News On Campus
Pick-Staiger Rings in 25th Year
Destination: Plan-It Purple
Profiling Racial Profiling
Young Woman with a Future
The Cloak of History
Bikers Battle Breast Cancer
New Students: Right on Target

Lab Notes

Rural Poor Worse Off
More Juice
Healthy Lifestyles
QAPs Off
DNA Sleuth
Key to Asthma, Allergies

Sesquicentennial

Impersonating History

Deaths
Sheldon Berger
Bernard Gordon
Marvin Lee Manheim Anthony Raimondi
Laszlo K. Stein
Samuel Thaviu
Rosemary Wells


Campaign Northwestern
Campaign Leadership Broadens Its Base

Donor Paul Leffman, right, with University President Henry Bienen at the dedication of the expanded Block Museum.

(Photo by Stephen Anzaldi)

In the museum's permanent collection, Jacob Lawrence's Confrontation on the Bridge, screen print, 1975

 

Expanded Block Museum Opens to Rave Reviews


A new and greatly expanded Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art awed visitors when the facility reopened to the public in late September.

A gift of more than $4 million from North Shore art patron Paul Leffmann made the renovation possible. The museum has grown to 20,000 square feet of space and now includes an impressive second story that triples the original size of the building.

More than 6,000 square feet are being devoted to multiple exhibition spaces and greatly expanded educational facilities featuring the 160-seat James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium and the Ellen Phillips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery.

The museum also boasts a new conference room, library and administrative offices, as well as offices for the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (CIRA) and the new Center for Art and Technology.

The museum also contains a print, drawing and photography study center housing its growing permanent collection, which now numbers more than 5,000 works and includes such artists as William Hogarth, Henry Moore, Andy Warhol, Ed Paschke, Wassily Kandinsky and James McNeill Whistler.

The new center makes all of the Block Museum's collections accessible to Northwestern faculty, students, visiting scholars, teachers, school groups and the general public by appointment. The center also gives the museum the ability to organize small scholarly exhibitions that are to be seen for short periods of time and are organized in conjunction with classes, seminars and special programs.

Architect Dirk Lohan of Chicago designed the new structure.

Starting this fall docents began taking an active role both in giving visitors -- from middle-school children to adults -- the background on the artists and in leading groups on tours of the outdoor sculpture garden.

For more information about future Block Museum exhibitions, visit the Block Museum Web site at www.northwestern.edu/museum or call (847) 491-4001.

Pick-Staiger Rings in 25th Year
In 1970 the late Albert Pick Jr. (H76), former chair of Pick Hotels Corp., and his wife, Corinne Frada Pick (Mu24), celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. She received a present -- Pick-Staiger Concert Hall -- that has been the architectural and acoustic "Gem of the North Shore" and a significant part of Northwestern's educational and cultural landscape ever since its dedication a quarter-century ago on Oct. 26, 1975.

The gift was an appropriate one. Born in Seattle, Corinne Pick attracted attention as a pianist by the time she was 5. When she was 9, she studied in San Francisco with Hugo Mansfeldt, a student of Franz Liszt. She continued her music studies at Northwestern.

To ensure that the hall would be among the best in the country, Albert Pick encouraged his esthetically inclined brother-in-law, Charles Staiger, to join him in supporting the project. The two had remained close after the death of Pick's sister, Pauline, a year after her marriage to Staiger.

Staiger began his career in a fine arts gallery in New York City, where he developed a lifelong love of Chinese art. (The Pick-Staiger lobby displays numerous Chinese pieces from his personal collection.)

Pick-Staiger's silver anniversary is being celebrated throughout the 2000–01 season. The festivities kicked off with a gala weekend Oct 26–29 of concerts, lectures, exhibits and receptions highlighting the full range of performance at the School of Music.

As the school's primary performance facility, Pick-Staiger has presented thousands of musical performances, ranging from faculty recitals and student ensemble performances to concerts and master classes by some of the music world's leading artists.

Plans for a concert hall had been in existence for many years, but only with the completion of the lakefill project in 1964 was space available. In breaking ground for the concert hall, the Picks and Staiger effectively laid the cornerstone for a comprehensive Northwestern arts complex that eventually grew to include Regenstein Hall of Music, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, the Theatre and Interpretation Center and the Marjorie Ward Marshall Dance Center.

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Destination: Plan-It Purple
Fasten your seat belts for the ride to Plan-It Purple. Northwestern's Departments of Information Technology and University Relations have collaborated on a new online public calendar allowing students, alumni, faculty and staff members to find and publicize campus events.

