Tim Kehoe and Ernesto Zedillo at HHEI's globalization forum
Photo by Lisa Miller

Economics—it's more than elegant mathematical models, says Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico who now directs the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.

The early economists, he said at a recent CLA event, understood that their discipline was "about understanding human problems and providing ideas to address those problems.... This is something that was lost along the way. Economics as a technical discipline sometimes forgets to introduce into their models the political dimension."

Zedillo was speaking at the Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute's recent forum on globalization, exchanging ideas with Timothy Kehoe, CLA's own Distinguished McKnight University Professor of economics and adviser to The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. Kei-Mu Yi, director of research at the Minneapolis Fed, moderated the event.

The program underscored Zedillo's point, touching on the role of economics in a wide variety of human contexts, from global politics to Mexican history, from the environment to organized crime. Kehoe focused on how nations have rebounded from recessions past and present, and Zedillo, in Yi's words, on "the broad sweep of all the important issues involving globalization in the past 300 years."

The discussion prompted one audience member to comment on the importance of the social sciences and the need "to teach young people how to manage the forces that we have unleashed... [and] that humanity has to be able to manage the globalization it has launched."

"Globalization: The Promise & The Challenge" attracted more than 400 people. It was the largest event yet for HHEI, now only a year old.

- Tessa Eagan

Watch the event and see a slide show at z.umn.edu/hheiglobal

Emerging 40 years ago during the Civil Rights Movement, the Department of Chicano Studies was a manifestation of the nation's 20th-century struggle to end racism, sexism, homophobia, and other inequalities. Today it continues to ground its work in social justice, and incorporates community outreach and service-learning as key distinctions.

In celebrating its anniversary, the department is looking forward more than backward. A name change, to "Department of Chicano-Latino Studies," will signal its intent to address the changing face of the Minnesota's and the United States' fastest-growing ethnic group. And it will add to an already interdisciplinary curriculum with courses on education policy and practices, community filmmaking, health, business, and media.

Department chair Louis Mendoza says the department's future will be shaped by two goals. "First, we'll continue to play a critical role in educating everyone on the important contributions Latinos and Latinas make to the social, cultural, intellectual, political, and economic well-being of this country," he says. "Second, we'll continue to partner with the local Latino community to increase educational access, and through our service-learning opportunities work to improve their overall quality of life."

- Kelly O'Brien

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View more information and a complete calendar

How do you animate the liberal arts?

"We need to initiate a Campaign for the Liberal Arts – a campaign that makes plain their essential place in the contemporary world.

"It never ceases to astonish me how easily the liberal arts are taken for granted in our society. Yet when a major crisis impacts our daily lives, the persons most needed and most wanted in the room are those trained in language, religion, history, politics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and media. We must animate the liberal arts daily."

Dean Jim Parente
2011 State of the College Address

Share your experience

• How are the liberal arts essential in your life?
• How do you demonstrate their vitality in the world?

Join the conversation. We'll share your ideas and experiences. Send us a note at claReach@umn.edu.

Mary Hicks
Photo by Everett Ayoubzadah

By Mary Hicks

Like many of you who have supported the University over the years, I recently received a thank-you letter from our new president. Frankly, I was touched. And I was especially touched to see his signature -- Eric W. Kaler, Ph.D. ’82.

OK, I know it’s just a signature. But I’m a sentimentalist. I’m thrilled that President Kaler is so proud to declare his University of Minnesota provenance as an educator, researcher, and leader. Just listen to him talk, and you’ll know his pride is deep and heartfelt.

As a president who earned his stripes on this campus, he knows that a great University of Minnesota opens the doors to greatness for Minnesotans. And he knows from his own experience the importance of financial support to help students across the threshold. As he said in his inaugural address, the fellowship awarded to him “was the only way this son of a working-class family could go to graduate school.”

As a leading land grant institution, we have a responsibility to develop talent for a 21st-century economy. And as a top-tier research university, we have a special responsibility to educate graduate students. Graduate and professional degrees are increasingly essential for hiring and advancement in all of the industries that drive discovery, innovation, and the economy. Our graduate students are tomorrow’s leaders not only in higher education but also in just about every other arena imaginable.

It all begins here -- as a dream, a partnership, and a legacy. Every great professor was once a graduate student aspiring to create something new. And behind every great professor, behind every great scholarly or creative work or research project or breakthrough discovery, there’s a new generation of graduate students not only learning “from the master” but also providing inspiration and insight, investigating, collecting and synthesizing data, working shoulder-to-shoulder with their faculty colleagues and mentors to create knowledge, advance human understanding and create a better world. They are also teaching the next generation of students and keeping the legacy going.

As music professor Mark Russell Smith says so eloquently,

Music is an art of legacy -- I was taught by [a] ... master conductor when I was a graduate student, and now I have the same opportunity to share my experience with these fan-tastic students. I am a better conductor and musician because of my interaction with these students, and I have the privilege of sharing and exploring some of the greatest masterworks of art ever created with them.”

And you can see the results on the faces -- and in the words -- of graduate students like Ethan Rowan Pope:

The Voice to Vision anti-genocide project ... [with David Feinberg] helped me look outside and beyond myself for inspiration and knowledge; to learn from people who have survived unimaginable horror and trauma; to keep my artistic eye on the things that most matter; and to be grateful for my good health and my good life. David helped me stay confident with my own distinct voice even while his own, more experienced, voice gave me encouragement and guidance.

Without graduate fellowship support, especially in these hard times, such rich teaching and learning partnerships might never happen. We can only imagine the wasted potential and lost opportunities. With fellowships ranging in cost from $20,000 to $40,000 (depending upon the field), the need is monumental.

But so is the payoff. As President Kaler said, “philanthropy [plays] an absolutely pivotal role in building on the foundation of public investment to catapult us to excellence.” It makes “the difference between good and great.”

I hope that you will do what you can to keep CLA great by supporting our graduate students.

>> Mary Hicks is the director of Development and Alumni Relations. You can reach her at 612-625-5031 or hicks002@umn.edu.

How do we find peace after ruptures that are every bit as terrible as the world's worst natural disasters, but perpetrated by our own kind?

The question is ancient and persistent. We struggle with unreason and despair as loved ones return from Afghanistan and Iraq -- or not -- and the daily news, steady as a metronome, beats out stories of tragedy and injustice around the world.

These are hard things to think about.

But human beings have hope. We believe in the powers of human intelligence and empathy, and in the miracle of the creative spark -- powers we have invoked throughout history to invent incredibly complex structures like language, music, art, and poetry, democracy, social institutions, as well as technological solutions for problems of health, hunger, and commerce.

In this feature you will read about four College of Liberal Arts faculty members and a graduate student who are working to create ways to make humanity whole after self-inflicted trauma.

They are investigating how we can retain painful memories as cautionary and not destructive, how to heal broken hearts and reconcile old enemies, and how to elevate the cause of justice to the highest levels of human attention.

The wrongs they address may be painful, but their proposals ring true and their hopes are transcendent. Read, and imagine: we can conduct peace.

• The power of the human story

  Scribes for Human Rights: telling stories that statistics cannot. By Greg Breining

• The pity of war, the call to peace

  Inclining toward peace: Benjamin Britten's monumental War Requiem. By William Randall Beard

• And then there was one

  Making art that honors the survivors of genocide. By William Randall Beard

• The justice cascade

  Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

Patricia Hampl, Claire Stanford and Barbara Frey: telling stories of human rights in a personal voice
Photo by Darin Back

By Greg Breining

One person’s voice, one person’s story, can rise above the cacophony of world events. Consider Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, an extraordinary account of the Holocaust. » “When you think about it, you realize there is not a concentration camp in that book, there are no figures, there are no numbers, there are no statistics, there is no documentation, except the documentation of a life, a precious life, snuffed out by hatred, racism, genocide,” observes Patricia Hampl, regents professor of English. “We supply that information, the horror, while she supplies what was lost. And so I keep going back to Anne Frank as the model for why it is we need the personal voice.”

