AROUND THE QUADS
Campus Bulletins

Around the Quads

• Rushdie's Midnight's Children coming to the Apollo • General Science Course Being Created for Core • Bizup Developing New Writing Program • Bollinger Adds Two Key Administrators • Campus Bulletins • Alumni News • Transitions • In Lumine Tuo • In Memoriam • Elbaum, Carroll Receive CCYA Achievement Awards • Athletics' Bill Steinman Retires (Sort of)

HAMILTON MEDAL: As this issue went to press, preparations were nearing completion for the annual Alexander Hamilton Medal Dinner, scheduled for November 14 in Low Library Rotunda. This year, the Columbia College Alumni Association continues its tradition of celebrating University presidents when it honors George Rupp with the Alexander Hamilton Medal for distinguished service and accomplishment. CCAA presents the medal to an alumnus or faculty member for distinguished service and accomplishment in any field of endeavor.

Rupp, now president of the International Rescue Committee, served as Columbia’s 18th president from 1993 until being succeeded by Lee C. Bollinger in June. He will be the fourth president to be honored with the medal upon leaving office, joining Nicholas Murray Butler (Class of 1882), who served from 1902–45 and was honored with the first Hamilton Medal in 1947; Andrew W. Cordier (1968–70) in 1970; and Michael I. Sovern ’53 (1980–93) in 1993. Other presidents who were honored — two while still in office — were Grayson Kirk (1953–68) in 1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower (1948–53) in 1963 and William J. McGill (1970–80) in 1979. In addition, acting president Frank D. Fackenthal (Class of 1906), who served from 1945–48, was honored in 1948.

For more information about the Alexander Hamilton Medal Dinner, please contact Shelley Grunfeld in the Alumni Office at (212) 870-2743 or rg329@columbia.edu.


TRUSTEE: Dr. Harold E. Varmus ’66 P&S, a Nobel laureate and former director of the National Institutes of Health, has been elected a University trustee.

Varmus has served as the president and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center since January 2000. He shared the 1989 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with J. Michael Bishop for their work at UC San Francisco on the genetic basis of cancer. Varmus spent 23 years as a faculty member at UCSF.

In 1993, Varmus was named by President Bill Clinton to serve as the director of NIH, a position he held until the end of 1999. While at NIH, Varmus initiated many changes in the conduct of intramural and extramural research programs, recruited new leaders, planned three major NIH buildings and helped increase NIH’s budget from less than $11 billion to nearly $18 billion.

Varmus has been an adviser to the federal government, pharmaceutical and biotechnology firms and many academic institutions. Recently, he served on the World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, advisory committees on electronic publishing and a National Research Council panel on genetically modified organisms. He co-authored Genes and the Biology of Cancer (Scientific American Library, 1992), an introduction to the genetic basis of cancer for a general audience. He also co-edited five books and has authored or co-authored nearly 350 journal articles.

Varmus earned his bachelor’s from Amherst in 1961 and his master’s from Harvard in 1962. After graduating from P&S, he served on the medical house staff at Presbyterian Hospital from 1966–68. The University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1990.


WE'RE NO. 10?: Columbia tied for 10th place in the 2002 rankings of national universities published in the September 23 issue of U.S. News & World Report, down one notch from a year ago. Princeton finished first for the second consecutive year, followed by Harvard and Yale tied for second, Cal Tech, Duke, MIT, Stanford and Penn tied for fourth, Dartmouth was ninth and Columbia and Northwestern tied for 10th.

Rankings are based on peer assessment (25 percent), graduation and retention rates (20), faculty resources (20), student selectivity (15), financial resources (10), alumni giving (5) and difference between actual and predicted graduation rate (5). Columbia’s highest ranking was seventh in selectivity, while its lowest were in financial resources (20th) and alumni giving (18th).

In an article in Spectator, Sheila Dvorak ’03 described the rankings as “arbitrary” and added, “Columbia has a lot of other stuff [that cannot be measured in the rankings]. Its position in New York City has to count for a lot. We’re in the best city in the country.”

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