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SHERIDAN ROAD | What's New at Lake Forest College

25 Scholarships for Chicago Public School Students

In September Lake Forest College announced a donation of 25 scholarships to Chicago Public School (CPS) students who meet its admissions requirements and who have a household family income of less than $45,000.

Each scholarship will cover remaining costs of tuition once federal, state, and available awards have been applied. Students who receive the scholarship must achieve a cumulative grade point average of 2.5 or higher in their first year at the College and at least 2.75 thereafter.

"With this scholarship, our goal is to give CPS students an edge when it comes to getting a great education close to home," said President Stephen D. Schutt. "We see this as an opportunity to reach out even further to the people of Chicago and to strengthen our identity as Chicago's National Liberal Arts College."

On average, six CPS graduates already enter the College each year from high schools such as Austin, Jones, Kelvyn Park, Lincoln Park and North Lawndale College Prep. But the need is clear for students in Chicago Public Schools, which is the third-largest school district in the nation, includes more than 600 schools, and serves approximately 409,000 students. According to the Consortium on Chicago School Research, only 45 percent of CPS students who entered a four-year college in 1998, 1999, 2002, and 2003 earned a bachelor's degree within six years.

CPS students must apply to be considered for the scholarship, but the College waives the $40 application fee for all online applicants before December 1. "We are very pleased to partner with CPS to inform Chicago juniors and seniors of this opportunity, and we very much look forward to their students' applications," said William Motzer, vice president of admissions and career services at the College. Motzer oversees the program and is working closely with the CPS Office of Postsecondary Education.

In a press release, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley said that the scholarships offered by Lake Forest address the idea that education is the best long-term solution to solving the problems of poverty and income inequality.

"Our hope for a better tomorrow starts with improving our schools and giving all our children an equal chance to dream and grow and realize their potential," Daley said. "This contribution from Lake Forest College helps give kids who have done all the work we have asked them to do — but who don't have the money — the chance to go to college."

Architecture Quiz

From Romanesque to English Gothic and Tudor to Prairie Style, a variety of architectural styles from the past 150 years exist on Lake Forest Collegeís 107-acre campus. In recognition of this, the College received a $150,000 Campus Heritage Grant from the J. Paul Getty Trusts in 2004 for the development of an historic preservation plan for the campus.

The project included a fall 2006 course titled Lake Forest College as a Cultural Landscape, which used the campus as a living laboratory in the interpretation of cultural landscapes. With the help of architects and preservationists, students received training in the principles and practices of historic preservation and assisted with research to compile a comprehensive historic inventory of the College.

The culmination of this effort resulted in a book called Lake Forest College: A Guide to the Campus, which will be published and on sale for $18 by early December (call 800-LFC-ALUM for information). Written by students, faculty, alumni, and staff, and co-edited by Professor of Art Christopher Reed and College Archivist Arthur H. Miller, the book includes comprehensive information about the buildings on campus and several essays that give context to the history of the College's environment.

Spectrum created a quiz based on facts from the book to test how well you know the architecture of Lake Forest College. Good luck!

Which prominent Chicago architect designed several buildings on campus?
a. Frank Lloyd Wright
b. Howard Van Doren Shaw
c. Mies van der Rohe

Visual Communications, located on Middle Campus behind Young Hall, was once used as a:
a. Stable for horses
b. Trough for pigs
c. Kennel for show dogs

Which building on campus was featured in the 1983 movie Class, starring Rob Lowe and John Cusack?
a. Carnegie Hall
b. Blackstone Hall
c. Arthur Somerville Reid Hall

BONUS QUESTION: Which building was featured in Robert Redford’s Academy Award-winning movie Ordinary People?

Which cluster of buildings stands on the site of a house built in 1870 as the African Methodist Episcopal Church for Lake Forest’s African American community?
a. South Campus faculty houses
b. Sports Center and Alumni Memorial Field House
c. Mohr Student Center and Stuart Commons

Which type of housing was built on Farwell Field for GIs returning from World War II?
a. Teepees
b. Barracks
c. Quonset huts

Which building nicknamed “Old Ironsides” housed the campus’s first gymnasium and pool and was rebuilt after a 1969 fire rumored to have been started by a right-wing group who believed the building housed Students for a Democratic Society?
a. Carnegie Hall
b. Hotchkiss Hall
c. Young Hall

Built in the early 1960s, the four residence halls on South Campus were named for former Lake Forest College presidents. Who were they?

