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Expert in 17th Century English Economic History Sees Parallels to Today’s Fiscal Crisis

History Professor Carl Wennerlind’s most recent book focuses on a financial system come undone, a public looking to its government for answers, and a monetary system badly in need of trust and transparency.

Chemistry Prof. Koji Nakanishi Remains Hard at Work at 87

Nakanishi studies biologically active compounds—substances from living organisms that have a pharmacological use. 

Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award Winners Reflect on What Makes Great Teachers

Great teachers are always learning, from their peers, students, teaching assistants and families. Just ask the 10 winners of this year’s Distinguished Columbia Faculty Awards.

“I worked as a teaching assistant for a professor who, after 30 years of teaching, spent hours to prepare for every single class,” said Music Professor Giuseppe Gerbino. “He taught generations of students that teaching is a lifelong learning process.”

Political Science Professor Melissa Schwartzberg learned from one of her teaching assistants, Kevin Elliott, “who persuaded me to be more creative in my pedagogy” and incorporate a mock constitutional assembly in her Problems in Democratic Theory class.

Don J. Melnick, professor of ecology, evolution and environmental biology, as well as anthropology and biological sciences, found inspiration in his family.

“My grandmother and great aunts and uncles came to this country at the turn of the last century. They had amazing stories, all of them captivating,” he said. “My parents instilled in us a thirst for knowledge and a desire to learn as much as we could about the things that interested us. The thirst for knowledge we were given, the commitment to education we were indoctrinated into, and the telling and retelling of stories throughout our childhood were the greatest influences on my teaching.”

These three professors, and seven others, will be honored this month for outstanding scholarship, teaching and service. Some have been at Columbia for decades; others joined the faculty as recently as 2006.

The awards were established in 2005 with a $12 million gift from University Trustee Gerry Lenfest (’58 LAW, ’09 HON) and carry a $25,000 stipend for each of three years. The ceremony will take place Feb. 27 at the Italian Academy.

Here is a look at this year’s winners, and some of their views on what makes a great teacher:

Frances A. Champagne, associate professor of psychology, is a pioneer in the field of behavioral epigenetics, the branch of molecular biology that probes the impact of the environment on the expression of genes. Since coming to Columbia in 2006, she started a lecture course called “The Developing Brain” and established a multidisciplinary research training group that explores the origins and inheritance of behavior. She also teaches a course in the neurobiology of reproductive behavior. “There are many approaches to being a good teacher but a common theme is a feeling of enthusiasm for what you are teaching and a feeling of satisfaction at being able to communicate that excitement to the students,” she said.

Jean Cohen, the Nell and Herbert Singer Professor of Political Thought and Contemporary Civilization, has been at Columbia for nearly 30 years. She has organized six international political science conferences and had visiting professorships around the world. Her current research involves the revival of “political religion” across the globe and the risks it poses for democracy, constitutionalism, human rights and gender justice. “A good teacher is someone who can present a coherent class lecture, who cares about the topic, who is open to discussion and debate and different points of view, is not authoritarian or dogmatic but willing also to learn from students while being rigorous and demanding. The point is not to be ‘relevant’ but to be excellent,” she said, adding that her teaching style was partly influenced by different teaching methods she observed in the U.S. and abroad. While it varies with the size and level of the class, she is always open to students’ questions.

Giuseppe Gerbino, associate professor of music and chair of the Music Department, is an authority on Italian Renaissance music. He has explored the relationship between music and language and the concepts of perception and cognition in the early modern period. “Teaching is not a simple transfer of knowledge but an act of sharing,” he said. “For me, it is important to communicate to students how deeply a book or a musical work has changed me over the years. Sharing this experience is one of the most rewarding aspects of what we do as teachers.” And, he added, “A little bit of humor also goes a long way.” His book \"Music and Myth of Arcadia in Renaissance Italy,\" published by Cambridge University Press, received the 2010 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society.

