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AROUND THE QUADS

Campus News

LEHECKA INTERN: A group of alumni has established the Roger Lehecka Summer Internship to enable one or more College students who could not otherwise afford it to take an unpaid internship during the summer following his or her junior year. The fund already has raised $100,000 in honor of Roger Lehecka ’67, a former dean of students.

The first Lehecka Fellow was M. Alper Bahadir ’07. Bahadir is a Global Scholar from Turkey and has a 3.74 GPA, majoring in economics. He is a graduate of Inanc Turkes Ozel Lisesi, a school for gifted and financially disadvantaged children.

Bahadir was a full-time intern for 13 weeks with the International Labor Organization at the United Nations in Geneva under the supervision of Dr. Duncan Campbell, director of the International Policy group, working on research related to Turkish labor markets, globalization and local development. This year, he is studying at the London School of Economics.

CLASS OF 1954 INTERN: In honor of its 50th reunion, the Class of 1954 endowed a summer internship fund for one or more rising juniors or seniors with a preference for an internship in government or not-for-profit industries.

The first Class of 1954 Summer Intern was Mohammad Fahad Ali ’06 from Jamaica, Queens. He has a 3.55 GPA with majors in biology and neuroscience. Ali interned with the Bangladesh Cancer Foundation under the supervision of Dr. M.H. Talukdar at the National Institute of Cancer Research in Bangladesh. He worked on the Cancer Registry Project, a pilot program undertaken to organize a population-based cancer registry in the Gazipur district outside the capital of Dhaka. He plans to pursue a career in medicine and public health.

DAVIS HONORED: Jewelnel Davis, University chaplain and associate provost, was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Carleton College on June 11. Davis, who served as Carleton’s chaplain, was recognized for serving the college with “ethical distinction, intellectual integrity and uncommon verve,” according to her citation. Davis is credited at Carleton with revitalizing the chaplain’s office. In her role as assistant to the president for human relations, she managed and coordinated educational and training programs on sexual harassment. Davis also was involved in developing campus-wide policies on discrimination and academic freedom.

CENTER FOR NEW MEDIA: Last spring, the Center for New Media Teaching & Learning partnered with the Black Rock Forest Consortium to modernize its meteorological network, allowing Columbia students to examine real-time meteorological data online. In this project, funded by the National Science Foundation, CCNMTL worked with the consortium to modernize wireless access to three of the forest’s data-collection stations to allow remote access to real-time meteorological and stream data. This data is collected hourly throughout the forest, which is located in the Hudson Highlands on the west bank of the Hudson River.

Using a Web-based data viewing system, students in Professor Kevin Griffin’s “Environmental Systems” course manipulated the data to create time series graphs measuring the relationship between rainfall and stream flow in watershed-based environments. “The students came up with interesting questions to explore and definitely got a true scientific experience using the lab,” says Griffin.

URBAN STUDY: Columbia and Barnard students participating in a new program sponsored by the Center for Urban Research and Policy (CURP) recently completed a study of the development challenges facing New York and Mexico City.

The program is designed to introduce undergraduates to the importance and rigor of social science research. In this case, students were asked to develop individual research projects that take social and environmental approaches to understanding urban sustainability. The yearlong study combined classroom learning with significant fieldwork. Students spent the year conducting their field research in New York City as well as traveling to Mexico City in March to observe and document its inner-city conditions.

Using small neighborhoods as units of analysis, the students observed that corruption and the misallocation of natural resources have prevented urban strategists in both cities from reaching their development goals. Developments such as one led by Mexican businessman Carlos Slim in Mexico City’s ancient city center Zócalo, and the redevelopment of Times Square in New York, they found, are aimed at attracting tourist revenue, rather than combating fundamental problems such as corruption and uneven development. The projects were capped by workshops led by Sudhir Venkatesh, CURP director and associate professor of sociology and African-American Studies, as well as a series of presentations from experts in the field.

SHABAZZ CENTER: The Shabazz family, in collaboration with Columbia Digital Knowledge Ventures, has launched the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, the largest exhibition in the world on Malcolm X. The multimedia presentations invite citizens and scholars to experience and learn about the lives and work of Malcolm X and his wife. The memorial is located in Harlem’s historic Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which he co-founded, held some of their most important public events and where he was assassinated on February 21, 1965.

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