Before the Web debut of Plan-It Purple, 52 separate Northwestern online calendars existed, each providing event information for a single Northwestern department or school. Now all the information is in one location at www.planitpurple.northwestern.edu

The demand for calendar centralization has been growing, according to Thomas Board, director of technology support services for IT. "For several years we've wanted to develop this service," he said. "With leadership from UR and design input from major Northwestern calendar providers, Plan-It Purple has an exciting look and a rich set of features that are easy to use." Viewers can find information on the calendar by date, campus (Evanston or Chicago), group or type of event.

For those less familiar with the Internet, Plan-It Purple provides step-by-step guides to help submit events as well as edit the submission. Also, those who want to publicize their events on other Northwestern calendars as well as Plan-It Purple will be able to do so without having to go through the process more than once.

"We're hopeful that, with a direct link from the University's home page, Plan-It Purple will become the central source for the listing of all campus events," said Alan Cubbage, vice president for university relations.

Leah Culligan is the editor of Plan-It Purple. She can be reached at planit@northwestern.edu

 

 

 

 

Profiling Racial Profiling

Tackling an issue that has cropped up in communities across the United States, Northwestern's Center for Public Safety organized a symposium on racial profiling last September that attracted 400 participants.

"The goal was to help law enforcement agencies conduct effective crime and traffic crash prevention programs while protecting the rights of citizens," said Alexander Weiss, director of the center. Charges of racial profiling by police departments were leveled in the last year in many U.S. cities.

Top law enforcement executives making presentations included police chief David Bejarano of San Diego and Reuben Greenberg, police chief of Charleston, S.C.

Symposium speakers also included Harvey Grossman (L73), legal director of the Illinois division of the American Civil Liberties Union; Harvard professor Randall Kennedy, author of Race, Crime and the Law (Random House paperback, 1998); and David Harris (WCAS80), associate professor of law at the University of Toledo.

In his presentation, Harris noted that he has studied traffic ticketing in four Ohio cities. His research strongly indicates that African Americans are about twice as likely to be stopped and ticketed as other drivers. The rate actually increases if federal data are factored in showing that African Americans are less likely than whites to be drivers.

 

 

Young Woman with a Future

 
  Ana Ivelisse Aviles is a role model for the visually impaired.
In a telephone conversation, Ana Ivelisse Aviles' tone of voice immediately conveys the motivation and self-assurance that have been key to her success.

What a telephone conversation does not reveal is that Aviles is legally blind, but that fact has not proven to be a hindrance that she could not overcome.

The third-year graduate student in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences has worked with a variety of agencies and businesses, including the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards, and held an internship with LifeScan, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

Winner of leading awards from the National Science Foundation and the American Society for Quality, she most treasures her Floyd R. Cargill Scholarship from the Illinois Council of the Blind. To her, this recognition underscores the fact that the severely visually impaired should not limit their goals.

Her future plans include teaching, in an attempt to produce engineers who understand the interdependency of academe and commerce. "The important thing is that we all work together toward a goal," Aviles says. "I feel the knowledge I gained at Northwestern will help me to repay society for helping me get this far."

 

 

The Cloak of History

The blood-soaked cloak in the Chicago Historical Society that Mary Todd Lincoln may -- or may not -- have worn on that fateful night at Ford's Theatre is the focal point of a compelling Web site on the tragedy of Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

"Wet with Blood: The Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln's Cloak" (www.chicagohs.org/wetwithblood), a joint Northwestern­Chicago Historical Society project, makes use of 21st-century Internet technology to create a richly textured exhibit on the culture of Civil War America.

Lincoln's death, the exhibit visitor learns, was arguably the first media sensation, popularized and often sensationalized through illustrated booklets of the day. Visitors also discover how Lincoln mourners, overwrought with grief and excitement, descended on Ford's Theatre and the Petersen boarding house, where Lincoln died, to obtain keepsakes.

Viewers can also return to the scene of Lincoln's assassination and find out about the ongoing forensic investigation of the cloak.

"It is difficult to imagine a medium other than the Internet that could exhibit, juxtapose and simultaneously present documents, text and images in the multisensory way that ŒWet with Blood' allows us to examine the Lincoln assassination," said Smadar Kedar, site production manager and member of the University's academic technologies unit.

From left, medical students Robert Wysocki, Nicole Otanicar, Amit Patel and Colby "Shad" Thaxton bicycled for breast cancer research.

