Emory Magazine | Winter 2002: Precis

Volume 77
Number 4

Health for All

Fear of Flying

Flying II: High Anxiety

Association of Emory Alumni

Current News and Events

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a three-year, $885,000 grant to the lab of Harriet Robinson, chief of microbiology and immunology at Yerkes Primate Research Center, in support of her ongoing research to develop a DNA-based vaccine for measles. The vaccine program is being conducted in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. With this grant, the Gates Foundation is now funding $1.6 million in vaccine research at Yerkes, including nearly $800,000 for malaria vaccine development.

Forbes magazine, in its annual ranking of business schools, compared the cost of attaining an MBA to the prospect of a bigger salary, and determined Goizueta Business School’s ranking as eighteenth in “Best Bang for the Buck,” up from twenty-fourth last year. Also, in BusinessWeek’s ranking of executive MBA programs, Goizueta ranked eighth worldwide.

Woodruff Library received a $120,000 grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation to provide on-line access to major Irish literary archives at Emory, including manuscripts by W. B. Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and Derek Mahon, and at Boston College, the two primary repositories of Irish literature in the United States.

K. Jeff Carney, a urology surgeon and assistant professor at Emory’s School of Medicine, is the new chief of urology at Grady Memorial Hospital. Carney, who is the first physician to hold the position full-time, began working at Grady August 1. His specialties include general urology, oncology, trauma, and reconstructive surgery.

Emory’s School of Medicine is one of four major academic medical centers in the southeast United States that will begin gathering data for investigators interested in the genetics of rheumatoid arthritis in African Americans, with support from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases.

Nanette K. Wenger, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Emory’s School of Medicine and chief of cardiology at Grady Memorial Hospital, has been named to the Scientific Advisory Board of WomenHeart, a twenty-member panel of prominent American physicians and nurses who provide policy direction and scientific expertise.

IT’S NOT EASY BEING GREEN—especially if you’re an urban university campus such as Emory. Infamous Atlanta sprawl, thick Clifton corridor traffic spawned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Cancer Society, an ever-rising campus population, and the need for massive research buildings to support the thriving health sciences center conspire to stymie Emory’s progress toward being “green”—an environmentally conscious campus.

But thanks to deliberate, diligent efforts on the part of President William M. Chace and many others, Emory is striving to overcome these obstacles and growing ever greener. One of the University’s most notable initiatives: a recent move to plant the seeds of environmental awareness in courses across the academic disciplines.

Last spring, biology professor Arri Eisen and anthropology professor Peggy Barlett received a $56,500 grant from the University Teaching Fund to develop the Piedmont Project, an effort to incorporate environmental themes into a wide range of course offerings. Nineteen faculty members, including professors of English, law, theology, philosophy, German, and business, participated in a two-day workshop in May, where experts from Northern Arizona University coached them on how to work green issues into class discussion and coursework—organically, of course.

“You could see how, for example, chemistry and biology professors could teach about the environment, but some of the other faculty members had really interesting ideas,” says Sally Pete, a science and society professor who coordinated the workshop. “It was a very diverse group.”

A few of the eco-friendly ideas that sprung from the workshop included courses on nature poetry, the connections between business and environmental issues, and eco-theology.

Emory also has been praised for efforts including a multi-faceted alternative transportation program and a push for ecologically sound buildings.

Last year, President Chace won the Clean Air Campaign’s Pace Setter Award for his leadership in developing commuting programs and alternative transportation options. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an “idiosyncratic guide” to the nation’s greenest campuses and Emory made the cut, largely due to its transportation program.

“Emory University is probably further into the use of nonpolluting and low-polluting motor vehicles than any other college in the country,” wrote Noel Perrin, an environmental studies professor at Dartmouth College who compiled the guide.

For instance: instead of gas-guzzling pickup trucks, many of the University’s facilities management staff zip around in forty-four electric carts designed for this purpose. Emory also is building a fleet of alternative-fueled shuttles and buses, and was the first Atlanta institution to have a full-time staff member devoted to commuting programs.

“You just have to whittle away a little at a time to make progress,” says Senior Associate Vice President for Business Affairs Erick E. Gaither, who is responsible for University transportation and heads a task force created to implement a campus-wide environmental policy. “We’ve gone from nothing to this, so it’s fairly significant.”

In another ambitious move, Emory’s master plan aims to add three new buildings to the elite group of thirteen structures nationwide currently certified by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. Robert Hascall, senior associate vice president for facilities management, is guiding the construction of the Whitehead Research Building, Science 2000, and the Winship Cancer Institute to meet stringent LEED standards. The program takes into account site selection, erosion control, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.

Hascall sees to it that Emory stays green as well as growing. “The campus master plan was completed with campus sustainability, valuing our natural woodlands, and smart growth and development in mind,” Hascall says. “It is the framework by which we can assure that we grow the campus facilities in a way that is very environmentally sensitive and sustains the beauty and quality of the campus for the future.”—P.P.P.

“The acquisition of the Edelstein collection is a significant addition to the Woodruff Library’s modern American poetry collections,” says Stephen C. Enniss, curator of literary collections. “The collection includes many rarities which, due to a variety of circumstances of their time, were only published in extremely limited numbers. Emory students and faculty will now have access to these works in the form that their authors first presented them to readers.”

In particular, Edelstein’s Wallace Stevens collection stands out as one of the most complete anywhere, including one of only twenty copies of Stevens’ Ideas of Order, first published by the Alcestis Press in 1935. Poets of the noted North Carolina Black Mountain school, the Beat Movement, and the New York School are also featured in considerable number.

Another high point of the collection is a copy of James Merrill’s first book, affectionately titled Jim’s Book, privately printed when Merrill was just sixteen by his father, one of the founders of Merrill Lynch. Emory poetry students also will be able to read one of twenty-six known copies of Robert Lowell’s first collection, The Land of Unlikeness.

Edelstein, who died in 1996, was Distinguished Bibliographer in Residence at Brown University’s John Carter Brown Library at the time of his death. His collection, Enniss says, was offered to Emory because of the University’s interest in modern literary collections.

Last spring, the library also acquired the literary archive of British poet Tom Paulin, including manuscript drafts of all Paulin’s poetry and criticism, photographs, personal correspondence, and letters from fellow poets Seamus Heaney, Paul Muldoon, and the late Ted Hughes.

“Tom Paulin already is a noted poet and critic, and will have a distinguished future career,” Enniss says. “Adding his papers to our research collection is in keeping with building a living archive of writers in their prime.”–P.P.P.

Also in Précis:

Crawford Long Hospital undergoes $270 million renovation

Doc Hollywood: The Musical

A Journey of Reconciliation

Depression and high blood pressure make deadly combination

A Race of Singers

The Poetry of Natasha Trethewey and Janet McAdams ’96PhD

Remembering Evangeline T. Papageorge ’29M

Emory’s “hidden history” revealed in Oxford Historical Cemetery

Faith Journey: Daniel B. Cole ’93C