Annual Report of the Provost, 1997–98
Robert Maynard Hutchins once observed that “it is the glory of the University of Chicago that, since its founding, …it has had a sense of mission. It has had an idea, a purpose. It has stood for something.” The precise content of that “mission,” that “idea,” has been stated differently by different people at different times. Hutchins himself believed that “what makes the University of Chicago a great educational institution” is “the intense, strenuous, and constant intellectual activity of the place.” Some years later, Edward Levi explained that “the importance of our University is that we are now, as we have always been, somewhat out of step,” and that the University of Chicago is unparalleled in its commitment “to the discovery of knowledge and the transmission of our cultural and intellectual heritage.”
Ernest DeWitt Burton offered a somewhat different slant on the question, noting more than seventy years ago that, more than any other institution of higher learning, the University of Chicago “is a place for hard work,” and that “unless you have come here expecting to work hard, you have come to the wrong place.” Perhaps refining Burton’s observation, Ned Rosenheim wrote in the early nineties that the University of Chicago “is a place that is forever devoted to inquiry, …where all of us take education seriously, but where we pursue education with high spirits, and with joy.”
This past year, in a particularly comprehensive and eloquent statement of “the idea of the University of Chicago,” the Faculty Committee for a Year of Reflection observed that “Chicago has developed a celebrated—some would say notorious—brand of academic civility. It is a place where one is always in principle allowed to pose the hardest question possible—of a student, a teacher, or a colleague—and feel entitled to expect gratitude rather than resentment for one’s effort.”
However one defines the “idea” of the University of Chicago, there has never been any doubt that, as Max Mason declared in the twenties, the University of Chicago “must be outstanding, or nothing. There is no reason for its existence as just another university.” That remains, first and foremost, at the very core of who we are.
In this year’s Annual Report, I will focus on four subjects: (1) new faculty appointments; (2) other developments of the past year; (3) some (hopefully) interesting changes over time; and (4) the campus master plan.
Faculty
During the 1997–98 academic year, we promoted eighteen members of the faculty to tenure and appointed seventy-six new faculty members. Our new colleagues at the rank of full Professor are an especially impressive group. This was, indeed, a truly extraordinary year of recruiting. I am thus delighted to present our new full Professors, for they will play a special role in helping to preserve the “idea” of the University of Chicago for the future:
In the Humanities:
Shadi Bartsch, from Berkeley, a distinguished classicist whose research brings contemporary debates about such issues as selfhood, representation, and the body to bear in forging new understandings of Latin and Greek sources;
Thomas Christensen, from the University of Iowa, an expert on eighteenth-century music theory whose studies have opened entirely new fields of inquiry by situating music in its broader intellectual, historical, and cultural context;
Thomas Pavel, from Princeton, an influential scholar in the fields of comparative literature and critical theory whose work has recently extended into the study of French classicism;
Marta Ptaszynska, from Indiana University, a percussionist, musical theorist, and innovative composer whose work has been performed both nationally and internationally.
In the Physical Sciences:
Alexander Beilinson, from M.I.T. and Moscow University, one of the world’s most exciting and sought-after young mathematicians, who is creating new paradigms in virtually every field of mathematics and who is the first of our new generation of University Professors;
Vladimir Drinfeld, from the Institute for Physics in Kharkov, Ukraine, a Fields Medalist (the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize) and one of the world’s foremost algebraists;
Ridgway Scott, from the University of Houston, a computer scientist who has made fundamental contributions to both computer science and applied mathematics and links both to such fields as biology and fluid dynamics.
In the Social Sciences:
Edward Prescott, from the University of Minnesota, a macroeconomist whose work has had a profound impact on current understandings of business cycles, general equilibrium theory, and banking;
Saskia Sassen, from Columbia, a sociologist who has received international acclaim for her investigations of the impact of a changing global economy and patterns of migration on the social and geographical structures of major world cities;
Mark Strand, from Johns Hopkins, the 1990 Poet Laureate of the United States, who is distinguished not only for his poetry, but also for his literary and art criticism;
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, from Johns Hopkins, an influential cultural anthropologist who is one of the world’s leading experts on Haiti and the Caribbean.
In the Biological Sciences:
Eric Beyer, from Washington University, a child-care specialist who has gained broad international recognition for his research in the gap junction field of intercellular chemical communication;
Elliot Gershon, from the National Institute of Mental Health, the new Chair of Psychiatry, whose pioneering research, particularly on the epidemiology of bipolar affective disorders and schizophrenia, has defined the goals of psychiatric genetics;
Richard Hudson, from the University of California—Irvine, a molecular population geneticist whose theoretical work has revolutionized his field;
Anthony Kossiakoff, from Genentech, the new Chair of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, who has made seminal contributions in structural biology, crystallography, and protein engineering;
Sangram Sisodia, from Johns Hopkins, the new Chair of Pharmacological & Physiological Sciences, whose research as a molecular neurobiologist is at the cutting edge of efforts to elucidate the molecular mechanism underlying Alzheimer’s Disease.