Fostering the power of the personal voice -- in memoir, fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction --to defend human rights is the purpose behind Scribes for Human Rights, a fellowship Hampl and Barbara Frey, director of CLA’s Human Rights Program, launched in 2006. The fellowship enables masters of fine arts students in creative writing to connect with academics and other professionals in the field of international human rights. The experience provides material for their writing, with the goal of conveying the experience of persecution and human rights struggles in personal terms, through stirring narratives.

“The personal voice is the centerpiece of what I feel creative writing has to bring to all this,” says Hampl. “It is not propagandistic; it is not polemical. It is, rather, expressionist and personally voiced documents. Sometimes of horror. Think Anne Frank. That’s who I think of.”

When Hampl met Frey

The story of Scribes began several years ago as Hampl wondered how to financially support students not only with teaching or research assistantships, but for their chosen craft. “We ought to have some things that are -- writing instead of teaching!” she exclaims. “Not everyone wants to or should be a teacher.” Then, at a dinner party, Hampl met Frey.

She was familiar with Frey’s work and the human drama at its foundation, and her ideas began to spill out: “... and you publish reports, but these reports are mostly based on trends, statistics. And we have all these people who can do narrative writing that brings the story into story form and highlights an individual....

“I hardly had to get the first sentence out of my mouth before she not only grasped it but augmented it,” recalls Hampl. “We have been a real team since then.”

Frey concurs. “In the field we produce a lot of dry legal reports and complaints on what are essentially gripping and wrenching human stories. I really believe there’s a need and I see an emergence of writers who are able to tell the whole story of what the victims or what communities go through when they are subject to human rights violations. It’s valuable to bring good writing skills to spread information and understanding about human rights violations, about their causes and consequences. We feel the scribes really benefit from learning about the practice of human rights on the ground.”

Scribes began as a full-year fellowship with a requirement to publish in the field. But the program changed with the realities of funding. Now it is a summer fellowship (with a stipend of about $4,000). Scribes have written about immigrant detention in Midwest jails, Minnesota’s movement to stop the genocide in Darfur, the Liberian truth and reconciliation commission and Thai desecration of Hmong burial sites.

One scribe spent time in Minnesota’s prisons and hosted workshops for human-rights workers on how to write compelling accounts of oppression. In some cases, students have proposed teaching writing workshops instead of writing themselves. To some extent, it’s up to the student to propose how writing will be combined with human rights.

Food Justice

The current scribe is Claire Stanford, a third-year MFA student. She writes primarily fiction, but has also written blogs and magazine articles on food. (She is getting a graduate minor in sustainable agricultural systems.) Her human rights focus is on “food justice,” ensuring that all people, especially the urban poor who might live in “food deserts,” have access to high-quality, fresh, nutritious food.

Stanford spent the summer working with at-risk students at Gordon Parks High School in Saint Paul, where many students have fallen behind in their studies, wrestled with drug addiction, or spent time in jail. Some are parents. Many have dealt with racial discrimination.

Says Stanford, “They are students who are experiencing a number of human rights issues, depending on how you define that.”

Stanford met with students three days a week, “helping the kids to work on their own writing, to work on their literacy and their basic writing skills, and also to work on some self-realization and self-empowerment.” Many days, Stanford met the students on the University’s St. Paul campus, where they visited Cornercopia, the student organic farm. Students were introduced to foods, such as kale, that may have been unfamiliar and learned lessons -- literal and metaphoric -- from the farm, often writing about the experience afterward.

Says Stanford, “There are a lot of intense moments coming out of these students’ lives. And they’re extremely willing to share them, which I thought was amazing.” Stanford will be writing lesson plans from the Gordon Parks experience. She also plans to blog about it and incorporate some of her experience and observations in a long essay or memoir.

Meanwhile, the fellowship provided her much needed financial support and provided the opportunity to represent the University’s Human Rights Program at the Edible Schoolyard Academy conference in Berkeley this coming June. “It’s easy during graduate school to get really cloistered in your own work,” says Stanford. “The fellowship really gave me the motivation and also the support to go out and do something. That’s been really invaluable in my understanding of this.”

And understanding is important, both for the writer and the public. Whether the rights in question are access to an adequate diet, freedom from racial discrimination, or salvation from political oppression or genocide, the human story is a persistent flame that casts a light of understanding.

Says Hampl, “We really trust first-person voice, just as we have all been moved by Anne Frank to understand that that voice and the ability to bring that voice to an audience and a readership is what can change hearts and minds.”

>> Greg Breining has written for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and is the author of several books.

• The power of the human story

  Scribes for Human Rights: telling stories that statistics cannot. By Greg Breining

• The pity of war, the call to peace

  Inclining toward peace: Benjamin Britten's monumental War Requiem. By William Randall Beard

• And then there was one

  Making art that honors the survivors of genocide. By William Randall Beard

• The justice cascade

  Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

Kathryn Sikkink, political science professor, documents how justice cascades when brutal dictators go to court.
Photo by Darin Back

By Greg Breining

Kathryn Sikkink has had a ringside seat to a profound shift in attitudes toward justice.

As a University of Minnesota exchange student in 1976, she lived in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, during the depths of the civilian-military dictatorship.

A decade later she was living in Argentina, researching her dissertation on an unrelated topic, when the very first “trials of the juntas” brought former military dictators to justice. She realized there had been a sea change in the attitudes of the citizenry of Latin America -- something that academics were ignoring or discounting.

“My first objective was just to document something that people weren’t paying attention to,” says Sikkink, now a regents professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. The experience shaped her academic work and led her to write The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics, published this fall by W.W. Norton.

Despite misgivings by some academics, policy makers, and commentators that the threat of trials causes dictators to cling to power more ruthlessly, Sikkink believes the evidence shows something else -- that human rights trials have brought justice, greater respect for human rights, and more-benevolent governments.

“It’s not just wishful thinking on my part. It comes from careful empirical research,” says Sikkink. “I like to think of myself as a strong supporter whose support is based on strong empirical evidence.”

Needed: The perfect storm

The theme for Justice Cascade -- indeed, the concept behind the title -- came from Sikkink’s experience in Uruguay, a one-time democracy that had recently slid into authoritarianism and political violence. “People could barely imagine that their country would be returned to democracy.

But what they really didn’t imagine at all is that the people responsible for those murders could ever be held criminally accountable,” says Sikkink. “If people in Uruguay couldn’t even imagine that that would be possible, how did it happen?”

What happened is that people did begin to imagine the possibility and with that convergence of events justice became possible. “In order to have something new like this happen you have to have almost a perfect storm,” Sikkink says.

Modern human rights trials were presaged by the trials of former Nazi leaders in 1945-46. “It starts at Nuremberg because Nuremberg sets a lot of important principles. But Nuremburg is the exception that proves the rule,” says Sikkink. The Nazi trials occurred only because Germany was defeated.

More recent trials are different: “Now we’re having trials in countries in which there was no war, no foreign army.”

