John W. Kluge ’37, the billionaire businessman who was one of Columbia’s most generous benefactors and who founded the Kluge Scholars Program that benefitted hundreds of current and former College students, died on Tuesday evening, September 7. He was 95.
Born on July 21, 1914, in Chemnitz, Germany, Kluge immigrated when he was 8, grew up in Detroit and earned a scholarship that allowed him to attend the College. “If it hadn’t been for Columbia, my path would have been entirely different in life,” Kluge said at a celebration of his 90th birthday in Low Library. “Columbia gave me an opportunity, and the only way you can really repay that opportunity is for you to help someone else.”
As the Columbia Lions gear up for the 2010 season, Football Head Coach Norries Wilson will be answering fan questions ahead of Sept. 18 game opener against Fordham. To send in a question, comment on the official Columbia University Facebook page by noon on Sept. 10. Coach Wilson will answer selected questions via a taped video interview, posted on Facebook Sept. 17.
For the second consecutive summer, a group of talented New York City teenagers from low and moderate income families have come to Columbia University for an introduction to rigorous, college-level coursework in the humanities thanks to a unique collaboration between the University's Center for American Studies and its Double Discovery Center for local high school students.
Columbia climbed to fourth place in U.S. News & World Report’s 2011 ranking of national universities, which was released on August 16. Columbia was tied for eighth a year ago. Harvard, which had tied with Princeton for first place in 2010, took over sole possession of the top spot this year, followed by Princeton and Yale. Stanford and Penn were tied for fifth, CalTech and MIT tied for seventh and Dartmouth, Duke and Chicago tied for ninth.
The Fulbright U.S. Student ETA Program to Brazil has a SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY for an additional 20 ETA Awards for grants beginning in MARCH 2011. In addition, the number of ETA grants for Brazil for March 2012 has increased to 30.
More than 3,000 alumni and guests celebrated their reunion from June 3-6 and Dean's Day on June 5, with events on campus and in venues around New York City.
As the Class of 2010 celebrated Class Day on May 17, the College’s newest alumni were treated not just to mild temperatures and sunny skies but also to a rousing call to arms from keynote speaker Benjamin Jealous ’94, NAACP president.
For the seventh year, the procession included the Alumni Parade of Classes, with 115 alumni from as far back as the Class of 1936 marching with their class banners to welcome seniors into the alumni community.
Jenny Davidson, associate professor of English and comparative literature, received the 49th annual Mark Van Doren Award, and Katharina Volk, associate professor of classics, received the 35th annual Lionel Trilling Award, at a ceremony to be held in the Faculty Room of Low Library on Wednesday, May 5.
Grace Zhou, CC '10, and Sarah Ngu, CC '12, were awarded the Foreign Language Areas Studies Fellowship for the academic year. The FLAS award offers fellowship assistance to meritorious students undergoing beginning, intermediate, or advanced training in modern foreign languages with concentrations in related international or area studies.