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January 18, 2005
2004: Year in Review

For just the 19th time in its history, in 2004 Emory inaugurated a new president. Following is a look back at that and the rest of the year that was, as covered in Emory Report.

January


Story EmoryGives raises more than $492,000 for the University’s charitable partners, surpassing its goal by nearly $70,000, and the number of employees participating rises to 2,126, or 12.7 percent of the Emory workforce, nearly double the participation rate of two years earlier.

The University’s new pre-employment drug-testing policy goes into effect Jan. 2, stating that only applicants for certain safety-sensitive positions will be tested.

Emory kicks off its 20th annual King Week, Jan. 19–25, when volunteers plant trees in the King Historic District. Joseph Lowery, co-founder with King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, preaches at a week-ending worship service. Elaine Brown, former leader of the Black Panther Party, delivers the keynote speech, “What Would Martin Say?”

A new debate series, the dramatic reading of a new play, poetry and dance presentations, and even a planetarium open house follow the rechristened Charter Celebration Dinner, Jan. 26, as the University extends Charter Day to a weeklong, campuswide academic and artistic festival commemorating Emory’s 89th
birthday.

Emory ranks in the Top 10 among U.S. universities in the Association of University Technology Managers’ annual survey of earnings from the commercialization of research inventions, earning $29.6 million in fiscal 2002 (up from $3.6 million the previous year). Most of the revenues came from three licenses for antiviral technology.

The third annual Kenneth Cole Leadership Forum features singer, actor and social activist Harry Belafonte as keynote speaker. Belafonte appears in Glenn Auditorium Jan. 28 with Fox 5 news anchor Amanda Davis to cap the forum, themed “Many Faces in One Place: Building the Diverse Community.”

February

Former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes hosts the School of Law’s eighth annual EPIC Inspiration Awards, Feb. 3 in Tull Auditorium. Award recipients include Bill Brennan Jr., director of the Home Defense Program of the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, and Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher. Bill Rankin, staff writer for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, receives a Special Community Collaboration Award.

Emory continues work to update the 1998 Campus Master Plan. The new plan—dubbed “CPU4”—will hold to the 1998 plan’s guiding principles while taking into account an evolved set of circumstances.

Theater Emory presents the world premiere of Leap, by award-winning playwright and Emory alumna Lauren Gunderson, Feb. 12–21. Based on scientific and historical fact, Leap infuses myth, biography and science into a new story about Isaac Newton. Gunderson’s play Background won the 2004 Essential Theatre Playwriting Award, making her the first two-time winner (Parts They Call Deep was a recipient in 2001).

Habitat for Humanity founder Millard Fuller speaks Feb. 17 in Tull Auditorium as part of the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion’s Family Forum Series, focusing on the plights of children in crisis.

Nine months after closing, the newly renovated fourth floor of Woodruff Library reopens Feb. 18 with a ribbon cutting to celebrate the installation of new compact shelving, which expands the floor’s holding capacity by nearly 65 percent.

President Jim Wagner, Emory College Dean Bobby Paul and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences interim Dean Bryan Noe host a Feb. 20 gathering in the Carlos Museum to honor one of Emory’s most distinguished professors, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Eléonore Raoul Professor of Humanities and History, who was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2003.

The Women’s Center hosts its annual Unsung Heroine Awards banquet on Feb. 24. Honorees include: Piper Beatty (undergraduate); Jenny Higgins (graduate); Kristen Looney (staff); Donna Jean Brogan (faculty) and Patricia Boyle (alumna). The event also includes a posthumous recognition of Sidney Howell Fleming, a longtime faculty member and the only woman in her 1964 School of Medicine class.

Emory, the CDC, the Clifton Corridor Transportation Management Association and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta undertake a comprehensive transit study of the Clifton Corridor. The goal is to find ways to improve the transportation system in an area that accommodates more than 23,000 employees, nearly 12,000 students and 8,000 patients and visitors each weekday.

March

A change to the University’s benefits package, restoring health care benefits for 112 Emory retirees to their pre-2003 levels, takes effect on March 1. This group of retirees, the University Senate fringe benefits committee reasoned, was inappropriately burdened by reductions to health care premium subsidies that took effect Jan. 1, 2003.

