UChicago News

University of Chicago to celebrate Convocation Weekend June 8-9

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 12:14 -0500

The University of Chicago is preparing to celebrate Convocation Weekend on June 8 and 9.

The weekend kicks off with Class Day, a celebration that includes an invited speaker, the presentation of College awards, and speeches by students from the Class of 2018. The event will be held Friday, June 8, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Main Quadrangles.

The University-wide Convocation ceremony will be held Saturday, June 9 from 9:15 to 11 a.m. also in the Main Quadrangles. Later in the day, the College and graduate divisions and schools will hold individual ceremonies in which diplomas will be presented.

Convocation represents a calling together of the entire University, with graduating students, faculty and staff from the College and graduate divisions and schools gathering to recognize educational achievement.

For those unable to attend, the Class Day and Convocation ceremonies will be webcast. Follow the weekend’s events on social media using #uchicago2018.

The invited speaker for Class Day is Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Obama and a distinguished senior fellow at UChicago Law School. She will address the College’s graduating students and their families about the responsibilities of global citizenship.

Student speakers for Class Day are Priscilla Daboni, Mark Meyer and Andrea Popov. The ceremony is open to family and friends of graduating students as well as the larger UChicago community.

On Saturday, Convocation will begin with a procession of undergraduate and graduate candidates into the Main Quadrangles. President Robert J. Zimmer will verbally confer degrees to candidates by division and school during the ceremony. The University is scheduled to award a total of 3,243 degrees.

This year’s Convocation speaker is Marianne Bertrand, the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics at Chicago Booth. Bertrand is an applied microeconomist whose research covers the fields of labor economics, corporate finance, political economy and development economics. Her address is entitled “Mind the Gaps.”

Awards and medals

On Saturday, the University will award honorary degrees to Fabiola Gianotti, an experimental particle physicist who led the search and characterization of the Higgs boson; Charles M. Lieber, a groundbreaking scholar of nanoscience and nanomaterials; Michael C.A. Macdonald, a leading expert in early language and civilization in the Arabian Peninsula; Robert E. Ricklefs, a leading figure in evolutionary ecology; and William S-Y. Wang, a pioneer in the study of language evolution and the emergence of new languages.

Martin Baron, executive editor of The Washington Post, will receive the Benton Medal for Distinguished Public Service, which recognizes people who have rendered distinguished public service in the field of education, including anyone who has contributed in a systematic and distinguished way to shaping minds and disseminating knowledge.

The University will recognize faculty members for excellence in teaching with presentations of the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Faculty Awards for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring and the Norman Maclean Faculty Award.

Event logistics

Information about the weekend’s events, as well as details on transportation, parking and accommodations can be found on the Convocation website. Convocation shuttles can be tracked at uchicago.transloc.com. Attendees and community members are advised that there will be increased traffic and road closures during this time.

Tickets are not required for the main ceremonies, although they may be required for individual division and school ceremonies. General seating for Convocation will open at 7 a.m. and is available on a first-come basis.

Please note that all bags are subject to inspection before entering the Main Quadrangles. Items that may disrupt other guests from seeing or hearing the ceremony are not permitted inside the Quadrangles.

Comprehensive care physician model improves care, lowers hospitalization

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 14:40 -0500

Patients who need frequent hospitalization account for a disproportionate amount of health care spending in the United States. In 2012, the University of Chicago Medicine—funded by a Health Care Innovation Award from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation—began enrolling patients in a clinical trial designed to test an imaginative way to reduce such hospital stays.

The study, featured in the May 20 New York Times Sunday Magazine, was designed to determine whether doctors who focus their practices on the care of patients in and out of the hospital, known as comprehensive care physicians, could improve care while reducing hospitalization for a highly vulnerable set of patients at high risk for being hospitalized.

The core element of the CCP model is that the same physician provides care for patients in the clinic as well as in the hospital. A few CCPs even make house calls. The CCPs also lead a team of nurse practitioners, social workers, care coordinators and other specialists selected for their ability to address the needs of high-risk patients. Each physician carries a panel of approximately 200 patients at a time, serving as their primary care physician during clinic visits and supervising their care whenever they are hospitalized.

From November 2012 to June 2016, 2,000 patients with chronic health problems enrolled in the study. Most came from the South Side of Chicago and most of them had at least one hospital stay in the previous year. All of these patients were covered by Medicare.

The model is built upon 15 years of research by study director David Meltzer, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago and chief of hospital medicine, and colleagues, on the changing medical work force in the United States. The model was designed to provide better care at lower cost. In this pilot study, it was able to improve the continuity of patient care, especially during and after a hospital stay, as well as strengthen the bond between doctor and patient.

Half of the patients in the study were assigned to “standard care.” They connected with a hospital-based primary care physician who saw patients as needed in the clinic, but did not directly take care of them if they were admitted to the hospital. The other half were assigned to one of five CCPs, who saw them during clinic visits and also cared for them in the hospital.

When the study was completed, it was evident that the CCP model was both preferred by patients and economically beneficial in terms of reducing health care utilization.

“Hospitalization rates for CCP patients were 15 to 22 percent lower than for standard care patients,” Meltzer said. CCP patients also reported “a better experience,” he added. They gave their physicians higher ratings on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems, a patient satisfaction survey required for all hospitals by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The University’s standard care physicians scored quite well, in the 80th percentile nationally, but the CCP doctors were in the 95th percentile. They also were ranked higher by patients dealing with mental health issues.

“There's a huge literature suggesting that elements of the doctor-patient relationship, including trust, interpersonal relations, communication and knowledge of the patient, are all associated with lower costs and better outcomes,” Meltzer said.

The trial, still underway, enrolls patients who are predicted to spend an average of 10 days a year in the hospital. Many of these patients have chronic diseases. Others are geriatric patients living in residence homes or patients with renal disease requiring regular dialysis treatment.

This program “may improve patient experience and health status while substantially reducing utilization for patients at increased risk for hospitalization,” the study authors conclude. “The CCP model warrants further exploration through efforts to implement it in additional settings and rigorously evaluate its effects on outcomes and costs.”

“Our goal is to understand patients’ needs so that we can give them the most appropriate care,” Meltzer said. “That should be better for them, produce better outcomes and ultimately be less costly for the health care system.”

The next step is an expanded program, the Comprehensive Care, Community & Culture Program, designed to reduce the unmet social needs of economically and socially disadvantaged patients. About 400 people have already enrolled.

Additional authors of the study are John F. Cursio, Andrea Flores, Robert Gibbons, James Zhang, Tom Best, Greg Ruhnke and the Comprehensive Care Research Group.

Manifest wins first place in Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge

Thu, 31 May 2018 11:16 -0500

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago on May 30 announced the winners of the 22nd annual Edward L. Kaplan, '71, New Venture Challenge, a top-ranked accelerator program in the nation.

Eleven finalists shared in a $700,000 cash prize pool—the highest ever given at the New Venture Challenge, greatly surpassing last year’s prize pool of $400,000. Thanks to a recent gift from Chicago Booth alum Rattan L. Khosa, an additional $150,000 for the new Rattan L. Khosa First-Place Prize was included, as well as $240,000 that was added from various prize sponsors and distinguished judges during today’s deliberations.

“Every team that presented in today’s finals is a real and operational company that can grow beyond this program,” said Starr Marcello, executive director of the Polsky Center and adjunct professor. “We are proud of all the teams that presented to our investors today, and those that took part in the 22nd year of the NVC. We are excited to see them grow.”

Finalists presented to 27 distinguished judges—including Dan Caruso, MBA’90, founder and CEO of Zayo Group; Immanuel Thangaraj, MBA’93, managing director of Essex Woodlands Health Ventures; and Penny Pritzker, founder and chairman of PSP Capital and U.S. Secretary of Commerce under President Barack Obama, among others.

Winners of the 2018 NVC include:

Manifest, a distributed ledger solution that will standardize 401(k) transfers, won first place and $315,000, including $150,000 from the Rattan L. Khosa First-Place Prize, $120,000 from individual distinguished judges, $25,000 from The Caruso Foundation and $20,000 for their acceptance into the Pritzker Group Venture Fellows Program this summer. Manifest, which is a member of the Polsky Incubator, is creating a network between 401(k) providers and streamlining the process to help eliminate the estimated $2.5B that providers lose each year due to these inefficiencies.

Mindful Urgent Care, a company offering same-day, non-emergent mental health and substance abuse psychiatric services to insured and cash-paying clients, took home second place and $125,000, including $75,000 from individual distinguished judges, $25,000 from The Caruso Foundation, $12,500 from the Polsky Center and $12,500 from the UChicago Innovation Fund. Mindful Urgent Care was the winner of the 2018 Global New Venture Challenge and will be opening its first location in New York in the next month.

Coeus.ai, a company that empowers video game streamers and gamers by utilizing proprietary machine-learning algorithms to automatically create hundreds of highlights out of any video game stream and gameplay, won third place and $90,000, which includes $40,000 from OCA Ventures, $25,000 from The Caruso Foundation, $12,500 from the Polsky Center and $12,500 from the UChicago Innovation Fund.

There was a tie between MUU and BrewBike, each taking home $45,000. Muu, a Brazilian ice cream that has less calories, more protein and less fat than traditional brands, took home $22,500 from the Polsky Center and $22,500 from the UChicago Innovation Fund. BrewBike, a company that provides coffee to college communities, took home $20,000 for their acceptance into the Pritzker Group Venture Fellows Program this summer, $12,500 from the Polsky Center and $12,500 from the UChicago Innovation Fund.

Oxalo Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company based on University of Chicago research and committed to ending the epidemic of kidney stones, took home $25,000, including $12,500 from the Polsky Center and $12,500 from the UChicago Innovation Fund.

nuBorn Medical, a company creating a smart baby bottle system to diagnose and treat feeding problems in preterm infants, took home $15,000 including $7,500 from the Polsky Center and $7,500 from the UChicago Innovation Fund.

Four finalists: Seurat Therapeutics, FORESEEaBill, Sweet Karma and Haystack ABI each took home $10,000, including $5,000 from the Polsky Center and $5,000 from the UChicago Innovation Fund. Seurat Therapeutics is a biotech startup developing a new medication that can stop migraines before they start. FORSEEaBill is an innovative platform technology that provides life sciences organizations with decision support in identifying the appropriate payer for every test, procedure and service performed during a clinical trial. Sweet Karma is a dessert company focusing on innovative dessert for health and fitness conscious people. Haystack ABI is a data-driven management platform for restaurants.

