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Wholly Hopkins
Matters of note from around Johns Hopkins
Medicine: The Sweet Smell of a Nobel
International Studies: Mourning Paul H.
Nitze
Humanities: Theater Program Finds a Home
Students: Food and Fun on an Autumn
Weekend
Humanities: More on Mark Twain
Books: Celebrating a Certain Joie de
Vivre
Mathematics: Adding Up Good Vibrations
Public Health: Bloomberg School Looks for
Leaders
Engineering: Water Treatment to Bank
On
Students: Frank Talk About Student Sex
Community: Reading a Community's Needs
Professional Studies: Academic Approach to Real
Estate
The Sweet Smell of a Nobel
Smell has long been regarded as one of the most enigmatic
of the senses. For years, the basic principles for
recognizing and remembering some 10,000 different odors
were not well understood by scientists.
Last month,
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine alumnus Richard Axel,
Med '71, was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for
explaining how the olfactory system works.
Axel, a professor at Columbia University since 1978, shares
the $1.36 million prize with Linda Buck. In 1991, he and
Buck, then a postdoctoral student, jointly reported
discovering a large gene family comprised of 1,000
different genes that were devoted to producing different
odor-sensing proteins or receptors in the nose. Their
research explained how we perceive thousands of smells,
which identify foods, warn us of fire, and bring back
memories from years before.
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Alumnus Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize for his work
explaining the olfactory system.
AP Photo / Jeff
Chiu |
Axel is the 31st person affiliated with Johns Hopkins to
win a Nobel Prize. He told The Washington Post that
he became interested in studying smell because he wanted to
find an aspect of sensory perception that might be
decipherable using his specialty, molecular biology. Smell
was a good candidate because gene-finding techniques could
identify the large number of genes he expected it might
take to detect the entire group of odors.
In a telephone interview posted on the Nobel Prize Web
site, Axel admitted that discovering the family of genes
and receiving the Nobel were both surprises to him, and he
offered advice to students dreaming of winning their own
Nobel one day.
"I think the important message, if I were to talk with
students, is that the joy of science is in the process, and
not in the end," he said. "That science is a process of
discovery, which unto itself should be a meaningful
pleasure." — Maria Blackburn
Hopkins Mourns Paul H. Nitze, SAIS
Co-Founder
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Paul H. Nitze
Photo by
Will Kirk |
The Johns Hopkins community is mourning the loss of Paul H.
Nitze, co-founder of Johns Hopkins'
School of Advanced
International Studies. Nitze, who helped shape
America's cold war relationship with the Soviet Union, died
of pneumonia on October 19. He was 97.
A leading expert on foreign policy and arms control, Nitze
was an adviser to United States presidents of both parties.
Throughout his long political career, which began in 1940,
he served as director of the Department of State Policy
Planning Staff, secretary of the Navy, deputy secretary of
defense, and a member of the U.S. delegation to the
Strategic Arms Limitations
Talks from 1969 to 1974. In 1962, he advised President
Kennedy daily during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, in the
early 1980s, as head of the U.S. negotiating team at the
Geneva Arms Control Talks, he took his now-famous "walk in
the woods" with a Soviet negotiator, in which he attempted
to break the deadlock between the two superpowers.
President Reagan awarded Nitze the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, in
1985.
Nitze co-founded the School of Advanced International
Studies with Christian Herter in 1943 and maintained a
relationship with the school throughout his life. The
school became a division of Johns Hopkins University in
1950, and in 1989 the trustees renamed it the Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced International Studies to recognize his
extraordinary career and his service to the university.
"As co-founder of SAIS during World War II, he demonstrated
in a private undertaking the wisdom and vision that was so
much a part of his public life," university President William R. Brody wrote of Nitze in
an e-mail announcing his death to Hopkins faculty, staff,
and students. "The university relied over the years on his
leadership and advice, and we are very much the better for
it."
— Catherine Pierre
Theater Program Finds a Home
Two nights before the opening of Johns Hopkins University
Theatre's performance of Jeffrey Sweet's Bluff,
English major Kateri Chambers '06
is gently prompting her co-star during rehearsal.
"I think you skipped a couple lines," Kateri says.
"Yes, yes, you're right," responds the actor, John Astin,
A&S '52, as he thanks her and prepares to replay the scene
for the fourth or fifth time.
