Annual Report of the Provost, 2004–2005
19 October 2005
Dear Colleagues
I write to you in a time of transition, following President Randel’s announcement in late July of his acceptance of the presidency of the Andrew Mellon Foundation, to begin next academic year. We are deeply grateful to Don for his leadership and tireless work on behalf of the University. His many accomplishments range from a stronger scientific connection with Argonne National Laboratory to a more cooperative and optimistic relationship with the communities around the University. During his term he completed some of the important initiatives started before 2000 and has begun others that in turn will come to fruition under future presidents.
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, James Crown, has written to the whole University community about the search for Don’s successor. A Trustee committee has been appointed, and a Faculty advisory committee has been elected by the Council of the Senate. They have begun their work of soliciting nominations. You are invited to suggest candidates.
Meanwhile, in a decentralized organization like ours, the responsibility for the continuity of academic programs rests in the hands of the deans and department chairs. I am glad to be able to report that over the past year four deans accepted reappointment for five-year terms: Rick Rosengarten in the Divinity School, Ted Snyder in the Graduate School of Business, Jeanne Marsh in the School of Social Service Administration, and Saul Levmore in the Law School (the terms of Ted and Saul to begin next July). To all of them I want to express my appreciation for the leadership they have provided and for their willingness to continue in their highly demanding jobs.
Faculty
The academic year 2004–05 saw more comings and goings among the tenured faculty than in the past few years. In contrast to the previous two years when faculty departures were about half the long-term average, over the past year the total of twenty departures of tenured faculty was slightly above the long-term average. The numbers are small, and year-to-year fluctuations are expected. Nevertheless, numbers alone do not capture the intellectual loss of individual departures, and the Provost’s Office is doing a study of the reasons individual faculty give for leaving. At this point, it appears that the motives are very diverse and exhibit no dominant pattern.
On the positive side, we welcome a strong cohort of new faculty, including twenty-one tenured appointments.
Alexander Chervonsky (Pathology, from the Jackson Laboratory): His seminal discoveries concerning the factors controlling homing of T cells hold great promise for elucidating the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases.
Michael Dawson (Political Science, from Harvard): A leading scholar on issues of race and politics, his recent book, Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies, has reoriented the field.
Jean Decety (Psychology, from INSERM): Pioneering in the use of neuroimaging, his current research extends his earlier work on motor control and action perception to the study of social neuroscience.
Richard Fehon (Molecular Genetics, from Duke): His identification and functional characterization of proteins located in the tight junctions between epithelial cells are revealing new roles for the intercellular junctions in cell function.
Joe Garcia (Medicine, from Johns Hopkins): A preeminent investigator of the mechanisms of acute respiratory distress syndrome and their relationship to patient care, he joins us as chair of the department.
Michael Glotzer (Molecular Genetics, from Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna): His recent discovery and initial characterization of the multi-protein centraspindlin complex have shed new light on the molecular mechanisms of cytokinesis.
Tatyana Golovkina (Microbiology, from the Jackson Laboratory): Her important insights into the mechanisms of retrovirus infections are based in the use of the murine model, where virus/host genetic interactions can be manipulated.
Mark Hansen (English, from Princeton): Based on research in the emerging field of new digital technologies, his latest book, Bodies in Code: Interfaces with New Media, demonstrates the impact of the digital revolution across contemporary culture.
Christopher Kennedy (Linguistics, from Northwestern University): Syntactician and semanticist, he examines how structure and meaning interact in such areas as vagueness in language and elliptical statements.
Franklin Lewis (Near Eastern Languages, from Emory University): His groundbreaking studies of two classical mystic Persian poets, Sana’i and Rumi, have established his prominence in the field.
John List (Economics, from University of Maryland): A methodological contrarian in field experimental economics, his experiments in real market settings are challenging the results found in the laboratory.
Viswanathan Natarajan (Medicine, from Johns Hopkins): An expert on lipid and oxidant signaling, his work has important implications in understanding the mechanisms of acute lung injury and airway inflammation.
Eduardo Perozo (Pediatrics, from University of Virginia): He has creatively combined the fields of ion channel biophysics and structural biology, employing methods that reveal the movements of proteins that allow for function.
Stephen Raudenbush (Sociology, from University of Michigan): A distinguished educational methodologist and Scientific Director for Analysis in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, he will chair the new Committee on Education.
Ilaria Rebay (Ben May Institute, from MIT): Her research on Drosophila has recently established the first link between an organ determination network and an extrinsic signaling pathway.
Benoît Roux (Pediatrics, from Cornell): A biophysicist and expert in protein dynamics, his innovative computational analysis of channel function is reorienting the entire field.
