The University of Chicago

Crescat scientia; Vita Excolatur

Annual Report of the Provost, 2000–2001

September 17, 2001

The University of Chicago came into being as a result of the rather startling marriage of interests of a brilliant and highly entrepreneurial young Biblical scholar William Rainey Harper, the first President of the University, and the University’s founding philanthropist—John D. Rockefeller, then the richest man in the world.

By 1887, Rockefeller began considering for the first time his “responsibility” to make a major philanthropic gift. Education had always interested him, and he felt that “to aid a university, whose graduates would spread their culture far and wide, was the surest way to fight ignorance and promote the growth of useful knowledge.” He was drawn particularly to the city of Chicago because it was then in a period of rapid growth. He was concerned that an eastern school might be encrusted with tradition, whereas a new school in Chicago, in his words, could “strike out upon lines in full sympathy with the spirit of the age.”.

In their initial approach to Rockefeller, the supporters of the proposed new university in Chicago thought it appropriate to put forth a “scheme so vast, so comprehensive” that it could “capture a mind so constituted as Mr. Rockefeller’s.” In short, they wanted Rockefeller to help establish a full-blown university from the very moment of creation. This vision both inspired and worried Rockefeller. Concerned that he would be overwhelmed with the financial demands of so ambitious a program, he pleaded with Harper to start modestly with an undergraduate college and defer the university to a later day.

After two years of discussions, Rockefeller committed the then stunning sum of $600,000—equal to $10 million today. Harper accepted the gift graciously, but immediately made clear that it wasn’t enough. As he put it to Rockefeller, “the whole country is expecting the University of Chicago to be from the very beginning an institution of the highest rank and character.” Harper said, frankly, that the money raised so far was insufficient to realize this lofty aim. Rockefeller forked over an additional million dollars.

Harper then set out to build an institution that “will amaze the multitudes.” He hired more than 120 faculty members in less than a year, raiding so many eastern institutions that his ransacked rivals complained of foul play. His nationwide talent search netted for the first faculty such distinguished scholars as John Dewey, Robert Herrick, Albion Small and Thorstein Veblen, to name just a few.

Although Rockefeller was delighted with Harper’s success, his worst nightmare was coming true: he would end up the primary benefactor of an institution that would bleed him dry for years. But wherever the brilliant Harper led, Rockefeller—sometimes grudgingly—followed. He was not a man to abandon a project that had received his blessing. By 1892, the year the University opened its doors, Rockefeller had contributed $2.3 million—equal to $40 million today.

But this did not end the story. Once the University was inaugurated, Harper did not stand still. Never satisfied, he advanced on a dozen fronts. He created a new junior college, a night school, an extension school, a university press, new laboratories and museums. He also believed a university should benefit the surrounding city, and researchers from the new University fanned out from the campus to undertake studies at Hull House and other settlement houses.

In 1893, Rockefeller came up with another $500,000, and in 1895, he handed over $3 million more. Rockefeller was exhausted by Harper’s constant requests for support. In 1895 he wrote a friend, “I am in trouble. The pressure of these appeals for gifts has become too great for my endurance.” By the end, Harper was made to promise that he would not ask Rockefeller for any more support. Even this did not stop him. Although prohibited from talking directly to Rockefeller about finances, Harper circumvented the ban by praying aloud for money for the University in Rockefeller’s presence. When all the dust had settled, Rockefeller’s total giving to the University of Chicago came to an amount equal today to more than $250 million.

How did Rockefeller feel about all this?

Here is what he said on the one occasion when he personally addressed the University of Chicago community: “I want to thank your Board of Trustees, your President and all who have shared in this most wonderful beginning. It is but a beginning, and you will do the rest. You have the privilege to complete it, you and your sons and your daughters. I believe in the work. It is the best investment I ever made in my life. It is the grandest opportunity ever presented, and I am profoundly thankful that I had anything to do with this affair.”*

As we approach the public “launch” of the University’s new comprehensive capital campaign on November 9, trustees, deans, directors and development officers have been hard at work “doing the rest.” In the past two years, to set the stage for the campaign announcement, the University has raised more than half-a-billion dollars—more than double the present value of Rockefeller’s contributions, and more than the goal of the entire 1990s’ Campaign for the Next Century.

