Defining the future

As the new vice president and secretary of the University, Rosemary Magee ’82G has to attend to plenty of logistics, from “meetings to memos to minutes,” as she puts it.

But through her more than two decades at Emory, she has learned to welcome diversions –those tangents of thought, spontaneous conversations, or unexpected detours that often lead to insights and adventures.

“Life is most satisfying when lived in the diversions, which for an interval may turn into the main event,” says Magee. “I’m a big believer in diversions as a positive part of life.”

Magee, formerly senior associate dean for Emory College, began working in the college after completing her PhD in literature and religion at the Graduate Institute for Liberal Arts. She lives in Decatur with husband, Ron Grapevine, an electrical engineer; they have a grown daughter, Rebecca, and a teen-age son, Sean.

“Most people attend college for four years. After that, they are able to move on to the next stage of their lives,” said Magee, in a recent essay she wrote for the faculty and staff newspaper. “I’m proud to admit that I’ve spent the last two decades of my life in college. . . . I’ve not yet had a day when I felt as if I’d learned everything I wanted to know.”

College Dean Bobby Paul says Magee “has been the mainstay of the college office under five deans. She is, quite literally, irreplaceable. I can only express relief that she will be just shouting distance away across the Quad.”

In her new position, Magee will work closely with the Board of Trustees, the President’s Cabinet, and other groups involved in the governance of the University. She is heavily involved in the ongoing strategic planning process, and sits on the Strategic Planning Steering Committee, helping to craft a vision for Emory’s future.

Magee says she accepted the promotion, which makes her one of the highest-ranking female administrators on campus and the only woman in the President’s Cabinet, after President James W. Wagner, Trustee Ben Johnson ’65C, and others helped her to see “the opportunity for creativity in the position.”

“I was anxious to see how it would evolve at this moment in Emory’s history with this group of people assembled to lead it, which would include me,” says Magee. “Social philosopher Richard Rorty says ‘the future is our definition of it.’ And we are at a defining moment.”

Magee formally took over the position on February 1 from Gary Hauk ’91PhD, who served as secretary of the University for more than a decade under presidents James T. Laney, William M. Chace, and Wagner, and is now vice president and deputy to the president.

“Rosemary knows many of our trustees and has worked with them over the years on the Arts Center project, in fundraising, and on other initiatives,” says Hauk. “She’s widely respected . . . and she knows the way the University works and appreciates its distinctive culture. Besides which, she’s just very smart and kind, which is always a powerfully effective combination of qualities.”

As executive director of the Arts Project, Magee has had prior experience with bringing a complex vision to life. She was instrumental in the fundraising, conceptualization, and creation of the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, which opened in the fall of 2002.

“In the way of all important and creative processes, there are moments when there are lots of different, competing energies, and then there are moments of clarity,” says Magee, who is also a published short-story author. “You start off with a piece of land, an idea, a blank page, a vision. It’s a struggle some days and a dance other days, but the exciting thing is the unfolding.”

The important thing in work as in life, she says, is knowing which path–or diversion–to follow.

“The University is really a unique and special place in the world, and our responsibility is to maintain that,” Magee says. “We are not a business, not a think tank, not a government agency, not a foundation, not a city council, not a church, and not a hospital–even though we include a hospital, that is not all of who we are. We are, instead, a preserver and creator of knowledge, which is an ancient and honorable role.”–M.J.L.

An Organic Life

On this early Friday morning a week or so before Valentine’s Day, a lively discussion of Edgar Allan Poe’s Masque of the Red Death is taking place in a basement classroom in Callaway Center.

In this short story written in 1842, Poe describes a country in which a virulent plague is devastating the population. Prince Prospero isolates himself and a thousand friends within a walled, castle-like Abbey. Several months into their seclusion, he decides to hold a masked ball in the seven rooms of his imperial suite.

The color scheme–no doubt symbolic–progresses from blue to purple and so on until reaching the final room, which is draped with black velvet tapestries with window panes of deep scarlet.

“Why are the red and black paired together?” asks Professor of English Laura Otis, scanning the room.

A student in the back responds casually, “Oh, you know, blood, evil, passion, death . . .”

Otis laughs heartily. “Yes, that about covers it,” she says.

The reading list for this undergraduate course, “Literature and Science before 1900,” also includes Darwin’s The Origin of the Species, Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Shelley’s Frankenstein, and has proven particularly popular with pre-med students.

“Most of them are interested in pursuing medicine, but they range from biology majors to English majors,” says Otis. “The interesting thing is, I can’t tell which is which.”

