northwestern university school of continuing studies continuum magazine - 2005

CONTINUUMT H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E S C H O O L O F C O N T I N U I N G S T U D I E S A T N O R T H W E S T E R N U N I V E R S I T Y

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CONTINUUM

SCSN O R T H W E S T E R N U N I V E R S I T Y S C H O O L O F C O N T I N U I N G S T U D I E S

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On the cover: Wieboldt Hall, c. 1927.

Continuum is published by the School

of Continuing Studies at Northwestern

University for its students, alumni, faculty,

staff, and friends.

Editors: Margaret Buhl, Tom Fredrickson

Associate editor: Brad Farrar

Designer: Vickie Lata

Photos: Kevin Weinstein, Courtesy of

Northwestern University Archives,

Andrew Campbell, Marc Hauser

© 2005 Northwestern University.

All rights reserved.

Produced by University Relations.

3-05/20M/TF-VL/10120

Views expressed in Continuum do not

necessarily reflect the opinions of the

editors or the University.

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featuresGreat Scott 2Walter Dill Scott and the birth of adult education at Northwestern

No more writer’s block 6Creative writing springs to life at SCS

Un hombre de letras 10SCS alumni Don Luis Leal has introduced generations of students to the richness of Mexican, Chicano, and Latin American literature

departmentsStudent profile: Jenn Williams 14

SCS news 15Walter E. Smithe to the rescue; Student Advisory Board;the ILR Journal; and more

SCS people 17News from alumni, students, and faculty

To be continued… 20Memories of the P. I.by Jim Kemper (ILR)

Spring 2005 Continuum 1

From the dean

Dear SCS Friends,

I am pleased to welcome you to the second issue of the new Continuum. In the following

pages, you’ll find articles that look ahead to new programs and look back on our origins.

As I read these stories one thing became clear: Innovation has been a longstanding

tradition at the School of Continuing Studies, and we plan to continue that tradition.

Adult education was a radical idea 100 years ago, as John Balz shows in his fine

history of the early days of continuing studies at the Northwestern (“Great Scott,”

pages 2–5). No less innovative is the entrepreneurial spirit of SCS today as we embrace

new partnerships, as with the University’s Center for Public Safety (“SCS news,”

page 15), and develop new degree offerings, such as the Master’s of Creative Writing

(MCW) program (“No more writer’s block,” pages 6–9).

The MCW program is a real SCS success story. It draws on a remarkable pool of writing

talent from within the University and beyond — including recent MacArthur fellow Aleksandar

Hemon (see “SCS people,” page 18) — and has already attracted an energetic and promising

group of students. I am proud to support a program devoted to the transforming power of writing.

The power of writing is echoed in several other stories in this issue of Continuum. It’s in the

pioneering career of SCS alumnus Don Luis Leal (“Un hombre de letras,” pages 10–13), it’s in in

the pages of the ILR Journal (“SCS news,” page 16), and it is vividly evident in Jim Kemper’s skill

at capturing a particular time and place in words (“Memories of the P. I.,” page 20).

One of our goals in Continuum is to shine a light on the people who make SCS a special

place. In this issue you will read about our Student Advisory Board as well as a profile of student

Jenn Williams — people whose generosity and commitment make the SCS community what it is.

The response to our last issue of Continuum has been overwhelmingly positive. As we look

forward to future issues of the magazine and future initiatives at the school, we ask you — alumni,

current students, faculty, staff, and friends — to help us tell the SCS story. Let us know what is

happening in your lives; suggest ideas for future profiles and articles; tell us about the people and

experiences that have made SCS a special place for you.

Sincerely,

Thomas F. Gibbons

Dean

April 2005

2 Continuum Spring 2005

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) was anIllinois farm boy who graduated Phi Beta Kappa fromNorthwestern in 1895 before entering the buddingfield of educational psychology. In 1900 he returned toNorthwestern to help start the psychology department,where he developed a test for the U.S. Army to identifyand promote officers based on merit and ability.

Scott was a businessman as well as a scholar. AfterWorld War I, he ran his own industrial consulting firm,headed up a bureau of “salesmanship” in Pittsburgh,and wrote books on advertising, human resources, and “human efficiency.” Business and psychology were really not so far apart, he believed, for when a business-man asks what a customer wants, “he is talking aboutthe minds of his customers,” Scott wrote in his Theoryof Advertising (1903).

This practical, worldly emphasis made Scott some-thing of a rebel in the conservative fraternity of highereducation. He considered the majority of American ed-ucators “seclusive, snobbish, and intolerant,” accordingto an article in the Daily Northwestern. With the Uni-versity struggling academically and eating away at itsendowment, he turned down the presidency twice be-fore finally acquiescing in 1920. Scott brought his inde-pendent thinking to Evanston in the form of the “ScottDoctrine,” as it was known around campus.

The strategy focused on figuring out how best toserve individual students. Scott’s idea was not to mold

students to the University, but to mold the Universityto them. “Training should be determined primarily by the needs of the youth to be educated,” he wrote in1922, “not by the needs of … society or the availablecourses.”

For someone interested in understanding the human condition and devoted to the practice of socialscience, there could be no finer subject than the collegestudent. Each student — no matter his or her age —was an unfinished collection of interests and attitudes. It was the job of educators to help students determinetheir strengths and nudge their personalities towardmaturity. Scott relished that position.

He looked at Northwestern with the same empiricaltenacity with which he analyzed the U.S. military. Incharts and tables he asked: Who was coming and going?Why? What was their background? What were their future plans? Which classes were popular? Soon he hadfirm grasp of whom he was looking for. Not “merebookworms,” he said. He wanted men and women withintellect, emotion, and will — or as he put it, “thepower to think, to feel, to do.” In adults Scott foundsuch traits — as well as a lot of untapped potential.

An oxymoron?Scott’s thinking about educating adults was developing at the same time other educators and social scientistswere pondering the subject. Someone near the top of

Great ScottThe birth of adult education

at Northwestern


the University has believed in the promise of and the responsibility for teaching adults since the last decade of the 19th century. For example, the University was an original partner in a six-school adult education consortium called the Chicago Society, the College of Liberal Arts offered evening classes prior to World War I, and the School of Commerce offered its ownevening curriculum throughout the early 20th century.

But to many adult education seemed like an oxy-moron. In the eyes of most universities and businesses,adults were not students — they were exhausted parents;they were busy employees; they were slow learners.

Early ideas about how and why to teach adults were connected with industrialization, urbanization,immigration, and changing philosophies of Americaneducation. New towns rose as fast as factories could be erected, mechanization meant more leisure time for employees, and employers demanded more workers

with better training. In the last quarter of the 19th century, the federal government expanded its role inhigher education, directing money and land to collegesthat would offer liberal, agricultural, and vocationaltraining. A college education remained a rare privilegein 1890 when schools like the University of Pennsyl-vania and Johns Hopkins — borrowing from England’suniversity extension model of learning for the sake oflearning — carried the university to the communitythrough school-sponsored lectures and public forums.More than 30,000 enrolled in correspondence coursesat the University of Chicago in the early 20th century,and public libraries and YMCAs offered adult programscalled “continuation schools.”

In the 1920s the phrase “adult education” came into national vogue, used as an undefined catch-all term by educators, propagandists, and profiteers. Aslate as 1956, critics were still deriding evening schools

It is probably too much to say that without Walter Dill Scott,

Northwestern would not have educated adults. But it is true

that without Scott, adult education at Northwestern would have

taken a very different form.

