Columbia College Alumni Association

Close Search

You are here

All-Class Reunion

2017 All-Class Reunion

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Read more about our All-Class Reunion 2017 Mini-Core Classes, Talks and Tours below.

Saturday, June 3 | Morning Keynote and Tours

10:15 a.m.-11:45 p.m.

Reunion Keynote: Scents and Sensibility: The Fascinating Relationship Between the Brain and Smell,
with Dr.
Richard Axel CC’67
Axel is a Nobel Prize Winner, a University Professor and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Columbia University.

Tours (choice of)

  • The Student Experience Tour
    Relive your student days by visiting residence halls, Butler Library and dining halls with a student guide.

  • The Neighborhood Tour
    Learn how Morningside Heights has changed and visit community favorites like The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and The Hungarian Pastry Shop on this student-guided tour.

  • The Baker Athletics Complex Tour
    Visit Columbia’s state­-of­-the-­art athletics fields and stadium.

  • Manhattanville: Tour of the Lenfest Center for the Arts
    Take a tour of one of the anticipated buildings at Columbia University's Manhattanville campus, Lenfest Center for the Arts, home of School of the Arts. The tour will include performance art spaces, the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Gallery, and great views of the city.

Saturday, June 3 | Afternoon Classes, Talks and Tours

2:15 p.m.-3:45 p.m.

Mini-Core Classes (choice of)

  • Literature Humanities
    Julie Crawford,
    the Mark Van Doren Professor of Humanities; the Paul Brooke Program Chair for Literature Humanities
    Resistance to Authority in Shakespeare’s 'Othello'
    Is there an analogy between legitimate resistance to political authority and the wife’s traditional right to disobey the unrighteous orders of her husband? What happens when the ruler of the domestic kingdom does not act justly? Join Crawford in this exploration of what Desdemona and Othello have to teach us about resistance to unjust authority.

  • Contemporary Civilization
    John Ma,
    Professor of Classics
    Democracy and Decision-Making in Thucydides
    Classical Athens, a direct democracy, managed an empire and fought a protracted world war with all decisions taken by vote in mass assemblies after competing speeches by politicians. Thucydides, a historian of empire and war, devotes particular attention to such decisions — notably the decisions to go to war or to escalate operations. His judgment was often critical, but was he right? Listen to Ma compare Thucydides’ judgments with actual ancient documentary records. What does the evidence tell us about the necessary conditions for viable democratic politics?

  • Frontiers of Science
    David Helfand,
    Professor of Astronomy
    Global Warming: What We Know, and What We Don’t Know
    Want to dispel the misinformation and cut through the irrational exuberance in today’s public debate on climate change? Listen to Helfand’s dispassionate analysis of what we know and what we don’t yet know. Every planet’s temperature is controlled by a simple balance between the energy it receives and the energy it radiates back into space. Helfand will examine each of the main factors affecting this balance, including astronomical ones over which we have no control and the composition of our atmosphere, which we are profoundly affecting, including context from climate changes derived from tree rings and ice cores. After examining the current energy balance and what we can expect during the next few decades, Helfand will conclude by exploding a few myths and providing a rational basis for decisions about the future.

  • Extreme Engineering
    Shahram Ebadollahi SEAS'99, '02, '05, BUS'16
    , Vice President, Innovation & Chief Science Officer at IBM Watson Health
    The Cognitive Era in Health
    IBM Watson Health is changing the ecosystem of healthcare to empower researchers, monitor patients and improve quality care through large-scale data curation and complex solutions. This talk will offer insight on cognitive systems, or augmented intelligence, and highlight the impact it has for transforming healthcare organizations.

  • Universities in a Post-Truth World with Professor Carol Gluck
    Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History
    At a moment when “truth” and “lying” have become terms of rhetorical sport, how can universities reassert the significance of evidence, the value of science, and the meaning of knowledge? In our changing media and political landscape, it seems urgent to consider anew how we think we know things, how information acquires the status of truth, and how data is deployed to advance claims. This panel, chaired by Professor Carol Gluck, Chair of the Committee on Global Thought, will bring together prominent speakers from Columbia and two of its international partner universities, Sciences Po (France) and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) for a multi-disciplinary conversation about the role of universities in a post-truth world.

Alumni Featured Talk

  • My Startup Story with Marco Zappacosta ’07, Co-Founder and CEO, Thumbtack
    Marco Zappacosta '07, co-founder and CEO, Thumbtack, speaks with Catherine Clifford '04, senior entrepreneurship writer, CNBC, about his journey from a political science major at Columbia to the head of a startup now valued at $1.3 billion.

Tours (choice of)

  • Student Experience Tour
    Relive your student days by visiting residence halls, Butler Library and dining halls with a student guide.

  • Neighborhood Tour
    Learn how Morningside Heights has changed and visit community favorites like The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine and The Hungarian Pastry Shop on this student-guided tour.

  • Manhattanville: Tour of the Lenfest Center for the Arts
    Take a tour of one of the anticipated buildings at Columbia University's Manhattanville campus, Lenfest Center for the Arts, home of School of the Arts. The tour will include performance art spaces, the Miriam & Ira D. Wallach Gallery, and great views of the city.