“The trend, I argue, actually began in Greece in 1975 with the fall of the colonels,” says Sikkink. “The Greeks become the first modern society that holds its own leaders criminally accountable for human rights violations.” The Greek colonels had blundered in Cyprus, triggering a Turkish invasion, and “were totally delegitimized.” With the state thus ruptured, a path was cleared for these unprecedented trials, she says. Portugal experienced its rupture with the Carnation Revolution of 1974.

The Argentine junta lost stature with its defeat in the Falkland Islands in 1982. In one country after another, as trials have followed regime change, the idea of holding former leaders accountable for human rights abuses is more easily imagined.

“That’s why it’s called the justice cascade,” says Sikkink. “There’s this notion of what we call a norms cascade.” Unimaginable norms become commonplace.

Testing the idea

But as the use of trials has exploded -- in the former Yugoslavia, Cambodia, Egypt, and elsewhere worldwide -- critics have contended the trials are dangerous and counterproductive. The most common critique is that the increasing threat that dictators will be brought to justice ups the ante and steels the leaders against compromise: military leaders will stage coups to forestall any possibility of trials.

“The dilemma is, dictators have hung on to power for a long time,” says Sikkink, “Stroessner of Paraguay for 40 years. So somehow the notion that dictators in the old days didn’t hang on to power and nowadays, because of this threat of prosecution, they are all of a sudden going to hang on to power longer is a little questionable. How are we going to test that idea?”

Sikkink and her colleagues created a database of all “transitional prosecutions” from 1979 to the present. It turned out to be an affirmation of evidence-based research in the social sciences, revealing, she says, that “The use of human rights prosecutions is associated with improvements in human rights....In Latin America, which has had more trials than any other region of the world, the dictatorships have not lasted longer. We have virtually no dictatorships anymore in the region. We’ve had a huge upsurge in trials, and we’ve had the most complete transition to democracy of any of the less-developed regions of the world.”

While so-called realists may oppose human rights trials because they aren’t keen on the principle of international law, passionate advocates of international law may oppose human rights trials because they fall so far short of their ideals, says Sikkink. At a recent conference she met an academic who condemned the Cambodian trials of former Khmer Rouge dictators because they provided cover for the present regime.

“I can’t believe that no justice would be better than imperfect justice,” Sikkink told her. “Even if we only get five convictions, that’s better than zero convictions.”

The role of the United States has ranged from inspiring to obstructionist. America played a large role in the Hague trials for crimes committed during the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia, including political leaders Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić. On the other hand, the United States opposed the creation of an International Criminal Court except under the control of the United Nations Security Council, where the United States wielded a veto. “We failed,” says Sikkink. “Sometimes we are defeated by a coalition of smaller like-minded states and non-governmental organizations.”

It is said that justice delayed is justice denied, but “one of the lessons of the book is that there is no swift justice,” says Sikkink. “Justice very often comes slowly.”

And when it does, the world is often spectator to a defendant, a former strongman, frail and nearing death. Says Sikkink, “People say, ‘Let’s just let them go. What can be gained from prosecuting these individuals?’

“The problem is if you don’t have trials, sometimes people rewrite history and say, ‘That never happened!’ In Argentina, where the trials left this incredible record, no one can deny anymore that 10,000 or 15,000 people were ‘disappeared’ by the military regime. You can’t deny it. And I think as a result, there will never again be an authoritarian regime in Argentina.”

Greg Breining has written for publications including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, Star Tribune, Minnesota Monthly and is the author of several books.

• The power of the human story

  Scribes for Human Rights: telling stories that statistics cannot. By Greg Breining

• The pity of war, the call to peace

  Inclining toward peace: Benjamin Britten's monumental War Requiem. By William Randall Beard

• And then there was one

  Making art that honors the survivors of genocide. By William Randall Beard

• The justice cascade

  Trials of dictators: gathering power in the cause of human rights. By Greg Breining

At the Raptor Center: what do you say to a snowy owl?
Photo by Everett Ayoubzadeh

Children who stutter sometimes stop talking--they feel it's not worth the effort. But at the Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences' day camp, young stutterers learn a different tune: "It's okay to say what you want to say, stutter or not. Don't clam up: you can be successful the way you are."

Proving the point are camp leaders, professionals from the community, and grad students, some of whom stutter. Children receive speech therapy, but the emphasis is on examining the effect their stuttering has on others and interacting with people they meet on field trips to fun places like the U of M Raptor Center (photo above).

The department has launched a similar program for teens. Scholarships are available, thanks to an anonymous donor.

For more information, contact Linda Hinderscheit, hinde001@umn.edu

What's the worst way to helping your partner with a thorny problem? Offer advice.

Image by Dan Woychick

In an experiment involving 85 romantic partners, CLA psychology professor Jeffrey Simpson and grad student fellow Maryhope Howland found that overt support, either practical or emotional, usually backfires. It often makes the recipient feel even more anxious or angry, indebted to the support-giver, and experience lowered self-esteem.

This was especially true among anxiety-afflicted males receiving emotional support from their sweeties.

Effective support, the researchers found, is invisible--given so skillfully that the recipient isn't aware of it. This was true of both practical and emotional support: the more "under the radar," the more effective. In order for this system to work, however, a recipient must trust the giver's good intentions.

How to give invisible support? The research warns against playing an overtly "supportive" role, and instead making the discussion equal and conversational. Invisible support de-emphasizes the roles of supporter and supported. One approach is to avoid calling attention to the partner's problem or limitations by using oneself or a third person as an example.

The research, published in Psychological Science, emphasized that, like most everything else in an intimate relationship, it takes two to tango when it comes to support. In delivering it the one partner has to be skillful; in receiving it, the other blissfully ignorant.

Rosita Albert

Far more common now than wars between nations, inter-ethnic conflict takes many forms -- from prejudice and discrimination to anti-government insurgencies and state-sponsored slaughter. Some of these struggles -- like the seemingly endless combat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- are responsible for millions of deaths.

"Stopping the madness" and improving intercultural relations have been the aims of Rosita Albert, an associate professor in CLA's Department of Communication Studies who leads the University's pioneering Intercultural Communication program.

Much of her early research examined ways to foster understanding between immigrants and "mainstream" Americans. In recent years, her work has gone global: troubled by massacres in places like Rwanda and Darfur, Albert joined with academic allies worldwide to look beyond interpersonal friction to the more volatile discord that often arises between ethnic groups.

With co-editor Dan Landis from the University of Hawaii, editor of International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Albert has gathered 20 of the world's top intercultural-relations experts to contribute to a first-of-its-kind Handbook on Ethnopolitical Conflict. Slated for publication in 2011, the book will provide guidance to scholars and policymakers eager to understand, calm, and avert inter-ethnic conflict.

"I see this book as a step towards genocide prevention," Albert says. "Some might say that's grandiose, and of course it's just a step."

Indeed, this child of a Holocaust survivor knows full well that inter-ethnic discord won't end any time soon. Easing it will require the sort of profound societal transformation that can prompt rival groups to stop shooting, start talking, and ultimately find their way to mutual understanding.

Are you extraverted? It's probably because your medial orbitofrontol cortex is large compared to the rest of your brain. Bet you didn't know that.

Brain regions light up on a scan, their color indicating activities relating to the Big Five personality traits.
Photo courtesy of the Association of Psychological Science

CLA psychologists are learning more about how the physical characteristics of our brains--specifically, the relative sizes of the various regions of a given individual's brain--affect behavior.

In a study funded in part by the National Institute of Mental Health, a team led by Professor Colin DeYoung studied brain scans of 116 health adults. They saw that four of the "Big Five" personality traits--extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness and conscientiousness--related directly to the size of specific regions of the brain. (The fifth of the Big Five, openness, did not.) The assumption is that a bigger area of brain can accommodate more neurons, which can produce more activity.