Wilhelm Schlag (Mathematics, from Caltech): An analyst of broad interest, he has made significant contributions in the areas of harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, mathematical physics, and probability theory.
Michael Sells (Divinity, from Haverford College): Scholar of the Qur’an, Islamic mystical texts, and Arabic poetry, his current research focuses on the contemporary polemic between Western and Islamic militants over rights, democracy, and tolerance.
Douglas Skinner (GSB, from University of Michigan): His empirical research in accounting and finance has provided notable insights on topics such as voluntary disclosure and corporate dividend policy.
Mark Slouka (English, from Columbia University): Writer of award-winning fiction and essays, his latest novel, The Death of Water and Fire, will appear shortly.
Malika Zeghal (Divinity, from CNRS): As a political scientist she studies power relationships in contemporary Islam manifested in settings as diverse as the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo and the west side of Chicago.
This University has a great tradition of regenerating itself through outstanding younger faculty appointments, and this year is no exception. Sixty-nine promising scholars have joined the University at the rank of assistant professor this fall. It is our job as colleagues to do everything possible to enable their success.
Faculty honors
Our outstanding faculty received a steady stream of honors and awards through the year—in fact, far too many to list in this letter. Here is a brief selection of the leading honors. Olufunmilayo Falusi Olopade and Kevin Murphy were named MacArthur Fellows. Philip Gossett received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award. John Brinkman, Friedrich Katz, and George Stocking were honored with the Mellon Emeritus Award. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute named Albert Bendelac and Milan Mrksich as HHMI Investigators. The newly elected members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences are Sheila Fitzpatrick, Susan Goldin-Meadow, Melvin Shochet, and myself (I couldn’t be happier with the company).
Diversity
As you know, the Provost’s Initiative on Minority Issues has been working over the past few years and is now completing its mandate. PIMI has made a number of recommendations, which we have begun to implement. Last autumn the President and I sent a letter giving the argument for why the initiative is a priority for our core mission as a University. In 2004–05 the efforts in faculty and student recruiting and retention have shown improved results, among them the better graduation rate for students of color. The Office of Minority Student Affairs has been reorganized, and I am delighted to welcome Ana Vazquez as its new Director. To continue the important work of PIMI, I have appointed as Deputy Provost for Research and Minority Issues Professor Ken Warren, who was instrumental in formulating the recommendations of PIMI.
Women’s and family issues
I want to follow up on last year’s letter by noting two initiatives. First, the University is proceeding with a program to cooperate and provide financial support to local daycare providers in order to develop child care programs for infants and toddlers. The aim is to have University-supported places available for infants and toddlers at local centers within the next eighteen months. Second, Dean Robert Fefferman and Associate Provost Mary Harvey collaborated with faculty over the summer to write a grant proposal for NSF’s ADVANCE program to promote more women scientists. The development of the proposal generated several ideas that will be implemented regardless of the outcome at NSF.
Community
The University continues to support numerous initiatives in the surrounding neighborhoods, perhaps the most important and visible of which is the Urban Education Initiative. UEI brings together five elements with the common purpose of improving public education in the city of Chicago and the country. The five include the Center for Urban School Improvement (USI), SSA’s Community Schools Program, the Consortium on Chicago School Research, a new academic Committee on Education, and a package of programs in the Office of Community and Government Affairs. The aim is to bring together the highest quality research on education with practical involvement in the public schools in the expectation that the best research will produce knowledge to identify the most effective practices for urban education. The empirical results are already promising. Our charter school, North Kenwood/Oakland, with a very economically disadvantaged population is achieving results that exceed Chicago Public School averages in all areas and state averages in many. The Consortium is producing the most respected assessments in the country of student performance in an urban school district. These successes and others have drawn national attention as the most interesting experiment in urban education by a university and, as such, have attracted major gifts from foundations and private donors. Much remains to be done. This autumn the University has opened its second public grade school at 37th and Cottage Grove. The plan is to open three more, including a high school. The academic Committee on Education is off to a great start with the recruitment of Stephen Raudenbush, who will work with colleagues to develop research programs. As President Randel wrote, no issue is more pressing for the nation than public education, and the University of Chicago has a golden opportunity to make a decisive contribution.