Don J. Melnick is the Thomas Hunt Morgan Professor of Conservation Biology in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology. He created the blueprint for the department known informally as E3B, which has grown in faculty size, student enrollments and degree candidates since it was established in 2001. He developed a bio-anthropology sub-specialty that is now a standalone major and was one of the first to teach Frontiers of Science, a Core Curriculum science course.

His research has taken him all over the world, from the mountains of the Himalayas to the jungles of Sumatra. “I have had to explain what I do to many different types of people, in different cultures, in different languages, and this has helped me immensely in my teaching,” he said. He sees every lecture as a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. “I have found this to be the best way to draw students into a lecture or a course—take them on a journey from a place they know to one never dreamed of before.”

Rosalind C. Morris, professor of anthropology, works across a variety of disciplines besides her own specialty, including literature, philosophy and media studies. For the last 15 years she has been doing ethnography research in South Africa’s gold mining region, and thinking about how people learn to change. “Students must learn to assume the burden of critical thought, for there is no hope for the future without the commitment and the capacity to remedy what ails the present,” she said. When she teaches the core ethnography course for undergraduate anthropology majors, students read fiction, drama, journalism, history and social theory. “I aim to help students understand how knowledge is shaped by the discourses and the aesthetic traditions within which they are framed,” she said. “My objective is to help students to learn on their own.”

Gerard Parkin, professor of chemistry, says he tries to present material with enthusiasm—and sometimes humor. “It is most important to engage the students, ask them questions and make them think about what is being discussed,” he said. Students in his general chemistry classes use handheld clickers during lectures to give him feedback in real time, which he said helps him determine if they understand the materials. He also often corrects what he called “significant conceptual errors” in textbooks, which, he said, “instills in the students the notion that they need to be critical of what they read.” Parkin joined the Columbia faculty in 1988 and in 2008 received the University President’s Award for Outstanding Teaching. He also is a recent recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, presented at the White House.

Caterina Pizzigoni, an associate professor of Latin American history, arrived at Columbia in 2006. “I think of teaching as an interaction with the students,” she said. “I try to involve them first of all through images and primary sources we can work on together in class and through questions, in a seminar but also in a lecture format.” An expert on the indigenous people of central Mexico during the colonial period, her work reconstructs and analyzes their society and culture using documents in their native language, Nahuatl, as well as sources in Spanish. “Reading between the lines and the passion to discover anything about the individuals behind these documents have informed my teaching,” she said. Pizzigoni says the students at Columbia “inspire me every day, even when I think I am too tired to step into the classroom.” In 2008 she won the Columbia Mentoring Initiative Award, which recognizes faculty who mentor first-year students.

Ovidiu Savin, professor of mathematics, enjoys “explaining mathematics to students of all levels, interacting with them, stimulating them and helping them to gain confidence in their math abilities.” His research involves partial differential equations, which appear in all areas of mathematics and science. “They are relevant, for example, in traffic network planning in cities, Internet traffic optimization and fluid dynamics,” he said. “This gives me the opportunity to provide my students with concrete examples of applications of math.” Besides the courses he teaches, Savin prepares students for the Putnam Competition, an annual undergraduate math contest. The top scorer in the 1997 competition when he was a student at the University of Pittsburgh, he has helped make the Columbia team among the perennial favorites. Last year, the Italian Mathematical Union awarded him the Stampacchia Gold Medal, an international prize that is considered one of the highest honors in mathematics.

Melissa Schwartzberg, associate professor of political science, is a political theorist whose research centers on the history of democratic institutions and the rules for and consequences of democratic decision making. “One of the most rewarding elements of teaching undergraduates in particular is the opportunity to help them critically assess institutions they know quite well—the use of elections, the secret ballot, majority rule etc.,” she said. When teaching the history of political thought, she said she emphasizes arguments that might question students’ assumptions and tries to make a case for them. “I dislike lecturing and tend to turn even my lecture courses into seminars.” Schwartzberg teaches the Contemporary Civilization course in the Core Curriculum, as well as other undergraduate and graduate level courses. A part-time scholar of ancient Greek institutions, she is also an associate member of the Department of Classics.

