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Wholly Hopkins Matters of note from around Johns Hopkins
Arts and Sciences dean leaving for Lafayette
presidency
Daniel Weiss, James B. Knapp Dean of the
Krieger School of
Arts and Sciences since 2002, announced at the close of
2004 that he will be leaving Johns Hopkins. On July 1, he
will become the 16th president of Lafayette College, a
liberal arts institution of 2,300 undergraduates in Easton,
Pennsylvania. Weiss will succeed Arthur J. Rothkopf, who is
retiring after 11 years as Lafayette's president. |
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Weiss is proud of having developed a vision for the
Krieger School's future. Photo by John Dean |
"It's a great opportunity, but I leave here with great
affection for Hopkins, and with gratitude," Weiss said
after his announcement. "Lafayette is an excellent liberal
arts college whose central concerns are the kinds of issues
that I've worked hard for at Johns Hopkins —
undergraduate
education, and liberal education focusing on the breadth
and depth of what an undergraduate experience ought to
be."Weiss earned an MA in art history in 1982 from Hopkins and a PhD in 1992. The next year, he joined the art history faculty, and became department chairman in 1998. During his Hopkins career he won three teaching awards, and in 1994 became one of the few art historians ever to win the Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize from the Medieval Academy of America. The prize recognizes exceptional first articles published in medieval studies. Before he became dean, Weiss helped develop the Krieger School's strategic plan, and as dean worked to implement it. "I'm most proud that we've been able to work hand in hand with the faculty to develop a vision of the future for the school," he said. He also expressed pride in the creation, during his tenure, of new programs in East Asian, Africana, and Jewish studies, as well as increased diversity among Krieger students and faculty; a heightened focus on academic ethics; revision of the undergraduate curriculum; and participation in the Charles Village Project, a new student housing, retail, and parking complex now under construction on Charles Street across from the main campus. On January 1, Adam Falk became interim dean. Falk, a professor of high-energy physics, has been Krieger School dean of faculty since 2002. He will direct the school until a national search identifies Weiss' successor. — Dale Keiger
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Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees Chair Raymond
"Chip" Mason announced at the October Alumni Leadership
Weekend gala that the campaign had so far raised $1.54
billion. For more on the gala, see the
alumni news section. Photo by Larry Canner |
"The outstanding success is a testament to the loyalty and
generosity of many thousands of alumni, friends,
foundations, corporations, and other supporters of Johns
Hopkins," university President
William R. Brody wrote in an
e-mail message to faculty, staff, and students. "It is also
a tribute to you. It is your hard work, your scholarship,
your research and creativity, your contributions of
knowledge to the world that inspire so many gifts, large
and small, to Johns Hopkins."Money raised in the Knowledge for the World campaign has been instrumental in the completion of major capital projects, such as the $27 million renovation of the Peabody Institute and the final build-out of the Bloomberg School of Public Health block on Wolfe Street. But bricks-and-mortar projects remain a significant campaign priority, representing 30 percent of the goal. Johns Hopkins Medicine development officers are working toward a $272 million goal for private support for a new cardiovascular and critical care tower, a children's and maternal hospital, and three research buildings. Of that, $116 million has been raised so far. Other important capital projects are the South Quad project (see p. 24) and Gilman Hall renovations at Homewood and a School of Nursing expansion that will also house the Berman Bioethics Institute. Another campaign priority is endowment, especially for student aid and faculty support. The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering, for instance, are seeking $100 million for undergraduate financial aid; $22.7 million is in hand so far. Gifts of $1 million or more represent 75 percent of the total raised, but smaller gifts have also helped to propel the campaign forward. In fact, the number of Homewood undergraduate alumni making annual gifts of any size has increased from 28 percent to 32 percent. "This combination of leadership commitments with many, many thousands of very generous smaller gifts will, by the conclusion of this campaign, have a transforming effect on the Johns Hopkins Institutions," said Robert Lindgren, vice president for development and alumni relations. "We have a lot of momentum, but there still are needs out there that are critical to the university and the health system, particularly in buildings, student aid, and faculty support. Meeting those needs and keeping Johns Hopkins competitive in those areas is our top priority as the campaign continues over the next three years." — Maria Blackburn
Sweet relief for the stressed-out student? Not this
time.