Far left: Walter Dill Scott.

Above: Wieboldt Hall, today and in the 1930s.


Social scientists were hard at work as well ruminat-ing on adult education’s meaning. The most influentialresearch of the decade was coming out of New York,where psychologist Edward Thorndike was gatheringstatistical proof that people did not lose their intelli-gence or their ability to learn as they aged. The find-ings — which, when published in 1928, challenged the theories of every previous educational researcher — meant that education need no longer be confined to children. Thorndike thought educators needed onlyto focus on the motives of adult learners and respondaccordingly. Schools ought to determine what adultswant to learn, not what they should be taught.

Such ideas echoed in the “Scott Doctrine” atNorthwestern. (In fact, Scott had met Thorndike while teaching summer classes at Columbia Universityin New York, and Thorndike wrote Scott a letter of recommendation to a defense employer praising his talent for “dealing with men” and “devising personnelschemes.”) Scott criticized the “old attitude” that edu-cation was an isolated endeavor, separate from practicallives and work. The “new attitude,” he said, was an education that benefited from experience and contin-ued throughout a person’s entire life.

Scott demanded that such attitudes and philoso-phies serve practical purposes. Above all else, he was

for their medley of courses. Wrote one historian: “[I]tappears … that about all these fragmented segments of the evening colleges have in common is that they are all passionately interested in teaching something to adults of all ages.”

Amidst this mish-mash of educational missions,however, was the search for a unifying principle. Theperiod from 1918 to 1944 was the most crucial to thedevelopment of adult education. Thinkers committedto learning not as a privilege of the few, but as an intel-lectual opportunity for all, began to brainstorm. Sug-gestions for a principle came from writers and teacherssuch as Eduard Lindeman, who helped adult educationfind nationwide social and institutional support. In The Meaning of Adult Education (1926), cited todayamong the field’s seminal works, Lindeman noted thatthe term “adult education” was apt “not because it isconfined to adults but because adulthood, maturity, defines its limits.”

The unifying principle was to help adults respondintelligently to their own situation. Learning camefrom personal experience, not external authority.Rather than instill in adults the meanings of life,Lindeman believed adult education was the process by which men and women discovered those meaningsfor themselves.


a pragmatist with a keen sense of the marketplace. In1924 he noted that the demand for evening courses“seems to be growing.” Eventually, he predicted, thatgrowth would demand a “change (in) all the presentconceptions of the educational process.”

It would also demand new facilities.

“John Doe Hall”Walter Dill Scott did not shrink from challenges. Aspresident of Northwestern, he was revered as a builderas well as a thinker. During his tenure Northwesternopened schools of journalism, education, and engineer-ing, a Scientific Crime Detention Lab, and the TrafficSafety Institute. New buildings for law, medicine, anddentistry climbed the downtown skyline. And he was amaster fundraiser, growing the University’s endowmentfrom $5 million in 1920 to more than $28 million bythe time he left office in 1939. He was quick to seize an opportunity when presented with one.

By 1925 William Wieboldt had already made a fortune selling other people’s products. The once-poorGerman immigrant was now a wealthy departmentstore tycoon and had turned to philanthropy. He had established a foundation with $4.5 million and set aside $1 million of it for a gift to the Uni-versity of Chicago. Hisson Raymond, however,urged him to wait. Per-haps sensing a businessopportunity of his own,the son tipped off his friend Walter Dill Scott.(Raymond Wieboldt just happened to be the lead contractor on a number of building projects at North-western.) He suggested Scott call his father. “You mustprepare a prospectus for a project that will appeal toFather,” he said. “You must do it immediately.” If Scottdid, he might convince William to split the million between two schools.

Scott hastily organized a meeting. He and Raymondstayed up late into the night working on an eight-pagedocument describing how William Wieboldt’s donationcould be used. They outlined plans for a giant center— temporarily called the “John Doe Building” — devoted entirely, in Scott’s words, “to adult educationin the fields of Commerce, Arts and Sciences.” He setaside space for classrooms, laboratories, libraries, audi-toriums, even a museum. When he was finished withhis pitch, Northwestern got the $500,000 — worthmore than $5.1 million today — as a down payment for construction of an eight-story building bearing theWieboldt surname. Raymond got the construction con-tract, and adult education got a new home. WieboldtHall opened in 1928, and adult education officially

began in the fall of 1933, when University College (theforerunner of SCS) opened its doors. Today WieboldtHall is the academic and administrative headquarters of the School of Continuing Studies in Chicago.

Adult education would have its boom — afterWorld War II, when veterans flooded day and nightschools; and its bust — in the early 1970s, when risingtuition rates and increased competition pushed enroll-ment levels to record lows. By the end of the 20th century, however, no one could doubt the value and potential of adult learners.

Today, adult education is no longer an afterthought,but an essential component of Northwestern’s mission,says SCS Dean Thomas F. Gibbons. “As the pace ofchange in society increases, as people start second andthird careers, as new technologies reshape the work-place, SCS is one of the few places innovative, flexible,and academically strong enough to meet the needs ofadults at every stage of their lives. No one questionsthe value of lifelong learning today,” he says.

“Adult education used to mean finishing somethingleft undone,” adds Gibbons. “Today the students Iknow see SCS as a new beginning. Maybe that’s a subtle shift, but I think it’s a critical one.”

—John Balz

“We should begin work early and go to school always. There is no gulf between … school and office.” —WALTER DILL SCOTT

A new campus for new programs. In the 1920s Walter Dill Scott’s plans for a campus on Chicago’s northside made its mark on North-western — and on the city.With the completion of Levy Mayer Hall (1926), theWard Memorial Building(1926), and Wieboldt Hall(1927), Scott raised the University’s urban profile. The 1925 groundbreaking for the Chicago campus(opposite) brought togethermajor donors for the project(above, from left): Elbert H.Gary, Mrs. Walter Hirsch,Walter Dill Scott, Mrs. LevyMayer, William Wieboldt, Mrs. George A. McKinlock, and George A. McKinlock.

About 30 years ago, when S. L. Wisenbergwas in her first year at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, she received a questionnaire askingwhether Northwestern should offer a graduate programin creative writing. Wisenberg gave the idea an enthu-siastic thumbs-up, only to see nothing come of it.Today Wisenberg — winner of a Pushcart Prize for her fiction and author of a collection of essays Booklist

dubbed “gems not to be missed” — codirects the pro-gram she endorsed back in her undergraduate years: the Master of Arts in Creative Writing (MCW) pro-gram at SCS. Within only a year of its birth, the MCWprogram has attracted an impressive roster of authorsto its faculty and talented developing writers to itsworkshops. “I always hoped Northwestern would havethis program,” says Wisenberg.

6 Continuum Spring 2005Continuum Spring 2004

After a long gestation, creativewriting program springs to life.

Much of the credit for the program’sgenesis and success goes to award-winning poet and novelist ReginaldGibbons, professor and chair of Englishat Northwestern and codirector of theMCW program since it be-gan in fall 2003. Gibbons,author of seven poetry collections and the novelSweetbitter, had taught manyundergraduate poetry work-shops at Northwestern butbelieved that teaching cre-ative writing at the graduatelevel would yield even big-ger rewards. Since 1989Gibbons has been a mem-ber of the core faculty of the MFA Program forWriters at Warren Wilson College, alow-residency graduate program thatdraws students to its campus in the BlueRidge Mountains for a series of inten-sive 10-day workshops and classes.“Anyone who has ever taught creativewriting likes the stimulus of teachinggraduate students,” says Gibbons,adding that “older students bring alarger fund of life experience to theirwriting.”