Are we slaves, then, to the brains we were born with? No, says DeYoung. Just like biceps or glutes, the various regions of the brain grow larger the more they are used. So if you want to grow the empathic side of your personality, practice empathy. You will be beefing up your posterior cingulated cortex, making empathy biologically easier in the future.

The study, published in Psychological Science, is significant to the field of personality neuroscience because it supports the hypothesis that greater volume of brain tissue is associated with increased function. This, in turn, contributes to the creation of a broad theoretical framework for understanding the relationship of biology and personality.

Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, two former CLA faculty members, have won the 2011 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy."

Economists Christopher Sims (left) and Thomas Sargent conducted their Nobel Prize-winning research in CLA.
Photo courtesy of the Nobel Foundation

Much of their prize-winning work was done in CLA's Department of Economics, which now claims seven of the University's 22 Nobelists, more than any other department. Their awards also elevated the U to second place among public research universities with Nobel ties, and to 12th place among all such institutions in the world.

In the early days of the partnership with CLA's Department of Economics and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, econometrician Sims and macroeconomist Sargent started building a better model to measure the impact of fiscal and monetary policy. Their work has helped explain why economies respond the way they do to intervention by central banks or other government authorities.

"Sargent has primarily helped us understand the effects of systematic policy shifts, while Sims has focused on how shocks spread throughout the economy," the Nobel Prize academy said. Sims, a professor at Princeton University, maintains close ties with CLA. Sargent is a professor at New York University, an advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and serves on the advisory board of CLA's Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute.

Read about Sims's and Sargent's work, in lay terms, on the Nobel Prize website.

It came out of the blue: a notice of beneficiary. Two months later the estate attorney said the gift would be at least a million dollars. Then the checks began to arrive.

Charles and Myrtle Stroud: Their gift came out of the blue. It will change lives.
Photo courtesy of the Stroud Estate

Myrtle Erickson Stroud, who died at 101, had left CLA $14 million for undergraduate scholarships.

It was not only the single largest scholarship gift in the history of CLA, but in the history of the university--and it was a complete surprise.

Stroud and her husband Charles lived modestly in Windom, Minn., for 68 years. Neither was a U of M alum, although Charles had attended classes here in the early 1920s, Myrtle in 1932. She'd previously graduated from Miss Wood's School in Minneapolis, one of the nation's first preparatory academies for kindergarten teachers, and went on to teach in Minnesota schools. Charles, a businessman and investor, died in 1973.

The Strouds had no children, and that they chose to make university students their heirs touched President Eric Kaler, who said of the gift: "It came from their heart, unprompted. We're incredibly grateful for that."

The Charles E. and Myrtle L. Stroud Scholarship will support new freshmen entering the College of Liberal Arts, and returning students and students transferring from other colleges. In its first year it will help 45 students, a number that will grow over the years as the endowment is fully established and invested.

"This generous gift can open the doors of the university to talented students who face financial barriers," said CLA Dean James Parente, "especially in view of the high rate of transfer students we have entering CLA and the growing need for all students for financial support. The return on Myrtle Stroud's investment in CLA students will be felt for generations to come."

Jim Parente
Photo by Kelly MacWilliams

Every day and in all sectors of our college -- the arts, humanities, and social sciences -- we work on fundamental questions about the nature of the human experience, the kind of society in which we want to live, the boundaries between individual well-being and the collective good, and most importantly, how to prepare students to shape and lead our world.

This important work animates the liberal arts, bringing them to life in the real world and demonstrating their centrality and value.

In this issue of Reach, you will find stories about faculty and students confronting issues of human rights, justice, and accountability under the law; producing written and visual art that helps us understand the remembered horrors of genocide; performing music that heals and humanizes. We take great pride in the accomplishments of our faculty and students, but they do more than contribute to their disciplines. They also animate the liberal arts and illuminate their fundamental role in educating individuals and shaping public discourse.

Dr. Eric Kaler, our new President, embraces the centrality of the liberal arts. An alumnus of the U's distinguished Department of Chemical Engineering, he well understands that the continued distinction of our University depends on the academic strength and vibrancy of the College of Liberal Arts. He visited our college on several occasions this fall to reaffirm the foundational role liberal arts play in 21st-century research and education.

Many public universities have been disinvesting in the humanities, but this fall CLA affirmed its commitment by celebrating the renovation of Folwell Hall, the U's center for global languages, literatures, and cultures -- fields essential to the success of a global university. We are grateful for the extraordinary support we received for this project from the Board of Regents, former President Robert Bruininks, and the Minnesota legislature.

We were further buoyed by the stunning estate gift of Ms. Myrtle Stroud of Windom, Minn.: $14 million, the largest gift for undergraduate student support ever received by either the college or the University. This fall we welcomed the first cohort of students funded by this extraordinary gift.

In October, the bright light of the Nobel Prize in Economics shone on two former faculty, Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, for work completed largely during their joint tenure at our stellar Department of Economics. This month they joined us at the first public forum of our Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute, launched last February to bring the latest research to bear on issues like environmental protection, social insurance, and financial regulation.

I invite you to stay in touch. Visit the CLA2015 website to find my 2011 State of the College address and plans to advance the college this year. Contact me at cladean@umn.edu. And join us for a lecture, performance, or exhibition. I promise you will be amazed and delighted!

With best wishes for the holidays and the New Year,
James A. Parente, Jr.
Dean

"I've been incredibly fortunate so far as an entrepreneur and as a citizen of our state and now, it's my turn to 'pay it forward.'" Scott Litman
Photo courtesy of Magnet 360, LLC

Scott Litman spends his days on the cutting edge of digital marketing and promotion, creating social media systems and web search optimization and other strategies that didn’t even exist a decade ago.

The 1990 University of Minnesota CLA graduate and his business partner, Dan Mallin, have hit the entrepreneurial jackpot three separate times, building successful digital marketing companies from scratch and then selling them at great profit to bigger businesses. Now they’re back with a fourth company, Magnet 360, which looks like another winner.

He’s rightly proud of his career success, but there’s an extra touch of satisfaction in his voice when Litman speaks about his volunteer efforts with a non-profit venture he helped launch and sustain: the Minnesota Military Appreciation Fund, which raises money for troops returning from overseas combat zones. He and Mallin, who has an M.B.A. from the University’s Carlson School of Management, have provided much time and expertise to the fund as it has mushroomed from its founding in 2005 to its current level, raising $12 million to provide grants to more than 12,000 returning troops and their families.

The grants range from $500 to each service member returning from combat, up to $10,000 to those who’ve been seriously injured during their tour of duty. Families of a Minnesota service member killed in action receive $5,000.

Entrepreneurial energy

Although Litman didn’t serve in the military, and no one in his family has been sent overseas on combat missions since 2001, he threw himself into the project with his typical entrepreneurial energy after being recruited by MMAF founders Gene Sit and Michael Gorman.

Gorman knew about Litman’s marketing abilities and public service commitment from their work together in the local entrepreneurial community.

“We knew from the beginning that we needed to project a consistent and highly professional face, to build a brand, as well as a technical platform to get the word out about our program and facilitate the grant process,” said Gorman, managing director of Split Rock Partners, a Twin Cities venture capital firm. “I knew Scott has a tremendous energy level and appetite for interesting challenges; he’s an optimistic person who wades right in and rolls up his sleeves to make something happen,” Gorman said.

Litman didn’t hesitate when approached.

So we just go on with our lives?

