Lawrence Today, Volume 76, Number 2, Winter 1995 Lawrence University
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Lawrence University Lux Alumni Magazines Communications Winter 1995 Lawrence Today, Volume 76, Number 2, Winter 1995 Lawrence University Follow this and additional works at: http://lux.lawrence.edu/alumni_magazines Part of the Liberal Studies Commons © Copyright is owned by the author of this document. Recommended Citation Lawrence University, "Lawrence Today, Volume 76, Number 2, Winter 1995" (1995). Alumni Magazines. Book 34. http://lux.lawrence.edu/alumni_magazines/34 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Communications at Lux. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni Magazines by an authorized administrator of Lux. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ,. • ·. n r ~ 0 D A y WINTER 1995 The Magazine of Lawrence University . VOL.•76, NO. 2 • I , • ... , ( I President's Report 1994--1995 •. • , .J • -• • • College Debuts New WorldWide \feb Site - • http:Hwww.lawrence.edu LAWRENCE • UNIVERSITY APPLETON, WISCONSIN 54912-0599 • Donald Stewart Editor Director of public affairs • Kris Parins Art director - Jenny Schmitz Graphic designer Drae Jonas Production coordinator Rick Peterson Associate director of public affairs News services manager Lawrence Today is published by Lawrence University. Articles are expressly the opinions of the authors and do not_necessarily represent offi cial university policy. Correspondence should be sent to: Lawrence Today Lawrence University Appleton, WI 54912-0599 FAX: 414-832-6783 WHAT'S ON THE COVER E-mail: This rendering of the Lawrence Donald.B.Ste~ [email protected] • We reserve the right to edit correspon campus adorns more than the dence for length and accuracy. cover of the President's Report. Lawrence University promotes equal It can also be found at the opportunity for all. ,. Lawrence site on the World Lawrence University wishes to thank , Wide Web. The address is Image Studios for contributirtg http:/ /www.lawrens:e.edu. , photography appearing in this When visiting t e site, click in publication, and Fox River Paper sequence on the "Life at Company for contributing the stock on which it is printed. ,. Lawrence" link, the "visiting campus" link, and the "tour our Lawrence Today is published quarterly campus" link. Then click on any in March, June, September, and building and see what happens. December by Lawrence University, Office of Public Affairs, Appleton, Wisconsin 54911. Second-class postage paid at Appleton, Wisconsin 54911. USPS-012-683 POSTMASTER: Send address chang~ to Lawrence Today, Lawrence University, 115 South Drew Street, Appleton, WI 54911-5798. , , ' Table of Content& • President's Message ........................................................................ ·...................... 2 President Richard Warch .. • Financi~ Results :. ........... ;........ :. .. ~ ............ ·........................................................ lS . I William Hodgkiss Fund Raising ............... .,. ......................... :... :.............•.................. ·.................. 19 v· ' · Gregory A. Volk ' f 1 ., ( 1 1994-95 Faculty Scholarly and Creative Achievements ......................................................... .2 2 ; ( . ( 1994-95 Highlights .................................. :................. ·................. ·.... :................... 40 ' .. \ ,• ,, . ' \ .. .. • • (.' .. .. , , .. 1 ' . ... • • I Microsoft's long--awaited and much--debated release last month has made the phrase "I do Windows" take oo a whole • new meaning. And I, dutifully if a • bit apprehensi~ely, attended classes in our Infor'matiCDn Technology Center to learn about this new computer product as well •as . t . others that I might plausibly use in the coming 'months and .. .. years. "Computer literate" is not a descriptor with which 'm often associated, ·uDE but I'm trying. In fact, I'm the kind of guy Calvin Trillin wrote abdut in a piece entitled "Unplugged," who discovered after his son I • moved out of the house that he had lost the ability to tape. "I don't know if you've ever tried taping off one of those •• 0 • 2 .. .... I , I ... •II ' cable boxes'without a kid around," concerned are, at best, suspect. I'll I Message from the President _, Trillin's friend says, "but it's no joke." confess that I was optimistic here for a _____ That'~ me, a member of the pre~ brief time, when I managed to knock microchip generation: someone who my daughter off the lower rungs of the has a VCR, but it's always blinking top tep. Tetris scores, but my small 12:00. When we got a computer motor control no longer enables me to several Christmases ago as the claim even. that triumph. I can word family present, my son got i't up and process with the best of them, but I .r. running without even glancing at stand a better chance of identifying , instructions or an operating manual, the names of New Deal agencies than played around with it for several days telling you the meanings of DOS, 1 . and then left to go back to RAM,.