This blending of literature and science is of special interest to Otis, who also co-teaches “The Roots of Modern Neuroscience,” with Professor Paul Lennard, director of the Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology program.

Otis, a neuroscientist, literary scholar, and recent recipient of a MacArthur “genius grant,” joined Emory’s faculty in the fall of 2004.

“I was raised with the idea that science is work and literature is play,” says Otis, grabbing a quick energy bar in her Callaway office after class is dismissed and before office hours begin. “My father was an engineer, and my mother went to a private school where women were taught things such as proper posture instead of the sciences.”

With her parents’ encouragement, she majored in biochemistry as an undergraduate at Yale and went on to pursue a master’s in neuroscience at the University of California at San Francisco. She immersed herself in the sciences, but missed literature desperately.

“I started getting depressed, to the point of it interfering with my day-to-day functioning,” she says. “Then I took a few lit classes at Berkeley. I had the sudden realization that you could do something because you wanted to. People said my face would light up when I was talking about nineteenth-century novels.”

Otis, who is fluent in German, Spanish, and French, went on to earn a PhD in comparative literature from Cornell University. Her thesis, Organic Memory, explored the popular–but inaccurate–Victorian theory that “memory and heredity were essentially the same and that one inherited memories from ancestors along with their physical features.”

Otis became an assistant professor of English at Hofstra, a private university on Long Island, and in 2000 received a MacArthur Fellowship–a no-strings-attached stipend of $500,000 paid over five years to individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and creativity. The fellowship gave her the financial freedom to take sabbaticals to complete several other works, including Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century (University of Michigan Press, 2001), translating Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s Vacation Stories: Five Science Fiction Tales (University of Illinois Press, 2001), and editing the anthology Nineteenth-Century Literature and Science (Oxford University Press, 2002).

“To receive a MacArthur is like being in the middle of a positive conspiracy theory,” Otis says. “A cascade of people are, anonymously, doing nice things on your behalf. I used to walk around thanking everyone I knew in case they were involved.”

Otis spent several sabbaticals researching and writing at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and is currently working on a book about the groundbreaking lab of nineteenth-century German physiologist Johannes Müller.

She continues to be fascinated by the interaction of science and the humanities, whether investigating the formation of personal identity, the impact of human relationships on scientific research, or the writings of a brilliant medical researcher who is also a gifted novelist.

“What I want to fight is the idea that people can only do one thing in life,” says Otis. “It’s a terrible thing to be classified and placed in a category. Then you stop trying to develop talents in other areas.”

Which, in Otis’s case, is not likely.–M.J.L.

The Alan Palmer Scholarship honors alumnus’ zest for life

Alan Palmer ’86Ox-’88C had three passions in life, according to those who knew him best: golf, his friends, and Oxford College.

Palmer, president of the Palmer Agency in Decatur, died suddenly of a heart attack in 2003 at age thirty-seven. His family and friends decided to hold an annual Alan Palmer Memorial Golf Tournament, with the proceeds going to fund a scholarship in his name at Oxford.

The Alan Palmer Scholarship is now endowed and has reached more than $120,000.

“It was such a tragedy for us to lose Alan,” says his sister, Myra Palmer, who took his place at their family’s life and heath insurance brokerage agency after his death. “But the opportunity to help someone else enjoy Oxford the way he did–my brother would love this. It’s very comforting for us as a family.”

A near-scratch golfer, Palmer played the game every chance he got, says his sister, especially when it came to charity tournaments, several of which he helped to organize. Every two years, he and a group of friends went to either Ireland or Scotland to play on the world’s most famous courses. “His motto was: ‘Grip it! Rip it! Leave nothing in the bag!’, ” Myra Palmer says.

The first Alan Palmer tournament was September 27, 2004, at the Druid Hills Country Club, and although it rained for much of the day, his friends still gathered, clearing almost $30,000 for the scholarship fund.

“I came to discover that Alan was a fierce competitor at every sport he played, from soccer to golf to whiffle ball,” says Matt Jewell ’88C, who was on Emory’s varsity soccer team with Palmer as well as a fraternity brother in Kappa Alpha. “Alan was bright, engaging, hilarious, loyal, and generous. I have never met someone who had so many best friends. My wife and I joked that he was a lot like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, one of Alan’s all-time favorite movies, because he worked in the family business, which he had taken over when his father retired, and he had so many friends from so many different places.”

The scholarship will be given annually to a rising sophomore at Oxford who exhibits leadership qualities similar to those of Palmer.

“Alan was one of those larger-than-life characters, who possessed the campus from the moment he set foot here as a freshman,” says W. Thomas Wilfong, director of development at Oxford. While at Oxford, Palmer was tapped to be Dooley’s spokesperson, representing the “spirit of Emory.”

