Posted in College
Seven startups run by Columbia College young alumni — BoardRounds, Ply, Longneck & Thunderfoot, Rawr Denim, Shout, ModaBound and Bundle Organics — were chosen to take part in the new Columbia Startup Lab in SoHo. The lab will provide a dedicated Columbia-only shared workspace on the street level of the eight-floor Varick Street location of WeWork, a building that currently houses — and was the site of the founding of — Reddit. These startups are seven of a total of 31 teams of Columbia alumni from the College, Engineering, SIPA and the Business School that will be housed at the WeWork space beginning in June.
Twelve first-year students in Columbia College, The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and General Studies have received 2014 Presidential Global Fellowships. The students, whose academic interests range from Art History, French and Sociology to Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, and Industrial Engineering to Physics, Sustainable Development and Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, were selected from a pool of more than 100 for the University’s new undergraduate global summer program.
Students will honor Professor of Mathematics Robert Friedman with the 2014 Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching, which recognizes a faculty member’s “humanity, devotion to truth and inspiring leadership,” and Professor of History Rashid Khalidi with the 2014 Lionel Trilling Book Award, given to a member of Columbia’s faculty whose book was published in the previous year, for his book Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East, at an awards ceremony in Low Library on May 5. The honorees are selected annually by a student committee to honor faculty members for their contributions in the classroom and in print.
Acclaimed actor and screenwriter Dan Futterman CC ’89, known for his screenplay of the award-winning film Capote (2005), will deliver the keynote address at the 2014 Columbia College Class Day ceremony. The annual event, which honors graduating seniors, will take place at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 20, 2014, on the South Lawn of Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus.
Katie Bentivoglio CC ’13 has received a prestigious Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Junior Fellowship. The highly-competitive fellowship, at the think tank’s offices in Washington D.C., is offered to between 10 and 12 seniors and recent graduates each year from nearly 400 participating colleges, each of which may only nominate two candidates per year.
History Professors Elizabeth Blackmar and Christine Philliou CC ’94, Political Science Professor Virginia Page Fortna, English and Comparative Literature Professor Erik Gray, Earth and Environmental Sciences Professor Peter Kelemen, Art History and Archaeology Professor Ioannis Mylonopoulos, Psychology Professor Valerie Purdie-Vaughns CC ’93, French and Romance Philology Professor Joanna Stalnaker and Biological Sciences Professors Brent Stockwell and Rafael Yuste, will be honored this spring with Lenfest Distinguished Teaching Awards.
Samuel Zeng CC ’15 and Kun Leng CC ’15 have been awarded honors thorugh The Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program. The Goldwater Scholarship, a federally-endowed program honoring former U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, is the premier undergraduate award for students interested in pursuing careers in mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering.
Abbee Cox CC ’14, a psychology major, has been named a 2014 Humanity in Action Fellow. The Humanity in Action Fellowship brings together college students and recent graduates from around the world to explore different national histories of discrimination and resistance to injustice, as well as contemporary issues affecting minority groups.
Robert L. Belknap SIPA ’57, GSAS ’59, professor emeritus of Russian in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, longtime Literature Humanities instructor and former acting College dean, passed away on March 17. “Bob was a magisterial teacher of literature in true Columbia tradition, a guiding intellect and scholar in the field of Russian literature and a committed educator who devoted his energy and vision to making Columbia an institution to be proud of,” said Liza Knapp GSAS ’85, department chair and associate professor of Slavic. “From start to finish he was a man of integrity, wit, wisdom and goodwill.”
The Teagle Foundation has awarded Columbia, along with Yale University and the University of Chicago, a $280,000 grant for a three-year collaborative research project to study the significance, impact and role of core curriculum programs housed within research universities, strengthen the three institutions’ core text-based programs and engage others in similar work.