Chicago Journal ::

Planning for the future
In a March 21 letter to the University community President Robert J. Zimmer reported on a campus-wide planning process “to identify and address strategic opportunities and challenges.” Grouped under four major headings—Evolution of Academic Programs, Support for Faculty and Students, Engagement in Hyde Park and Nationally, and Financing New Initiatives—the initiatives being proposed, discussed, or planned include establishing a molecular-engineering program, expanding the faculty to meet emerging needs and disciplines, and restoring Harper Library by creating a new College Learning Center. To read President Zimmer’s report online: president.uchicago.edu.

Rockefeller names new dean
Rev. Elizabeth Davenport, a University of Southern California senior associate dean, is Rockefeller Memorial Chapel’s new dean. Davenport, an English-born Episcopal priest, begins July 1. Davenport will provide pastoral care, supervise weekly religious services, oversee musical programs, and develop special events. She replaces Rev. Alison Boden, who is now at Princeton University.

Fund-raising hits new high
Chicago’s total cash fund-raising ranked 11th in the country with $333.49 million at the end of the 2007 fiscal year, according to the Council for Aid to Education. The top-ranking school was Stanford University ($832.34 million).

GSB expands global footprint
The Graduate School of Business has announced plans for a larger Singapore campus. The school will move from its current House of Tan Yeok Nee location, where it has been since 2000, into a three-building campus north of Singapore’s central business district. More than double the current location’s size, the new campus provides space to expand the GSB’s offerings beyond an executive-MBA program to provide non-degree executive-education courses. Other University units also will offer programs in Singapore.

Going up: College tuition
In April the Board of Trustees approved a 4.9 percent tuition hike for College students, pushing total yearly costs to an estimated $48,488. Softening the blow, of 4,780 undergraduates enrolled in the College, about 57 percent receive financial aid. And for students whose annual family income falls below $60,000, the new Odyssey scholarship program replaces loans entirely with grants. For students with an annual family income between $60,000 and $75,000, Odyssey cuts their loans in half.

An American in Beirut
In March Peter F. Dorman, PhD’85, a professor in the Oriental Institute and chair of Near Eastern languages & civilizations, was named president of the American University of Beirut (AUB). Dorman, who lived in Lebanon as a child and has spent much of his career in the Middle East, becomes AUB’s 15th president since its 1866 founding. He is the great-great-grandson of the institution’s founder, Daniel Bliss. 

Focus on human rights
The College will use a $1 million gift from Richard Pozen, AB’69, and his wife, Ann Silver Pozen, to create the Pozen Visiting Professorship in Human Rights. Pozen professors will serve quarter-long appointments, teaching a College-level Human Rights Program course and participating in workshops and campus activities.

New mind, biology institute head
Leslie Kay, associate professor in psychology, has been named director of the Institute for Mind and Biology. The institute brings together researchers from several disciplines to examine basic questions about the mind’s interaction with other body systems as well as how social contexts influence health. As director, Kay succeeds Martha McClintock, the David Lee Shillinglaw distinguished service professor in psychology.

Fighting youth violence
A team of University and national scholars will work with the City of Chicago to develop interventions to reduce youth crime. The project falls under the larger University of Chicago Crime Lab initiative’s research framework. School of Social Service Administration professors Jens Ludwig and Harold Pollack, also faculty chair of the Center for Health Administration Studies, will lead the project.

Relief for the developing world
The Yale School of Medicine named a team of Chicago students—23 from the Pritzker School of Medicine, three from the College—the winner of the first Outstanding REMEDY Program Award. In summer 2007 Chicago’s REMEDY, or Recovered Medical Equipment for the Developing World, team spent two weeks setting up health clinics across the Dominican Republic. Yale, which administers the REMEDY program, chose Chicago from more than 600 participants nationwide, citing the students’ “ease with which they run the program.”

Pathogen probe
In April Argonne National Laboratory officials marked the upcoming completion of the Howard T. Ricketts Regional Biocontainment Laboratory with an open house. Researchers at the facility, named for the Chicago associate professor who discovered that the Rocky Mountain wood tick carried the bacillus for Rocky Mountain spotted fever, will examine infectious microbes to produce drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic devices to counter bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases. Officials at Argonne, which the U of C manages, expect the lab to open in August.

After the Co-Op: Treasure Island
Treasure Island Foods, a Chicago-based high-end grocery store, opened on 53rd Street in March, replacing the shuttered Hyde Park Co-Op Market. The Co-Op, a 75-year-old neighborhood institution, closed January 20 after its board voted to dissolve the store in exchange for its landlords’ (including the U of C) assumption of some of its existing debts.

New job program
In March Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, University President Robert J. Zimmer, and several city and South Side community leaders launched the Career Pathways Initiative. The program helps South Side residents find entry-level jobs on campus.

Rekindling a rivalry
After a 78-year hiatus, the U of C and Tokyo’s Waseda University renewed their baseball rivalry with a three-game series in Japan as part of the Maroons’ annual spring-break road trip (see the CORE College supplement, page 23). The late-March expedition, organized to commemorate Waseda’s 125th anniversary, honored a tradition that lasted from 1910 to 1936, with the Maroons traveling by boat to Tokyo every five years. In this year’s revival, Waseda, the 2007 Japanese college baseball champions, won all three games.

A federal presence
In April the University established a Federal Relations Office and appointed A. Scott Sudduth associate vice president for federal relations. Based in Washington, D.C., Sudduth will represent the University’s perspective on higher education and research policy to Congress and the executive branch. He also addresses issues related to Argonne and Fermilab national laboratories. Sudduth, who has led federal-relations efforts for the University of California system since 1988, begins June 1.

Law school cuts Net
The Law School removed Internet access in most classrooms to eliminate some classroom distractions. Some professors had already established no-computer rules during class, but because many students prefer to use laptops for note-taking, Law School Dean Saul Levmore didn’t want to ban computers altogether.

Disneyland analysis
A four-student team from the Graduate School of Business won the Roland Berger IESE Business School international competition in Barcelona. Seven teams were asked to analyze Hong Kong Disneyland’s financial performance and provide recommendations to the company for going forward. The team members are Bharat Kapoor, Dustin Lyman, Nayan Patadia, and Michelle Warner.

Suspects plead not guilty
The youths charged with the November 19 fatal shooting of Amadou Cisse, a U of C graduate student, pleaded not guilty in Cook County Court on February 26. The four suspects are Demetrius Warren, 17; Eric Walker, 16; Benjamin Williams, 21; and Jamal Bracey, 17. The shooting marked the first time a student has died from a violent crime on or near campus since July 1977.