SUMMER READING HIDDEN TALENTS COMMENCEMENT New Works Creative Words of by Faculty | 7 Columbians | 8-9 Wisdom | 4-6 VOL. 33, NO. 13 NEWS AND IDEAS FOR THE COLUMBIA COMMUNITY JUNE 11, 2008 Elite Club Brus, Jessell Rewards 25 Receive First Years’ Service Kavli Prizes By Adrienne Blount MASTER By David Poratta ear in and year out they have olumbia scientists Louis E. lectured students, managed Brus and Thomas Jessell Ystaff, maintained Columbia’s Cwere among the first recipi- buildings and grounds. On June 2, OF ARTS ents of the Kavli Prize, a new award Columbia returned the favor, in- set up by a Norwegian-born physi- ducting 111 new members into the cist and philanthropist to reward 25-Year Club, a special group of research in nanoscience, neurosci- Columbians who have worked full ence and astrophysics. time at the University for a quarter The two Columbia researchers of a century. are among seven pioneering sci- They were inaugurated into entists who, according to the Kavli the club with a dinner at Lerner Foundation, have transformed and Hall, a silver pin and a violet rose For related stories on the prize- corsage. This was the 54th an- winning research, turn to page 10. nual gathering; before the 111 new inductees, the 25-Year Club had advanced these growing fields. The 1,836 members. winners, from the United Kingdom, “This was my first job out of Sweden, the Netherlands, Japan graduate school and I’ve been very and the United States, will each re- happy here and I’ve never regretted ceive a scroll and medal, and share it,” said Kathryn Harcourt, director the $1 million prize awarded under of original and special materials each category. cataloging at Butler Library. She’s The awardees were announced actually a 28-year employee, but May 28 during a live simulcast be- tween Oslo and New York at the opening ceremony at Columbia Uni- versity of the inaugural World Sci- ence Festival, spearheaded by Brian Greene, professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia and Tra- cy Day, award-winning journalist. “We are enormously proud of BARROSO N Tom Jessell, who guides our Nobel EILEE Prize-winning team of neuroscien- by Russell Scott Smith tists in our interdisciplinary Mind, Brain and Behavior Initiative, and s the daughter of an auctioneer and a the margins of society, immune from responsibility to of Louis Brus, for his leadership in K C hairdresser in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, any but his or her own vision. Becker challenged these physical chemistry and his funda- SMO N Carol Becker dreamed about a career as a ideas, encouraging students to work on public projects mental breakthroughs in emerging OH J writer and an intellectual. Her parents didn’t and advocating for more contemporary critical theory nanoscience,” said Lee C. Bollinger, New 25-Year Club member, Jayne D. Wade of Afinish high school and the family lived in a three-room courses. “The school had turned its back on the city,” president of Columbia University. NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, gets a rose. apartment. But anything seemed possible when she she recalls. “I was saying, ‘We live in society; we all do. Brus is the Samuel Latham was inducted only this year because wandered the halls of the Brooklyn Museum. We don’t live in isolation. The world influences us, and Mitchell Professor of Chemistry and she was a part-timer for her first “It was a playground for me, an extension of the we as creative people should be able to talk about it.’ ” professor of chemical engineering three years. street,” recalls Becker, the new dean of Columbia’s When Columbia’s School of the Arts was looking in the Department of Chemistry. In Many of the newly inducted club School of the Arts. “I don’t remember paying. I don’t for a new dean, Becker immediately “popped out,” says 1983, he made a fundamental dis- members say it’s hard to believe even remember guards. We’d just run in. It was dark. Nicholas Lemann, dean of the School of Journalism covery while studying optical prop- 25 years have passed. “Just yester- There were mummies. It was this amazing place of the and a member of the search committee. “She has a erties of semiconductors whose day, this campus blossomed into imagination, and the beginning of my love for art.” very forceful, imaginative personality. She dominates atoms or molecules had been ex- an enormous celebration, after the Even as she became dean of faculty at the School of the room.” The school needed someone powerful, he cited by the absorption of light. Columbia football team defeated the Art Institute of Chicago and a renowned innovator adds: “There was a sense that it was under-resourced Collaborating with colleagues, Brus Princeton to end its losing streak,” in arts education, Becker never forgot her roots. “I’m and losing students to other schools that could offer made smaller and smaller synthetic said Peter Johnson, now associate a believer