In the Professional Schools:
Lisa Bernstein, from Georgetown, a specialist in law and economics whose scholarship in the field of commercial law illuminates the relationships among merchants, their customs, and the laws that govern them;
Saul Levmore, from the University of Virginia, one of the nation’s most distinguished legal scholars who writes across a broad range of fields, including torts, bankruptcy, taxation, family law and legislation;
Willard Manning, Jr., a rigorous and innovative econometrician from the University of Minnesota whose current research focuses on the effects of insurance and alternative health care delivery settings on the use of health care services;
Eric Posner, from the University of Pennsylvania, a prolific young scholar whose work has established him as a national leader in the study of law and social norms;
Julie Roin, from the University of Virginia, a national and international authority on the taxation of financial instruments and international taxation.
Some Highlights of the 1997–98 Academic Year
New graduate and research programs:
In 1997–98, the University established a new Department of Family & Community Medicine; initiated new Ph.D. programs in both Cinema & Media Studies and Jewish Studies; inaugurated a new graduate program in Environmental Sciences as a joint enterprise of the Harris School and the Physical Sciences Division; substantially revised the Graduate Residency Track for Ph.D. students across the University; and established the Martin E. Marty Center in the Divinity School.
Citations:
Working every bit as hard as Burton promised, faculty members published scores of new books in 1997–98, including Tony Bryk’s Charting Chicago School Reform; Jim Chandler’s England in 1819; Fred Donner’s Narratives of Islamic Origins; Norma Field’s Sketches of Post-War Tokyo; Susan Goldin-Meadow’s The Nature and Functions of Gesture in Children’s Communication; Dennis Hutchinson’s The Man Who Once Was Whizzer White; Jonathan Lear’s Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul; Martha Roth’s Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor; Ron Suny’s The Soviet Experiment; Noel Swerdlow’s The Babylonian Theory of the Planets; Rob Vishny’s The Grabbing Hand; and Bruce Winstein’s Elementary Particle Physics to name but a few.
Research support:
In 1997–98, faculty and researchers at the University received 1,459 grants and contracts for a record $219.3 million. This represents an 8 percent increase over 1996–97. Examples of such grants include $500,000 from the NEH to preserve research materials in the history of religions; $3.5 million from NASA for a joint project with the Goddard Space Flight Center to design a camera for the stratospheric observatory for infrared astronomy; $500,000 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to develop a comprehensive program in sleep physiology and medicine; and $2 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a multi-city study of children, families, and welfare reform.
AAAS:
This year, six members of the faculty were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This placed us second among the institutions with which we ordinarily are compared (i.e., Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, M.I.T., Penn, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale).
“Teacher of teachers”:
A recent Lingua Franca survey, designed to measure the academic placement of Ph.D. graduates in four-year colleges and universities, ranked the University of Chicago first in six of the twenty-five fields measured (Anthropology, Economics, History, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Philosophy, and Divinity)—more than any other university in the nation.
College curriculum:
After more than two years of deliberation, the College adopted an exciting new undergraduate curriculum (the “Chicago Plan”), which consists of one-third general education, one-third concentration, and one-third free electives. The College also launched its new FLAG program in 1997–98, which enables undergraduates to participate in intensive foreign-language programs abroad, and (with the generous support of the Mellon Foundation) an innovative new program designed to enhance and extend language instruction literally “across the curriculum.”
Development:
At $140.5 million, the University’s fund-raising in 1997–98 set a new record, surpassing the prior record by more than $10 million. Over the past five years, the average growth rate in fund-raising has been 11.8 percent annually. The University received twenty-three commitments last year of $1 million or more.
Academic calendar:
To provide some respite from Burton’s workload, the University modified the academic calendar last year to ensure that, beginning in 1999–2000, there will be at least a three-week break between the Autumn and Winter Quarters.
Botanic garden:
The American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta officially declared the University a nationally recognized “botanic garden,” making the University of Chicago one of only a handful of universities in the nation to have attained this status.
New facilities:
The University has recently completed, or shortly will complete, the Oriental Institute expansion and renovation, the Law School’s new Kane Clinical Education Building (scheduled for dedication in October), and the Allee Laboratory for research in biopsychology (also scheduled for dedication in October). In addition, we have begun work on the Regenstein Library reconfiguration and a new building for the University of Chicago Press, which is scheduled for ground-breaking later this year on the South Campus at the corner of Dorchester and 60th Street.