Astin — alumnus,
professor, and Bluff director — might be
forgiven for the slip. After all, what are a few missed
lines compared to the major overhaul he's made to the
university's theater program?
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John Astin, Kateri Chambers, and Loren Dunn in
Jeffrey Sweet's Bluff
Photo by
Raphael Schweber-Koren |
Ever since arriving as a visiting professor in 2001, Astin
has had a project: to revive the university's long-dormant
drama program — the program he himself graduated
from before going on to a healthy career in film and
television, including his most notable role as Gomez Addams
in the original Addams Family TV program.
"We were the only major school in the East without a
theater program," Astin says. "Even MIT has a theater
program." The Homewood community has proof that his work
is paying off. Students can now study acting, directing,
lighting design, and technical production through the Writing Seminars. And beginning next
year, the Johns Hopkins University Theatre, formerly known
as the Hopkins Studio Players, will have a permanent home
in the Homewood campus's Merrick Barn, where Astin
performed when he was a student.
Theatre Hopkins, which has used the Barn for its
community productions, will likely find a new home within
Charles Village beginning next season.
Until now, says Astin, the biggest challenge in developing
a formidable theater program has been the lack of an
adequate space. "There was no place to work," he says. "I
had to scramble for a place to do shows." (The troupe has
rented performance space in the nearby Baltimore Museum of
Art's 363-seat Meyerhoff Auditorium, where it will showcase
its to-be-determined spring show as well.)
As the program prepares to settle into its new home, plans
are in the works to enhance the Barn's performance space
and to add classrooms for training and set production.
"Some of these students are very good," Astin says. "I want
to build a theater here of a troupe of actors of a
professional [caliber]."
Students with a flair for drama
and the arts embrace the opportunity Astin is offering
them.
"I never expected anything like this when I came to
Hopkins," says Marshall Ross '05, a backstage tech on
Bluff who started as a pre-med but is now in the
Writing Sems. "I've always had a creative side, but never
really explored it in this way."
Tarik Najeddine '05, a
psychology major, agrees that there is value in having
an outlet for creative expression. "People are realizing
that is not healthy to sit in the library and stare at
organic chemistry books for hours and hours," says
Najeddine, who had two small roles in Bluff.
"There's a lot of camaraderie here, instead of the usual
Hopkins competition."
For Astin, the theater program is good for students —
and for Hopkins in general. "I felt the school really
needed this," he says. "I'm here out of love for Hopkins,
as a service to the university." — Christine A.
Rowett
Food, Fun, and Silliness on an Autumn Weekend
Susan Boswell, dean of
students, would not be bribed — unless it was a
particularly good bribe.
"I can get your kids into college," offered freshman Phoebe
Quin, whose father works for the College Board.
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Peabody Director Robert Sirota (left) and President
William R. Brody add vaudevillian spice to Saturday
evening's Variety Show.
Photo by
Will Kirk |
That seemed to persuade her. Boswell, official judge of the
Crazy Cart Race (dressed in a Dr. Seuss hat to mark the
occasion), named Quin's team the winner.
The race, just one event in the Homewood campus's
first-ever Fall Festival, was designed to encourage
teamwork and communication. Teams of six — including
a blind-folded cart pusher and a navigator who shouts
directions — competed to negotiate an obstacle
course. The fastest team should have won, except
that, according to the rules, extra points could be
accumulated for a number of reasons, including those
bribes. (That's to keep things silly, explains Ralph
Johnson, associate dean of students and director of the
Fall Festival.)
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Participants in the Crazy Cart Race (right) received
extra points for scooping up items, including these pink
blow-up flamingos (below).
Photo by
Will Kirk |
The festival, which took place over the October 1-3
weekend, was created to give the Homewood community in
general — and undergraduates in particular — a
greater feeling of kinship with the school. "The idea is to
bring together students, faculty, and staff to celebrate
campus community," says Johnson.