The first place Gibbonslooked to house such a pro-gram at Northwestern wasthe Graduate School, whichalready offered MFA pro-grams in theater and paint-ing. But their curricularstructure was too restrictivefor the creative writing pro-gram Gibbons envisioned.Looking for flexibility and a way to cut throughacademic red tape, he discovered the ideal tape-cutter in Thomas F. Gibbons (no rela-tion), who became dean of SCS in May 2002. “Tom was eager to support the program,” says Gibbons, “and he

found a terrific administrator in CaryNathenson,” assistant dean of graduateprograms at SCS. Gibbons further credits his codirector last year, BrianBouldrey, the author of three novels and

a collection of personalessays, for his role inlaunching the program.

When shaping the MCW program,Nathenson and others atSCS looked at existingprograms in the Chicagoarea and identified a gap.Although several areauniversities offer creativewriting programs, nonesupported a part-timegraduate program that

would allow students to complete theirdegrees in two to three years — whileearning a living. At SCS, Nathensonsays, “we already had a very successfuladult student model, and we have theflexibility to create new programs.”

Catching big writing fishNorthwestern had another powerful advantage: the ability to attract topwriters as adjunct faculty. Wisenberg

explains it this way:“Northwestern alreadyhas nationally knownwriters on its faculty, like Reg Gibbons, Mary Kinzie, and BrianBouldrey. The Universityhas great resources that support writing —Northwestern UniversityPress, TriQuarterly [a lit-erary journal], the literaryjournalism program atMedill, and the Center

for Writing Arts. When we cast our netwe are able to attract some very big fish,writers who are also good teachers.”Last year those included MacArthur

L. C. FioreWhen Chicago Public Radio announced threewinners from the 715 short stories entered inits “Now Hear This” competition in October,“Bluster and Balderdash,” by MCW studentL. C. (Charles) Fiore, was among them. Win-ning the contest, says Fiore, and hearing his work read aloud by a professional actorfor broadcast, “was a huge thrill.”

Fiore’s relative youth — he was 25 whenhe entered the program in fall 2003 — didnot prevent him from creating a nuancedmain character of retirement age. Perhapsthat is because Fiore, who holds a demand-ing day job as an executive assistant at theChicago Board of Options while devoting his evenings to writing and MCW classes,says he feels “like two different people allthe time.”

The program’s part-time schedule workedperfectly for Fiore, who says the programprovides a firm foundation for writers “andthen lets you take risks.” He calls the MCWfaculty “an incredible pool of writing talent,”citing classes with Hemon, Thompson,novelist Alexander Shakar, and academicsuperstar Stanley Fish. At the top of Fiore’slist is Bouldrey: “Brian’s class was the firsttime I thought about rhythm and reading my work aloud,” says Fiore. “After I graduatenext fall, I’ll miss the feedback.”

What we learned:Developing writersdiscuss their craft

Reginald Gibbons

S. L. Wisenberg


“genius” grant winner AleksanderHemon, the Sarajevo-born author ofThe Question of Bruno. Jean Thompson,a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign andthe author of four novels — her latest is City Boy — and three story collec-tions, taught nonfiction last spring. This ever-changingpool of adjunct facultycomplements the tal-ents of Northwestern’s full-time faculty andexpands the variety of class offerings.

Top writers attracttop students. SCS administrators wereencouraged by thestrong response to the program from thevery beginning and the high quality of the applicants. “This is turning into ourmost difficult program to get into,” saysNathenson. “Theirwork must pass musterfor them to be admitted, which helpsinsure the quality of the classroom experience. In a rigorous,workshop-based programlike this you can’t just sitback. It’s incredibly hardwork.” The program isdesigned for people who have mastered thefundamentals of creativewriting; SCS encouragesthose who need morebackground to first takeundergraduate writingcourses or register for the program’s special non-credit course, What Graduate SchoolsWant: Applying to Creative WritingPrograms.

Administrators have also beenpleased with the variety of backgroundsof the applicants. “We’ve had studentsfrom every area,” says Nathenson, “people in their 60s and people straightout of college; lifelong writers pursuing

new careers, writers in midcareer whosee this as a stepping stone to greatersuccess; some who enroll for personalenrichment. The mix is part of whatmakes our writing community exciting.”

Distinctive featuresBuilding a program like the MCW from

scratch was challenging,says Gibbons, but itgave organizers the opportunity to incorpo-rate several distinctivefeatures. Northwestern’sMCW differs from an MFA in that it is ahybrid of an academicprogram and a profes-sional degree program.“We expect our writingstudents to be studentsof literature,” saysNathenson. Designed to be flexible and afford-able, the MCW pro-gram appeals to writingstudents and faculty by fitting a full-scalewriting program into a

part-time structure of evening classes.Students take at least one course per

term but may take up to fourcourses per term. Classes are small, with workshopscapped at 15 students.

In addition to the con-centrations in fiction and poetry traditionally offered by creative writing programs,Northwestern’s program offers a concentration in creative nonfiction — essays,memoirs, cultural criticism,literary journalism, and related writings. “We’re

really strong in creative nonfiction,”notes Wisenberg, “and we’ve attractedgreat faculty to teach it.” Miles Harvey,author of The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime, will teach the core course in creativenonfiction this spring.

Students take three workshops in their areas of concentration and

“We’ve had studentsfrom every area … people in their 60s and peoplestraight out ofcollege; lifelongwriters pursuingnew careers, writers in mid-career who see thisas a stepping stoneto greater success.”

Michael MoreciMichael Moreci was about to leave Chicago,headed for an MFA program in creativewriting at Northern Michigan University,when a friend told him about Northwestern’sMCW program. With an undergraduatedegree in creative writing from the Universityof Illinois at Chicago and several publica-tions in campus and literary journals underhis belt, Moreci entered the program in fall 2004 at age 24 with valuable writingexperience and life experience spiced bywork as a bartender.

Moreci is pleased that he was able to stay in Chicago and says the small class sizein the program strengthens his connection to his classmates, who bring a wide spec-trum of perspectives to their writing anddiscussions. Moreci will take advantage ofthe program’s independent study option byworking with novelist and poet John Keene.

“Anyone who wants to write has to realizethat it takes time,” says Moreci. “Probablythe most important thing is finding yourvoice.” Moreci believes that Northwestern’s MCW program offers students the freedomto discover that voice.


complete the remainder of the 10-course curriculum with a mix of corecourses and electives. Core courses,such as Writing Across Genres, takeplace on the Chicago Lakefront campus.Students take some electives on theEvanston campus, choosing from gradu-ate offerings in SCS literature and lib-eral studies degree programs. Studentsalso participate in four noncredit semi-nars designed to expose them to profes-sional opportunities. Topics for thesetwo-day workshops areWriting for Fame andFortune; Grammar for Creative Writers;The Art and Science of Revision; andResearch for Writers.

One of the hall-marks of the programis the breadth of opportunity it offersfor independent study, culminating with themaster’s final projectrequired of all students. For this cap-stone project students write an originalcreative work — one long piece or a series of shorter pieces — under the supervision of a faculty member. Stu-dents also have the option throughoutthe program to work independentlywith full-time and adjunct faculty.