Even after Palmer came to Emory College for his junior year, he and his friends spoke about Oxford as if it were “hallowed ground,” says Jewell.

“Alan called his father one night during his first semester at Oxford and told him that he ‘had found a home.’ Oxford remained Alan’s home from that day forward,” says Jewell, “and is without a doubt the most appropriate place to honor Alan’s memory and pay tribute to his wonderful life.”–M.J.L.

“I Will Be Married”

For Spring 2005

Paige Parvin

Someday my prince will come . . . but why wait?

Thirty students sit in rapt attention, busily taking notes and frequently raising their hands to ask questions. The instructor, who has been teaching this particular class for eighteen years, presents information in an orderly fashion, using a hybrid format that’s half-lecture, half-discussion. She distributes several handouts and puts detailed outlines on the board.

As routine as the scene might seem, one swift glance around the room makes it clear that this is not your typical Emory class.

The average age of the students is somewhere in the thirty-five to forty range, although there are people in their twenties and a few grey heads, as well. Several races and ethnicities are represented, but the group is heavily weighted toward the female gender, with only seven men. Styles vary from business women in suits and pumps to bearded, laid-back guys in rumpled khakis. One young blonde woman is disabled and takes notes on the floor with her bare foot.

About the only thing this group has in common is this: They all want to be married in a year.

Indeed, that’s the title of the evening course, “I Will Be Married in One Year,” a staple of Emory’s Center for Lifelong Learning for nearly two decades. Instructor Janet Page approaches the class in a brisk, businesslike fashion that appeals to adults who are ready to stop playing games and settle down with Mr. or Ms. Right.

During this class, for instance, she goes over a twelve-month plan outlining the appropriate steps for each month of a new relationship. By month five, she says, you should have thoroughly assessed your emotional compatibility, and this is the time to call it quits if it’s not clicking. “This is not a famine, get out and move on,” Page says. The students write it all down.

There’s a reason the course has remained popular: it works. One of Page’s star pupils is Neil Stokes, an Atlanta lawyer who took the class shortly after Page started teaching it eighteen years ago. At the time, he was recently divorced after a twenty-year marriage, and he was eager to settle down again and have more children. But his busy career made it tough for him to meet new people.

During the class, Page, a licensed psychotherapist, brought in a professional matchmaker who helped Stokes organize his search for a new mate and introduced him to a series of women she determined would be compatible. At first, he was leaning toward what he calls “type-A, competitive personalities,” but the matchmaker guided him toward a more creative type. When he met Carol Cagle, a Suzuki violinist and instructor, he knew she was the one. Thanks to the course, the couple has now been married seventeen years and have four children together.

“It worked like a charm,” Stokes says of Page’s “I Will Be Married” class. “What it really did was help you get organized and gave you the tools you needed to search for a proper mate. I am an ex-engineer, so I am used to learning something and then applying it.”

The class is a combination of intuitive conversation and no-nonsense, practical instruction. Page doesn’t sugar-coat her advice: “If your partner is selfish, you’re participating in it,” she tells the women in the class. “If they’re boys, you’re the mama. Your job is to fix your attitude.” But she also offers softer insights: “People don’t feel loved if they don’t feel comprehended,” she says, and, “Being envied is a whole lot less desirable than being happy.”

Stokes says the class was the best $50 he ever spent. “I got the fairy tale,” he says. “Seventeen years and happily ever after.”–P.P.P.

Fox retires

After thirty-four years with the University, William H. Fox, senior vice president for external affairs, retired January 17.

“Bill Fox has earned the affection and gratitude of generations of Emory alumni, staff, and faculty members for his remarkable spirit and exemplary love of his alma mater,” said President James W. Wagner. “He has left an indelible mark on our University, for which we can be very grateful.”

Fox came to Emory in 1971 to pursue a doctorate in religion and literature and began his administrative career in 1974 in the Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts. “When I came to Emory, I found a place that held, at its deepest core, values that were similar to my own,” Fox says. “That alignment has been magic to me all these years.”

In 1979, Fox completed his PhD and became Emory’s first dean of Campus Life. He was named vice president for Campus Life three years later, where he served for more than a decade and helped oversee a construction boom that yielded several major new buildings. After joining the Institutional Advancement division (now the Office of Development and University Relations) in 1991, Fox led a capital campaign that raised $420 million. During his tenure, IA raised more than $2 billion in gifts, pledges and planned gifts.

Fox says he saw Emory “open its doors” during his career. “Emory has become much more concerned with outreach and concern for the external community,” he says. “But I also saw it become much more diverse and open, which makes it a more rich community.”