Some Changes over Time
Programmatic changes:
During the period 1993 to 1998, the University decided to close one academic unit—the Department of Education—but added three new departments (Human Genetics, Comparative Literature, and Family & Community Medicine); several new interdisciplinary degree-granting committees, including Jewish Studies, Cancer Biology, and Cinema & Media Studies; several new interdisciplinary research centers addressing such issues as race, religion, and gender; an exciting new interdisciplinary program in human rights under the auspices of the Center for International Studies; and a new Interdivisional Research Institute for the Physical and Biological Sciences.
University finances:
From 1993 to 1998, the University’s endowment doubled from $1.2 billion to $2.4 billion. This growth reflects both an exceptionally strong national economy and significantly increased fund-raising. In terms of fund-raising, the University’s annual giving has increased from $78.7 million in 1993 to $140.5 million in 1998.
The University has also significantly strengthened its operating budget during this period. Following a year in which we incurred a $10-million operating deficit, the University projected in 1993 that, if we continued to do “business as usual,” we would suffer a cumulative operating deficit from 1993 through 1998 of more than $170 million. Because the University did not follow a “business as usual” approach, the actual cumulative operating deficit during this period was less than $20 million, and we have had a balanced budget for the last three years. The primary factors enabling the University to reverse this trend were significant changes in the composition of the student body, enhanced fund-raising, administrative cost reductions, and a strong national economy. The single most important factor was net tuition revenue, which increased by more than 50 percent from 1993 ($90 million) to 1998 ($143 million).
Enrollment:
From 1993 to 1998, total student enrollment in the University increased from 10,907 to 11,864. The College grew from 3,435 to 3,722; the professional schools grew from 4,376 to 4,817; and the divisions grew from 3,096 to 3,325 (including an increase in the number of master’s students from 173 to 366).
Ph.D. students in the Humanities and Social Sciences:
There have been particularly noteworthy changes in the composition and number of Ph.D. students in these two divisions. Reflecting a variety of factors that have affected universities generally, from 1993 to 1998 the total number of entering Ph.D. students in these divisions has declined from 400 to 300. The number of these students receiving Century Fellowships has remained roughly constant, at about forty, but the percentage of entering Ph.D. students receiving Century Fellowships has increased from 10 percent to 13 percent. The number of entering Ph.D. students receiving “substantial” annual stipends ($8,000 or more) from University funds has increased from sixty to about eighty-five, or from 15 percent to 28 percent. Finally, the number of entering Ph.D. students paying full tuition has declined from 130 to 100, although the percentage has remained constant at about one-third.
Faculty size:
Over the past five years, the faculty of the University has decreased slightly from 1,229 to 1,216. In the Arts & Sciences, the faculty has decreased from 636 to 616. The student/faculty ratio in the Arts & Sciences has increased from 10.3/1 to 11.4/1, whereas the student/faculty ratio in the professional schools (excluding the clinical departments of the BSD) has remained constant at about 22/1.
Hyde Park:
By any standard, the last decade has been the best for the Hyde Park/South Kenwood neighborhood since World War II. Over $100 million in new residential construction has been completed since 1990, with a similar amount already on the drawing boards for the next few years. Crime in Hyde Park, which has declined steadily over the past twenty years, continues to fall. Indeed, if current trends continue, there will be 20 percent less crime in 1998 than in 1997. Moreover, the revitalization of the neighborhoods both north and south of Hyde Park/South Kenwood is nothing short of remarkable. For the first time in a generation, major private sector investment is flowing into these neighborhoods, bringing middle-class residents back to Woodlawn and North Kenwood/Oakland. The University continues to do its part to aid in this revitalization, most recently by establishing the University of Chicago Charter School in North Kenwood/Oakland. With continued University investment in the future, it is possible for the first time in decades to imagine Hyde Park/South Kenwood turning from a competitive disadvantage to a competitive advantage in the University’s efforts to recruit and retain the nation’s best faculty, students, and staff.
Campus Master Plan
Over the past five years, our financial success has been directed primarily towards eliminating what otherwise would have been a succession of annual operating deficits that would have drained our long-term vitality. Having addressed that issue, we are now well positioned to turn our attention to another pressing concern—our long-term capital needs. It is against this background that the President last year initiated the fourth comprehensive master planning effort in the history of the University. Led by a steering committee consisting of faculty, trustees, and administrators, and assisted by a team of nationally prominent consultants, we hope to complete the plan this fall. I would like in this report to give you a preview.