The New Venture Challenge finals is one of the marquee events of UChicago Innovation Fest. Now in its third year, UChicago Innovation Fest celebrates pioneering discovery and entrepreneurial endeavors at the University of Chicago. Led by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, the month of events, workshops and accelerator programs highlights the breadth and impact of innovation at UChicago in the areas of entrepreneurship and research commercialization, scientific advancements and social impact.

University to bestow five honorary degrees at Convocation

Tue, 29 May 2018 14:48 -0500

The University of Chicago will present honorary degrees to five distinguished scholars during the 531st Convocation on June 9.

The honorary degree recipients are Fabiola Gianotti, the director-general of CERN; Charles M. Lieber, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor at Harvard University; Michael C.A. Macdonald, research associate in the faculty of Oriental Studies and the Khalili Research Centre at the University of Oxford; Robert E. Ricklefs, the Curator’s Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis; and William S-Y. Wang, chair professor of Language and Cognitive Sciences at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Fabiola Gianotti, an experimental particle physicist who led the search and characterization of the Higgs boson, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science.

Gianotti led the 3,000-member ATLAS collaboration since its inception at CERN Laboratory to search for the Higgs boson, one of the most sought-after objects in scientific history. Her early career was devoted to the search for supersymmetric particles, which could provide stability to nature’s two very different fundamental energy scales—gravity and weak interaction.

Gianotti is a member of the Italian Academy of Sciences, a foreign associate of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Sciences, and an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy. She is the author or co-author of more than 500 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Her scientific and societal contributions have been recognized by prestigious honors, including the Special Fundamental Physics Prize of the Milner Foundation, the Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society, the Medal of Honor of the Niels Bohr Institute of Copenhagen, and the honor of “Cavaliere di Gran Croce dell’ordine al merito della Repubblica” by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

Charles M. Lieber, a groundbreaking scholar of nanoscience and nanomaterials, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science.

Lieber has defined directions and demonstrated applications of nanomaterials in areas like electronics, computing and photonics, and has pioneered the interface of nanoelectronics with biology and medicine, including his current focus on brain science. He has originated new paradigms that have defined the rational growth, characterization and original applications of functional nanometer diameter wires and heterostructures, and provided seminal concepts central to the bottom-up paradigm of nanoscience.

Lieber’s work has been recognized by a number of awards, including two National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Awards, the MRS Von Hippel Award, the Willard Gibbs Medal and the Wolf Prize in Chemistry. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine. He is also a fellow of the Materials Research Society and American Chemical Society, and honorary fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society. In addition, Lieber is co-editor of the journal Nano Letters, and serves on the editorial and advisory boards of a number of other journals. He has published over 395 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and is the principal inventor on more than 40 patents.

Michael C.A. Macdonald, a leading expert in early language and civilization in the Arabian Peninsula, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

Macdonald has improved knowledge of the languages, religions, cultures and history of ancient Arabia and neighboring areas, including the Hellenistic and Roman Near East, through his scholarship on the vast number of inscriptions on the Arabian peninsula that predate the language of the Quran. Macdonald created the Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia, a database that collects more than 70,000 inscriptions, many of which were unearthed, edited and translated by Macdonald himself. He was instrumental in establishing the field of Ancient North Arabian studies as an academic field in its own right, and has been its foremost scholar for the past three decades. He has fundamentally enabled the work of scholars of Ancient North Arabia, and has contributed research and writing that has shaped and guided this field.

In addition to his many articles, Macdonald also wrote the book Literacy and Identity in Pre-Islamic Arabia (2009). Macdonald was elected to the Fellowship of the British Academy in 2016.

Robert E. Ricklefs, a leading figure in evolutionary ecology, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science.

Ricklefs has contributed fundamental research linking disease dynamics to macro-ecology, linking life-history evolution with macro-evolutionary patterns, and searching for commonalities in patterns of ecological communities across types of organisms and geographic areas. His research focused on history’s role in determining population densities and distributions on islands, at a time when other leading ecological researchers were emphasizing the importance of species interactions at local scales for shaping species distributions. Because of this, his work represents the modern foundation for the recent synthesis of local conditions and historical processes in shaping the composition of communities of organisms.

Ricklefs is the recipient of the 2015 Ramon Margalef Prize from the government of Catalonia, the 2011 Alfred Russel Wallace award from the International Biogeography Society and the 1999 President’s Award from the American Society of Naturalists, among other honors. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

William S-Y. Wang, a pioneer in the study of language evolution and the emergence of new languages, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

Wang is an internationally renowned linguist whose scholarship and academic impact have spanned two continents across the Pacific Ocean. He has performed multidisciplinary research on the biological and evolutionary basis of language, as well as computational linguistics with a focus on the production and processing of language, the brain and computer interface, machine translation, and speech synthesis and recognition. He was one of the first to apply a combination of linguistics and acoustics to the problem of machine recognition of speech.

Wang is the founder and lead editor of the Journal of Chinese Linguistics, which is the top publication in this field. He has had full professorial careers at the University of California, Berkeley; at the City University of Hong Kong; and at National Taiwan Normal University. His wide-ranging scholarship has been written in or translated into Chinese, English, French, German, Italian and Japanese.

UChicago hosts art exhibit honoring Illinois military members killed in combat

Fri, 25 May 2018 14:00 -0500

Through Memorial Day, the University of Chicago will host an art exhibit that honors military service members from Illinois killed in combat since 2001. Featuring more than 200 hand-sketched portraits, Portrait of a Soldier will be on display in the McCormick Tribune Lounge in the Reynolds Club through May 29.

During an opening reception on May 24, UChicago Associate Vice President David Chearo urged the audience gathered to use Memorial Day as “a time to reflect upon those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.” A Marine veteran, Chearo appreciated that events like this on campus acknowledge that “your experiences and your brothers and sisters that have been lost are appreciated.”

Bridget Collier, associate provost and director of the Equal Opportunity Programs at UChicago, welcomed community members to the opening of the exhibit, which she said was created “to put faces to the names of the fallen.”

The reception included several speakers, including Ivan Samstein, vice president and chief financial officer at UChicago and an Army veteran; first-year student and ROTC member Nathan Kim; and former Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois.

The portraits were created by artist Cameron Schilling of Mattoon, Illinois, who drew the first in 2004 of a Mattoon Army veteran who died in Iraq. Then-Illinois Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn saw the sketches and established the memorial exhibit in 2004, bringing it across Illinois.

“Memorial Day is a day to never forget all of those who gave their last full measure of devotion to our democracy,” said Quinn, alluding to President Abraham Lincoln’s sentiment delivered in “The Gettysburg Address.” Quinn encouraged visitors to take the opportunity to explore the portraits and see each of the men and women depicted, “to look into the eyes of the service members” and “see their soul.”

The exhibit was brought to UChicago with the support of the Maroon Veterans Alliance. Kim, who is also vice president of the organization, closed the event with a reading of the famed John McCrae poem, “In Flanders Fields,” an ode to veterans of World War I.

Kim told the crowd that the exhibit was a powerful reminder that “regardless of our race, our backgrounds, our sexual orientation, we’re all Americans.”

Students bring accessibility to forefront in organizing disability studies conference

Fri, 25 May 2018 11:38 -0500

A scholar of linguistic anthropology and the anthropology of disability, UChicago graduate student Sharon Seegers conducts research on sign language interpreters in Hanoi. Her work focuses on the ways interpreters are dependent on deaf people and what it means to value interpreters’ dependence.

Seegers appreciated the opportunity to present her disability-focused research at a recent UChicago conference focused on disability studies. The Chicago Disabilities Studies Conference was conducted in an environment designed to accommodate attendees with disabilities.

“A lot of the scholars who did present are students with disabilities and also disability scholars,” said Seegers of the April 20-21 event, which highlighted research from undergraduate and graduate students and faculty from across the country. “It was a great opportunity for disabled scholars to present their work in an accessible environment.”

A dyslexic student, Seegers was one of the UChicago students who helped plan and organize this year’s conference, which offered attendees with disabilities resources including American sign language interpreters, CART services, large-print materials and access copies. This was the fourth annual conference, which was held at the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Stephanie Ban, a fourth-year student at UChicago, presented her BA thesis, which focuses on how three Chicago-area universities addressed the issue of wheelchair accessibility prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. She was impressed by the wide variety of speakers and topics at the event.

“Whatever your interest was in disability studies, someone at the conference was speaking on that exact topic,” said Ban, who added it “served to highlight that disability is a form of diversity that should be embraced more widely across campus.”

Matthew Borus, a graduate student in the School of Social Service Administration and the Department of Sociology, participated in a panel on disability organizing and activism. His research focuses on the significant role of the Disability Rag, a print periodical in the 1980s that gained wide circulation and national focus, in the disability rights movement.

“This was primarily an academic conference engaging multiple disciplines,” Borus said, “and it also modeled accessibility practices that can be a lot more common.”

Student organizers hope the conference will return to UChicago in future years and will help increase the visibility of disability studies.

UChicago project archives decades of South Side home movies

Tue, 08 May 2018 15:32 -0500

From birthday parties to family holidays and picnics to parades, scenes from everyday life on the South Side of Chicago are featured in a new UChicago film preservation project that aims to reflect the history and diversity of families and communities.

More than 200 home movies shot from 1929 to 1982 make up the South Side Home Movie Project and its new digital archive. The project, founded and directed by Prof. Jacqueline Stewart, a renowned scholar of African-American film culture, is the culmination of 13 years of work to collect, preserve, repair and digitize home movie collections, including that of Stewart’s family, which lived in Princeton Park.

Although largely silent, the footage—shot on 8 mm, Super 8 mm and 16 mm film—speaks volumes to scholars like Stewart as well as the students and filmmakers who can benefit from these “unique documents of cultural and social history.”

“I’m interested in visual details of family and community life—the details that rarely make it into mainstream films or conventional histories of Chicago,” said Stewart, professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies and the College, who grew up in Hyde Park. “The movies we collect are intimate, first-hand visual records of work and play, of traditions and spontaneous acts. Scenes of families dancing or eating or traveling together personalize and illuminate aspects of our history that are often intangible, even in still photographs. And they activate memories, crucial knowledge and expertise that too often goes unrecognized.”

The free online archive contains film from Chicago neighborhoods ranging from Chatham to Bridgeport to Chicago’s East Side. Oral histories recorded by family members describing their home movies are available as companion works to the films. The digital archive is fully browseable and also allows visitors to add tags and comments to help identify places, people and events as part of the collective historical project.