In addition to serving as an administrator, Fox taught an undergraduate course in literature and religion each year.

Fox is quick to credit his wife of thirty-eight years, Carol, calling her the “unsung hero” of his work at Emory.

“Emory gave me the chance to travel the world, to make close friends with people I would have otherwise never met,” Fox says. “It intertwined my greatest passion: community, service, and education of the needs of the world.”

New Dean for Goizueta

Lawrence Benveniste, dean of the Carlson School of Management and U.S. Bancorp Professor in Finance at the University of Minnesota, will assume the deanship of Goizueta Business School on July 1.

“Larry has the ideal combination of experience, vision, drive, and business acumen to lead Goizueta during the next phase of its history,” says Provost Earl Lewis. “He is an excellent successor to Tom Robertson.”

Robertson has taken a new position assisting President James W. Wagner in raising Emory’s international profile through the ongoing strategic planning process and beyond.

“As Dean Robertson steps into his new role, we are indeed most fortunate for have Larry Benveniste come to us,” Wagner says. “He has a clear understanding of Goizueta’s potential and core values, as well as an appreciation for the vital role the school plays in the larger University.”

Maryam Alavi, John M. and Lucy Cook Chair in Information Strategy and chair of the Goizueta dean search committee, will serve as the school’s interim dean during the spring semester.

Before his 2001 appointment as dean for the Carlson School, Benveniste held the positions of interim dean, associate dean of faculty and research, and chair of the finance department. He came to the Carlson School from Boston College. Benveniste also has been a staff economist for the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C., where he helped to develop significant regulatory initiatives, including risk-based capital, which monitors the equity value of commercial banks to protect the deposit insurance system.

Benveniste, who received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley and his bachelor’s degree from University of California at Irvine, calls Goizueta a “rising star.”

“I look forward,” he says, “to being a part of its continued growth, building on Dean Robertson’s success in recruiting world-class faculty and students, and partnering with the great business community of Atlanta.”

The Trailblazer

When Principal Nash Alexander III ’89C decided to change the name of his northwest Atlanta public school from West Fulton Middle School to Benjamin S. Carson Honors Preparatory School a few years ago, he met some resistance from the students.

“They felt it sounded like a private school and that other students would tease them,” Alexander says. “But once we had a dialogue and I explained the significance of the name, almost all the students voted in support of it.”

Alexander had chosen to rename the school in honor of Benjamin Carson, director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. The world-renowned African-American surgeon was raised by a single mother in Detroit and started out as a poor student with a violent temper. He turned his life around, however, with a level of self-determination that Alexander expects from each of his 825 young charges. Carson’s autobiography, Gifted Hands, is required reading for all students at the school.

“Ninety-eight percent of our students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches. We draw from several Atlanta Housing Authority residences, such as Hollywood Courts, and many of our students are from single-parent, lower-socioeconomic homes, or have had a parent incarcerated at one point in time,” says Alexander, as he walks through the halls of the school, pausing to pick up a discarded chip wrapper or to tell a student to take his hood off.

The school’s historic building is immaculate, with bright yellow lockers, colorful paintings of motivational quotes hung over each classroom door, a new media center, a spacious lunchroom, and a small outdoor amphitheater built by volunteers from area businesses.

“Our vision is to teach and learn so well that family background is no longer an issue,” says Alexander, a soft-spoken, charismatic man who was born and raised in northwest Atlanta. “It’s not about their background, it’s about the expectations we place on them. As they prove year after year, if we set high standards, they’ll meet them.”

Alexander, who began his career as a physics teacher at North Atlanta High and then served as assistant principal at his alma mater, Frederick Douglass High, is as supportive as he is demanding of his sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students. He shows up at most of the school’s sporting events, awards ceremonies, and other functions.

The students are required to do their part as well. Known as the Carson Trailblazers, they attend school from 8:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. each day–a half-hour longer than the typical school day. Block scheduling gives teachers extra time to cover the subject matter. Students have year-long concentrated study in either French or Spanish. No math courses below pre-algebra are offered. By the time they graduate, says Alexander, students are prepared for honors or magnet programs in high school.

Test scores and student behavior have improved consistently in the four years since Alexander took over the school in July 2001. “These students,” he says, gesturing to a bulletin board filled with neatly typed essays, “have the ability to compete with anyone.”

Talia Myrick, an eighth-grader at Carson Prep who wants to be an interior designer, says she had a lot of misconceptions about the school before she became a student there.

