Précis | Winter 2005

Rudolph’s Legacy: As an Emory undergraduate, Joe King ’88C studied the life and work of architect Paul Rudolph in Judith Rohrer’s History of Modern Architecture course. King’s veneration for Rudolph’s architectural vision may have begun with Cannon Chapel, but it did not end there. King recently published a book, Paul Rudolph: The Florida Houses (Princeton Architectural Press, 2002), and brought a companion exhibition to museums across the country, including most recently to the Museum of Design Atlanta.

Literary Largesse: They came to Emory in four hulking sea-cargo containers, rumbling into the Briarcliff Campus on tractor trailers that looked fit to deliver entire floors of furniture or industrial equipment. Instead, the trucks held books—more than fifty thousand of them, in fact. Books in boxes, books in crates, books in wooden tea chests that still had bits of tea leaves crushed in the bottom. The four massive shipments from a warehouse in Geneva, Switzerland, brought Emory what is thought to be the largest collection of poetry ever amassed by a private collector, recently given to the University by bibliophile Raymond Danowski.

Year of the Jaeckel: The fourteen-ton Opus 45 Pipe Organ that is now a focal point in Emory’s Emerson Concert Hall was only recently installed, but the grand instrument is the fruit of a relationship that goes back more than a decade. In 1991, when plans for a University arts center were beginning to take shape, administrators and members of the arts faculty met with organ builder Daniel Jaeckel and asked him to design an organ expressly for Emory. But those early plans were abandoned and the agreement with Jaeckel had to wait more than ten years, until the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts was completed in 2003.

The Storyteller: Author Salman Rushdie lectured at Emory in early October as the Richard Ellman Lecturer in Modern Literature. The biennial event honors the late Robert W. Woodruff Professor Richard Ellman, biographer of James Joyce and Oscar Wilde.

Goizueta was one of two business schools in the country chosen to offer the U.S. Business Internship Program for Young Middle Eastern Women, a mini-MBA-style program during the month of August. The effort is part of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, created by the federal government to support economic, educational, and political reform in the Middle East. Forty-two women, chosen for their promising business acumen and ambition, came to Emory from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza, and Yemen.

The Voice Center, which opened in September 2003 in the Medical Office Tower of Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, is equipped to diagnose, treat, and rehabilitate those with voice disorders, especially professionals who use their voices to make a living. The center has several specialists on staff, including laryngologists, speech language pathologists, and voice therapists.

Finding Synchronicity: Hope Mirlis ’93C, is a founding member of Synchronicity Performance Group, a theater company that seeks to produce “fearless, fresh, and thought-provoking” plays in Atlanta. Synchronicity began because its founders saw a lack of cutting-edge works locally, especially ones with juicy roles for women at all levels of production.

A win-win situation: When Betsy Stephenson joined Emory as director of athletics and recreation in July, she not only gave up her post as associate director at a highly competitive NCAA Division I school–the University of California at Los Angeles–and moved across the country, she also came to a physical education facility under major renovation. But Stephenson says the move felt right because of what lies at the heart of the Emory athletics program: the student athletes.

Fuld Fellows: After graduating with a degree in psychology, Jordan Bell ’99C traveled to Southern Nepal to volunteer with the Women’s Health Initiative, to Eastern Turkey to produce an independent documentary on the Kurdish population, and to Macedonia to teach at an international school. When, during a return visit to Atlanta, one of her former Emory professors told Bell about the Fuld fellowships at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, she saw the chance to combine social activism and international health by pursuing a master’s degree in nursing.

Healing the Sick: Physician G. Scott Morris ’83M, who grew up in Atlanta, founded the Church Health Center in Memphis, Tennessee, to help the working poor, elderly, and homeless. The clinic is now the country’s largest faith-based health center for the poor. The Church Health Center, which accepts no government funding, now has 40,000 patients for whom it is the primary health care provider.

Emory has long fostered vigorous scholarship in the field of Irish studies, achieving national and international renown with its collection of twentieth-century Irish literary materials and strong faculty. Ironically, though, a formal Irish studies program did not exist–until now. The program was launched last spring and the curriculum will be completed later this year.

Sundance East: Started in 2001 by a handful of Emory students, Campus Moviefest caught on like wildfire in Atlanta and is rapidly making its way into other cities. In four years, the Atlanta festival has grown from a thousand Emory students participating to ten thousand amateur directors, editors, and actors at eight area universities. “We really didn’t know what to expect that first time,” says David Roemer ’02B, co-founder and CEO of Ideas United, the fledgling company that organizes Campus Moviefest. Roemer and Dan Costa ’01B, now president of Ideas United, conceived Campus Moviefest (originally iMovieFest) as a community-building activity among students.