This campaign, which will help define the future of the University of Chicago, and will continue through 2006, is both a challenge and an opportunity. As President Randel has observed:

The University’s greatest asset is its people. We must continue to recruit the kinds of faculty, staff and students who can both make and profit from the unique institution that this University is and will remain… . Although it is the spirit of this University that will be most important in attracting the kinds of people we want to join us, we must be prepared to compensate faculty and staff appropriately, we must support our students adequately, and we must maintain the very substantial program on which the University has embarked to improve its physical facilities.

In this year’s Annual Report, and against this backdrop, I will focus on four subjects:

  1. new faculty appointments;
  2. other highlights of the past year;
  3. progress in the implementation of the campus master plan; and
  4. the recommendations of the committees I appointed last year to evaluate our activities in the arts, in our international programs and in computation science.

New Faculty

If “the University’s greatest asset is its people,” its most essential asset is its faculty. As a University dedicated to the creation and transmission of knowledge, it is ultimately through the achievements of our scholars and teachers that we are judged, and it is our faculty who are most responsible for preserving and enriching our distinctive values and discourse.

Over the past five years, we have averaged 52 new faculty appointments annually. In 2000–01, we made 66 such appointments. Although I would be pleased to mention all of our new colleagues, I will limit myself to those new members of the faculty who join us with tenure, for they will have the most immediate impact on our mission.

In the Biological and Physical Sciences:

  • Michael Coates (Organismal Biology and Anatomy), from University College London, a paleontologist of lower vertebrates who works at the forefront of the integration of paleontology and developmental biology.
  • Douglas Fearon (Knapp Center for Immunology), from Cambridge University, a member of both the Royal Society of London and the National Academy of Sciences, whose pioneering research on complement, B cell receptor and immunologic memory has profound implications for the control of infections, autoimmunity and organ transplantation.
  • Dennis Gaitsgory (Mathematics), from Harvard, a leader in the geometric Langlands program, one of the central areas of research in the theory of representations and automorphic forms.
  • Robert Ho (Organismal Biology and Anatomy), from Princeton, an embryologist and developmental biologist whose use of genetic and molecular tools is uncovering the most fundamental mechanisms of cell fate and formation in a complex body plan.
  • Stephen Kent (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), from Gryphon Sciences (previously a member of the faculty at Rockefeller and Cal Tech), whose pioneering work at the interface of protein chemistry and biology has revolutionized the chemical synthesis of peptides and proteins of biological significance.
  • David MacQueen (Computer Science), from Bell Laboratories, a leading figure in the development of programming languages, whose critical role in the advent of Standard ML marked a turning point in the history of computer languages.
  • Olaf Schneewind (Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology), from U.C.L.A., a molecular geneticist, biologist and biochemist whose pathbreaking research focuses on the discovery of mechanisms of protein targeting in bacterial pathogens.
  • Rick Stevens (Computer Science), from Argonne National Laboratory, an internationally recognized leader in high performance computing, with special expertise in the development of new data visualization techniques.

In the Humanities and Social Sciences:

  • Muzaffar Alam (South Asian Languages and Civilizations), from Nehru University, a scholar of northern Indian history, whose research has changed our understanding of the last decades of the Mughal Empire.
  • Dain Borges (History), from U.C.-San Diego, as expert on the socio-cultural history of Brazil, whose work has shed important new light on the evolution of the family and on race and religion at the turn of the 20th century.
  • David Finklestein (Philosophy), from Indiana, a philosopher of the mind, whose thoughtful scholarship provides a powerful alternative approach to the difficult question of the nature of first person authority.
  • Adrian Johns (History), from U.C.-San Diego, whose prize-winning analysis of early modern British publishing challenges current arguments linking the origins of the scientific revolution to the fixity of knowledge thought to be assured by printed texts.
  • David Martinez (Classical Languages and Civilizations and the Divinity School), from Texas, a leading specialist in Greek papyrology; ancient magic; pagan, Jewish and Christian traditions; and religion and culture in Ptolemaic Egypt.
  • Roger Meyerson (Economics), from Northwestern, one of the world’s leading microeconomists, who has made seminal contributions to economic theory in fields ranging from mechanism design to models of strategic voting, and who joins us as the William C. Norby Professor.
  • Bozena Shallcross (Slavic Languages and Literatures), from Indiana, a specialist in Polish poetry whose scholarship, in such works as Parallel Visions: The Journeys of Zagajewski, Herbert and Brodsky, explores the links between literature and the visual arts.
  • David Wellbery (Germanic Studies), from Johns Hopkins, whose pathbreaking work in literary and cultural theory, including field shaping essays on Schopenhauer, Nietzche, Lessing and Goethe, has earned him appointment as the first LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor.
  • Alison Winter (History), from Cal Tech, an award-winning historian of science, whose recent book, Mesmerized, is a landmark study of the transformations of scientific authority in Victorian England.