The Board of Trustees approves President Wagner’s nomination of Earl Lewis as Emory provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. Lewis, graduate dean at the University of Michigan, emerged as the top candidate following campus visits by four finalists. “[Lewis] will bring a rich portfolio of capabilities that will be a strong complement to those already part of Emory’s leadership team,” Wagner says.

At a March 2 meeting in White Hall, the Alliance to Improve Emory Village unveils its plans for transforming the commercial center at one of the University’s most visible entry points. The plan involves a “road diet” on N. Decatur—meaning one lane in each direction with a center turn lane—between Clifton and Lullwater roads, redirecting N. Oxford as it enters the Emory Village intersection, and replacing traffic signals at the intersection itself with a roundabout.

During the Southern regional meeting of the American Conference for Irish Studies, held on campus March 4–7, Emory announces the creation of a new program in Irish studies, to be directed by Associate Professor Geraldine Higgins. Pulitzer Prize-winning Irish poet Paul Muldoon allows Emory to print a limited-edition broadside of his poem “The Coyote” to celebrate the announcement.

Two separate but related reviews—one of the Office of Equal Opportunity Programs (EOP) and another of the University’s discriminatory harassment (DH) policy—get under way. The EOP office review is conducted by an external committee working in cooperation with the Office of the General Counsel. Senior Vice President and General Counsel Kent Alexander co-chairs the DH policy review, along with Emory College Dean Bobby Paul.

Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson is announced as one of four honorary degree recipients to be feted at Emory’s 159th Commencement ceremony. Her co-recipients include medieval historian Caroline Walker Bynum, U.S. Olympic Committee President Emeritus LeRoy Walker and Emory Trustee Emeritus James Williams.

The Goizueta Business School breaks ground for the Goizueta Foundation Center for Research & Doctoral Education, March 17. The 91,000-square-foot addition, to be completed by fall 2005, will bring much-needed classroom and office space as well as room for the school’s growing graduate programs.

Eleven employees are honored with 2004 Awards of Distinction at a March 17 ceremony. Each is presented a plaque and a $500 U.S. savings bond. The winners are Berky Abreu, women’s studies; Veronica Carlson, law library; Chris Cook, general counsel; Linda Erhard, ITD; Elaine Gossett, FM; Kathryn Heath Graves, public health; Beverly Medley, physiology; Roark Miller, Campus Life; Julie Moran, Yerkes; George Nikas, theology; Debra Siegel, Campus Life.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Margaret Edson, author of Wit, delivers the keynote address at the 12th annual Pride banquet, March 18 in Miller-Ward Alumni House.

The March 22–24 EduCATE (Educational Conference on Academic Technologies at Emory) conference is the biggest iteration yet for the 3-year-old classroom technology showcase. Richard Robb, Scheller Professor of Medical Research at Mayo Medical School and director of the Mayo Biomedical Imaging Resource, delivers the keynote address.

Former interim Provost and law school Dean Woody Hunter is named president of Singapore Management University, a 4-year-old business school home to 2,200 students. Hunter, who is serving as visiting professor of law at the University of Sydney in Australia, says he “will never truly ‘leave’ Emory because it has been too much a part of me.”

On March 25 in Tull Auditorium, the School of Law’s four Woodruff professors—Harold Berman, Michael Perry and Martha Fineman, all Robert W. Woodruff Professors of Law; and Martin Marty, Robert W. Woodruff Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Religious Studies—gather for “The Foundations of Law,” one-day celebration of legal scholarship.

Brooks Holifield, Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Church History delivers the 2004 Distinguished Faculty Lecture, “The Odd Couple: Theology and Science in the American Tradition,” March 25. Holifield chose the topic in light of debates over the teaching of evolution in public schools.

Emory’s Inauguration Celebration, March 29–April 2, arrives with a week of symposia, exhibits, performances, ceremonies
and gatherings that culminate with the official induction of Jim Wagner as Emory’s 19th president. A 72-person torch run carries the “inaugural flame” from Oxford College to the Atlanta campus for the Friday afternoon Inauguration Ceremony.

