March 2003			The Play's the Thing America's Bandstand The World Turned Upside Down	E Line Sports Q&A Books Alumni Passages Classes From the Field First-Person Letters Huskiana
		Spacey prviews latest film, wows students Students stood in line outside Blackman Auditorium in rock-concert proportions (1,200 had to be turned away) when two-time Academy Award–winning actor Kevin Spacey came to Northeastern in January to discuss his new movie, The Life of David Gale, which opened nationwide last month. The packed house was treated to a screening of the film, in which Spacey plays the title character, a college professor and death-penalty opponent who himself lands on death row after being convicted of rape and murder. Following the screening, the actor took the stage for a relaxed forty-minute question-and-answer session. He explained how he stays down-to-earth (“I don’t live in Hollywood; I live in New York City”), and he wouldn’t say how he feels about the death penalty (“As soon as you say what your opinion is, people stop listening to you”). Spacey was touring universities around the country to talk about the film. Northeastern’s selection as one of the venues was viewed as a major coup. “All the other colleges and universities in Boston are just green with envy,” said Del Lewis, director of the university’s Center for the Arts. And the audience drank the excitement up. The event’s tone bordered on giddy as several students begged Spacey for—and received—hugs or handshakes. Another student invited him to dinner, which he politely declined. Audience members later agreed Spacey had given them one of the “coolest” experiences they could remember. NU marketing strategy takes flight—literally The university’s marketing campaign is taking off. Via US Airways, that is. This month and next, US Airways passengers traveling to Boston will get a glimpse of Northeastern people and places in a two-minute segment that’s part of the airline’s “Best of Boston” in-flight video. The segment features NU professors, alumni, co-op partners, and students, as well as panoramic shots of the campus. And that’s not all. Northeastern is getting its name in the limelight through a new one-year partnership with WGBH-TV. As a sponsoring partner for Nova, American Experience, and Ken Burns: American Stories, the university will be featured in a segment that opens these shows, which have strong intellectual content and audience appeal. On campus, new promotional images are popping up. Bus and van wraps and banners on poles display images from the marketing campaign, which creatively combine photos of campus, students in the classroom, and students on co-op, featuring shots of Shillman Hall, the Zakim Bridge, and the Boston Stock Exchange. Marketing manager Alexia Corey Monsen points out that, because Northeastern buses and vans often travel off campus, “it’s another way to get the look and feel of Northeastern out there.” The new marketing strategies build on existing efforts to spread the news about everything Northeastern has to offer. Since last fall, the university has been touting its strengths—such as its new housing and its state-of-the-art recreation center—through billboards, print ads, and other media. The promotion began last fall in the Mid-Atlantic states. This spring, the message is being broadcast coast to coast, responding to demographic shifts that indicate the numbers of potential college students are growing most swiftly outside the New England region. The marketing campaign represents “a multiplatform strategy,” says University Relations vice president Sandra King. “The idea is to reach key target markets—prospective students and their parents, guidance counselors, and corporate leaders—with messages in the media that are credible and well-respected.” Bioterrorism, sensing and imaging discussed Northeastern hosted two major conferences in recent months. The first was aimed at helping Boston-area cities and towns learn how to prepare for a bioterror attack. The second focused on research, education, and education-industry collaboration within the field of sensing and imaging. The bioterror conference, spearheaded by School of Nursing assistant dean Lea Johnson and associate professor Margery Chisholm, brought the university community together with federal, state, and local officials to discuss plans for handling large-scale bioterror attacks. The second conference, hosted by Northeastern’s Center for Subsurface Sensing and Imaging Systems, served as a showcase for advances in sensing and imaging technologies, such as sophisticated sensors that provide detailed underground views. Conference presenters outlined potential uses for subsurface sensing technology, which encompass such diverse areas as homeland security, police work, and medicine. Two new vice presidents named Northeastern recently welcomed the appointment of two new vice presidents. Former Polaroid executive Marian Stanley has begun work as Northeastern’s first vice president for corporate relations. And Robert Gittens, LA’75, L’78, has been named the university’s vice president for public affairs. Stanley, who assumed her vice presidency in January, is charged with facilitating the development of strategic relationships between the university and its key corporate partners. As Northeastern’s primary representative to the corporate community, she will develop and supervise the Office of Corporate