Stressbusters has a funny problem. The student group wants
to give free, five-minute seated massages to alleviate
stress. But Hopkins students are just too stressed out to
take them up on it.
On a December evening during finals week, the top floors of
the Milton S.
Eisenhower Library are an anxiety-filled
place. Some students cluster in small groups to review
class notes. Others slump over books at café tables
littered with takeout food containers. The air is filled
with nervous chatter and the steady whir of an espresso
machine. |
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Though Stressbusters gave 110 backrubs during the Fall
Festival in September, shown at right, their finals event
was less successful. Students "can't take five minutes for
themselves," says Battick. Photo by Will Kirk |
Relief stands just inside the library doors. Sophomores
Leandra Uribe and Katie Battick — dressed identically
in
jeans, flats, and white Stressbusters T-shirts —
have been
trained in seated massage and relaxation techniques.
Following the urgings of Stressbusters student coordinator
Abby Burch to "look friendly, but not creepy," they make
eye contact. They smile. They inquire politely. Time and
again they are rebuffed: "We have to study." "We don't have
time." Almost an hour passes before a graduate student
agrees to a free backrub."This is the Hopkins way," Battick sighs. "They can't take five minutes for themselves." Stressbusters started last fall as a joint program of the offices of the Dean of Student Life, Health Education and Wellness, and the Student Health and Wellness Center. So far, about 150 trained student volunteers have given more than 300 backrubs to students, faculty, and staff at 17 campus events, says Barbara Gwinn, associate director of the Office of Health Education and Wellness. The two-hour library event, which resulted in only a half dozen back rubs, had less traffic than the coordinators hoped, but Gwinn is already thinking about ways to improve similar events in the future. Stressbusters, which started at Columbia University in 1996, was brought to Hopkins by Allegra Hamman, a nurse practitioner at the Student Health and Wellness Center. Hamman — who saw students' stress-related insomnia, depression, headaches, and back pain — wanted to help students better manage stress. "If we can start to make the link for them between stress and illness, educating them about some lifestyle choices that will enhance their coping mechanisms, we will be providing an important service," she says. "Stressbusters backrubs are just one means of doing that." The backrubs benefit both the givers and receivers, notes Jordan Friedman, the health education trainer who founded Stressbusters at Columbia. "Stressbusters is so much more than a five-minute backrub," he says. "One of the components of the training is that the students learn how to communicate with their Stressbustees. This training can translate into students' social lives, lives with their partners, children, and friends." For Gwinn, the poor turnout at the library event only strengthened her resolve to help students deal with their stress. "This place is a pressure cooker," she says. "It's a testament to how stressed out people are that they can't even spare five minutes for a back rub." — MB
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| Roger Brunyate |
Next month, Peabody Opera Theatre presents the world
premiere of The Alien Corn, an opera in two acts.