In the Professional Schools:

  • Reid Hastie (GSB), from Colorado, a leading psychologist of decisionmaking, who is now applying his original and distinctive “story model” of jury deliberations to the study of on-line investor decisions.
  • Hans-Josef Klauck (Divinity), from the University of Munich, perhaps the most respected New Testament scholar of his generation, who has published extensively on theology, biblical interpretation and early Christian social organizations.
  • Edward Snyder (GSB), from Virginia, a distinguished economist whose wide-ranging scholarship explores questions in industrial organization, antitrust policy, law and economics and financial institutions, and who joins us as Dean of the Graduate School of Business.

Selected Highlights of the 2000–2001 Year

Faculty Awards:

Jim Heckman (Economics and the Harris School) received the Nobel Prize for Economics (the sixth member of our faculty to earn this distinction since 1990); Gary Becker (Economics) received the National Medal of Science (the fourth member of our faculty to receive this award in the past two years); three faculty members (Frank Richter of Geophysics, Edwin Taylor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology, and Bob Wald of Physics) were elected to the National Academy of Sciences; and four members of our faculty (Douglas Diamond of the GSB, Don Randel of Music, Bob Rosner of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Lucia Rothman-Denes of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology) were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Among the many other achievements of our faculty in 2000–01, I would note that Hugo Sonnenschein (Economics) was elected to the American Philosophical Society; Stephen Stigler (Statistics) was elected president of the International Statistical Institute; Janellen Huttenlocher (Psychology) received the Hall Award from the American Psychological Association; Sean Carroll (Physics) received a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship; Paolo Cherchi (Romance Languages and Literatures) received Italy’s Guiseppe Dessi Prize; Alexander Kiselev (Mathematics), Ka Yee Lee (Chemistry) and Savdeep Sethi (Physics) received Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships; Elaine Fuchs (Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology) received the Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences; and Dwight Hopkins (Divinity) was selected as a Henry Luce III Fellow in Theology (the fourth member of our faculty to receive this distinction in as many years—more than any other university in the nation).

Faculty Publications

Here is just a brief sample of some of the books our faculty published in 2000–01:

  • Andrew Abbott, Chaos of Disciplines
  • Lauren Berlant, Our Monica, Ourselves
  • Dipesh Chakrabarty, Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference
  • Richard Epstein & Cass Sunstein, Bush, Gore and the Supreme Court
  • Robert Fogel, The Fourth Great Awakening
  • Daniel Garber, Descartes Embodied
  • Thomas Holt, The Problem of Race in the Twenty-first Century
  • Mathhew Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism
  • Jacob Levy, The Multiculturalism of Fear
  • James Lastra, Sound Technology and the American Cinema
  • Ed Laumann and Bob Michael, Sex, Love and Health in America
  • Laura Letinsky, Venus Inferred
  • Mark Lilla, The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin
  • Tanya Luhrman, The Growing Disorder in American Psychiatry
  • Larry Lynn, Improving Governance
  • Margaret Mitchell, The Art of Pauline Interpretation
  • Salikoko Mufwene, Creolization of Language and Culture
  • Wendy Olmstead, Rhetorical Invention and Religious Inquiry
  • Dennis Pardee, Les Textes Rituels: Ras Shamra-Ougarit XII
  • Eric Posner, Law and Social Norms
  • Eric Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life
  • Morton Silverman, Suicidology
  • Josef Stern, Metaphor in Context
  • Linda Waite, The Case for Marriage
  • Bryce Weir, Cerebral Vasospasm
  • Aslihan Yener, The Rise of Complex Metal Industries in Anatolia
  • Iris Young, Inclusion and Democracy

Other Faculty Research:

Not all of our faculty’s research is embodied in books. For example:

