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Freeland: Capital campaign crucial
to NU's academic goals
Northeastern’s current capital campaign—the $200 million Leadership Campaign—is crucial for expanding and enhancing the university’s academic programs, said President Freeland during his annual address to the university corporators at Boston’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel in May.
“If our colleges are going to strengthen their positions, if the university is going to achieve the top-100 goal, we need to provide our people with the resources comparable to those available to our competitors,” Freeland told the corporators. “This is why the Leadership Campaign is so vital.”
The six-year fund drive, currently in its quiet phase, has already drawn $91 million in commitments from roughly 49,000 donors; seventeen of those gifts have exceeded $1 million. And two parts of the campaign—the annual giving program and the Campus Campaign—are both moving along at a fast clip. As of June, the annual giving program surpassed its fund-raising goal by more than $500,000, bringing in $6 million from 25,000 alumni, parents, and friends. And the Campus Campaign, aimed at drawing $2 million from Northeastern employees and members of the governing boards, has already raised $1.5 million from 730 of the university’s 2,300 employees.
The Leadership Campaign is directed toward four central themes that reflect Northeastern’s overall strategy for institutional progress, Freeland explained in his May address. They are: extending the university’s leadership in practice-oriented education; maintaining world-class standards in teaching and research; becoming a model of educational opportunity and urban engagement; and fostering a vibrant campus community.
Key among those goals, Freeland said, is asserting national leadership in practice-oriented education, a new learning model that fuses professional education, liberal learning, and cooperative education. This is best achieved, he said, by strengthening the connection between co-op and the classroom.
“As we do this, we need to document and proclaim the benefits of practice-oriented education aggressively and widely,” he said.
Funds raised during the Leadership Campaign must also be used to hire outstanding faculty, enhance campus facilities, and provide resources for scholarships and fellowships, he said.
Freeland noted that Northeastern’s overall academic reputation in U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings has improved substantially, to 105th, and he credited a number of factors, including the addition of reputable faculty; national recognition for individual units, such as the High-Tech MBA program and the Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems; the attraction of outstanding students from a widening geographic circle; and achievements of groups like the business college’s case competition team, which has won four of five Business Beanpot competitions, and the engineering college’s robot-building team that won this year’s national championship.
University relations director Sandra King
named thirteenth vice president
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| Sandra King
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“She has fully demonstrated the ability to provide us with the kind of leadership we’re going to need, both in the traditional areas of university relations and in the new arena of strategic marketing,” he said.
Freeland praised King’s work during the past year in the development of a strategic marketing plan, which will serve as the blueprint for Northeastern’s branding and marketing efforts that aim to position the university as the leader in practice-oriented education and as a center of academic excellence in the heart of Boston.
King becomes the thirteenth vice president at the university. She is a Northeastern alumna, having received a master’s degree in business administration from the university in 1977, after earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration and economics from Elmira College, in New York.
She has worked as a management consultant helping Internet start-up companies position themselves in the marketplace, and as senior vice president for sales and marketing and a director of BankVest Capital Corp.
From 1990 to 1998, she served as vice president for marketing at Babson College.
In addition to leading the development and implementation of strategic marketing at Northeastern, King oversees the units of public relations, publications, conference and event planning, university web services, university photography, the faculty-staff newspaper, and the alumni magazine.
New research centers funded by university
Seeking to raise the profile of the university’s research efforts, Northeastern is funding three new interdisciplinary centers in the areas of nano manufacturing, race and justice, and molecular biotechnology. Each of the centers—chosen from a list of five finalists—will receive $250,000 in seed money and up to $750,000 over five years. The goal is that each attract enough outside funding to become largely self-sufficient by the middle of the decade.
“In forming these three new interdisciplinary research institutes, the university is taking a giant step forward in reaching its goal of top-100 status,” said Ronald Hedlund, vice provost for research and graduate education.
The Nano Manufacturing Research Institute, led by Ahmed Busnaina, William Lincoln Smith chair of mechanical, industrial, and manufacturing engineering, will attempt to manufacture tiny structures ranging from 1 to 100 nanometers and integrate them into computer processing chips and other functioning structures. Its members will work in collaboration with the physics and chemistry departments.
The Race and Justice Research Institute, led by law professor Deborah Ramirez, will store information about race, crime, education, and other issues that affect communities of color. It will also sponsor a series of conferences in conjunction with the College of Criminal Justice, the African-American studies department, and the School of Education.
And the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, led by arts and sciences dean James Stellar, Barnett Institute director Barry Karger, and Stephen Zoloth, dean of Bouvé College of Health Sciences, will seek to raise the university’s profile in biotechnology through research into new technologies and applications.
The awards bring to six the number of research institutes at the university. Hedlund said the university hopes to fund three more centers in the near future.
EMC’s Egan gets nod for Irish ambassadorship
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| Richard Egan (left) with Senator Edward Kennedy
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EMC, a $9 billion company based in Hopkinton and the largest technology firm in Massachusetts, is a global leader in data-storage software and hardware for computers. The firm has a major manufacturing plant in Ireland’s County Cork, employing 1,600 workers. Egan held the position of chief executive officer at EMC until 1992; he was named chairman emeritus this year.
Egan, 65, whose great-grandfather emigrated from Ireland, was born in Quincy and raised in Dorchester.
He is well-known on the Northeastern campus for his generous support of the university. In 1994, he donated $6.7 million to help finance the construction of the $30 million Egan Engineering/Science Research Center, named for Egan and his wife, Maureen.
Egan was expected to present his credentials and assume the ambassadorship in Dublin this month.
Take a bow!
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| José Massó
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Brian Coventry, BA’88, is the newest president of the Northeastern University Alumni Association. The Buffalo, New York, native took over the top position on July 1 after serving as executive vice president and leading several alumni chapters in Manhattan and Pittsburgh. His term will run two years.