For even more variety, studentsmay expand their independent study beyond campus by working via e-mailwith instructors from theprogram’s Faculty MentorList, an ever-changinggroup of writing instructorswith diverse writing stylesand teaching methods. Thisyear’s list of 10 facultymentors includes severalWisenberg knows from herwork at the literary journalAnother Chicago Magazine.A few of the mentors onthe list, along with theirteaching bases and a sampling of their publications, are Anne Calcagno,DePaul University, Pray for Yourself;John Dufresne, Florida International

University, Louisiana Power & Light;Barry Silesky, Art Institute of Chicago,John Gardner: Literary Outlaw; andSharon Solwitz, Purdue University,Blood and Milk.

A lifetime of writing opportunitiesAs committed as the MCW program isto nurturing developing writers, it has apractical side, too, equipping graduatesfor careers in related fields. Not all stu-dents entering the program are banking

on writing the GreatAmerican Novel.Some seek careers inpublishing and edit-ing; others hope toteach creative writ-ing. The programsupports those op-tions by requiringstudents to take acourse in eitherteaching creativewriting or the pub-lishing industry. The

MCW program also offers opportuni-ties to gain teaching and internship experience, placing students at work-places like Chicago’s arts webzine, the Bridge. Students looking for workafter graduation may take advantage of Northwestern’s University CareerServices office or attend one of SCS’scareer workshops. In addition to theirdevelopment as writers, MCW studentscan add a master’s degree from North-

western to their résumés.MCW student Michael

Moreci (see sidebar) says he is excited to be part of this new endeavor.“Northwestern is a greatplace to learn,” he says. “I think this program willopen doors to a lot of opportunities.”

For more information onthe Master of Arts in Cre-ative Writing program, go

to www.scs.northwestern.edu/grad/cw.

—Leanne Star

“Northwestern alreadyhas nationally knownwriters on its faculty.When we cast ournet, we are able toattract some very bigfish, writers who arealso good teachers.”

Lesley LathropLesley Lathrop already had one master’sdegree from Northwestern — in history —when she started the MCW program in fall2003 at age 38. She used her academicresearch and writing skills in her work for theIllinois Humanities Council. Lathrop foundwriting so satisfying that she was about tomove to Boston to attend an MFA program in creative writing at Boston College whenshe heard a radio ad for Northwestern’s newprogram.

“I really didn’t want to move,” Lathropsays, “so I jumped right into the program at Northwestern.”

In the MCW program Lathrop concentratedon creative nonfiction. “I like to learn aboutpeople,” says Lathrop, who enjoys writingprofiles and biographical sketches, includingones on Virginia Woolf and Abraham Lincolnthat make up part of her master’s project.

Because Lathrop entered the MCWprogram with credits from SCS’s master’s in literature program, she became MCW’s first graduate in December. As a result of the program, Lathrop says her writing hasbecome more focused: “I pay more attentionto syntax, diction, rhythm, and punctuation to create the effects I want.” Lathrop citedclasses she took with Hemon, Wisenberg, and Elizabeth Crane, author of When theMessenger Is Hot, and is especially gratefulfor the support she received from her adviser,Bouldrey.

“I used to write in what Brian called ‘wordpackages,’” says Lathrop, explaining that a“word package” is a predictable string ofwords — “You know how it’s going to end.”Now, she says, “I find more original ways to say what I want.”



Alumni profile

He has written 20 books and edited another 29. He hasbeen a respected teacher and mentor at several majoruniversities. He’s known and studied a who’s who ofLatin American authors: Carlos Fuentes, Juan Rulfo,Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, and Gabriel GarcíaMárquez. He received the National Humanities Medalfrom President Bill Clinton and the Aguila Azteca(Aztec Eagle) Award from Mexican president CarlosSalinas. But at 97 Don Luis Leal is still not ready to retire from his life’s mission — to bring attention toMexican, Chicano, and Latin American literatures.

Leal (40) promoted the study of these literaturesand authors at U.S. universities at a time when litera-ture from Spain was the gold standard. Early in his career he focused on the work of Mexican writers, and later he brought attention to Mexican American(Chicano) authors. Leal’s support for such authors andtraining of more than 44 doctoral graduates who studythem has raised their profile in American universities.He also is the premier scholar of the Mexican shortstory and continues work in that field even today.

For Luis Leal, retirement is an option never enter-tained. There are still too many ideas in the world yetto be conquered by the professor emeritus, who stillteaches Chicano studies courses at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara. And through all he’s seen,what is appealing about him is that he’s as passionate as a young person discovering something for the first time.

His life’s mission, through literature, has been to erase ignorance and to bridge the gap between two neighbors inexorably tied together in history andculture: the United States and Mexico.

“If you know Chicano literature, then you will have a better attitude toward the Chicano people,” he says. “Mexico and the United States are very closeneighbors — but they don’t know each other. I thinkit’s very important for American people to know how rich the Mexican mythology is. In the UnitedStates everything is science, but there is another per-spective, which is the mythical, which complements the science.”

The fact that Leal may not have many years left to work is what bothers him. So he doesn’t stop, as he puts together yet another book on the Mexicanshort story. In 2003 he published Mitos y Leyendas de Mexico: Myths and Legends of Mexico, in which he retells 21 stories from Mexico’s indigenous and colonial past.

Hundreds of students have gleaned Leal’s knowl-edge, enjoying walks or a morning coffee session withhim, listening as he empties the contents of his mind.Students call him “Don Luis,” a title of honor, ratherthan professor.

“He’s a walking bibliography,” says RolandoRomero, professor and former director of the Latina/Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois,where Leal taught.

Un hombre de letrasSCS alumnus Don Luis Leal has introduced generations of students to the richness of Mexican, Chicano, and Latin American literature.


Growing up norteñoLeal lived a privileged childhood. He was born into an influential northern, or norteño, Mexican ranchingfamily on September 17, 1907, in Linares, NuevoLeón, an agricultural town rich with orange groves.The Leals owned a Spanish-style home an entire block long next to the marketplace. He lived there with his parents, four brothers and sisters, and anextended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Theoldest child, he was always “reading, reading, reading.”He recalls reading excerpts from Don Quixote aloud tothe younger children.

When he was about eight years old, in 1915, the violence of the Mexican Revolution reached his town.His father aided the revolutionary Lucio Blanco, oneof the first to give land to the peasants. While manyMexican families fled to the United States, Leal’s father decided to move the family to Mexico City.

With the unrest, Leal did not attend school forabout two years. He recalls witnessing fusilamientos,or executions, in the streets of Mexico City. He remembers soldiers pushing around peasants and the poverty of the Mexican people. “That’s what affects you,” he recalls, “the suffering of the people.”

In the end Leal believes the revolution was good,because it tied the richer north and the poorer southtogether, creating a national identity.

Arriving at NorthwesternThe day he stepped off the train at Union Station in Chicago, the young man knew he was far fromMexico. He couldn’t speak English, but he couldread it. It was cold that day in May 1927, the sameday Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic Ocean.Leal was wearing a light summer coat and a straw hat much like the one usually worn by MauriceChevalier, the French singer and actor.

“Everybody was looking at me!” Leal rememberswith a laugh.

Friends from his hometown were attendingNorthwestern University and had encouraged him toapply. He arrived speaking only limited English,which led him to Northwestern’s School of Contin-uing Studies (then called University College) and its innovative and flexible admission policies. “I wasprovisionally accepted until I learned sufficientEnglish to become a regular student,” he recalls inMario T. García’s book Luis Leal: An Auto/Biography(2000). “Little by little my English improved, untilafter a few years I began to take classes in math, sci-ence, English, and other undergraduate courses. Butit took me seven years to master English, which iswhy I didn’t complete my BA until 1940.”

