While You Were Away...

In June, two thunderous ovations at the 1997 Staff Recognition Dinner celebrated Minnie Hargrow's 50 years at the Homewood campus.

Eugene Sunshine, for 10 years the university's senior vice president for administration, left Hopkins in July to assume a similar post at his alma mater, Northwestern University.

In order to bring a sense of stability and focus to an institution best known for its highly decentralized planning and widely divergent funding sources, Sunshine and then-provost John Lombardi worked in collaboration with senior administrators and the university board of trustees to create, in 1989, Hopkins' first five-year plan.

It is, Sunshine says, perhaps his greatest accomplishment during the decade he spent in Baltimore.

In case you missed it, his going-away gathering was a typical Gene Sunshine affair: serious business laced with lots of humor. Held in the sweltering Hutzler Reading Room on the Homewood campus, Gene, his wife Holly and his children looked on as many of his colleagues took the opportunity to make some good-natured roastings and touching tributes. Among his going-away gifts was treasurer William Snow's stunning, framed watercolor of Gilman Hall.

Richard E. McCarty, professor and chairman of the Biology Department since 1990, was appointed interim dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. And university President William R. Brody asked John J. Lordan, vice president of business affairs, to serve as interim senior vice president for administration upon Eugene Sunshine's departure from the university in July.

The university, in partnership with local law enforcement agencies and community organizations, was awarded a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to establish the Mid-Atlantic Regional Community Policing Institute.

The institute will serve Maryland, the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and Delaware, as well as parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Some 35 sites in 29 states have received more than $33 million in total funding to develop community policing institutes throughout the country.

Despite the first major rain storm to hit the Baltimore region in weeks, an estimated 400 adults and 125 children gathered for the 10th annual Hopkins Picnic held June 26. The event was held on Garland Field on the Homewood campus for the first time, a location which, despite the rain, was well-received. Beneath the tent, senior administrators led by university President William R. Brody--in a "Chef Bill" apron-- grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for the hungry crowd while his wife, Wendy Brody, took tickets at the door.

Tod Williams, Billie Tsien and Associates, a New York-based architectural firm cited by Newsweek as a creative force to watch in the coming century, was selected by the university to design the new student arts center on the Homewood campus.

The 50,000-square-foot, $12 million building will sit on and in the wooded knoll at the end of 33rd Street, adjacent to the Baltimore Museum of Art's sculpture garden. Preliminary designs submitted by the firm call for a building of three distinct segments cut into the sloping hill that separates Charles Street from the back of Whitehead Hall. The segments form a triangular courtyard that looks south to the sculpture garden.

Fund raising for the new center continues. Currently, $9 million has been raised or pledged, and current projections call for a groundbreaking in the fall of 1998. The building itself should be completed within two years of the start date, making it likely the proposed center of "artmaking of the 21st century" will be around to welcome the first incoming class of the new millennium.

On July 16, Robert J. Harwood Jr. pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and a handgun violation in the April 10, 1996, killing of Rex Chao. As part of the plea agreement, he was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The university, as part of the state of Maryland's new Live Near Your Work pilot program, announced it will contribute $1,000 toward employee purchases of new homes in target areas near the Homewood, East Baltimore and Johns Hopkins Bayview campuses. The state and the city of Baltimore each will match the university's contribution, making $3,000 available to each participating member of the faculty or staff.

Any full-time faculty or staff member of the university is eligible. Employees must also contribute a minimum of $1,000 cash toward the purchase of their home.

The university has committed to fund 30 grants during the pilot program. Participants will be required to contact a housing agency for information about the neighborhoods in the target areas and about the Live Near Your Work program. The agency will also be able to provide information about home ownership, the process of buying a home, mortgages and fair housing laws.

In July, the university completed the acquisition of the former Wilson Church building last used by a Methodist congregation that merged recently with Grace United Methodist Church. After several months of renovations and house cleaning, the red-door building on the southeast corner of Charles Street and University Parkway--tentatively called the Johns Hopkins Center for Faith and Service--will be home to the university's student religious organizations and many student community and service-oriented clubs.

The center will be used partly for religious observances and gatherings with "regular services to be held in the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions as well as non-denominational prayer and/or meditation experiences.

Elaine and Wayne Schelle returned to their alma mater in July to help celebrate the groundbreaking for a future pavilion, which will include permanent seating for 5,000 on the visitors' side of Homewood Field. For the past several years, thousands of sports fans have been seated in temporary wooden bleachers on the north side of the arena.

The effort to create the grandstand pavilion began with a gift of $150,000 from 1953 graduate "Buzzy" Budnitz, a former standout lacrosse player who called Homewood Field the "Yankee stadium of lacrosse."

The new northside pavilion will be named in honor of the Schelles. Preliminary construction work is set to begin by the end of the summer; the pavilion is scheduled to be completed before the men's lacrosse team opens its season in February.

A committee of faculty representing every Engineering department as well as representatives from the School of Arts and Sciences, APL and the Engineering student body met with university President William R. Brody last month to begin formally the search for a new dean for the Whiting School of Engineering. Provost Steven Knapp will chair the search effort, which will solicit nominations on a national level.

With 111 faculty currently, the Whiting School is involved in many initiatives ranging from language and speech processing, materials science, geometric computing, nanostructures and microelectronics. The university officially re-established the school as a separate division in 1979. Annual research expenditures at the school are now nearly $30 million. With the announcement of the departure of Dean Don Giddens for Georgia Tech, Charles Westgate, the William B. Kouwenhoven Professor of Electrical Engineering and associate dean for academic affairs at the school, was appointed interim dean in May.

As of July 31, the Johns Hopkins Initiative Campaign had reached $769.5 million, or 86 percent of its $900 million goal. Gifts and pledges for endowment and facilities total $459.9 million, or 88 percent of the $525 million goal for these priorities.