  • Robert Clayton (Geophysical Sciences) led an international research team that concluded that the Tagish Lake meteorite is the most primitive sample of the solar system yet discovered. Based on an analysis of interstellar dust grains, Clayton traced the meteorite back almost to the birth of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago.
  • McGuire Gibson (Oriental Institute) led a joint Syrian-American excavation at Tell Hamoukar in the Khabur River basin of Syria. Potsherds and other artifacts found at the site, which was on a major ancient route between Nineveh and Aleppo, show occupations as early as 4000–3500 BC.
  • Graeme Bell (Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) led a research effort that identified the cause of a rare form of diabetes that affects newborn children. In the past several years, Bell’s team has isolated four different genes that cause maturity onset diabetes of the young.
  • In partnership with the University’s North Kenwood-Oakland Charter School and the Center for School Improvement, SSA has launched an innovative research project to formulate a new model of practice for school social workers to promote more effective learning environments for children in urban schools.
  • Based on measurements taken at the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer in Antarctica, a team of scientists led by John Carlstrom (Astronomy and Astrophysics) has confirmed evidence that ordinary matter accounts for less than 5% of the contents of the universe. The rest consists of mysterious dark matter (30%) and an even more mysterious dark energy (65%) that causes galaxies to rush apart at an ever-accelerating speed.
  • Yuri Tsivian (Cinema and Media Studies) created an innovative CD, Immaterial Bodies: A Cultural Analysis of Early Russian Films, that enables the user to explore in both Russian and English and through ten separate “pathways” more than 100 films from pre-revolutionary Russian cinema, which are presented against the backdrop of the life and culture of the period.
  • Judy Cho (Medicine) and Dan Nicolae (Statistics) have identified the first genetic abnormality that increases susceptibility to Crohn’s Disease. Their team determined that mutations of Nod2, a gene involved in the immune system’s initial response to bacterial infection, significantly increase the risk of Crohn’s.
  • Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source achieved “saturation” of self-amplified spontaneous emission at a wavelength more than 1,000 times shorter than ever previously achieved. As a result of this breakthrough, free electron lasers may one day provide laser-quality X-ray beams that will enable the creation of holographic images of molecules far beyond what is now possible.
  • Music composed by Shulamit Ran (Music) was presented on a new CD, entitled Premiers for Clarinet, which was released by Gasparo Records. Ran’s composition, Scenes (3) for Clarinet, is performed by Arthur Campbell. The recording also includes works of Andrew MacDonald, Chin-Chin Chen, Bruce Saylor, Pieter Snapper and Augusta Read Thomas.
  • Jack Cowan (Mathematics) led a research team that has provided new insights into the complexities of vision, the workings of the brain and even the origins of art. The team is deducing the internal circuitry of the visual brain by mathematically reproducing the geometric hallucinations people see when they ingest mind-altering drugs, view bright lights or encounter near-death experiences.

Research Awards:

The University received a record $265 million in government and foundation awards in 2000–01. Illustrative of these awards were a $5 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to Steve Sibener (Chemistry) to support a study of the long-term viability of materials used in orbiting spacecraft; a $3.3 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to Linda Waite and Barbara Schneider (Sociology) to support the Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work; a $2.5 million grant from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund to Norbert Scherer (Chemistry) and Steve Kron (Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology) to support a cross-disciplinary training program in the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics; a $2.5 million grant from Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for graduate fellowship support in the Social Sciences and Humanities; a $1.8 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for the Clinical Scholars Program in the BSD; and a $1.5 million award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to Olufunmilayo Olopade (Medicine) to support research on the molecular genetics of aggressive breast cancer.

Fundraising:

In 2000–01, the University topped $200 million in fundraising progress—the second highest total in University history. We received 33 gifts of $1 million or more, including a $21 million gift from Gary Comer to name the new Comer Children’s Hospital; a $6 million challenge gift from Robert McCormack to support a new GSB residence hall; $5 million from Robert and Ruth Halperin for financial aid in the College; $5 million from Parker and Julie Hall to support a program in jazz and to help beautify the campus; and $4.4 million from Jack Miller to support a named professorship and a new Center for Peripheral Neuropathy in the BSD. In the past two years, University trustees have made gifts totaling $95 million—more than the entire amount given by trustees in the seven years of the Campaign for the Next Century.

University Finances:

After five consecutive years of operating surpluses, the University ended 2000–01 with a modest deficit. Due to weaknesses in the investment markets, the University’s endowment declined in value by about 8.5% in 2000–01. This decline in the value of the endowment has no direct impact on the operating budget in 00–01 or 01–02 because the University’s endowment payout formula phases in the effects of changes in the endowment over a period of four years. But, depending upon economic developments in the next several years, this may present a challenge as we move towards 2002–03 and beyond.