Brunyate,
chairman of Peabody's Opera Department, wrote the libretto,
and his Peabody colleague Tom Benjamin composed the
music.Maugham's story is the tragic tale of George Bland, the scion of a baron and member of Britain's parliament. In the late 1920s, George's parents live the fiction of being descended from generations of English landed gentry, though two generations earlier, the Blands were not the Blands. They were the Bleikogel's, prosperous German Jews who came to England and prospered some more. As the opera opens, George's parents, Sir Adolf and Lady Miriam, have renounced their German and Jewish heritage. Miriam now prefers the name "Muriel"; Adolf wishes to be called "Bertie." George rejects his family's fabricated identity and his father's plans to groom him for Parliament. He convinces his parents to let him study piano in Germany, on condition that in two years he return to England and play for an eminent pianist who will judge whether he has the potential to become a great concert artist. George spends the two years intensely studying music, but also finding his lost cultural roots. When he returns home and plays his recital, the eminent pianist confirms what he already suspects: He will never be more than a talented amateur. George accepts her verdict, leaves the room, and takes his own life. Asked about the challenges of turning Maugham's story into an opera, Brunyate responds with a list: "Rounding out the narrator. Filling out the other characters to make it a true ensemble piece. Being evenhanded in the distribution of roles, and sympathizing with as many of the characters as possible. And writing for and about music without ever having the music heard." The last refers to the piano music central to the plot. Brunyate and Benjamin were concerned about finding singers who could play the piano parts onstage. They also didn't know how they would work scene changes around a grand piano. In their solution, the piano stays in the orchestra pit, George's recital occurs offstage, and all the piano music comes during the orchestral interludes. Says Brunyate of the new work, "It is not like most operas. There's no love interest. There's very little action onstage. It's about people who don't talk about what's really important to them, and that's quite unusual." — DK
Hopkins teams show their stuff
When
Johns Hopkins men's soccer
opened its 2004 season, the
team had no place in the national rankings. Talk about
underestimated.
The Jays proceeded to roll up an undefeated regular season,
spend seven weeks in the No. 2 spot of the national
Division III poll, and advance to the Sweet Sixteen of the
NCAA national championship before dropping a one-goal match
to Maryland rival Salisbury State. The 2004 Hopkins team
set school records for winning percentage (.900), fewest
losses (1), and best start to a season (16-0). The Jays
never even trailed in a game until the second round
of the
NCAA tourney.
Key to Hopkins' stellar season was defense. The Jays
allowed only six goals all year and never more than one in
any single match. The team's goals-against-average was the
eighth best ever recorded by a D-III school. Senior goalie
Gary Kane Jr. was rewarded for his efforts by receiving
first-team All-American honors and a mention in the January
10 Sports Illustrated. Junior midfielder Manbaj Gill
was
named second-team All-American.
In addition to their strong showing in the NCAA tournament,
the Jays won the Centennial Conference championship for the
fifth time.
In that other version of men's football, Hopkins had its
third straight championship season as quarterback Zach
DiIonno led the Jays to a 9-2 record and victory in the
Eastern College Athletic Conference Southeast Championship
game. For the third straight season, Hopkins shared the
Centennial Conference championship and won its post-season
ECAC game.
DiIonno, a junior, led the conference in passing yards and
total offense. His favorite target, sophomore Anthony
Triplin, led the Centennial in receptions, and sophomore
Ben Scott was the conference's leading kicker. The Jays did
not always make winning look easy, as they came from behind
six times for victories, including the 26-23 win over
Waynesburg for the ECAC title. |
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D-III Player of the Year Brian Mead Photo by Jay Van Rensselaer |
Under head coach Jim Margraff, A&S '82, Hopkins football
has enjoyed a striking resurgence. From 1969 to 2001, the
Jays did not win a single football championship. In the
last three seasons, Hopkins has won six. Of their last 35
games, the Jays have been victorious in 30.Finally, in men's water polo, senior Brian Mead was named Division III national player of the year and first-team All-American. The honors capped a season in which Mead scored his 100th goal and became the all-time greatest scorer in Hopkins water polo history. — DK
Restoring a once vibrant exchange in the Middle
East
Back in 1963, when Tommy Turner, then dean of
Johns Hopkins
Medicine, agreed to create an exchange program with the