“We were having a nice lunch and Gene Sit reminded us that there were thousands of Minnesotans in the desert that very day with nothing to eat but MREs [Meals Ready to Eat]. And he said that only about .5 percent of Americans were being impacted by the war while the rest of us go on with our lives,” Litman recalled.

“I saw it as a way to make sure that everyone -- whether they were for the conflicts or against them, whether they want to support war or support the troops by bringing them home -- could say thank you and help take care of these people. It’s a thank-you, not just for the injured or those in need, but for everyone who served.”

So Litman and Mallin joined the fund’s steering committee in those beginning stages. They set up the website, conceived and executed the branding, and promoted the program, both to eligible veterans and to the public, for the fundraising efforts that provide the funding.

Their promotion efforts include the MMAF’s annual walk and recognition event for military members, and an annual fundraising dinner which has featured speakers like Sen. John McCain, journalists Tom Friedman and Tom Brokaw, and author Vince Flynn.

Gratitude

The response from veterans receiving the grants has been heartwarming and inspirational, Litman said. He cited thank-you notes from recipients:

“I just wanted to take a moment and let you know how much my family and I have appreciated the MMAF grant we received. The $500 was such an encouragement to us as we were facing reintegration time together. Your work is important! Please let everyone know that MMAF is making a positive difference in so many lives.” -- Staff sergeant, Geneva, Minn.

Thank you kindly for the $500 grant I received in the mail. The funds will be used wisely and couldn’t have come at a better time as I transition back into civilian life. Wishing you all the best and thank you for your generosity.” -- First lieutenant, Saint Paul, Minn .

John Kriesel, state representative from Cottage Grove, Minn. and a sergeant in the Minnesota National Guard who lost both legs in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, was another fund recipient. “The Minnesota Military Appreciation Fund is a tremendous asset to the state. It’s always an honor to work with them,” he said.

Litman and Mallin are also the founders of the Minnesota Cup, a statewide business plan competition for entrepreneurs. Since 2005, the competition has played an important role in the state’s efforts to seek out and reward new inventions and ways of doing business.

Litman was a history major at the University and says that was a great foundation for his business success. “The CLA and History Department don’t realize that they’re actually providing a good business background for students,” Litman said. “Many graduates are very successful entrepreneurs; we know about learning from the past and appreciate the guidepost lessons of others who’ve gone before.”

His achievements, and appreciation for the help he’s had along the way, led to the interest in community service, he said. “Everything I’ve received, especially from the U and from my family, has ultimately led me to realize there’s a time to give back,” he said. “I’ve been incredibly fortunate so far as an entrepreneur and as a citizen of our state and now, its my turn to ‘pay it forward’. Both the Minnesota Cup and MMAF are there to help people who are working hard and doing great things and give them a leg up when they need it.”

Joe Kimball, a former columnist and reporter for the Star Tribune, now writes for MinnPost. He is the author of the bestselling Secrets of the Congdon Mansion.

Dean James Parente, Jr.
Photo by Kelly MacWilliams

Our long, snowy winter has finally drawn to a close, and the burgeoning colors of spring signal a long-awaited renewal. Spring in the Midwest also brings the threat of violent storms, but some of the greatest storms around the country center on the funding of education, especially public higher education, and strategies state governments are pursuing to balance their budgets. We read almost daily of looming deep reductions to higher education in several states and of proposals for dramatic increases in tuition. Public research universities are, of necessity, re-examining their priorities and devising new ways to fulfill their educational, research, and outreach missions with fewer resources from states whose citizens and economies they were founded to serve.

The changing landscape of American higher education—indeed, of higher education globally—affects all colleges and universities, both public and private, albeit in different ways. Of the many fields represented at a university, the liberal arts, especially the humanities, arts, and humanistic social sciences, are being subjected to intense scrutiny.

Some universities have reduced and even eliminated programs such as classics or philosophy that have for centuries been fundamental to a liberal education. Foreign language instruction is being sharply curtailed, even in commonly taught languages such as German and French, even as many institutions are expanding their internationalization efforts. The academic job market for Ph.D.s across the humanities continues to contract, despite strong student interest in these fields, and we are in danger of losing a generation of scholars and teachers whose research otherwise would have forged new paths in philosophy, history, literature and culture, and religion.

During the past year, the CLA 2015 Planning Committee—a group of faculty, staff, and students I charged in December 2009 to provide counsel about the long-term future of our college—has been meeting. Its report, issued late last fall, garnered much attention across the college and University for its eloquent exposition of the centrality of the liberal arts to every great university.

The report outlines steps we must take to ensure that the liberal arts at Minnesota will continue to thrive. It emphasizes the need for signature undergraduate, graduate and research programs, in which we will excel and by which we will distinguish ourselves among peer institutions. It calls for building greater connections with external communities and partners in accordance with our public mission. (You can read more about the report in this issue of Reach.)

The changes we are considering aim to ensure sustainable academic excellence at a time of reduced public resources. That challenge actually provides us an exciting opportunity to rethink priorities and devise new ways to improve research and education as we reaffirm our enduring belief in the fundamental value of the liberal arts.

The success of our University depends on maintaining a vibrant College of Liberal Arts as its strong foundation. Without the liberal arts, our deepest knowledge—of ourselves, our relationships to other cultures, the values by which we live, and the political, social, and religious institutions that shape our world—would be sorely wanting.

You, our alumni and supporters, are the best ambassadors for the core value of a liberal arts education. Please join with us in promoting the liberal arts in Minnesota and beyond. The future of our society and our world depend on whether we can make visible the myriad ways in which the liberal arts illuminate the most complex issues of our time and provide a sure path for resolving them.

So here we are, at the end of the new millennium's first decade. We've peered back at the dawn of creation, found water on Mars. We've mapped most of the human genome, can watch the brain at work, know how to replace hearts, clone pigs from stem cells, and smash protons. We have smart phones. And vacuum cleaners with minds of their own.

But the thing we claim to desire most continues to elude us.
Peace. And its twin sister, justice.

Peace exists, but only ephemerally, vanishing as quickly as a bullet can escape the barrel of a gun. War, political and economic terrorism, and ethnic conflict continue to wrack the globe as they have from time immemorial. In fact, our last century was our bloodiest. It was also the one in which we first applied practical imagination to what was previously unimaginable--how to achieve our own self-destruction--and then made the tool to do it: the atom bomb.

The idea of the atom, the radical component of all matter, originated long ago where all of our endeavors do: in the human imagination, that astonishing place in the mind we visit when we need to transcend limitations.

The atom was just a notion in the 5th century B.C.E., when Democritus and Leucippus came up with the theory of "atomism." It was 2,300 years before that child of the mind actually shook hands with reality--first with Einstein and others who produced a description of the atom's shape, size, behaviors, and relationships, then when J. Robert Oppenheimer and colleagues split the atom, framing its overarching presence in a way that changed the world forever. Its release spawned the dark clouds of war, nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and mutually assured destruction.

Perhaps, reader, you see this question coming: can we do the same thing with the elusive concept of peace? Are we able to take the first step--to imagine peace, a sustained peace, and make tools of mind and body that might help us create it? Can we figure out what peace is made of, discover its "atomic" components and release its power so that at last we can intentionally, knowledgeably, make peace?

The faculty members we feature in this story are doing just that: imagining peace. They are committed to the belief that with knowledge, creativity, and commitment we can, indeed, realize peace and justice.

Their research questions are radical--about the nature of peace, about the "atoms" that make it up and that just might be amenable to some kind of rearrangement or condition that will allow peace to settle in and stay awhile.

Imagination--one of the liberal arts' most valuable tools--allows us to transcend present realities and shape the future. Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions."

