Brown and White Vol. 117 no. 8

              By DANI TODD
Lehigh was nominated by Institu­tional Investor’s Foundation & Endow­ment Money Management (FEMM) as a finalist for its Large Endowment of the Year award, according to FEMM’s Web site.
The nominees were selected based on performance and investment deci­sions, according to the Web site. Other criteria included the meeting of endow­ment goals and successful use of man­agers and consultants.
Peter M. Gilbert, Lehigh’s chief in­vestment officer, said Lehigh’s strategy last year was more a question of sur­vival than success.
Last year, with the economic down­turn, it was crucial for these managing the endowment to change their ways of investing to take advantage of the market.
“We adopted an asset allocation policy,” Gilbert said. “The idea there would be to have a much more diversi­fied portfolio particularly in alternative assets, such as private equity, hedge funds, real estate and commodities.”
Before last year’s market crash, Lehigh terminated some managers, ex­pecting to hire new ones, Gilbert said. From this Lehigh received cash back from those managers.
“When we looked at the market, many of these markets we were inter­ested in were hitting all-time highs: in­ternational markets, emerging markets, commodities,” Gilbert said. “Rather than put that money in, we would wait and hope for market correction and buy lower rather than at the top.”
The cash available to the endow­ment, as opposed to many large en­dowments, provided the ability to fund the university’s operating budget, as well as other benefits, Gilbert said.
“Cash provided liquidity and gave us dry powder to take advantage of op­portunity,” Gilbert said.
“Particularly in alternative invest­ments, you really need to be with the highest quality managers. The differ­ence between the medium and the best managers is very great.”
Many of the best managers had been closed to new investors when the market was high, Gilbert said. After the crisis, many investors could not rein­vest, opening opportunities for Lehigh to work with the best investors.
“We were able to develop over 30 new investment relationships, mostly in the alternative area,” Gilbert said. “It was really a good opportunity to build relationships with the best managers out there, which helped us develop long term growth for the endowment.”
Gilbert said being able to take ad­vantage of these opportunities was
Investments help Lehigh meet endowment goals
See ENDOWMENT Page 4
Club to hold event, raise awareness about Uganda
By CALLIE BURROWS
Schools 4 Schools, a new club at Lehigh, will be hosting “Displace Me: LU Version,” an event designed to inform Lehigh students of the liv­ing conditions in Uganda.
The event is set for Oct. 21 at 8 p.m. on the University Center front lawn, and will include simulations of life in Uganda, students’ personal stories, a movie and information on how to get more involved with Schools 4 Schools.
The Schools 4 Schools organiza­tion began in 2007 and is run by vol­unteers under the age of 26.
The organization’s original goal was to connect Australian schools with African schools to help educate African students on HIV/AIDS, teenage pregnancy, drugs and al­cohol, violence and other pressing issues, according to the Schools 4 Schools Web site.
The organization has now ex­panded to include schools all around America.
The students are mentored by GOLD members (Generation of Leaders Discovered), who provide education and motivation through weekly modules. The organization’s mission highlights the importance of providing African students with edu­cational opportunities to stimulate change along with producing a gen­eration of globally aware people.
Schools 4 Schools was brought to the Lehigh campus last year by Eva Gathura, ’12. She was a member of Schools 4 Schools in high school but wanted to become more involved in the program.
“I was seeing these problems in other countries, and I couldn’t just
See SCHOOLS Page 6
B&W photo by KATE MCLAUGHLIN
Charles Villa-Vicencio, a visiting professor at Georgetown University, speaks about genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Baker Hall at the annual Kenner Lecture, on Tuesday. See full coverage in Tuesday’s edition of The Brown and White.
Vol. 117 No. 8
Friday, September 25, 2009
‘All the Lehigh News First’
THE BROWN AND WHITE
Lehigh University’s Student Newspaper Founded in 1894
Hawks aim
to tame Tigers
Page 16
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Where in the world will you study?
Page 7
By LAUREN KELLY
The kind of society Americans know and support cannot continue, said James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency”, a book about the issues future generations will face regarding the oil crisis, global warming and liv­ing in suburbia. Kunstler spoke on Tuesday in Lewis Lab.
America does not know how to pay back its debt, and our resources are approaching their scarcity limits, he said.
Kunstler also spoke about the future of Amer­ica and what must happen for the country to be able to thrive in the future.
He focused on the depletion of oil. The United States uses one billion barrels of oil every two weeks, almost all of which is imported from other nations, he said. Oil will become a source for political turmoil, he said.
He said new, usable oil fields have not been discovered, so he anticipates a companion crisis in oil nationalism, meaning that oil-producing nations will learn to divide and distribute oil dif­ferently. There are no apparent combinations of alternative fuels that will allow America to keep running the way it is running, according to Kun­stler. America needs to create more urban and rural towns.
Urban and rural towns would replace what Kunstler called “the greatest misallocation of re­sources in the history of the world,” also known as suburban developments.
America cannot afford to build any more sub­urban developments, Kunstler said.
With the reintroduction of towns, Kunstler believes retail will have to be more locally based. Agriculture will be the focus of American
Author speaks
of future oil, environmental, economic crises
Learning from apartheid
See KUNSTLER Page 4
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