in democracy,” says Becker, who studied full scholarships.” particles and later realized these director of undergraduate admis- with the social philosopher Herbert Marcuse at the While Becker was appointed dean last September, semiconductor nanocrystals could sions and financial aid for Columbia University of California, San Diego. As a grad student, she didn’t officially start until January, as she was given prove highly useful in a variety of College and the School of Engineer- she helped organize for the United Farm Workers, the fall semester to finish her latest book, a collection of fields, including medicine. ing and Applied Science. “That was and after earning her Ph.D. in English literature (with essays, Thinking in Place, to be published in November. Brus learned of his award just one remarkable day.” a thesis on Poe and Melville), she was one of the She is now ensconced in her Dodge Hall corner office, hours before the announcement, Mr. Johnson was talking about original staffers at the progressive news magazine whose windows overlook Broadway. There’s not a and said he was surprised and hon- an event from 20 years ago, and In These Times. scrap of decoration on the walls. “I always take a lot of ored. “The prize brings recognition his nostalgia sparked other club Becker joined the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978 as time before I hang things,” Becker says, adding that the to the chemistry department, which members to relive that historic day an English and philosophy teacher. At the time, many blank, white surroundings are a nice change from her is a very strong one,” said Brus. “Co- in October 1988, when Columbia art schools were still dominated by the 19th century old office in Chicago, which was stuffed floor to ceiling lumbia is a great place to learn sci- snapped its 44-game losing streak. Romantic notion of the artist as an outsider, living on with art given to her over the years. ence and to be an intellectual.” continued on page 12 For a Q & A with Carol Becker see page 9 continued on page 12 www.columbia.edu/news 2 JUNE 11, 2008 TheRecord ON CAMPUS MILESTONES AUSTIN QUIGLEY, dean of Columbia College, announced that he will step down at the end of the 2008-2009 aca- demic year. Appointed in July 1995, Quigley will have the second-longest tenure as dean in the college’s history. He will remain at Columbia and continue to teach as the Brander Matthews Professor of Dramatic Literature. He also will devote half of his time to serving broader University initiatives, working as Special Advisor to the President for Undergraduate Education. Law school professor MICHAEL W. DOYLE was elected chairman of the board of the United Nations Democ- racy Fund, which supports projects around the world designed to empower civil society in order to increase popular participation, ensure that people can exercise their democratic rights and develop pluralistic media. Doyle, the law school’s Harold Brown Professor of In- ternational Affairs, Law and Political Science, was ap- pointed to the board as the U.N. Secretary-General’s personal representative. The 2008 Lionel Trilling award was given to JosePH Massad for his book Desiring Arabs, a study of the representations of Arab sexuality. Massad teaches mod- ern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures department. The Trilling award honors a book from the past year T by a Columbia author that best exhibits the standards of intellect and scholarship found in the work of Lionel Trilling, the longtime professor at Columbia. CHRIS TAGGAR CHRIS Chance Nalley, professor of math at the Columbia PERFECT ENDING Secondary School, won a Master Teacher Award from After the speeches, the awards and the cheers—after the bleachers have cleared but before the cleanup crew arrives—a quieter, more intimate celebration on Low Plaza. Math for America, which recognizes educators com- mitted to teaching in urban schools. Nalley will receive a four-year supplementary stipend worth a total of $57,500, which he intends to use to complete his doc- Art History torate in math education at Teachers College. Math for America is a not-for-profit group that aims to improve Dear Alma, math education in public schools by attracting and re- When were the arts first offered to students at taining highly qualified secondary school teachers. Columbia? —Right-Brainer Dear Right-Brainer: GRANTS & GIFTS USPS 090-710 ISSN 0747-4504 Columbia wasn’t interested in the Vol. 33, No. 13, June 11, 2008 arts during its first decades. As it added WHO GAVE IT: Bob Berne (CC’60, BUS’62) and more schools on its way to becoming a Steffi Berne university, Columbia tended to establish HOW MUCH: $13 million Published by the professional schools such as the College WHO GOT IT: Columbia College Office of Communications and of Physicians and Surgeons (1767), the Public Affairs Law School (1858) and School of Mines WHAT FOR: Financial aid (1864)—but no arts.