Leal began as a mathematics major, but after he met Spanish professor Roberto Brenes Mesén, a poetand the former Costa Rican ambassador to the UnitedStates, he switched to Spanish. Brenes Mesén taughthim to critique Latin American literature from a LatinAmerican perspective, not a European one.

Feeling out of place at the University, he moved in with his friends from Linares, staying at a boardinghouse in Chicago managed by a Mexican family. He became active with the transplanted Mexican commu-nity, serving in the Mexican American Council, an organization with an office at Hull House in Chicago.He tried to find scholarships for Mexican students,hosted speakers at the Mexican consulate, and aidedmigrant workers.

During the 1930s the Spanish department atNorthwestern became split between supporters of thedictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain and support-ers of a democracy. Some students joined brigadesagainst Franco, but Leal was careful about revealinghis politics.

“There was a big problem for the students, yousee,” says Leal, who opposed Franco. “Because youdidn’t know whom your professor was in favor of.”

While at Northwestern he met his wife, GladysClemens, at a dance. They married in 1936 and wouldlater have two sons. After graduating from SCS in1940, Leal began writing for small bilingual andSpanish newspapers in Chicago. In 1942 he publishedhis first article, called “La leyenda guadalupana,” aboutMexico’s patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe, in theSpanish newspaper ABC.

Leal was planning to go back to Mexico. “But Iwas studying, studying, studying. Then I got married.Then I became a citizen in 1939. Then I went to the war. Then I became a teacher. But I was always remembering Mexico.”

Leal was teaching Spanish and working toward his PhD at the the University of Chicago when he was drafted in 1943. Up until the night before he left, he worked on a bibliography for an anthology onMexican literature, recalls friend Rolando Hinojosa-Smith, an author and professor at the University ofTexas at Austin.

“He left for the army on a Monday, but he was still working that Sunday night,” says Hinojosa-Smith.“That’s Luis Leal. He said, ‘I have to finish it.’”

Leal became a member of an amphibious unit responsible for escorting men to shore during the invasion of the Philippines. After U.S. forces took control of the Philippines he waited for the go-ahead to invade Japan. Leal believes the dropping of theatomic bomb saved his life. “I would never have come back,” he says.

“Que delicia How delicious

que satisfacción what satisfaction

que euphoria how euphoric

que algería what happiness

ser parte del sarape

to be part of the serape

de la existencia.” of existence.

— “El Sarape de la Existencia,” Don Luis Leal, 1979


Entering the academic worldFollowing the war he completed his dissertation at the University of Chicago on the chronicles, orcrónicas, written by the Spanish between the 16th and 18th centuries following the conquest of theAztec empire. He viewed the fictional elements ofthe stories as the forerunner of the Mexican shortstory. Facts had been melded with stories aboutAztec deities and other fiction. Leal’s fascination with this topic continues today and forms the basis of his most recent book.

In 1952 Leal packed up his family and his books and moved to a place even more foreign thanChicago had been: Mississippi. There he taughtSpanish at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.He was the only Latino teaching in the department.It was while he was there, in 1955, that Leal pub-lished his first major work, Mexico, civilizaciones y culturas, about Mexican culture.

During his time at Ole Miss, Leal caughtglimpses of William Faulkner shopping at the localdrugstore and fishing. He remembers having coffeewith several black students from Cuba and PuertoRico. “Nobody said anything” about them, he recalls,although he thinks the university assumed they were white when they were accepted. (Officially, the University of Mississippi did not admit black students until James Meredith in 1961.)

It was his first tenured job, but he would not staylong. In 1956 he left to teach at Emory University inAtlanta. Leal didn’t like the segregation of the South,and he balked at the Emory University president’s request not to discuss the “racial problem.”

“That was bad,” he recalls. “How could you teach Latin American literature without talkingabout race?”

Professor, mentorFrom 1959 until 1976 Leal taught at the Universityof Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There he men-tored dozens of doctoral students in the study ofLatin American and Mexican literature. Many of thestudents remember “Don Luis” discussions. “He’sprobably the only person that I still speak to with the usted,” says Romero, referring to the formal useof “you” in Spanish. “I don’t do it with anyone else.It’s just a sign of respect.”

Sandra Messinger Cypess, a student of Leal’s who is now director of the Spanish department at the University of Maryland, says Leal had a gentleapproach in the classroom and taught her how toread literature.

While mentoring the next generation of scholars,Leal embarked on the next stage of his own careerwith the 1973 publication of “Mexican American Literature: A Historical Perspective,” an article in theRevista Chicano-Riqueña. In it he argued that Chicano(or Mexican American) literature was not a moderndevelopment but can be traced back to the Spanishcolonization of the Southwest. The writing sprangfrom people living in territories that had passedthrough Spanish, Mexican, and finally U.S. hands.Therefore, the literature is autonomous — no culturehas full claim to it, not even American literature, because of its mixed heritage.

In 1976 Leal retired from the University ofIllinois, though he has continued his teaching as professor emeritus at the University of California,Santa Barbara. In this scenic seaside playground he has accomplished his second wave of work, promotingMexican American literature. In 1995 he chronicledthe genre with the publication of No Longer Voiceless.Leal feels proud that in fall 2005 the university is planning to launch the first Chicano studies PhD program in the nation.

He continues to teach in the classroom. His friendHinojosa-Smith, who has already delivered two retire-ment speeches for his friend and expects to delivermore, calls him a war horse: “Come September, he just begins to sniff the chalk on the chalkboard.”

As a scholar Leal has always had a reputation for being open-minded. “Some famous or importantpeople tend to look down on other people, and he hasthis tremendous sense of generosity and compassion,”says Victor Fuentes, a retired professor at the Univer-sity of California, Santa Barbara. “He has a great lovefor people and humanity.”

“To me,” says Fuentes, who hails from Spain, “he personifies all the best values of Mexican cultureand history in one person.”

So Leal continues on his quest. Each day he tacklesthe work at hand: another book on the Mexican shortstory, an article for an encyclopedia yet to come out,or the latest edition of a literary journal he founded,Ventana Abierta: Revista Latina de Literatura, Arte yCultura.

“I have a whole file of articles unpublished,” Leal says, walking to a room and then opening a filecabinet packed with papers. “Then I have a big box of topics to do. I know I won’t have time to do it all.”

But, he says, “I’m still doing it.” And he doesn’t intend to stop any time soon.

— Katherine Leal Unmuth (who is not related to Luis Leal).Reprinted with permission by Northwestern magazine.

Opposite page from top:Luis Leal with his father,Luis Leal Ardines, about

1912; Leal in Chicago in the early 1930s.

This page from top: Leal, standing at left, in New Guinea during

World War II; Leal, with his wife,Gladys, receiving his PhD from the

University of Chicago; Leal, right, with novelist

and literary historianCarlos Fuentes in 1986;

Leal, left, with poet,essayist and

Nobel Prize winnerOctavio Paz.

Home town Brenham, Texas Current SCS program I’m pursuing my

bachelor’s of philosophy in communication studies. Day job I wear a couple

of hats. I am a coordinator of Northwestern’s LGBT Resource Center. We provide resources and services for the lesbian, gay,

bisexual, transgender community and our straight allies at Northwestern. I am also assistant to the director of the Norris

University Center. Hobbies Photography, songwriting, singing torch songs, playing Pacman and Ms. Pacman.

