LehighWeek Volume 12, Issue 32

              Packer restoration
Stained glass windows
are being restored
See page 8
Volume 12, Issue 32
LehighWee/c
The campus digest for innovation, news and events with SouthMountaineer
millennial iiwiiui
John Fisher recieves
engineering's Fritz Medal
See page 5
July 15,1999
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The new working MBA
Starting this fall, students enrolling in Lehigh's MBA program
must have at least two years of
work experience, under
a new requirement approved recently by the
faculty of the College of
Business and Economics.
Kathleen A. Trexler,
associate dean and director of the MBA program said the new requirement will provide
Lehigh's 330 MBA students a richer education
while making the program more competitive nationally and internationally.
"Virtually all of the MBA programs in the top 20 schools require a significant amount of
work experience as part of their
admissions criteria," says
Trexler. "And the success of our
new integrated MBA model
hinges on the fact that students
with real work experience can
help enrich the classroom experience for each other."
Recent changes have made
the MBA .program integrated
and interactive by immersing
students in the real-world atmosphere of a dynamic and competitive corporate environment,
says Trexler. Students gain an
improved business perspective
by working on industry projects
with corporate sponsors and with
professors who have backgrounds in teaching, research
and consulting.
"We want each student to be
able to fully participate in the
shared learning experience, as
well as glean from the experiences of fellow students," Trexler
says. "We think the best way to
achieve this is to be certain that
every student in the program
come to Lehigh with significant
professional experience."
Lehigh's current MBA students average nine years of professional experience.
The new working requirement will not affect students already enrolled in the MBA program, but it terminates the five-
year arts-MBA and engineering-
MBA programs, and it closes the
MBA program to Presidential
Scholars, who earn a fifth year
of tuition-free education at
Lehigh.
The change is necessary for
the Lehigh MBA program, which
was recently ranked by the
Gourman Report among the top
50 programs in the world, to continue to compete on a global
level, Trexler says.
"Continuous change and continuous improvement will be the
hallmarks of the 21st century,"
Trexler says. "Lehigh's MB A program is committed to providing
the professional environment
necessary to prepare our students to manage change across
functions, across industries and
across borders."
-Linda Harbrecht
Memorial Walk renovation restores honor to WWI veterans
Graphic by Ken Raniere
Memorial Walk originally commemorated the 46 Lehigh alumni who died in World War
I. Their names were inscribed on stone markers and placed along the macadam path.
Parking was permitted on Memorial Drive during the 1980s, dishonoring the "sacred
walk." This summer, additional parking spaces elsewhere coupled with an anonymous
gift paved the way for Lehigh to restore the walk. Renovations will include new
walkways, plazas and landscaping.
Memorial Drive to be walkway again
Work is underway to restore
Memorial Drive East as a walkway between Chandler-Ullmann
Hall and Taylor Gym and to
build a courtyard plaza in front
of Chandler-Ullmann.
The new walkway will feature
paving blocks, benches, period
lighting, and picnic tables. Landscaping will be added. The plaza
in front of Chandler-Ullman will
Ullmann and stabilize its chimneys, but that will depend on the
cost estimates received.
Rhonda Gross, vice president for finance and administration, said e-mail responses to
President Greg Farrington's
announcement of the project "are
running 3-1 in favor of the
project."
Parking was not allowed
contain a water fountain and     along Memorial Driv
stone sitting walls.
An anonymous alumnus donated half the cost of the project,
with the rest coming from the
facilities maintenance-budget.
"This is part of our overall
plan to beautify the campus,"
said Tony Corallo, associate
vice president for facilities services. "We had a sea of macadam
walkways right up to the doors
of many of our venerable old
buildings. We also want to create informal areas for social interaction among faculty, students and staff."
Corallo would also like to
clean the exterior of Chandler-
til the early 1980s. It was originally a "sacred space" in memory
of alumni killed in World War I.
Stone markers with the names
of fallen alumni line the path
and have been damaged by cars.
