Volume 4, Issue 2 Summer 2014 The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences | Columbia University Defining Identity: Examining Diversity Initiatives at Columbia Contents 01 From the Dean . 2 02 Defining Identity: Examining Diversity Initiatives at Columbia . 4 03 A Meteorologist for the Millennial Generation . 12 04 Anna Karenina on a Roller Coaster . 16 05 The New Graduate Student Center . 20 06 Alumni Profile: Anita Demkiv . 22 07 Alumni Profile: Daniel Duzdevich . 24 GSAS Alumni Association 08 On the Shelf . 26 Board of Directors 09 In Memoriam . 28 Jillisa Brittan, President, M .A . ‘86, English and Comparative Literature 10 Dissertations Deposited Recently . 32 Robert Greenberg, Vice President, M .A . ‘88, Philosophy Frank Chiodi, Secretary, M .A . ‘00, 11 Announcements . 48 American Studies Tyler Anbinder, M .A . ’85, M .Phil . ’87, Ph .D . 12 Helpful Links . 50 ’90, History Gerrard Bushell, M .A . ’91, M .Phil . ’94, Ph .D . ’04, Political Science Annette Clear, M .A . ’96, M .Phil . ’97, Ph .D . ’02, Political Science Michael S . Cornfeld, M .A . ’73, Political Letters to the Editor Dean: Science Carlos J . Alonso To share your thoughts about anything you have read in this Elizabeth Debreu, M .A . ’93, Art History and publication, please email [email protected] . Unless Editor: Archaeology you note otherwise in your message, any correspondence Robert Ast received by the editor will be considered for future George Khouri, M .A . ’69, Classics Assistant Editor: publication . Please be sure to include in your message your Andrew Ng Lindsay Leard-Coolidge, M .Phil . ’87, Ph .D . name and affiliation to the Graduate School of Arts and ’92, Art History and Archaeology Sciences . Senior Director for Alumni Relations: Jill Galas-Hickey Harriet Zuckerman, Ph .D . ’65, Sociology SUPERSCRIPT is published twice annually by the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the GSAS Alumni Association . Design, Editing, and Production: Tracy Zwick, M .A . ’11, Modern Art Columbia Creative superscript : contents 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 From the Dean The professional development of our students is to go on to join the professoriate, it was a chance • [The intern] was a pleasure to work with. The one of the principal obligations of the Graduate to understand the workings of the University experience and insight that she brought to the School of Arts and Sciences. I would like to beyond the familiar yet limited confines of their office were incredibly valuable. She caught on very report to you on a related GSAS initiative recently departmental home base. I would like to share with quickly, especially since these projects were more implemented, and which I had mentioned to you in you some of the comments that we received both technical in nature. She adapted, learned, and was my column for the previous issue of SUPERSCRIPT: from the participating students and the academic able to contribute to these efforts effectively. the Internships in Academic Administration that offices that hosted them, because together they • [The intern’s] previous experiences as both an were inaugurated in spring 2014. In this program, provide a compelling account of the program’s instructor and student provided great insight on twelve advanced graduate students were placed in success. Three of the student responses contained how best to approach the needs and end goal of academic offices throughout the University such as the following reflections: this project. He provided critical research/analysis the Office of the President, the Provost, Columbia • I was welcomed to the office’s weekly staff and regularly met with key members of our office College, Columbia University Press, and several meeting, which was a great chance for me to really and outside units to help push this effort along. others, so that they would experience firsthand for see what was going on in the entire office. one semester the inner workings of those offices One may lament the fact that academic as they managed their tasks and responsibilities. • I really enjoyed the opportunity to see how administration (as opposed to the faculty ranks) The participants came from a wide variety of a university operates on a day-to-day basis. is the fastest growing segment of academic graduate departments and programs, and included We are so far removed from this in our home employment, but the reality is that the career representatives from the three canonical divisions departments. I enjoyed being able to sit in on of university administrator typically requires the of the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the important meetings to understand the issues the doctoral degree as an entering qualification. Natural Sciences. University faces and how it will approach them. As such, academic administration will become This was helpful in terms of understanding how increasingly an employment path for our always- A survey of the initial class of interns in Columbia universities operate and also how organizations in remarkable