April

In an April 2 ceremony on the Quadrangle, James W. “Jim” Wagner is inaugurated as the 19th president of Emory University. Delegates from 218 institutions attend, as do Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and former President Jimmy Carter.

The Emory Clinic, Georgia’s largest and most comprehensive physician group practice, names Wright Caughman as director and associate dean for clinical affairs within the School of Medicine, effective Sept. 1. Also, Ira Horowitz is appointed to a new part-time position as the clinic’s associate director.

Emory’s medical, law and business schools again rank among the Top 25 in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. The School of Medicine and Goizueta Business School both rank 19th (up from 21st in 2003), and the School of Law ranks 23rd (up from 27th). Emory’s joint program in biomedical engineering, launched in cooperation with Georgia Tech in 1997, moves up four spots to No. 2 in the nation.

Betsy Stephenson, associate athletics director at UCLA, is appointed Emory’s new director of athletics and recreation, effective June 1. After serving eight years in Los Angeles, Stephenson in her new post will oversee 18 varsity sports, as well as intramurals, club sports and recreational activities.

Medical faculty at Grady Hospital celebrate their new home as the Emory Clinical Training and Faculty Office Building is dedicated, April 8. The four-story, 68,000-square-foot building is located across the street from Grady at the historic intersection of Armstrong Street and Jesse Hill Jr. Drive. A large display on the first-floor walls traces the evolution of School of Medicine since its founding in 1854 as the Atlanta Medical College and its commitment to Grady since the hospital’s founding in 1892.

Goizueta Business School Dean Tom Robertson announces he will step down from his post in January 2005 to assume a new position as head of the internationalization aspects of Emory’s strategic planning process, President Wagner announces April 16. “The objective,” Robertson says, “is to contribute to scholarship, health care and social action worldwide, and to develop the Emory brand internationally.”

President Wagner announces the process for building Emory’s strategic plan. Twelve “opportunity committees” convene to discuss the University’s strategic strengths and the areas on which it should focus in years to come.

Emory faculty, staff and students take a proactive approach to dealing with race on campus, meeting in small groups to discuss diversity. “Black and white faculty were not talking to each other [earlier in the year],” said Daryll Neill, professor of psychology, one organizer of a series of small-group faculty meetings. “But there was a lot of public posturing in the newspapers.”

Oxford Dean Dana Greene announces she will step down in June 2005 after five years at Oxford’s helm. “The last five years have been very rewarding, and I am filled with a sense of gratitude for the opportunity to have served this unique college and my alma mater, Emory University,” she says.

Johnnie Ray, vice president for resource development at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, is announced as Bill Fox’s successor as senior vice president for Institutional Advancement, effective July 1. Ray will be charged with leading Emory’s upcoming comprehensive fund-raising campaign, having led UT’s $1.5 billion, “We’re Texas” campaign since 1997.

May

The Board of Trustees approves names for four perenially flowing streams on campus: Antoinette Candler Creek, George Cooper Creek, Henry Hornbostel Creek and Ernest Richardson Creek. All four names were solicited from the Emory community through a collaborative effort between the Ad Hoc Committee on Environmental Stewardship and the Friends of Emory Forest, led by Tim Bryson.

Emory adds more than 3,330 names to its alumni rolls as graduates of the Class of 2004 receive their diplomas at the University’s 159th Commencement ceremony, May 10. The event marries old and new, as Emory Weekend is combined with Commencement for the first time, and the Class of 1954 leads the procession at the main ceremony.

June

On June 1, Sodexho becomes Emory’s food service provider, and several campus eateries are remodeled. New dining locations, including coffee and sandwich shops in Woodruff Library and White Hall, are planned for the future.

“The Genomic Revolution,” a new exhibition at the Fernbank Museum of National History for which Emory isthe major sponsoring partner, opens June 12. Throughout its run, Emory professors and researchers deliver lectures on genomics and coordinate with the museum on a range of related programming.

Vice President and University Secretary Gary Hauk is appointed by President Wagner to a new position as vice president and deputy to the president. Hauk had been secretary since 1991.