Answers: 1-b, 2-c, 3-b, 3 bonus: Sports Center, 4-a, 5-c, 6-b, 7-The Rev. James G. K. McClure, The Rev. Herbert McComb Moore, John Scholte Nollen, William C. Roberts

Project for Peace

After receiving a Kathryn Wasserman Davis 100 Projects for Peace grant to help Nepalese families gain job and money management skills, Annada Rajbhandary '10 (pictured) and former student Suman Gautam traveled to the Chitwan district in Nepal in July. They provided skills training in vegetable farming and animal husbandry to over 40 men and women who were affected by the decade-long Maoist insurgency. They also established micro-credit funds to encourage them to start their own businesses, such as goat farming. Ultimately, the students, who filmed a documentary about the experience, hope the project helped the families damaged by war to turn their suffering into hope for the future.

Rankings Decision

Lake Forest College will not participate in the U.S. News & World Report reputation survey, announced President Stephen D. Schutt in August.

The decision came after the Annapolis Group, a consortium of 100 liberal arts colleges, including Lake Forest College, recommended the development of a new Web-based resource, as a U.S. News rankings alternative, to give students and parents accessible, comprehensive, and quantifiable data on colleges. The group also called on colleges to stop filling out the surveys, an opinion supported by dozens of other college presidents.

The survey is controversial because it calls on presidents, provosts, and deans of admission to rate more than 250 schools across the country. Educators consider it unscientific and unfair considering how much their opinion is weighted (the survey accounts for 25 percent of the school's total score). Resistance to the rankings is gaining ground. In this year's rankings the response rate to the reputation survey was 51 percent, down 7 percent from a year ago.

Rankings are also determined by several pieces of data provided by schools, including acceptance rate, freshman retention, graduation rate, alumni giving rate, faculty resources, financial resources, and student selectivity.

In the magazine's 2008 rankings, Lake Forest placed 97th out of 125 colleges in the top tier and 250 colleges overall. Lake Forest was also included in The Best 366 Colleges (The Princeton Review, 2007).

YouTube Debate

"With Bush, Clinton, and Bush again serving as the last three presidents, how would electing you, a Clinton, constitute the type of change in Washington so many people in the heartland are yearning for and what your campaign has been talking about? I was also wondering if any of the other candidates had a problem with the same two families being in charge of the executive branch of government for 28 consecutive years, if Hillary Clinton were to potentially be elected and then re-elected."

— Politics major Cris Nolan '08, a precinct committeeman in Mundelein, Illinois, posed this question to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic presidential candidates in the CNN-YouTube democratic debate that aired July 23. Only 38 questions out of nearly 3,000 were chosen for the broadcast.

Celebrating Liberal Learning

Alumni who returned for Homecoming had the opportunity to go back to class on October 5 at the Academic Festival, a day-long event in which faculty, alumni, students, and staff held sessions on a variety of subjects and issues. The festival also included photo exhibits, an alumni book exhibit, a "Taste of Chicago" lunch, several walking tours, and a presidential plenary session featuring President Stephen D. Schutt and former Presidents David Spadafora and Eugene Hotchkiss, pictured with moderator and Professor of Art Ann Roberts, who reflected historically on the mission of the College.

International Day of Service

On a warm and sunny Saturday morning in September, nearly 600 Lake Forest College students, faculty, staff, and alumni boarded buses in the parking lot behind Mohr Student Center headed to 33 local charities around the Chicago area. Throughout the day, they packed boxes of food for the needy, picked up trash, harvested crops, visited the elderly, and participated in other volunteer opportunities.

Meanwhile across the country, alumni like Bob Gross '71 — who took his dog Fraggle, both are certified as a registered dog therapy team, to the Glenridge Nursing Home in Augusta, Maine — coordinated their own volunteer events. In all alumni in Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Connecticut, California, and Ohio participated in the day.

Around the world, alumni like Shannon O'Kane '99 (pictured), who volunteered at a rural school in Cambodia with the PEPY Bike to School Program that provides bikes to students to make education more accessible, made the day a truly international effort. She joined alumni in China, Canada, England, Nepal, and Cameroon, who planned their own volunteer events.

The College's International Day of Service was held September 29 to show that the campus community is part of the larger, global community. Thanks to an $18,000 gift from the McCormick Tribune Foundation, which covered the costs like transportation and T-shirts, the day kicked off a week-long series of events that culminated on Homecoming, Reunion, and Family Weekend.

Associate Director of Annual Giving Derek Lambert '03, who coordinated the effort, said he has received e-mails from many volunteer sites asking when Lake Forest students could come back. "I was proud of our students," Lambert says. "They were all coming off the buses happy and smiling. They were also all dirty and tired and asking when can we do this again."

Gates Center to Promote Leadership, Personal Growth

Lake Forest College announces the establishment of the Gates Center for Leadership and Personal Growth. Located in Stuart Commons, the Gates Center is supported by a generous gift of $1.5 million from Lake Forest residents John and Chrissie Gates and their children and another $500,000 to be raised separately by the College.