What’s your favorite thing about Chicago? The architecture. This city is so vertical and well thought out. It is so

different from what I grew up with. Why SCS? Why now? Eight years ago I left the University of Texas at Austin. First off, at

19 who really knows what they want to do with their life? Additionally, I was struggling with being gay and trying to

reconcile that with growing up in a pretty socially and religiously conservative

place. I wandered for awhile: I lived in Alaska and Montana; I worked all

kinds of jobs; I gained experience and began to find my voice. I worked

for a couple of LGBT and progressive religious organizations, but I

really wanted to go back to school. I was ready. It feels great to be at

SCS and back on this path. It is even more remarkable that I am

providing a resource to students who might be struggling with the

very things that caused me to leave school the first time. Who is your favorite

professor? Pamela Bannos keeps the fun in photography and appreciates

the creativity in each of her students. It’s a gift to keep encouragement

alongside criticism. What inspires you most? People and their stories. When

I traveled I met people I would never come across otherwise, people from all

walks of life. I think of these friends and carry the stories of their triumphs

and failures, of love and love lost with me. Through them I learned that the

most radical thing we can do is to be completely, truly, shamelessly ourselves.

Jenn Williams: communication studies major


Student profile

As SCS prepared to moveinto its new Evanston headquartersat 405 Church Street last year, oneof the first orders of business wasfurnishing the facility. The originalplan for the former mansion, built inthe 1890s in the French Romanesquestyle, was to acquire period pieceswhere possible — especially for thenewly renovated first-floor lounge.Although a few such pieces werepurchased from antique stores, SCS staff found that 405 ChurchStreet was far from furnished.

When Timothy Smithe (Kellogg 96)learned of this need, he arrangedfor SCS to purchase a number ofpieces at a discount from his family’s company, Walter E. SmitheFurniture, where he is vice presi-dent for sales and marketing.

Walter E. Smithe has been a lead-ing furniture manufacturer and re-tailer for more than 50 years andwas able to provide SCS with anumber of stunning and stylisticallyappropriate pieces for the lounge,including two sofas, two high-backchairs, a writing desk and chair, a marble table that matches theolive green fireplace in the lounge,and an antique clock for the mantle.

As the furnishings arrived, so did a personal note from Smithe,along with a bottle of champagnechilled in a crystal bucket. SCS isgrateful to the Smithe family andlooks forward to many happy mem-ories in the newly furnished loungeat 405 Church Street.


SCS News

Walter E. Smithe helps SCS settle into new home

Center for Public Safetyjoins SCS

Northwestern’s Center for PublicSafety became part of the School of Continuing Studies on January 1.

Founded in 1936 as the TrafficInstitute, the center offers coursesin accident investigation, police operations and management, andtransportation engineering to public safety and law enforcementprofessionals. In addition, the center does research and providestechnical assistance to law enforce-ment agencies on such topics asracial profiling, DUI, and relatedtopics.

Recognizing that the center, like SCS, offers programs for adultlearners, the University decided to combine the assets of both programs. The move will provideimproved instructional and admin-istrative support for the Center for Public Safety, said Thomas F.Gibbons, SCS dean. “Locating thecenter in SCS will enable it to takeadvantage of our registration, infor-mation technology, marketing, andother areas of support,” he says.“The type of training offered by thecenter will be a good fit with SCS,so we’re looking forward to havingthem as part of the school.”

“This permits us to solidify ourplace in the Northwestern commu-nity,” said Alexander Weiss, directorof the Center for Public Safety, “and to capitalize on the significant expertise and experience that SCSbrings to the University’s programsin continuing and professional education.”


SCS News

Student Advisory Board: Making a difference

Students in the School of Continuing Studies have longunderstood they have more to offer the SCS community than just tuition and attendance in classes. The SCS Student Advisory Board is committed to seeing that students remain full and dedicated partners in the life of the school. “We want to help fellow students get the most out of their SCSexperience,” says Timothy Lindsey, SAB president.

The current incarnation of the SAB was founded in spring 2004 with the goal of enhancing the experience of SCS students. The SAB acts as anadvocate for students and works closely with associate dean of studentservices Tim Gordon and the student services staff. “The SAB has workedvery hard in the past year to assist faculty, staff, and fellow students in creating a stronger SCS community,” he says. “The group is a critical link in continuing the school’s mission and providing a student voice as we continue to develop new services and initiatives.”

In the past year the board has sponsored presentations during NewStudent Orientation, held “meet and greet” events during the first weeks of class, and created other opportunities for students to air their concerns.One of these ideas involved publishing the Dean’s List (a listing of studentswho have earned a GPA of 3.7 or better in a term), which, thanks in part to the SAB, is now available online at www.scs.northwestern.edu/ugrad/credit/deans_list.cfm.

On the social side, the SAB hosted the first annual SCS HomecomingTailgate party last autumn—and celebrated the Wildcats’ victory overPurdue. Angelique Collins, SAB treasurer, says, “It was awesome. The bestpart was hearing the stands go wild every time the Wildcats scored!”

Regular SAB meetings are held on the second Friday of every month in Wieboldt Hall in Chicago. SCS students who attend two consecutiveboard meetings are eligible to be nominated as SAB members at their third meeting. Each spring the SAB membership nominates and elects an executive board — president, vice president, treasurer, and secretary— that serves a one-year term. “Any current SCS student is eligible to serve as a member of the board,” says Matthew Brach, SAB vice president. “All they need is the desire to make the SCS experience even better.”

Upcoming activities include the 2005 SAB member recruitment event on May 8, leadership elections on May 13, and an open board meeting on June 10. For more information, contact SAB secretary Ann Hennig at [email protected].

Inspired collaboration

Last December SCS’sInstitute for Learning in Retirementcelebrated the publication of its annual literary and art magazine,the ILR Journal. At a reception inEvanston ILR members and SCSstaff gathered to hear Fred Shafer,lecturer in advanced creative writ-ing at SCS, speak on the subject ofinspiration and mark the end ofnearly a year’s work on the 104-page collection of fiction, poetry,essays, photography, drawing,painting, and other artwork. Withthe publication of the 13th volumelast year, the ILR Journal has beenaround nearly as long as ILR itself.The noncredit peer-learning pro-gram for mature adults has been inexistence for 17 years. (An essayreprinted from an earlier volume ofthe ILR Journal appears in “To becontinued …” on page 20.)

“The ILR Journal reflects thedepth, breadth, and creative spiritof our members,” says BarbaraReinish, ILR director. “The humor,wisdom, personal reflection, andart within its pages demonstratethe remarkable acuity and agility ofthe mind even in our later years.”

Each year work on a new editionof the ILR Journal begins soon afterthe last one is finished. Early in theyear ILR members are invited to ap-ply to be on either the journal’s juryor the editorial board. In May theILR community submits writing and artwork for the journal. Thejury meets with Robert Gundlach,director of Northwestern’s WritingProgram and professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics inthe Judd A. and Marjorie WeinbergCollege of Arts and Science, and to-gether they review all submissionsand agree on which pieces to sendto the editorial board.

The editorial board decideswhich of these pieces will appear in the journal and works with theauthors and artists to refine theirwork as needed. In the fall this

Congratulations to Barbara Reinishand the Institute for Learning inRetirement, which recently received a $100,000 grant from the Bernard Osher Foundation tosupport new initiatives in lifelonglearning. See the next issue ofContinuum for more information.

material is turned over to BradFarrar, SCS production manager inChicago, who works with Reinishand the journal editor to producethe final layout. The artwork thatreceived the most positive reactionfrom the jury and editorial boardduring their reviews is selected forthe cover. The journal is printed after Thanksgiving. A portion of thecost of producing the ILR Journalis paid through donations from theILR members, with the remainingexpenses covered by the ILRbudget.

