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CAMPUS
BULLETINS
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THE BEAT GOES ON: Applications are up, selectivity is up, SAT scores
are up - in other words, it was just another year for the College
Admissions Office.
A record
14,094 applications were received for places in the Class of 2005,
an increase of 4.7 percent over a year ago. The College accepted
1,720 students, producing a selectivity or admittance rate of 12.2
percent, the lowest in College history and the third-lowest in the
Ivy League behind Harvard (10.7) and Princeton (11.7). With the
College's target enrollment at 1,007, that would make the yield
58.5 percent.
The
average SAT scores of the students accepted was 1,425, another record,
and 88 percent of those students who submitted a class rank were
among the top 10 percent of their class. Students were accepted
from all 50 states and 35 countries.
Early
decision applications reached 1,501, up 12.9 percent, an indication
that Columbia continues to be a school of choice among leading students.
Annmarie
Gallagher '03 with her poster at the Capitol.
PHOTO: DONALD HOOD
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POSTER: A poster designed by Annemarie Gallagher '03 was
one of 64 selected for presentation on March 29 in the U.S. Capitol.
Gallagher, the youngest of the 64 presenters, assembled the poster,
"Detecting Optic Nerve Disease with the Multifocal Visual Evoke
Potential (mVEP): Lessons from the Blind Spot" as part of the
fifth annual research poster competition organized by the Washington,
D.C.-based Council on Undergraduate Research, which promotes undergraduate
student research in science, mathematics and engineering. Donald
Hood, the James F. Bender Professor in Psychology, sponsored
Gallagher in the competition. Nile Kurashige '01 Barnard was also
selected to present a poster in the competition.
PRINCETON'S PLAN: With an endowment that has surpassed $8 billion
plus a strong annual giving program, Princeton has announced plans
to provide grants instead of loans for all of its undergraduate
financial aid beginning with the fall 2001 semester as part of a
$57 million increase in endowment-income spending. The no-loan program
for undergraduates is expected to cost more than $5 million next
year, while improved support for graduate students will cost more
than $6 million.
Columbia
will be studying the effects of the changes in Princeton's financial
aid policies, the second time in three years the school has moved
to makes its package more attractive to prospective undergraduates,
as well as the responses of other Ivy and peer institutions. However,
Dean Austin Quigley noted that the College's prospective student
pool differs significantly from Princeton's, so there is not expected
to be any immediate effect of the move on Columbia's ability to
attract top students.
VAN DOREN/TRILLING: The annual Van Doren and Trilling awards were
scheduled to be presented on April 23, after press time, so look
for coverage in the September issue of CCT. The awards are
presented by students to faculty members, the Van Doren award for
outstanding teaching and the Trilling award in recognition of an
outstanding book written by a faculty member.
BANQUETED: Colleagues and students honored University Professor
Ronald Breslow in word and music at a banquet-symposium on
Saturday, March 24. The evening, which marked the esteemed chemist's
70th birthday, featured the world premiere of a celebratory piano
solo, Liberating Chemistry from the Tyranny of Functional Groups,
composed by Bruce Saylor specifically for the evening and performed
by pianist Michael Boriskin. (The title of the piece refers to Breslow's
pioneering research on artificial enzymes.) The 200 invited guests
at the Low Library event included leading chemists from across the
United States, some of whom were Breslow's students, as well as
colleagues and students from Columbia and other institutions.
Breslow,
who has been a Columbia faculty member for more than four decades,
was recently named one of the top 75 contributors to the field of
chemistry in the last 75 years by Chemical and Engineering News.
His research has focused on the design and synthesis of new molecules
with interesting properties, and the study of these properties.
He has received many of the top prizes in his field, including the
U.S. National Medal of Science and the Priestley Medal of the American
Chemical Society, its highest honor.
ADVISING: Robert Glenn Hubbard, R.L. Carson Professor of
Finance in the Business School, was named chairman of the President's
Council of Economic Advisors in February. A tax-cut advocate, the
Columbia economist served as a deputy assistant secretary in the
Treasury Department during the administration of President Bush's
father. He joined the younger Bush's campaign in 1999 to help develop
economic policies.
