For the Record

Business dean to step down
Chicago Booth Dean Edward A. Snyder, AM’78, PhD’84, will step down in June. Snyder, the George Pratt Schultz professor of economics, led the business school through a period of growth during his nine-year tenure, including David Booth’s (MBA’71) $300 million donation and a move to the Charles M. Harper (MBA’50) Center. Endowed professorships nearly doubled, and scholarship assistance more than tripled during Snyder’s tenure.

Stone’s career needs no defense
The Illinois Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has honored clinical-law professor Randolph Stone with its lifetime achievement award. As director of the Law School’s Mandel Legal Aid Clinic from 1991 to 2001, Stone created its Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project. Before coming to the Law School, Stone was the Cook County public defender.

Rooted in South Side history
The University has dedicated the 5710 South Woodlawn Edible Arts Garden to South Side historian Timuel D. Black, AM’54. A political organizer, author, and a City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus, the 90-year-old Black leads tours of Bronzeville for the Hyde Park Historical Society and the Graham School of General Studies. The garden, dedicated in October outside the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, features South Side historic artifacts, including stone planters made from Maxwell Street pavement remnants.

Hansen heads Friedman Institute
Lars Peter Hansen has been named founding director of the Milton Friedman Institute for Research in Economics. Hansen, the Homer J. Livingston distinguished service professor in economics and the College, chaired the faculty steering committee that recommended creating the institute, which opened in July 2008. The MFI’s role is to support research that “has the power not only to advance an academic field,” Hansen said, “but to encourage new directions of inquiry.”

Alumni scholars seek justice
Stephanie Bell, AB’08, has been named a Rhodes scholar, and Amol Naik, AB’09, has received a Marshall scholarship. Bell, an aspiring anthropologist, will pursue an M.Phil in development studies at Oxford and plans to become a social-justice advocate focusing on HIV/AIDS in Africa. Naik, who founded the Chicago Justice Initiative as an undergrad, will study the history of international relations and human rights at the London School of Economics.

Climate action
Kyle Gracey, a Harris School and physical-sciences master’s student, attended the December United Nations climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen as one of 27 youth leaders selected by the SustainUS Agents of Change program. Gracey reported on policy and political developments for the advocacy group Global Observatory. Argonne researchers Ted Bohn and Keith Hardy also attended the conference to discuss plug-in hybrid vehicles.

Henderson named Bator winner
Assistant law professor M. Todd Henderson, JD’98, will receive the Federalist Society’s 2010 Paul M. Bator Award in February. The Bator Award, named for the former Chicago and Harvard law professor, goes to an academic under 40 for excellence in legal scholarship, teaching, and public impact. Federalist Society president Eugene Meyer noted that, in addition to being “a first-rate scholar,” Henderson served in the military.

Early returns: apps are up
This fall the College received 5,855 early-action applications, a 32 percent increase from its 2007 high. Students applying early “tend to view the University as a first choice,” said James G. Nondorf, vice president and dean of College admissions and financial aid, “so the increase suggests a growing pool of students who are passionate about the institution.”

In their own words
The Black Youth Project, which features bloggers and researchers associated with the University, has launched blackyouthproject.com, designed to give voice to young black people. “While this generation of young African Americans are much talked about by pundits and the media, they are rarely talked with and asked to engage in real dialogue,” said Cathy Cohen, deputy provost for graduate education and principal investigator for the Black Youth Project. “Finally there’s a place on the Web where young black people can speak for themselves instead of having other people speak about them.”

Seed grants spur growth
Two projects funded by the University’s collaborative seed grants have earned additional support from the Department of Energy. Physicists Karen Byrnum, Henry Frisch, and Erik Ramberg—representing Argonne, the University, and Fermilab, respectively—received $8 million for their efforts to build a larger, faster, cheaper, and more precise light detector. Fermilab materials scientist Lance Cooley, AB’86, and chemistry professor Steven Sibener earned $1.5 million to study next-generation materials to make improved superconducting cavities.

Dig this
Christian Kammerer, AB’03, SM’06, became the third straight University of Chicago student, and the sixth since 2001, to receive the annual Alfred Sherwood Romer Prize from the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology. Kammerer, a PhD student in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology, earned the prize based on his presentation “The Effects of Mass Extinctions on Synapsid Disparity over Time” at the society’s October meeting in Bristol, England.

Protesters go caroling
About a dozen activists with the campus group Students Organizing United with Labor enlivened a December demonstration with seasonal sounds. The New York Times reported that songs like “O U of C” (to the tune of “O Christmas Tree”) protested shortened workweeks for hourly employees in residence halls and engineering offices. The group also criticized President Zimmer’s decision not to cut administration or faculty pay despite budget reductions. “The economy is bad, something we all know,” they sang in “Jingle Bells” style. “You say you’re cutting costs right now, but you’re paid like a CEO.”

Foster’s selection computes
The Association for Computing Machinery has named Ian Foster, the Computation Institute director, a 2009 ACM fellow. Foster, the Arthur Holly Compton distinguished service professor in computer science, was cited “for work in parallel programming languages, collaborative and distributive computing.”

Good chemistry
Chemistry professor Ka Yee Lee has been named the American Chemical Society’s 2009 Astellas USA Foundation Award winner. Lee, who studies the accumulation of beta-amyloid deposits in the brain linked to Alzheimer’s disease, will receive a $30,000 research grant. Also a newly elected American Physical Society fellow, Lee’s research includes the mechanical role of substances in the lungs that prevent the collapse of air sacs. Her findings could aid the treatment of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome, a common complication of premature birth.

Solar projects energized
Argonne National Laboratory has received $7.2 million for three solar-energy projects from the Department of Energy as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. An additional $5 million in ARRA funding will subsidize collaboration among Argonne, Commonwealth Edison, GridPoint, and the University of Illinois Sustainable Technology Center.

Honors add up for Alpert
Hannah Alpert, ’11, has been named a cowinner of the 2010 Alice T. Schafer Prize for excellence in mathematics by an undergraduate woman. In 2009 Alpert received a Barry M. Goldwater scholarship, and a paper she coauthored, “Obstacle Numbers of Graphs,” received an Undergraduate Poster Session Prize from the Mathematical Association of America. Schafer, SM’40, PhD’42, was a founding member and second president of the Association for Women in Mathematics.

McKee steps into Hawkins’s shoes
Dovetta McKee took over in November as director of the Office of Special Programs/College Prep. McKee, who worked for OSP in the 1990s, spent the past three years as director of special initiatives at Prevention First Inc. She succeeds Larry Hawkins, who died in January 2009 after leading the office since its 1968 founding. The program, which works with students from four South Side high schools, offers tutoring, cultural field trips, and college-preparation services.

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