The weekend kicked off with a Friday night cookout on the
beach, attended by nearly 1,500 faculty, students, and
staff from all the Hopkins campuses. There was a football
pep rally, a "Video Shootout" in which students used
provided video cameras to create five-minute documentaries
about campus life, novelty events like Human Foosball, a
water polo game, a Casino Night in Levering Lounge, and a
five-hour scavenger hunt through Homewood and Charles
Village, in which students had to solve 22 clues, including
one given by a mock fortuneteller in Levering Hall. The
weekend wrapped up with a 2 a.m. Sunday breakfast in front
of Levering.
The festival was a success, according to students like
junior Asheesh Laroia. "What the campus needs is more
people talking to each other," she says.
Boswell believes the festival — considered a new
campus tradition — will increase school spirit. And
that's a good thing, the dean says. "Anything we can do to
build and reinforce the community is important to Hopkins."
— Jessica Valdez, A&S '04
More on the Man Who Never Let His Schooling Interfere With
His Education
Larzer Ziff's newest book, Mark Twain (Oxford
University Press, 2004), takes on a legend in a mere 116
pages. Clear, crisp, and concise, his book — first in
the publisher's new Lives and Legends series — not
only tackles the most beloved, most quoted, and most
written-about American author of all time but also gives
fresh critical insight into his work. "A sentence by Ziff
is worth more than a paragraph by most other
scholar-critics," one reviewer said of his work.
Ziff, a research professor of
English at Johns Hopkins who retired in 1999 after 18
years on the faculty, is the author of six books on
American literary culture. He sat down with Johns
Hopkins Magazine just before his new book's release to
talk about Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Johns Hopkins Magazine: What sort of a challenge was
it for you to write about such a larger-than-life literary
figure in such a brief space?
Larzer Ziff: I had 35,000 words, but 100,000 would
have been easier. You could write forever on Mark Twain.
All of the books on him are very long. The criticism on him
is endless. It was a real challenge to do it in 35,000
words and be original and say something. That's what
intrigued me more than anything.
JHM: Twain was most well-known, both in America and
overseas, for his sense of humor, and yet he was conflicted
about being known as a humorist. Why?
LZ: He wanted to be taken as seriously as the famous
writers of his day. In America, that would have been
authors like William Dean Howells and Henry James. He
wanted to feel as though he were in that class. He also
felt some self-consciousness because much of his work was
sold by subscription publications. Yet subscription
publications reached his audience, his people.
JHM: It's hard to be funny in print. Twain was not
only funny at the time he wrote, but his work still elicits
laughter 100 years later. How come?
LZ: The great thing about Mark Twain's humor is that
it's in the telling, not in the punch line. For Twain the
humor is the humor of the storyteller, not the tale. That's
why Hal Holbrook [the actor who plays Twain onstage] is so
good, and why the average teacher of Mark Twain can't get a
laugh from his class when he reads Twain's work. I don't
even try anymore. I don't read Twain out loud to people. I
tell them it's amusing and they should read it
themselves.
JHM: Most people read Tom Sawyer and
Huckleberry Finn in school. What lesser-known works
of Twain's are worth a look?
LZ: Some of his short pieces here and there are not
as easy to get to as his novels, but they are wonderful. He
wrote a letter to Queen Victoria that's hilarious. His book
Life on the Mississippi is a spin-off from a series
he wrote for The Atlantic Monthly called "Old Times
on the Mississippi." That series is marvelous. I would
recommend that. And Pudd'nhead Wilson is probably
the novel that I say should be reread.
JHM: Mark Twain once referred to himself as "the
most conspicuous man on the planet." He remains one of the
best-known American writers of all time. Why is he so
famous?
LZ: There are people today who are much more famous
than he was, but none of them has the staying power of his
celebrity. Twain's celebrity goes beyond the magnetism of
celebrity itself. There is something akin to love that Mark
Twain attracted in people, a genuine kind of love that I
don't think celebrities like Madonna attract.
— MB
Celebrating a Certain Joie de Vivre
Kay Redfield Jamison loves the word "galumphing." According
to the Oxford English Dictionary, Lewis Carroll's
coinage from The Hunting of the Snark conveys a
sense of "marching on exultingly with irregular bounding
movements." Children at play galumph. Joyful people
galumph. To galumph expresses exuberance.