“The movies we collect are intimate, first-hand visual records of work and play, of traditions and spontaneous acts…and they activate memories, crucial knowledge and expertise that too often goes unrecognized.”Prof. Jacqueline Stewart

Through this new digital archive, and an active program of screenings and exhibitions across the South Side, the project has worked to ensure that this archive will be available to students, teachers, researchers, artists and filmmakers today and in future generations. Film clips may be downloaded for research and creative projects with written permission from the project.

“We are frequently approached by documentary filmmakers who have difficulty finding footage of family life in Chicago, particularly among African-Americans, during this time period,” Stewart said. “Also, having worked with local musicians who find inspiration in the poetic silence of these films, and high school students who use SSHMP films to reflect on pressing issues of gentrification and activism, we welcome inquiries regarding creative projects as well as research projects.”

The project is actively seeking participants to contribute their films and stories to the archive.

The project is supported by the University of Chicago's Division of the Humanities, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, the Film Studies Center, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, the Women’s Board of the University of Chicago and the Office of Civic Engagement’s Community Program Accelerator.

$35 million in NIH funding launches health research accelerator with UChicago

Fri, 04 May 2018 09:19 -0500

The University of Chicago and UChicago Medicine are part of a new health research accelerator that has launched thanks to nearly $35 million from the National Institutes of Health.

The Institute for Translational Medicine will work to improve people's lives by pursuing research breakthroughs and getting those discoveries into the real world.

“This vital initiative will help drive research and discovery that can greatly and more efficiently benefit the health of our patients and surrounding communities,” said Kenneth Polonsky, dean and executive vice president of medical affairs at the University of Chicago. “We look forward to leveraging these new opportunities, technologies and the robust network of resources now available to our medical and academic communities—as well as to our local community partners—to continue to advance medicine that makes a difference in people’s lives.”

The ITM is a partnership between the University of Chicago and Rush in collaboration with Advocate Health Care, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Loyola University Chicago and NorthShore University HealthSystem that’s fueled by millions of dollars in funding from the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. Over the next five years, the funding will help researchers, the public, government, industry and nonprofits work together to improve the health of Chicagoland residents.

“The ITM supports clinical and translational research in so many ways,” said Julian Solway, dean for Translational Medicine at the University of Chicago and one of the ITM three principal investigators. “We’re thrilled to launch this organized effort and work with such great allies to speed up the innovation pipeline.”

(From left): Susan Cohn, UChicago dean for clinical research; Joshua Jacobs, vice provost for research at Rush; Sara Serritella, ITM director of communications; Gerald Moose Stacy, ITM administrative director; Prof. Eric Beyer, ITM career development core leader; and Julian Solway, UChicago Dean for Translational Medicine, visit the new ITM location at the UChicago campus. (Photo by Alan Klehr)

It currently takes an average of 14 years to get new treatments made and to the public, according to the NIH. The ITM will work to cut down that timeline and turn research findings into uses that can improve human health, ranging from social media messenger tools that are being developed to diagnose and help treat depression from your smartphone to school programs scientifically proven to reduce violence.

Opportunities for UChicago and beyond

The ITM offers faculty and staff from all UChicago schools and departments funding for any form of research that could be applied to improve human health. It also offers specialized facilities, discounted rates, insider connections to local and national collaborators, and other resources.

Students and junior researchers can take advantage of mentoring from world-renowned senior faculty. Free training and educational programming will also be available, ranging from basic research essentials to how to write successful grants taught by former reviewers themselves to science communications training.

The ITM is part of a network of more than 55 hubs across the country supported by NCATS’ Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, bringing both local and national education, funding, and other opportunities to the UChicago community.

And those opportunities extend beyond campus: nonprofit organizations, South Side neighborhoods and others across Chicagoland will be able to partner with researchers from all six Chicago ITM institutions to build studies, make discoveries and raise awareness about the health areas they care about the most.

“We’re all in this together,” said Susan Cohn, dean for clinical research at the University of Chicago and a principal investigator on the ITM grant. “Everyone is invited to come to the table, share their voice and come up with creative solutions that we’ll help make a reality.”

The ITM will help those solutions live beyond the lab by providing connections to its network of partners that include industry, startup accelerators, venture capital firms, government agencies, patient advocacy groups and others.

One such partner is the Chicago Department of Public Health. The ITM will collaborate to address Chicagoans’ health needs identified in the City’s Healthy Chicago 2.0 report.

“The city of Chicago is very excited about this partnership and how it will directly impact the health needs of our communities,” said CDPH Commissioner Julie Morita. “We’ve put a lot of time and resources into identifying the problems, and this partnership will help address the problems with dynamic solutions. Being part of this team will help us make sure those solutions are backed by science and created with input from both the experts and the residents who are impacted by it.”

Patients and families will also benefit from being at the forefront of medicine so that they can take advantage of breakthroughs as soon as possible.

“Everyone benefits from health research, from finding new cures to finding ways to stay healthier in the first place,” Solway said.

Valerie Jarrett named UChicago’s 2018 Class Day speaker

Thu, 03 May 2018 12:28 -0500

Valerie Jarrett, former senior adviser to President Obama and a distinguished senior fellow in the University of Chicago Law School, has been named the invited speaker for UChicago’s Class Day celebration.

A corporate executive and attorney respected for her leadership in public service, Jarrett will address the College’s graduating students and their families about the responsibilities of global citizenship. Her address is part of the Class Day event starting at 2 p.m. on Friday, June 8, in the Main Quadrangle. The gathering will include the presentation of College awards and speeches by students from the Class of 2018. Class Day began last year and is a celebration that kicks off Convocation weekend.

“We are delighted that Valerie Jarrett will join the College in celebrating this year’s graduating class,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College and the Martin A. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of History. “Our graduates are intellectual leaders whose knowledge and analytical skills equip them to address the world’s most pressing social, economic and environmental challenges. Valerie Jarrett’s distinguished career and viewpoints will provide extraordinary perspective on the global role of scholarly leaders.”

The longest-serving senior adviser to President Obama, Jarrett oversaw the White House Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. She also chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls and co-chaired the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.

Before joining the Obama administration, Jarrett was the CEO of The Habitat Company, a real estate development and management company. She also served under Chicago Mayors Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley and has held numerous board positions, including vice chairman of the University of Chicago’s Board of Trustees.

“I am honored to be selected as the Class Day speaker at the University of Chicago,” Jarrett said. “I am incredibly optimistic about our future because of the talent in the Class of 2018 and am excited to share in their celebration of this momentous occasion.”

Most Americans look to research universities for innovation leadership, finds Polsky Center

Wed, 02 May 2018 10:15 -0500

An overwhelming majority of Americans are looking to research universities to be the foremost drivers of innovation at a time of anxiety over global competition, according to a new Innovation Indicator survey from the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago.

The Polsky Innovation Indicator found that 71 percent of Americans believe research universities are a “major force” in driving U.S. innovation, considerably more than the number who said that of large corporations, startup businesses or government. The survey also points to real challenges for global competitiveness, with just one in four people viewing America as the global leader in innovation. That suggests a growing need for universities to provide leadership through field-defining research and applying new knowledge to benefit society.

“Even though innovative ideas continue to flow from American universities and businesses, greater global competition means we need to do even more to maintain our leadership position,” said Steven N. Kaplan, faculty director of the Polsky Center and the Neubauer Family Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “That takes both research funding and energizing people to commercialize that research through discovery and entrepreneurship.”

(Image courtesy of Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation)

The Polsky Innovation Indicator was conducted in April by NORC at the University of Chicago and released to coincide with the UChicago Innovation Fest, which runs May 1 through June 3, celebrating pioneering discovery and entrepreneurial endeavors at the University.

Speaking at a May 2nd event announcing the survey results at the Polsky Exchange, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin agreed that research universities are an important catalyst for American innovation, augmenting the actions of the federal government.

“The federal government can provide an environment for growth, but it’s the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators around the U.S. who are going to lead us to a successful 21st century,” Durbin said. “UChicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship is creating an environment where they can excel.”

Slipping as innovation leader

The Polsky Innovation Indicator found that 28 percent of people surveyed said they consider the U.S. the world’s leader in innovation, with 29 percent saying the nation is falling behind and 42 percent viewing the U.S. on par with other industrialized countries.

The survey results follow recent reports raising concerns about the U.S.’s global competitiveness in innovation. The 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index placed the United States out of the top 10 most innovative economies for the first time in the report’s history. The number of new companies in the U.S. has dropped by half since 1980, producing what some economists have labeled a “startup deficit,” slowing productivity and economic growth. In 2016, for the first time, Chinese venture capital fundraising matched U.S. levels—with much of that investment coming from within China’s borders.

Leadership role for universities

As for what fuels innovation in the U.S., 71 percent of respondents said research universities are a driving force for innovation versus 60 percent for large corporations, 53 percent for startups and 47 percent for government. At the same time, more than half of respondents in the Polsky Innovation Indicator considered declines in public and private funding a major barrier to innovation.

“This survey reinforces what the American people see every day—that our research universities have propelled the United States to a global leadership role in innovation and are essential public goods. But without robust and sustained federal research investments, research universities will be unable to help ensure that the U.S. remains at the top, by providing the people, ideas and discoveries that enhance our economy, improve our public health and bolster the national defense,” said Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Association of American Universities.

Despite increased emphasis on commercialization and entrepreneurship at universities, respondents said that academic institutions can still do more to lead U.S. innovation. Sixty-one percent of respondents to the Polsky Innovation Indicator survey said that universities play “about the same role they have always played” in creating the next generation of innovation and only a quarter said that universities are “leading the charge more than ever before.”

“Universities still need to find a more effective way to help innovators move their discoveries into the marketplace. At UChicago, the Polsky Center is providing a distinct engine for advancing innovation,” said Eric Isaacs, Executive Vice President for Research, Innovation and National Laboratories at UChicago, at the Polsky event. “We’re building on our record by putting pieces into place that enable us to open new facilities and launch new ventures dedicated to enriching lives here in our community and across the world.”

The Polsky Innovation Indicator survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. Interviews for this survey were conducted between April 11 and 16, 2018, with adults age 18 and over representing the 50 states and the District of Columbia. 1,086 panel members completed the survey—975 via the web and 111 via telephone. The overall margin of sampling error is +/- 4.2 percentage points.

