Alumni

Urban Legends
Their careers intertwined with Chicago, three longtime professors bid farewell to the classroom to return to their city roots.

By Fern Schumer Chapman
Photos by Chip Williams

Serendipity. That’s the word the three professors use to describe the presence of three great urbanists in history, economics, and politics: Michael H. Ebner, Paul B. Fischer, and Richard F. Dye who have worked together at Lake Forest College for more than two decades — a combined total of nearly a century. 
    
“A college of this size would not specifically hire an urban economist,” said Dye,who has specialized in public finance. “It is too small of a field of concentration. So it was really an accident that all of us in three different fields would have such a strong interest in urban affairs.”
    
It was also serendipitous that the three could come together to create the academic foundation for the College’s growing Chicago initiatives, which ultimately resulted in the institution’s Center for Chicago Programs, the core of the College’s identity in recent years. Earlier in their careers, the professors offered students a unique academic understanding of urban affairs, creating a concentration in metropolitan studies and arranging student internships through the Woods Institute for Local and Regional Studies.
    
All three retired at the end of this school year but, as Dye said, “None of us are going to the hammock.” They are simply giving up the classroom so that they can pursue other professional interests. And that’s exactly what “Chicago’s National Liberal Arts College” offers professors — an abundance of professional opportunities.

MICHAEL H. EBNER
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY

In the world of History Professor Michael Ebner, his students and colleagues affect eternity, too. That’s because while he served as the teacher at Lake Forest College, he also became a student to his students and colleagues.
 
“This is not just an institution of teaching; it’s an institution of learning,” said Ebner, as he contemplated his retirement one day in late March. “Lake Forest College fosters an environment where everyone has an opportunity to learn.”
 
Last semester, Ebner taught a class called Chicago Dreaming with Associate Professor of English Davis Schneiderman. “We drew upon history and literature to examine Chicago,” said the bearded Ebner, who sports a tie even when he comes to campus just for office hours. “I learned so much from Davis about American literature and culture.” 
 
It is difficult to measure the influence of a professor who has taught more than 2,700 young people in his career. But students carry a great teacher with them throughout their lives. Take Richard Alles, who graduated in 1982. For years, Ebner rarely heard from him. But 20 years after he graduated, Alles sent Ebner a large yellow envelope containing several articles on urban growth and development that ran in The Boston Globe and a brief note on a white index card. On it was scrawled in vaguely familiar handwriting: “Professor Ebner, I thought you might be interested in reading these clippings. Richard.” 
 
That is not surprising to Brianne Peck ’04, a staff member at the Chicago History Museum. “I remember him mentioning (in class) when past students would update him on what they were doing — he always had a big smile on his face. His level of commitment to his students is unparalleled. Lake Forest College has been lucky to have him for the past 30 years!”
 
One student from the late 1970s, Joseph Ferguson ’81, who is now a federal prosecutor, remembers that he and his peers called Ebner the Sage of Passaic. “It was a nod to his fulfillment of the unarticulated stereotype of a professor of American history,” Ferguson said. “Beard, pipe, tweed, ever-present gravitas — and his New Jersey origins.”
 
Best known as the author of the prize-winning book, Creating Chicago’s North Shore: A Suburban History (University of Chicago Press, 1988), Ebner, the James D. Vail III Professor of History and former department chair, has been a member of the faculty since 1974 and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He has taught many classes including American Cities, Sport as History, and American Social History. In his retirement, he plans to complete a book called Extremely Suburban America, which examines the rapid suburban growth since 1945.
 
In addition, he’s hoping that retirement will give him the time to take in a few movies. “The last time my wife (who is also retiring from teaching at a Highland Park Elementary School) and I went to a movie was September 2, 2006,” he said. “That’s symbolic of the intensity with which we live our lives.” This past year was especially busy for Ebner because he chaired the Sesquicentennial Committee.
 