Jamison, a Hopkins professor of psychiatry and a
best-selling author, reserves an index entry for "galumph"
in her new book, Exuberance: The Passion for Life
(Knopf 2004). Her previous work had explored darker
emotional terrain, like bipolar disorder (Touched With
Fire, An Unquiet Mind) and suicide (Night Falls
Fast). In Exuberance, Jamison examines the lives
of people who seem to go at life with a joy and boldness
beyond most mortals. She discusses the psychology of
exuberance, its evolutionary importance for both humans and
animals (who, she argues, also exhibit it), and its risks
and rewards.
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Kay Redfield Jamison
Photo by
Tom Wolff |
"I had always been interested in enthusiasm, why some
people are enthusiastic and others aren't," she explains.
"So I just decided to look at it from a psychological point
of view. I loved every minute of it."
Jamison's book discusses a remarkable variety of remarkable
people, living and dead: Theodore Roosevelt; naturalist
John Muir; physicist Richard Feynman; Arctic explorer
Richard Byrd; the Puritans who sailed on the
Mayflower; Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley, who devoted
his life to photographing snowflakes; J. M. Barrie, the
author of Peter Pan; P. T. Barnum; soldiers going into
battle; C. S. Lewis; astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin;
and James D. Watson, co-discoverer of DNA. She selected as
subjects individuals who exhibited the traits by which she
defined exuberance: infectious high energy, unquenchable
curiosity, a large capacity for joy, and a restlessness
that differentiates it from mere happiness.
Jamison is particularly interested in exuberant scientists,
and interviewed a number of them. She says, "I think
scientists get unfairly painted as being robotic or
uninteresting. In fact, most of the really great scientists
that I know have been incredibly enthusiastic and can't
wait to get back to their experiments and find out what's
going to happen next."
Exuberant people are important, says Jamison. They're the
ones who explore new territory, make scientific
discoveries, create a bond among a species or social group,
and nudge the more hesitant toward greater achievement. She
says, "When people join together in high-mood, high-energy
activities" — often around a central figure whose
exuberance attracted them — "that forms a
closeness."
Jamison acknowledges, however, that contagious enthusiasm
can send people down the wrong path, such as ruinous
financial speculation. Recall the 17th-century Dutch tulip
mania in Europe, when people sold all their possessions to
invest in tulip bulbs. "The very thing that causes people
to take risks that are useful also causes people to take
risks that are not," says Jamison. "For example, a lot of
the scientists that I interviewed said that, on the one
hand, [exuberance] allowed them to take a lot of risks
intellectually that they wouldn't otherwise take because
they got caught up in their work and followed that mood
wherever it went. But it also increased the chances they
would make errors or not use the kind of judgment they
would ordinarily use."
She concludes, "What you need is this wide diversity of
temperaments. You need some people who are anxious and shy
and cautious. A certain number of people have to attend to
life's necessities. That is enormously important to all of
us. [But we need] other people who are uninhibited and wild
and take all sorts of chances that the species couldn't
afford to have everyone doing." — Dale Keiger
Hopkins Hospital on the WB
"Hello. This is Scott Patterson, and it's really terrific
that you called. You have a great opportunity to help me do
something very, very important. I'm involved in helping to
build the best children's hospital at Johns Hopkins —
one of the top hospitals in the country...."
— Fans of Gilmore Girls will recognize Patterson
as the actor who plays Luke Danes on the series. When Luke
got a new cell phone number this season, the show's
creators decided to forgo the phony "555" area code and use
a real one instead. Patterson chose the message, and when
fans call the number,
Hopkins
Children's
Center gets a boost. (To hear the rest of the message,
call 860-294-1986.)
Adding Up Good Vibrations
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Illustration by
John S.
Dykes |
Everything vibrates. According to string theory, the entire
universe is composed of vibrating filaments. The planet
vibrates from earth tremors and the ocean's tides and the
explosions of war. We vibrate from sound and the machinery
around us and the swoosh of blood through our veins. The
very atoms within us vibrate.
Yet much about vibration remains a mystery, unpredictable
and inadequately defined. Mathematicians understand the
simple, one-dimensional vibration of a violin string. But
how does the shape of an object — a drumhead, for
example — affect the way it vibrates? Mathematicians
can't tell you, not with the exactitude that science and
mathematics require. They can't predict exactly how the
head will vibrate, because no exact formula exists. Enter
Christopher Sogge and Steven Zelditch.
