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| Big-Picture Transformation |
| End of an Era |
| Fortunate Son |
| Letters |
Sports |
| E Line |
Books |
| Alumni Passages |
Classes |
| From the Field |
First-Person |
| Huskiana |
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Northeastern welcomes new provost, law dean Northeastern opens the 2002–2003 academic year with two new senior administrators in its ranks. Ahmed Abdelal, former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgia State University, began work last month as the new senior vice president for academic affairs and provost. He succeeds David Hall, who will return to the law school faculty after a sabbatical.
In an interview, President Freeland praised the two newest members of his leadership team. “Ahmed Abdelal is an experienced academic professional with a splendid record of achievement,” Freeland said. “He has done nationally significant work in strengthening faculty work life.” Of the new law dean, Freeland said, “Emily Spieler is a distinguished law professional and scholar who also brings a wealth of practical experience to the law school.” Abdelal, who will serve as one of four members of Freeland’s senior leadership team, holds a doctorate in microbiology from the University of California–Davis and is an expert in microbial physiology and genetics. As provost, he will serve as the university’s chief academic officer, with responsibility for educational and research activities in the colleges, schools, and academic units. Spieler, who received her law degree from Yale University, will also serve as Northeastern’s Hadley professor of law. A Fulbright Scholar and leading authority on employment law and social insurance systems, Spieler has strong ties to the Boston area. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1969 and has been a member of the Massachusetts bar since 1974. Before taking the Northeastern deanship, she served for twelve years on the faculty of the West Virginia University College of Law. She has also held a variety of senior positions in the public sector, including service as commissioner of West Virginia’s Workers’ Compensation Fund and as that state’s first deputy attorney general for civil rights. NU Magazine wins twelve national awards
A gold medal for single photograph, and finalist status in the categories of department/column (for “Alumni Passages”), article design, whole publication design, and illustration, from the Association of Educational Publishers. A bronze medal for photography, from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Excellence awards for single photograph, photography series, illustration series, and editorial spread, from the University and College Designers Association. And inclusion in two annual volumes that showcase the best in American graphic design and illustration. The 2002 Print annual will feature the opening pages of the November 2001 article “September 11, 2001” as an example of excellence in editorial-spread design. The 2002 American Illustration will reprint the art that accompanied the January 2001 “Books” department. In addition, three articles from Northeastern University Alumni Magazine made it to CASE’s nomination list for best article, more than from any other alumni magazine in the country. University breaks ground on squash facility In the latest effort to connect with its urban neighbors, Northeastern has broken ground on a state-of-the-art squash and fitness facility that will serve as a center for a Roxbury-based after-school youth-enrichment program. The three-story, 30,000-square-foot building, which will adjoin the employee parking garage on Columbus Avenue, will be jointly constructed by Northeastern and SquashBusters of Boston, a program that provides academic tutoring, mentoring, community service, and squash instruction for middle school and high school students. The project is scheduled to be completed by summer 2003. The facility will house eight squash courts, a fitness and exercise area, locker rooms, and community and office space. Freeland cites urgency in repositioning Though Northeastern has made remarkable progress toward its goal of becoming one of the nation’s top 100 universities, a looming decline in the number of college-bound high school students makes it imperative that the repositioning process proceed with renewed vigor, President Freeland told members of the governing board. Key to that effort, Freeland said in his sixth annual address to the Northeastern Corporation last spring, will be the recently launched Leadership Campaign, Northeastern’s $200 million fundraising effort. A large measure of Northeastern’s success over the past decade is attributable to the growing pool of U.S. public high school students, which rose from about 2.3 million in 1993 to nearly 2.5 million today, Freeland explained. Demographics experts project the number will peak at about 2.7 million by 2008, before beginning to decline, particularly in Northeastern’s fertile recruiting base of New England. “So we must move, and we must move quickly, lest we risk, a few years from now, slipping back into the perilous position that we encountered in the early 1990s,” Freeland said. Northeastern’s ascent into the top 100, Freeland said, is tied to making demonstrated progress in four key areas that play a major role in institutional rankings systems: student quality, student success, resources, and academic reputation. On each of these fronts, there is good news to report, Freeland added. On the issue of student quality, for example, the president noted the university continues to enroll better-prepared classes—average freshman SAT scores hit 1167 last year—while making substantial improvements in selectivity. Gains such as these, he said, put Northeastern in a strong position to achieve top-100 status. “We are making good progress, but we have a long way still to go,” he said. New dorm, health sciences center open The transformation of west campus continued apace with the opening this month of the new Behrakis Health Sciences Center and West Village Residence Hall E.