Copies of the current issue of the ILR Journal are available for atax-deductible gift of $12. Back issues are free. For more informa-tion, contact ILR at 847-491-7724, 847-467-3021, or 312-503-7881.

From left: SAB members Matthew Brach, Nodia Powell, Angelique Collins, AdriannaBaryla, Timothy Lindsey, Ann Hennig, and Mike Lough.


SCS News


SCS people

Alumni and students

Lindsey Simenson Bass

(97) of Roselle, Illinois,

is operations manager at

GN Otometrics North America

in Schaumburg. The company

develops and manufactures

computer-based audiological

and vestibular measurement

instrumentation. She and

her husband, Steve, are the

parents of Abby Louise, born

in August 2003.

Keith Bodger (00) of

Wheaton, Illinois, is an

environmental specialist

at Nicor Gas in Naperville.

He wrote his first book,

Fundamentals of Environ-

mental Sampling (Govern-

ment Institutes, 2003), a

practical guide to sample

collection. He and his wife

have two children.

Eileen Brendel (99) of

Chicago married David

Monsurate on April 23, 2004.

Alvin Cheeks (02) of Chicago

is chair, president, and CEO

of ClinDev Global Inc., an in-

ternational pharmaceutical/

biotech services firm. He was

elected to the board of direc-

tors and named chair of the

board’s nominating commit-

tee for Near North Health

Service Corp., one of the

nation’s largest federally

qualified community health

care centers.

Brian R. Dolan (99) of Fort

Lauderdale, Florida, is an

associate at Camp & Camp,

specializing in probate and

estate litigation. He earned

a law degree in May 2002

from Shepard Broad Law

Center at Nova Southeastern

University in Fort Lauderdale.

Byron S. Dunham (73) of

Savannah, Georgia, retired

after a career in journalism.

He was a reporter for the

Toledo Blade and assistant

editor and manager of the

Rotarian, the Rotary Club’s

magazine based in Evanston.

In 2001 he received a

National Magazine Award for

best fiction and has been in

Who’s Who in America and

Who’s Who in the World.

Connie Garner-Cohen (89)

of Wilmette, Illinois, is head

of the liberal arts department

at Harrington Institute of

Interior Design in Chicago

and teaches English composi-

tion and literature. She

received a master’s degree

in written communications

in 1995 and a teaching certi-

ficate in adult education with

a writing specialization from

National-Louis University in

1997.

Syrola Schaefer Hirsch (61)

of Chicago, a former World

War II Army nurse, received

the Cook County Sheriff’s

Senior Medal of Honor, given

to seniors who best repre-

sent the spirit of volunteer-

ism. She volunteers at the

Chicago Cultural Center and

performs as “Jolly Sally,” a

professional clown.

Marilyn Grinager Mason

(67) of Evanston obtained

a master’s in social work

from Loyola University in

1986 and became a licensed

clinical social worker in the

early 1990s. She worked

full-time at Catholic Charities

from 1986 to 2001. Mason

is now semi-retired and since

March 2003 has run the

Home Sharing Program of

the Center of Concern in Park

Ridge, Illinois, which matches

people in homes or apart-

ments with people looking

for a place to live for reasons

of economic need, security,

or companionship.

Robert G. Mau (92, G98)

of Chicago was appointed

senior writer for the Chicago

Mercantile Exchange in

February 2004.

Jennifer Raaths (00) of

Wauconda, Illinois, coedited

and helped publish a book

titled Faces of POF: Learning

and Living with Premature

Ovarian Failure and has been

appointed to the board of the

Premature Ovarian Failure

Support Group. She and her

husband, Daniel Yacono, are

the parents of twins, Emily

Susan and Lauren Elizabeth,

born in November 2003, and

Alexander Henry.

Michael Raleigh (97) of

Greenwich, Connecticut, is

an award-winning artist

whose mixed-media piece

Easter Parade was accepted

in the New Jersey Center

for Visual Arts’ 2004 Inter-

national Juried Show, which

ran between January and

March.

Lisa Yondorf (96) works as a

writer/editor for the Gradu-

ate School at Northwestern

University. She plans, writes,

edits, and does most of the

photography for the Grad-

uate School Quarterly and

edits the Graduate School

Bulletin, the school’s web

site, and other documents

published by the Graduate

School. She says her profes-

sional success is “thanks

in large part to my writing

certificate from the School

for Continuing Studies and

to articles I wrote for the

Evening Northwestern and

Northwestern by Night (pred-

ecessors of Continuum).”

In memoriam

John T. Anagnost (50)

Elizabeth Schrei Bailey

(48, Kellogg 52)

Stephanie Biedron (47)

John J. Bogdansky (67)

James V. Brown (59)

John R. Budz (61)

George W. Cole Sr. (68)

Gary Alan Heller (82)

Alice M. Lessick (60)

Lucille Levenshon (99)

Henry F. Levin (85)

Margaret Boyer Linsday (48)

Helen C. Mattas (48, G49)

Frances Witmer Miller

(37, G38)

Ronald A. Paul (70)

James E. Roach (70)

Richard Serafin Rossi (75)

Martin J. Ryan III (57)

Paul S. Urbanick (57)

Fae Phyllis Vaughan (47)

David D. Weinstein (44)

Northwestern Alumni Association

Northwestern CareerNet, your online, searchable

networking resource offered by Northwestern Alumni

Association, has more than 11,100 alumni career contacts

in its database. This service offers you the benefit of

establishing and maintaining valuable connections with

fellow alumni in your field of work.

You may also volunteer to be an alumni career contact

yourself. By volunteering, you are agreeing to be contacted

by fellow alumni or students so you can share your career

knowledge and experiences with them.

You may access Northwestern CareerNet at www.alumni

.northwestern.edu/career. For more information, contact

Aspasia Apostolakis, Northwestern Alumni Association,

at [email protected].


SCS People

Faculty

Paul Buchheit, instructor

in the Master of Science

in Computer Information

Systems program, is one

of the founding members of

the One Globe group (www

.oneglobe.com), a nonprofit

organization dedicated to

the education of high school

and college students in the

larger issues (environment,

health, military spending,

etc.) that will affect the

peace and prosperity of

our future world.

Benjamin Chickadel, instruc-

tor in the Fine and Decorative

Art Appraisal and Connois-

seurship Professional Devel-

opment Program (PDP), has

work appearing in the book

Figurative Ceramics, to be

published by Lark Books this

spring. He also had a solo

show at the Contemporary

Art Workshop in Chicago in

January 2005 and had work

in San Francisco at the Pawn

Brokers Gallery in December

2004.

Elizabeth Crane, instructor

in the Master of Arts inCreative Writing (MCW) program, will have her book

of stories All This Heavenly

Glory published by Little,

Brown in March.

Reginald Gibbons, professor

of English and classics, chair

of the Weinberg College

English department, and

teacher of the poetry-writing

workshop in the MCW program, won the Folger

Shakespeare Library’s O. B.

Hardison Jr. Poetry Prize in

2004. It is the only major

award in the United States to

recognize excellence in both

teaching and writing poetry.