The Hopkins professors of
mathematics
recently received $402,000 from the National Science
Foundation to tackle the problem. It's the largest grant
ever awarded to Hopkins mathematicians, part of a $975,398
grant made to a team of five that includes mathematicians
at the University of California, Berkeley, and the
University of Washington.
The abstract for the grant, titled "Eigenfunctions of the
Laplacian," states: "This proposal is concerned with
estimates of solutions of wave equations on (both compact
and non-compact) Riemannian manifolds, possibly with
boundary." That's rather a lot to absorb if you are not a
mathematician, so Sogge and Zelditch suggest that you
imagine a pool table.
Strike a cue ball on a standard, empty rectangular billiard
table. It's not that hard to predict its trajectory. The
ball is going to collide with one side of the table at a
specific angle, ricochet at a corresponding angle toward
another side, and so forth. It's comparatively easy to
predict the ball's path, which is why a pool hustler is
able to run the table and take your money.
But now imagine a non-rectangular table, says Zelditch,
something shaped, for example, like the floor of a stadium:
a rectangle with rounded areas on each end. Strike a cue
ball on that table, and after a few collisions,
first with a flat boundary, then a curved boundary, the
ball's motion quickly becomes chaotic. Says Zelditch,
"After a hundred ricochets, try to guess where the ball is
going to be. You can't really do it. People sometimes say,
'The ball forgets where it came from.'"
Predicting a drumhead's vibrations is even harder. They are
just as random and unpredictable as the path of the second
billiard ball. No doubt to the relief of their neighbors in
Hopkins' Krieger Hall, Sogge and Zelditch will not be doing
any actual drumming. Their research will consist of thought
experiments and scribbled equations. Imagining a drum head
is simply a useful model for visualizing a vibrating
surface. Says Sogge, "At the core of what we're trying to
do is the fact that, unlike the one-dimensional problem"
— that vibrating violin string — "it is
impossible to write down formulas that describe the exact
properties of periodic vibration [the "eigenfunctions" of
the grant's title]. We have to work indirectly with pretty
difficult tools. We have to kind of invent the techniques
while we're working on the problem." — DK
Bloomberg School Looks for Leaders
The Bloomberg School of
Public Health is looking for a few good recruits.
Last spring, the school announced that an anonymous donor
is giving $22 million over the next 10 years to create the
Hopkins Sommer Scholars program. Named in honor of Dean
Alfred Sommer, SPH '73 (MHS), the program aims to attract
and educate the next generation of leaders in global health
issues.
"This very generous gift is just an enormous benefit
because it will allow us to recruit the best and brightest
students," says James Yager, senior associate dean for
academic affairs and a professor of toxicology in the
Department of Environmental Health Sciences. Sommer
Scholars will need not only an impressive academic
background but "demonstrated leadership potential" as well,
Yager says.
Beginning with the 2005-2006 academic year, up to 15 MPH
students will receive tuition and living stipends for their
entire course of study, and up to 15 doctoral students will
receive stipends for five years plus two years of paid
tuition. (The rest of their tuition will be covered by
training grants and other sources.) In addition to their
normal academic schedule, scholars will participate in
seminars and internships designed to establish a network of
public health leadership for years to come.
Students interested in a Sommer Scholarship, which the
school likens to the Rhodes Scholarship, will apply as
usual to individual programs, then the departments will
nominate their best candidates. Applications to the MPH and
doctoral programs are due in December, and scholarships
will be announced in March. The school is getting word out
now — with a Web site
(
www.jhsph.edu/sommerscholars) and ads in publications
such as Science and The New England Journal of
Medicine.
Yager says that the scholarship is a fitting tribute to
Sommer, who is stepping down as dean next year to devote
more time to his research: "Al has been a tremendous
spokesperson for public health, and his own research has
had a dramatic effect on improving the lives of people
around the world." And it will enable the school to
continue that good work in the future, says Yager. "We hope
that when these individuals go out there and start to have
an impact, others will be interested in coming in and
supporting this program." — CP
Water Treatment to Bank On
Making river water safe to drink needn't be complicated nor
costly, according to Johns Hopkins doctoral student Josh
Weiss, who looked no farther than a river's banks for an
effective filtration technique.