American University of Beirut, the goal was clear: "to help
AUB become the Johns Hopkins of the Middle East," recalls
Lebanese-born radiologist Nagi Khouri, today director of
the
Breast Imaging Center at Johns Hopkins. |
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| The American University of Beirut |
And for a time, that goal seemed within reach. From the
mid-1960s through the mid-1970s, 21 AUB medical center
fellows underwent training at Johns Hopkins; 17 returned to
AUB to hold posts as department chairs or dean. In
addition, some 30 AUB physicians (among them Khouri)
received medical training at Hopkins. When Sam Asper, then
Hopkins vice president for medical affairs, became dean and
chief of staff at the AUB medical center in 1973, he
established training programs for paramedics, nurses, and
public health workers for Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, and
laid the groundwork for making AUB the principal
postdoctoral center for the Arab world.But everything came to a crashing halt in 1975, with the outbreak of civil war in the region. The AUB medical center became a casualty and war hospital. The collaboration with Hopkins, which had been so promising, ceased to exist. "Now we're back to square one," says Khouri. He is among a handful of Johns Hopkins Medicine leaders, including Paul Lietman, who are determined to restore the Johns Hopkins/AUB relationship. "This has the potential to build a much-needed bridge between the United States and a very volatile part of the world," Lietman says. Last spring, the two institutions signed an agreement to advance a scientific and training exchange. In August, Myron Weisfeldt, chair of the Department of Medicine at Hopkins, and half a dozen Hopkins medical faculty evaluated the medical program at AUB and developed a plan for the future of the exchange. On the agenda: sending up to six Hopkins medical faculty a year to the AUB medical center, to spend a month each teaching and doing research. In particular, Hopkins researchers will help in establishing centers of excellence in such areas as neuroscience, genetics, and oncology. Fellows from AUB will also train and conduct research at Hopkins.
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Jeff Smith conducts an auxilliary midwife class in
Jalalabad Photo by JHPIEGO |
Smith, an ob-gyn with appointments at the schools of
Medicine and Public
Health, is based in Kabul, where he is
the country director for
JHPIEGO, a Johns Hopkins affiliate
that improves health care internationally for women and
newborns. Despite Afghanistan's emergence from the
repressive rule of the Taliban, Smith says, it is still a
dangerous country, especially for women giving birth. An
Afghan woman faces a one-in-six lifetime risk of dying from
a complication of pregnancy. (In the United States, the
risk is one in 4,000.) "If you imagine an Afghan classroom
with six little girls, one of them will ultimately die as a
result of complications of pregnancy," says Smith. "You'd
have to fill the stadium at Hopkins with girls in order to
have one of them run that risk."Unfortunately, women in Afghanistan are not alone. Each year, more than 500,000 women die in childbirth worldwide, most often from infection and postpartum hemorrhaging. Both are easily managed by skilled providers — doctors, nurses, and midwives. Only 60 percent of women in the world use a skilled provider; in developing countries, that number can be significantly lower. JHPIEGO's mission is to turn those statistics around.
Last summer, the organization received a five-year, $75
million USAID award to lead ACCESS, a program to work with
health providers, policy makers, and country health
ministries to scale up existing JHPIEGO programs. ACCESS
follows up on the Maternal and Neonatal Health Program
(MNH), which since 1998 has been developing best practices,
training experts, and advocating for women to have better
access to health care. "We have great strategies," says
Leslie Mancuso, JHPIEGO's CEO. "We've identified ways to
save women's lives. We've identified ways to save newborns'
lives. But we need to make sure it becomes a national
program" in the countries where JHPIEGO works. JHPIEGO'S
ACCESS partners are Save the Children, the American College
of Nurse-Midwives, the Futures Group, the Academy for
Educational Development, and Interchurch Medical
Assistance. |
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Three generations of women in Herat Photo by JHPIEGO |
One of the most important parts of their mission is to
increase the number of skilled attendants. Afghanistan, for
example, has only 400 trained midwives. "Women can only be
seen by a female health care provider," says Smith.
"Husbands would rather allow their wives to die than be
attended by a male physician." Over the next two years,
JHPIEGO training programs will triple the number of
midwives and, more importantly, "facilitate a fundamental
shift in the educational process so that all future
generations of midwives are better trained," Smith
says.