The University of Chicago Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation brings the power of ideas in the laboratory, classroom and community to the world. Through education, resources, and programs, the Polsky Center commercializes discoveries, partners with companies, and attracts venture capital. The Polsky Center runs UChicago’s top-ranked business accelerator, the Edward L. Kaplan, ’71, New Venture Challenge, which has helped launch more than 185 companies worldwide that have gone on to achieve more than $10 billion in value and raised over $600 million in funding. The mission of the Polsky Center is to support students, faculty, alumni, and community members by bridging the gap between knowledge and practice, idea and action, and research and impact. By igniting a spirit of innovation and fostering connections that extend across the University, city, region and world, the Polsky Center enables more ideas to have a meaningful impact on society. Learn more at polsky.uchicago.edu.

NORC at the University of Chicago is an objective, nonpartisan research institution that delivers reliable data and rigorous analysis to guide critical programmatic, business, and policy decisions. Since 1941, NORC has conducted groundbreaking studies, created and applied innovative methods and tools, and advanced principles of scientific integrity and collaboration. Today, government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world partner with NORC to transform increasingly complex information into useful knowledge. Learn more at norc.org.

UChicago Medicine begins Level 1 adult trauma care

Tue, 01 May 2018 16:55 -0500

The University of Chicago Medicine began providing adult trauma care on May 1, with the first patient being brought by ambulance at noon, signaling the official activation of its Level 1 Adult Trauma Center.

The beginning of adult trauma services comes as UChicago Medicine is being recognized for high-quality medical care in many areas. In the last two weeks, UChicago Medicine also announced it had earned its 13th sequential “A” rating in patient safety from industry watchdog Leapfrog Group and that it achieved Magnet Recognition status—the gold standard for nursing excellence and high-quality patient care, from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

“The events of the past seven days are testimony to the tremendous strides UChicago Medicine has made over the past several years to be a stronger academic health system for its community, patients and their families,” said Kenneth S. Polonsky, dean and executive vice president of medical affairs at UChicago. “We thank each and every one of our faculty and staff for their hard work in getting this organization to this point.”

The program adds to UChicago Medicine’s pediatric trauma and burn services, providing the community a comprehensive system of care to treat the full range of trauma injuries in patients of all ages.

“Today represents the culmination of years of advocacy, planning and partnership,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. “I commend the community members, advocates, University of Chicago and their health care partners for working together in a coordinated, collaborative effort to ensure equity in essential medical services and that the highest quality health care is in close reach of every resident of Chicago.”

Since announcing plans to become a Level 1 Adult Trauma Center in December 2015, UChicago Medicine staff have logged thousands of hours preparing to provide care to trauma patients. It has hired additional employees, including 18 experienced trauma professionals from around the country. Interdisciplinary teams have been developing wraparound services to support trauma patients and their families, and newly crafted internal policies and procedures tweak everything from laboratory testing protocols to blood bank operations.

“All three of these achievements are further validation of our efforts to improve quality, safety and service to our patients, faculty and staff collaboration, and employee and community engagement," said Sharon O’Keefe, president of the medical center.

—This story first appeared on the UChicago Medicine website.

LGBTQ young adults experience homelessness at more than twice the rate of their peers

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 15:00 -0500

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer young adults are more than twice as likely to experience homelessness as their non-LGBTQ peers. They are also at greater risk for experiencing high levels of hardship, including higher rates of assault, of exchanging sex for basic needs and of early death. These findings emerged from research by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, which provides new insights to the challenges faced by America’s youth who experience homelessness.

“Our study reveals the vulnerability of LGBTQ youth in our country today. They are at higher risk both before and during their experiences of homelessness,” said Bryan Samuels, executive director of Chapin Hall. “Given the evidence that our young people are in harm’s way, we have an obligation to act to protect them. Fortunately, our findings point to solutions, too.”

This is the second in a series of research briefs on youth experiencing homelessness. A paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health was the basis for the first brief, which identified high levels of youth homelessness nationwide.

The report is among the first national assessments of the increased risks facing LGBTQ youth. It found:

LGBTQ youth are among the most at-risk sub populations for homelessness. Young adults (18-25) who identify as LGBTQ experienced homelessness at more than twice the rate of their non-LGBTQ peers. Black LGBTQ youth, especially young men, had the highest rates of homelessness.
Among youth experiencing homelessness, LGBTQ youth had twice the rate of early death as other youth. LGBTQ youth also experienced higher levels of adversity, including higher rates of assault and of exchanging sex for basic needs.
Youth made decisions about seeking services based on the reputation of the agency providing the services. Safe and affirming systems and services are important to LGBTQ youth.
The factors that led young LGBTQ people to experience homelessness stem from more than “coming out.” Their families faced broader issues of instability, including poverty, violence, addiction or mental health problems that contributed to their risk for homelessness and adversity.

In addition to revealing critical insights to LGBTQ youth homelessness, the report also details solutions that can help protect LGBTQ youth who are homeless now and that can prevent homelessness in the future. These solutions include:

Provide enhanced training across the provider community, including Medicaid providers, to identify and respond to the trauma and hardship faced by this population.
Engage LGBTQ youth as full partners in strengthening systems and services.
Encourage community organizations and systems working with runaway and homeless youth to institute more sensitive data collection about sexual orientation and gender identity.
Add or revise guidance in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration Block Grant on how these resources can better support LGBTQ and minority LGBTQ youth.
Evaluate the most promising programs and interventions to determine their effectiveness for LGBTQ youth. The federal government can take the lead by providing evaluation funding for core interventions.

“One critical insight we’ve gained from this study is that LGBTQ youth won’t use services they don’t trust,” said Matthew Morton, research fellow at Chapin Hall, who oversaw the study. “The reputation of providers matters, and that reputation has to be earned. Safe and affirming systems and services are critical to helping LGBTQ youth. If we don’t take action on this, we run the risk of missing out on the talents, skills and contributions of many LGBTQ youth.”

The first Voices brief on National Estimates found that one in 10 young adults, and one in 30 teens ages 13-17, experienced homelessness over a year. Upcoming briefs will explore findings on other subpopulations of youth experiencing homelessness, including pregnant and parenting youth and rural youth.

Artist and activist Ai Weiwei to screen, discuss new film April 29 at UChicago

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 15:15 -0500

The Logan Center for the Arts will host renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei on Sunday, April 29 for a Q&A and screening of Human Flow, his new documentary on the global refugee crisis.

Captured over the course of a year in 23 countries, Human Flow follows the stories of the more than 65 million people who have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II.

Reservations for the screening are sold out, but the live Q&A with Ai Weiwei will be streamed here beginning at 4 p.m. CDT. Both the screening and Q&A are part of a nationwide simulcast.

The event is presented by UChicago Arts and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with additional support provided by the Pozen Family Center for Human Rights and the Chicago Humanities Festival.

Following the screening, the audience will have a chance to learn more about local, national, and international immigrant and refugee organizations, including Refugee One, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the Heartland Alliance.

Learn more about Human Flow and Ai Weiwei here.

Playwright Martyna Majok, AB’07, wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 12:44 -0500

Editor’s note: Playwright Martyna Majok, AB’07, was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play, Cost of Living. In the award, the play is described as “an honest, original work that invites audiences to examine diverse perceptions of privilege and human connection through two pairs of mismatched individuals.” The play appeared Off-Broadway in 2017 and was called ‘immensely haunting’ by The New York Times.

The Polish-born Majok spoke with UChicago News in 2014 about another of her works, a comedy entitled Ironbound that appeared at the Steppenwolf Theatre, as well as her experience as a performer and playwright while at the University. The original story appears below:

Martyna Majok’s “Ironbound” is the story of the relationship between Darja, a struggling Polish immigrant, and three very different men. The play, she says, was inspired by the work of Marxist theorist Slavoj Zizek.

It’s also a comedy.

Despite its weighty subject matter, the last thing Majok wants is “for the audience to sit there for the next hour and a half thinking this is just drama. You have to give them permission to laugh.”

“Ironbound” emerged as Majok was preparing to marry her then-fiancé and reflecting on “who has the privilege to marry for love.” Both Majok and her husband grew up poor and chose to pursue careers in the arts. Majok says they feared they would never have economic security. “We know how hard it is to get out of a cycle of poverty.”

She began to reflect on the romantic choices made by her mother—like Darja, a working-class immigrant from Poland.

“She would make what ended up being the wrong decisions for all the right reasons, trying to do the best thing that she could for her children and for herself,” Majok explains.

Around the same time, Majok was reading Zizek’s Violence during long commutes between a residency and teaching position at a theater in New Jersey and Connecticut, where her fiancé was in graduate school. “What I took away from that is that capitalism makes us treat each other as commodities,” she says. “‘What can you do for me, what can I do for you’ doesn’t exactly equal love.”

With Zizek’s writing, her mother’s experience, and her own impending marriage all simmering in her head, Majok dashed off the first draft of “Ironbound” in just a week. The play follows Darja over 22 years, depicting her at different points in her three marriages and showing her fierce struggle to survive and provide security for her son.

After two workshop productions, she submitted “Ironbound” to Steppenwolf at the suggestion of the company’s literary manager, who had mentored Majok during an internship after college.

“Part of our deal was that if I came to Chicago, I had to bring him Polish food, so I just brought him three pounds of kielbasa and some pierogi. Hopefully he liked it. I haven’t heard back from him, so maybe it was too much,” Majok jokes.

Becoming a playwright was never Majok’s plan, although she always showed a flair for writing. She didn’t see her first play until high school, when she won $45 playing pool and decided to treat herself to a production of “Cabaret” on Broadway.

As a University of Chicago undergraduate, she tried out for a play and fell in love with the strong bonds she created with her castmates. “I loved the communities that you form—these little ridiculous, inside joke-y families,” she says.

Her love of theater flourished as she studied with David Bevington and Nick Rudall at UChicago. She delved into playwriting during a quarter studying abroad in Paris.

She describes her first play as “the 22-year-old play that you write about your family. It was a super dark and ungenerous and emo play.” University Theater ultimately produced the piece, and Majok decided she wanted to make playwriting a career.

“It’s the thing that I found challenging and exciting and I felt it had worth,” she explains. “Leaving some sort of permanence was attractive.”

Supported by a fellowship from the Merage Foundation for the American Dream, Majok spent the first two years after graduating from UChicago immersing herself in the theater community by watching, studying, reading and writing as many plays as she could. She went on to study playwriting at the Yale School of Drama.

