Posts Tagged ‘lee bollinger’
Bollinger appoints head of MIT mech. engineering Dean of SEAS
University President Lee Bollinger appointed Mary Cunningham Boyce, effective July 1, 2013. A University statement includes the full details of the appointment, which may be read in full below.
NEW YORK, March 26, 2013 —Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger today announced his appointment of Mary Cunningham Boyce as the new Dean of the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, effective July 1, 2013. Professor Boyce comes to Columbia after more than 25 years at MIT, where she is currently the Ford Professor of Engineering and Department Head of Mechanical Engineering.
It’s International Polar Bear Day…
It seems only appropriate with this wailing wind that you give yourself a break and settle down for an extra few minutes in bed to honor the holiday. When you’re up, here’s the news:
Read this: Topics of conversation at President Bollinger’s most recent Fireside Chat included online education, open course evaluations, and the Core.
Know this: Teacher’s College students call for the University to be more honest and transparent about financial aid renewal policies.
Even more: Minnia Feng makes a case for a little superstition every now and then.
Meet the latest search committee members
Nicholas Dirks suddenly resigned as executive vice president for Arts and Sciences last month to become chancellor of UC Berkeley, paving the way for the search committee process we’ve all come to know and love. Now, that time has come.
University President Lee Bollinger just announced the 15-member committee that will recommend candidates to replace Dirks, and it’s a diverse group: 10 professors, a dean, two alumni, a graduate student, and an undergraduate student (Daphne Chen, CC ’14 and Columbia College Student Council vice president of finance). The committee’s chair is international affairs professor Robert Jervis.
Bollinger said that he wants to choose a new A&S EVP by the end of the academic year. For the full list of committee members, look after the jump. More »
Who will be the next J-School Dean?
The current Journalism School Dean, Nicholas Lemann, will vacate his post in June. He’s been in charge for the last decade. During that time the world of journalism has seen quite a few changes.
Some people were surprised when President Bollinger announced that he would lead the search for Lemann’s successor. They shouldn’t have been: the J-School has always been close to PrezBo’s heart. Prior to Lemann’s appointment in 2003, Bollinger suspended the hunt for a dean so that the school could “rethink the school’s mission and curriculum,” according to the NYTimes.
To make guesses about the type of person who is likely to fill Lemann’s shoes, then, it makes sense to find out what PrezBo thinks about the direction in which journalism should be heading. Luckily, he hasn’t been shy about his opinions on this issue. More »
PrezBo’s biggest legal victory, reconsidered
Abigail Fisher says she was rejected by the University of Texas at Austin because she is white. She’s seeking $100 from the school in wasted application fees. This morning at 11 a.m., the United States Supreme Court will hear her case.
Why should you care? Because the Court’s decision could end affirmative action forever. Because the outcome of this case could permanently change the makeup of college student bodies.
And last but not least, because the Court’s decision will either affirm or overturn a landmark Supreme Court ruling and President Bollinger’s best-known legal victory. More »
PrezBo on politics, college rankings, and dean searches
University President Lee Bollinger loves to talk about Manhattanville and globalization—a fact he acknolwedged in an interview last week with Spectator.
But he also dished on why college rankings (kinda) matter, what he’s looking for in the new dean for SEAS, and which presidential candidate’s candidates policies would be better from an academic standpoint. Some highlights from the interview:
- There’s a presidential election a month away, in case you didn’t know, and while Bollinger would not express his personal views on the election, he said he thought that the policies of Democrat Barack Obama, CC ’83, were generally more supportive of student loans, funding for research, affirmative action, and other issues in academia and education administration than those of his Republican opponent Mitt Romney.
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The leeway that the Department of Education and Department of Justice granted admissions offices last December with regard to the educational benefits of diversity is something that “you would not expect to come out of the Romney administration,” Bollinger said.
- Many people are skeptical of college rankings, Bollinger included. But he said that it is important that all of Columbia’s schools are in the top 10 in the country. “I think these are crude ways of saying something that’s pretty deep and profound,” Bollinger said. “You do not want to run your institution according to what U.S. News and World Reports says. More »
In case you missed it: This week in news
As we settle into October, this semester’s storylines are starting to become familiar. Barnard cuts its budget. Columbia looks for ways to make life easier for its students. Upper Manhattan residents have problems with redistricting. Local hawks die from rat poison.
Wait, what was that last one? In case you missed it, here’s the News Desk’s breakdown of this week’s top stories:
Barnard administrators went on something of a PR blitz this week, in the wake of a series of budget cuts that has riled students. Barnard President Debora Spar told Spectator that the college is working to cut up to $8 million from its annual operating budget, before telling the Student Government Association that students need to do a better job of communicating their concerns to administrators. Barnard Dean Avis Hinkson addressed lingering concerns over this year’s housing crunch at an SGA town hall Tuesday night, just before more than 80 students attended a teach-in to support Barnard union workers, who say that administrators are trying to freeze their salaries and cut benefits. More »
PrezBo’s touching gesture
When Aung San Suu Kyi is in the room, the audience tends to focus on her.
At Saturday’s World Leaders Forum event, she managed to discuss serious issues behind Burma’s political transition in between making a joke about pressure cookers and publicizing a vacant speechwriting position.
She took questions and asked advice of the students in the room. She left an email address and promised to respond to everyone. She talked about the importance of staying true to principles, but left no doubt that she was fully cognizant of the immediate and practical challenges she faces as an incumbent politician.
In case you missed it: This week in news
It was a typical week for Columbia and the neighborhood, with controversies, confusion, and committees dominating the headlines. Here’s the News Desk’s quick recap of all the stories you might have missed:
There were a lot of students and staffers unhappy with the University this week—students because they’ve been waiting in hour-plus lines at the Package Center, and staffers because Barnard is asking about 175 employees to accept a three-year wage freeze. And in a story that’s made national headlines, a former Columbia Ph.D. student is suing the University, saying that he was fired after rejecting his lab supervisor’s sexual advances.
Who gets to come to Columbia? That’s the question being asked this week by Columbia’s Greek women, who must choose between four sororities competing for two spots on campus, and by Barnard Public Safety, which is now requires you to present a Columbia ID if you want to enter campus between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. It’s also a question that will be taken up by a new faculty committee, whose members will advise Provost John Coatsworth on undergraduate admissions and financial aid policies. More »
PrezBo stands by J.P. Morgan’s man
J.P. Morgan Chase announced last month that it lost $2 billion this past quarter. The losses apparently stemmed from “errors, sloppiness, and bad judgment,” according to J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon. Now some are calling for Dimon, who has a seat on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s board of directors, to step down from his post at the Fed to avoid a potential conflict of interest.
One person who doesn’t think Dimon should step down? Lee Bollinger, chairman of the New York Fed’s board of directors. Prezbo says Dimon should not resign, and anyone who says that he should resign has a “false understanding” of how the Fed works, and is being “foolish.” You can check out the full story at the link, or the Reader’s Digest version after the jump: More »