Wednesday, March 23, 2005

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W E D N E S D A Y MARCH 23, 2005

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXL, No. 39

www.browndailyherald.com

An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891

COMEBACK KID With high expectations, Hugh Murphy ’06 returns to the Bears’ track and field lineup SPORTS

STUDENT STARTUPS From sleep to snacks to the Web, campus businesses reflect what students care about most 8

INSIDE

Colleagues offer praise as grad school dean prepares to step down

3

TODAY

TOMORROW

showers 43/31

morning snow 41/30

Simmons to lead search for Providence superintendent

ALL THAT JAZZ

BY LEORA FRIDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Having brought the graduate school to a more prestigious position than ever before, Dean of the Graduate School Karen Newman will leave her position in May after a three-year tenure. Newman signed on as dean in 2001 with the intention of serving in the position for only three years, she said. Newman has held a faculty position at Brown since 1978 and did not see her appointment to dean as a career change, but rather a three-year term during which she had the opportunity to help shape an exciting period in Brown’s history. A recently appointed search committee has called for candidate nominations to succeed Newman, due March 31 and will continue the search process from there, said Provost Robert Zimmer. Graduate school applications have increased by 46 percent since Newman began her term, and the selectivity of graduate school admission is now at 17 percent, almost equal to the college’s 15.9 percent. Newman attributes these changes to the graduate school’s navigable new Web site and to her administrative review of the graduate school, which included adding budgetary administration and standardizing forms. In general, Newman said, “the buzz is out there” about Brown’s investment in expanding faculty, enacting need-blind admissions and enabling a stronger community for its graduate students. Newman has been lauded most recently for her work with the development of the Cogut Humanities Center and the Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World and has invigorated the graduate school through her commitment to the Plan for Academic Enrichment and active outlook on educational development, Zimmer said. With funds from the Plan for Academic Enrichment and budget reorganization, Newman raised graduate student teaching assistant stipends to equal mid-range salaries among competitor

Matt Lent / Herald

The Tomassi Combo — Evan Brown ’06, tenor saxophone; Yoshi Fujita ’06, alto saxophone; and Chris Erway GS, trombone — brought some jazzy tunes to Grant Recital Hall on Monday Night in the Jazz Combo Concert. schools. She also worked to build community around graduate research by applying for and instating five Mellon Graduate Workshops a year. These seminars bring students writing their dissertations together to share ideas and expedite a process that is often isolating and lengthy. “I came in ready to enact the Plan for Academic Enrichment and through that, strengthen the mission of the University,” Newman said. Newman’s colleagues were full of praise for the departing dean. Dean of the College Paul Armstrong said Newman fully understood the participatory enterprise that is learning. “If we could clone Karen Newman, that would be great,” Armstrong said. Newman understood the role of the graduate school in “making the fabric of the University College strong,” Zimmer said. He gave Newman credit for putting the graduate school on its feet with her high level of academic standards and val-

Student dies in New Pembroke 1 A student was found dead Tuesday in New Pembroke 1. Providence Police and Department of Public Safety officers limited access to the dorm Tuesday evening until the body was removed from the building. A student who lives in the dorm told The Herald that a police officer informed him that an NP1 resident died “several days ago” but did not specify the cause of death. PPD detectives said they could not confirm the death until next of kin had been notified. University officials refused to comment. —Eric Beck Editorial: 401.351.3372 Business: 401.351.3269

ues. “It’s really important that we see a triangulation, not just a dyad,” Newman said, reflecting on the importance of a relationship between undergraduates, graduate students and faculty. A strong graduate school helps Brown attract topnotch faculty and enriches the experience of undergraduate students, particularly those involved in research, she said. Even as a dean, Newman remained committed and connected to undergraduate education, having participated in an Undergraduate Teaching and Research Assistantship and having read several undergraduate theses while dean. On top of her administrative duties, Newman has continued to teach one class per year in the departments of English and comparative literature, where she has a joint appointment. After a year’s leave, during which she will work on a research project tentatively titled “French Shakespeare,” Newman will return to Brown to teach.

