Yale Bulletin & Calendar
Campus Notes

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Campus Notes

In mid-December, Marci B. Sternheim will leave her post as the first executive director of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale to begin work as executive director of the Wilton, Connecticut-based Dibner Fund, a private foundation which supports educational programs in the areas of history of science, technology and engineering. Ms. Sternheim, who holds a doctorate in Spanish and Latin American literature from Yale, joined Yale Hillel in 1994 after having served for six years as assistant secretary of the University. During her years with Yale Hillel, she oversaw the construction of the Slifka Center, established its administrative infrastructure and helped define the program, policies and mission of the new institution.

An administrative change is also taking place within the Office of Environmental Health and Safety (OEHS). Serving as the manager of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of OEHS is Robert Klein. He replaces Tom Ouimet, who will continue his association with OEHS as an adviser to the director with responsibilities for special assignments. Mr. Ouimet has led the section since 1996. Mr. Klein has served since 1996 as a senior industrial hygienist.

Dr. James P. Comer, the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry and associate dean of the School of Medicine, has received the Camille O. Cosby World of Children Award. The nationally recognized honor, considered the "Nobel Prize" for outstanding achievement in working with and improving the lives of disadvantaged children, was also presented to Tipper Gore and BankBoston chief executive officer Chad Gifford. They received the award at a ceremony in mid-November in at the Copley Plaza Hotel Boston. Dr. Comer is an internationally recognized expert in child development and is director of the Yale Child Study Center's School Development Program.

The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival/Yale Summer School of Music is one of 42 organizations nationwide to be awarded a "Commissioning/USA" grant from Meet the Composer and the National Endowment for the Arts. The festival will receive $7,000 to commission a work for chamber ensemble from Houston composer Chris Theofanides. The Norfolk Chamber Music Festival will then present the world premiere of the work in the summer of 1998 with the ensemble Speculum Musicae. The composer will work closely with the ensemble this summer at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, which recently won the Award for Adventurous Programming from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers for its contributions to contemporary musical life.

Two members of the Yale community recently won prestigious prizes for their books. Steven B. Smith, professor of political science and master of Branford College, has won the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, given by Phi Beta Kappa for scholarly studies of the intellectual and cultural condition of man, for his book "Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity," published by Yale University Press. The award, established in 1960, carries a cash prize of $2,500. Jacob S. Hacker, a doctoral candidate in political science, has been named cowinner of the National Academy of Public Administration's 1997 Louis Brownlow Book Award. The award is given annually for excellence in public administration literature. Mr. Hacker's book is "The Road to Nowhere."

Peter Brooks, the Tripp Professor of the Humanities and director of the Whitney Humanities Center, received an honorary doctorate from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris on Nov. 7. While in Europe, Professor Brooks also delivered the Zaharoff Lecture, titled "History Painting and Narrative -- Delacroix's 'Moments,'" at the Taylor Institution, University of Oxford.


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