Six Democrats take the stage June 23 in Glenn Auditorium, as Emory hosts a forum for candidates running for U.S. Congress in Georgia’s 4th District. The candidates include Liane Levetan,
Cynthia McKinney, Connie Stokes, Nadine Thomas, Chris Vaughn and Cathy Woolard. Republican Catherine Davis is out of town and unable to participate.

July

In an effort to tie annual pay increases more closely to job performance, Human Resources revamps Emory’s Perfomance Management System, doubling the available indices for work quality and requiring employees and supervisors to work together to set objective performance goals.

Emory Hospital earns a No. 8 ranking in heart and heart surgery from U.S. News & World Report, marking the 14th time since the magazine began ranking hospitals in 1990 that the program has been named among the nation’s elite. Emory programs in ophthalmology (17th), psychiatry (18th), kidney disease (21st),
geriatrics (27th), urology (40th) and gynecology (40th) also are included in U.S. News’ rankings of 17 specialties.

In a July 13 all-campus e-mail, President Wagner presents a draft code of ethics for Emory, urging community members to respond. “A code of ethics helps us declare to the world and to each other how we will work to implement our vision,” Wagner says.

August

Timothy Roemer, former Democratic congressman from Indiana and one of 10 members of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, appears at a public meeting at the Carter Center, Aug. 10, to discuss the commission’s much-anticipated report and recommendations.

Emory ranks 20th among 248 national universities in the 2004 U.S. News & World Report annual college quality rankings. Goizueta Business School was 17th in the rankings of undergraduate business programs.

In Glenn Auditorium, Aug. 24, the Class of 2008 begins its voyage through higher education at Opening Convocation. Each speaker expounds on the theme of journeying, both the physical and philosophical, and its importance to Emory’s newest students.

The Center for Women at Emory gets both a new name (it had been called the Emory Women’s Center since its founding in 1992) and a new home, as it moves from a modular unit behind the Dobbs Center to a new suite on the third floor of Cox Hall.

Claus Halle, former Coca-Cola executive and generous University benefactor, dies on Aug. 22 at the age of 77. Halle, along with his wife, Marianne, provided the support for the Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, which officially opened in October 1997.

The Institutional Advancement division changes its name to the Office of Development and University Relations (DUR). “The term ‘Institutional Advancement’ is just not well understood outside the University,” says Johnnie Ray, senior vice president for DUR, who initiated the name change. “Development and University Relations is much more descriptive of what we
actually do.”

The University delays a transition from monthly to biweekly pay for employees affected by changes to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The law governs which job titles must be eligible for overtime; all Emory employees affected by the changes moved from being paid on a monthly salary basis to being paid an hourly wage. Human Resources creates a special website for FLSA changes and pledges to review the affected job titles thoroughly.

September

Emory announces the acquisition of the Raymond Danowski poetry library, considered the largest ever built by a private collector, encompassing some 50,000 books as well as scores of thousands of periodicals, manuscripts, correspondence and other materials. To commemorate the event, Sept. 9, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman and poet Dana Gioia gives a Sept. 9 reading in the Carlos Museum.

The Carlos Museum’s New Galleries of Greek and Roman Art open on Sept. 18, marking the debut of nearly 100 recently acquired classical treasures, integrated with 250 previous holdings, in an opulent setting designed with renowned architect Michael Graves and Associates.

At his annual town hall meeting, Sept. 22 in the P.E. Center, former President Jimmy Carter comments on everything from the war in Iraq to gay marriage. Asked what one thing he would change about American foreign policy, Carter replies, “I would have someone in charge other than George W. Bush.” A half-minute standing ovation follows.

EmoryLink, a new initiative headed by an advisory group from across Emory constituencies, takes a broad look at the University’s information technology (IT) infrastructure with the goal of defining a common IT communication platform for University-wide e-mail, calendaring and collaboration.

Longtime civil rights activist Jesse Jackson speaks in Glenn Auditorium, Sept. 28, on “Activism and the College Student,” urging those students in attendance to register to vote. “We are a community of interest,” he says. “We will vote on issues of the economy, war and peace, and we will be heard.”