One of the biggest boosters of the institution, Ebner believes that the community and culture make the College unique. “People have a great respect for one another that cuts across culture and class,” he said. “I’ve tried to know the names of everyone who works here and I’ve tried to connect with them, even for just a few moments, about baseball or the beauty of the campus.” He said that he avoids political topics. “There is a wonderful sense of connection here that encompasses students, faculties, staff, trustees, and alumni.”
 
Undoubtedly, Ebner has established an enormous reputation and legacy, but he is convinced that it is time to step aside. “In my youth I learned that no one is indispensable,” he said, “and I’m a great believer in faculty retirement. Young people, who are richly educated, rejuvenate the institution and take it in new and exciting directions. I’m supremely confident that the College is in excellent hands.” 

PAUL B. FISCHER
PROFESSOR OF POLITICS

Professor of Politics Paul Fischer’s “eternity” will not only be felt by the students he influenced, but also by the College which he pressed to redefine itself and the lives he has improved through his programs in the public realm.
 
“I’ve tried to combine academia with public service,” said Fischer, who has been at Lake Forest College for 36 years. “At first the College didn’t know what to do with me.”
 
When Fischer first arrived at Lake Forest College in the early 1970s, the administration recently had eliminated the business major because it clashed with the image of a quality liberal arts education. The College rejected the idea of pre-professional learning, applied research, and public service in a liberal arts curriculum.
 
Fischer’s training and background had been at large universities and in urban settings where applied social sciences and public service were part of the curriculum. “Combining the traditional liberal arts culture with my interest in encouraging students to enter public service and applied social science careers became my abiding and consuming interest,” he said.
 
That consuming interest changed the nature of education for hundreds of students. He helped create internship programs in politics and economics. He used Chicago’s North Shore, from Evanston to Zion, as a laboratory for his classes. He helped organize the Wood Institute for Local and Regional Studies, which worked on neighboring community-based issues, from economic development to tax reform. He (and Professors Ebner and Dye) founded the metropolitan studies concentration in urban issues. Most recently, through the Richter Scholars Program, Fischer recruited students to assist him in policy work. They become involved in everything from gathering and analyzing census data or a public housing database to participating in meetings with government officials, community-based organizations and public housing residents.
 
Typically, graduate students at large universities perform these tasks, not undergraduates from a small liberal arts college. “Sometimes, I would take these students to the conferences,” Fischer said, gazing at the pictures of his grandchildren in his office on the fourth floor of Young Hall, “and we would be the only small liberal arts college there. The kind of research I was doing with undergraduate students was usually done at the University of Illinois or University of Chicago with armies of graduate students at a researcher’s beck and call.
 
“We found new ways to prepare our students to be active, engaged citizens,” he said. “Citizens who can contribute their skills and expertise to solving many of our society’s most difficult problems. I rejoice!”
 
But many students are not rejoicing at Fischer’s departure. “No one can fill his shoes,” lamented Maulik Vaishnev ’08, whom Professor Fischer advises. Disappointed that the three urban studies professors are leaving, Vaishnev is concerned about the future of the program. “We have a ‘lab’ for urban studies right next door [the City of Chicago],” he said, “and these urban studies professors have utilized Chicago very well in the curriculum.”
 
Fischer will be remembered for his smaller contributions as well. Jared Fox ’09 recalled taking a final in his Urban and Suburban Politics class. “Everyone was writing feverishly until the very last minute,” he said, “and then Professor Fischer said ironically, ‘The more you write, the more you can get wrong.’”
 
Eight years after Fischer joined the faculty at the College, he won a two-year fellowship in Washington, D.C., as a member of President Carter’s urban policy staff. He returned to the College in 1981 and, in addition to teaching Race and Housing and American politics and public policy classes, he began to develop his career in consulting and serving as an expert witness for important public housing desegregation cases around the country.
 