Joseph Slaughter, associate professor of English and comparative literature, teaches African, Latin American and Caribbean literatures, postcolonial and narrative theory, and human rights. Since many of the texts he teaches aren’t familiar to the students, he said, he emphasizes the importance of cultural and historical context in all literature. “Ideally, being literate means also being aware of the ways in which reading is inflected by larger socio-historical and cultural dynamics,” he said. “I try to be attentive to the class dynamics, to the disparities in student preparation, and to learn from the students the ways in which we can best learn together.” His teaching style depends on the size of the class and the topic, he said. “One of the shared qualities between a good teacher and a good student is being humble about what one knows—never being overly confident that one’s knowledge is correct or represents the only or best answer to any question or problem.” His first book, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law, won the René Wellek Prize from the American Comparative Literature Association in 2008.

—by Georgette Jasen

Living Language: Faculty Q&A With Linguist John McWhorter

John McWhorter may be best known for his magazine and newspaper writing about race, but the Philadelphia native is at heart a dyed-in-the-wool academic whose first inkling that he would spend his life studying languages came when he was still a preschooler and heard someone speaking a foreign language. 

New York Squared: Marguerite Holloway on the Man Who Mapped Manhattan

In 2004, Marguerite Holloway, an assistant professor at the School of Journalism, found herself writing about the Mannahatta Project—an effort by environmental scientists to “recreate” Manhattan in its natural state.

At the Vanguard of a Revolution in Computational Genetics

Using mathematics and computer analytics, Pe’er is identifying the genetic makeup of the founding Ashkenazi Jews by analyzing the full DNA sequences of hundreds of their descendants in the New York City area.

ColumbiaDoctors Opens New Midtown Center

Columbia University Medical Center has launched a new medical practice near Rockefeller Center, giving the commuters and visitors who stream into midtown Manhattan easy access to some of the city’s top practitioners.

Amgen Scholars Program Helps Science Students Learn by Doing

There are about 25 to 29 Amgen Scholars on the campus each summer. The students come from Columbia, Barnard and universities like Harvard and Duke as well as smaller colleges like Carleton and Lafayette. They arrive after Memorial Day for a 10-week stay and engage in independent projects mentored by scientists from the University community.

Shedding New Light on Infant Brain Development

A new study by Columbia Engineering researchers finds that the infant brain does not control its blood flow in the same way as the adult brain.