The
Council of Economic Advisors focuses primarily on research but also
assists in formulating policy. While the council chairman used to
be the president's chief economic adviser, that position has been
transferred to the head of the National Economic Council, currently
Lawrence Lindsey, a friend of Hubbard's since graduate school at
Harvard. "You have to see how these things evolve," Hubbard
said in The New York Times on February 27, "but my hope
for the Council of Economic Advisers is that it plays a very strong
participatory role in developing economic policy."
A
tax law specialist and prolific researcher, Hubbard has argued that
high marginal tax rates discourage work effort and also entrepreneurial
activity, which he suggests is mostly taken on by the wealthy. He
has also studied family savings, reasons creditors are reluctant
to lend to farmers, and obstacles corporations face obtaining loans.
A Florida native, Hubbard attended the University of Central Florida
and received his doctorate from Harvard in 1983. He taught at Northwestern
for several years before moving to Columbia, where he has held a
joint appointment as an economics professor in Columbia's Faculty
of Arts and Sciences since 1997.
COMMUNITY: More than 1,000 volunteers from the Columbia community
led by President George Rupp joined their neighbors from
the surrounding communities on a cold, rainy March Saturday to clean
parks, renovate buildings, repaint school classrooms and work at
other projects during the fourth annual Columbia Community Outreach,
a student-organized event. U.S. Representative Charles Rangel
gave opening remarks, followed by keynote speaker Evan Davis,
president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York
and clerk of the Trustees at Columbia.
HELP WANTED: The Center for Career Services has launched its first-ever,
online Alumni Resource Network, where Columbia students and alumni
can search for career advice. Created through an expanded partnership
with JOBTRAK, this database holds occupational information of Columbia
graduates in virtually all career fields including current positions,
career paths and resources they wish to offer. It contains a searchable
feature where students and other alumni can view this information
and contact those they wish for advice and guidance, as well as
a tracking method for alumni to select the amount of times they
wish to be contacted per month.
If
you are interested in sharing your professional knowledge and expertise
and would like to become a resource, go to: www.columbia.edu/cu/ccs.
By clicking on the Alumni link, you will find instructions to register
with the online Alumni Resource Database. When prompted for a password,
enter LION as a default password until you make the change. For
additional information, call CCS at (212) 854-5609.
SOCIAL WORK: Columbia has announced plans to construct a new building
for the School of Social Work at 121st Street and Amsterdam Ave.
on land that has been empty for many years and is often called the
"Pharmacy site," after the defunct School of Pharmacy.
A second building also will be built on that site, to provide housing
for Law School students.
Community
protests had led the University to halt construction last winter
at the original Social Work site, on 113th Street between Broadway
and Riverside Drive.
110th STREET: At a lengthy and spirited public hearing on March
6, Community Board 7 approved Columbia's request for building variances
at 110th Street and Broadway that would allow the construction of
a shorter, wider building to house the proposed faculty residence
and K-8 school. Though Columbia can build a structure as tall as
18 stories, the variances will allow a 12-story building with architectural
features contextual to Morningside Heights and better space for
residential living, retail stores and the elementary school. The
planned building would include 27 apartments for faculty with children,
space for an innovative K-8 school on the first through sixth floors
and ground floor retail to contain a grocery market and Chase Manhattan
Bank, a current tenant on the site. As part of the project, two
adjacent historic buildings will be renovated at no cost to tenants
and dedicated entirely as housing for non-Columbia affiliates.
CALLING ALL PHILOS: The Philolexian Society, which lays claim to
being the oldest student organization on campus, is beginning plans
to celebrate its 200th anniversary in 2002. The organization, whose
mission is to improve the rhetorical skills and literary awareness
of students, was founded in 1802, continued uninterrupted until
1962, and was reestablished in 1985. In preparation for the anniversary
celebration, the current Philolexian leadership would like to get
in touch with former Philos, from any point in the Society's history.
Alumni can contact Rachel Kahn-Troster '01 Barnard, censor
of the Society, at rdk23@columbia.edu
for information.
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