Alumni 1994 Newsletter
After almost a year as ISP Director I have learned a lot and perhaps accomplished a little. The wheels are turning on several projects, so next year the goal is to learn a little more and accomplish a lot. The toughest challenges remain ones of better integration. Have you heard that before? Thanks to everyone, students and staff, who have helped me out and made my first year interesting! During '93-'94 there were no radical innovations in ISP, but there were a few significant changes (P < 0.01). As you may remember from last year, Professor Stein has now become Dean Stein, and is working harder than ever on behalf of students in the Office of Studies. I consult him frequently. He continues to take a major interest in ISP. Laura Bryannan, the Program Assistant for the past five years, has moved on to a position with more responsibility, at least on paper. She is now the Department Assistant in Anthropology, but we continue to consult her, too. In her place is Diane Kessler, formerly the secretary to the chairman of the Department of Neurobiology and Physiology. Diane is making good progress on learning to answer the myriad of questions posed by ISPs and prospective ISPs, and learning the complexities of ISP databases. CAS has just gotten Diane a new 486 with a big enough hard disk to accommodate all of WordPerfect at the same time! This frees up a little old 286 for the Director's office. (An aside related to this: I encourage those of you with power in the computer software industry to adopt a voluntary cap on the allowable percent increase per year in program size and the requirement for hard disk space - even an increase of 50% per year for the upgrades would be better than what we have seen lately. If this doesn't happen soon, I will have to appeal to those of you with power in government to legislate this instead!)
New faculty continue to rotate into ISP, bringing new ideas and new challenges. This year, for instance, Prof. Heidi Schellman began teaching the first year physics course and Professors Paul Auvil (a former director of ISP) and Donald Ellis returned to ISP teaching. Professors Peter Dallos and Erwin Goldberg were new in Biology (but yes, T. T. Wu is still with us). Next year both the first and second year math teachers will change.
In terms of physical modifications, the student committee maintaining the ISP Pop Machine brought in enough money, at 50 cents a can, to buy attractive new floor lamps for the lounge, and a new stereo. The old stereo remains as a plant stand.
One of the most frequently asked questions about ISP is what graduates do with their degrees. This was not an easy question for me to handle initially, so Diane and I ferreted through our alumni data base for some answers. The answer to the question is, not surprisingly: Practically anything. But I also learned that the database is quite incomplete, particularly in terms of employment beyond graduate school, and I need you to help me rectify that. If you get this mailing via your parents' address, and have a permanent one of your own, or if you have any new information about your further education or employment, please let us know! Add whatever tidbits you would like about how ISP has influenced your life so far. Thanks to those of you who have responded. If mailing a note is too tough, we are on email, you know, and several alumni have reached us this way. This kind of information is really important for recruiting and for applying for funds for ISP summer research, student travel to scientific meetings, and new ISP computers.
THANKS!
Rob Linsenmeier (ral@isp.nwu.edu)
WHAT'S NEW AT NU?
The biggest news affecting NU as a whole is the selection of a new president: Dean Henry S. Bienen from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. You will learn, or possibly have learned, more about Bienen's impressive credentials through other alumni publications. Bienen takes over on about Jan. 1, 1995, as NU's 15th President. Arnold Weber, will be kicked upstairs to be Chancellor, a post that has not been occupied recently. The faculty are curious to see how NU will be affected as a political scientist takes over from an economist.
Commencement was memorable in Weber's last year. Baritone William (Old Man River) Warfield, who recently joined the faculty of the School of Music, opened with a rousing Star Spangled Banner. For weeks, rumors had circulated that Bill Clinton might be the featured commencement speaker, but at graduation, Weber was the only President who showed up. He told the audience that he had tried to fill in for Clinton by rising early and jogging through the campus, accompanied by Public Safety Officers sworn to lay down their lives in case he was accosted by a Daily reporter or an Evanston City Councilman. After a big breakfast at the downtown MacDonald's he went home to prepare for commencement. The featured speaker was actually Charles Richard Johnson, an Evanston native who is now a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Washington. He received an honorary Doctor of Arts degree, according to the Commencement program, for his novels that combine "materials from the African American experience with the exploration of perennial and universal philosophical themes." He spoke about how his mother, a part time cook at Northwestern, had often brought home books cast off at the end of the quarter or year by women in the sororities, and this was how he learned to read and appreciate great literature. His talk was probably more interesting than Clinton's would have been. Among those awarded honorary degrees, columnist Ann Landers and actress Patricia Neal received the most applause, but two scientists were also given all the rights and privileges appertaining to a Northwestern degree. (I think this means an opportunity to buy NU mugs and sweatshirts, but I'm not sure.) They were Elvin Kabat, recognized for his work on immunochemistry, and Yasutomi Nishizuka, who discovered protein kinase C and explored its biochemistry.