(Photo courtesy of Amit Patel)

Bikers Battle Breast Cancer

Four Northwestern medical students hit the road this summer -- on their bikes -- to raise more than $18,500 for breast cancer research at The Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.

Nicole Otanicar, Amit Patel, Colby "Shad" Thaxton and Robert Wysocki, all second-year medical students, organized a Breast Cancer Bike Quest and cycled 2,000 miles from Vancouver to San Diego between July 7 and Aug. 22. Sponsorships, mostly from private and personal donations, will go toward breast cancer research, treatment development and prevention awareness at the center.

"We were thinking about what to do with our summers, and riding for a cure sounded like a great idea," Patel said. The four decided to dedicate their time and physical effort to raise money to fight breast cancer because each of them was close with someone who had been a victim of the disease.

With 40 pounds of equipment and supplies on their backs, the bikers endured plenty of uphill roads and many cold, foggy mornings.

"The group itself was outstanding," said Patel after the trip. "I can't think of four people who worked together so well. Luckily, there weren't many injuries or broken bikes to fix."

 

New Students: Right on Target
Once again, more women than men have started first-year classes at Northwestern: 992 females and 902 males.

It's a trend that began about seven or eight years ago and mirrors a national phenomenon, according to Rebecca Dixon, associate provost of University enrollment.

The students are among the 14,719 who had applied for admission. The number of freshmen is near the University's target of 1,900 and also smaller than last year's class of 1,952 freshmen, Dixon said.

One significant change: 88 students are from foreign countries, compared with last year's 56. Dixon partly attributed the increase, an all-time high, to the accumulated effect of expanded overseas recruiting in Asian countries, the Middle East and Europe over the past several years as well as the economic recovery in those areas.

African American students compose exactly 6 percent of the class. Other ethnic categories are Hispanic/Latino, 4 percent, Asian American, 16.3 percent, Native American, 0.3 percent, domestic Caucasian, 61 percent, and foreign citizens, 4.6 percent. The class includes 7.7 percent who are either multiracial or did not report an ethnic identity.

Among freshmen from the United States, 46.3 percent are from the Midwest. The breakdown of other geographic areas is 13.4 percent from the West; 15.6 percent from the Middle States; 8.7 percent from the South; 5.0 percent from the Southwest; 4.5 percent from New England; and 6.3 percent U.S. citizens living overseas.

Academically, the middle 50 percent of SAT verbal test scores for the freshmen ranges from 630 to 720; the middle 50 percent of SAT math test scores ranges from 660 to 750. The mean high school class rank, in the 94th percentile, is slightly above that of last year's class.

In a sign of the times, 688 enrollees said they first found out details about Northwestern from the Internet as opposed to telephoning, using e-mail, visiting campus, writing a letter or attending a college night program.

Visit the Sesquicentennial Web site for the latest information on Northwestern's 150th anniversary celebrations.

Junior Elise Godinez, left, dressed as Northwestern educator Frances Willard, gives directions to a first-year student.

(Photo by Stephen Anzaldi)

Sesquicentennial
First-Year Students Shown Northwestern Character

Excuse me, Frances Willard, is that your building you're standing beside?

As part of the University's Sesquicentennial celebration, students dressed as Northwestern historical figures greeted freshmen moving into residence halls during September's New Student Week.

In addition to Frances Willard, the noted temperance and women's rights advocate, played by junior theater major Elise Godinez, other characters included James S. Kemper, Orrington Lunt, Sarah Rebecca Rowland, Helen Foster Walker and Annie May Swift.

The actors offered insight into the history of each residence hall and background on important figures in Northwestern's history.

Although Godinez passed on her temperance message to as many students as she could ("I'd better not catch you drinking in my building"), she wasn't entirely sure many of them caught the reference. But she enjoyed the experience anyway. "It was a fun way to interact with people," Godinez said. "It was an easy conversation starter."

Jenny Frank, a first-year student from Portland, Texas, who is living in Chapin Hall, had a brush with Julia Chapin herself. It was Chapin's brother-in-law, D.K. Pearsons, who provided the funds for the building.

"I thought, 'Wow, that's a very elaborate costume,'" Frank said. "Then she explained what was happening, and it all became clear."

The Sesquicentennial Office provided the young actors information about the people they played and rented the costumes. The rest was history.

In other Sesquicentennial news:

Everyone interested in the history of Northwestern will want to order the Sesquicentennial book -- Northwestern University: Celebrating 150 Years -- which is available for $45.