As an innovative new resource center and program, the Gates Center will help students develop essential life skills and promote their educational progress at the College. With leadership development and personal growth as major emphases at the Gates Center, there is a strong, obvious connection between the Center and the Office of Leadership and Community Involvement (LCI). As a result, the College has decided to merge the Gates Center and LCI into a new entity, the Gates Center for Leadership and Personal Growth.

The newly organized Gates Center, directed by Assistant Dean of Students Christopher Waugh, will organize, sponsor, and participate in courses, workshops, speakers, and internships that focus on leadership, personal growth, and related topics.

Among other things, the Gates Center will provide: initial training in leadership and community participation during New Student Orientation; strong, continuing leadership training for students awarded leadership scholarships; a library of current resources on emotional intelligence and life skills; and speakers from various professions to educate students about different forms of leadership, working in teams, individual and group relationships, and personal growth and development.

Speakers Sound Off

Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning author and New York Times columnist, kicked off Homecoming Weekend festivities by delivering the Oppenheimer Lecture "The World is Still Flat" on October 4.

In front of a full crowd at the Sports Center, he discussed his best-selling book The World is Flat, which explores globalization and how current technology and digital trends enable anyone in any country to compete in business. "This era of globalization is built around individuals because of how easy it is to connect around the world," he said.

The convergence of several factors — the fall of the Berlin Wall, Microsoft's invention of Windows, Netscapeís development of the Internet browser, the dot-com bubble, major investment in fiber optic cable, and the ability to make computers and software compatible — flattened the playing field, he said, creating a platform for people to conduct business from anywhere through forces such as outsourcing, off shoring, blogging, uploading, file sharing, and more.

But this has also contributed to the world's growing environmental problems, which is the subject of his next book project. "The global economy is like a monster truck with the gas pedal stuck and you lost the key," he said. "The monster truck is growing exponentially, and what weíre doing is incremental." Creating more efficient, eco-friendly business practices is better for productivity as well as the environment, but he believes the world will only "go green" when the United States sets the example.

Friedman also touted the benefits of a liberal arts education while talking about the importance of using one's imagination to compete successfully in the global economy. "The secret of our success is the liberal arts," he said, adding that our imaginations come from applying the frameworks of our specialties.

Juan Melendez, on death row in Florida for 18 years before he was exonerated, spoke about his experience and the death penalty on October 2.

Il Kwa Nori, a Korean American cultural troupe, performed traditional percussion music called poongmul in a concert on September 26. This social and artistic form incorporates song, dance, and rhythm into a lively and energetic performance that tells stories, celebrates, and reinforces solidarity among its members and audience.

John Kinsella, a prolific author, editor, poet, and professor, spoke as part of the English department's On the Run Lecture Series on September 25.

Director of the Latino Cultural Center Pepe Vargas spoke about Latino identities in Chicago on September 18. Following his talk, Nelson Sosa gave a Pan-Latin American music presentation.

Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine Joseph Mayberry Professor of Pathology Kathy Green delivered the talk "A Voyeuristís Approach to Cell Biology: Revealing Cell Behavior Using Cell Imaging" for the Biology Seminar Series on September 19.

Duke University Professor of Religion Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke's Islamic Studies Program, delivered the Oppenheimer Lecture in a talk called "Islam at the Crossroads: In the Media, in the Academy, at Home, and Abroad" on September 9.

By the Numbers

2,974 American flags flown in front of Young Hall to represent each victim killed on September 11

450 Bagels served to volunteers on the International Day of Service

365 Students in the Class of 2011, including a hip-hop choreographer, a winner of the National Latin Exam, a member of a local improv troupe, and a sailor of a 130-foot schooner from Gloucester, Massachusetts, to San Juan, Puerto Rico

100 Million dollar goal for the 150th Anniversary Campaign for Lake Forest College to double the endowment, increase the Annual Fund, and build new facilities

5 Faculty chairs named: Catherine Benton, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Assistant Professor in the Humanities; Anne Houde, Foster G. and Mary W. McGaw Professorship in the Life Sciences; Douglas B. Light, Laurence R. Lee Professor of Biology; Ann M. Roberts, James D. Vail III Professor of History; Jeffrey O. Sundberg, James S. Kemper Foundation Chair in Liberal Arts and Business

In the News

The Chicago Sun-Times announced Lake Forest's offer of 25 full-tuition scholarships to Chicago Public Schools students in a September 30th article.

The International Day of Service was the subject of a September 29 Waukegan News Sun column about a dedicated day of service opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

The Wall Street Journal featured Lake Forest College in an August 28 article about nonalumni who graduated from elite schools but give major donations to colleges with fewer resources.

