:: By Mary Ruth Yoe

:: Photography by Dan Dry

In Every Issue ::

Spring brings a round of good news our way.

May was even merrier than usual on campus, elevated by a round of headline-making gifts. The month began with naming gifts for the Graduate School of Business’s Charles M. Harper Center and the upcoming Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts. It ended with the announcement of a $100 million gift, the largest in University history, from an anonymous College alumnus, to support undergraduate financial aid. Such benisons would be welcome at any time, but they seemed particularly fitting in spring—which, as any commencement speaker worth his or her honorary sheepskin will tell you, is the season of beginnings.

Hats off to the graduating dad: Ilan Caspi, MBA’07, greets Ella (4) and Coby (2) after the June 10 convocation.

More cause for celebration

There was also good news at the micro level. In May the Magazine won four awards in the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s Circle of Excellence competition. Three of those awards went to the print edition: bronze medals for staff writing and for college and university general-interest magazines, while in the best-articles category freelancer Joshua Davis’s “La Dolce Baseball” (August/06) won a gold medal. In the world of electronic media, the Magazine’s Web log, UChiBLOGo, which Managing Editor Amy Braverman Puma coordinates, won a bronze medal in the technology-innovation competition.

In June Ruth E. Kott joined the Magazine as alumni news editor. Ruthie, who worked during the 2006–07 academic year as a student assistant in our office, will soon be an alumna: she’ll receive her degree from the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) in August. A graduate of Colgate University, where she majored in sociology and anthropology, Ruthie also spent a year as a middle-school English teacher, so her grammar skills are sharp, and she has the patience of a saint—both excellent qualifications for her new line of work.

The masthead also reveals one more bit of news: with a space crunch on campus, the Magazine has changed quarters. In mid-June, along with a number of other Development and Alumni Relations staffers, we moved offices to 401 North Michigan Avenue, just west of the GSB’s Gleacher Center. Our beat remains the same—good news indeed.