The 47th Annual Mark Van Doren Award—which honors a Columbia professor for his or her commitment to undergraduate instruction, as well as for "humanity, devotion to truth, and inspiring leadership"—has been given to Andrew Nathan, the Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science. The award is named in honor of Mark Van Doren, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, novelist, literary critic, and longtime member of Columbia's faculty with a reputation for pedagogical greatness. Professor Nathan has taught at Columbia since 1971, during which time he has published many books on modern Chinese politics and human rights; served as director of the East Asian Institute at the School of International and Public Affairs; received a Guggenheim fellowship, among others; and directed graduate studies within the Political Science department—all while maintaining his accessibility and commitment to undergraduates. He currently teaches ‘Introduction to Human Rights’ and ‘Chinese Foreign Policy’ at the undergraduate level.

The 33rd Annual Lionel Trilling Award, which honors a book from the past year by a Columbia author that best exhibits the standards of intellect and scholarship found in the work of Lionel Trilling, '27, has been given to Joseph Massad for his Desiring Arabs. Professor Massad teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department. This book—his third—offers an insightful study of representations of Arab sexuality. It is an important and eloquent work of scholarship that the committee feels will have a lasting impact on its field.

The Columbia College Academic Awards Committee is a student-led group of nine students, representing a cross-section of classes and majors within the College. It is the committee's annual responsibility to oversee the selection process for the Lionel Trilling and Mark Van Doren awards. Beginning in the fall, the committee co-chairs select new members and solicit nominations for each award. For the rest of the fall semester, and well into the spring, committee members audit the classes (both lectures and seminars) of Van Doren award nominees to observe the quality of their instruction. At the same time, committee members read titles under consideration for the Trilling award. Working collaboratively, the committee meets every week to confer on the selection process and to evaluate nominated professors and all books published by Columbia’s faculty in the calendar year. This process culminates in the selection of the winners in the spring.

Frontiers of Science, the newest component of the College’s Core Curriculum, has been awarded a $200,000 grant from The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

Frontiers of Science, now in its fourth year, is a one-semester course taken by all College students in their first year. It consists of seminars of no more than 22 students per section led by faculty members and Columbia Science Fellows, and lectures delivered by some of Columbia’s leading scientists, including Nobel laureate Horst Stormer and National Medal of Science winner Wallace Broecker. The seminars provide a forum for in-depth discussion of the week’s lecture and associated readings, and debate on the implications of the most recent scientific discoveries.

The Core Curriculum, launched in 1919, is the cornerstone of Columbia’s baccalaureate program and the oldest uninterrupted program of general education in America. The Core provides students, regardless of their major or concentration, with wide-ranging perspectives on significant ideas and achievements in literature, philosophy, history, music, art, and now, science. By exposing students to pressing research questions and instilling a sense of how scientific thinking should inform public debate, Frontiers prepares students for citizenship in a technological age where scientific literacy is essential for success in virtually all careers.

The original Arthur Vining Davis Foundation was organized in 1952 under a living trust established by the donor, and two additional trusts commenced operations in 1965. According to the Foundations’ Web site, “The higher education program seeks to strengthen private four-year liberal arts institutions that place strong emphasis on teaching and whose students choose majors primarily in the humanities, science and math.” In addition, programs seeking grants should “reflect the undergraduate priority of the president” of the applying school, with preference given to “projects with potential to influence undergraduate education beyond the university.”

The grant will support the research conducted by the Fellows (post-doctoral level scientists) who teach in Frontiers of Science.

Dear Columbians,

Columbia has announced today major changes in the financial aid it provides to students and their families. Beginning in the fall of 2008, student loans will be replaced by grants across all income bands, parental contributions for families with incomes below $60,000 will be eliminated, and families with incomes between $60,000 and $100,000 will have their parental contributions significantly reduced.

It has long been recognized at Columbia that the institution’s national standing has been firmly based upon its twin commitments to inclusiveness and excellence. Financial aid is so important because the College’s excellence derives in significant part from its inclusiveness, from the range of voices that inform academic inquiry and social exchange. In this sense, all students benefit from our financial aid programs, whether or not they receive financial support, and our enhanced financial aid program will enable us to maintain this vital tradition.

We can make these enhancements now, rather than at the end of the Campaign for Undergraduate Education only, because we are confident that alumni, parents, and friends of the College will help fund them through continued giving—both to the College Fund and toward the additional $140 million in financial aid endowment still needed to meet the College goals of the Campaign. As always, we are deeply grateful to those who help us meet the needs of each new generation of students seeking access to all that a Columbia education provides.