“People expect children who go [to Carson] to be killed or to go to jail,” says Talia. “When I was in private school, I thought everything would be handed to me. But when I started here, it taught me a new way of life. I realized this is a real school with real people who have real problems. At Carson, nothing is fake–it is a school that helps children become anything they want to be.”

Alexander, Talia says, is an “awesome” principal.

“Mr. Alexander is a busy man with a lot of things on his plate, but he’s never too busy to help a Trailblazer in need,” she says. “He talks to the children at Carson with pride because he knows they will be something in life.”

At thirty-eight, Alexander is one of the youngest principals in the Atlanta Public School System. But his work at Carson Prep is already gaining national recognition– he was among fifteen principals across the country to receive the 2004 Ambassadors in Education Award from the National Civic League and the Met Life Foundation. The $5,000 grant is given to public school principals in the middle grades and higher who are making extraordinary efforts to strengthen their schools and communities.

His innovative leadership has attracted other invaluable resources to the school: Dr. Carson himself visits his namesake once a year on “Ben Carson Day,” and his foundation provides several annual $1,000 student scholarships. More than twenty business partners have painted classrooms and the media center, provided donations, and built extras such as picnic tables outside the lunchroom. The accounting firm Deloitte and Touche, in collaboration with Hands On Atlanta, mobilized about 1,500 volunteers and donated more than $250,000 in materials and supplies to Carson Prep.

And Emory’s Office of University-Community Partnerships worked with Carson Prep last year to increase parental involvement in the school. This relationship is set to expand, since the middle school has been chosen to be Emory’s partner on a $400,000 grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development for the next three years. A Community Outreach Partnership Center will be established at Carson Prep to strengthen families, improve student academic achievement, preserve affordable housing, and attract resources to the northwest Atlanta community, an area where the poverty rate is nearly twice the citywide rate of 24 percent.

“Nash and I were classmates at Emory,” says Sam Marie Engle ’90C, senior program associate in the Office of University-Community Partnerships and director of the Community Building Fellows Program, who is helping to coordinate the grant. “It is no accident, we think, that all these years later we have come together again to do something groundbreaking.”

Other Emory faculty and alumni are involved with the school and the community in innovative ways. Nancy McGarrah ’83PhD, a clinical psychologist in private practice, is teaching Carson faculty ways to foster non-violence and resiliency among the students. Melissa Wade ’72C-’76G-’96T-’00T, director the Barkley Forum, Emory’s nationally ranked debate team, has established a debate team at Carson Prep, part of the forum’s outreach to Atlanta middle-school students. Wade has worked with eighty-six students at Carson, many of whom have won awards in tournament competition in the Georgia middle school league.

“Our students are debating students from private schools like Westminster and Pace Academy and winning,” Alexander says.

The HUD-sponsored Community Outreach Partnership Center, says Engle, will bring together faculty from Emory College, the graduate school of arts and sciences, the law and business schools, and fellows from Emory’s Fellowship Program in Community Building and Social Change, a program launched in 2001 with a seed gift from alumnus Kenneth Cole ’76C.

“This partnership will engage Emory in the very important work of improving the quality of life of metro Atlanta, while preparing students to become lifelong agents of positive community change,” says Engle. “It is very exciting that so much of Emory will be in the community for a sustained period of time. This represents the future direction of the ethically engaged university transforming the world through scholarship, service, research, and teaching.”

Sustainability is the key, said Michael Rich, director of the Office of University-Community Partnerships, during a December meeting with northwest Atlanta leaders at the Jane Fonda Center on Emory’s Briarcliff Campus. “We want to talk about how we can keep this program going not just for three years, but for thirty years.”–M.J.L.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall . . .

When Mary Ellen Medici was a teenager in Boston, she took full advantage of summer days by covering her skin in baby oil and iodine and spending as much time in the sun as possible.

In her early forties, Medici started having some serious regrets about her youthful indiscretion.

“My skin was really damaged from the sun. I had age spots, and the skin on my face was dry and old looking. I had wrinkles around and underneath my eyes,” says Medici, who lives in Fayetteville with her husband and two sons.

After a friend had an eye lift, Medici started considering cosmetic surgery and scheduled a consultation with Seth Yellin ’84C, director of the Emory Facial Center and chief of facial plastic surgery.

“Like it or not, we live in a society that puts great value on appearance,” says Yellin. “One’s body image and self-image are critical. Attractive, confident people have a social advantage. Most of my patients are already attractive. But they want to regain their youthful advantage.”

Like Medici, who decided on a laser resurfacing of her face and an eye lift, more and more people are turning to surgery to enhance their appearance, correct perceived flaws, or reduce signs of aging. Almost nine million Americans had cosmetic surgery last year, with the top five procedures being rhinoplasty (nose job), liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, and face-lift.