Planning and space
Last year’s letter reported on the Campus Master Plan Extension. That effort was completed a year ago, presented to campus constituencies, and approved by the Trustees. The plan covers the next fifteen years and will undoubtedly undergo adaptation to changing circumstances. Implementation is underway. Following the move of the GSB into their new facilities, Rosenwald, Stuart, and Walker were refurbished as the new home of the Departments of Economics, English, and Philosophy, as well as the College Admissions Office, the Humanities Dean’s Office, and classrooms. The current renovation of the first floor of Harper will remake that space into classrooms, yielding a total of eighteen incremental classrooms for the College and Divisions. On the west campus the Center for Integrative Science (formerly the IRB) has been completed, a facility that will enable exciting discoveries at the intersection of the biological and physical sciences.
On the drawing boards now are four other large projects to facilitate research and student life on campus in the future. The first is the addition to the Regenstein Library. After a long period of planning and discussion, the decision was made to build on land adjacent to Regenstein a high-density, rapid-retrieval system. This on-site option will keep the materials immediately accessible. Since the addition will likely be filled with journals and serials whose contents are listed online, the loss of browsing should not be a serious disadvantage. The addition will include a reading room for use of the materials and an area for the important work of conservation of the collection. For more details, see http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/reg/addition/. The Regenstein with its depth of collection and ease of access has been one of the great research tools in the world for humanists and social scientists over the past generation. The planned addition should maintain its special advantages. Part of the challenge in the planning effort was the unparalleled rapidity with which the means of dissemination of knowledge have been changing. In conjunction with the addition of physical space, a task force is now planning how to configure the current building to serve the University in the future. If you have views, please contact the task force chair, Andrew Abbott.
The second major project is the construction of a new laboratory building for the clinical sciences. The design of the Center for Biomedical Discovery is nearing completion, and construction will begin soon at the corner of 57th Street and Drexel. The new building is needed because the renovation of the older buildings south of 57th Street would be too costly and inefficient, and would leave us with less than optimal wet labs. The older buildings will be renovated for more appropriate uses.
The third project is the renovation for the Physical Sciences of Searle and the Research Institutes. Unlike the BSD space, the layout of these buildings can accommodate 21st century science, but they are aging and in need of renewal of their infrastructures. Design of the renovation has begun with a view to construction over the next few years.
The final major project on the drawing board is aimed to improve student life. The Shoreland dormitory has housed a generation of College students who have appreciated the independence of apartment living. But the condition of the building and the recent city ordinances regulating facades would make it very expensive to do the necessary maintenance (upwards of $50M.). The decision was made to sell the Shoreland to a developer (who will return it to its original purpose of high-class apartments) and to build a new dormitory on the South Campus. This is one of several developments that will enliven that area of campus in the coming years.
This is a partial list of the physical changes underway on the campus. For a full description of progress on the Master Plan see http://www.uchicago.edu/docs/mp-site/construction/. The projects are large and expensive—the four projects above will in total cost more than $350M—but they are all important to the core mission of the University.
Financial state of the University
Last year ended with the University in a stronger financial position, though recent reports from other elite research universities indicate that our competitive position is no easier. The Chicago Initiative has now raised more than $1.3 billion. The Trustees have recommitted themselves to the goal of $2 billion and have focused on endowment to support students and faculty, our two most important assets. In addition, the value of our existing endowment rose by 18.1% in the year ending June 30, 2005. The strong market returns over the last two years will begin to show up in the University’s revenue stream next year. Finally, our financial planning should be improved through a new ten-year planning model developed over the past year.
The coming year
The central administration currently is preparing for the ten-year reaccreditation review by the North Central Association (NCA) and for the competitive contract renewal for the management of Argonne National Laboratory (ANL).
The reaccreditation process entails (1) the collection of information to demonstrate that the University meets basic institutional standards related to education and administration, and (2) an analysis in depth of a special topic, in our case the University’s research infrastructure. A group of faculty and administrators has spent the past year gathering data on our research infrastructure (ranging from the Library to laboratories to IT) and reflecting on our decision-making in setting priorities. The team of external evaluators will visit campus in early February, and the report will be publicly available thereafter. Some of you may be asked to speak with the team.
As you know, the federal Department of Energy has required for the first time that the University compete for the contract to manage ANL. Our relationship with Argonne has become increasingly integral to the University’s scientific research, and the winning of the contract correspondingly important. Vice President for Research Thomas Rosenbaum is leading the large and highly complex effort to assemble the University’s proposal to be submitted in the winter. As part of our effort to extend the University’s value to ANL and DOE, we have recruited Northwestern University and the University of Illinois to join the Board of Governors and to participate in a Science Policy Council. The Department of Energy’s decision is expected next summer.
Obviously, the coming year will be an important one for the University. I hope that it turns out to be productive for all members of the University community.
With best wishes,
Richard P. Saller
Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service
Professor of History and Classics, and Provost of the University