Fall 2011
Within the Family
Looking Back, Looking Forward
On a sunny autumn morning 10 years ago, I was having breakfast in Low Rotunda at a meeting of alumni relations professionals from Columbia and its Ivy peers. Afterward I stopped by my office and found a group of colleagues gathered by the reception counter, huddled around a black-and-white portable TV. It was then I discovered that this was to be no ordinary autumn morning.
September 11, 2001, is one of those dates that is imprinted in the mind, one of those dates that will live in infamy, as FDR said 70 years ago following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For alumni my age, that list surely includes November 22, 1963, the date John F. Kennedy was assassinated; alumni from different generations may have others on their personal lists.
My 9-11 experience, thankfully, was unremarkable. For several hours, I watched what was happening from the Alumni Office, some eight miles north of Ground Zero. I was able to call my wife in Westchester to let her know I was fine and would be making my way home. I got into my car and headed north, finding the streets clogged with traffic and most of the bridges leading from the island of Manhattan closed for security reasons. I stopped a mounted policeman who let me know of one small bridge over the Harlem River that was still open, and four hours after leaving my office I pulled into my driveway.
Many were not so fortunate. Some 2,753 people, including eight College alumni, lost their lives in the tragedy, and many more suffered physical and emotional scars that may never fully heal. Some of them were students here at the College, seeing for the first time just how horrible a place the world sometimes can be.
Campus reaction was remarkable. Many students headed to Ground Zero and volunteered in the relief effort. A moving candlelight vigil grew spontaneously on Low Plaza that night, the first of many services that would take place. While many extracurricular events were canceled through the weekend, classes were resumed on Wednesday in an effort to restore a sense of normalcy. Many of the class discussions centered on the tragedy as faculty offered their perspectives. “It was very helpful to have some structure instead of sitting around watching TV,” one student noted at the time; another said that returning to class “while difficult, was very therapeutic.”
Ten years later, it is worth pausing for a moment to remember — not just the heinous act, but the heroic response by everyday people that marked the days that followed.
This issue launches a new era for Columbia College Today. After 10 years as a bimonthly, we are moving to a quarterly publication schedule. With the start of each season, look for an enhanced magazine that we hope will bring you even more of the good things you have come to expect from us, in a more attractive format.
Some brief history is in order. Columbia College Today began as a newspaper serving College alumni in November 1954 and switched to a magazine format in December 1960. After several interruptions, it was relaunched in Winter 1972 and has been published continually ever since.
In the 1990s, a concerted effort was begun to build alumni participation and to more actively involve alumni with one another and the College. CCT went quarterly in 1998 as the cornerstone of the communications component of this participation plan and grew to a bimonthly in September 2001. The theory was simple: As I wrote in that issue, “The best way to connect, or re-connect, alumni with the College and each other is through regular communication.”
Much has changed in the decade since then. Columbia magazine (which serves alumni of all 16 University schools) has been revived and regularly appears quarterly, so that lately, College alumni have been receiving 10 magazines a year (more if you have more than one degree). Electronic communication has exploded and become a way of life for many. Facebook, Twitter and all other social media were merely figments of fertile imaginations way back then.
By going quarterly, we will be able to better plan each issue of CCT and more fully develop and present themes as warranted. This issue, for example, includes three articles focusing on the Class of 2015, its makeup and ways in which it was welcomed to the College community, plus a feature in which alumni offer words of advice to those following in their footsteps. A future issue will be themed around the 25th anniversary of the graduation of the College’s first coed class.
Along with enhanced content, we also are working to improve the look of our magazine, making it cleaner and fresher. The goal is to better present all the things you have come to expect from us: a robust Class Notes section, features on the fascinating people who make up the College family, provocative essays in “Columbia Forum,” the latest news from Morningside Heights in “Around the Quads,” expanded coverage of athletics in “Roar Lion Roar” and regular departments such as Bookshelf, Obituaries and more.
As always, we welcome your feedback and participation: college.columbia.edu/cct/contactus.
After the resignation of Dean Michele Moody-Adams in late August, an interim dean, James J. Valentini, was named. In her two years as dean, Moody-Adams contributed a great deal, including the formation of the Dean’s Alumnae Leadership Task Force, record fundraising for the Columbia College Fund, strong support for financial aid, and a firm commitment to the sciences and to the Core Curriculum.
Valentini, a professor of chemistry as well as the former director of undergraduate studies for the department, is a distinguished scientist and educator who has been a faculty member since 1991 and has been in the forefront of Columbia’s resurgence in undergraduate science education. CCT spent “5 Minutes with …” Valentini in 2007 and wishes him the best in his new responsibilities.