For more than 50 years, communities in Europe have known
that a well sunk near a river provides water that has
better odor and taste than water taken directly from the
river. That's because the soil alongside the river serves
as a natural filter, removing hazardous materials such as
industrial solvents.
Hoping to better understand just how the process works,
Weiss spent six years studying the output of water drawn
from riverside wells in three U.S. municipalities. His
findings, which he presented this summer at the annual
meeting of the American Chemical Society, indicate that
riverbank filtration does considerably more than just make
water taste better — and that it could be used to cut
water treatment costs within the United States.
Weiss analyzed water samples from municipal wells in
Indiana, Kentucky, and Missouri. Back in his lab at
Hopkins, in the Whiting School's
Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering
(DoGEE), he then purified, by the same methods used by
conventional water treatment plants, water samples from the
rivers that run beside those wells.
When he compared the results, he found that riverbank
filtration was as good or better than conventional
purification measures in cleansing the water of organic
material, mostly decaying plant matter. Organic material is
harmless on its own but reacts to chlorine purification by
forming byproducts thought to be carcinogenic. Thus, the
more such material can be removed prior to chlorination
(which still has to be applied to the well water), the
better.
Weiss also found that riverbank filtration showed promise
at significantly reducing concentrations of microorganisms,
including giardia and cryptosporidium, waterborne organisms
that cause serious digestive ailments and are difficult to
kill by standard means.
Weiss and his doctoral adviser, DoGEE professor Edward J.
Bouwer, believe riverbank filtration could lower water
treatment costs and reduce the risks of chlorination and
waterborne diseases. "If you think about what it costs to
build a full-scale treatment plant to make river water
safe," Weiss says, "you can see how this could be very
beneficial." — DK
Frank Talk About Student Sex
Jessica Beaton's sex advice column in the Johns Hopkins
News-Letter raised a few eyebrows last year with its
frank sexual content, sense of humor, and no-holds-barred
approach to dealing with all aspects of relationships.
Now the international relations major has found herself a
new audience: the 6 million readers of the national
magazine CosmoGIRL! Beaton's bi-monthly column, "Ask
College Girl," made its debut in the magazine's October
issue. "No question's too heavy — or too naughty
— for College Girl!" the editors proclaim in their
introduction to Beaton's relationship advice column. That's
not a stretch. The New York City native says that of the
hundreds of questions she's fielded both at Hopkins and for
CosmoGirl!, she's never shied away from a topic.
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Jessica Beaton |
"I know that there are a lot of people with questions who
just do not know how to ask or even begin a conversation
about them," the 20-year-old Beaton says. "If I touch on
one issue or another in a column that lets someone start a
dialogue that they weren't able to before, I'm happy."
Beaton's career as a sex and relationship adviser began
when she was an AIDS peer educator in high school. In 10th
grade, after completing a semester of Health, she realized
there were gaps in the sexual and reproductive health
component and so proposed changes. She told her headmaster,
"I believe in this new proposed curriculum so much that I
would even teach it." He took her up on her offer, and
Beaton taught Health to 10th- and 12th-graders at her
school for two years.
Beaton's Hopkins friends knew about her sex-ed experience,
and when one became News-Letter editor last year,
she wanted Beaton for the sex columnist job.
"I really thought it would be fun," says Beaton, who plans
to study law in the area of women's rights and development.
"I talk about a lot of these topics with friends, why not
talk with the campus about them?"
After Beaton wrote a freelance story on sexuality for
CosmoGIRL! last May, the editors asked to see her
News-Letter columns. They had been looking for an
advice columnist, and Beaton got the job.
"There are so many questions that our girls come to us with
that are better answered by someone who has recently been
through it," says CosmoGIRL! executive editor Ann
Shoket. "Jess couldn't be more honest and straightforward,
and that is exactly what you want to get from your advice
columnist."
Unlike her News-Letter column, Beaton's column for
CosmoGIRL!, which targets females aged 13 to 23, is
more about relationships and dating than sex. Nevertheless,
her honesty is still there. As is Beaton's devotion to
promoting safe sex. "Every column where I talk about sex
gives a nod to safer sex," she says. "It is important to
make safer sex the norm, and continually reinforcing that
message is incredibly important to me." — MB
Reading the Needs of Greater Homewood
Neighborhoods
Nearly every Wednesday night, David Engelhardt, a
nationally ranked Scrabble competitor, leaves his downtown
office and travels to Charles Village to share his fervor
for words, reading, and comprehension. But his midweek task
is no game. Engelhardt is one of about 60 regular tutors
who participate in the largest volunteer literacy program
in Baltimore City through the Greater Homewood Community
Corporation (GHCC).