Over time, she says, she’s worked to make her plays funnier and less self-serious than her earlier efforts, and to write rich, complex female characters. “Women with strong appetites and flaws—I would like to see these women on stage, and if I were an actor, I would want to play these women who go after something hungrily,” she says.

Her next project focuses on the women and families that continued to live near Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster, despite the risks to their health and safety.

Even when tackling the weighty topic of Chernobyl, Majok’s darkly comedic sensibility still shines through. “It’s a musical,” she says.

Jeanne Gang discusses ‘mining the city’ for inspiration about architecture and design

Tue, 17 Apr 2018 10:31 -0500

For architect Jeanne Gang, the materials that compose the built environment are as important to her as the final design.

Speaking April 10 at UChicago’s Logan Center for the Arts, Gang recalled visiting a ruin on St. John’s several years ago that served as inspiration: Although its craggy stone walls seemed unremarkable at first, Gang later discovered that they were made up of the skeletons of harvested coral and brick shards that were likely used as ballast on slave ships.

“The question is: Are all materials tainted with history, or can they be redeemed in some way?” Gang asked in her address, the first of three Randy L. & Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures, in which the University highlights individuals making fundamental contributions to the arts, humanities and humanistic social sciences.

Jeanne Gang, "Material World", Lecture 1 of 3, 04.10.18

Video of Jeanne Gang, "Material World", Lecture 1 of 3, 04.10.18

Jeanne Gang, "Material World", Lecture 1 of 3

Gang is best known for combining elements of ecological systems into her designs—from the 82-story Aqua Tower (2010) in downtown Chicago, which resembles a landscape of hills and valleys; to the Ford Calumet Environmental Center (2008), which used the nest-making process of birds for inspiration.

“I’ve always been sensitive to materials in architecture, seeing the choice of them and the deployment of them on equal footing with the building’s function, its form, its technologies,” Gang added. “The issue of where materials come from, the resources they consume, where they end up, and the way they make people feel, are all central to my thoughts about architecture.”

In three talks entitled “Mining the City,” Gang will explore various elements of the built environment. She framed the first discussion around the ubiquitous three Rs of environmentalism—reduce, reuse, recycle—as starting points for “reusing physical resources rather than starting from complete scratch.”

In a wide-ranging discussion, Gang explored architecture and design from the growth of mass consumerism by the American public in the post-war 1950s, up to modern innovations for making better use of space through concepts like tiny houses and micro apartments.

Gang shared concepts for current and past projects, including the conversion of a former coal-burning power plant into a modern student union at Beloit College, to a network of flexible live-and-work units in the former factory town of suburban Cicero.

Pioneering architectural vision

Gang was introduced to a crowd April 10 by Christine Mehring, chair of the Department of Art History at UChicago, who recognized Gang as one of a handful of successful female architects in the history of architecture. Mehring praised Gang’s efforts to bring more diverse perspectives to the profession during a celebrated career.

“In little over a decade, Jeanne has built an international reputation for advancing and intertwining the social, elemental and formal possibilities of architecture and design in the 21st century,” Mehring said.

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2018 Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures

The founding principal of Studio Gang, an international architecture and urban design practice based in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, Gang was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2011, which recognized her as “an architect challenging the aesthetic and technical possibilities of the art form in a wide range of structures.” Locally, her projects include the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo (2010), Northerly Island (2015) and closer to UChicago, the Campus North Residential Commons (2016).

Most recently, Gang also was named one of seven designers selected by the curatorial team for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, for which the University of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago are serving as commissioners.

Gang’s next Berlin Lecture is April 17, a talk entitled “The Uneven City,” which will followed by her final talk on April 24, “Mutualism in the Anthropocene.” Both will begin at 6 p.m. in the Performance Hall at the Logan Center.

A $10 million grant will support Crime Lab collaboration for police innovation

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 17:20 -0500

A $10 million grant from philanthropist Ken Griffin will support a transformative new initiative to reduce violent crime in Chicago, through a collaboration with Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Police Department and the University of Chicago Crime Lab.

The grant to the University of Chicago will strengthen violence prevention efforts by the city of Chicago and Chicago police by ensuring officers have the tools and support they need to more effectively fight violent crime and build community trust. It will accelerate proven programs, advance technology and data analytics, provide officer training and support, and launch an innovation fund to help make Chicago a safer place to live and work. The grant builds on the city of Chicago’s comprehensive effort to promote effective and equitable policing and complements the work of city agencies and community partners implementing the city’s public safety strategy.

The University of Chicago is committed to advancing urban research with the potential to make a lasting impact in addressing society’s greatest challenges. Since the University launched the Crime Lab in 2008, the initiative has partnered with community organizations across the country to design, rigorously test and scale programs with the greatest potential to improve lives. These efforts include programs such as Choose to Change’s trauma-informed mentoring and therapy for Chicago youth, and the recently launched READI Chicago initiative, which provides intensive transitional jobs and wraparound supports for those at the center of Chicago’s violence. This new grant to support police innovation complements these other efforts to improve academic outcomes for youth, enhance income opportunities for those living in communities most impacted by violence and reduce the harms of the criminal justice system.

“This incredibly generous donation will help us deliver on our comprehensive public safety strategy by expanding training, technology and trust between police and residents,” said Emanuel. “This is another demonstration of how civic innovation, academia and philanthropy can come together to create meaningful and lasting impact for the city we all love. The impact of Ken’s donation will be felt for generations to come.”

The grant will support the Chicago Police Department and the Crime Lab’s joint efforts to leverage data analysis, community input and technology resources to improve public safety in four key ways: sustaining the Crime Lab’s support of the strategic decision support centers, advancing the use of data analytics within the police department, strengthening training and other supports to frontline officers, and leveraging research and technical expertise to support a safer Chicago in every neighborhood.

“As a community, we are unified in our desire for Chicago to be a safer place to live and work. No child, anywhere, should be afraid to walk to school or play outside. A safer Chicago attracts more families and better jobs, and provides a better quality of life for all,” said Ken Griffin. “I am proud to support the University of Chicago Crime Lab, whose programs have had a powerful impact on reducing violent crime. I hope this initiative inspires other leaders to join the important efforts by many to make our city safer for everyone.”

“The Crime Lab was created with the explicit goal of trying to make our city safer and more equitable for all who live here,” said Roseanna Ander, founding executive director of Crime Lab. “This generous grant will further our efforts to use data and evidence to drive progress, building on our decade of partnership with city agencies and community-based organizations across Chicago. We are proud to work with Ken Griffin and the department to further these efforts to reduce violence, to promote community engagement and trust, and to enhance opportunities for all Chicagoans.”

The new initiative complements and augments efforts to reduce violent crime in Chicago since 2016, when the city experienced a substantial increase in homicides. That includes work by partners at Chicago CRED, the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, and the Chicago Sports Alliance. Announced in December 2017, the alliance is a collaboration between the Crime Lab and the five largest Chicago professional sports teams (Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, Cubs and White Sox), who collectively donated a total of $1 million in grants to address violence in the city.

Strengthening and expanding strategic decision support centers

In early 2017, the Chicago Police Department, in close collaboration with the Crime Lab, launched the first strategic decision support centers. The SDSCs bring together a suite of technology resources, including gunshot detection systems, digital cameras and software that highlights areas in communities that are at the highest risk of violence. District commanders use these resources to monitor crime developments in real-time; develop localized crime reduction strategies to meet the needs of, and with input from, the community; and then adjust activities to prevent crime more effectively.

The weaving together of technology, analytical processes, leadership and robust community engagement is showing dramatic results with the 7th District, or Englewood, seeing a 67 percent decrease in shootings compared to 2016 and the 25th District, or Grand Central, already seeing a 40 percent reduction in shootings compared to 2017. Since their launch, the Crime Lab has embedded data analysts in the SDSCs to provide analytic support, develop processes for using data to guide decision-making and to identify opportunities for collaboration with community partners. The data from Crime Lab analysts supports Chicago officers as they develop localized crime reduction strategies using data analysis, human intelligence and input from the community. These efforts are tailored to meet the unique needs of each community, with community concerns incorporated into the district's daily planning process. A significant portion of the grant will support the Crime Lab’s continued collaboration with Chicago police in the SDSC program through 2019.

Advancing the use technology and tools to drive data analytics

The effective use of technology is at the heart of effective modern policing. The donation will expand the Chicago police’s collaboration with the Crime Lab to grow the department’s analytical framework, prioritizing data gathering, analysis and improved display of police’s core crime management system, CompStat, as well as improving the flow of information delivered and shared between police headquarters and districts. This grant will support the enhancement of the analytics framework within the police department in order to better integrate and share data across the department and improve the data management systems used to fight crime and enhance community interactions.

Supporting officers’ professional development and wellness

The Chicago Police Department is currently in the process of working with the Crime Lab to design a system to identify when and how to extend officers additional support if needed. The donation will fund the development of a comprehensive set of supports and services for front-line Chicago officers, such as training and mental health resources, that prioritize the needs of the officers and the residents of the neighborhoods where they work. Drawing on national best practices and the expertise of executive staff from police departments across the country, this work will identify, implement and evaluate robust services and supports for the officers that need them most.

Crime Lab Innovation Fund

This collaboration between the Crime Lab and the Chicago Police Department will aim to develop evidence to improve the Chicago police’s work as well as its relationship with the community. Building off recent experience, Chicago police and Crime Lab will use part of this grant to continue to collaborate on a series of innovative initiatives, including leveraging national expertise to assist and advise the department and help bring police operations set the standard for national best practices. The Crime Lab will work with the police department as a research partner that will include developing rapid response evaluations of questions in the field and designing long-term intervention tests that will ensure the police department and the Crime Lab are well positioned to benefit from emerging trends and new technology in community safety.

The Chicago Police Department is currently expanding its smart policing strategy to the 25th District and the department doubles the number of districts utilizing predictive strategies in 2018 to 13 of Chicago’s 22 districts. In the 25th District, a station-based Strategic Decision Support Center has been installed along with gunshot detection technology and additional crime cameras, to support police in preventing, combating and responding to violent crime. Year-to-date, across the police districts that have implemented an SDSC since at least January, the number of shooting victims has decreased by 41 percent, outpacing reductions citywide.

Scholars in law and economics debate impact of new interest rate benchmark

Tue, 10 Apr 2018 16:50 -0500

The Federal Reserve Bank this week began publishing a new interest rate benchmark that underpins trillions of dollars in financial products, from mortgages to car loans. With the potential expiration in 2021 of LIBOR, the ubiquitous benchmark that has been a mainstay for nearly 50 years, focus is shifting to creating new—and hopefully better—benchmarks that will meet the needs of the financial community while reducing the opportunity for manipulation.