Another key element is making sure information is relevant
and applicable to a low-resource country. In many remote
communities, a "health center" can be one room, often
without electricity or running water, says Patricia Gomez,
an ACCESS clinical specialist. JHPIEGO teaches health care
providers simple solutions,like using chlorine to prevent
infection or having community members bring water to the
center every day. "We're not going to be able to give each
country, each provider, each facility all the money they'll
ever need," says Gomez. "But to be able to use the very
simple things that we can find in a country to do infection
prevention — if it's chlorine and water in a bucket,
that's what we do." |
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Mother and child in Batikot, a village in
Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan Photo by JHPIEGO |
ACCESS medical director Harshad Sanghvi cites JHPIEGO's
approach to cervical cancer as another simple solution to a
major problem. A Pap smear, Sanghvi explains, isn't
feasible where "women have to walk 50, 60, 70 miles to come
to a clinic," because you can't expect them to return for
test results. So JHPIEGO developed the "single visit
approach" to diagnosis and treatment. "The beauty of this
test is that a nurse in remote parts of Africa or Asia can
do this. The tools required are very simple-a speculum,
ordinary kitchen vinegar, a pair of good eyes, and a
reasonable amount of light," says Sanghvi. If pre-canerous
lesions are found, the nurse can remove them during the
same visit.The single visit — which, through a Gates Foundation grant, was used in pilot programs in Thailand, Malawi, Ghana, and Peru — proved to be in fact better than a Pap smear, Sanghvi adds. "Most of our work is taking things that have worked really well in the United States or Europe and adapting them to the needs of the developing world," he says. "We've been really successful in developing innovative solutions for those kinds of situations." — Catherine Pierre
A wave, a crash, and a mass of debris
"We were on the way to get some tea in the main dining room
when the tidal wave struck. We were in the large lobby,
which is open on the ocean side, when at 10 a.m. a wall of
water loomed up about a hundred yards away. (Later news
would tell us it was about 30 feet high.) Fortunately, we
were close to the main stairwell, and the three of us ran
like hell up the stairs as we heard a thunderous crashing
noise below us. When we looked out at the third-floor open
air lounge, we saw below us a mass of debris."
A new front door will make the Homewood campus more
inviting
There's a new quad in town. On paper, that is.
In November, the university's Buildings and Grounds
Committee approved the schematic design for a new "South
Quad" on the Homewood campus. It will be built on a current
visitor/staff parking lot and what was once known as
Garland Field. The new quad will be anchored by a
26,000-square-foot Visitors' Center and will give the
campus a more inviting entry point.
Visitors will be directed to enter campus off Wyman Park
Drive and park in a new underground parking facility, a
three-level structure beneath Garland Field that will
accommodate 600 cars. From there they'll proceed to the
Visitors' Center, which will house the Admissions Office
(currently located in Garland Hall); an alumni board room;
and an area featuring information on Hopkins history,
current research, and the Homewood undergraduate
experience. Planners expect the center to have a
traditional design, consistent with the campus's Georgian
character. The quad will be lined with trees and feature a
long expanse of "recreational turf."
Larry Kilduff, executive director of
facilities
management,
describes the planned quad project as "truly
transformational" for the Homewood campus. "What makes this
project especially significant is its position on the
campus and the fact that it is creating a new south
entrance," Kilduff says. In addition to the Visitors'
Center, the South Quad will be formed by Garland and Clark
halls, a new computational sciences facility, and three
future buildings that were called for in the university's
master plan drafted in 2000.
Construction is set to begin in June, with completion of
the Visitors' Center, parking lot, and computational
sciences building set for late 2007. Excavation of Garland
Field will occupy the first few months of construction, as
workers clear the way for the underground parking
facility.
Where will all that soil go? Nelson has been contacting
parks and rec centers around the area to see if any have
plans for a new football or soccer field. He says
confidently, "We'll find a good home for our dirt."
— SD
Lampreys offer clues to restoring mobility in those with
spinal cord injuries
The last sentence of Encyclopedia Britannica's entry
on the lamprey states, "They are . . . of no great positive
value to man." If Ralph Etienne-Cummings' research bears
out, that assertion will need to be revised.