Sincerely,

Austin E. Quigley
Dean of Columbia College

For more information:
www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/finaid/
giving.columbia.edu/FinancialAid.html

More than 600 alumni, students, faculty, administrators and guests filled Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City on March 5, as the College honored five of its most accomplished alumni with John Jay Awards for distinguished professional achievement: Barry Bergdoll ’77, Alexandra Wallace Creed ’88, Robert L. Friedman ’64, Jonathan S. Lavine ’88 and Ronald F. Mason Jr. ’74.

It was the most successful event in the 30-year history of the John Jay Awards Dinner, raising $2.2 million for the College in what Bill Campbell ’62, chair of the Board of Trustees, called “a real celebration of the College.” President Lee C. Bollinger echoed that thought when he observed, “In many ways, the College is first among equals at the University, and tonight we are here to celebrate the College.”

Brian C. Krisberg ’81, president of the Columbia College Alumni Association, thanked the attendees for their generosity and noted that the money raised “will help to enrich the lives of Columbia College students for years to come.”

In presenting the awards, Dean Austin Quigley declared that the five honorees “have enhanced the standing of the Columbia community through their remarkable achievements.” Each of the award recipients was introduced by a student who is a John Jay Scholar, and Mark Kortov ’08 spoke on behalf of all the scholars and thanked the alumni for their generous support of the special academic enhancement program.

Bergdoll is the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art and professor of architectural history in the Department of Art History and Archeology. He earned an M.A. and a B.A. with honors from King’s College, Cambridge, and an M.Phil. and Ph.D., in 1982 and 1986, respectively, from GSAS.

Bergdoll’s interests center on modern architectural history, with an emphasis on France and Germany between 1750–1900; cultural history; city planning; and the intersections of architecture and new technologies. He has studied questions of the politics of cultural representation in architecture, the larger ideological content of 19th-century architectural theory and the changing role of architecture as a profession and architecture as a cultural product in 19th-century European society.

Bergdoll has organized, curated and consulted on numerous exhibitions, including “Mies in Berlin” (MoMA, 2001), “Breuer in Minnesota” (Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 2002), “Les Vaudoyer: Une Dynastie d’Architectes” (Musée D’Orsay, 1991) and “Ste. Geneviève/Pantheon; Symbol of Revolutions” (Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1989).

He has written for Architecture, Harvard Design Magazine, The Yale Architecture Review and The New York Times and has written or contributed to several books. An edited volume, Fragments: Architecture and the Unfinished, was published in 2006, and a study of Marcel Breuer’s architecture is to be published this year.

“Columbia for me is a family,” he said, noting that he had arrived on campus 35 years ago and that any time he left, “it was always with a round-trip ticket.”

Creed was named executive producer of NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams in March 2007. This appointment made her the first woman to lead a weeknight network evening newscast in a decade, and she is one of a small group of women to serve in the top post of a Big Three daily newscast. Although Williams was unable to attend the dinner, he taped a congratulatory message that was shown to the audience.

Creed also is NBC News v.p., a position she has held since January 2006 and has overseen a number of areas in the News Division, including NBC Special Reports and executive oversight of NBC Nightly News.

Previously, Creed, who has a B.A. in English literature, was executive producer of Weekend Today and senior producer of Today beginning in March 2005. During her time as executive producer, Weekend Today’s ratings remained dominant and Saturday Today was No. 1 across the board.

Creed joined NBC News from CBS News, where she was a senior broadcast producer for The Early Show starting in May 2000, and was a senior producer for The Early Show and CBS This Morning. From 1996–98, Creed was producer for CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. From 1990–96, she was an associate producer for CBS This Morning, 48 Hours and the CBS foreign desk. She began her network career at the CBS News London bureau and has been honored with six News and Documentary Emmy awards.

“When I consider the things in life that are important to me, every one of them I trace back to Columbia,” she said. “The ability and urge to question everything that I developed at Columbia has been the foundation of my career as a journalist.”

Friedman is a senior managing director and chief legal officer of The Blackstone Group. Blackstone is a leading global alternative asset manager, operating the world’s largest private equity fund, one of the largest real estate opportunity funds, a leading fund of hedge funds business and other alternative asset management businesses.

Friedman joined Blackstone in 1999. He participates in the work of its private equity group and its mergers and acquisitions advisory group and also played a key role in effectuating its initial public offering in June 2007. Before joining Blackstone, Friedman had a 32-year career as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. He became a partner there in 1974 and for a long time was a leader of its mergers and acquisitions practice and a member of its senior management.

A member of the Board of Visitors, Friedman has served as a director of eight companies and also is a member of the Boards of Directors of Axis Capital Holdings Limited, Northwest Airlines and TRW Automotive Holdings Corp. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of Penn’s Institute for Law and Economics and is a trustee of the Nantucket Land Council as well as Chess-in-the-Schools and New Alternatives for Children, both in New York City.

“My years at Columbia were totally transformative,” said Friedman. “Columbia provides the best education that money, or a John Jay Scholarship, can buy.”

