E Line

Gorbachev group tackles economic globalization

The Gorbachev Foundation of North America, in its first report since its establishment at Northeastern last spring, warned last month that while the potential gains from the ongoing globalization of the world economy are great, the process is also fraught with serious risks.

A panel of nineteen international experts, led by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and including two other Nobel laureates, said these risks, such as the loss of national sovereignty and global financial destabilization, can be averted only through sustained cooperative efforts between national governments in both economics and politics.

"Globalization could become a very positive process, if it is managed," Gorbachev said through an interpreter. "There must be some regulation of this process."

One way to help control the global economy, Gorbachev said, would be to levy a tax on international transactions that would help to regulate financial flows. He also suggested reforming existing international organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, or creating new organizations to help monitor and regulate the global economy.

"The international community should not agree to the continued functioning of international organizations based on the rules formulated decades ago," Gorbachev said. "We should reform these organizations."

Gorbachev conceded that some of the group's conclusions were at odds with the views of other experts. But, he said, "I think our approach is responsible and thoughtful. I believe that if we follow this approach, we will be able to avoid the extremes and avoid the negative aspects of globalization."

The Gorbachev Foundation of North America, a nonpartisan organization, aims to address the consequences of increasing political, economic, and social globalization. The center is chaired by Northeastern Board of Trustees chairman George Matthews.

The findings from last month's two-day, closed-door meetings were summarized in a three-page report and presented by Gorbachev at a news conference in the Egan Research Center. The group will continue its discussions at future meetings and then issue its recommendations to international agencies and governments.

Gridders post best mark since storied '63 season

Northeastern's 1997 football season concluded with far better results than anyone dared hope for.

Though falling short of making the playoffs, the Huskies posted their first eight-win season since 1963, when Joe Zabilski coached the team to a perfect 8-0 record and its first and only bowl game appearance.

"People didn't think that Northeastern could win in football, and I think we proved that wrong with back-to-back winning seasons and national recognition," said coach Barry Gallup. "You can't do it every year, but those are going to be our goals and our expectations. The great programs are the consistent programs. That's where we want to be."

The Huskies' 8-3 record was good for third place in the Atlantic 10 Conference and left them just short of qualifying for the sixteen-team Division 1-AA playoff field. A 49-35 loss to top-ranked Villanova in the final game of the year put an end to N.U.'s Cinderella season.

"We were picked to finish somewhere in the middle [of the Atlantic 10]," Gallup said. "So to be the third-best team in a very competitive twelve-team conference is something the players should be proud of."

Leading the way this season was senior quarterback Jim Murphy, who graduates as the Huskies' career leader in attempts (1,148), completions (624), yardage (7,804), and touchdown passes (40). For his efforts, he was named the Gridiron Club's New England Offensive Player of the Year. Gallup took home the group's New England Coach of the Year honors.

N.U. adopts third Tobin School class

Continuing its pledge to provide Roxbury's deserving young students with access to higher education, Northeastern has adopted another sixth grade class at the Maurice J. Tobin School.

Under the agreement, Northeastern will grant full-tuition scholarships to those students who are accepted into any of the university's academic programs upon graduation from high school.

With forty-four students, this year's class is the largest group adopted to date, according to Holly Carter, dean and director of the Office of Educational Opportunity and Service Learning, which coordinates the Tobin program.

"Every time we take on a new class, it brings on a whole new set of excitement," Carter said. "Our goal is to make sure that each child knows that there is a group of people [at Northeastern] that cares for them."

Northeastern began adopting Tobin sixth-graders in 1991 as part of its expanded partnership with the Mission Hill community. The partnership represents a $5 million award of approximately 100 scholarships.

Students in the first adopted class are now seniors in high school. A second set of students, adopted in 1994, is now in ninth grade. With the addition of this year's class-the last N.U. plans to adopt-the program encompasses 108 students.

In addition to granting full-tuition scholarships, Northeastern provides the Tobin students with a wide range of support services that address academic enrichment, role modeling, family support, and motivational needs.

Did you know?

