Results tagged “universityofchicago”

If you thought Obama's receiving this year's Nobel Peace Prize was jumping the gun, get ready for more looking ahead. The University of Chicago is already taking the first steps to try to secure the eventual Obama Presidential Library. Bloomberg reports that U of C officials have already asked the White House about plans but have been rebuffed with the reasoning being, "too soon." University of Chicago president Robert J. Zimmer told Bloomberg, “We are trying to understand the situation as best we can now. Until the president really wants to talk about it, has some kind of direction that he’s thinking about, we really feel more specific questions are premature.” Meanwhile, U of C spokesman Steven Kloehn said, “I know of no contacts on that topic."

A two-acre plot of land that plays host to carrots, beets, and turnips during the warmer months is at risk of being turned into a construction site because its original owner, The University of Chicago, wants it back. The university plans to turn the garden into a staging area for their new Chicago Theological Seminary building on the southeast edge of campus, with construction due to start in the spring.

                     

We were perusing some pretty pictures on Flickr when we stumbled across this collection by Quinn Dombrowski. The photos are of some of the creative graffiti that's been posted at the Joseph Regenstein Library on the campus of the University of Chicago. We talked with Dombroski who informed us of plans for a book based on the intellectual scribblings.

Professor Malcolm J. Casadaban, a 60-year-old genetics researcher at the University of Chicago, died on Sept. 13 at the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Bernard Mitchell Hospital. Casadaban was studying the genetics of the plague bacteria and officials think his infection may stem from his research. The U of C Medical Center said in a statement that Casadaban’s autopsy showed “no obvious cause of death” except for the presence of a weakened strain of the plague bacteria Yersinia pestis in his blood. Although there doesn’t appear to be a public health threat related to his death, U of C has taken precautions by notifying Casadaban’s close contacts and working closely with the city and state health departments and the CDC to investigate his death.

              

This summer, the University of Chicago approved the renovations of the reading rooms in Harper Memorial Library and Stuart Hall. John Boyer, Dean of the College, said, “Our goal is to restore this beautiful space to its deserved splendor. There will be new lighting, new furniture, new carpet, better technology—everything needed to make the space as useable, contemporary and welcoming as possible, while ensuring the history remains intact.” The renovated reading rooms, closed in June, will reopen in September. Chicagoist reader/Flickr pool contributor Avi Schwab got a peek earlier this summer at the beginning of the renovations and shared his gorgeous shots with us.

Former University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein was tapped back in January of this year by past U of C colleague President Obama to join the growing rank of czars and head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, but now the Senate confirmation process has been put on hold by Republican Senator John Cornyn.

• Do not be alarmed when the loud F-16s go screaming overhead tonight at 1 a.m.; there's a good reason for it.
• Looks like there will be a delay in the guilty plea of former Blago cohort Len Monk who was scheduled to do so tomorrow.
• A plant in Carol Stream was evacuated earlier today because of a chemical leak.

• The state budget doomsday is nigh: Gov. Quinn - in a speech to the General Assembly today - promised to veto the "half-baked" budget proposal that's most likely going to be sent to him before tonight's midnight deadline.
• A judge sentenced a corrupt former cop to 11 years in prison and exclaimed, “In this city, it seems to me we are bombarded by stories and cases and prosecutions of police misconduct."
• Spider-Man, Spider-Man, stealing whatever a Spidey can.

A new study by the University of Chicago has revealed a disturbingly high rate of turnover among Chicago Public Schools teachers. According to the study, within five years, the CPS loses half of its teachers and almost two-thirds of new teachers. The study, conducted by the U. of C.'s Consortium on Chicago School Research, also showed that turnover was even heavier at poorer, predominantly African-American schools where half the teachers left within three years. The study focused on 35,000 public school teachers in 538 elementary schools and 118 high schools over the course of five school years, from fall 2002 until spring 2007. For more information on the study, check out stories by the Sun-Times, the Tribune, and, of course, the entire study itself.

A University of Chicago student created a controversial organization dedicated to the advancement of men, encouraging undergraduate male students to sharpen their understanding of business and politics. "Men in Power" was inspired by a satirical column in the school's newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, in March. The article was obviously a parody, but it was taken seriously enough to cause a controversy over whether it could be perceived as misogynistic or logical.

• More developments in the case against Marni Yang.
• The Tribune profiles Settler's Pond, an exotic animal shelter that's facing rough times in the current economy.
• Controversy is swirling at the University of Chicago over a column in the school's paper that was retracted.

As the official Kestnbaum Writer-in-Residence at the University of Chicago, Stuart Dybek is no stranger to the South Side. A Little Village and Pilsen native, Dybek’s works often chronicle the ethnic shifts that occurred in these neighborhoods over the past fifty years, including the masterful coming-of-age tale I Sailed With Magellan.

• There are now nine suspected cases of Swine Flu in the Chicagoland area: 5 in Chicago, 2 in Kane County, and 1 in DuPage and Lake Counties.
• Former Alderman Tyrone Kenner, who was once found guilty of accepting bribes, passed away on Monday from complications due to diabetes; Kenner was 76.
• ComEd named Anne Pramaggiore its first ever female president and COO today.