For more visual types, an hourlong videotape on the University, Northwestern: Moments in Time, is also ready for distribution. The cost is $10, plus shipping and handling. Both can be ordered by visiting the Sesqui-Web site at www.nu150.northwestern.edu or by calling (800) 621-2736.

And if that isn't enough, the special Sesquicentennial spring issue of Northwestern magazine -- lengthier than usual and covering the University's history, student life, academic contributions, the growth of both campuses and much more -- will definitely be a keepsake item. Look for it around March 1.

Northwestern researchers have found that rural poverty is a bigger problem than many imagined.

Prith Banerjee, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lab Notes
Rural Poor Even Worse Off than Urban Poor
Despite what most might think, rural labor markets have much higher unemployment and far less earnings growth than urban labor markets.

Those findings come out of a recent report issued by the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research (JCPR) and the Rural Policy Research Institute.

"Many low-income people in rural areas live in small towns and work at low-skill, low-wage jobs in manufacturing and service industries," said Greg Duncan, JCPR director and Northwestern professor of education and social policy.

The report's recommendations include creating a separate tier for larger families in the Federal Earned Income Tax Credit provisions, bolstering health insurance coverage and child-care assistance for low-wage families and making greater use of resources created by the Workforce Investment Act to match workers with jobs.

More Juice
Thanks to a three-year, $2 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, electrical and computer engineers at Northwestern are developing low-power computing systems that may breathe longer life into battery-powered, portable devices such as laptop computers, Palm Pilots and cellular phones.

Rather than improving the batteries, the team, led by Prith Banerjee, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is focusing instead on the complex architecture of the computer and its use of power to complete tasks.

In addition, the researchers will develop prototypes to reduce energy consumption for such devices as satellites.

Healthy Lifestyles Still a Good Idea
More proof of the value of a healthy diet and exercise: Men under 40 with elevated high-serum cholesterol levels face a greater long-term risk of dying from coronary heart and cardiovascular disease than male peers with lower cholesterol levels.

Jeremiah Stamler, professor emeritus of preventive medicine, and Northwestern colleagues evaluated the impact of cholesterol levels in some 82,000 men with no history of diabetes or heart attack in a study published last July in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In one of the long-term studies, 11,000 men age 18 to 39 were followed up for 25 years. In the second, 1,300 men age 25 to 39 were followed up for 34 years, and in the third, 69,000 men age 35 to 39 were followed up for 16 years.

Coronary heart disease accounted for 26 percent of all deaths in the first group, 34 percent of all deaths in the second and 28 percent of all deaths in the third. Cardiovascular disease accounted for 34 percent, 42 percent and 39 percent of all deaths, respectively.

QAPs Off
Researchers from Northwestern, the University of Iowa and Argonne National Laboratory have solved what is known as a quadratic assignment problem that was first posed in 1968 as a test of computer capabilities.

QAP problems such as this one arise in many applications, including decisions about the layout of departments in a hospital or manufacturing facility and the design of high-speed computer chips.

The undertaking, part of the National Science Foundation-funded MetaNEOS project, is one of the largest and most complex computations ever performed to crack a discrete optimization problem.

A collection of more than 1,000 computers around the world solved the problem over seven days. If the computation had been run on a single computer workstation, a final answer would have been about seven years away, said Jean-Pierre Goux, a former research associate at Argonne and Northwestern's Optimization Technology Center.

Further information on this QAP can be found at www.mcs.anl.gov /metaneos/nug30.

DNA Sleuth
Northwestern researchers have discovered a way to make DNA detection faster, cheaper and more accurate.

One hundred times more sensitive than conventional methods, scanometric DNA array detection combines gold nanoparticles with DNA to form tiny probes capable of detection. It could make point-of-care DNA testing possible in the doctor's office and in other places more accessible than hospitals.

These probes can distinguish a perfect DNA match from a close match and are able to pinpoint bad matches that might otherwise be missed by conventional detection systems. Results are read on a simple flatbed scanner costing as little as $60.

Chad Mirkin, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, and colleagues published their research in Science magazine in September.

Lock and Key to Asthma, Allergies
Researchers at Northwestern and Harvard Medical School have identified the structure of the interaction complex of two molecules central to the allergic response in humans.

A breakthrough that could affect the more than 50 million Americans with allergies and asthma, the discovery of how antibodies bind to mast cell receptors could lead to the development of a new class of drugs that attack allergies at their source.