Renovation of the Technological Institute continues. Currently Chemistry and some Physics research areas are being redone, and in the next phase, teaching labs for Chemistry, Physics, and Biology will be overhauled. The university announced this year that renovation will be extended from academic buildings to places that really have an impact on students - the dorms. This summer Bobb and McCullough Halls are being repaired. The work will extend over 7 years and $29 million to other buildings. Much of the work will be on plumbing, roofing and masonry, but dining halls will also be redone and electrical systems will be upgraded to handle the ever increasing load caused by student gadgetry. Peggy Barr, the Vice President for Student Affairs said, "I don't want students to look forward to Club Med, but I would like them to come back to better living quarters." Maybe Club Mich. Another important development is the heavy investment in fiberoptic tele-communications. In the fall all dorm rooms are supposed to be wired onto the network. This will mean, to slightly paraphrase George Hackett of Newsweek (May 16, 1994), that if the student has "a standard triple-bay tower file server with a 1500 megahertz paging workstation fax modem, the proper multitasking graphical user interface and about 100 gigabytes of RAM," that he or she can connect to the "local Fidonet node" and "learn all sorts of useful new stuff on the Infobahn." Perhaps there will be other benefits, too.
NEWS FROM ALUMS
Recent letter from Jeanne Briskin (EC '77), 2504 N. Ohio St., Arlington, VA 22207
"Dear ISP: Here's a long delayed response to the August '93 newsletter. After graduating from NU in '81 (BA Chemistry and Environmental Studies; alas 8 am chemistry lab won out over geophysics), I went to MIT in another obscure program called Technology and Policy, with an emphasis on environmental policy. I won a Noyes Fellowship to work at the Conservation Law Foundation. At graduation, I joined the US EPA in Washington, DC. After working on hazardous waste policy, writing regulations on lead in drinking water, conducting the first survey of pesticides in drinking water wells, my job is now to implement programs to prevent global warming -- mainly through energy conservation and profitable use of methane released from natural gas pipelines, coal mines, landfills and animal feed lots.
News about other '81 ISPers: Sara Brentlinger Walters recently left the Office of Management and Budget for Charlotte, NC. Dave Turner is in Seattle as a postdoc (cell bio?). Mary Womack is in Portland, OR, also a postdoc (in neuroscience). Tim Learmont is in Palo Alto, CA and works on computer systems. Mark Muldoon is in England as a postdoc working on chaos, I think.
There's definitely life after ISP. Many things can be derived from 1st principles. ISP was great for the camaraderie and the attitude of connectedness among scientific areas that has been very important to my career in environmental policy. I look forward to hearing more about the current ISP program and my other classmates."
Jane Caldwell (EC '88) emailed Mike Stein recently with the following news:
"Hi Mike from Cow Country! Hope all goes well there for you, and for ISP. Grad school's fine here (U. Wisc.Madison). I'm fairly well settled in the lab, and am taking some more molecular biology classes...oh boy. It seems that I have picked a good lab and a good advisor. I'm pretty happy here, the work is challenging, and the people leave me alone to do my work-who could ask for more? If Tim (Klitz) were here, I'd be in cat heaven. Thought you'd be amused to know that I FINALLY have reason to learn Mathematica. (Yeah, I know you tried to get us to learn it my 2nd or 3rd year, but...) One of my classes - Biochemical Applications of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (essentially my work here) -- has a problem set in which we're using Mathematica to solve a system of 3 first order differential equations---the Bloch Equations, maybe you've run into them some-where (my sympathies!). Anyhow, I'm discovering that Mathematica isn't really so bad, and am having as much fun as one can possibly have learning a new application. (We're using Unix machines from SGI, so my results/mistakes come back fairly quickly, too, which is nice.) Anyway, if you're still twisting arms to get people to learn Mathematica, kudos--keep up the good work! Now I just wish I remembered a little more of my math, although it's coming back quickly--good thing I saved all of THOSE books.
"Say hello to anyone skulking around the lounge who might remember me. Take care!"
