Clark. Applicants who learned of their admittance from the interactive website were linked to a personal page on which they had previously indicated their academic and extracurricular interests. The page had the names and e-mail addresses of current Yale students who can answer questions about the admitted student's interests. The admitted student could also view a map of the United States that indicated where other applicants and admitted students are from, and whether any former students from their high school are currently at Yale. The website also provided information about "Bulldog Days," which give admitted students an opportunity to learn what it is like to live at Yale. Hundreds of admitted students have registered on-line to attend the three-night stay on campus this spring. The total applications to Yale College this year for the Class of 2006 was 15,443, an all-time high. A total of 2,008 students were admitted, including students who gained admission through the early decision process. The URL for the Yale undergraduate admissions website is: www.yale.edu/admit

Ernesto Zedillo, Mexico's ex-president, will lead Yale's Globalization Center beginning in September

The American Physical Society has awarded the 2002 Nicholson Prize to D. Allan Brmoley, the Sterling Professor of the Sciences. The award recognizes him for his "roles as a research scientist, an outstanding teacher, a supportive mentor and colleague, a leader of the physics community in this country and worldwide, and advisor to governments." The American Physical Society is the dominant professional society for physics in the U.S., though it has members throughout the world.

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

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/business/yourmoney/21VIEW.html