Relations as well as a corporate outreach center. Stanley worked at Polaroid for twenty-nine years in various positions, including as corporate vice president for Eurasia/Africa, before founding her own consulting firm, Stanley Global Resources, three years ago. Gittens will lead Northeastern’s Government Relations and Community Affairs office, overseeing the university’s interactions with federal, state, and local government agencies and officials, and with community representatives. Most recently, Gittens served as cabinet secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services, acting as the governor’s chief policy adviser on health care, social welfare, and quality-of-life issues. He has also served as state Department of Youth Services commissioner, first assistant county district attorney, and former governor Michael Dukakis’s deputy chief legal counsel. In 1993, he was appointed to the Boston School Committee, a body he chaired from 1996 to 1998. Gittens will assume his vice presidency this month. Meanwhile two vice presidents have announced they will step down from their posts. Karen Rigg, vice president for student affairs, will retire from the university at the end of August. Rick Porter, vice president for cooperative education, will return to the mathematics faculty and serve as special assistant in the Center for the Study of Practice-Oriented Education. MLK speaker urges a "more just" society International activist and author Randall Robinson urged the audience attending the university’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. convocation to “pick your field, define your area,” and “work for a fairer, and more just, and safer place in which to live.” The founder of TransAfrica, a lobbying group focused on the interests of African and Caribbean countries, said celebrating King’s life means taking a critical look at U.S. policies, both foreign and domestic, and reminded listeners such analysis requires an education. Survey: NU's diversity climate has improved A solid majority of employees and students believes Northeastern is today a more welcoming place for minorities, women, gays, and lesbians than it was six years ago, although members of those groups are less satisfied with the climate for diversity than the community at large, a new campus survey shows. Most respondents to the “campus climate” survey, conducted by the Office of Institutional Research during fall 2001 and released last December, said they perceive Northeastern to be more respectful, less racist, less sexist, and less homophobic in 2001 than in 1995, the year of the last such survey. Further, more than eight in ten respondents agreed that “diversity is good for Northeastern,” while fewer than three in ten thought “emphasizing diversity leads to campus disunity.” The survey culled responses from about 2,570 individuals from six groups: faculty, professional staff, support and technical staff, undergraduate day students, graduate students, and evening students. “It’s gratifying to see that people feel better overall about the climate for diversity today than they did in 1995,” said Donnie Perkins, dean and director of the Office of Affirmative Action and Diversity, which commissioned the report. “But we also see that women still feel we’re grappling with sexism and minorities still feel we’re grappling with issues of race. It says we have work to do—very hard work.” More than 70 percent of all respondents characterized Northeastern’s environment as “not racist”; 60 percent said the university wasn’t sexist; and 55 percent said it wasn’t homophobic. But because women and members of minority groups were more likely to report some problems with Northeastern’s climate for diversity, Perkins said the university must examine more closely how different races, ethnicities, and cultures on campus interact with one another. “We’ve increased the diversity of our student body,” he said. “We’re making progress in the diversity of our faculty. Now we need to focus on how to develop better human relations with one another.” Take a Bow! A Northeastern graduate has received the Army’s highest peacetime medal for valor. Colonel J. Edgar Wakayama, LA’67, of Las Vegas, Nevada, was at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, when terrorists crashed a Boeing 757 into the building. The former University of Nevada–Reno professor was on active duty with a Department of Defense weapons-testing unit. According to his citation for the Soldier’s Medal, Wakayama—a Medical Service Corps reservist and Vietnam veteran—re-entered the Pentagon three times to search for survivors, leading several to safety, and then helped to treat the wounded. For the next nine days, Wakayama worked twelve-hour shifts with the Red Cross. Two School of Law graduates were among the recipients of the 2002 Pro Bono Awards, given by the National Law Journal. Reed Zars, L’86, a solo practitioner in Wyoming, fights utility companies that pollute the environment. He recently won a $160 million settlement involving a coal-fired power plant in Colorado that had caused record levels of acid snow near the Continental Divide. And the Chicago law firm Jenner & Block—including lead partner Benjamin Weinberg, L’90—was lauded for its work on behalf of death row inmates. The firm “has taken a leadership role in addressing the need for counsel in capital cases,” the Journal wrote in its January 6 issue.