ISP HONORS
ISP students won at least their share of awards this year. Joe McMahon (EC '92), who is double majoring in physics, and Chris Toomajian (EC '91), who is double majoring in Biological Sciences, have won Barry M. Goldwater Scholarships. Goldwaters were authorized by Congress in 1986 to encourage the study of mathematics and science. John Novak (EC '90) won a German Academic Exchange (DAAD) scholarship for next year, which entitles him to take courses at Universit�t M�nchen, and to do research at the Max-Planck Instit�t f�r Physik. Jason Wong (EC '90) won the Marple-Schweitzer Memorial Award as the best Senior Chemistry major. Julie Osladil (EC '91) won a Pew Summer Research Fellowship for the second year and Lawrence Walters and Mrunil Champaneri (EC '93) also have Pew Awards. I'm sure I will miss someone if I try to list all of those in honorary societies, but the number is large. Nick Siebers (EC '93) was a Presidential Scholar in his last year of high school. This prestigious honor is given to only 140 seniors (roughly the top 0.0056%) in the country each year. Professors won awards, too. Larry Pinto, who taught the ISP Neurobiology course for several years, won the E. LeRoy Hall Award for Teaching Excellence from CAS. Ken Poeppelmeier (Chemistry) was elected to fellowship in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE - June 5, 1994
"Educators are praising Stanford University's move to tighten its liberal grading policies, but say much more needs to be done to cure the rampant grade inflation in academia... Stanford's faculty, capping weeks of debate, voted overwhelmingly Thursday to reintroduce in 1995-1996 a failing grade after dropping it 24 years ago, when many campuses were loosening grading standards. Bowing to student criticisms that Fs carry an undue stigma, professors agreed to designate the grade 'NP' for 'not passing.'" [Editorial comment: Right. That should help a lot.] "But it remains to be seen how often professors [will] use the NP grade and whether they give out more Cs and Ds, grades that have virtually disappeared from Stanford student transcripts over the last 20 years. Some 93 percent of all letter grades handed out last year at the California university were As and Bs, a significant increase over 1970....At Northwestern University, [Registrar Donald] Gwinn said he didn't expect Stanford's action 'to have any effect at all. Stanford's policies were so much more liberal than any others in the country,' Gwinn said. 'They have moved back toward the pack.' At Northwestern As and Bs account for 68 percent of grades, he said. But he said that at highly selective campuses, 'there tends to be a feeling that these are the very brightest students and they really ought to be getting really good grades.'"
A FEW QUOTES FROM THE EXIT SURVEY:
How has ISP differed from your expectations before you arrived here? "Maybe I've seen too many movies, but I half expected to find a massive research complex with steel doors and radiation symbols. I was surprised to find a house with a drink machine and a cat." - Sam Kalat, EC '90. (You never found the steel doors and radiation symbols?)
"Do not water down the curriculum. In fact, you might wish to make it more rigorous. Rigor is VERY IMPORTANT in understanding things. Qualitative descriptions are for technicians, and I was not aware that ISP intends to produce technicians. This is a really big deal. I hear grumblings about letting the curriculum get soft. That would be detrimental. ISP is NOT easy. It's not supposed to be." - Giuseppe Terracina, EC '90. (OK, we won't let it get easier. Do any other alum have comments about whether it was rigorous enough?)
'94 GRADUATES
Graduating ISPs accomplished some remarkable things this year, even though not all formally won honors for them. Herewith, an incomplete list. Kevin Curran, who will be attending law school, received honors in his German major for a project entitled "Brecht's Episches Theater: In Theorie und Praxis." Kevin also did research in neurobiology. Two ISPs, Cyrus Piraka and Ben Strackany, graduated in three years, the first ISPs to do this since 1988. Cy also had the distinction of being in the Honors Program in Medical Education and completing a history major. Both he and Ben will be attending medical school at Northwestern. In the biology line, Shasta Sabo, a double major in ISP and Biological Sciences, will be an author on three full papers resulting from her undergraduate research with Professor Bill Klein. Shasta worked primarily on proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease. She will attend Rockefeller University in the fall.
Triple majors have been common in ISP for some time, but are still not easy. Only 27 students have done it in the history of ISP. John Novak, Kyle Altmann, Kevin Curran, and Giuseppe Terracina finished three this year. Remarkably, three (3, III) students completed four (4, IV) majors in four years!! This had never been done before. All of them did ISP, math, and physics. Nicholas Matlis added Astronomy. He will attend the University of Texas at Austin in Physics next year. David Schaff added Geology, and will attend Stanford's geophysics program in the hope of figuring out earthquakes. Sam Kalat's fourth major was biology, and he will go on to UNC - Chapel Hill in Biochemistry.
Also worthy of note was the marriage of Travis Ruelle (EC '89) and Jennifer Scott (EC '90) early in 1994. Trav and Jen have been among the most helpful of the ISPs around the Center and will be missed when they move to Cincinnati this month.
Congratulations to all the ISP scholars on their accomplishments. Stay in touch!
GIFTS
We want to thank the individuals who have made contributions to ISP recently.
Kurt Ahrens (EC '87), David Darwin (EC '79), Philip Kaldon (EC'76), David Matheson (EC '81), Chad Miller (EC '85), Mark Pauli (EC '88), Beth Rees (EC '83), Mark Scherrer (EC '86), Howard Schwartz (EC '82), Paul Seo (EC '79). Gifts to ISP are used to purchase computer software, books, and to support scholarships.
When the College of Arts and Sciences asks for your support this fall, please remember the needs and accomplishments of our faculty and students and designate your gift to ISP. Just write "Integrated Science Program" in the memo area on your check.