Yellin’s practice increased by 36 percent last year, mirroring the national surge.

“Television has done a lot of good in terms of demystifying plastic surgery, taking it out of the realm of the privileged and bringing it to the masses,” says Yellin. “But it also sets up false or unrealistic expectations. Makeover shows spend a long time searching for people who are just right, and who will show a dramatic change.”

He adds, “These are real surgeries with real risks, real healing time, and real scars.”

Yellin, who went to medical school at New York University after graduating from Emory, says his skills as a plastic surgeon–suture techniques, knowing how much and in which direction to pull, where to create an indention–were gained on the job.

“Medical school gave me the privilege to do what I do, but 99 percent of what I learned there doesn’t apply,” he says. “Cosmetic surgery is where art and medicine cross. Plastic surgeons must have a well-developed aesthetic of what makes a face beautiful.”

About three-fourths of his practice is cosmetic surgery; the remainder is reconstructive. Yellin is co-director of Emory’s Pediatric Head and Neck Center, where he operates on children with cleft lips or microtia, a congenital ear deformity.

Yellin performed two corrective surgeries on seven-year-old microtia patient Alexandria Head, of Smiths, Alabama, to rebuild her ear. “When she was in preschool, other kids started noticing, and Alex started asking why her ear was smaller,” says her mom, Tiffany Head. “But now, she’s very confident about it. She wears ponytails, and tucks her hair behind her ears.”

Yellin also teaches at Emory, volunteers at Grady Memorial in downtown Atlanta, and does research on topics as diverse as facial implants, vaccine delivery techniques, and the effects of placental stem cells and wound healing.

“I have a very rewarding, very full schedule,” he says, eating a quick lunch of pasta and salad between surgeries in his office.

A youthful looking forty-three, Yellin hasn’t had any cosmetic surgery personally (although he doesn’t rule it out for the future) but he does give himself Botox injections periodically. “I used to have two deep lines right between my eyes, which made me seem intense and serious,” he says. “People react to me completely differently now–they see me as lighter and more approachable.”

Yellin does encounter patients who want more and more surgeries, or who have unrealistic expectations about what cosmetic surgery can do for them. “Part of my job is to identify people’s motivations,” he says. “If they believe the surgery will make their husband love them or cure their depression–those are the people I won’t operate on.”

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Women’s Studies, says individuals are much more aware of their appearance in today’s visually oriented world.

“This has changed drastically over the last hundred years, with scales, full-length mirrors, cameras, video. Before all these instant images, we weren’t able to scrutinize what we look like in the same way that we are now,” she says. “Our commercial culture has more of everything, and that includes more arenas for the enhancement and presentation of self. This is both exciting and disturbing.”

The vast majority of individuals seeking cosmetic surgery, Garland-Thomson adds, “aren’t trying to look perfect or like movie stars. Part of what they want to achieve is not to be noticed. We all want to pass for ‘normal,’ and not be too different from the standard in either direction.”

Or, like Medici, they simply want to look like a younger, healthier, better-rested version of themselves.

“I have people make comments all the time: ‘Your skin looks so great, what did you do to your skin?’ It feels much softer, and has kind of a glow, and the lines have diminished,” she says. “I feel so great. I would do it again.”–M.J.L.

Uniquely Emory

The University undergoes self-analysis to prepare

for the next phase in its evolution

What is the soul of Emory?

What makes this University distinctive? What sets it apart from its peers? What are its aspirations?

These are the questions that are being asked in committees, open forums, town hall meetings, and spirited conversations across campus as part of an initiative to examine Emory from the inside out, analyze its strengths and weaknesses, set priorities for the University as a whole, and chart a course for its future.

“We have the opportunity to leave behind the worn-out paradigm of the ‘multiversity’ and to become truly singular, a university,” says President James W. Wagner. “Our planning will thus lead us to an Emory difference, to a destination where this University stands apart because of both the kinds of work we are doing and the quality of our doing them.”

The strategic planning process, co-chaired by Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Earl Lewis and Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Michael Johns began in the spring of 2004 and is expected to conclude this summer.

“What I think this institution has struggled with internally and externally is figuring out how to realize its potential,” Lewis told the Academic Exchange, a faculty newsletter. “Part of this exercise is a self-disciplining one, where the goal is to figure out how we take the notion of potential, concretize it, and use it to guide our own actions. That’s not to say we’re going to inscribe inflexibility into the system, but at the end of five years when we go back to evaluate our success, we can say this is where we wanted to be–and here we are.”