Although a campus master plan serves many needs (including, for example, an inventory and assessment of all University facilities, a definition of appropriate boundaries with the neighborhood, an articulation of overall architectural and landscape guidelines, and a strategy for preserving open spaces and options for future development), I will focus here on our preliminary recommendations with respect to seven major components of the plan—a new athletics center and swimming pool, new research laboratories for the Physical and Biological Sciences, new undergraduate residence halls, new facilities for the Graduate School of Business, a new arts center, the Midway, and (inevitably) parking. We are convinced that each of these projects is essential to the long-term excellence of the University.
Perhaps the single most powerful insight of our consultants in shaping our thinking about the campus concerns Ellis Avenue. Although most of us tend to think of Ellis Avenue as our “back door,” even a quick glance at the map shows that it is in fact the central spine of the campus, linking the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the College to the east, with the Biological Sciences, (most of) the Physical Sciences, and the Hospitals to the west. Although it should thus be a center of campus activity, it does not in fact function in that manner—with the notable exception of the Bookstore, which demonstrates the potential. It is our view that we should pay a good deal more attention to Ellis Avenue in the future.
To that end, we tentatively recommend siting the new athletics center and swimming pool on the west side of Ellis Avenue, running north-south, between 55th Street and 56th Street. This has several distinct advantages. It establishes a major activity center along Ellis Avenue; it opens directly onto the University’s primary athletics fields; it establishes a stronger and more defined presence for the University along 55th Street; and it anchors the North Campus in an area that, until now, has seemed a wasteland. With cafes, juice bars, and other retail activity on the ground floor, this location would add much-needed vitality to this long-neglected part of our campus.
To reinforce this siting of the athletics center and swimming pool, and to help further establish both a more defined boundary for the University along 55th Street and a more defined character for the North Campus, we envision a new multi-floor parking structure across the street from the athletics center, running east-west along 55th Street. The parking structure would have an architectural design that complements and reinforces the design of the athletics center; it would provide convenient parking for users of the athletics center (as well as for the rest of campus); it would create (along with the athletics center) a more formal and more inviting entrance to the campus at 55th Street and Ellis Avenue; it would establish a more defined northern edge for a new North Campus “quadrangle”; and it would have on its ground floor facing south a coffee shop, a newsstand, and similar amenities for the convenience of users and to add further to the vitality of campus life.
Looking south from the proposed parking structure, you would today see four buildings—Court Theatre, the Smart Museum, the Cochrane-Woods Art Center (which houses the Art Department), and the Young Building (which houses University Police and Facilities Services). We envision moving the current occupants of the Young Building (perhaps to a new building on the South Campus near the new Press Building), and establishing a new arts center at the corner of 56th Street and Ellis Avenue. That center, which might house studios for the visual, musical, and/or theater arts, as well as new exhibit and/or performance space, would complete this part of the North Campus in a coherent and compelling manner as a vibrant “arts quadrangle.” It would add significantly to the new athletics center and swimming pool as a new forum for campus life, and it would reinforce the role of Ellis Avenue as a lively campus thoroughfare.
Moving farther south, we now approach Regenstein Library. It is here that we envision new undergraduate residence halls. In recent decades, the University has accommodated the need for additional dormitories primarily by dispersing students throughout the community in renovated apartment buildings and hotels. Although this has had a strongly positive impact on the neighborhood and has provided students with a rich variety of often very attractive housing options, it has at the same time stripped the Central Campus of a major source of student life and weakened our students’ own sense of community. We have therefore concluded that we should site our new residence halls, which would be reserved primarily for first-year students in the College, in the Central Campus.
Specifically, we envision a series of new low-rise dormitories for between 600 and 700 students beginning on Ellis Avenue, just north of the Henry Moore sculpture, turning east at the corner of 56th and Ellis, continuing east to University Avenue (with a break at the intersection of Greenwood and 56th Street, where a portal echoing Hull Court—located one block to the south—would provide a gracious entry to the new “Regenstein quadrangle”), and then turning south at University Avenue until Bartlett Gymnasium. These residence halls would complete the block around Regenstein, further strengthen Ellis Avenue, complement the proposed development of the North Campus, create a new and beautifully landscaped “Regenstein quadrangle,” and enable a significant number of young students to live at the very core of the Central Campus.
