Alumni Gazette

In the News

“You want them to learn lessons that are powerful but benign. . . . But when you have a kid leave their bike out, it gets run over and rusty, and you say, ‘O.K., honey, we’ll buy you a new one,’ they never learn to put their bike away.”

—Mary Sapon-Shevin ’77W (EdD), a professor of teaching and leadership at Syracuse University, in a Newsweek story about the role of parents in helping—or undermining—their children’s development as students.

Neurologist Honored for Alzheimer’s Research

John Morris ’74M (MD), the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Washington University in St. Louis, has received one of neurology’s most prominent honors for his work to understand the early stages of the debilitating disease. Morris, who also is the Harvey A. and Dorismae Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology at Washington, and Ronald Peterson, director of the Mayo Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in Rochester, Minnesota, received the 2005 Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology. Sometimes described as the “Nobel Prize of Neurology,” the award honors researchers for their work in helping advance the understanding of Alzheimer’s and related disorders.

Composer Wins Guggenheim Fellowship

Don Freund ’73E (DMA), a professor at Indiana University’s School of Music, will have additional support for compositional and other research projects, thanks to a 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship. Freund, a member of the Indiana faculty since 1992, was one of 186 artists, humanists, and scientists in the United States and Canada selected for the prestigious award. The fellowships are awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

A 17-Year Presidency Ends

Geibel (Photo: Carlow University)

For the first time in 17 years, a 2,200-student university in Pittsburgh is being led by someone other than Sister Grace Ann Geibel ’75E (PhD). Geibel stepped down as president of Carlow University on June 30, when she was formally named president emeritus of the mostly women’s institution that she had graduated from in 1961 and that she had headed since 1988. Her successor is Mary Hines, formerly the executive officer at Penn State University’s Wilkes-Barre campus. Founded in 1929 as Mount Mercy College by the Sisters of Mercy, the Roman Catholic religious order of which Geibel is a member, the school received state permission last fall to change its designation to a university. Before being named president, Geibel served as academic dean and cochair of the college’s music department.