President Ruth Simmons will chair a search committee for the next superintendent of the Providence Public Schools, Mayor David Cicilline ’83 announced Tuesday. The 19-person committee will be responsible for recommending a final group of candidates from which Cicilline and the school board will make the ultimate selection. In a preliminary timeline that the Mayor’s Office shared with Simmons, the search should finish in mid- to late-summer, said Marisa Quinn, assistant to the president. Current Superintendent Melody Johnson announced in February that she had accepted the position of superintendent of schools in Fort Worth, Texas. Frances Gallo, former director of administration for the school department, has been appointed transition superintendent until a permanent replacement is found. The search for a new superintendent comes at a pivotal time for the Providence school system. Problems within the system were exemplified during recent troubles at Hope High School, as the Rhode Island Department of Education outlined a “Consolidated Corrective Action Plan” for the school after a series of public hearings in December. Some public officials called for Hope’s closing, or for the state to assume control of the school, but the action plan appointed a special master to supervise improvement efforts. At the March 1 faculty meeting, Simmons had said the University would announce new initiatives with the Providence school system the week of March 7. These initiatives have now been postponed until a new superintendent has been named, Quinn said. Simmons’ involvement with the search committee will not affect her efforts in the silent phase of the University’s capital campaign, Quinn said. — Herald staff reports

Seniors seek employment with varying degrees of luck BY ALEXANDRA BARSK SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Looking for a job is undeniably a stressful and time-consuming process — some seniors got it over with in the fall, others are just now starting to fill out applications, and then there are those who have done their best to avoid it altogether. According to Kimberly DelGizzo, director of the Career Development Center, at this time of the year, she encounters seniors who are at a wide variety of points in the job-hunting process — including those who do not even want to think about starting to look. “There are those students who did oncampus recruiting — some who are doing investment banking or consulting and who already have positions — and a lot of other people who have been actively involved in the job search who have some things percolating,” DelGizzo said. “And then there’s a pool of students who either don’t want those fields and so they haven’t been looking for anything else yet, or they’ve been looking but they haven’t found what they need and want and are getting a little stressed about it.”

In terms of her future employment prospects, Shereen Kassam ’05 has been stress-free since December. She has already secured a position as a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting in Boston and will start work in August after taking what she called her “last vacation ever.” Kassam applied to about 10 different firms, all through the CDC’s eRecruiting website, and ultimately chose between three different offers. According to Kassam, the application process for the investment banking and consulting positions included up to three separate rounds of interviews, which, she said, required a good deal of preparation. For the consulting positions, she read case study books and conducted mock case studies with friends. And for the investment banking positions, “You have to know what’s up in the markets, read the Wall Street Journal, remember everything you learned in economics,” she said. According to DelGizzo, many students hold the misconception that the on-campus recruiting program, run by the Employer Relations staff, serves primarily students who are interested in invest-

195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

ment banking and consulting because it is those industries that tend to do heavy and visible on-campus recruiting. Though the CDC tries to bring a broader spectrum of industries to Brown, DelGizzo said, many organizations do not conduct on-campus recruiting because they cannot afford to, their hiring need is not great or that is not typically the way they hire. Han Wen ’05 also used the eRecruiting Web site to submit applications in the fall, but because she had planned to go to graduate school in political science, she said she originally viewed the job search as “a backup plan.” Wen said she did not start putting a great deal of effort into the application process until she heard about a marketing position at L’Oréal in New York — a job she ultimately secured. “I spent much more time on that application,” she said. “I did a lot of preparation for interviews, a lot of research. I read as much as I could on the Internet about the company, the industry and their comsee JOBS, page 5 News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com


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Wednesday, March 23, 2005 by The Brown Daily Herald - Issuu