February 3, 2005

The digest

Northwestern people, events and things

Former Gov. Thompson talks on 9/11 Report / Law School alumnus and former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson recently delivered a Crain Lecture on the work of the 9/11 Commis-sion, of which he was a member. In his talk “Are We Safe?” he said, “Our task was to find out what happened, why it happened, could it have been prevented and, most importantly, what can this nation do to decrease the odds of it happening again.”

“We worked for a year and a half, at first largely in silence,” he said, adding that interviewing higher-profile witnesses, like the heads of the CIA, FBI, and members of the Clinton and Bush cabinets, brought more media exposure to the commission, as did the release of the 9/11 Commission Report.

Since its publication, more than a million copies of the report have been sold, and millions more have been downloaded.

Student’s lofty fundraising / Kellogg School student Bo Parfet is doing his part as a global citizen by raising money for scholarships at schools on each continent. But that’s the easy part. He is climbing the world’s Seven Summits — the tallest mountain on each continent — in conjunction with his fund-raising. Parfet has already climbed four mountains and will take on Mount Everest in Nepal this spring. For his first climb, he ascended Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa and raised $14,000 through business contacts, family and friends to help pay the tuition of two African medical school students.

SESP software tops list / A software product developed by the School of Education and Social Policy recently received a top ranking in the Peoples’ Choice Awards 2005, sponsored by eSchool News. Readers of the online publication recognized “My World GIS” as one of the top selections in the school science category. After only 10 months on the market, it placed sixth on the list of Earth science software for high school.