What, then, of Bartlett Gymnasium, a historic building that (mercifully) will no longer be used as a gymnasium or swimming pool after the opening of the new athletics center? We tentatively recommend that the upper floor of Bartlett, which is a high-ceilinged gymnasium with a suspended running track, should be converted into a new dining commons to serve the new residence halls (as well as anyone else who wishes to dine there). If you are familiar with Bartlett, with its magnificent stained glass windows and grand staircase, it should be immediately apparent that this is a wonderful opportunity to re-use an almost 100-year-old building in a new and spectacular way. Moreover, the suspended running track that overlooks the future dining commons could be redesigned as study and computing lounges, and the lower floors of Bartlett could be converted into space for student organizations and activities, thus reinforcing the very positive developments that already have been achieved in the Reynolds Club and Hutchinson Commons, which are directly across the street.
This brings us to the new research laboratories for the Biological and Physical Sciences. We envision a major research facility that may house new laboratories for the James Franck Institute, the new Interdivisional PSD/BSD Research Institute, the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research, the Howard Hughes Institute, and a range of other activities. The new facility will be located on the south side of 57th Street between Ellis and Drexel Avenues. This building, which will replace Whitman, Visual Sciences, and Phemister Hall, will provide a critical new link between the Physical and Biological Sciences. It will be directly across 57th Street from the Donnelley Biological Sciences Learning Center, the Knapp Medical Research Building, and Allee Laboratory, and it will form the northern edge of a revitalized and redesigned Science Quadrangle that will include the Kersten Physics Learning Center and Hinds Laboratory for the Geophysical Sciences to the east, the Crerar Science Library to the west, and the Cummings Life Sciences Center to the south. The new laboratory will thus be both geographically and intellectually at the very center of scientific research at the University.
One of the most intriguing challenges for the master plan is the Midway Plaisance. Originally designed by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1871 and the centerpiece of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the Midway has provided essential playing fields for the University, the Laboratory Schools, and the neighborhood for over a century. But it has also come to be seen as much as a psychological and physical barrier between the Central and South Campuses as a recreational resource. To address these concerns, the master plan envisions several important improvements to the Midway, which will require the active collaboration of the city and the Chicago Park District.
The goal, in short, is to redevelop the Midway, along with Jackson Park to the east and Washington Park to the west, as a series of connected parks matching the beauty and elegance of Grant Park. The plan envisions: (a) crowning the central panels of the Midway to improve drainage and make them more attractive for year-round recreation; (b) constructing a permanent ice-skating rink in the central panel of the Midway between Harper Library and the Law School, complete with a permanent warming house, observation deck, and refreshment service; (c) completely relandscaping the north and south side-panels of the Midway along both 59th and 60th Streets with a rich variety of “strolling gardens” that will flower at different times throughout the year; and (d) redesigning, relighting, and relandscaping the streets and sidewalks that cross the Midway from north to south to reestablish the original feel of sculptured “bridges.” With these and other modifications, the goal is to preserve the Midway as an important recreational resource while at the same time establishing a landmark Botanic Garden that will visually connect the Central and South Campuses.
The final major component of the master plan involves new facilities for the Graduate School of Business. Although the GSB now occupies three buildings in the central quadrangle (Rosenwald, Stuart, and Walker), it needs a significant expansion to accommodate new classrooms, interview rooms, breakout rooms, and student service space. Although this is still very much a work in progress, two alternatives are under active consideration. One possibility is for the GSB to construct a new building on the east side of University Avenue between the Quadrangle Club and the Chicago Theological Seminary; the other is for the GSB to move to the South Campus to the block bounded by Woodlawn and Kimbark Avenues and 60th and 61st Streets. The latter is obviously a much bolder option that would have a dramatic effect on both the South and Central Campuses. As part of the master planning process, the steering committee will continue to work closely with the GSB to find the solution that best serves the long-term interests of the GSB, the University, and the larger community.
As you can see, this is a challenging (and exhausting) process. The steering committee believes that the plan as presently conceived offers a truly exciting vision of the campus of the future. To bring all this to reality will take enormous effort, patience, commitment, and resources. If past master plans are a guide, not everything we envision today will come to pass. But much of it will, and if we do our job well this master plan will guide the University’s decisions for many years to come. With that in mind, I invite your comments—positive, by the way, as well as critical! Please write or e-mail me (g-stone@uchicago.edu) with your reactions and suggestions. Although we have consulted widely in this process with faculty, deans, trustees, students, administrators, and alumni, we enthusiastically welcome any and all advice. The more we hear now, the better the campus will be in the future.
Thomas W. Goodspeed wrote in 1892 that it was the hope of the first “master planners” of the University of Chicago “that the passing of years among its beautiful structures might increase intelligence, refine taste, develop character, and thus minister to the highest culture.” That is our hope as well.
With warm best wishes for a truly “outstanding” academic year
Geoffrey R. Stone
Harry Kalven, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School and the College, and Provost of the University