A Whiting School
associate professor of
electrical and
computer engineering, Etienne-Cummings wants to develop
an
electronic implant that would restore mobility to people
with paralyzing spinal injuries. Scientists believe that
people can walk because in their lower backs are bundles of
neurons called central pattern generators. These neurons
act as a sort of oscillator, orchestrating the repetitive,
sequenced muscle movements that constitute walking. When a
spinal injury results in paralysis, scientists suspect that
the pattern generator itself has not been damaged, but its
connection to the brain has been severed. In theory, if the
proper impulses could be sent to the lower spine by some
other means, a paraplegic could walk again. |
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Etienne-Cummings (far left) works with doctoral students
Francesco Tenore and Jacob Vogelstein on his spinal cord
microchip project. Photo by Will Kirk |
Enter the lamprey. Often called lamprey eels though they
are merely eel-like, lampreys are fish, parasitic in most
cases, found in both fresh and salt water. They are one of
the most primitive of vertebrates, but their spinal cords
have properties that scientists can use to model higher
vertebrates, even humans. Furthermore, lamprey cords can be
removed from the fish and kept alive and functioning in a
laboratory solution, which makes them ideal for study.Etienne-Cummings and Avis H. Cohen, a professor of biology at the University of Maryland, have been studying how lamprey cords transmit the nerve impulses that make the fish swim. Their goal is for Etienne-Cummings to replicate, and modify in a predictable way, the patterns of those impulses on a silicon microchip. The chip will form the heart of a device that the researchers will then implant in a lamprey, to see if they can artificially stimulate it to swim. The ultimate goal is to create an implant for people with lower-body paralysis, to stand in for the brain to stimulate, in a very simple way, that person's pattern generator and restore function to the legs. The microchip would do what the person's brain no longer can: in effect, tell the legs to get moving. Etienne-Cummings is confident that he and Cohen can create a chip to stimulate a lamprey. But progress toward a human implant is not assured. He notes, for example, that while scientists know that central pattern generators exist in lampreys, mice, and cats, there has been debate as to whether they exist in humans. The matter remains controversial, but recent experiments strongly indicate that they do, though precise location of the neural circuits and structures remains elusive. "It is not a slam dunk, by any means," he says. "Just because we can do it in lampreys does not imply that we can do it in humans. In humans it's a much more complicated process. A human is limbed — there are arms and legs, with different muscles that [compared to lampreys] have completely different temporal dynamics in terms of how you activate the muscles." If the scientists succeed in developing technology that works in lampreys, they will progress to tests on mice. Etienne-Cummings estimates that at least 10 years of work lie ahead before researchers might have a device that can be tested on people. — DK
Romance Languages to merge with German
Spring is the season for growth and change, so it seems
appropriate that Stephen G. Nichols is excited to talk
about some of the changes ahead for the Krieger School's
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, which
he
chairs.
The biggest change is that Romance Languages and
Literatures will merge with the
Department of
German. "This
is a dynamic initiative that allows the department to have
a critical mass it never had before," says Nichols, who
will chair the new Department of German and Romance
Languages. "It allows us to undertake the kind of programs
we've never been able to offer and to create the momentum
to attract top people. My goal is to make the German
Department as strong as it's ever been." |
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Humanities departments at Hopkins tend to be small. When
faculty leave or retire, it can be difficult to replace
them or to attract top graduate students, Nichols says.
There was a concern this could happen with the German
Department, which recently saw the departures of a number
of professors and currently has only three tenured faculty.