• Dancing and Dreaming of Justice
• Defining Happiness
• Caring, For Justice

Lucille Broderson Reading at Coffman
Introduction by Michael Dennis Browne
27 minutes

Lucille Broderson
"The Letter Never Sent"
2.42 minutes

A Rare Perspective

• Story and interview of Lucille Broderson by poet Michael Dennis Browne and Reach editor Mary Pattock
• Poem: "After"

First the Minnesota research team discovered they could use a special kind of brain scan to identify, with 95 percent accuracy, people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now, as they recently announced in the Journal of Neural Engineering, they can actually watch a brain as it experiences PTSD: it becomes hyperactive in the right temporal lobe, which is responsible for memory.

Hyperactivity in the composite brain image on the left indicates PTSD. The composite on the right shows brain activity among people who are recovering from the disorder.

Psychology professor Brian Engdahl and his medical school colleague Apostolos Georgopoulos, M.D., used Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to measure magnetic fields in the brains of 80 people with PTSD; 18 of them were in remission, and 284 were healthy. Many of the sufferers had served in the military in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq.

They found clear differences in brain activity among the groups—something that X-rays, CT scans, and MRIs have been unable to do. They also observed that the telltale hyperactivity continued in the brains of the PTSD sufferers even when they were not consciously remembering past trauma, indicating that the terrifying memories could return at any moment.

Engdahl and Georgopoulos, both members of the Brain Sciences Center at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, hope the findings will help them develop better kinds of treatment for PTSD, and encourage more veterans who suffer from it to seek help.

Since Europe's Middle Ages, Islam has shared with the West remarkable contributions to science, architecture, art, and the humanities. A February conference, sponsored by the Religious Studies program with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, took a closer look at this centuries-old exchange of ideas.

Catalan Atlas of 1375 (detail)
One of the most important maps of the medieval period, this section of the Catalan Atlas shows how cultural boundaries were crossed in the exchange of knowledge between the Islamic world and Europe. The original Catalan Atlas is housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

"Shared Cultural Spaces: Islam and the West in Arts and Sciences" brought together prominent scholars from across the country and from many local colleges. Speakers included keynoters Anouar Majid (addressing "The Inhumanity of Orthodoxy") and Wadad Kadi, an expert on Islamic political thought. Speakers from CLA included professors Catherine Asher (art history), William Beeman (anthropology), Nabil Matar (English), and Ali Momeni (art), and Religious Studies program director Jeanne Kilde.

The conference premiered Journey, a stage adaptation of the 12th century masterpiece Hayy ibn Yaqzan, by the Andalusian Muslim philosopher and physician Ibn Tufayl. Described by Beeman as a compendium of many aspects of Islamic science in the context of a parable, it is a story about a boy raised in the wild by a deer. Its empiricism profoundly influenced not only Arabic and Islamic thinkers, but also Europeans including Defoe, Newton and Kant, and heralded the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.

Other conference sessions addressed science (especially astronomy), aesthetics and architecture, and how new media is shaping how Muslims tell their stories.

Learn more at http://z.umn.edu/sharedspaces

A "capacity to think big" is what got Steven Rosenstone his new job—chancellor of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, according to MnSCU trustee Duane Benson. Rosenstone will assume the new position August 1.

Currently the university's vice president for scholarly and cultural affairs and CLA professor of political science, Rosenstone has led a number of visionary projects, most recently the renovation of Northrop Auditorium, the U of M's Future Financial Resources Task Force (which he co-chaired), and new scholarship programs.

From 1996 to 2007 he was dean of CLA. Under his leadership, the college revamped the undergraduate experience, created state-of-the-art facilities and forged new partnerships with businesses, communities, and cultural and civic organizations. He was awarded the McKnight Presidential Leadership Chair for his service to the University.

MnSCU is a complex organization, comprising 32 state universities and community and technical colleges. It operates 54 campuses and serves some 277,000 students in credit-based courses and 157,000 students in non-credit courses.

Photo by Kelly MacWilliams

The Metrodome collapsed under 17 inches of snow, buses got stuck, flights were canceled and plows pulled off the roads. Here at the University, the campus closed for one day—but opened the next, December 12, to host CLA's fall 2010 commencement ceremony.

Only about 30 of CLA's 600 graduating seniors were unable to make it to the event, held in Northrop Auditorium.

Nuruddin Farah, the prominent African novelist currently a Winton Chair in the Liberal Arts, delivered the commencement address, calling attention to the community's investment in the new graduates:

I keep talking about your life...as though [it] is yours to do with what you please. However, let me wonder aloud and ask: how much of a young person's life is his or hers to do with what they please? Has it ever occurred to you that your life is as much yours as the bank in which you deposit your paychecks.... The truth is, you are a mere custodian of your life, which belongs, in big or small ways, to many other persons too. I propose that your life belongs, in part, to those who have invested in it: your parents, your guardians, your relatives, your peers, those of whom you're enamored and to whom you've committed yourself. In short, it belongs to anyone who has invested in your well-being from the instant you opened your lungs at birth until now.

Mary Hicks
Photo by Everett Ayoubzadeh

I recently heard a group of really smart undergraduates talk about what brought them to CLA. The list of "competitors" for these students was a kind of who's who of universities—Chicago, North Carolina, Berkeley, and Northwestern, to name but a few. So why CLA? One reason stood out: the amazing professors.

The students talked about the thrill of learning from professors who were always ahead of the curve in their fields, being inspired to burrow into subjects they'd never even thought about before, and being invited to collaborate on research projects that just could end up changing the world. And they stressed again and again how much their professors—and yes, their TAs, too—cared about students and went out of their way to spend quality time with them.

It's easy to take for granted the brilliance and stature of our faculty. After all, they're part of the web and weave of CLA life. But the conversations I heard got me thinking: What makes them so exceptional? And why do they work so hard—teaching, doing research, writing books, creating art, advising and mentoring students, and serving the University in so many ways? It's certainly not the money. Most of them could earn far more with their talents in private industry.

I think the answer is simple: it's a labor of love. They love learning and discovery, and even more, they love sharing what they know with their colleagues and students, and learning from them as well. And they love seeing their discoveries take root in the world, transforming lives and communities. That's the ultimate jackpot.

But all of this is in jeopardy. The CLA 2015 Report warns that the risk of a "slide into mediocrity" is very real, given the enormous fiscal and political challenges we face. And yet, we remain optimistic. We truly believe in our own hearts that "CLA is the University's beating heart." How do we keep that heart beating? With a course of treatment that includes bold interventions like the 62 strategies recommended in the report.

For some of us, the treatment might feel a little like major surgery—to get better, we'll have to feel some pain, not to mention anxiety. But we're absolutely dedicated to the kind of inside-out transformation and renewal that will strengthen our college for the long haul. And driving us toward the fifteen goals outlined in the report is our core commitment to teaching and learning.

In the smaller, student-centric college that we envision, every student will have access to gifted and committed faculty members throughout their education.

That means we must build faculty capacity even as we shrink our college and realign our programs to address 21st-century realities. Just as "the liberal arts are the very core and essence of academic learning," CLA faculty are the "core and essence" of our college. We may define "best" in many different ways, but we probably all agree that no college can be "best" without a great faculty.

We're at a pivot point. As the economy took a dive in 2007-09, faculty raids subsided. We are now seeing a resurgence of raids, especially by private universities with deeper pockets. This is a serious challenge for CLA. We simply can't buttress our faculty with public dollars alone.