• In puppy news, dogs seized in a puppy mill raid on the south side have all been adopted.
• The University in Chicago Medical Center is in trouble after an audit found the hospital violated federal law when an emergency room patient died. Perhaps this has a little something to do with why a highly criticized plan to move the ER has been temporarily tabled.
• A principal in Wisconsin has had his school fight song changed because it contained the word "fellow," which he felt was sexist.

It is a glorious time of year to be a college sports fan. You've got your brackets picked, you've of course entered our Chicagoist Tournament Challenge, and you'll be giving the economy the middle finger as you watch non-stop hoops at work for the next two days. But what about the post-tourney let down? After a national champion has been crowned on April 6, where can you turn to fill the void of collegiate competition? Well, how about the Association for Computing Machinery's International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC)? It may not be a sport, per say, but the competition is fierce and the stakes are high. Hear us out.

Not content to simply protest figs, the University of Chicago is taking the awesome one step further by offering a class in the upcoming quarter on pirates. The class, Anthro 21254. Intensive Study of a Culture: Pirates is taught by assistant anthropology professor Shannon Lee Dawdy and is - obviously - the most popular class in terms of enrollment. In order to accommodate the number of requests, Dawdy increased the class's size from 90 to 150 students.

Yesterday we brought you pictures of the Westboro Baptist Church protest at the University of Chicago and the University community's awesome counter-protest. Now comes some great video of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity holding a dance party as the Westboro protesters walk by their house. [via Videogum]

              

The infamous Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas hit up the Hyde Park campus of the University of Chicago yesterday, one of three protests the church had planned at the University. According to a report last month by Chi Town Daily News:

The air is beginning to clear again after 150 University of Chicago students were evacuated from their dormitory after high levels of carbon monoxide, about 400 parts per million, were detected in the basement earlier this afternoon.

Movies and music go together like David and Maddie, and there's a lot of both going on in Chicago at the moment:

• Legendary Chicago architect John Holabird passed away yesterday at the age of 88.
• Our pal Justin Kaufmann over at WBEZ's blog has a copy of Cook County Clerk David Orr's alleged open letter to Sen. Burris calling for Burris to resign.
• Like it or not, President Obama signed off on the $787 billion stimulus package today.

Looks like the University of Chicago is going to join the ranks of Brown University, University of Pennsylvania, Clark University and 27 other institutes of higher learning and will begin allowing coed dorm rooms starting next month. The U of C says the student-requested policy change "isn't aimed at romantic couples" but rather to allow BFFs of the opposite sex to share housing. Those in a relationship won't be forbidden to request to partner up in the dorm, however, nor do they need parental permission -- sure to thrill the moms and dads out there writing the big checks each semester. And don't even think about breaking up around midterms.

Movies! Aside from preparing for and then recovering from your T-Day food coma, what else ya gonna do?

The current financial crisis has reached a point to where even local colleges are beginning to feel the crunch. As more students are in need of financial assistance, the schools are dealing with shrinking endowments. With these endowments, which fund up to a quarter of the schools costs, bringing in smaller returns, the schools are having to rework budgets.

"Everyone's feeling pressure," says Will McLean, Northwestern's chief investment officer. The university's $7.2-billion endowment, which funds almost 20% of school operations, produced returns of 3% during the 12 months ended in August, compared with 22% in the year-earlier period.

Continue reading "Financial Slowdown Hits Area Universities"

We tend to be somewhat skeptical of university rankings just because there are so many out there, but if there's one thing we notice, it's that the University of Chicago seems to rank high in pretty much all of them. And it's no different with the rankings released by QS (Quacquarelli Symonds). The home to a bevy of Nobel Prize winners, including the recently awarded Yoichiro Nambu, has been ranked as the eighth best university IN THE WORLD! (emphasis ours). Suck on that, MIT.

We'd like to congratulate University of Chicago professor Yoichiro Nambu, 87, who was awarded half of the Nobel Prize for Physics today "for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics." According to the Nobel Foundation:

The fact that our world does not behave perfectly symmetrically is due to deviations from symmetry at the microscopic level.

Continue reading "Univ. of Chicago Professor Shares Nobel Prize in Physics"

A program at the Art Institute uses art to help nursing students strengthen their observational and visual perception skills. "The Discerning Eye: Visual Observation Skills from the Art Museum to Patient Diagnosis" is a 90-minute presentation meant to be incorporated into the patient-analysis section of the nurse residency program at the University of Chicago. The program aims to increase students’ awareness and ability to filter visual stimuli, while helping to challenge the perception that art has no tangible value in the real world.

"But Mr. Daley and the alderfolk look like a combination of Milton Friedman and Warren Buffett, compared with the fiscal circus in Springfield." — Greg Hinz

Princeton Review released its college rankings yesterday, and some Illinois schools have a lot to be happy about. Others....not so much. The results are from student surveys, so you have no one to blame but the kids at your alma mater.

Chicago Police Officer Richard Francis, tragically killed in the line of duty early Wednesday morning, is remembered. [Trib, S-T]