A patient at Emory Hospital is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), an extremely rare degenerative condition, and the hospital notifies 98 recent brain and spine surgery patients of the remote possibility that they may have been exposed to the protein that causes CJD. Physicians say potential exposures might have occurred following the Sept. 10 brain biopsy of the patient who later was diagnosed with CJD.

October

The 2004–05 EmoryGives campaign opens Oct. 1 with the lofty goal of raising $900,000, a huge increase made possible by including donations to the Nov. 6 American Heart Association Heart Walk (which brought in more than $360,000 in 2003) in the EmoryGives sum. Also, for the first time donations can be made online.

From Oct. 3–5, Indian novelist Salman Rushdie makes his first public appearance in Atlanta as the 2004 Richard Ellmann lecturer in Modern Literature. The author of The Satanic Verses delivers three lectures under the heading “The Other Great Tradition,” defending literature that blurs the distinction between “reality” and unreality.

Emory announces its researchers attracted $351.5 million in external research funding in fiscal year 2004, leading the state’s research institutions and increasing awards by approximately 10 percent over fiscal year 2003. Since 1999, sponsored research funding at Emory has grown by more than 71 percent.

The Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning (JCAL), a quarterly online journal based at Oxford College devoted to the connections between emotion and understanding in the classroom, debuts. Edited by Oxford Associate Professor Ken Carter, JCAL (www.jcal.emory.edu) is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal designed to promote research, education and community building in areas related to the scholarship of teaching.

The third Classroom on the Quad, themed “Vote 2004” and held Oct. 20 on the Quadrangle, serves as a primer for the Nov. 2 presidential election. The event features a slate of 13 speakers, including President Wagner; some hold to the event’s “rule” of nonpartisanship and some do not.

President Wagner delivers the seventh annual State of the University address, Oct. 21. He examines two types of excellence:competitive vs. contributing excellence, saying he hopes Emory practices more of the latter. “Contributing excellence advances whatever it touches,” Wagner says. “It changes the way other people think and do things.”

To help combat the national nursing shortage, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and Agnes Scott College launch a dual-degree nursing program that enables young women to spend three years at Agnes Scott, followed by two years at Emory, and emerge with two bachelor’s degrees.

Emory faculty, staff and students form the Sudan Crisis Working Group to raise awareness of the ongoing killing and displacement of refugees from Sudan’s western Darfur region. The group organizes a series of events throughout the fall, including an Oct. 27 panel discussion that draws a full house to WHSCAB auditorium.

The University Senate unanimously passes a resolution reaffirming Emory’s policies for same-sex domestic partners and urging that Georgia voters be fully informed of measures on which they are voting. The President’s Commission on LGBT Concerns presented the resolution in light of the upcoming Nov. 2 ballot referendum on amending the Georgia constitution to ban same-sex marriage; the language on the ballot does not accurately portray the amendment as it passed the state legislature.

The Yerkes National Primate Research Center dedicates its new Neuroscience Research Facility on Oct. 28. The $27 million, five-story building, connected to the main Yerkes facility by a bridge, provides 92,000 square feet of research space.

November

A capacity crowd packs into Winship Ballroom on Nov. 4 to hear an update from executive vice presidents Earl Lewis and Michael Johns, co-chairs of the Strategic Planning Steering Committee, on where the process stands and what is needed as it moves forward.

President Wagner again urges open—and frequent—communication at the 13th annual Employee Council Town Hall, held Nov. 9 “There is a stiffness of communication on this campus,” Wagner says. “We need to engage each other easily.”

Beginning Nov. 29, Emory employees receive the Campus Climate Survey, an attempt to measure employees’ attitudes toward the University’s working culture: its diversity, level of support for professional development and workplace atmosphere. The survey was developed by the President’s Commission on Race and Ethnicity (PCORE) and has the full support of President Wagner and the administration.

December

Lawrence Benveniste, dean of the Carlson School of Management and U.S. Bancorp Professor in Finance at the University of Minnesota, is announced as the next dean of Goizueta Business School, effective July 1, 2005 (see story, page 1).

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