Tag: Katie Koch

  • Nation & World

    Chasing the caffeine high

    In opening Harvard’s first student-run coffee shop, Jesse Kaplan found startup success the old-fashioned way.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Harvard awards 9 honorary degrees

    Media icon Oprah Winfrey, who will serve as the principal speaker for the Afternoon Exercises, joins eight other leaders in their fields — from medicine to politics to public service — in receiving an honorary degree at Harvard’s 362nd Commencement.

    14 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Parting words

    An Ethiopian classicist, a French explorer, and a New York policeman-turned-HKS student will speak at this year’s Morning Exercises on May 30.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Talent on the sidelines

    Every spring, high-achieving high school seniors around the country play the college admissions game in the lead-up to the May 1 decision deadline. Research by Christopher Avery of HKS research shows that many poor but promising students are sitting out.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    To protect, serve, mourn

    The Harvard University Police Department joined thousands of colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday to pay tribute to Sean Collier, the officer slain in aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Emerging to a renewed normal

    After a tense Friday that saw the campus and the Greater Boston area on lockdown, Harvard came to life again Saturday as students and visitors flooded into Harvard Square.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Jazz as conversation

    Artist and composer Wynton Marsalis returned to Sanders Theatre for his fourth lecture-performance at Harvard, an exploration of the strange alchemy of instinct, expertise, and empathy that jazz musicians need to “play and stay together.”

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Strength in numbers

    For Harvard’s unusually tight-knit group of faculty, student, and staff runners, the Boston Marathon was meant to be the culmination of months of teamwork and training. After Monday’s bombings, the running community pulled together for a different reason.

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A loss close to home

    The Harvard community mourned the loss of Krystle Campbell, daughter of longtime HBS dining staffer Patty Campbell and sister of Cabot House dining services worker Billy Campbell, in the marathon bombings.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    On Tax Day, a step toward equality

    Under federal law, same-sex couples pay taxes on spousal medical coverage that their heterosexual married coworkers do not. Starting this month, Harvard will help LGBT employees and their families offset those costs with a tax equalization payment of $1,500 a year, the University announced April 15.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Making this economy work

    In honor of its 30th anniversary, the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government brought together heavy hitters in economics and government to discuss how private and public leaders can help the United States thrive again.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Hallmarks of healthy eating

    The Mediterranean Diet has been lauded as a healthy eater’s dream, but it’s still a mystery to many Americans. Greek cooking guru Diane Kochilas and cardiac health expert Frank Sacks — who have worked to enhance the diet’s presence in Harvard’s dining hall menus — visited groups across Harvard last week to share insights and…

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    ‘Sisterhood of the traveling pantsuit’

    This week, Harvard Business School celebrated 50 years of women in its M.B.A. program with a summit that drew hundreds of the School’s female graduates to campus. But as a new alumni survey demonstrates — and as speakers like “Lean In” author Sheryl Sandberg acknowledged — women still have a long way to go to…

    8 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Lessons of a temporary city

    The Maha Kumbh Mela, India’s massive gathering of Hindu pilgrims, ended in March. But for Harvard researchers across disciplines, the festival and the tent city it spawned continue to yield lessons in everything from big data to urban planning.

    3 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Provost’s other hat: Teacher

    As provost, Alan Garber spends his days tackling Harvard’s administrative concerns. This semester, he has stepped back into his old role as a teacher, leading a freshman seminar on health care policy that has given him a fresh take on the University he helps lead.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Reading the president’s mind

    Jon Favreau, who recently stepped down after several years as President Obama’s head speechwriter, took a Harvard Kennedy School audience on a behind-the-scenes tour of the president’s best-known addresses.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New spaces for old friends

    What’s in store for the revamped Harvard Art Museums, set to open in fall 2014? On Wednesday evening, curators offered visitors a glimpse of how the museums’ collections will be showcased in the new building, with a nod toward the thoughtful, the innovative, and the interactive.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A new face at the Vatican

    After Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope on Wednesday, Harvard analysts weighed in on what his selection, as the Vatican’s first Jesuit and first South American leader, could mean for the future of the Roman Catholic Church.

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    A postwar call to service

    : The United States must do more to help its newest generation of veterans reintegrate by capitalizing on their desire to serve, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, former commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said at a panel event in honor of Harvard’s veterans.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Bridging the gap, digitally

    A new project at Harvard’s Pakistan Innovation Network brings professors and their research to students, activists, and entrepreneurs across South Asia via video conferencing, making possible connections that could spark social change.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Driving global issues home

    In an ever-more-crowded media landscape, journalists and academics alike must think creatively about how to bring overlooked human-rights issues to Americans’ attention, said Nicholas D. Kristof ’81 as he accepted the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism at the Harvard Kennedy School.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Art and cost

    Why should cities support the arts, and how can they do so sustainably? Experts debated those questions at the public launch of a multiyear initiative of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations that will analyze the role of the arts in strengthening U.S. cities.

    6 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Tracking disease in a tent city

    At India’s Kumbh Mela, the largest temporary city in the world, public health researchers from Harvard and beyond staged a small but nimble operation to follow health measures and disease outbreaks. The results will hold lessons not just for future Harvard students, but for urban health planners in India and elsewhere.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Peering into our blind spots

    Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji and longtime collaborator Anthony Greenwald condense three decades of work on the unconscious mind in “Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People.”

    7 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Among millions, a blank slate

    The Kumbh Mela, the world’s largest religious gathering, spawns a city of millions virtually overnight — and with it, a thriving ecosystem of commerce large-scale and small. Harvard Business School researchers traveled to India to search for the festival’s unlikely lessons in infrastructure, governance, and informal networks.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Saving the mother river

    The Sangam — the point where the Ganges, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers meet — is one of the holiest spots in India, drawing millions of Hindus for the Kumbh Mela festival. As a group of Harvard students learned, it’s also a place where centuries-old religious practices and modern-day environmental politics collide.

    9 minutes
  • Nation & World

    How the big speech fared

    After Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Harvard College students at the Institute of Politics watch party offered their first impressions of President Obama’s second-term agenda.

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    New ways to fund science

    As research funding dwindles, scientists need to rethink their methods for supporting the most promising projects, and how they communicate their work to the public, Nobel Prize–winning geneticist Paul Nurse told an audience of Harvard scientists.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Using new media to save the old

    Nine years after he helped Harvard roommate Mark Zuckerberg launch Facebook, Chris Hughes ’06 returned to campus to discuss his latest underdog venture: his plan to reinvigorate the ailing but venerable magazine The New Republic.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Mapping a megacity’s metabolism

    The temporary city that supports the Kumbh Mela, India’s gathering of millions of Hindus, is planned and built in just three months. A team of students, architects, and photographers from the Harvard Graduate School of Design set out to map the insta-metropolis in one week.

    10 minutes