The seven-story structure, with a curved façade of tinted glass, features a 150-seat amphitheater; state-of-the-art gross anatomy, neuroanatomy, and osteology laboratories; a pharmacy practice laboratory; observation and discussion rooms; student gathering spaces; and numerous classrooms and lecture halls. The building also now houses a new undergraduate admissions visitor center. West Village E, the seventh campus residence hall to open in the past three years, adds another 293 beds to the campus housing stock, bringing to nearly 2,350 the number of beds to come online since 1999. The building boom is aimed at transforming Northeastern into one of the nation’s premier residential campuses, capable of one day housing more than 50 percent of the university’s full-time undergraduate student population. Northeastern last spring broke ground on two more residence halls, West Village G and H, which will add another 485 student beds to the mix. Building H will also serve as the new home to the College of Computer Science, currently located in Cullinane Hall. Aspiration winners go above, beyond Associate professor of accounting Timothy Rupert’s teaching and research credentials speak for themselves. In 1996, he won the university’s prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award—one of just four handed out that year. Last year, he was named Teacher of the Year by the College of Business Administration. And during his tenure at Northeastern, Rupert has published numerous scholarly articles, including four in The Journal of the American Tax Association, the leading academic journal for taxation research. But it was neither his teaching nor research efforts that earned Rupert one of this year’s President’s Aspiration Awards. Rather, it was the hundreds of hours he volunteered at Community Tax Aid of Boston, a nonprofit corporation that provides low- and middle-income taxpayers with assistance in preparing their tax returns. In addition to personally preparing hundreds of returns each year, Rupert, a member of the organization’s board of directors, conducts three all-day training sessions for other preparers at the beginning of each new tax season, and manages two of the organization’s preparation centers, one of which is on the Northeastern campus. “It’s nice when you can take your talents and not only apply them to your professional career, but use them to do good for society,” Rupert said. He and the other winners of the third annual Aspiration Awards—Chrisie Halkett, an administrative assistant in the sociology and anthropology department; Sara Wadia-Fascetti, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; and eight representatives of the Snell and School of Law libraries—were honored at a spring awards ceremony in the Curry Student Center. “In the end, this award is about the individual people who affect the university’s mission to be a national research institution that is student-centered, practice-oriented, and urban,” President Freeland said in his remarks. “We all know that you don’t get very far unless the individuals on campus care about moving the university in this direction.” Martin bids Northeastern adieu Although Jack Martin’s service in Vietnam lasted only twelve months, it dramatically altered the next thirty-five years of his life.