Lavine is a managing director at Bain Capital, a leading global private investment firm based in Boston, and the chief investment officer of Sankaty Advisors, Bain Capital’s fixed income and credit affiliate. Lavine started Sankaty, one of the nation’s leading managers of leveraged loans and bonds, credit derivatives, mezzanine and distressed debt, in 1997, and it now has 70 investment professionals in offices in Boston, London and Chicago and approximately $25 billion in committed assets under management. Before starting Sankaty, he worked in Bain Capital’s private equity business, was a consultant at McKinsey and began his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert.

An active alumnus, Lavine is a member of the Board of Visitors, the President’s Task Force on Athletics, the Campaign Committee for Undergraduate Education and Faculty Development and the Leadership Committee of the Columbia Campaign for Athletics. He also is a member of the boards of Children’s Hospital Trust, City Year, Horizons for Homeless Children, and Stand for Children and is a director of the Boston Celtics. In 2004, Lavine was honored as one of the Boston Business Journal’s 40 outstanding Bostonians under the age of 40.

Lavine earned an M.B.A., with distinction, from Harvard Business School. While at Columbia, he received the David Truman Award for outstanding contribution to the College’s academic affairs.

“Columbia teaches first and foremost critical thinking,” said Lavine. “Columbia really does send you away with one message: It is not about the degree you get, but what you do with that education.”

Mason was appointed president of Jackson State University in February 2000. Prior to this appointment, he founded and was executive director of the Tulane/Xavier National Center for the Urban Community, which grew out of his work as the federal monitor over the recovery of the Housing Authority of New Orleans. As an appointee of the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Mason was responsible for improving the city’s public housing.

A 1977 alumnus of the Law School, Mason simultaneously was Tulane’s senior v.p. and general counsel, where he oversaw the university’s business operations and was its chief legal counsel for 18 years. Prior to working at Tulane, Mason was executive counsel to the president of the Southern Cooperative Development Fund, which organized and financed low-income businesses and cooperatives across the Southeast. Mason was legal counsel and on special assignments, including management of a 300-acre experimental vegetable farm.

Jackson State has experienced unprecedented growth and enhancement during Mason’s tenure. Enrollment has grown by almost 3,000, the size of the campus has doubled, there have been more than $200 million in capital improvements, two colleges have been added, the endowment has quadrupled, the number of African-American Ph.D.s produced is second in the nation and research funding has tripled.

Among Mason’s awards and recognitions are the Mayor’s Medal of Honor from the City of New Orleans and the Martin Luther King Lifetime Achievement Award from Dillard, Loyola, Tulane and Xavier Universities.

“It’s great to be back at Columbia,” said Mason. “As we say down south, I feel like I’m in some pretty high cotton alongside the other distinguished honorees. It was an exceptional experience for me to come to Columbia and one for which I am forever grateful.”

The historical profession lost a giant with the passing of John A. Garraty, the Gouverneur Morris Professor of History emeritus at Columbia University. The author and editor of numerous American history books, Garraty was one of the most prolific historians of his generation. I worked as his last research assistant, and I once asked him the secret of his prolificness, as if expecting him to reveal some secret formula or regimen. In addition to his writing, he had a family, taught classes, vacationed at a Paris apartment and even ran the New York City marathon. Amidst all this activity, he still wrote copiously. “Where do you find the time?” I asked.

“Time?” he responded. “Time is a question of priorities. Only the dead have run out of time. They’ve met their final deadline.” I began to laugh, because it seemed a curious way to answer my question. But when I laughed, Dr. Garraty put up his hand. “No, I’m serious,” he said. “If something ranks high enough as a priority, you’ll find the time.”

Time ran out for Dr. Garraty on December 19, as he died at his Sag Harbor, N.Y., home of heart failure at age 87. But he leaves a wealth of work for readers to contemplate. The New York Times obituary on Garraty focused almost exclusively on a project he completed during retirement, the massive American National Biography. With the rise of online encyclopedias, the ANB — available in the reference section of virtually every library — may be the last work of its kind.

The ANB represented just one of many legacies that Garraty bequeathed the historical profession. One of his most impressive achievements was his textbook, The American Nation, first published in 1963 and now in its 12th edition. An entire textbook was a mammoth undertaking, but even in the days before word processors, Garraty was a fast writer. The American Nation became a best-selling college text, and Garraty published a version for high school students, too. Through his textbooks, Garraty reached millions of students — far more than through his classes or scholarly work.

Garraty had a knack for making history enjoyable. A specialist in political and economic history, he could make the dismal science of economics lively. The Great Depression, which Garraty published in 1986, has clear, simple chapter titles such as “Why It Happened,” “How It Started,” “What To Do About It” and “How It Ended.”