The findings were published in a July issue of Nature.

Theodore S. Jardetzky, an assistant professor of biochemistry, molecular biology and cell biology who led the study, likens the interaction between receptor and antibody to a lock and key. "The antibody is the key that fits into the lock of the receptor on the mast cell. When an allergen, say a molecule present in cat dander, attaches to the antibody, it provides the signal to turn the key."

  Deaths

Sheldon Berger, 71, associate professor emeritus of medicine, died July 26 in Chicago.

A specialist in endocrinology, Dr. Berger authored more than 20 papers and headed numerous studies in his field.

He is survived by his wife, Cyrena, his mother, a daughter, three sons, a sister and four grandchildren.

Bernard Gordon, 78, adjunct associate professor emeritus of journalism, died June 4 in Glencoe, Ill.

Until retirement in 1991, Mr. Gordon was co-director with professor Abe Peck of the Magazine Publishing Group.

Mr. Gordon was preceded in death by his wife, Margaret. He is survived by two sons, two sisters and six grandchildren.

Marvin Lee Manheim, 63, professor of transportation and professor of management and strategy, died Aug. 10 in Chicago.

Mr. Manheim joined Northwestern in 1983 as William A. Patterson Distinguished Professor of Transportation. Before that, he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Survivors include his wife, Mary Beth Watson-Manheim, two daughters and a stepson.

Anthony Raimondi, 71, professor emeritus and former chair of neurological surgery, died June 16 in Gargagnago, Italy.

Dr. Raimondi, considered one of the founders of pediatric neurosurgery, chaired the department at Northwestern from 1972 to 1982.

He is survived by his wife, Lucia, a son, a daughter and four grandchildren.

Laszlo K. Stein (GS57, 63), 71, professor of communication sciences and disorders, died June 1 in Evanston.

Mr. Stein taught at Northwestern for 10 years in the School of Speech's Audiology and Hearing Science Department and in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in the Medical School.

Mr. Stein is survived by his wife, Jean, and one son.

Samuel Thaviu, 90, professor emeritus of violin, died July 1 in Evanston.

Mr. Thaviu began teaching music at Northwestern in 1966 and retired in 1977. Even after retirement he maintained ties to the University, sponsoring two competitions and giving annual recitals.

Mr. Thaviu is survived by his wife, Elinor, a son and daughter and a granddaughter.

Rosemary Wells (GSESP73), 69, former assistant professor in the Dental School, died May 18 in Deerfield, Ill.

Known for her interest in the tooth fairy myth, she actually turned her home into a tooth fairy museum. Ms. Wells also taught composition to dental hygiene students from 1967 to 1985.

She is survived by her husband, Warren, two sons, a daughter and six grandchildren.

Campaign Northwestern
Campaign Leadership Broadens Its Base
As is the case with many things in life, fund-raising efforts go through phases. Now that Campaign Northwestern is expected to pass the $1 billion mark by year's end -- on the way to the ultimate goal of $1.4 billion -- the campaign's leadership group has expanded its numbers.

"This is a very conscious decision," said Penelepe Hunt, associate vice president of University development. "As the campaign has matured, we've reached a point where we need to reach out to include more constituencies."

Accordingly, the group has added six new members: Judith Stofer Block (S63), Valerie M. Kahn (WCAS86), Christine Olson Robb (WCAS66), William E. Sagan (WCAS73), Sona Wang (KGSM86) and David B. Weinberg.

Block recently rejoined Northwestern's Board of Directors after serving as an alumni trustee from 1993 to 1997. She is the immediate past board chair of the Field Museum.

Kahn, who co-chaired the 1999 Medical Research Campaign for Children's Memorial Medical Center in Chicago, assists the University as national chair of the Northwestern Annual Fund.

Robb, current president of the John Evans Club, is an art dealer and interior designer. In addition to owning her own firm, Robb has been on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Women's Association Board of Directors and is active with many other Chicago-area organizations.

Sagan joined Northwestern's Board of Trustees in 1994 and since 1998 has been chairman and CEO of Benesight, a medical claims administrator.

Wang will be co-chair of the campaign leadership group's diversity committee and is a member of Northwestern's Council of One Hundred. A member of the Board of Trustees since 1999, she is a general partner at an Evanston-based venture capital firm, Inroads Capital Partners.

Weinberg, chairman and CEO of Judd Enterprises Inc., has been a trustee of the University since 1994 and chairs the committee on educational policies
and appointments.

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