College Admissions:

2000–01 was another strong year in College admissions: applications increased to 7,480 (a 36% increase over 1997–98 and a 1% increase over 1999–00); early action applications increased to 1,800 (a 109% increase over 1997–98 and a 9% increase over 1999–00); the admit rate declined to 43% (down from 61% in 1997–98 and 44% in 1999–00); yield (the percentage of admitted students who enroll at Chicago) increased to 34% (up from 30% in 1997–98 and 33% in 1999–00); 82% of the entering class were in the top 10% of their high school class (up from 71% in 1997–98 and 81% in 1999–00); the median combined SAT score of entering students was 1395 (up from 1349 in 1997–98 and 1381 in 1999–00); 55% of the entering class were evaluated as academic “1’s or 2’s” by our admissions office (up from 30% in 1997–98 and 48% in 1999–00); and the number of National Merit winners in the entering class has increased from 84 in 1997 (21st in the nation) to 97 in 1998 (17th in the nation) to 139 in 1999 (9th in the nation) to 151 in 2000 (8th in the nation). Our College students continue to excel. Members of the Class of ‘01, for example, this year received a Rhodes Scholarship, a Churchill, a Truman, 2 Gates Cambridge Scholarships, 2 Fulbrights, 4 Goldwaters and 13 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.

Progress on the Campus Master Plan

  • The University of Chicago Press building, at 60th and Dorchester, opened in January 2001.
  • The new parking building at 55th and Ellis, which holds more than 1,000 cars, and which will soon host a bowling alley/restaurant and offices for student activities and community service, opened in January 2001.
  • The Max Palevsky Residential Commons, which will house more than 700 College students near Regenstein Library, will open in two phases: The building located along University Avenue will open in September 2001, and the buildings located along 56th Street and Ellis Avenue will open in January 2002. This project was designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta, who last year received the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal Award. Legorreta joins three other AIA Gold Medalists whose work is represented on our campus Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
  • The renovation and conversion of Bartlett Hall into a 550-seat dining commons will be completed in January 2002.
  • The Midway skating rink, a joint project of the University, the Park District and the City, opened in March 2001. Further landscaping of the Midway Plaisance, a multi-year project, will continue this year with the installation of a new winter garden.
  • In August, the University began construction of the Gerald Ratner Athletics Center, which will contain an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a competition gymnasium, a health club, and other facilities. The Ratner Center, which was designed by Cesar Pelli, is scheduled to open in September 2003.
  • In the winter of 2002, the University will break ground on the new Graduate School of Business integrated campus, at 58th and Woodlawn. This building, which was designed by Rafael Viñoly, is scheduled to open in September 2004.
  • In July, the University began construction of the 400,000 square foot BSD/PSD Interdivisional Research Building, which will contain laboratories for the James Franck Institute, the Howard Hughes Institute, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Department of Chemistry, and a range of other research-related activities. This facility, which was designed by Harry Ellenzweig, is scheduled to open in September 2004.
  • The University of Chicago Hospitals began construction this summer of the new Comer Children’s Hospital, which will be devoted primarily to neonatal and pediatric intensive care. The Comer Children’s Hospital, which has been designed to reflect “a child’s wonder at the process of discovery,” will open in 2004.

For updates on these projects, and an opportunity to review the architectural designs, see the Campus Construction Web site.

Second Phase Campus Master Plan:

As we open new buildings, such as the Ratner Athletics Center, the Interdivisional Research Building and the new GSB integrated campus, existing space will become available for new uses. This “second phase” of the campus master plan is a critical component of the overall evolution of the campus. One example of this process is the renovation and conversion of Bartlett Hall from a century-old gymnasium (replaced by the Ratner Center) into a new dining commons for students. Another example is the re-use of the space in the Administration Building, vacated by the Press when it moved into the new Press Building, to bring together the University’s Development Office from many locations scattered across campus.

Another important component of these “second phase” issues concerns the reassignment of Rosenwald Hall, Stuart Hall and Walker Museum, which will be vacated by the GSB when it moves into its new integrated campus in 2004. Under the leadership of Associate Provost Caren Skoulas, and in collaboration with Deans Boyer, Mueller and Saller, we have fashioned a partial program for the re-use of these buildings. The general contours of this plan are as follows.

