Good Chemistry James J

Columbia College Fall 2012 TODAY Good Chemistry James J. Valentini Transitions from Longtime Professor to Dean of the College your Contents columbia connection. COVER STORY FEATURES The perfect midtown location: 40 The Home • Network with Columbia alumni Front • Attend exciting events and programs Ai-jen Poo ’96 gives domes- • Dine with a client tic workers a voice. • Conduct business meetings BY NATHALIE ALONSO ’08 • Take advantage of overnight rooms and so much more. 28 Stand and Deliver Joel Klein ’67’s extraordi- nary career as an attorney, educator and reformer. BY CHRIS BURRELL 18 Good Chemistry James J. Valentini transitions from longtime professor of chemistry to Dean of the College. Meet him in this Q&A with CCT Editor Alex Sachare ’71. 34 The Open Mind of Richard Heffner ’46 APPLY FOR The venerable PBS host MEMBERSHIP TODAY! provides a forum for guests 15 WEST 43 STREET to examine, question and NEW YORK, NY 10036 disagree. TEL: 212.719.0380 BY THOMAS VIncIGUERRA ’85, in residence at The Princeton Club ’86J, ’90 GSAS of New York www.columbiaclub.org COVER: LESLIE JEAN-BART ’76, ’77J; BACK COVER: COLIN SULLIVAN ’11 WITHIN THE FAMILY DEPARTMENTS ALUMNI NEWS Déjà Vu All Over Again or 49 Message from the CCAA President The Start of Something New? Kyra Tirana Barry ’87 on the successful inaugural summer of alumni- ete Mangurian is the 10th head football coach since there, the methods to achieve that goal. The goal will happen if sponsored internships. I came to Columbia as a freshman in 1967. (Yes, we you do the other things along the way.” were “freshmen” then, not “first-years,” and we even Still, there’s no substitute for the goal, what Mangurian calls 50 Bookshelf wore beanies during Orientation — but that’s a story the “W word.” for another time.) Since then, Columbia has compiled “The bottom line is winning,” he said. “I’m not going to mince Pexactly three winning records in 45 seasons of football. words on that. It’s winning. That’s life. I have three kids and I’ve 52 Obituaries So what makes Mangurian think he can succeed where Buff Do- been through this ‘everybody gets a trophy’ deal. And I get it, nelli (with the 1961 championship team — alas, before my time — to a certain extent. But the real world doesn’t work that way. It 56 Class Notes as a striking exception); Frank Navarro; Bill Campbell ’62, ’64 TC; doesn’t work that way in business, it doesn’t work that way in Bob Naso; Jim Garrett; Larry McElreavy; Ray Tellier; Bob Shoop; the classroom. You get an A or you get a B, and it’s hard to get an 85 Alumni Sons and 104 Alumni Corner and Norries Wilson largely did not? A. A’s are special. Celebrate Homecoming 2012 on Saturday, October 20. Daughters Ben Ratliff ’90 rediscovers “I’ve been doing this for 33 years,” Mangurian “It’s about winning. It’s about being successful. said in August as he prepared for the start of his But what everybody has to understand is that if Alumni Profiles the haven of Butler Library, 3 Within the Family 44 Columbia Forum: first season at Columbia. “I’ve been fortunate to be you do win, then you learned a lot and accom- 70 Robert Shlaer ’63 especially the stacks. College: What It Was, around some very successful programs. I’ve been to plished a lot along the journey. It wasn’t just the 91 Macky Alston ’87 what people in the football world would consider destination.” 4 Letters to the Is, and Should Be the pinnacle, the Super Bowl, and I’ve worked in The Lions began their journey with 12 days of 99 Alexandra Epstein ’07 Editor A reflection on college and organizations that are arguably the best in football. spring practice, where Mangurian got to see re- the role it should play in our Hopefully, I’ve picked some things up along the way. turning players firsthand, and continued through “One of the biggest lessons you learn in this preseason training camp, where he focused on the 6 Around the Quads challenging times. game is to evaluate the situation objectively, have a 32-member class of first-year players. His objective Columbia hosts Dartmouth BY ANDREW DELBAncO clear idea of where it is you actually want to go and in both, rather than to install specific schemes or at Homecoming on Saturday, what you want to accomplish, then use your experi- plays, he said, was to find out which players he can October 20. ence and the experience of others to put together a depend upon. road map to get