LehighWeek Volume 12, Issue 30

              Sterling performers
Staff given awards
at annual dinner
See page 7
Volume 12, Issue 30
LehighVfeA;
The campus digest for innovation, news and events with SouthMountaineer
Sports Update
Nick Martucci'99 signs
with the Oakland Raiders.
See SouthMountaineer   8
May 12,1999
Hans Baer '47 wins
56th Lin-Life Award
Hans J. Baer '47, honorary chairman of Julius Baer Holding LTD,
the largest private banking group
in Zurich, Switzerland, has received the 56th Annual L-
in-Life Award, the most
prestigious service honor
given by the university,
for lifelong service to his
alma mater.
The presentation took
place at a May 5 dinner
in New York City.
In giving the award, Eugene Mercy Jr. '59
praised Baer's diplomatic
efforts in negotiating a
settlement between the
Swiss banks and the survivors of
Holocaust victims. Baer represented the Swiss banking indus-
*-*^H
Baer with his scholar Kalin
Kolev '02
try in its dispute over the last few
years with families of Holocaust
victims.
The L-in-Life Award was established in 1939 by the Lehigh Club
of New York to recognize alumni
ioi outstanding achievements in
their business and professions,
and for devotion and service to
their alma mater.
Those attending the conference
were welcomed by Andrew J.
Chepaitis '90, president of the
Lehigh Club of New York. Remarks were also made by President Gregory C. Farrington;
Ronald J. Ulrich '66, chairman
of the board of trustees; and H.
George Shoffner '75, president
of Lehigh's Alumni Association.
Baer earned a degree in engineering, and entered the family
business when a principal manager of the family's Julius Baer
Holding LTD retired. The private
bank was taken public by Hans
Baer and two cousins in 1974.
Baer was named chairman of the
board in 1993 and honorary chairman in 1996. Today, the banking
conglomerate owns all outstanding stock and has operations in
London, Johannesburg, New York
and San Francisco.
Baer has served as chairman
of the Global Advancement Council, which helps Lehigh with international programs and recruitment. He was executive-in-resi-
dence in the College of Business
and Economics, and received an
honorary doctorate of laws degree
from Lehigh in 1997.
Baer also established the Hans
J. Baer International Scholarship
Fund to support international
undergraduate students, preferably those from Europe. He was
named an honorary trustee of
Lehigh in 1998.
-Linda Harbrecht
Heading abroad, Russian major
opts for ■- Irkutsk
Celina Nichols '00 laughs readily, speaks
quickly and directs several trains of thought simultaneously and with relish.
Conversant about English royal history - particularly the fates of Henry VIII's wives and the
reign of his daughter, Elizabeth - she launches five
minutes later into an enthusiastic discussion of ballet, an art to which she devoted 10 years of her childhood.
But when the subject comes around to the Russian language, her major field, Nichols pauses to
measure her words.
"I don't like easy things," she says. "I like stimulation."
If she likes a good fight, Nichols, who also majors in English, has not been disappointed in Russian. The language is baffling not so much for its
Cyrillic alphabet as for its endlessly declining nouns
and adjectives, and its scarcity of cognates that English speakers find in abundance in French and
Spanish.
In advanced classes with Profs. Mary Nicholas and Galina Pastur, Nichols reads and discusses the works of the Russian literary masters
— Tolstoy, Pushkin and Chekhov — in Russian. The
students wear out Russian-English dictionaries.
Resorting to English is frowned upon.
Next year, Nichols plans to study in Russia —
not in popular, cosmopolitan Moscow or St. Petersburg, but in Siberia, at the University of Irkutsk, a
city with few well-known tourist attractions and
fewer English speakers.
"I wanted a more small-town atmosphere off the
beaten track," says Nichols. "Irkutsk called me.
There's less crime, it's right next to Lake Baikal,
and Mongolia is close by. It's kind of exotic."
Nichols, who arranged her study-abroad year
through Vermont's Middlebury University, will take
all her courses in Russian. They include advanced
Russian, Siberian culture and history, 19th-century
Russian literature and either dancing or cooking.
John Kish IV
Celina Nichols, in the Zoellner Arts Center
dress shop , works on the Asian-style party
dress she will take to Siberia.
In her spare time, Nichols hopes to ride horseback around Lake Baikal, the world's deepest
fresh-water lake. She may even try to visit
Mongolia.