This is where you come in. We're asking you, our alumni and friends, to partner with us in new creative ventures to recruit and retain the A-list faculty everybody's clamoring for. And I don't mean just the academic superstars; I mean all of the brilliant, hard-working scholars and teachers whose lights could glow a whole lot brighter if they only had the resources. Just imagine a special research fund, perhaps $5,000-$10,000 for each of three years, helping a CLA scholar get a pathbreaking book published and into the hands of students; or a major gift for an endowed professorship or chair providing ongoing support for the scholarly and creative work that our students are so pumped about.

If you love learning, if you put stock in what those students are saying, if you care about public higher education, and if you care about the future of CLA and the University of Minnesota, this is your moment, and ours. It's time for all of us to step up and do what we can to help reinvent CLA for the decades ahead, so that it can be the strong, innovative, intellectually rich, student-centric college that we are all so proud of. I'd love to talk with you.

Mary Hicks
Director, Development & Alumni Relations
612-625-5031, hicks002@umn.edu

Each of us in the CLA community plays a role in growing and strengthening the college we love.

Donors help the college realize its highest ambitions.

"We've always felt music education is important and needs support. If the arts, in general, aren't part of your life when you are young, when will they be?" –Wayne and Meg Gisslen
Photo by Trish Grafstrom

Those listed below have made extraordinary contributions:

• They've created hundreds of scholarships and fellowships that keep CLA's doors open to more than a thousand students each year;
• They've established dozens of academic chairs and professorships that help us recruit and retain top faculty;
• They've fueled discovery through dedicated research and outreach funds;
• They've invested in CLA's educational infrastructure by improving facilities for the creative and performing arts, languages, and social sciences.

In July the University will have a new president, Eric Kaler; the state has new leadership; we are charting a dynamic course for the new century with CLA 2015. As we move into this new era, we are grateful for the continued loyalty, trust, and support of our donors.

Thank you for joining us in creating the CLA of tomorrow.

To see a more comprehensive list of annual donors to CLA, please visit the donor roster.

Do you give to CLA? Tell us why!

Share your story.

* deceased

Lifetime gifts or pledges $10,000,000+

Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. and The Hubbard Broadcasting Foundation

Lifetime gifts or pledges $1,000,000+

Austrian Government
Nathan* and Theresa Berman
Harvey V. Berneking*
Elizabeth B.* and John* Cowles, Sr.
Sage and John Cowles, Jr.
Curtis L. Carlson Family Foundation
Ruth and Bruce Dayton
Deluxe Corporation Foundation
Edelstein Family Foundation
N. Marbury Efimenco*
Beverly Wexler Fink and Richard M. Fink
Esther F. Freier*
Starke* and Virginia Hathaway*
Donald V. Hawkins*
Erwin A. and Miriam J. Kelen
Kelen Family Foundation
Terence E. Kilburn
Myron and Anita Kunin
David M. and Janis Larson
Benjamin Evans Lippincott* and Gertrude Lawton Lippincott*
Ted Mann*
Don A.* and Edith I. Martindale
R. F. "Pinky" McNamara
Hella L. Mears and William F. Hueg, Jr.
Charles M. Nolte*
Arsham H. Ohanessian*
Helen F. and Otto A.* Silha
Myrtle L.* and Charles E. Stroud*
Leland "Lee" and Louise Sundet
Marvin and Elayne Wolfenson

Lifetime gifts or pledges $250,000 - $999,999

3M Company and 3M Foundation
AOL Time Warner, Inc.
Dominick J. Argento and Carolyn Bailey-Argento*
Fern L. and Bernard* Badzin
Alex Batinich
Lyle A. Berman
Bilinski Educational Foundation
Selmer Birkelo*
James I. Brown*
Sidney L.* and Betty L.* Brown
John R. and Susan L.* Camp
China Times Cultural Foundation
Patrick Corrigan
Aina Swan Cutler*
Ronnaug Dahl*
Carol E. and Charles M. Denny, Jr.
Dietrich W. Botstiber Foundation
Hannah Kellogg Dowell*
Everett A.* and Ruth Dickson* Drake
Leaetta M. Hough and Marvin D. Dunnette*
Ruth Easton*
Freedom Forum
Frenzel Foundation
Gwenith F. Gislason*
Harrison G. and Kathryn W. Gough
Government of Finland
Ellen D. Grace
Bert M. Gross and Susan Hill Gross
N. Bud* and Beverly N. Grossman
Marion D. Groth*
Herman F. Haeberle*
Fleurette Halpern*
Charlotte H. and Gordon H. Hansen
Lowell and Cay Shea Hellervik
Herbert Berridge Elliston Fund
Vivian H. Hewer*
Harold L.* and Harriet Thwing* Holden
Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation
Cecill C. and Judge Earl R.* Larson
Ronald L. and Judith A. Libertus
Benjamin Evans Lippincott* and Gertrude Lawton Lippincott*
Robert B. and Mary A. Litterman
Phyllis B. MacBrair*
William W. and Nadine M. McGuire
The McKnight Foundation
Thomas B.* and Elizabeth K.* Merner
Doris B.* and Raymond O.* Mithun
Bruce D.* and Mildred D.* Mudgett
Eula* and Gil* Northfield
Jevne H.* and George T.* Pennock
Pew Charitable Trusts
Harold E.* and Louise A.* Renquist
Katherine* and W. Gardner Roth*
Ruth Easton Fund of the Edelstein Family Foundation
Richard L. and Ellen R. Sandor
Showboat Fund
Werner Simon*
Star Tribune and Star Tribune Foundation
Raymond J. and Elvira A.* Tarleton
Ted and Roberta Mann Foundation and Blythe Brenden
Asher Waldfogel
William D. Wells
Virginia J. Wimmer*
Kurt Winkelmann and Janine Gleason
David Michael* and Penny Rand Winton
Robert O. Young, Jr.*

Lifetime gifts or pledges $100,000 - $249,999

American Latvian Association in the U.S.
American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise
Frances Coakley Ames*
Elmer L.* and Eleanor J.* Andersen
Andreas Foundation
James Ford Bell and the Bell Family
Marvin and Betty Borman
Paul Brainerd
Caroline Brede*
Gerard L. Cafesjian
Joan Calof
Jean E. Cameron and Robert O. Linde
David P. Campbell
Cargill and Cargill Foundation
John S. and Margaret Chipman
Margaret I. Conway*
David C. and Vicki B. Cox
Mathias Dahl*
Dayton Hudson Corporation and Dayton Hudson Foundation
Dicomed
A. Richard Diebold, Jr.
Doran Companies
Robert W. and Mary Eichinger
Herbert B. Elliston*
Embassy of Cyprus
Equity Services of Saint Paul, Inc.
Estonian Archives in the U.S.
William E. Faragher
Judy Farmer
Ted Farmer
David R.* and Elizabeth P. Fesler
David D. Floren
The Ford Foundation
John E. Free*
Jeanne K. Freeman*
Helen Waters Gates*
General Mills and General Mills Foundation
R. James and Teddy Gesell
Margaret E. Gilbertson*
Marion D. Groth*
Guy Grove Family Foundation
Jo-Ida C. Hansen
Evelyn J. Hanson*
Mark and Jacqueline Hegman
Dona M. and Thomas P.* Hiltunen
Jean McGough Holten
John S. Holten*
James A. Johnson and Maxine Isaacs
Richard* and Freda M.* Jordan
Kaemmer Fund of the HRK Foundation
Michael H. and Julie A. Kaplan
Samuel and Sylvia Kaplan
Anoush Khoshkish
James M.* and Audrey H. Kinney
Ida F. Kramer*
Joel R. and Laurie M. Kramer
Carol E. Ladwig*
Bruce A. Larson
Mary Frances Lehnerts*
Stephen E. and Sheila R. Lieberman
Benjamin Y. H. and Helen C. Liu
Merle W. Loppnow*
Donald J. and Diana Lucker
Natalie C. Lund*
Sidney Lyons*
Emily Maltz and Dale T. Schatzlein*
Carol K. March
Tom and Martha Martin
Max Kade Foundation
Robert H. Mc Clellan*
Medtronic and Medtronic Foundation
Mertz Gilmore Foundation
Miller Khoshkish Foundation
Marjorie E.* and Franklin W. Mortenson*
James W. Nelson
Marion E. Newman*
Otto Bremer Foundation
Robert and Joan* Owens
Patrick and Aimee Butler Family Foundation
Lawrence Perlman and Linda Peterson Perlman