"Reading is essential for just about everything we do,"
says Engelhardt, 53. "Most of us take it for granted."
Engelhardt works primarily with David Williams, 52, who was
born in Trinidad to a family with nine children. Though
Williams attended school until the sixth grade, he never
learned to read. "If you are blind, somehow you develop a
different kind of sense," says Williams, who relied on
friends and strangers to understand forms, applications,
and other materials. "I developed smartness; I was always
friendly with people. That is how I dealt with it."
That worked until he emigrated in 2001. "When I came into
this country, I realized nobody would help me with
anything," Williams says without a hint of bitterness. "I
just smiled and made up my mind that I could learn."
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Reading is fundamental for David Engelhardt (left) and
David Williams.
Photo by
Christopher
Myers |
When Engelhardt and Williams started their tutoring,
Williams could not understand the street signs and
billboards he encountered every day. Today, he works in a
publications distribution warehouse and recently bought his
first home.
GHCC's adult literacy and English for Speakers of Other
Languages (ESOL) programs were created to attract
immigrants to Baltimore City, which had been steadily
losing residents. To date, the programs have helped more
than 4,000 foreign-born city residents with basic reading,
writing, math, and English skills. Instruction methods
include regularly scheduled and facilitated conversation
groups, where students practice everyday discussions and
language tasks.
"When immigrants come into the area, they're intimidated to
use their skills," says Todd Elliot, director of the adult
literacy program. "If we can get them over that barrier, we
can help them feel better about themselves."
Adult literacy and ESOL programs are just two of GHCC's
many missions. The organization was established 35 years
ago as a coalition of area activists and representatives
from prominent institutions: the Johns Hopkins University,
Union Memorial Hospital, and the Maryland Casualty
insurance company. Retired Hopkins Vice President Ross
Jones, A&S '53, is among those credited with creating the
organization.
"Ross Jones was the one who saw that building relationships
between neighbors and institutions would strengthen the
community," says William Miller, GHCC's executive director.
"And he was right. If you're a large institution like
Hopkins, it's important to solidify the area around
you."
Today, the group focuses its efforts on strengthening 40
neighborhoods in Greater Homewood through education and
economic development. Its primary goal, Miller says, is to
get people involved in their own communities; last year
GHCC members logged 54,000 volunteer hours in area schools.
Since its inception, the organization's scope has expanded
to include areas farther north and south of Homewood.
Emeritus professor of
biophysics
Michael Beer, a longtime city advocate who spearheaded an
effort to preserve the Jones Falls, is president of GHCC's
board of directors.
While he takes pride in GHCC achievements, he is careful to
give credit to the staff and volunteers who carry out the
group's missions.
"They see some of the big problems that our society has and
devise ways to do something about them," Beer says. "Some
wonderful stories come out of their work."
David Williams is one of those stories. He recently
traveled back to Trinidad and ran into an acquaintance who
needed help reading instructions at the airport. Williams
gladly complied.
"I'm helping people to fill out forms!" he says, still
amazed at his own progress. "Isn't that great?" —
CAR
Academic Approach to Real Estate
Hoping to better equip professionals who want to make their
mark in real estate, Hopkins'
School of Professional
Studies in Business and Education will launch a
full-time master's degree program beginning next fall.
Made possible by a $5.85 million commitment from donor
Edward A. St. John, the full-time master's will complement
the school's existing part-time program, one of just five
in the nation devoted to real estate science. While that
program is aimed at midcareer professionals, many of whom
already hold degrees in law and business, the full-time
program is intended for recent graduates, says Michael
Anikeeff, chair of the newly renamed Edward St. John
Department of Real Estate. "We believe this program to be
unique in academia," he says.
SPSBE will recruit students both nationally and
internationally for the 12-month program, which will
include elements of the part-time program (including
courses in design, construction, land use regulation, and
real estate law) as well as an internship at an approved
real estate company. — Sue De Pasquale
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