The Economics Department, which is now located in the Social Sciences Research Building, will move into Rosenwald. The area vacated by Economics will be used to expand and consolidate the space available to the History and Sociology Departments. The Philosophy, English and Comparative Literature Departments will move from Classics, Wieboldt and Gates-Blake into Walker, Rosenwald and Stuart, and the Committee on Social Thought will move from Foster to Stuart. The areas vacated in Classics, Wieboldt and Foster will be used by the Humanities Division for program growth and consolidation, and Gates-Blake will be dedicated to the College for the Harper Society and other College programs. The College will also gain full use of the fourth floor of Stuart Hall for student meetings, conferences and study groups.

The College Admissions Office, which is now located in Harper Library, will move to Rosenwald, and the vacated space in Harper, which was designed and used originally as classrooms rather than offices, will be returned to its original purpose. When combined with the classrooms in Stuart, these moves will add approximately 18 classrooms (ranging in size from 20 to 80 seats) for College and Divisional teaching.

A number of other buildings, including Edelstone, Searle, Judd, Kelly, Beecher, Green and the Research Institutes, are also under review for possible “second phase” reallocations. We expect to have plans for most, if not all, of these buildings by the end of 2001–02.

Committee Reports on Advancing the Arts, International Programs and Computation Science

In last year’s Annual Report, I announced the appointment of three University-wide committees to make specific recommendations to strengthen our programs in the arts, in the international arena and in computation science. Each of these reports is now complete, or substantially complete, and later this fall each will be published in the University of Chicago Record and on the University’s web page. For now, however, I would like briefly to highlight some of the key conclusions and recommendations of each of these committees.

Advancing the Arts

The Advancing the Arts Committee was comprised of a nine-member Study Group, which included deans, faculty members and administrators, and an Arts Advisory Committee, which included representatives from more than fifteen professional and student arts organizations. The Study Group’s central observations and recommendations are as follows:

  • A great research university should nurture the unique and powerful role of the arts in the education of the whole person, and should support the practice of art not only as a recreational diversion from the rigors of academic life, but as a central activity of the “life of the mind.”
  • More students, faculty, staff and community members engage the arts on our campus than ever before. This increased participation has paralleled an impressive growth in the excellence and diversity of our programs. But our arts-related facilities are inadequate for our needs, and the sheer number of programs and the complexities of their organizational structures often impede our ability to realize our goals.
  • The Study Group therefore recommends that the Provost appoint a new Arts Planning Council and a new Assistant Provost for the Arts with the responsibility to help strengthen the arts curriculum, foster student-faculty collaboration, support the University’ professional arts organizations, and facilitate more active and more effective collaboration both among the arts programs on campus and between the arts programs on campus and the arts organizations in the City.
  • The Study Group also recommends that the University address immediate facilities needs by instituting a more collaborative and more efficient use of existing facilities and by undertaking a series of targeted renovations to enhance the quality of those facilities, including a major renovation of Mandel Hall.
  • The Study Group recommends further that, as part of the comprehensive capital campaign, the University should construct at 60th and Drexel a new student Center for Creative and Performing Arts, combining a complete renovation of Midway Studios with a major new arts complex–including additional visual arts studios and classrooms, music practice rooms and student performance spaces.
  • The Study Group recommends that the University reserve the site at 56th and Ellis (where the Young Building is now located) for future development to enable the Smart Museum, the Renaissance Society and the Court Theater collectively to fulfill the Campus Master Plan’s vision of an “arts quadrangle” at this key location in the north campus.

International Programs

The Committee on International Programs was chaired by Chris Faraone (Classics) and included seven other faculty members from departments and schools throughout the University. The Committee’s key observations and recommendations are as follows:

  • In the last decade, the University has experienced a significant growth in the number of overseas programs and internships (especially in the College and the GSB) and a 20% increase in the number of foreign students on campus.
  • To enhance the experience of our foreign students, the University should expand and improve our English as a Second Language programs and establish several highly competitive and prestigious merit fellowships for foreign graduate students.
  • Although noting the important intellectual value of our exchange programs with leading foreign universities, the Committee found that the mechanics of these exchanges have often proved unwieldy. It therefore recommends that the guidelines for exchange programs promulgated by the Provost’s Office in 1997 be more widely distributed and enforced and that the Office of International Affairs be reorganized and reoriented to enable it to better support these programs.
  • The University’s five area studies centers, which cover East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Eastern Europe, support faculty research, conferences, exchange programs, visiting faculty, post-doctoral students and library acquisitions. To further the work of these centers, the Committee recommends that the Center for International Studies (CIS) take a more active role in promoting collaboration among the area studies centers and between these centers and the relevant schools, divisions and departments. The Committee further recommends that CIS widen its mission to include a broader range of international issues (such as international political economy and international security) as well as area studies.
  • The Committee recommends the appointment of an Associate Provost or Assistant Vice President for International Affairs to oversee University-wide standards regarding exchange programs, work with the Directors of CIS and International House to help coordinate their activities, and help raise funds for international programs. The Committee further recommends that at least part of the Office of International Affairs should be located in International House and that International House should play a more important role in the creation and delivery of programs for foreign students.
  • To enhance the development efforts of our international programs, the Committee recommends the establishment of a new Working Group on International Alumni and Development and the eventual creation of a series of University of Chicago international centers (“Chicago Houses”) in selected foreign cities to serve as bases for our overseas activities.