But even more important, he says, it gave him some insight into the importance of place. As a signal battalion officer, Martin helped the elite 173rd Airborne Brigade move ten times in six months. “That caused me not to want to move again,” said Martin, who retired in June after a thirty-five-year career at Northeastern, the last twenty-two as vice president of business. “When I got home [from Vietnam], I thought about what doesn’t move, and I decided to work at a university.” But he wasn’t necessarily looking to stand still. “The whole thirty-five years since I got out of the Army have been very, very hectic,” he said. “I’ve been driven to be an accomplisher.” And his accomplishments at Northeastern have been numerous. Among them: directing the construction of the Egan Research Center, the Marino Recreation Center, the West Village residence halls, and Shillman Hall, and overseeing the renovations of Matthews Arena, Columbus Place, Dodge Hall, and the Curry Student Center. “I give Jack Martin great credit for the physical transformation of the Boston campus,” said president emeritus John Curry, one of four presidents whom Martin served. Martin’s connection with Northeastern began in 1960, when he enrolled as a student in the College of Business Administration. Though he struggled early, he soon became a regular on the honor roll before graduating five years later. As the conflict in Vietnam intensified, Martin joined the university’s ROTC program, became a distinguished military graduate, and enlisted in the Army as a commissioned officer. On completion of a two-year hitch, Martin came back home and began his long professional relationship with Northeastern. Now, at age sixty, Martin enters his next life phase. After battling cancer, dealing with heart trouble, and comforting his mother in the months leading up to her death in February, Martin said his sense of his own mortality forced him to reassess his priorities. He rattles off his passions: boating, literature, mechanics, writing his autobiography, art, genealogy, travel, nature, music, and films. But he won’t ignore the unexpected pleasures. On a commute home before retiring, he said, he stopped in a marshy area to listen to symphonic spring peepers, tiny frogs that live up to their name. “It’s a beautiful sound,” he said. “I must have listened to them for half an hour.” University launches Leadership Campaign Seeking a place as one of the nation’s elite teaching and research institutions, Northeastern has publicly launched the $200 million Leadership Campaign, the most ambitious fundraising effort in the university’s history. At a kickoff celebration May 22 in the Marino Recreation Center, President Freeland told the gathering of 400 trustees, administrators, alumni, and prominent friends of Northeastern that the university is an institution on the move. “We have grown from a proud institution serving the local community to an internationally recognized university,” Freeland said. “This transformation is due in large part to the support from our alumni and friends. The success of the Leadership Campaign will enable us to reach new levels of achievement and assume our rightful place among the nation’s top 100 universities.” Serving as master of ceremonies of the event was trustee Robert Shillman, E’68, H’00, chairman and chief executive officer of Cognex Corporation and one of the university’s most generous benefactors. The evening’s program featured a video highlighting the importance of the campaign. Segments were interspersed with remarks by Neal Finnegan, BA’61, H’98, chairman of the Board of Trustees, and Ronald Rossetti, BA’66, who serves as the campaign’s chairman. Officially named “The Leadership Campaign: New Pathways to Excellence,” the effort seeks to raise private support in key areas: • Endowed faculty chairs, $29 million: To enable the university to attract and retain outstanding researchers and teachers. • Student scholarships and fellowships, $31 million: To increase by 44 percent the current market value of endowed scholarships and offer an additional 380 scholarships each year. • Facilities and equipment, $76 million: To upgrade classrooms and labs, modernize residence halls, and renovate athletic facilities. • Technology and library resources, $14 million: To upgrade technology in the Snell and Law School libraries. • Academic programming and research, $35 million: To support faculty teaching and research initiatives, and student co-op and internship opportunities. • Unrestricted annual support, $15 million: Discretionary funding for day-to-day operational expenses of the university. Take a Bow! Mardges Bacon, professor of architecture, has been named Northeastern’s newest Matthews distinguished professor. The award, funded through an endowment from trustee chairman emeritus George Matthews and his wife, Kathleen Waters Matthews, gives recipients two years’ release time from classroom responsibilities and up to $20,000 to pursue research interests. Cassandra Jackson, assistant professor of English, has been awarded a 2002–2003 resident fellowship at Harvard University’s W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American Research. She will conduct research for her forthcoming book Barriers Between Us: Mulatto Figures in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction. Anthony Bajdek, associate dean of student affairs and a senior lecturer in history, was presented with the Cavalier’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland during a ceremony at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The award recognizes Bajdek’s efforts to sustain West Point’s annual tribute to Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a Polish member of the Continental Army who played a pivotal role in defeating the British at Saratoga in 1777. |
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