Folic Acid Supplements Early in Pregnancy May Reduce Risk of Autism by 40%

Large study in Norway finds early timing of supplements is critical

$25 Million Gift to Medical Center Enhances New Initiative for Treatment of ALS
Daniel L. Doctoroff, Bloomberg LP CEO and president; David M. Rubenstein, co-CEO of The Carlyle Group; and Bloomberg Philanthropies today unveiled Target ALS, a $25 million three-year initiative to streamline discovery of new approaches to treating ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). “Finding a cure for ALS requires that we think differently about how to tackle this debilitating disease,” said Doctoroff. “While ALS scientists have made great progress in the last few years, their research too often occurs in silos, impeding discovery. Target ALS will provide an organizational framework for the world’s leading ALS researchers to share and coordinate their findings so that we can make progress toward therapies and a cure.” Target ALS is the next phase of an accelerated research initiative of Project A.L.S., a New York-based foundation focused on finding and funding a cure for ALS, and the Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University, which was announced in January 2010. Target ALS will build on the rapid scientific progress of the past three years through a new collaboration that pools the efforts of dozens of scientists and laboratories into an efficient organization focused on new targets for ALS therapeutics. The immediate goal is to seed an array of drug-development programs at pharmaceutical and biotech companies, based on cutting-edge data generated by Target ALS scientists. Target ALS will identify and transfer candidate therapeutic targets—molecular events that occur in ALS patients that, when blocked, can slow or arrest disease progression. The long-term goal is to find effective therapies for ALS. Researchers and laboratories from around the world participating in Target ALS will benefit from a central organization through which to share ideas, progressand discoveries, as well as a source of funding to develop new collaborative projects. A feature of the new consortium is the Target ALS Core Facilities, which will provide ALS investigators with access to key technologies that are too complex or costly to set up in each individual laboratory. “With fresh resources and determined collaboration, we can make steady progress toward a cure for this devastating disease,” said Rubenstein. “Dan, Mike and I hope these resources will serve as a unifying catalyst for the great work that is being done around the world to cure and prevent ALS.” “Collaboration is essential to build on the real progress that’s being made in the field of ALS research,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, philanthropist and Mayor of New York City. “I’m proud to join Dan and David to launch this innovative new project and bring together the scientific, academic, healthcare and business communities to stop this horrible disease once and for all.” Scientific director Christopher E. Henderson and executive director Manish Raisinghani will jointly manage the program. Henderson is the Gurewitsch/Vidda Professor of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine and co-director of the Motor Neuron Center and the Project A.L.S./Jenifer Estess Laboratory for Stem Cell Research at Columbia University Medical Center. The project will also benefit from the vision of special consultant Zach Hall, who is a former director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and was the first president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. “Target ALS will generate a pipeline of candidate therapeutic targets that will provide a common language for Target ALS and pharma and biotech companies, with whom we have initiated a dialogue to define their needs and expectations,” said Henderson. “By coordinating and supporting the work of leading ALS scientists and engaging pharma and biotech, Target ALS provides a new way of organizing science that will hasten the development of much-needed therapies for this debilitating disease,” said Hall. “We are extremely grateful to Dan, David and Bloomberg Philanthropies for their generosity and for recognizing the great promise of the research led by Dr. Henderson and his colleagues both here at Columbia and at our collaborating institutions,” said Lee Goldman, dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine, Columbia University Medical Center, and executive vice president for Health and Biomedical Sciences, Columbia University. Reflecting the wide range of institutions involved, Target ALS’s strategy will receive oversight from a research advisory board, and funding will be conditional on positive evaluation by an independent review committee. “With the recent discovery of new genes and disease mechanisms, ALS research is now in its most exciting phase ever. Target ALS will allow us to make a determined push toward rational therapeutic strategies for this terrible disease,” said Jeffrey Rothstein, director of the Robert Packard Center for ALS Research at Johns Hopkins University and chair of the Target ALS Research Advisory Board. The objectives of Target ALS build upon, and are complementary to, those of existing ALS-related foundations and centers, with whom collaborations and coordination are an important part of the Target ALS strategy. “Project A.L.S. is proud to have launched Target ALS, a systemized approach to screening ALS therapies. Project A.L.S. will continue to launch new ideas that we hope will feed the Target ALS mission,” said Valerie Estess, director of research for Project A.L.S. “We are eager to partner with Target ALS to provide access to core facilities for some of the scientists we support worldwide,” said Lucie Bruijn, chief scientist of the ALS Association, which funds research, engages in advocacy, and provides care and support to ALS patients and families. “Testing candidate targets in predictive disease models is a high priority and we are pleased to collaborate with Target ALS in this area,” said Melanie Leitner, chief scientific officer of Prize4Life, Inc., a foundation dedicated to accelerating the discovery of treatments and cures for ALS. —by Columbia University Medical Center Staff
Study Points to Possible Cause of, and Treatment for, Non-familial Parkinson’s

Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have identified a protein trafficking defect within brain cells that may underlie common non-familial forms of Parkinson’s disease. 

Old Age Offers No Protection from Obesity’s Death Grip

As obese Americans grow older, their heightened risk of death climbs, despite a slew of prominent research reporting that an elevated BMI doesn't shorten lifespan, and may even extend it. 

Photographer Paolo Ventura’s Invented Worlds at the Italian Academy

Referencing history, art and the subconscious, Paolo Ventura’s photographs function as architectural relics of the imagination, portraying characters and scenarios that are magical, poignant and strangely familiar—he calls them invented worlds. 

James Jordan Retires as Leader of Columbia University Press

James D. Jordan today announced his retirement as President and Director of Columbia University Press, effective Sept. 1, 2013.