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SPECIAL ISSUE: YEAR IN REVIEW n HONOR ROLL OF DONORS WINTERWINTER 20092009 PUBLISHED FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH Science in Sight Sewanee’s newest building brings the teaching and practice of science into the light CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE VICE CHANCELLOR ................3 ON THE MOUntain ............................................5 THE YEAR IN REVIEW .........................................8 INSERT: Honor roll of donors FINANCIAL POSITION .......................................11 POPULAR SCIENCE .........................................13 In October, Vice Chancellor Joel Cunningham addressed the crowd gathered in Spencer Hall’s Harris Commons for the dedication of the University’s new science building. 2 • SEWANEE MAGAZINE • Winter 2009 viewpointsVIEWPOINTS Dear Sewanee Alumni and Friends, When I was in junior high school in Oak Ridge, Tenn., my squirminess drove the devoted school librarian, Miss Ethel Wood, to despair. I remember the day — I was in the seventh grade and growing at about an inch a month — when Miss Wood pulled me aside to tell me that I ought to read more serious books. She pulled down a copy Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and said, “Here, you’re big enough to try this.” I will always be grateful for her gift of that challenge and encouragement. The novel was beyond my grasp, but I was not about to admit that, and by the end of having looked at every word, I had managed to sit still for long spells, which may have been Miss Wood’s chief hope, and a good bit of the tale had somehow seeped into my imagination. The famous first words of Dickens’ tale of Paris and London in the time of the French Revolution are: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...” I remember puzzling over them when I started that first go at what Miss Wood called a “serious book,” and I thought of them again as we imagined this special issue of Sewanee, in which we wanted to outline the University’s considerable progress over the last year, to celebrate the success of The Sewanee Call campaign and the new resources it is providing, and, at the same time, to report on how we are responding to the intense economic challenges that are unfolding this year for our country and the world. Last summer, The Sewanee Call campaign concluded with gifts of $205.7 million, well ahead of its ambitious $180 million goal. Those gifts have made possible major new facilities and increased resources for student scholarships and faculty support. In October, we celebrated the campaign’s success and dedicated the largest investment from the campaign, Spencer Hall, our splendid new laboratory and classroom complex for biology, chemistry, biochemistry, and environmental sci- ence. We are deeply indebted to each of the more than 18,000 donors who responded to The Sewanee Call. It will be no surprise to any of you that this good news has been tempered by the challenges of the worsening economic conditions of the last few months. Sewanee joined more than 300 colleges and universities in having to scramble in late September when the Commonfund’s short- term fixed-income fund was frozen, and over $30 million of Sewanee’s theoretically liquid assets were temporarily locked up. More than 75 percent of those holdings have been freed by now, but the initial scramble to put alternate sources of cash in place was a lively ride. About the same time, some of our long-term borrowing costs shot up for several weeks. Like most foundations and universities, our endowment’s market value has fallen, in our case, from July through December, by 21.6 percent. Sewanee has been careful with its resources, building modest reserves and budgeting mod- est contingency funds. With cautious adjustments to reduce many expenditures and, at the same time, providing additional aid to help students and families who are facing new financial difficul- ties, we have been able to keep the current academic year’s budget balanced. The happy news is that our enrollment for this Easter Semester is at an all-time high. However, we, along with most strong colleges and universities across the country, are finding it harder than usual to predict what our enrollments and financial aid needs will be for the academic year that will start in August. While holding back on filling some positions, we are moving ahead aggressively to make several key faculty appointments, hoping to take advantage of the swelling supply of outstanding academic candidates as other institutions cancel or delay their hiring plans. We are indeed experiencing something of the best and worst of times. Our job is to make the best of it all, to preserve and advance the University of the South, and your generosity is playing a major role in doing that. Warm thanks for your love and support for Sewanee. Ecce Quam Bonum. Joel Cunningham Winter 2009 • SEWANEE MAGAZINE • 3 viewpointsVIEWPOINTS Editor’s Note We interrupt your regularly scheduled reading to bring you this special is- Mummy and Baby sue of Sewanee magazine. As Vice Chancellor Cunningham mentioned in his introductory letter, the entire University community is keenly aware of its Thanks for the in- responsibility to act as careful stewards of the University’s resources. With teresting article on that in mind, this issue combines elements of an annual report (the Honor photographer Alfred Roll of Donors, the “Year in Review”) with elements of a regular issue of the Eistenstaedt’s visit to magazine (news and features). Sewanee (“Eisie Goes That means there are elements of each that are missing here, most notably Calling,” Summer the magazine’s regular departments and the popular Class Notes section. These 2008). I was as in- features will return with the next issue of the magazine in just a few months. In trigued as you were the meantime, if you have news to share that you would like included in Class regarding the story Notes, please email [email protected] behind the Delt Mummy, particularly With the year-long commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the found- given the fact that I was a Delt, and while I ing of the University, the completion of the most successful fund-raising cam- was there (’77-’81), there existed what we paign in the University’s history, and the opening of Spencer Hall, there has referred to as the “Delt Baby.” It was a desic- been much to rejoice about in Sewanee recently. Please join us in celebrating cated, small child-sized mummy-like relic the University of the South’s recent successes, thanking the people who have that resided in Woods Lab. We were told made them possible and making plans for a future of great promise. that it once belonged to the Delts, and that — Buck Butler we had donated it at some time in the past. I hadn’t given it a thought in years until I saw your article. Immediately upon see- ing the photograph, though, I remem- bered as a freshman accompanying some Letters senior brothers to Woods Lab and digging the “baby” out of a cabinet in a basement More Lost Cove Literature onized. Two volumes of his collected work lab room. It was smaller, and certainly less were published under the imprimatur of expressive than the fellow pictured in the In the letters section of the Summer 2008 The Library of America in 2005 — 50 Life article. It was a very dark and shiny issue of Sewanee magazine, my venerable years after his untimely death. brown, and something rattled inside when classmate and friend, Robert Weston, Charles S. L. Hoover, C’63 you shook it. added Andrew Lytle to Walker Percy as Wichita, Kan. I’ve polled several brothers from my eminent writers who have made imagi- era, and none of us believe the “mummy” native use of Lost Cove in their fiction. Hiking Home and the “Delt baby” are one and the same. Here’s another: James Agee. For The Morn- (I did hear though that the poor creature ing Watch, a novella of haunting sensibility Though there are many steps to Green’s occasionally found itself in bed with some and spiritual complexity, Agee drew in View and beyond, the Summer 2008 is- poor unsuspecting brother). All this said, large measure upon his experience as a sue of Sewanee magazine takes a big step in I do think it is interesting that we under- student at St. Andrew’s School (now St. the right direction with the article, “Best stood that the baby had once belonged to Andrew’s-Sewanee). Admittedly, Agee Day Hikes.” As a charter Sewanee Ski and our house and that it had been donated makes only a passing reference to Lost Outing Club (SSOC) officer, I can attest to Woods. It makes me wonder if the two Cove; but the reference is explicit. Not in to the uniqueness of the Domain as big became mixed in the chapter’s “memory” the cove, however, but atop the plateau, at reasons to ‘come back.’ You can always go and we assigned the mummy’s identity to a lake by the old sandstone quarry “across to the city, but you can’t always get what the baby. Either that, or we had some pro- the tracks” from the school, the climactic you want in the way of natural beauty that lific mummy hunter among our alumni scene takes place. Unlike Lytle and even simply is Sewanee. and there was actually more than one. Percy, who have suffered comparative Jeff Hartzer, C’73 Ballard Ward, C’81 neglect in recent years, Agee has been can- Albuquerque, N.M.

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