News Archive

The Marriage of True Minds: A freewheeling conversation with the Broadway team of Tom Kitt ’96 and Brian Yorkey ’93
Study: Innovative Pre-Apprenticeship Program for Minority Youth Deserves Expansion

Just weeks after President Barack Obama announced the creation of “My Brother’s Keeper,” an initiative aimed at increasing job training opportunities for young black and Latino men, a study released today by Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs found that the Edward J. Malloy Initiative for Construction Skills, an innovative workforce development model for students in New York’s career and technical high schools, has been succeeding in placing minority youth in middle-class careers in the construction industry.

Women were digital media pioneers but underrepresented and underappreciated in journalism startups

USA Today launched its first website just days before the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and its staff helped create a new kind of crisis storytelling in the aftermath. Rapid updates, photos, and story indexes made the web, for the first time in human history, a significant source of information for understanding national tragedy. Two years later, another major paper continued to shape our understanding of online news when a web producer at Philly.com assembled the multimedia version of Black Hawk Down. On the West Coast, meanwhile, the San Jose Mercury News unveiled Good Morning Silicon Valley…

Lenfest Distinguished Teaching Awards

Great teachers are passionate about the classroom, as evidenced by the 10 faculty members honored this year with Lenfest Distinguished Teaching Awards.

Simon Schama Documents 3,000 Years of Jewish History in New PBS Series

After a distinguished career that has spawned numerous books and television series on everything from the French Revolution to the slave trade, Columbia Professor of Art History and History Simon Schama is now unveiling his most personal project yet: "The Story of the Jews," a multimedia account of 3,000 years of Jewish history.

Columbia People: Clara Leon, Medical Center Assistant Director of Community Affairs

Leon coordinates the use of space on the CUMC campus for community projects and special events, everything from small meetings to big galas, health fairs and the annual HBO Latino Film Festival, which for several years attracted hundreds of people each summer for the premiere of a Latino film that later was shown on HBO. 

Community Brain Expo

School students arrived at the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s Kolb Annex on the Columbia University Medical Center campus March 12 to participate in the annual Community Brain Expo, cosponsored by the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.

Head of Medical Center Instrument Shop Turns Scientists’ Dreams Into Reality
For nearly half a century, Gary Johnson, an instrument maker at Columbia University Medical Center, has been taking scientists’ ideas for research equipment and turning them into reality. “People come to me and tell me what they need,” said Johnson, who is the director of the Design and Instrument shops for the Center for Radiological Research and the core facilities at the Medical Center. “When I get a request, I sit down with the researcher and we kick the ideas around and draw some sketches.” In January, Johnson, who has worked with nearly every department and center at the Medical…
Law Professor and President Emeritus Michael Sovern Reflects on ‘Improbable Life’

Michael Sovern (CC’53, LAW’55) has had a six-decade love affair with Columbia, from the moment he walked through its gates in 1949 through to the present as University president emeritus and Chancellor Kent Professor of Law.

Assessment of trends in groundwater levels across the United States

The Columbia Water Center, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, announced today the release of a new white paper, “Assessment of Groundwater Level Trends across the United States,” that analyzes long-term groundwater trends across the United States. 

Rare Book Library Highlights Renegade Publisher Who Roiled Literary Landscape

Samuel Roth has faded from history, but the books he published are hard to forget. This literary renegade, who studied at Columbia nearly 100 years ago, printed prurient novels, political exposés and foreign authors—often without their consent—and later in his life was known as the “smut king.”

Columbia Appoints Joan C. Waters as Ombuds Officer

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger has named a veteran legal counsel, Joan C. Waters, as University Ombuds Officer.

Exposing the Hazards of Lead Poisoning
A California judge has called David Rosner “the people’s historian.” Although the judge was speaking of Rosner’s role in a case that lists the People of the State of California as plaintiff, it is an apt description of someone who has spent decades studying environmental hazards, especially the toxic effects of lead paint on children. “Lead poisoning is the oldest and most persistent childhood epidemic in American history,” said Rosner, the Ronald H. Lauterstein Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and a professor of history in the Graduate…
Winners of the 2014 Bancroft Prize Announced

Columbia University announced today that two acclaimed works will be awarded the 2014 Bancroft Prize:

Climate Conditions Help Forecast Meningitis Outbreaks

for Astrobiology Magazine Wind and dust conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa can help predict a meningitis epidemic. Determining the role of climate in the spread of certain diseases can assist health officials in “forecasting” epidemics.