The University of Chicago Law School and the American Financial Exchange recently convened leading figures in law and economics and international finance to discuss how the new benchmark will affect rate-setting by banks, mortgage lenders, credit cards companies and other financial institutions—and the impact on hundreds of millions of consumers. The topic is of special importance to scholars of law and economics—a field born at the University of Chicago Law School that has transformed nearly every area of law.

“Our faculty is known for asking fundamental and important questions,” said Thomas J. Miles, dean of the Law School. “This conference is an example of that because it asks fundamental and important questions about our financial system: Namely, what is the true cost of money? Who should determine that cost? And how should they determine it?”

The Law School’s Coase-Sandor Institute of Law and Economics co-sponsored the April 3 symposium to begin a discussion on the transition to LIBOR alternatives being introduced. SOFR, the Secured Overnight Financial Rate designed by the Alternative Reference Rate Committee, is an overnight secured lending rate based on the U.S. Treasury repurchase agreement market; it was published by the New York Fed for the first time on April 3. Ameribor, created by the American Financial Exchange, reflects the borrowing costs of US small-and mid-sized banks using a 30-day rolling average of the weighted average daily volume in the AFX overnight unsecured market. Two years ago when AFX started, it was trading $5 million and $10 million a day with six participating banks. Today, it has 83 member institutions and has traded as much as $780 million in a single day.

“With contracts tied to LIBOR that are valued at hundreds of trillions of dollars, practitioners need to prepare for this change in the reference rate to minimize its disruption to the financial markets and ensure an orderly transition," said Richard Sandor, CEO of AFX and the Aaron Director Lecturer in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School. “We need to understand what the potential transition to SOFR and Ameribor means.”

While dissatisfaction with LIBOR has been linked to scandals of manipulation that surfaced during the financial crisis, the main impetus for change is LIBOR’s instability and lack of underlying transactions, according to David Bowman, special adviser to the Federal Reserve Board and the conference’s keynote speaker.

“LIBOR is based on markets that are not robust. That means you have to rely on the expert judgment of the panel banks, and most of them on most days don’t report a value of LIBOR that is based on any transactions from that day. Rather, they base their submissions on their expert judgement of what they could have borrowed at that day,” Bowman explained.

Recently two banks left the US dollar panel, and others are questioning their willingness to continue to participate, raising the specter that LIBOR may not exist past 2021.

The impact would be enormous. About $200 trillion worth of financial contracts are written on LIBOR, of which 95 percent are derivatives and about $10 trillion are cash products. None of these contracts include language to deal with the end of LIBOR.

David Bowman, special adviser to the Federal Reserve Board and the conference’s keynote speaker, presents at the symposium. (Images courtesy of Kathryn Haviland)

“So if LIBOR stopped today, a bunch of really terrible things would happen based on existing contract language, seriously threatening U.S. and global financial stability,” Bowman said. “It’s not an allegiance to LIBOR itself, but rather how intertwined LIBOR is in a host of legacy trades; unwinding them will be difficult."

Yet, there is good news. About 92 percent of these legacy trades will roll off before 2021, and importantly—starting now—much of the risk related to LIBOR can be reduced immediately if better contract language is written into new trades, providing an economically sensible alternative if LIBOR stops functioning.

“If you write that into contracts now, you will take care of the bulk of your risk, and it would be fairly free,” Bowman said.

While ARRC has considered a number of reference rates as alternatives to LIBOR, it selected SOFR because it has become the most robust. Currently, the average notional daily volume of repo trades captured by SOFR is about $900 billion, compared with, $75 billion in the overnight Fed Funds market and $13 billion in US Treasury Bills.

“The Fed is not saying there can’t be a variety of reference rates, or that everyone has to trade SOFR, or that LIBOR can’t continue," Bowman continued. But if you want something to replace LIBOR potentially, it has to be the most robust rate you can find; it has to support $200 trillion: SOFR can do that.”

Randall Kroszner, the Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School and a former governor of the Federal Reserve System, sees value in using different benchmarks for different situations.

“If you can use a benchmark based on transactions, you reduce the potential for bias. But if it is valuable to have a benchmark without many underlying transactions, you make the trade-off and see how the market develops. After all, LIBOR has stayed with us for a long time, despite its potential for bias,” Kroszner said. “As we think about the transition from LIBOR, we have to consider whether we want to mandate a move in a particular direction or let some spontaneous market forces develop such as the creation of the Ameribor reference rate, which was developed by Richard [Sandor] and his colleagues at AFX for small and medium-sized banks. It may not be the right benchmark for all contracts, but it could work for a certain set. ”

Kroszner suggested there could be a benchmark competition as institutions seek out different options for different circumstances: secured versus unsecured, robust versus limited. In the future, it could be very important to have multiple benchmarks so if something does change, it will make the transition easier and give regulators more flexibility to consider different alternatives.

The legal implications around the transition are large and uncertain, regardless of the benchmark that is chosen, according to Eric Posner, the Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School. So a few scenarios can be considered.

“The first is, if everybody depends on LIBOR, is there any way to keep it going? Another possibility is to calculate LIBOR in a different way,” Posner said.

Most important, however, is the language in the contract.

“Dr. Bowman encouraged people—as they enter new contracts—to have a fallback with a different reference rate. If that’s the case, the courts will enforce the new term. However, it may be difficult to decide on the fallback rate. You want something that is an economic equivalent to LIBOR, but if you get it wrong, there will be a problem,” Posner explained.

Without a fallback term, it is likely the legacy contract would be upheld as frustrated and the contract would be terminated, with terms possibly being netted out. And there is always the potential, although unlikely, that the court could rewrite the contract.

“What to do about this? It’s important as people design benchmarks that they consider the long-term risks. And people who use them in contracts should think about including fallbacks and safeguards, despite the risks they create. In addition, people who establish benchmarks should be aware of the potential liability,” Posner added.

“We also have to think more about whether a regulatory agency should play a more active role in not only helping to establish benchmarks in the first place, but also in managing them as we go forward.“

An archived livestream of the conference is available here.

Civil rights leader to discuss MLK legacy on April 4 at Rockefeller Chapel

Mon, 02 Apr 2018 12:00 -0500

Alumnus and local activist Timuel Black will discuss the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during an April 4 event at UChicago marking the 50th anniversary of the civil rights leader’s assassination.

The 99-year-old Black, one of King’s former associates, will be in conversation with Bart Schultz, director of the Civic Knowledge Project and senior lecturer of philosophy at UChicago, beginning at 12:30 p.m. The event will take place at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel—the site of two King addresses in 1956 and 1959—and will be preceded by a half-hour of civil rights-era music from the chapel carillon.

Black was instrumental in bringing King to campus in the 1950s along with fellow members of his First Unitarian Church in Hyde Park. Black became an ardent supporter of King, organizing the Freedom Trains that took thousands of Chicagoans to the March on Washington.

In addition to his role in the civil rights movement, Black helped get Harold Washington Jr. elected as the first African-American mayor of Chicago and led an initiative to bring the Obama Presidential Center to the South Side. He also has written volumes of oral histories interviewing African-Americans who, like him, grew up on the South Side.

A longtime teacher in Chicago Public Schools, Black twice a year leads tours detailing his own life and the history of King to younger generations. “I want to continue to encourage,” said Black in a 2014 interview, “as well as do what I can to fulfill the dream that Dr. King magnified and glorified, because that’s part of the universal dream that all of us need to have.”

The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Civic Knowledge Project’s MLK Initiative, a months-long effort to commemorate the legacy of King.

Students teach local kids skating through community program

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 10:40 -0500

On one of her first nights as a UChicago student, Meera Dhodapkar was walking across campus when she noticed the lights of an empty outdoor ice rink. The sight on the Midway Plaisance in the fall of 2015 brought back fond memories of Central Park in New York, where she first learned to skate, but it also served as inspiration for connecting with her new community.

As a high schooler Dhodapkar competed for Team USA in synchronized skating, in which 16 people perform a program with intricate formations and step sequences. But it was also during this time in which the New Haven, Connecticut native taught the sport to aspiring young skaters as a volunteer instructor.

“I learned a lot about what it means to work with kids, but I really gained a deep appreciation for the sport and what a privilege it is to share it with others,” said Dhodapkar, now a third-year student studying biology and public policy. “That was something I wanted to be part of my college experience too.”

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Ice Skating on the Midway

She realized a similar program at UChicago could help local children have fun while learning crucial skills and healthy habits. With the help of the University, Dhodapkar founded a free program that introduces children to skating, promotes an active lifestyle and cultivates good sportsmanship.

Over the course of the past three seasons, the ChicaGO! initiative has grown to reach more than 120 students from neighboring schools. With the help of four UChicago student volunteers—each experienced skaters—Dhodapkar teaches weekly classes focused on basic skating techniques, ranging from falling safely to skating forward and backward to executing two-foot spins.

“To know that I could inspire others to take an interest in the sport is something I couldn’t pass up,” said Calvin Chu, a third-year UChicago student volunteer. “The students begin as we all do: nervous and afraid of falling. But over time, they gain confidence through skating, and those are the moments I’ve cherished as part of the program.”

Creating community partnerships

Dhodapkar formed an initial proposal for the program after participating in UChicago Leads, a weeklong pre-orientation program focused on individual leadership development and leadership in the context of the community. Her biggest challenge was making the program available to all participants.

“Ice skating is a sport that can be fairly inaccessible to individuals,” said Dhodapkar. “Not only is it a small sport, not generally offered in schools, but it can be very expensive and difficult to find lessons. Our rink is free admission, but many rinks are not. Even paying to rent skates once a week can be a financial burden.”

To ensure the program reflected the interests of the community, Dhodapkar sought help from Shaz Rasul, one of the community-focused leaders she met during pre-orientation. As executive director of student civic engagement activities at UChicago’s Office of Civic Engagement, Rasul helps student civic engagement activities improve their efficacy, stimulate innovation and create new partnerships.

“We are in an era in which there are so many resources at the University for students looking to do something positive for the community,” said Rasul. “Part of our commitment at the Office of Civic Engagement is to help students think through their ideas, connect them to local community organizations and provide the tools to determine if an idea is a good fit for the local neighborhood.”

Rasul received a positive response from members of the Neighborhood Schools Program, a local education partnership he heads, so in winter 2016, his office helped Dhodapkar by funding a one-day pilot event for 30 students.

