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New funds for grad students
The U of C will allocate nearly $50 million over the next six years to ensure that doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences are among the most generously supported in higher education. Beginning this fall, a typical base aid package will include five-year support for tuition, health insurance, $19,000 a year for living expenses, and $6,000 for two summers of research. By the time the program is fully operational in six years, the University will be providing an additional $13 million each year.

Ovations for Court
In a year-end roundup of U.S. theater, Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout praised the Court Theatre as “the most consistently excellent theater company in America.” Court’s 2006 productions of Fences and Lettice and Lovage, Teachout said, “were, like everything else I’ve seen at Court, comprehensively satisfying. ... Court Theatre is a shining example of what American theater can and should hope to be.”

California, here he comes
Former Provost Richard Saller, a faculty member since 1984, moves to Stanford University in April as dean of its School of Humanities & Sciences, which awards 80 percent of Stanford’s undergrad de--grees and 40 percent of its doctoral degrees. Saller, the Edward L. Ryerson distinguished service professor of history and classics, stepped down as provost in January after four years.

Physics for historians
The American Physical Society has declared the University a historic site, commemorating discoveries by Robert Millikan, who joined Chicago’s faculty in 1897 and won a 1923 Nobel Prize for two experiments conducted in Ryerson lab. One measured individual electron charges, showing they came in small units called quanta, and the other measured the photoelectric effect, the electron emission resulting when light strikes some metal surfaces. Chicago physics professor and society president Leo Kadanoff said: “It’s remarkable that a single individual in independent experiments measured two of the most important quantities in all of physics.”

Top spot for Reaves
Donald J. Reaves, Chicago’s vice president for administration and chief financial officer since 2002, assumes a new position in August, as chancellor of Winston-Salem State University. Reaves, who came to Chicago from Brown, has overseen most of the University’s fiscal and administrative operations. He also supported five committees of the University’s Board of Trustees.

A classic gets new life
The U of C Press has published a seventh edition of Kate Turabian’s Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations—or “Turabian,” as it’s known. Turabian, Chicago’s dissertation secretary for decades, first published her manual in 1937. The new edition includes a guide to research and writing by Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, U-High’79, and Wayne C. Booth, AM’47, PhD’50, an outgrowth of their Craft of Research (U of C Press).

Smart names new chair
Robert Feitler, U-High’46, X’50, was named chair of the Smart Museum of Art’s board of governors. Feitler, a board member since the Smart’s 1974 founding, succeeds Chicago art dealer Richard Gray. Gray, who served for 15 years, was named chairman emeritus.

Nearer to Doomsday
On January 17 the U of C–based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its famous Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight, its first shift since February 2002. The move, the bulletin said in a release, signified concerns about growing nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea, escalating terrorism, and “new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.”

Share the wealth
Aiding the study of financial futures and capital markets, a Chicago Mercantile Exchange charitable trust gave the GSB $1.5 million, the largest of 20 university grants the Merc handed out in its first-ever such program. The GSB also received a $2.2 million grant from the Philadelphia-based John Templeton Foundation for the school’s 30-year-old Center for Decision Research. The grant will fund a three-year behavioral-economics program led by Richard Thaler, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller distinguished service professor.

New VPs for students, research
The University has filled two vice-president positions. Kimberly Goff-Crews, dean of students at Wellesley College, becomes Chicago’s vice president and dean of students in July. Part of the president’s executive staff, Goff-Crews will oversee graduate and undergraduate services and programs, both academic and personal. Meanwhile Donald Levy, the Albert A. Michelson distinguished service professor in chemistry, was named vice president for research and for national laboratories, effective January 1. Levy, a U of C faculty member since 1967, works with the president, the provost, and the heads of Argonne and Fermi labs.

Allen leaves Humanities post
Humanities Dean Danielle Allen announced in December that she would step down this summer after serving three years. Allen, a scholar of classical democracy, plans to spend next academic year completing two delayed book projects at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. The Humanities Division has elected a committee to advise the president and provost, who will appoint a new dean. Allen also was named to the Pulitzer Prize board in December.

Tuition help for science students
Seven Chicago graduate students received $10,000 scholarships from the local chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation (ARCS). The winners were: John A. Finarelli and Surangi W. Punyasena in evolutionary biology; Gerri E. Hutson in organic chemistry; Michael D. Seifert in physics; and Erica R. Aronson, Shahnaz A. Kazi, and Ann M. Laake in the Pritzker School of Medicine. The Chicago ARCS chapter is one of 14 nationwide that provide graduate scholarships in the natural sciences, medicine, and engineering.

Quality pick for Medical Center
Bruce Minsky, a leading authority on gastrointestinal cancers, was appointed the University Medical Center’s first chief quality officer. Arriving in January from New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Minsky also serves as associate dean for clinical quality in the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine, and as professor in radiation & cellular oncology. As Chicago’s chief quality officer he will combine the Medical Center’s existing quality-improvement programs into one comprehensive program.

Back to Yerkes drawing board
Facing protests from Williams Bay, Wisconsin, residents, the University reconsidered a deal with a New York developer to build a spa and luxury homes on 45 acres surrounding Yerkes Observatory. The proposal, formed last June, required Williams Bay to establish a special taxing district to run Yerkes as an educational center. The University, says Vice President for Community and Government Affairs Hank Webber, will work with the village, the Adler Planetarium, and nearby Aurora University (which also bid on the property) on a new plan to sell the obsolete observatory while preserving the building and grounds.

Off to the Emerald Isle
Franklin McMillan, AB’05, has become the first Chicago alumnus to receive the U.S.–Ireland Alliance’s George J. Mitchell Scholarship. Awarded annually to 12 Americans under age 30 who have exhibited academic achievements, leadership, and community service, the scholarship funds a year of postgraduate study in Ireland. McMillan, who was a student marshal, spoke at commencement, and cofounded a College ACLU chapter, hopes to enter Queens University in Belfast this fall and earn a master’s in theory, culture, and identity.

A winning Brattle
Joshua Rauh, an assistant professor of finance at the GSB, has won the 2006 Brattle Prize for an outstanding research paper on corporate finance published in the Journal of Finance. Rauh’s win—for “Investment and Financing Constraints: Evidence from the Funding of Corporate Pension Plans”—puts him in strong company. Past U of C Brattle Prize winners include Douglas Diamond, Raghuraam Rajan, Anil Kashyap, Luigi Zingales, Tobias Moskowitz, and Randall Kroszner.