there.” PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO “We put a lot more emphasis on finding out who 16 Roar, Lion, Roar Mangurian, a former assistant coach with five we could trust,” he said. “Who’s going to do the NFL teams and head coach at Cornell from 1998–2000, is not things we ask him to do when we ask him to do it? Who can we about to accept the status quo. count on? We believe in putting more pressure on them in practice “I’m not a believer in ‘That’s just the way it is and it’s always than they’ll probably have in a game. I guarantee you there will be going to be that way,’” he declared. “I’m not really interested in the a little bit of relief when these guys get to go out and play and we’re pitfalls and the things that have come before. Believe me, every day not standing right behind them, getting on them. But I think you I face, ‘Well, that won’t work’ or ‘That’s not the way it is’ or ‘Those have to harden them. You have to put them on the anvil and hit people won’t cooperate with you.’ It’s myriad things every time them with the hammer and make them harder, so that when it gets Robert Shlaer ’63 we turn around. My answer to that at this point is, ‘Why?’ And I tough they’ll be able to respond. It’s no different from a professor usually don’t get a very good answer, because the person I’m talk- who teaches his or her class and makes them study. It’s no different.” ing to wasn’t even around when that problem took place.” Columbia’s first exam, if you will, comes against Marist on WEB EXTRAS One example, he said, is the misperception that the Columbia September 15, with its first Ivy League test against Princeton on faculty does not support athletics. September 29, both at home. The offense figures to revolve around 5 More Minutes with Robert Y. Shapiro Like Columbia College on “That’s not true,” he said. “The faculty is more than willing to quarterback Sean Brackett ’13, the team’s leading rusher as well as Facebook: facebook.com/ Listen to Performances by Anthony da Costa ’13 help reach the objective, which is to make sure that these young passer last season. Mangurian is hoping some of his young play- columbiacollege1754 men get the education they need and have experiences they need ers will bolster a defense that features linemen Seyi Adabayo ’13 Ai-jen Poo ’96 Speaks Up for Domestic Workers and still be successful at football. They have no problem with and Josh Martin ’13 and linebacker Zach Olinger ’14, but which Gallery of Daguerreotypes by Robert Shlaer ’63 that. There’s no difference between going to practice and doing allowed 32.8 points per game last season. Follow @Columbia_CCAA your homework — you’re practicing for the test. When you put The Lions were 1–9 last season, the lone victory being a 35–28 on Twitter Watch the Trailer for Macky Alston ’87’s things in that perspective, it’s easy to see.” decision over Brown in two overtimes in their season finale. Documentary Love Free or Die Mangurian, whose Cornell teams went from 1–6 in Ivy play “We’ll be better,” Mangurian said. The journey will determine in his first season to 5–2 in each of the next two years, values the how much better. Overtime with Football Coach Pete Mangurian journey as well as the destination. Join the Columbia Alumni Association Network on Thank You to Our Fiscal Year 2012 Donors “If there’s anything that really defines how I approach things, For more from CCT’s interview with Mangurian, go to Web Extras at LinkedIn: alumni.columbia. college.columbia.edu/cct it would be this: It’s great to have a goal, everybody has them, college.columbia.edu/cct. edu/linkedin but the real work is how you get there. A lot of times we focus so much on the goal, we don’t focus on how we are going to get FALL 2012 3 port for research supported by the federal Letters to the Editor government through the years is not noted. I’m guessing that the opportunity Profes- sor Kulp had to support a research assistant versities and our national laboratories. in his radiocarbon counting lab in the early Volume 40 Number 1 I always wondered why I never ran ’50s may have been due to an AEC contract Fall 2012 into Wally in the College whenever I was he had. What if the budget cutters were ac- EDITOR AND PUBLISHER reminded on paper that he was a member tive then? Alex Sachare ’71 of my Class of ’53; I was delighted to learn David M.

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