Thomas F. Gibbons, dean

of SCS, received a Faculty

Member of the Year Award in

June 2004 from the Robert R.

McCormick School of Engi-

neering and Applied Science

at Northwestern. In addition

to teaching at SCS, he

teaches a course on nego-

tiations for McCormick’s

Master of Product Develop-

ment program.

Robert Launay, professor

of anthropology in Weinberg

College and instructor in

the Master of Arts in Liberal

Studies program, had six

articles published in the New

Dictionary of Ideas (Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 2004). He

has also written a chapter

on “New Frontiers and Con-

version” to be included in

the New Cambridge History

of Islam.

Gary Lehman, instructor in

the Landscape Design and

Management PDP, has joined

HNTB Corporation’s depart-

ment of urban design and

planning. He is also a part-

time faculty member at the

School of the Art Institute

of Chicago, teaching architec-

ture in the Early College

Program. He submitted de-

sign for the Flight 93 National

Memorial in Pennsylvania

and will be contributing to a

symposium, “Arts and Crafts:

Gardens and Landscapes of

the Era,” at the Chicago

Botanic Garden.

Jennifer Morrow, instructor

in the Mediation Skills PDP,

has been named program

chair for the Chicago-area

chapter of the Association

for Conflict Resolution. She

is a conciliator for the Arch-

diocese of Chicago’s Office

of Conciliation.

John W. Swain, instructor

in the Master of Arts in

Public Policy Administration

program, had two book chap-

ters accepted for publication

in the past year: “Niccolo

Machiavelli: Learning from

the Past as We Move through

the Future” (with Christopher

Anne Easley) in Peter L.

Cruise and Thomas D. Lynch,

eds., Handbook of Organiza-

tion Theory and Manage-

ment: The Philosophical

Approach, and “Public

Finance Management Infor-

mation Systems” (with Jay D.

White) in G. David Garson,

ed., Handbook of Public

Information Systems. Both

books are forthcoming.

Another essay — “Do More

Lights Make You Safer?”

(with Mark Karczewski) —

appeared in two trade jour-

nals: Law and Order (March

2004) and Police Fleet

Manager (March–April 2004).

S. L. Wisenberg has been

codirector of the MCW pro-gram since August 2004. In

March 2004 she published

fiction in the literary maga-

zine Third Coast. In June she

was interviewed on “Sunday

Papers with Rick Kogan” on

WGN-AM about the book

Poetry from Sojourner:

A Feminist Anthology, in

which her work appears.

In November she was the

Closs Writer-in-Residence at

Lafayette College in Easton,

Pennsylvania, visiting classes

in creative writing, Holocaust

studies, and Jewish humor.

This academic year she

was reappointed a visiting

scholar in gender studies

at Northwestern.

Hemon named MacArthur Fellow

Aleksandar Hemonwas named one of 23MacArthur Fellows for2004 by the John D. andCatherine T. MacArthurFoundation. He is aninstructor in the MCW program. The so-called“genius grant” brings withit $500,000 in “no stringsattached” support over the next five years.

Hemon was born inSarajevo and received aBA from the University ofSarajevo in 1990. In 1992he traveled to the UnitedStates as a journalist and,unable to return home because of the BosnianWar, remained in Chicagoas a refugee. He earned an MA in English fromNorthwestern in 1995,when he began writing inEnglish. His work has ap-peared in Granta, the New

Yorker, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s, and the Paris Review. In 2000 Doubleday/Nan A. Talese published Hemon’s The

Question of Bruno, which subsequently won several literaryawards, was published in 18 countries, and was named oneof the best books of the year by the New York Times BookReview, Esquire magazine, the Village Voice LiterarySupplement, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, and theWashington Post Book World. It was followed in 2002 byNowhere Man, a novel in stories that Esquire called “a truework of art that’s as vast and mysterious as life itself.”

Says the foundation: “Hemon creates an expansive fictional universe. He dramatizes with wit and dexterity the cultural displacements that he and his characters haveendured. His voice invigorates American literature and succeeds in conveying moving stories from the otherwiseincommunicable experience of war.”

SCS snapshot


What I remember most about the P. I. — that’s whatwe called the Philippines when I served there betweenthe wars in Korea and Vietnam — was the heat. Iwould walk back to the Bachelor’s Officers’ Quarters(BOQ) after the midwatch, the sun just coming up, and already I could feel the heat rash on my back, likestinging nettles on my skin. Lowering the blinds in the room, turning on the fan, I would try to sleep, listening to the myna birds squawking in the acaciatrees outside the windows and following the progress of a gecko slowly across the ceiling.

When five of us moved out of the BOQ and renteda house “on the beach” — meaning off base — wethought we had it made. We had a house boy, Carlos,who cleaned, washed our dishes, made our beds, anddid our laundry, and a nasty parrot, Binky, who bit thehands that fed him. When we had parties, we servedFrench champagne, brought back from Saigon by theflyboys who made regular flights there.

I was one of the fortunate ones to be in service between the wars. Only one of my 31⁄2 years in the navy was at sea. I spent two years as communicationswatch officer at a naval air base in the Philippinescalled Sangley Point. Two years is a long tour of dutyin a place like the P. I., but we found ways to pass thetime. There were vacation trips to Hong Kong andJapan. To escape the heat we drove to Baguio, 5,000feet up in the mountains, where the air was cool andpine trees replaced palms. When we wanted a beach,we could drive to Nasugbu, where in a hidden cove beneath the cliffs we’d found a perfect reef for snorkel-ing. I remember taking sightseeing cruises on the admi-ral’s yacht to Corregidor and Bataan. And a canoe tripto a waterfall deep in the jungle, like the kind of high-priced eco-tours people take today, complete with trop-ical vines and brilliantly colored birds and butterflies.

And, of course, there was always the city of Manila,20 minutes by boat across the bay. We docked at theArmy Navy Club, a relic of another age. The embassyand officer wives sat around the pool, sipping theirtropical drinks, looking out over the bay, while theamahs watched their children. The drinks were madefrom the calamanci lime, an orange-fleshed fruit I had never seen before. They clapped their hands, andservants rushed to take their orders. It was a scene right out of Somerset Maugham.

To be continued…

Along the bay ran Dewey Boulevard, one of themain thoroughfares of the city. Yet next to the new hotels, 10 years after the end of the war, there were stillthe ruins of bombed-out buildings. Across the Luneta,the city’s main park, sat the venerable Manila Hotel,where at night Manila society gathered. Like colorfulbutterflies — women in their long-skirted ternos offilmy pina cloth, men in the loose formal shirt calledthe barong — Tagalog danced to the mambo across thevast hotel room.

And there was another, older Manila, too — one that existed behind the walls in certain areas of the city, where old Spanish families, still speaking Spanishamong themselves, clung to their traditions. They metone another at the Casino Español. Or played jai alai atthe Fronton. Or joined the Basque pelotaris after hoursat the open-air café on Dewey Boulevard, where theysang Spanish songs until the wee hours of the morning.

Sad to say, when I remember the P. I., I think I mayhave seen the best of it. The beautiful forests aroundBaguio are all being logged, and what I recall has prob-ably disappeared. The reefs off the beach at Nasugbuwhere we snorkeled may have been dynamited by now,because that’s what the fisherman have been doing inthe Philippines. And Manila, a town I remember ascongested and corrupted then, can only have becomemore so now.

I always wanted to go back. But maybe it’s a goodthing I never did.

—Jim Kemper (ILR) reprinted with permission from theILR Journal.

Memories of the P. I.

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