graduates. Hence, I am happy academic offices, as well as one sent to the offices Carlos J. Alonso general operate. As a result of this internship, I am to announce that Internships in Academic in which they were placed, revealed that our Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Morris A. definitely considering academic administration as Administration is slated to be repeated in fall of students’ involvement in their chosen administrative and Alma Schapiro Professor in the Humanities a career option down the line. I am very happy I 2014 and that it will remain a fixture in the Graduate units was everything we had hoped it would had this opportunity at this point in my career. School’s yearly programming for its students. We be—and more. It seems clear from the survey are also hoping to expand the project soon to responses that this initiative channeled and satisfied • The workshops on the university and on nonacademic institutions in New York. a significant interest among graduate students. In administrative career paths run by the Dean the case of students who are considering the many of GSAS and by other academic officers from These internships are also an excellent example of alternatives to academic careers, the experience throughout the University were very insightful. the enriching opportunities that are made possible was a welcome opportunity to explore the everyday by alumni contributions to the Graduate School’s The offices were no less enthusiastic about the value life of an academic administrator and the work of annual fund. added to their work by the students they hosted: an academic office. For those students who wish Article 01 : page 2 superscript : contents 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 Defining When Andrea Morris first came across a job listing That commitment to diversity as a core academic for the newly created position of Assistant Dean for responsibility is made manifest in a variety of Academic Diversity in the Graduate School of Arts and ways, from the five-year, $30 million commitment Identity: Sciences—a position she has held since September the University announced in 2012 to advance the 2013—she wasn’t really looking to leave her post as a recruitment of underrepresented minority and tenured associate professor of biology at Haverford female scholars, to the growing variety of pipeline Examining Diversity Initiatives at Columbia College. Something about the ad caught her attention, programs designed to encourage students from By Alexander Gelfand though—namely, the word academic. such groups to pursue graduate studies in the first place. It is a commitment that has been influenced Morris already had plenty of experience, both personal by the past decade or so of research into the and professional, on the front lines of the effort to benefits of diversity, and by changing notions of increase diversity in higher education. The daughter what diversity really means. And its effects can of Jamaican immigrants and a Haverford alumna, she already be seen in the day-to-day experiences of was the first African-American woman to graduate those who make up the Columbia community. from Princeton with a Ph.D. in molecular biology. After returning to Haverford, Morris served on the college’s Diversity and Doxa Committee on Diversity and as a faculty adviser Contemporary ideas of diversity—its meaning, its to its Multicultural Scholars and Chesick Scholars value, how it can and ought to be addressed—have programs, which provide support for first-generation, been shaped by decades of legislation, litigation, underrepresented, and underprivileged students; and research. Fueled by the civil rights movement lectured widely on diversity in higher education; and by the executive orders issued by Presidents and established herself as a prominent researcher, Kennedy and Johnson that first introduced the earning the first National Institutes of Health Career phrase “affirmative action” to the American lexicon, Development Award ever given to a faculty member at early efforts at enhancing student diversity in higher a small liberal arts college. education focused on increasing the numbers of Nonetheless, Morris says that she did not historically underrepresented groups: racial and necessarily think of diversity as something that ethnic minorities and, eventually, women. Over was tied to the academic mission of a college or time, however, the definition of campus diversity university, as opposed to something that lived expanded to encompass socioeconomic status, in the realm of social justice. Reading that GSAS sexual orientation, religious belief, and more. job posting sparked an epiphany of sorts. “This This move toward what Carlos Alonso, Dean of is the heart of the matter, right? This is why it’s GSAS and Vice President for Graduate Education, really important,” Morris says of the University’s calls a more “ample” conception of diversity was decision to locate diversity at the center of its accompanied by a recognition that numbers alone intellectual mission.