He will continue this work in his retirement unless the Democrats are elected in 2008. “Then,” he said, true to his spirit of combining theory and practice, “I’ll be in Washington.”
 
Anna Nazarenko ’05, who served as Professor Fischer’s research assistant, said she can’t imagine her years at the College without him. “I acquired invaluable practical skills,” she said, “as well as an appreciation for Professor Fischer, who has devoted his passion and competence to solving deep-rooted social challenges of poverty and segregation.”

RICHARD DYE
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS

Economics Professor Richard Dye has affected eternity both inside and outside the classroom, taking advantage of the College’s location to develop himself and his contribution to the field of public finance.
 
“Lake Forest College’s location has been pivotal to me,” said Dye, who has teamed up with economists at neighboring schools to do research and write papers. “I have worked with people at large institutions within a 300-mile radius of the College — University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Illinois, Loyola University, and Northwestern University.” 

Aside from the academic advantages, the College’s location makes it attractive for families, particularly spouses who can readily find jobs in the Chicagoland area. “It’s not just that Lake Forest College is Chicago’s liberal arts college,” said Dye in his tidy office on the fourth floor of Young Hall. “It attracts better faculty because of its location.” 

But the location, which attracts talent to the College, also lures away professors who discover that they have abundant opportunities outside the classroom. “The research expectations here are modest,” said Dye, so he had the time to develop relationships and research off-campus. But some years, he simply devoted himself to teaching. “The balance between teaching, research, and scholarship allows you to reinvest yourself without being different, but being differently balanced,” Dye said. “It’s been a great ride.”
 
Now, in his new life adventure, the boyish-looking professor will work one-quarter time at the University of Illinois and three-quarters time for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, a nonprofit and tax-exempt educational institution that studies issues of land policy and land-related taxation. “I am giving up the classroom,” he said, “in favor of other professional interests.”
 
He has had a lasting impact on his students. Maria Velez de Berliner ’87 remembers that even if a student gave a wrong answer, Dye focused on the logic that student followed. “‘Show me your thinking pattern so I can understand how you arrived at your conclusion’ is what he told us all throughout the semester,” said Velez de Berliner, president of the Latin Intelligence Corporation, of Alexandria, Virginia, a consulting company that works with clients to help them develop their businesses in Latin America. “Rote learning and formula repetition was not for Dick. He was there to teach us how to think.”
 
In the process, Dye was inspired by his own students. Some years ago, a young woman submitted a term paper arguing that the Tax Increment Financing program she was working on at an internship in Highland Park was “costless.”
 
Tax Increment Financing is a tool that uses future tax gains to finance the current improvements that will create those gains. For example, when a road or school is built, an increase in the value of surrounding real estate often attracts new investments in new buildings. This creates more taxable property increasing tax revenues, which become the “tax increment.”
 
“My first instinct as an economist was that there have to be hidden costs,” said Dye, echoing the late economist Milton Friedman’s theory that “there is no free lunch.” “I ended up working on this for years to determine the costs. It became one of my three major areas of research.”
 
The Ernest A. Johnson Professor of Economics, Dye joined the faculty in 1983, after teaching at Bowdoin College and serving as a research economist at the Social Security Administration under a Brookings Institution Economic Policy Fellowship. He received an AB from Kenyon College where he was inspired to teach at a small college because he “had such wonderful experiences in the seminar rooms at Kenyon.” In 1977, he received his MBA and a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.
 
On the surface, it looks like Lake Forest College is suffering a major loss with the “retirement” of these three professors. But Dye, always the economist, sees the costs and benefits of this development and, ultimately, he said that it will reflect well on the College. 
 
“Having people go out while they are still vital is good,” he said. “People can stay too long. That’s the bane of an isolated small college. The College’s location in Chicago has supported us in being active professionals. The College has supported that, too.  “So…” he said, as if he were jumping off a pier, “here we go.”

Fern Schumer Chapman is a freelance writer from Lake Bluff, Illinois.