Computation Science

The Committee on Computation Science, chaired by Vice President for Research and Deputy Provost Bob Zimmer, is comprised of a steering committee of seven faculty members from across the University and an advisory committee of more than twenty-five faculty members and administrators. Although the Committee’s report is not yet complete, it will embody the following perspectives:

  • Informatics and computation are a powerful and rapidly evolving mode of inquiry and conceptualization with essential connections to many traditional disciplines and a vibrant internal intellectual framework. In many areas, informatics does or will play a decisive role in defining questions of fundamental disciplinary interest. The Committee believes that there is great intellectual opportunity for the University to create a distinctive multidisciplinary academic program that builds upon and extends the University’s traditional focus on modes of inquiry in the investigation of fundamental problems.
  • The University has some significant strengths in this area, including several outstanding programs led by individual faculty members engaging informatics as a mode of inquiry within their disciplines, a newly energized Computer Science Department, the recently established (though only partially realized) Computation Institute, and the University’s recently enhanced connection with Argonne National Laboratory.
  • Despite these strengths, the Committee believes that the long-standing inadequacy of the University’s commitment to informatics as an intellectual endeavor has produced an institutional culture, both real and perceived, that does not embrace informatics as a key intellectual activity. This has had negative effects both on research and education and on the recruitment of faculty and students.
  • The Committee concludes that it is essential for the long-term intellectual vitality of the University that it respond effectively both to this opportunity and to this need. Later this fall, the Committee will present a series of specific recommendations concerning the development of the Computation Institute, the Computer Science Department and their relationship to programs within other academic units, with an emphasis on faculty development and space requirements.

Conclusion

It was the extraordinary partnership of William Rainey Harper and John D. Rockefeller that got this remarkable University started. But, as Rockefeller himself noted, it was “but a beginning, and you will do the rest.” As you walk around this campus, you can see first-hand the legacy of those who have “done the rest.”.

George Walker, a suburban real estate developer with a deep commitment to education, funded the Walker Museum, which initially housed the Department of Geological Sciences, then became part of the GSB, and in the next several years will house departments in the Humanities. Martin A. Ryerson, who served as President of the Board of Trustees for thirty years, donated Ryerson Physical Laboratory and played a critical role in securing for the University in 1896 the second largest library collection in the nation. Henrietta Snell, Elizabeth Kelly, Mary Beecher and Nancy Foster contributed Snell, Kelly, Beecher and Foster Halls, which were all originally designed as women’s residence halls but now house such departments as Psychology and the Committee on Social Thought. Adolphus Bartlett, who started out as a lowly clerk, contributed Bartlett Gymnasium, which is now being given new life as a new dining commons for students.

A university is always a work in progress. But some things remain the same. Let me close with a letter I received recently from an alumnus who received his Ph.D. from the University and is now a faculty member at another distinguished university:

I am writing to tell you that we … do in fact have … larger offices, better furniture, larger support staffs, higher quality catering [and] better dressed students. This much said, I have been disappointed to find that [X University] is not a very serious place, speech is confined to a narrow band of acceptable and predictable views, and interdisciplinary research is more an aspiration than a reality.

The three strengths of Chicago [seriousness of purpose, rigorous intellectual discourse and an unparalleled commitment to interdisciplinary research and education] are … an essential part of the University’s identity and make it the unique institution that I continue to admire. I do hope that you will continue to work to ensure that Chicago remains Chicago … a very serious and special place indeed.

With warm best wishes for a serious—but joyful—academic year,
Geoffrey R. Stone
Harry Kalven, Jr., Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School and the College, and Provost of the University

* For the full story, and an excellent read, see Ron Chernow’s Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (1999).
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