IN BRIEF

Biotechnology Boosted
Promising breakthroughs in biotechnology discovered at the Medical Center will get a boost toward becoming commercial products, thanks to a $30 million state grant awarded to the University last fall. The grant is the largest single contribution to the Medical Center’s 10-year effort to establish Rochester as a national hub for biotechnology.

The money will be used to help develop ways to effectively transfer new discoveries from laboratories to the private sector and to help finance construction and renovation of the Medical Center’s 400,000 square feet of new research space.

Simon School Introduces New Certificate
Busy professionals who want to broaden their knowledge or retool their skills have a new opportunity to study financial analysis, electronic commerce strategies, health sciences management, service management, and the design of effective organizations. Those are areas of concentration included in a new certificate program launched by the Simon School last fall. Participants take courses from the existing master’s of business administration curriculum but do not have to commit to the full M.B.A. program in order to complete the certificate.

Eastman Introduces New Conductors
Two of the Eastman School of Music’s premier ensembles took to the stage this fall under the direction of new conductors. Mark Scatterday ’89E (DMA) made his debut as conductor of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and Neil Varon, who has had a prominent European conducting career for the past 30 years, led his first concert as conductor of the Eastman Philharmonia.

New Degree Goes ‘Global’
The Department of History has become one of the first academic departments to offer global history as a major field of study in its master’s and doctoral program. Designed as a self-sustaining field of study, the new program looks at the processes that have simultaneously affected local, regional, national, and international developments.

"The uniqueness of this program is that, unlike other programs or courses of study, this is not just a version of regional or comparative history," says Dorinda Outram, the Gladys I. and Franklin W. Clark Professor of History. "This is the study of the factors that have gone into construction of the global system we now have."

Rush Rhees Set for High-Tech Renovation
The east wing of historic Rush Rhees Library is set to be reconfigured to create better spaces for information technology and to allow for academic and social interaction 24 hours a day. The plans for the project are included in a $15 million fundraising effort that kicked off last fall with a $5 million gift from the Gleason Foundation, a Rochester-based organization headed by Life Trustee James S. Gleason ’68S (MBA).

The project includes creating a new Teaching and Learning Center to support collaborative learning, in which students, library research collections, and state-of-the-art teaching technology will work in unison. Throughout the wing, space will be upgraded, including a grand staircase, banks of windows, publicly accessible elevators, and other enhancements.

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