The Associated Press cited the Donnelley and Lee Library in an article about how renovated college libraries provide modern amenities such as cafes and new spaces for students to interact.

Vice President of Admissions WILLIAM MOTZER was quoted in an August 12 Chicago Tribune Magazine article on trends in college searches.

The Chicago Sun-Times and Daily Herald featured CRIS NOLAN '08 in articles about his question featured in the CNN-YouTube presidential debate in July.

A July 29 New York Times special educational section article on how colleges help students who are homesick featured the experience of MARY VOLK '09.

Head swim coach DAN SHELLEY — an Ironman tri-athalete who†has coached 44 conference champions, 14 all Americans, 3 national champions, and 3 Olympians — was Athlete of the Month in the July 2007 issue of Windy City Sports magazine.

Q&A with Linda Horwitz, Assistant Professor of Communications

With the 2008 presidential primary races heating up, Spectrum talked to Professor Linda Horwitz about rhetoric and its role in convincing Americans how to decide who gets their vote. Her research focuses on rhetoric, and next fall, she will teach Rhetoric and the Presidency, a class she taught before the 2004 election.

What is rhetoric?
The clearest definition I have read is from Hart and Daughton's book Modern Rhetorical Criticism (Allyn and Bacon, 2005). They define rhetoric as "the art of using language to help people narrow their choices among specifiable, if not specified, policy options."

What is the role of rhetoric in a presidential race?
In presidential elections, a decision has to be made without the benefit of truth. Rhetoric both introduces the American people to the candidates and gives them reasons to vote for one candidate over another. Examples include: stump speeches, conventions, caucuses, debates, television commercials, buttons, lawn placards, bumper stickers, blogs, and votes.

The Democratic frontrunners are an African American and a woman. What unique challenges do Obama and Clinton face in how they use rhetoric?
Both Obama and Clinton have to respond to the American citizens' expectations of what it means to be presidential. The fact that all presidents have been white men is reinforced through popular culture, where only a paltry number of fictional presidents have been men of color and even fewer have been female. The specific problem they face is how to convince the American electorate that they will be the president of all the people. Women and people of color are used to looking past gender and race when they choose candidates, but white men are rarely asked to make this move.

What will they need to say or do differently to convince Americans that either one could be president?
All I can do is speculate and critique their rhetoric to date. Obama has made a good choice in aligning his image with Abraham Lincoln. It is very important that he present himself as the champion of all the people. I think he will do this by being the smart outside observer who is called to make principled changes to return our country to the image we have of it.Appearing Lincolnesque is a subtle way to condemn anyone who is reluctant to vote for an African American by reminding us that Lincoln ended slavery and unified the country.

Clinton is running on her experience. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Clinton intimates that she is more experienced in military affairs than her rivals. This allows her to safely join the American electorate's focus on domestic issues.†Another rhetorical advantage is Bill Clinton, a powerful speaker with a huge following. He argues that her experience stems from her proximity to him during his time in office. This argument reminds Americans that Bill will be by Hillary's side during her presidency.

How can voters cut through the rhetoric of ALL the candidates?
First I would ask voters to recognize that rhetoric is the only real tool we have for deciding who should lead our country. That said, voters should read and listen to all discourse critically. We are sold a president in the same way that we are sold automobiles and orange juice, so we should bring the same critical consumer skills to the presidential campaign.

We should question who is talking and what makes him or her credible. We should question the "common values used to move us towards one candidate over another. Lastly, we should question the evidence used to support claims. A Web site out of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication, www.factcheck.org, monitors the accuracy of candidates' ads, debates, and interviews.

2007 Homecoming, Reunion, and Family Weekend

Lake Forest College announces $100 million capital campaign

Lake Forest College welcomed alumni, faculty, staff, students, and parents to its biggest Homecoming weekend in history to celebrate the sesquicentennial and announce a $100 million capital campaign — The 150th Anniversary Campaign for Lake Forest College.

The weekend kicked off on October 4 with the Oppenheimer Lecture by Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize winner. On Friday, the all-day Academic Festival celebrated liberal learning with sessions, panels, walking tours, presentations, and performances for alumni, faculty, staff, students, and parents. The campaign officially launched at the Coffeehouse Happy Hour in the Mohr Student Center with a toast by President Stephen D. Schutt. More than a dozen reunions partied the night away around the College.

Several more athletic and reunion events were held on Saturday along with the Homecoming Parade, which went through downtown Lake Forest for the first time in several decades. The Foresters took an early lead against Lawrence University and won the game. The weekend concluded with an alumni reunion dinner and dance in the cafeteria. To see more photos, visit alumni.lakeforest.edu.