“We are in an era in which there are so many resources at the University for students looking to do something positive for the community”Shaz Rasul, executive director of student civic engagement initiatives

In 2017, the program was formalized and the following year it offered weekly lessons to 50 participants over the course of winter quarter. Civic Engagement assisted Dhodapkar with grant proposals and helped forge partnerships with local organizations to fully subsidize the cost of skates and admission to the rink.

“I am personally very humbled by the number of people that wanted to engage in the program. It’s become much bigger than I ever could have imagined,” said Dhodapkar.

Next year, Dhodapkar hopes to expand the program, potentially offering lessons two days a week while organizing one-time skating events to reach more students. An aspiring physician, she also wants to apply the knowledge she has gained while studying public health and urban health disparities at UChicago. She is in the process of pursuing grants to incorporate formalized physical health and nutrition educational components into the program.

Dhodapkar said the program offers important lessons, both on and off the ice.

“There are huge benefits in learning how to persevere through challenges,” said Dhodapkar. “Every time you get on the ice, trip on your toe pick and take a nosedive, that’s a learning experience. The ability to take a hit but also learn from it is one of the most important things I’ve learned from the sport.”

All the world’s a stage for young UChicago playwrights

Tue, 06 Feb 2018 16:11 -0600

Fourth-year student Grace McLeod has already screened a short film at the Tribeca Film Festival and had additional works featured at venues and festivals nationwide. But she is still thrilled by the opportunities the University's Theater and Performance Studies Program has opened for her.

Last spring, the young playwright and screenwriter worked with Calamity West, who is part of a growing number of professional Chicago playwrights teaching with the TAPS program, helping to connect students to professional theaters throughout the city.

Thanks to West’s encouragement, McLeod applied for a summer residency program with Greenhouse Theater, where she was one of seven playwrights under 30 selected by the program. In October, McLeod’s play Herland was professionally staged—a heady experience despite her previous accomplishments.

“I’m still riding that high,” McLeod said. “I’m really proud. Now I’m in the process of sending it out to see if there is interest in producing it, and I’ve gotten some so far. Developing new plays is a very lengthy process, but I generally love it and I’m excited to see where it goes.”

Mutually beneficial collaborations

The experience has been a boon for instructors like West as well, who recently joined the roster of teaching playwrights in TAPS, including Evan Linder, Vanessa Stalling, Greg Allen, Sean Graney, Seth Bockley, Terrance Brown, Mickle Maher, Aaron Carter and Ike Holter.

“It makes me such a better writer,” West said. “I wasn’t anticipating that to happen. The students also show up, and they give me notes, and they push me as much as I push them. I can’t think of better ways to facilitate a program where relationships forge in the classroom. It’s really exciting.”

These kinds of relationships are exactly what faculty directors of TAPS had in mind when the major began about a decade ago, and the mentoring is quickly becoming the norm according to Heidi Coleman, TAPS director of undergraduate studies.

“I can’t think of better ways to facilitate a program where relationships forge in the classroom. It’s really exciting.”Playwright Calamity West

“The roster of TAPS teaching playwrights paves the way to a professional creative network,” Coleman said. “Grace is following a highway that Calamity is a part of, connecting her to this world. Every collaboration seeks this continuity, making a conduit for students to emerge as writers.”

This work ties directly into the efforts of the Chicago Performance Lab, which since 2009 has served as an incubator for professional companies around Chicago to develop new work, including residencies with Manual Cinema, The Syndicate and First Floor Theatre—three companies founded by UChicago alumni.

“TAPS has sought to position itself as a hub between the academy and the very vital theater world in our midst, and this is just one of the many ways we have sought to put our students into a meaningful dialogue with the amazing artists out in Chicago and across the country,” said David Levin, chair of TAPS and the Addie Clark Harding Professor.

Fostering professional connections

TAPS students also work closely with the Performance Lab, serving as interns during the summer session and in the process, becoming intimately involved with the production of a professional show.

“We’ve created student internships where students can be in the room when things are in production, and oftentimes they go on with the shows that they were part of here,” Coleman said.

Jesse Roth, AB’13, was a TAPS major and regularly assistant directs at the House, one of Chicago’s up-and-coming theaters. Roth credits her experience with TAPS with connecting her to a network of professional companies when she first graduated. Now she is enjoying returning the favor.

“I love speaking with current students and recent grads about life in the arts,” Roth said. “I’m really encouraged to see more and more young playwrights coming out of UChicago. The TAPS program is so young, but I imagine we’ll start seeing its impact in places like New York and Los Angeles in a few years, but it already feels like we have a quorum in Chicago.”

McLeod is ready to add her name to that group, and she believes that the TAPS program will continue to inject new UChicago talent into the theater world.

“I think that’s where this program is headed—getting students platforms for their work and getting them out to readings and really investing in telling students they can do this,” McLeod said.

Crime Lab finds behavioral nudges improve court attendance in NYC

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 16:40 -0600

In New York City, on average two out of five people who received criminal summonses were failing to appear in court, resulting in arrest warrants that carry more severe punishments and increased strain on government resources.

To change the costly trend, the city partnered with the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the non-profit ideas42 to see whether small nudges could help improve court attendance. First, they worked to simplify the summons ticket that people received. The time, date and location of court appearances were made clear and prominent, and the form specified that not showing up to court would result in a warrant.

A study of the effectiveness of the re-designed form, published Jan. 24 by the Crime Lab, revealed that these small changes to the form decreased failure-to-appear rates by approximately 13 percent. New York City law enforcement has begun using the new form for all criminal summonses issued citywide.

In addition, people who provided a phone number (about 11 percent of all summons recipients) were randomly selected to receive different text messages encouraging appearance. Some messages emphasized that there would be consequences for failing-to-appear, some encouraged planning in advance for the appearance, and some underscored that failing to appear would be out of step with the norms of their peers.

The most effective text messages, which combined information on the consequences of not showing up to court and plan-making elements, further reduced failure-to-appear in court rates by 26 percent. When the form and texting program were viewed together, the total decline in the rates of failure-to-appear in court was 36 percent. The New York State Unified Court System Office of Court Administration is now sending the most effective text message reminders to all summons recipients who provide a cell phone number on the summons.

Text messages with information on consequences of not showing up and plan-making elements helped reduce rates of failure-to-appear in court. (Courtesy of Crime Lab)

"When people fail to show up for court it might not be because they intended to, but rather because they failed to notice or remember the information about their court date,” said study co-author Anuj Shah, an associate professor of behavioral science at Chicago Booth. “This means that we do not necessarily have to resort to stricter punishments to reduce failure-to-appear. We simply need to make it easier for defendants to remember their court dates. These findings offer a glimpse of how behavioral insights might help find novel solutions to problems in the domain of criminal justice.”

“Little reminders can make a big difference, and these text messages will help people avoid a missed court appearance—and a warrant that could eventually lead to spending a night in jail. We’ve found that these gentle nudges help New Yorkers remember when and where their court appearance is and reduce failure-to-appear rates, and that progress is a great step toward a fairer justice system,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

This work represents an important step toward using behavioral science to improve the functioning and fairness of the criminal justice system, and to improve human lives. The Crime Lab is working with partners to continue to develop and evaluate other potentially scalable and cost-effective policy enhancements and interventions that leverage insights from behavioral science.

UChicago launches initiative to support students, scholars and artists affected by Hurricanes Irma and Maria

Wed, 24 Jan 2018 10:30 -0600

The University of Chicago is launching a new initiative to host students, scholars and artists affected by Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

The programs will support a select number of undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and artists by welcoming them to UChicago on a temporary basis to continue their work. By joining the UChicago community, the visiting students, scholars and artists will help foster and renew dialogues across campus from diverse experiential and disciplinary perspectives.

The Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture initiated the program. Partners include the College, the Office of Admissions, Campus and Student Life, UChicago Arts, UChicagoGRAD, the Graham School, the schools and divisions, and the Office of the Provost. The application process opened Jan. 3. The competitive programs provide a range of support such as room and board and other expenses.

Melissa Gilliam, vice provost for academic leadership, advancement and diversity and the Ellen H. Block Professor of Health Justice, pointed out that “Hurricanes Irma and Maria were devastating. This new initiative supports students, scholars and artists who have been severely affected, allowing them to continue their important work during this difficult time. We look forward to welcoming them to the UChicago community.”

The initiative includes:

Third- and fourth-year undergraduate students pursuing degrees at the University of Puerto Rico can apply to enroll at UChicago for the spring quarter. Applications for undergraduates are due Feb. 5.
Students in graduate programs in Puerto Rico can apply to continue their dissertation research at UChicago for a quarter as a non-degree visiting student. Those selected will partner with a UChicago faculty member whose area of research has a similar focus.
Faculty residencies are available for professors at colleges and universities in Puerto Rico. Under the program, scholars whose research has been disrupted by the hurricanes can continue their work at UChicago during the spring quarter.
The visiting artists program will be conducted in collaboration with arts and academic organizations in Chicago and Puerto Rico each of whom will nominate artists. Selected artists will come to UChicago from May through July.

For more information and application materials, please visit the program website.

University of Chicago to continue expansion of College housing

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 12:00 -0600

Continuing efforts to enhance on-campus housing for College students, the University of Chicago plans to build a new residential hall and dining commons that will open in the 2020-21 academic year. The new Woodlawn Residential Commons will be located between Woodlawn and University avenues, just north of 61st Street.

The new facility will house approximately 1,200 undergraduate students and resident staff, along with amenities, including lounges, study rooms and outdoor spaces. The facility will have 11 houses—residential communities that foster close academic and social networks throughout a student’s time at the College.

Much like the College’s award-winning Campus North Residential Commons, the Woodlawn residence is projected to offer single and double rooms, private apartments with kitchens and bathrooms for students who want greater independence, and common areas in each three-floor house to foster community and intellectual exchange, which are inherent to the College’s culture. The facility also will accommodate resident deans—faculty members who provide guidance and leadership to the staff and residents of College houses.

The new Woodlawn Residential Commons will be located between Woodlawn and University avenues, just north of 61st Street.

“The new Woodlawn Residential Commons continues the University of Chicago’s commitment to further the educational and personal success of our students by developing supportive and intellectually stimulating residential communities,” said John W. Boyer, dean of the College. “Students come to the University of Chicago for a distinct style of intellectual engagement and for a particular culture of learning, but that experience should not be confined to time in our classrooms. With the Commons, we will offer more high-quality resources for community living as well as an environment that also is designed to foster personal and intellectual development.”