The project will eliminates 38
parking spaces. To compensate,
Sayre Drive has been made oneway uphill and 24 parking
spaces have been created along
the road from Williams Hall to
Coxe Lab. Negotiations are underway with Windish Hall to
build a parking lot on the corner
of Packer and Taylor.
Twenty faculty and staff questioned the project at a brown bag
lunch July 7. Concerns focused
on the lack of consultation with
faculty and staff, the need for
trucks to deliver heavy materials to the buildings, parking and
traffic flow, and increased traffic noise in laboratories on the
rear of Chandler-Ullmann.
Corallo and Gross said the
walkway was designed to withstand some traffic and allow necessary truck deliveries. They acknowledged concerns about
parking and lack of communication but said they had been waiting to see how the city would act
about parking on Packer and
Brodhead avenues.
The Bethlehem Parking Authority didn't make a final decision about parking on those
streets until June 22. Anyone
can now park on Packer and
Brodhead for an unlimited time
except from 2 to 6 a.m.
Construction of the walkway
had to begin immediately,
Corallo and Gross said, for the
project to be completed before
classes start in late August.
Durand moves in at CBE     ...and Chen at CEAS
Richard Durand, the new dean of the College of
Business and Economics, is aware of the challenges that await him.
In researching Lehigh before coming here in June,
Durand says he found a "university with a national reputation and a business college
that was [flying above] the
radar screen."
Durand says he is energized by by that assessment,
and plans to infuse the CBE
with the same vigor and exuberance he brought to his prior role as head of
marketing at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Durand says a number of initiatives have
been implemented in the CBE and new goals established.
First is the decision to hire eight new faculty.
Taking over as dean of the P.C. Rossin College of
Engineering and Applied Science on the eve of
the millennium, John C. Chen is urging faculty
to adopt the best ways of
teaching and doing research,
striving for excellence in
both.
Shaping his educational
vision on the words of two
past Lehigh leaders, Chen
says,"Our challenges are really no different than they
were in Asa Packer's time,"
referring to the industrialist
who founded Lehigh in 1865. "The goal of engineering is to apply knowledge and technology to
better the human condition.
"But I like to remember also what John
Karakash [Lehigh's engineering dean from 1966-
81] said to me when I was a young faculty member. We not only teach engineering, but we edu-
Chen
Erickson
Basso
Two steps up
Mark Erickson, dean of students, has been appointed executive asssistant to the president
and associate vice president, effective July
26.
Erickson,
who joined
Lehigh in
1983, is being
succeeded by
Sharon K,
Basso, who
joined Lehigh
in 1989 as assistant dean
of students.
President
Gregory C.
Farrington,
who an-
n o u n c e d
Erickson's
appointment,
said additional administrative support was necessary
to develop and implement strategic institutional initiatives.
As executive asssistant,
Farrington said, Erickson would
advise and represent the president on committees, and work
with students, parents, faculty,
staff, trustees, alumni, government representatives, and members of the Lehigh community.
"Mark is uniquely qualified
for this position," said
Farrington. In addition to his
duties as dean of students,
Farrington cited Erickson's
teaching experience at Lehigh
and Lafayette, where he has
teught higher education and
communications, and his service
as a a Fellow for the American
Council on Education (ACE) in
1997-98, through which he
worked with William Adams,
president of Bucknell University.
Basso's appointment was announced by John W. Smeaton,
vice provost for student affairs,
who said the new dean of students had "provided leadership,
planning and supervision for
university judicial affairs,
multicultural affairs, academic
support services, student leadership development, services for
students with learning disabilities, and student convocation
and recognition ceremonies."
Basso, who received the 1998
Lehigh University Award for distinguished service, has served as
a judicial investigative and case
officer in violations of the university code of conduct.
Basso, who is completing an
Ed.D. in educational leadership,
administration and policy from
the University of Delaware, is
executive secretary of the Committee on the Standing of Students (SOS), past co-chair of the
University Retention Committee, and a member of the financial aid award and appeals committee.
Please see Durand on page 4
Please see Chen on page A
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