General as well as scholarly readers were Garraty’s intended audience, and he helped popularize history. In 1989, he began the “1001 Things” series with 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About American History. The series has grown to comprise titles on the Civil War, the South, Women’s History, and Irish-American History, the last written by Edward O’Donnell of Holy Cross College, a Garraty student at Columbia who has emulated his former professor.

Biography was one venue by which Garraty made history come alive. In addition to describing this craft in The Nature of Biography, he wrote volumes on the lives of Henry Cabot Lodge, George Perkins, Woodrow Wilson and Silas Wright. He was a master at capturing the right details about a subject. The Great Depression mentions the emphasis that leaders worldwide placed on frugality and balanced budgets to ride out the economic downturn, using as an example Prime Minister William King of Canada, “a man who was so parsimonious that he cut new pencils into three pieces and used them until they were tiny stubs … .”

Garraty kept readers engaged with his sense of humor, too. In The American Nation, recounting the first Thanksgiving after a tough year, Garraty wrote, “But if the Pilgrims had quickly secured themselves a safe place in the wilderness, what followed was hardly all cranberries and drumsticks.” (He was witty in person, too. He and Eric Foner [’63] edited The Reader’s Companion to American History, and while instructing graduate students on writing articles, Foner suggested including entertaining historical facts, like the first 19th-century basketball games being played using an apple basket as a hoop. “It was a peach basket,” Garraty corrected his colleague, then added, “I was there.”)

As a writer, Garraty was a conscious stylist. Knowing a writer’s responsibility to construct digestible sentences, Garraty liked to say, “Adverbs are bad,” explaining that they added unnecessary words to sentences while injecting little meaning. Take out the adverbs, Garraty advised, and the sentence will read just as well — if not better.

Garraty wanted to use his writing to teach readers. They learned American history, and they learned about writing itself. Occasionally, he wove more complex words into his high school textbook. Once, a student sent a letter complaining about words in the book that he could not understand. Garraty wrote back, explaining that reading such words in a history textbook was an effective way to build his vocabulary. Garraty also circled some words in the boy’s letter, pointing out to him that he, too, used vocabulary deftly, even if he might not have been conscious of it.

Garraty also knew the debt that every generation of historians owes to preceding ones, and he paid homage to those scholars who laid the foundation for today’s writing. For his two-volume work, Interpreting American History: Conversations with Historians, he interviewed 29 eminent historians, including Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Link, Richard B. Morris, T. Harry Williams, and C. Vann Woodward; this work remains a classic recording of the profession’s best minds. 1001 Things book has a section on “Great Historians,” and his books are sprinkled with quotations from historical colleagues and predecessors. In the classroom, Garraty asked first-year graduate students to write papers exploring the interpretations of 19th-century historian George Bancroft, one of his early favorites.

As a professor, Garraty related to a wide range of students and nurtured their talents. He received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College in 1941 and then worked during World War II as a Merchant Marine swim instructor. In 1948, he earned his Ph.D. from Columbia and then taught for 12 years at Michigan State University before returning to Columbia, where he was a professor for 31 years until his retirement in 1990.

At Columbia, Garraty ran the first-year seminar for American history graduate students. In it, he hosted a different guest professor from the Columbia and Barnard History Departments every week, a parade of stars that included Mark Carnes, Foner, Kenneth Jackson, Rosalind Rosenberg and Alden Vaughan. On the first day, the anticipation — and tension — among students were almost palpable. Statistically, the odds are against any graduate student finishing a doctoral program. The same thoughts ran through everyone’s minds: How difficult would it be? Who would survive, and who would not? Garraty spoke with eloquence that first day, giving students the best gift a professor could offer — encouragement. “Every one of you is capable of doing well here and completing the program. You wouldn’t have been accepted here if you weren’t,” he said. “You don’t have to be brilliant to write a good dissertation. I’ve sponsored some students who weren’t — believe me when I say that,” he said with a smile. “It does take persistence, though.” For many of us, Garraty’s words were precisely the right touch, the gentle encouragement we needed to hear.

When he was on campus, Garraty kept his office door open so that students could walk in to see him — although he had a playful French sign above his desk admonishing guests, “Soyez Bref” [“Be Brief”]. After talking to any visitor, he would return to work, showing the powers of concentration that were a key to his writing. Students lucky enough to work under Garraty during his four decades of teaching emerged with gifts that he generously bestowed — friendship and an immense knowledge of American history.

“In one sense the life of a great man ends with his last heartbeat, in another it goes on as long as people retain an interest in his accomplishments,” Garraty once wrote. Much the same can be said for John A. Garraty. His longtime friend and former student, Mark Carnes, Barnard College’s Ann Whitney Olin professor of history, now coauthors The American Nation textbook and coedits Garraty’s Historical Viewpoints volumes. Other former students continue to build on what Garraty taught them. Still more readers will indeed retain an interest in Garraty’s works, which beckon them in college courses and libraries nationwide.