More than half of last year's entering freshman class-54%-characterized their political leanings as "middle of the road," according to an N.U. survey. Nearly a third identified themselves as "liberal or far left," while just under 20% said they were "conservative or far right." Other findings: 71.5% said abortion should remain legal; 36% thought marijuana should be legalized; 80% favored a national health-care plan; 25% wanted to abolish the death penalty; and 20% supported laws prohibiting homosexual relationships. The survey, part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, found N.U. women to be slightly more liberal than their male counterparts.

The cost of higher education: competition a constructive force

Following are excerpts from President Freeland's testimony before the National Commission on the Cost of Higher Education on November 7, 1997, in the Egan Research Center.

This morning I want to emphasize three points:

First, while higher education has been criticized for failing to respond to the needs of undergraduates, our transformation suggests the opposite. Some eight years ago the market spoke. Prospective students and their families made it clear that if we did not change, our future was very much in doubt. We heard the message, and we are acting on it.

Second, while our transformation is incomplete, we have been able to significantly increase the value of a Northeastern education with only modest increases in real tuition charges to our students and even more modest increases in total tuition revenues from undergraduates.

Third, our efforts at institutional adaptation are greatly affected by federal and state higher-education policies. We strongly support the availability of low-cost, state-sponsored higher education in Massachusetts, but it is also evident that our ability to serve the students we want most to enroll-talented, ambitious sons and daughters from modest backgrounds-is greatly affected by state and federal action with respect to financial aid.

·Spurred by the crisis of the early 1990s, Northeastern set out to systematically recast ourselves as a smaller and better institution. Between the fall of 1990 and the fall of 1997, we reduced undergraduate enrollments by 20 percent, from about 15,000 to about 12,000 today. During this same eight-year period, we pared staff by 18 percent-from about 2,800 full-time faculty, administrators, and support staff, to 2,300.

While our transformation is a work in progress, early results are promising. Applications are up 52.6 percent from a low of about 9,100 in 1991. At the same time, our selectivity has increased markedly. Mean combined SAT scores have risen 105 points in eight years, including 33 points between the fall of 1996 and the fall of 1997. Freshman enrollment has stabilized and retention rates have risen steadily.

Since the fall of 1990, the sticker price of tuition for full-time undergraduates at Northeastern has increased at an annual rate of about eight percent-from $9,300 to $14,600. But the sticker price is not what we actually charge to many students. We have, in fact, offset a substantial proportion of these apparent increases by dramatically raising institutional financial aid. In fact, per-student aid from institutional sources increased from about $700 per year in 1990 to almost $3,200 this year, chiefly through reductions in actual tuition charges to individual students. If nominal tuition increases are reduced by the average amount we returned to students in financial aid, the result is a net or actual tuition increase of only 4.9 percent per year over the eight-year period I have reviewed. During these same years, the annual increase in the CPI averaged 3.3 percent.

We are determined to continue enrolling students from modest backgrounds. But it has become harder and harder to do so in the recent context of rising institutional costs and declining state and federal student aid. In spite of our growing financial aid expenditures, debt incurred by our students has risen alarmingly. Moreover, the average income of our entering students is edging upward.

Northeastern's recent history is a story of working hard to survive in a competitive academic marketplace. Facing our crisis at the beginning of this decade was not easy. But competition has made us a better institution and enhanced our ability to contribute to our students and to the economy of the region. I have little doubt that many other institutions have found new strength and have crafted their own unique ways of meeting the educational needs of our citizenry.

I am by no means a myopic apologist for higher education. I believe, in fact, that many of the current criticisms of the nation's colleges and universities, including those that brought this commission into being, are well founded. But I also believe that competition among academic institutions remains a powerful guarantor that, over time, our campuses will seek out strategies of price and program that best meet the needs of the public. I believe that the Northeastern story is an excellent illustration of how well this dynamic can work. From my perspective, that is a critical part of the recent history of American higher education that is too often lost in public discussions of the shortcomings of our academic institutions.

For Lower Roxbury, a "renaissance"

In a move intended to spark the revitalization of Lower Roxbury, university officials last month officially closed the deal to purchase Ruggles Center, acquiring the nine-story office building and three adjacent parcels of land for $17 million.

Now called Renaissance Park at Northeastern University, the building's offices will be leased by the university to commercial tenants. Northeastern will also provide more than 30,000 square feet of rent-free space to the Whittier Street Health Center for thirty-one years.

