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Big Sky Blues
In high school , Philip Aaberg 71 took train voyages lasting 12 hours each way between his hometown of Chester, Montana, and Spokane to study piano with master teacher Margaret Saunders Ott. Four decades later, Ott is 86 and Aaberg still makes the same …
Issue: November-December 2006
The Campaign Computes
As it proceeded during the fall semester, The Harvard Campaign featured a penultimate school’s launch (medicine); another galvanizing gift (computer sciences); and interesting evidence of the effects ofsmaller-scale philanthropy across the University, …
Issue: January-February 2015
Well Done
The Harvard Alumni Association Awards were established in 1990 to recognize outstanding service to Harvard University through alumni activities. This year’s recipients were to be honored on October 12 during the HAA board of directors’ annual fall meeting …
Issue: November-December 2009
Sagittarian Students
No shaky hands, please: stability is crucial. Three stabilizer rods, in fact, are attached to the center of your bow to steady it, like a tightrope walker’s pole. Take a nice, comfortable stance, feet perpendicular to the target. Pick up the bow, then tie …
Issue: November-December 2009
“Like Driving at Night”
It may seem odd that Maggie Shipstead ’05, whose third novel, Great Circle , arrives this spring, didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer. The current Los Angeles resident—born in Orange County, but peripatetic for a few years in-between—remembers reading …
Issue: May-June 2021
David Ellwood to Step Down
David T. Ellwood ’75, Ph.D. ’81, dean of the Harvard Kennedy School since his appointment by President Lawrence H. Summers in mid 2004 , announced today that he would step down next June 30. Ellwood is the longest-serving among the current decanal cohort: …
Love’s Labors
At age 47, with a solid academic career and a grown daughter, Mary Brown Parlee ’65 fell suddenly in love—with a man she’d known for decades. They had worked together in an MIT lab during the 1960s and spent summers on nearby Maine islands with their …
Issue: March-April 2009
Off the Shelf
“Much of the time we spend in gatherings with other people disappoints us,” warns professional facilitator Priya Parker, M.P.P. ’12. After this deflating introduction, The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Riverhead, $28) offers a breezy …
Issue: September-October 2018
Embracing AI
“Thank you, weirdly informative robot,” wrote a student taking Harvard’s introductory computer science course this summer, after receiving help from an AI-powered avatar. The development of generative artificial intelligence, which can create and …
Admissions Agenda
Edward Blum is certainly lucky. In late 2014, when his Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed suit against Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) aiming, as its website puts it, to “eliminate race and ethnicity from college admissions,” …
Issue: July-August 2022
A Tale of Two Detectives
Lauren Mechling writes in the thriving young-adult genre. Above: The author's first solo novel. While preparing to interview Cecile von Ziegesar, author of the wildly popular Gossip Girl series, for a London newspaper, Lauren Mechling ’99 spent a week in …
Issue: September-October 2008
Harvard Proponent
Photograph by Jim Harrison Walter H. Morris Jr. The Harvard Alumni Association’s new president, Walter H. Morris Jr. ’73, M.B.A. ’75, may have left the University’s classrooms years ago, but he has never stopped learning at Harvard. He often returns for …
Issue: September-October 2008
What Makes (and Remakes) a House
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) , in planning a major renovation of the 12 undergraduate residential Houses, has appointed a House Program Planning Committee “to examine the mission and purpose of House life and to develop an architectural space …
Issue: July-August 2008
Flocking to Finance
Recent graduates may take for granted the migration of one-fifth of their classmates into finance-sector jobs, but things haven’t always been this way. In a survey of 6,500 Harvard graduates from selected classes between 1969 and 1992, Claudia Goldin and …
Issue: May-June 2008
The “Toxicity of Low Expectations”
At a time when less than 50 percent of Americans grow up to earn more than their parents, how can higher education help move the needle, especially for low-income students? This was the overarching question in the Radcliffe Day panel discussion moderated …