-CPU, and GUI. ' Minneapolis, leaving me holding the All that being stipulated, as the bag, or, in this case, the mouse. So lawyers say, I want to devote a portion my bona.Jides as far as computing of my president's report for 1995 to and information technologies are the very topic of computing and .. • • . , f 3 ,. • .. ' · ~ • , information technology. As many future in every particular, I have read alumni from the last thirty years or and thought enough about such so know, computing has been at matters to be at once exhilarated and Lawrence and in the academic pro~ concerned. I am exhilarated by what ., gram and administrative structure here we can anticipate as powerful tools to since the early 1960s when the college permit faculty to teach and students acquired an IBM 1620 with punch to learn in ways heretofore impossible .. cards-which were, not to be folded, and at a pace, in some instances, • spindled, or mutilated-accommodat~ previously unimagined. To the extent ing one user at a time. In 1971~ 72 the that the future is a projection of the college moved into the time~sharing present, I can only marvel at how age with the Digital PDP~ 11 series, in spaces like our language acqtJ.isitions 1985 to the VAX series, and most lab and our new stat is ·cs lab will r~cently to Digital's Alpha series. In shape and influence our educational the meantime, microcomputers, both mission. Further, we are already begin~ ~ Macintosh and PC~compatibles, have ning to explore the ways in which ' become near ubiquitous on campus in access to the information superhigh~ the last decade. Last year, we installed way will enable students and faculty to a computer~based statistics laboratory connect to information resources in Stephenson Hall and created/ the nationally and world~wide and to bring Information Technology Center in the those resources to bear directly on the Seeley G. Mudd Library, and this sum~ educational mission of the college. mer completed computer clusters in We aspire to be re~onsibly responsive the six large residence halls. Once to these opportunities, and they are • fully equipped, these clusters will more exciting ones. than double the co~puters available In a recent survey of faculty at to students at all hours of the day 1,000 colleges and universities, the • and night. Corporation for Public Broadcasting So Lawn~nce has been and will found that the vast majority of them continue to be attentive to our place regarded computing and related in the computer age. Indeed, both a technologies as a significant benefit to first iteration of the college's long~ their work as scholars and teachers, range plan and our Lawrence 150 and as having an important positive campaign have identified information influence on the quality of education .. technologies and computing as areas of for students. That view .surely prevails great promise and potential for us in at Lawrence, and the faculty, individu~ the coming years, and what the one ally and collectively, will continue to • calls for, the other seeks to provide: examine and propose ways by which the resources to enable us to project these resources can help enhartce me ourselves into that future to the best academic purposes of the college- possible effect. in courses, in student research, in their I While I do not pretend to under~ own work" and beyond. stand the precise contours of that But for all of its promise and • • 4 potential, the brave new world of 100 years ago when he observed the cyberspace and information teehnolo~ dynamo at the Columbian Exhibition gies also gives me pause. To hear or and saw in it the end of the world he 4read the prognostications of some had known and the beginning of a people, yve will soon be in a world new age of unimagined power and where the traditional delivery systems change. We face a comparable situa~ of education are going to be antiquat~ tion today. · ed. Time and space and distance will no longer ,. ' pose significant con~ straints on how and where we gather infor~ mation, but each of us will be able to sit "in front of a computer screen or a television monitor and either dial~for~data or participate in networks of people like ourselves in conversation and investigation of topics of shared interest. Indeed, this vision of the future is a description of the present in many respects; projected forward, the frequency and range of such electronic educa~ tional opportunities .will multiply almost exponentially. Adams's fin de siecle thoughts were The Information Nicholas Negroponte, in his recent not all positive, and we might have Technology Center in book Being Digital, notes that "in 19-?2 similar reservations as we approach the Seeley G. Mudd Library. there were only 150,000 computers in end of the century and the beginning the world, whereas five years from of a new millennium. One troubling • now, the integrated~circuit manufac~ aspect of this future, for example, is turer Intel alone expects to be ship~ the presumpt'ior, at least implicitly, ping 100 million each year." Those that the true learner~ of the twenty~ who have access to the superhighway first century are going to be autodi~ will have seemingly limitless possibili~ dacts: men and women who tecrcl:l ties for learning before them.