President Wagner appointed a steering committee of faculty and senior administrators to lead the process. The Strategic Planning Steering Committee meets regularly in a basement room of the Math and Science Building that is jokingly referred to as “the war room.”

The first step has been to gather information. Small groups of faculty and staff across the University were called together to take stock of current conditions and to brainstorm about what they envision for their schools or divisions over the next five years. Town hall meetings were held around campus, with extended question-and-answer periods for community members to share their thoughts.

Task forces were formed to examine overarching issues relevant to the entire University. The first–the task force on internationalization–is chaired by Tom Robertson, former dean of the Goizueta Business School.

“The objective is to contribute to scholarship, health care, and social action worldwide, and to develop the Emory brand internationally,” says Robertson, who was deputy principal at the London Business School before coming to Emory in 1998. “This is a major untapped opportunity.”

Next, the steering committee identified signature themes–“big ideas” that cut across disciplines and could engage and connect the University in novel and transformative ways.

“These ideas must have a ‘wow’ quotient to them,” says Johns, “in that they will capture our imaginations and keep us sustained.”

Suggestions came from deans and alumni, medical residents and undergraduates, professors and community members. Messages flooded the Web site set up to elicit input (www.admin.emory.edu/StrategicPlan).

The nine themes that have emerged so far, in addition to internationalization, are: “Global Health,” “Mind, Brain, and Neuroscience,” “Predictive Medicine,” “Critical Inquiry and Creative Expression,” “Race, Racism, and Society,” “Religion, Society, and Human Experience,” “Citizen as Scholar and Scholar as Citizen,” “Policy Solutions and Implementation,” and “Societies in Conflict and Transition.”

These will be narrowed to four or five initiatives that will “animate our conversations over the next few years,” says Lewis.

As an example of a cross-cutting discovery, Lewis used the investigation of the royal mummy believed to be Ramesses I in the collection of the Michael C. Carlos Museum and its return to Egypt in the fall of 2003. The quest to determine if the mummy was the missing pharaoh involved “nearly the whole campus, in one way or another–neurosciences and culture, art and humanities, sciences and social sciences.”

Emory has many existing strengths that have allowed it to flourish, says Johns, who came from Johns Hopkins University eight years ago. These include the University’s location in Atlanta, strong service ethic, commitment to teaching and research, and robust financial condition.

“Why do we look so rich and feel so poor?” Johns asked the audience at a packed town hall meeting in the Winship Ballroom in November. “We have a lot of money, just not enough for all the brilliant ideas coming from our faculty and staff.”

The primary challenge Emory faces, he says, is that its national and international recognition is “not where it needs to be, compared to other top research universities.”

Gaining more recognition will involve wider and more diverse recruitment and enrollment of “the best and the brightest” students, hiring and retaining top-notch faculty, allowing for more collaborative programs and research, and aiming for higher profile graduate programs that rank consistently as the best in the nation.

“The goal is not to be on a certain list,” Johns added, “but to be so good that people put us on the list. And there is a difference there.”

The final phase of the strategic planning process will consolidate the University’s goals and strategic initiatives (both university-wide and within each school and division) and detail how resources will be invested in these priorities.

“Great things don’t happen in two months, or even a year,” Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Mike Mandl said at an Employee Council meeting in January. “We need to be about a set of principles. The key is to identify and articulate them, then begin the momentum toward them.”

The plan will be presented to the Board of Trustees in June 2005, and will become the platform for a comprehensive capital campaign led by Johnnie Ray, senior vice president for the Office of Development and University Relations.

“We need a well-formed institutional vision for the future. The importance of this cannot be overstated,” says Ray. “No amount of fundraising machinery, organization, or technique can be effective without a compelling, outwardly focused expression of how we can make a difference in society.”

RELATED QUOTES OF INTEREST:

“Deans have told us they need more faculty, more space, more resources. Yes, but what are you going to do with those things if you get them? That’s what we’re trying to discover. Ideas justify resources.”

–Provost Earl Lewis

“Emory has been amassing potential for a long time in terms of intellectual talent, faculty, resources, and so forth, and now is the right moment to realize that potential.”

–Associate Professor of History Sharon Strocchia, a member of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee

“We’re competing for faculty and students, whether or not we like to admit it. It’s very hard to define what we want to be if we don’t truly understand our competitive environment today. A critical part of the planning process is stepping back and taking a big, broader look at ourselves and the world around us.”

–Shari Capers, associate vice president of planning, in the Academic Exchange, a faculty newsletter.