Officials from the university, BankBoston, and the site's development team met November 14 for an informal celebration of Northeastern's acquisition, unfurling the centennial flag above the building and gathering on the ninth floor for a champagne toast.

President Freeland said the building will serve as an important symbol of Northeastern's commitment to the surrounding community and to the economic potential of the neighborhood.

"This site captures the idea of revitalization and it invokes the notion of economic development," Freeland said. "This is a place of rebirth and economic renewal in the city."

The facility was vacated by the Registry of Motor Vehicles in 1995 after workers there complained of respiratory ailments thought to be related to the building's insulation. Those problems have since been corrected, university officials said.

In addition to the former Registry building, Northeastern acquired surrounding land for possible use as a hotel and conference center or another office building. The university is also negotiating for the rights to an additional parcel that has been approved for use as a parking garage.

Take a BOW!

Ira Weiss, dean of the College of Business Administration since 1994, has had his contract extended through the 200001 academic year. In making the reappointment, provost Michael Baer praised Weiss for "providing strong and innovative leadership for the college."

Coleen Pantalone, vice provost for undergraduate education, has been promoted to interim executive vice provost. She succeeds Daryl Hellman, who returns to the economics department after nine years in the provost's office.

Robert Vozzella, vice president for cooperative education, will assume additional responsibilities for the university in the area of international education. His new title will be vice president for cooperative and international education.

Magazine honored for editorial, design excellence

Northeastern University Alumni Magazine recently received several national awards for editorial and design excellence.

Last month, the magazine was awarded a silver medal for overall communications excellence by Washington Edpress, a Washington, D.C.based educational and networking organization for publications, public relations, and other communications professionals. In addition, contributor Bill Kirtz, an associate professor of journalism, won a gold medal for his "Talk of the Gown" column "How to Write Good," which appeared in the November 1996 issue. The column had previously received a gold medal from the national Educational Press Association.

In October, the magazine won four design awards, including a gold medal for best use of illustration, in the annual Ozzie Awards competition sponsored by Folio, a magazine for publications professionals. The illustration, by Adam Rogers, accompanied the article "Jazz Was Their Beat" in the September 1996 issue. N.U. Magazine also received a silver medal for best use of photography (September 1996, "The Border War") and honorable mentions for overall design (September 1996) and cover design (May 1997, "Violence against Women").

Bouvé, nursing merger gets green light

The Board of Trustees last month officially authorized the consolidation of Bouvé College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and the College of Nursing into a new Bouvé College of Health Professions.

The merger, which is scheduled to take effect July 1, was proposed by President Freeland last spring as a way to elevate the stature and maximize the resources of the health sciences at Northeastern. The move was overwhelmingly endorsed in votes last fall by the faculties of both colleges and by the Faculty Senate.

The new college will likely comprise a School of Pharmacy, a School of Nursing, and other health sciences departments, though the exact structure will not be determined until a new dean is hired later this year.

A search for the new dean was expected to begin this month. Both Bouvé dean James Gozzo and nursing dean Eileen Zungolo have said that they may be interested in the post.

The merger leaves Northeastern with six day colleges: Bouvé, arts and sciences, business administration, computer science, criminal justice, and engineering.

Robinson inducted into CSSS Hall of Fame

Baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who broke the Major League color barrier in 1947 and forever changed the face of sports and the nation, was posthumously inducted into Northeastern's Center for the Study of Sport in Society Hall of Fame at the organization's thirteenth annual awards banquet and Hall of Fame induction ceremony in October.

Robinson's widow, Rachel Robinson, accepted the induction at the October 28 ceremony at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. Robinson, who starred for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1947 to 1956, joins previous inductees Muhammad Ali, Arnold "Red" Auerbach, and the late Olympic sprint champion Wilma Rudolph in the CSSS Hall.

Also honored at the ceremony were 1997 Giant Steps Award winners Reggie White, civic leader; Jodi Norton and Lawrence Wright, courageous student-athletes; and Jack Aker, coach.

Excellence in Sports Journalism Awards were presented to ESPN for its Outside the Lines broadcasts; to WCVB-TV for its "High Five" segments that salute area high school scholar-athletes; and to the Sporting News for its continuing coverage of the relationship between sport and society.