Tuesday, Febuary 13, 2001 Volume 47 Number 22 www.upenn.edu/almanac/

President of Lake Forest College: Steve Schutt Vice President and Chief of Staff Stephen D. Schutt has been unanimously elected as the 13th president of Lake Forest College, a private liberal arts college on the shore of Lake Michigan in Lake Forest, Illinois. Mr. Schutt, Penn Law '83, returned to Penn in 1995 as President Judith Rodin's Chief of Staff and was promoted to Vice President and Chief of Staff the following year. "Over the past six years, Steve played a central role in the formation and implementation of our Agenda for Excellence; he has provided valuable guidance in long-range planning, communications and multi-year budgeting; and he has been the point person on a large number of tough institutional challenges," said President Rodin. "Thanks to his strong leadership in its development, the Penn-assisted, preK-8 school will open its doors this fall as a wonderful expression of our faith in both the future of public education and University City." He is a trustee of Earlham College where he chairs the Committee on the College which supports and monitors initiatives to increase the applicant pool, improve student retention and improve the financial aid process. He is an honors graduate in English from Earlham, with an M.A. in English Literature from the University of London. Mr. Schutt began his career at Ballard, Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll, a large Philadelphia law firm, then supervised a 5,000-employee agency as deputy secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry and served as chief of staff to U.S. Senator Harris Wofford. The Lake Forest Presidential Search Committee noted "his passion for the liberal arts, his particular insights into and experience with fundraising, strategic and financial planning, communications and the demands and roles of a College presidency." Mr. Schutt will remain at Penn through June and will assume his new role as president at Lake Forest on July 1. (CLICK HERE for more on Presidents from Penn).

Dr. Rodin: Chair of New Economy Development Last Wednesday, Mayor John Street announced the creation of the New Economy Development Alliance and the appointment of President Judith Rodin as chair of its Board of Directors. An executive director will administer the Alliance which will be governed by a Board of Directors--including Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO of Glaxo-SmithKline, and Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast Corp. President Rodin said the Alliance would develop a "coordinated, overall strategy that involves all of the research institutions in Philadelphia and the region." She said, "University research provides the leverage" that convinces businesses it makes sense to be here. She said the Alliance would encourage companies to locate in Keystone Opportunity Zones--areas that are exempt from most state and local business taxes. Such zones are already in the city and more will be created. In a speech to the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Street said that Philadelphia must forge new relationships with colleges, universities, businesses and government to combine regional resources to create jobs and a quality of life "that becomes the foundation for economic prosperity." The goal is to lure high-tech companies to this area. The Pennsylvania Economy League makes this point in its report, Greater Philadelphia's Knowledge Industry, and it goes on to stress that "those colleges and universities will produce the intellectual capital, the leading-edge technologies, and the highly-trained workforce that Philadelphia must have to successfully compete regionally, nationally and internationally." The New Economy Development Alliance will work to capitalize on the region's competitive advantage in the life sciences and to facilitate the development of a research/commercial center. Last Tuesday, Governor Tom Ridge proposed spending $90 million on three biotech "greenhouses" across Pennsylvania with one in Philadelphia. Penn has also announced a $75 million initiative to fund a new Genomics Institute (Almanac February 6). Mayor Street said, "The New Economy Development Alliance will focus on my commitment to transform the former Navy Yard and the Post Office site at 30th and Market Streets into thriving, growing economic hubs for our city that will be the envy of our New Economy competitors. We must capture the essence of the city, mixing residential, cultural and commercial activity in one place--a place where people can live, learn, work and play."

Holly Pittman: College for Women Class of 1963 Term Professor Dr. Holly Pittman, professor of ancient Near Eastern art and archaeology in the history of art department, has been named the College for Women Class of 1963 Endowed Term Professor in the Humanities. She came to SAS in 1989 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she had been a curator of the art of the ancient Near East since 1975. She has also been curator of the Near East section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology since 1994. She is currently working at excavations in Turkey and Syria. In April 2001, Dr. Pittman will visit Iran to explore resuming research there. Dr. Pittman received her B.A. from SUNY Binghamton and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Columbia University. She is the founding director of the Center for Ancient Studies. Her current research interests focus on the semiotic status of art in the societies of the ancient Near East. In her teaching, Dr. Pittman has developed computer techniques that allow her students to take virtual tours of ancient places that no longer exist. She has published books and award winning articles. She is currently finishing a monograph on the art from the ancient city of Anshan in southern Iran as well as planning the program for the Penn Humanities Forum 2001-2002 theme, Time. She is working toward publication of the proceedings from a Center for Ancient Studies conference held at Penn in 1999 on the multiple origins of writing. This chair was established in 1989 as the result of a fund drive initiated by Patricia Savage and Maryann Sudo among their classmates in the Class of 1963 of the College for Women. The fund endows a term chair that honors the role of women as scholars, teachers and students at Penn.

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