“The Graduate School has suffered significantly in terms of its

competitiveness in recent years. If Emory is to move higher in the ranks as a University, its graduate programs must improve very significantly, as must the recognition of its faculty as leading research scholars.”

– S.C. Dobbs Professor of History Thomas Burns, who has been a faculty member at Emory for thirty-one years.

I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student

For Spring 2005

Paige Parvin

My impression of the students we get here at Emory, who are far above the national average in wealth, intelligence, high school records, and test scores, is that they have the capacity to learn a great deal but don’t come in knowing very much. Many of them are good company, and being in class usually puts them on their best behavior. . . . So I have a steady feeling of pleasure in being able to spend time among them, especially in a role that can actually win me their respect and interest.

University professors are known to write books about all manner of subjects–from atoms to art, zebras to Zimbabwe, and literally everything in between. Strangely, though, almost none write about what they do every day: teach students.

Patrick Allitt, professor of U.S. history and holder of the Arthur Blank Chair for Teaching Excellence, has changed that with I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student: A Semester in the University Classroom. The book is a day-by-day account of one introductory-level American history class, from the first day to the final exam.

A natural teacher and passionate advocate for good teaching, Allitt says he wanted to give readers a look at what really happens inside a college classroom, day in and day out. “There is a lot of interest and a lot of mystification about what goes on in college,” he says.

So for an entire semester, he sat down at his computer every day at 7:30 a.m. and wrote for about an hour, recording what happened in one particular class and, in the process, describing in detail his own approach to teaching. The result was what he called a “massive, shapeless thing” that he then cut, trimmed, and arranged into a journal-like chronicle that already has proved popular among other teachers, parents of college students, and the students themselves.

While a straight lecture class might not exactly spring to life on the page, Allitt’s teaching makes for compelling reading. With warmth and wit, he describes some of his tried-and-true classroom techniques: asking the students to draw pictures on the board, having them read long passages aloud, and making them write on exams until their fingers are stiff (he claims the multiple-choice test is the bane of American education).

As in every class, there are bright, committed students and those who lag behind; those who come to class early and those who are always late; those who do the reading and those who don’t. Allitt sometimes bemoans how little his students know, but he never doubts their potential or their worth. As the title of his book indicates, he believes a somewhat formal relationship between teacher and student is most conducive to their education; he has strict rules forbidding hats, eating, and cell phones in class. Yet his genuine affection for his students and his concern for their well-being is palpable on every page.

“I’m always aware, teaching, that I must not deflate those who get it wrong,” he writes after a lesson on railroads, in which students are asked to draw various kinds of trains on the blackboard. “With students whose diagrams are hopeless or whose suggestions about what is in a picture are miles off the mark, I look for phrases like, ‘I’m afraid not–there’s no reason why you should know this but let me help you through it a bit at a time.’ With a series of leading questions I’m usually able to get them describing much more accurately what is happening. I hope and intend that the question-and-answer is enabling everyone else in the room to learn from our exchange at the same time.

“When [the end of class] comes around, we’re in full flow and I’m enjoying myself, trying to communicate my pleasure in trains to the class. Before today I expect it had never occurred to many of them that the building of a railroad across America was something to enthuse over. Now the possibility exists. Even those who don’t really care about trains will be able to think to themselves, ‘Oh, yes, the professor loved those railroads,’ and that in turn will help them remember at least some of the things I said.”

Allitt brings a fresh perspective to American history, not only because he loves his subject, but because he is not American. Born in England and educated at Oxford, Allitt flew across the pond more or less on a lark after he finished school and spent a few months hitchhiking around the country with friends.

“I’ve always thought America was fantastic,” he says, his clipped British accent still strong. “I really wanted to combine being in America with studying America.”

Allitt applied to the University of California at Berkeley and earned his PhD in American history, going on to do postdoctoral work at Harvard. He came to Emory in 1988.

Since then, Allitt has devoted himself to quality teaching. As the Arthur Blank/NEH Professor of Teaching, he conducted a series of seminars for faculty and graduate students aimed at improving and enriching their teaching skills. He helped produce a video in 2002, “Teaching at Emory: The Experts Speak,” in which Emory students are interviewed about the strengths and weaknesses of teaching on campus. Allitt also has recorded a series of audio and video lectures for the Teaching Company, a Virginia-based organization that works with college professors to offer educational materials on a range of subjects.

Although he has written four scholarly books about American history, Allitt says I’m the Teacher was a more personal, soul-searching endeavor. “It was a labor of love,” he says. “I love teaching. I wanted it to be a book about academic life, but without feeling academic. I would like readers to have the impression that college is intellectually challenging in the best way, and that even the best students still have a great deal to learn.”–P.P.P.