The merger will become effective on July 1.Nichols has a proven track record when it comes to such academic mergers. He joined the Hopkins faculty in 1992 as the James M. Beall Professor of French and Humanities, and in 1995 became chair of the French Department. In 1999, when it merged with the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies to become the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Nichols was named chair. Since then, the French and Italian sections have hired high-profile faculty members, and the department has added programs in Spain, Italy, and France. "We are all much stronger now than we were then," Nichols says. Nichols' skill at strengthening academic departments is also evidenced in his recent recruitment of a top scholar to the department from Switzer-land. The Swiss government's mandatory-retirement policy would have forced Michel Jeanneret, a 16th-century French Renaissance specialist, to leave his job next year as head of the Modern French Department at the University of Geneva. Instead, starting this fall, the 64-year-old Jeanneret, who has agreed to a three-year part-time contract, will spend one semester each year teaching in Baltimore and the other in Europe, where he will supervise his graduate students in Geneva and conduct research in Paris. "He was the spark plug of the University of Geneva's French Department, and they were pushing him out," Nichols told The Chronicle of Higher Education in its December 3, 2004, issue. The Swiss government is "totally out of sync with the current life expectancies." — MB
Cancer claims two from the Krieger School
The Department of
Romance Languages and Literatures and the
Department of German mourn the
deaths of two long-time faculty members. |
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| Bianca Theisen |
Bianca Theisen, a professor of German and a Johns Hopkins
faculty member since 1992, died November 16 of cancer. She
was 44. A highly regarded literary theorist, Theisen
specialized in German Romanticism and media studies. She
distinguished herself as a scholar with "the lucidity and
the elegance in her writing as well as in her teaching
style," mRudiger Campe, chair of the German Department in
the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, told The
Gazette. "She has been a magnificent teacher." |
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Gérard Defaux Photo by Will Kirk |
Gérard Defaux, professor of Romance languages and
literatures and former chair of the Department of French,
died in Paris on December 31. Defaux, who was 67, had been
diagnosed with a brain tumor less than a year earlier. A
member of the Hopkins faculty since 1981, Defaux
specialized in Renaissance literature. "Quintessentially
French, though proud of his American citizenship,
Gérard
embodied the best in each of the two educational systems he
served," says Stephen G. Nichols, chairman of the
Department of Romance Languages and Literatures. "He was a
passionate teacher who inspired generations of
undergraduate and graduate students alike." A one-day
colloquium in Defaux's honor will take place on March 4 at
Homewood. — MB
SAIS's "service to the nation, service to humankind"
"SAIS is a farm club for the State Department. SAIS has
done so much to provide the human intellectual
infrastructure of national global security in the 21st
century. We rely on America's prowess in higher education
to provide us with men and women deeply knowledgeable about
the world, capable of mature judgment, dedicated to truth
and dedicated to service, service to the nation, service to
humankind. [I'd like to congratulate] SAIS on reaching your
60th year of outstanding achievements, outstanding service
to the world. And you need to keep doing it, for six
decades more, and six decades more beyond that. We need
you, the nation needs you . . . and above all, the world
needs you." |
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The Johns Hopkins Magazine |
901 S. Bond St. | Suite 540 |
Baltimore, MD 21231Phone 443-287-9900 | Fax 443-287-9898 | E-mail jhmagazine@jhu.edu |
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The funding needed to help AUB "become once again the
undisputed regional leader" in health care delivery will be
substantial, according to Lietman. In late fall, in
response to a letter sent by Medicine Dean Edward Miller,
an official from the U.S. State Department met with Miller,
Weisfeldt, Khouri, Lietman, and Steve Thompson, CEO of
Johns Hopkins International, to discuss government support
for the project. The meeting went well, according to
Weisfeldt, and he is optimistic about the future of the
exchange. "In Soviet Union/American history, the bonds in
medicine and biomedical research were part of what tore
down the wall," Weisfeldt says. He is hoping the
Hopkins/AUB collaboration could lead to similar progress in
the Middle East: "Health care, medical education, care of
patients — these things transcend all religions,
societies, and cultures." — Sue De Pasquale
The 74,000-square-foot computational sciences building will
sit opposite Clark Hall and primarily contain research
space. "This is very much an interdisciplinary building,"
says Travers Nelson, program manager in facilities
management. He expects the building to be useful for
collaborative research between faculty from the School of
Medicine and the schools of Arts and Sciences and
Engineering. Two tenants — the robotics research
group from Engineering and a computational life sciences
group — have already been identified.