Campus & Community

Last week, in public schools across Massachusetts, students were racking their brains to show what they know on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test. The test results, which will be released in the fall, will provide data that show students proficiency in English language arts, mathematics, and science and technology.

With more than a billion people and an economy that has been growing at 7 percent or more for the past decade, India is poised to become an economic powerhouse. Indeed, the nations impact on global business is already being felt, as over 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies have outsourced a portion of their services operations to India.

It is the beginning of class and it is Nias turn to say what clay means to her. She glances around the ceramics studio at the circle of teenage girls. Theyre standing shoulder to shoulder in front of a table covered with pristine clay tablets just waiting for hands to mold them. What I like about clay is you can always start over when you mess up, and it can be anything you want it to be, she says.

In April 1775, minutemen and patriot troops began pouring into the Boston area to surround the British army and contain it in the city. In April 2006, Harvard Extension School students are poring over centuries-old documents to advance our knowledge of what has become known as the Siege of Boston.

Winslow Homers moody watercolor Adirondack Lake is one of the treasures to be (re-)unveiled at the Fogg Museum on April 8 in the exhibit American Watercolors and Pastels, 1875-1950. For story and more images, see page 17.

George W. Mackey, the Landon T. Clay Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, died March 15 of complications from pneumonia. He was 90.

Magnus Lindberg is a major presence in the European music scene he is particularly admired for his orchestral scores. In his native Finland, he has the reputation of a latter-day Sibelius in London, his compositions are beginning to be a permanent part of the new music repertoire and in the United States, the Los Angeles Philharmonic records his work. This spring, Lindberg has been named Fromm Professor of Music at Harvard, a post previously held by Peter Maxwell Davies (1985), Gunther Schuller (1991), and Betsy Jolas (1994), among others. A concert of Lindbergs works will be presented at 8 p.m. on April 15 in John Knowles Paine Concert Hall.

Two Harvard affiliates recently joined 14 other graduate students from North America and Asia to be named 2006 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award recipients. The award is sponsored by the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and nominations are solicited internationally with winners selected on the basis of the quality, originality, and significance of their work.

Sanford L. Palay died on August 5, 2002, at the age of 83, and was buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts.

Jim Lehrer, award-winning television journalist, presidential debate moderator, and prolific novelist, will be the principal speaker at Afternoon Exercises during Harvard Universitys 355th Commencement, to be held on June 8.

Harvard collected a record $38,272 for the American Cancer Societys annual Daffodil Days fundraiser this year, topping 2005s total by $2,840. On the big day (March 20), more than 1,200 of the 4,866 dazzling bouquets sold were donated and delivered to area hospitals, including Cambridge, Mt. Auburn, and Youville hospitals, the Sancta Maria Nursing Facility, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. New to this year, 228 teddy bears were also sold.

April 29, 1636 – John Harvard marries Ann Sadler, sister of the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University. Just over a year later, they emigrate to New England. April 24,…

President Lawrence H. Summers will hold office hours for students in his Massachusetts Hall office on the following dates: Thursday, April 20, 4-5 p.m. Thursday, May 11, 4-5 p.m. Sign-up…

The Harvard Corporation has launched the search for a successor to President Lawrence H. Summers, who recently announced his decision to step down as president of the University at the end of the 2005-06 academic year. Derek Bok has agreed to serve as interim president from July 1 until a new president assumes office.

Seismologists at Harvard University and Columbia University have found an unexpected offshoot of global warming: glacial earthquakes in which Manhattan-sized glaciers lurch unexpectedly, yielding temblors up to magnitude 5.1 on the moment-magnitude scale, which is similar to the Richter scale. Glacial earthquakes in Greenland, the researchers found, are most common in July and August, and have more than doubled in number since 2002.

Though the much-anticipated results of Harvards first-ever Team Fitness Challenge (TFC) are in, it would seem that the more than 300 Harvard affiliates who participated in the University-wide challenge all came out victorious, or at least in better shape. Taken together, the 36 teams made up of Harvard staff, students, and faculty accrued nearly 261,000 minutes of fitness over the eight-week period, be it through yoga, jogging, weight lifting, or countless other physical fitness activities. Harvard Athletics and the Malkin Athletic Center sponsored the challenge.

HLS auction to support public interest positions One of Harvard Law School’s most exciting traditions, the annual public interest auction, will be held this evening (April 6). The student-run auction,…

Dental Service of Massachusetts (DSM) – the nonprofit corporation doing business as Delta Dental of Massachusetts – recently announced that it is expanding its Workforce Development Initiative with a $5 million Legacy of Leadership endowment to the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (Dental School). The gift will help address critical oral health needs in the community by building the dental workforce, increasing the number of minority oral health care professionals, and providing leadership in eliminating disparities in oral health care.

Alina Payne, professor of the history of art and architecture, has received the 2006 Max Planck Research Award, for outstanding work in art history. This annual award, Germanys equivalent to the Nobel Prize, recognizes two scholars – one working in Germany and one working abroad – with a stipend of 750,000 euros each. This honor, granted on a rotating basis to scholars in the engineering sciences, the natural sciences, the life sciences, and the humanities, identifies scholars of international repute whose work, according to the Max Planck Society, has the capacity to initiate, deepen, or expand international cooperation.

At 23 years, CityStep is older than its participants. Run entirely by undergraduates, the program partners young Harvard students with younger Cambridge public school students. Together, they dance the year away while exploring personal growth goals such as community, self-expression, creativity, and self-confidence.

Harvard Universitys Institute of Politics (IOP), located at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), recently announced that former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner and Patricia Clarey, former chief of staff to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, have been selected to serve as IOP Visiting Fellows this month. Warners fellowship is currently under way Clareys fellowship begins April 17.

Harvard Business Schools (HBS) Spangler Center hummed recently with the voices of 30 high school students from across Massachusetts participating in the Youth Leadership Forum (YLF). Sponsored by the office of the University Disability Coordinator in the Office of the Assistant to the President, Partners for Youth With Disabilities in Boston, and the Governors Commission on the Employment of People with Disabilities, which Marie Trottier co-chairs, this March 25 forum provided an educational, meaningful – and fun – experience for these young people, mostly high school juniors and seniors, each of whom has a disability.

Reinforcing its commitment to opportunity and excellence across the economic spectrum, Harvard today (March 30) announced a significant expansion of its 2004 financial aid initiative for low- and middle-income families.

The Class of 2010 has set new records for economic, gender, and ethnic diversity.

The Harvard Corporation has launched the search for a successor to President Lawrence H. Summers, who recently announced his decision to step down as president of the University at the end of the 2005-06 academic year.

A statement issued today (March 23, 2006) by the Harvard Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (CCSR) regarding stock in China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec Corporation).

Exercise improves your health, but can you kill yourself with too much snow shoveling, yard work, jogging, or playing tennis? “Despite all of the known benefits of exercise, there are…

David Suzuki, the Japanese-Canadian scientist and environmentalist, professed astonishment at having been awarded this year’s Roger Tory Peterson medal from the Harvard Museum of Natural History. “I’m not a birder,”…

Ian Gilby was following a chimpanzee through Uganda’s Kibale Forest, observing behavior and testing revised data collection methods. Gilby had done his doctoral dissertation on chimpanzees in Tanzania and was…

The white board that covers hundreds of feet of the curved hallway at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) is not always covered with equations – but lately, it…