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AROUND THE QUADS

Campus News

DEAN’S DAY: More than 600 alumni and parents returned to campus and the classroom on March 31 for Dean’s Day, enjoying their pick of lectures from some of Columbia’s finest faculty as well as administrators from career education and student services. The day began with an address from Dean Austin Quigley, who spoke of Columbia’s continued growth in applications, which produced a record-low acceptance rate of 8.9 percent for places in the Class of 2011. Quigley observed that this group was as diverse as ever, representing 49 states and more than 50 countries, and that these students had listed some 85 prospective future majors on their applications. “I found that number interesting,” he noted wryly, “because we only offer 73. We’ll have to get on that!”

CLASS DAY: Actor Matthew Fox ’89 will be this year’s speaker at Class Day, which will take place on May 15, the day before Commencement. Fox, who plays Dr. Jack Shephard on ABC’s Lost and formerly played Charlie Salinger on Fox’s Party of Five, follows Sen. John McCain P’08 (R-Ariz.), New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft ’63, playwright Tony Kushner ’78 and political correspondent and TV host George Stephanopoulos ’82 in delivering the Class Day keynote address. Speakers, who are chosen by a selection committee of seniors, must be affiliated with the College. Fox majored in economics, was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and played varsity football — as a senior, he was a member of the team that broke the famous 44-game losing streak.

BUILDING: Site preparation has begun on the southwest corner of Broadway and 120th Street, the first step in the construction of what will be a new interdisciplinary science building. The 188,000-square foot tower will rise between Pupin on 120th Street and Chandler on Broadway, above the Dodge Physical Fitness Center. It is planned to house two floors of science library and classroom space and seven floors of laboratory space; construction is scheduled to begin in February 2008, with move-in planned for September 2010. For updates on this and other construction projects, go to the Columbia Neighbors site and click on “construction projects.”

ADMISSIONS: The College sent acceptance letters to 1,618 of its record 18,081 applicants for places in the Class of 2011, an 8.9 percent admit rate, the lowest in the Ivy League and a record low for the College, continuing a trend that has lasted for more than a decade. Harvard was second with an admit rate of 9 percent, with Princeton and Yale at 9.5 percent, Brown at 13 percent and Dartmouth and Penn at 15 percent. SEAS, which enjoyed a 21 percent increase in applications, had an admit rate of 18 percent, making Columbia’s overall undergraduate admit rate 10.4 percent.

SUSPENSION: Executive Director of Undergraduate Financial Aid for the College and SEAS David Charlow ’85 has been placed on paid administrative leave pending a full review of his former financial interest in the for-profit student lender Student Loan Xpress. When the University learned that Charlow had a financial interest in this company, the University promptly began an investigation and notified the New York State Attorney General’s office.

The disclosure that a College and SEAS financial aid officer had a financial stake in the loan company came several days after five universities — Columbia was not one of them — agreed in a settlement with Cuomo to pay back $3.2 million to students to resolve an investigation of arrangements in which the institutions were paid by lenders based on student loan volume.

Shortly after the news of the investigations became public, Columbia sent a letter to students and parents as well as to alumni leaders informing them of the University’s cooperation in the Cuomo investigation of this matter. “We take this matter extremely seriously since the integrity of the process by which we recommend lenders to students is of utmost importance to us,” said the letter, which was signed by Deans Austin Quigley of the College and Zvi Galil of SEAS. “The case here appears to involve a single official who may have violated our policies, and we believe that this has had no adverse financial consequences for students and their families.”

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