AROUND THE QUADS: CAMPUS BULLETINS CONTINUED [ 2 OF 3]

Broadway producer Michael Rothfeld '69 (center) and his wife, Dr. Ella M. Fochay, chat with Dean Austin Quigley at the dedication of Lerner Hall's new Black Box Theatre. PHOTO: MICHAEL DAMES

Around the Quads

• Bollinger Becomes University's 19th President • Cole, Cohen To Leave Administrative Posts • Campus Bulletins • Transitions • Alumni Bulletins • In Lumine Tuo • College Honors 65 Students at Awards and Prizes Ceremony • More Than 1,000 Take Part In Community Outreach

BLACK BOX: Students and alumni gathered at Lerner Hall on April 16 to formally dedicate the student center’s new Black Box Theatre. Located on the fifth floor, the theater was inaugurated with performances by three student drama groups: the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe, the Columbia University Performing Arts League and the Black Theatre Ensemble.

“Virtually all of the good things in my life (besides my parents) are a result of my four years at Columbia,” said Michael Rothfeld ’69, the theater’s primary sponsor.

Dean Austin Quigley dedicated the theater with Rothfeld, following remarks by Ethan McSweeny ’93. After graduating as the College’s first theater major, McSweeny began a successful career as a director in regional and off-Broadway theater. He made his Broadway debut with last season’s Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, an all-star revival produced in part by Rothfeld.

“I got an enormous kick standing in the back of the theater and watching the audience enjoy the play,” Rothfeld said of that show. “One of the best experiences I had [as a producer] was working with Ethan.”

Operated through Student Development and Activities, the Black Box Theatre will be another venue for undergraduate theatre students to present their work. Applications to schedule in the theater are open to all recognized undergraduate student organizations.

MUTICULTURAL CORE: The Heyman Center for the Humanities has been awarded a $309,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support a series of workshops for the development of a multicultural sequence in the College’s Core Curriculum. The Core Curriculum began in 1919 with the establishment of the Contemporary Civilization course on war and peace issues. Literature Humanities followed in 1937 and by 1947 Art Humanities and Music Humanities had been added. The Core currently also includes Logic and Rhetoric, a Major Cultures component plus foreign language, science and physical education requirements.

The grant will support a series of three-week workshops in which faculty, post-doctoral fellows and preceptors in Core courses will discuss major texts, themes and issues in the major world traditions central to general education and suitable for further exploration in upper-level college seminars. The first workshop ran from May 28 to June 13 and focused on concepts of nobility (i.e., leadership) and civility. A later session will deal with the Medieval to Enlightenment periods, and a third session will address the modern period.

Wm. Theodore de Bary ’41, director of the Heyman Center and the John Mitchell Mason Professor and Provost Emeritus of the University, noted that the inclusion of a multicultural sequence in the Core Curriculum was anticipated by the Core’s founders, such as Dean Harry Carman and Mark Van Doren.

 NEIGHBORLY: In order to make information on Columbia construction projects, community services and other programs and initiatives more accessible to neighborhood residents, Columbia has launched a new Web site, Information for Our Neighbors. It also is accessible from a link on the home page of the main Columbia Web site.

In addition to updates about building construction, the site organizes and presents information on the many University programs that may be of interest to Columbia neighbors, including community service programs, cultural events and the economic links between the University and Upper Manhattan. The site also has links to Columbia Web sites and recent Columbia reports and publications.

Columbia is working with area community board offices, including CBs 7, 9, 10 and 12, to provide public Internet access for residents’ use. Residents without Internet access who are interested in the information on the Neighbors Web site can visit their local library or contact the Office of Community Affairs at (212) 854-4288 for written materials.

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