As a ballet student, Nichols got her first whiff
of Russian culture. Later, her family hosted foreign-exchange students, whetting her appetite
further for things foreign.
Of all the experiences that have prepared her
for Irkutsk, however, one stands out. Nichols, who
dislikes feeling ignorant about subjects she considers important, has often taken courses that
didn't interest her, from physics in high school to
astronomy and even computer science at Lehigh.
She has yet to drop one.
"I'm stubborn," she says. "I don't look at challenges as obstacles or tests, just as facts, like,
'Let's do it.'"
■Kurt Pfitzer
Speaking their language
Raquel Jackson '99 is a psychology major, but it is English
she has on her mind three days
a week when she volunteers
with the Poor Sisters of St. Joseph at the Casa Belen convent
in Bethlehem.
Jackson's "pupils," Sister
Maria Adelina of El Salvador
and Sister Beda Pazzartini of
Argentina, do the social work of
Holy Infancy Church on
Bethlehem's South Side. The
nuns visit the sick of the parish
at St. Luke's Hospital, and call
on members of the parish at
their homes.
At her volunteering sessions,
Jackson teaches the nuns conversational English, which she
says, enables her to learn more
Spanish. Jackson said the nuns
know English well, but need to
learn how to form sentences and
work on pronunciation.
"She explains things very
clearly," said Adelina. "It's really
wonderful of her to do this for
us."
Jackson first heard about the
opportunity to work with the
nuns from Pedro Medina, the
Pam Shealey
Raquel Jackson '99 tutors Sister Adelina Rivas of El Salvador (left) and
Sister Beda Pazzartini of Argentina (center).
director of the America Reads
program at Lehigh. Medina
talked with the nuns and recommended Jackson. She had
been a volunteer with America
Reads for two years, tutoring at
both the Boys and Girls Club
and Fountain Hill Elementary.
"I am able to gain teaching
experience as well as fine tune
my people skills. I know this will
be an asset to my future endeavors," said Jackson. "I find this
very rewarding because not only
am I teaching someone else, I
am also learning about that individual at the same time.
That's what makes it so fascinating."
-Jeffrey Bachman
LU presents parking
plan to City Council
A comprehensive plan to expand
Lehigh's parking capacity that includes the construction of two
new parking lots on campus was presented to
Bethlehem City Council's
Public Safety Committee
on Monday (May 10) by
Vice Presidents Rhonda
Gross and Ken Smith.
The current College
and University Parking
Permit (CUPP) plan will
expire June 1 unless it is
renewed by City Council.
Lehigh now leases 125
faculty and staff parking
spaces along Packer and
Brodhead avenues (at
$75 a space) through
CUPP. The Public Safety
Committee voted 2-1 to
forward the Lehigh plan
to the entire City Council for discussion at Council's May 19 meeting.
Gross and Smith outlined a
comprehensive plan through
which Lehigh would build a parking lot on Brodhead Avenue above
Mohler Lab within the next year.
That lot, which would add 20-30
new parking spaces, would require the demolition of some
buildings.
Discussions are underway
with the Windish Hall for a second new parking lot to be built at
the corner of Taylor Street and
Packer Avenue by paving an area
west of the hall. That lot would
also contain 20-30 parking
spaces.
Under the proposal, daytime
student parking would also be improved by creating an additional
20 student parking spaces on the
Asa Packer campus and permitting 25 more students to park in
the Zoellner garage.
Lehigh would also improve
parking for residential students
by creating an additional area of
long-term student parking in
Sayre Park, opening 30 parking
spaces on the east side of campus
for night parking, and expanding
student parking in the existing
Brodhead lot when the new
Brodhead lot is built.
The proposed plan asks to retain the existing CUPP parking
on Packer and Brodhead Aves.
Existing meters would be removed on Brodhead below
Packer, and removed on Packer
west of Brodhead. Nine nc ,v
meters would be installed on
Packer between Taylor and
Webster streets.
A parking study conducted in
1991 by the city and Lehigh
showed Lehigh needed 463 additional parking spaces on the Asa
Packer campus. Since then,
Lehigh has added 419 new permanent parking spaces.
Demand has also declined due
to the movement of people to
Mountaintop campus (a decline of
75 cars) and the implementation
of parking hang-tags.
LEHIGH
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