Boyer also noted that the College faculty have long advocated that a higher percentage of students should live in modern, high-quality housing on the central campus, and that they have seen this as a major determinant for the future success of the College. As a faculty committee on the future of undergraduate housing chaired by Prof. Lloyd Rudolph of the Department of Political Science concluded more than 20 years ago, housing influences well-being and quality of life, which are essential components of effective higher education. Today this belief remains foundational to the development of student residences on or near the main campus.

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Woodlawn Residential Commons Renderings

From a community perspective, the facility will provide new job opportunities and amenities. In addition to its primary role as a dining space for students, the dining commons will be available for public use. Bon Appétit Management Company, which runs all residential dining commons at the University, also will hire permanent and temporary staff for the new dining commons. Thirty-five percent of the work will be allotted to women and minority-owned entities, and 50 percent of employees will come from local South Side communities. Similarly, Turner Construction Company, which will construct the project, has committed to the University’s expanded goals for diversity and local hiring on capital construction projects. This includes increasing participation of certified, minority-owned contracting firms from 25 percent to 35 percent, women-owned firms from 5 percent to 6 percent, and raising the proportion of onsite construction workers who live in the city of Chicago from 30 percent to 40 percent.

The firm of Elkus Manfredi Architects is designing the facility. To allow the University to develop the commons without taking on new capital investment, a private developer team of Capstone Development Partners and Harrison Street Real Estate Capital will develop, provide the capital, oversee the design and construction of the project, and thereafter assume responsibility for upkeep of the new residential and dining commons after construction is complete. Once open, the facility will be managed like all other residential and dining halls on campus, with oversight provided by the University, Housing and Residence Life staff, and College resident deans.

“We are delighted to partner with the University of Chicago to build the Woodlawn Residential Commons,” said Jeff Jones, principal of Capstone Development Partners. “At Capstone, our strength is collaboration. We look forward to working with University leaders to expand residential College environments proven to foster students’ connectivity and academic success.”

Construction is anticipated to begin in the summer of 2018. Additional details will be available at that time.

UChicago Presents series celebrates 20th-century composer Gyorgy Ligeti

Mon, 22 Jan 2018 11:26 -0600

Over the next several months, University of Chicago Presents will celebrate the life and works of celebrated 20th-century classical composer, György Ligeti, through a series of musical events and lectures.

Amy Iwano, executive director of University of Chicago Presents, has long hoped to organize a performance around Ligeti, who is considered one of the most influential avant-garde composers of the last century. Her intent was to create a celebration both of his music and scholarship.

“We are very lucky in Chicago to have fantastic artists and ensembles who create really interesting programming, and in these concerts, we see Ligeti’s legacy—his impact on a younger generation of artists and how his music is evolving in their hands,” Iwano said.

Iwano worked closely with Music Department musicologists Seth Brodsky and Jennifer Iverson and composers Anthony Cheung and Sam Pluta, along with musical groups Third Coast Percussion and Eighth Blackbird, to create the series that began earlier this October. The series concludes on March 6 with a special performance by Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the famed pianist who worked closely with Ligeti during his lifetime.

Born in Romania in 1923, Ligeti was of Hungarian descent and had a tumultuous early life. While receiving his musical training, he was sent to a forced labor camp while his family were deported to concentration camps.

After World War II, Ligeti resumed his education and became a teacher at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, but fled to Vienna following the Soviet defeat of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956. He would go on to become of the most influential composers of the mid-20th century, and became known to the larger public when his pieces were used in several of Stanley Kubrick’s films, including 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Jennifer Iverson, assistant professor of music, said she is excited to hear so many of Ligeti’s pieces, which are known to be extremely technically difficult, be performed live, and thinks that listeners are in for a special treat.

“Audiences tend to love his music and be taken with it,” Iverson said. “His aesthetic is much more playful and freewheeling as far as 20th-century composers go. But technically, it’s so difficult. It’s quite special and unique to have so many performances happening live over the course of this year.”

On Friday, Feb. 2, Eighth Blackbird will join with Hungarian percussion group Amadinda to perform a selection of Ligeti’s piano etudes. Then, on Friday, Feb. 16, Third Coast Percussion will present three of Ligeti’s works, including Poème Symphonique, a spectacular performance that includes 100 mechanical metronomes. Both shows will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Logan Center.

David Skidmore, executive director of Third Coast Percussion, said his group is thrilled to get to share the works of “one of the great composers of our lifetime at the height of his prowess” with the UChicago community. Skidmore says they are working closely with UChicago students to prepare for the show, who are helping to procure the metronomes.

“The students will also help us design the performance, which leaves a lot to the imagination and allows for some fun extra-musical ideas with regards to staging, position of the metronomes in the concert hall,” Skidmore said. “It's so rare to hear a live performance of this piece, and we're so excited to bring the performance to Chicago!”

Each concert will also feature a pre-performance lecture by a member of the music faculty; and following the concert series, the Department of Music will host a scholarly conference, “Dislocations: Reassessing Ligeti,” from March 7-8.

Recently, the Ligeti Series was recognized with a prestigious $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which Iwano said will “help support this year’s Ligeti Series as a testament to his life and legacy.”

More information on all the events of the Ligeti Series is available here.

MLK commemoration highlights the struggle for civil rights and inclusion

Fri, 19 Jan 2018 11:05 -0600

One of Dorothy Butler Gilliam’s first assignments at The Washington Post was covering integration in the deeply segregated South. As the newspaper’s first African-American female reporter, the work carried particular pressures and dangers.

Speaking at the University of Chicago’s commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr., Butler Gilliam recalled the courage of James Meredith, who sparked riots when he enrolled at the University of Mississippi in the fall of 1962. She also detailed the conviction of black journalists who felt unsafe and unwelcome covering the civil rights movement across the South—often smuggling in typewriters or wearing disguises, or in Butler Gilliam’s case, sleeping at a black-owned funeral home to get the story.

“I knew that if I failed, it would be tougher for the next black woman to be hired by a major daily newspaper,” Butler Gilliam said.

Dorothy Butler Gilliam: 'Diversity and inclusion are worth fighting for'

Video of Dorothy Butler Gilliam: 'Diversity and inclusion are worth fighting for'

Dorothy Butler Gilliam: 'Diversity and inclusion are worth fighting for'

Her speech at the Jan. 16 commemoration included a discussion with her daughter, UChicago Prof. Melissa Gilliam, on civil rights, today’s media landscape and Butler Gilliam’s efforts for equal rights. The event capped a number of events in UChicago’s 28th annual celebration, which included the presentation of the Diversity Leadership Awards to faculty member Randolph N. Stone, alumna Sunny Fischer and staff member Scott Cook.

Below is an edited transcript of Butler Gilliam’s conversation with Melissa Gilliam, Vice Provost for Academic Leadership, Advancement, and Diversity and the Ellen H. Block Professor of Health Justice:

Melissa Gilliam: I’d like you to begin by taking us back to where you started, to the civil rights movement. What compelled you as we, many of us, are thinking, “What do we do in this moment in time?”

Dorothy Butler Gilliam: I think I would use the example of James Meredith, as a young person who got involved in something quite dangerous. One thing was that he had been exposed—he was a veteran—to living in places and situations where the harsh segregation of America was not practiced. He knew that there was a better way for him to live. Medgar Evers, who was also killed in Mississippi, was also a veteran. And I always think of how Congressman John Lewis talks about his own decision to, as he said, “get in the way.” It wasn’t because parents were an example, it was a deep, abiding conviction that they had to move to make change. And I think that you know, the exposure to other places, the knowledge that not all African-Americans, or “Negroes” as they were called then, or “blacks,” were treated in other places the way they were treated in America.

All of this gave people the moral courage that Dr. King pushed us to have. The other thing was that Dr. King stressed that individually we have a power, and this helped to magnify the individual’s understanding of how important it was to be a part of this great revolution.

MG: There’s a lot of attention now on The Post, for example the new movie. I’d like you to talk about what was it like to be, not only in a place where there were very few black people, where there were very few women, and nobody else who held both identities. We talk here about imposter syndrome—meaning there’s a certain sense of insecurity when you go into these places. What did it feel like to be the only black woman in a very large organization?

DBG: It was very tough at times, and I don’t want to sound beleaguered here but, you know, the rejection hurt. There were the difficulties in getting around, you know, and still having the same expectations of me that they would have of the white reporters. If I couldn’t get a cab to get back and forth to the office, then it made it just more difficult to do the work. Luckily, I had attended a women’s college for two years and learned shorthand, and so when I finally got a taxi I could sit in the back and use my shorthand to start writing the story so that when I got to the office I didn’t have to start from scratch. But I’m happy to say that by the 1970s there were African-Americans, people of color, more women.

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MLK commemoration 2018

MG: You mentioned that efforts to diversify the media were successful but now faltering. What are your thoughts about the current attack on media and the prospects for diversity in the media?

DBG: I think the current attacks on the media are very, very dangerous. I think they are dangerous internationally: The American democracy has been a touchstone around the world, so when you have a president who makes the kinds of statements that are being made, some things are tweeted, they’re erased the next day. But it still has a very destabilizing effect on the American democracy, internally and throughout the world. I think it not only lowers the prestige, but it also raises questions in the minds of people around the world. So a lot of people say that, “The media should just not pay attention to tweets and disregard them,” but it’s just more serious than that, it’s about the cumulative impact of this kind of behavior. There is so much turmoil in the world now that it only adds to that ongoing, earthquake-like disturbance that is taking place.

MG: So, one of the challenges people mention is that there’s just significantly less diversity in the media. We have a project here, led by Prof. Cathy Cohen called the Black Youth Project, and BYP10, in which young people themselves are making media. Can you talk a little bit about ways in which people who are being disenfranchised, marginalized, in the media are able to still get their voices heard?

DBG: Well, right now we’re kind of in the new century of journalism, which is very different. It’s in the process of, being made. We know—The Washington Post is one of the few daily newspapers that has done any significant hiring in the last year or two. That’s pretty significant. Newspapers are continuing to reduce staff. But we have the emergence of new readership habits, and also we have the emergence of social media in young people, and I’ve been espousing the importance of giving young people voice and many of them have certain views of social media, and to good effect. I think media is in the process now of developing into what it’s going to be. In many ways, media and technology are partners. But there are just a lot of questions, a lot of challenges. I think what is yet to come is certainly yet to be seen.