Lifetime gifts or pledges $25,000 - $99,999

A. G. Leventis Foundation
AT&T Company and AT&T Foundation
Adath Jeshurun Congregation
Shaykh Kamal Adham*
Advanced Bionics
Joan Aldous
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America
American Council of Learned Societies
American Express Company and American Express Foundation
American Psychological Assn.
Americana Arts Foundation
Katherine B. Andersen*
Brian* and Kari Anderson
Harold C. Anderson*
Keith H.* and Martha S. Anderson
Neil P. Anderson
Ronald E. Anderson
Dwayne O. Andreas
Association of American Universities
Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research
Ayers Bagley and Marian-Ortolf Bagley
Carol A. Balthazor
Jacob J. and Marjorie L. Barnett
Carol and George* Barquist
Belford Foundation
Bemis Company Foundation
Judson* and Barbara* Bemis
Robert D. and Pearl Lam Bergad
Michael and Carol* Berman
Eileen Bigelow*
Carl E. Blair
Kenneith G. Bomberg*
Robert L. Borg*
Frederick J. Bollum
Lee A. Borah
Margaret E. Borgman*
Sharon L. and Carl A. Borine
Boss Foundation
Thomas J. and Pauline M. Bouchard
Caroline Brede*
Henry L. Brooks*
Joseph Brown and Mary Easter
Robert H. Bruininks and Susan A. Hagstrum
John C. Bryant* and Marilyn Tickle Bryant
Donald G. Burch*
Russell W. Burris
Judy R. Burton*
The Bush Foundation
Carolyn L. Williams and James N. Butcher
Peter M. and Sandra K. Butler
Carmen and Jim Campbell
John P. Campbell
Christopher G. Cardozo
Carl and Eloise Pohlad Family Foundation
Joanne C. Carlson
Karl F. Carlson
Stan W. Carlson*
Lynn and Steve Carnes
Edward J. and Arlene E. Carney
Sol and Mitzi Center
Century Council, Inc.
Mythili V. and Varadarajan V. Chari
David S. and Margot H. Chatterton
Leeann Chin*
Thomas Choi
Charles H. Christensen
Christian Services, Inc.
City of St. Paul
Shirley M. Clark
Burt and Rusty Cohen
Mary Sue Comfort
Allison and Dan Connally
Harold and Phyllis* Conrad
Ellen R. Costello*
Randy and Carol Cote
C. Mayeron Cowles and C. F. Cowles
Cowles Media Company
Ella P. and Thomas M.* Crosby, Sr.
Christine M. Cumming
Mary C. Cunningham
DAAD - German Academic Exchange Service
Michael and Nancy Dardis
Bruce K. Nelson and Sandra J. Davies-Nelson
Joyce Ekman Davis and John G. Davis*
Ken* and Barbara J. Davis
Marjorie J. and Wendell J. DeBoer
Mike Decker and Julie Ferguson Decker
Shirley I. Decker
Cy and Paula DeCosse
Stefania B.* and Carl H.* Denbow
Mary L. Devlin
Michael A. Donner*
Esther B. Donovan*
Mary J. Dovolis*
Gerald S. and Judy C. Duffy
Florence G. Dworsky*
Zola C. Dworsky*
Eastern Enterprises
Karla Beveridge Eastling
Jeff H. Eckland
Todd W. Eckland
Elizabeth D. Edmonds*
April H. Egan and Kevin J. Lawless
Rondi C. Erickson and Guilford S. Lewis
Fred and Patricia L. Erisman
Ernst and Young LLP and Ernst and Young Foundation
F. R. Bigelow Foundation
Farfellow Foundation
David L. and Shirley M. Ferguson
Donald Ferguson*
Mark K. Ferguson and Phyllis M. Young
Merrill J. and Shauna Ferguson
Gertrude Finch*
Norma C. and John R. Finnegan, Sr.
Joan C. Forester*
Edward and Janet Foster
Francis Maria Foundation for Justice and Peace
Douglas A. and Emma Carter* Freeman
John D. and Berna Jo French
Eugene U. and Mary F. Frey
Friends of the IHRC
Carol M. and Benjamin F.* Fuller, Jr.
Burt and Nan Galaway
Jacqui and George* Gardner
GE Co. and GE Fund
Anne F. and Seymour Geisser*
Meg and Wayne Gisslen
GKL Management Consulting LLP
Glen and Harold Bend Foundation
Mary and Steven Goldstein
Lloyd F.* and Mary J.* Gonyea
David F. and Rosemary Good
Robert L. and Katherine D. Goodale
Doug and Jane Gorence
Government of Cyprus
Persis R. Gow
Graco, Inc. and Graco Foundation
William F.* and Patricia M.* Greer
Greystone Foundation
Sharon C. Grimes
Shane T. and Suzanne R. Grivna
Jonathan R. Gross
Leo* and Lillian Gross*
William Grossman
Catherine B. Guisan and Stephen J. Dickinson
Cleyonne Gustafson*
H. R. K. Trust
Bette Hammel
Ronald N. and Carol A. Handberg
Hanovers Manufacturers Trust
Lars P. Hansen and Grace R. Tsiang
Patricia* and Einar* Hardin
Harlan Boss Foundation for the Arts
Elizabeth T.* and John L.* Harnsberger
Harold L. Korda Foundation
Elizabeth S. Harris and Family of Dale B. Harris
Sigmund M.* and Joye G.* Harris
Nils and Patricia* Hasselmo
Helen B. Hauser
Leopold A. Hauser III
The Hawley Family
Headwaters Foundation for Justice
Patricia J. Heikenen*
Samuel D. Heins
Helen Harrington*
Hazel H.* and John* Helgeson
William Henderson
The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.
Allan A. Hietala
A. William Hoglund*
John L. Holland*
The Holland Foundation
Grace E. Holloway
Honeywell and Honeywell Foundation
Deborah L. Hopp
Wendy Horn
The Horst M. Rechelbacher Foundation
Leonid Hurwicz* and Evelyn Jensen Hurwicz
Marion B. Hutchinson*
ITT Consumer Financial Corporation
Warren E. and Mary E. Ibele
Institute for Aegean Prehistory
Jane Burkleo Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation
Janice Gardner Foundation
James J. Jenkins and Winifred Strange
Anne and Eric Jensen
Ardes Johnson
Paul E. Joncas*
Chester R. Jones*
Jacqueline Nolte Jones
Wendell J. and Elizabeth Josal
Donald W. and Phyllis L. Kahn
Max M. and Marjorie* Kampelman
Odessa Katsila
Clayton Kaufman
Wilbur C.* and Kathryn E. Keefer
Garrison E. Keillor
William H. and Madoline D.* Kelty
Dorothy Kincaid*
Ruth Kincaid
Joseph* and Jacqueline* Kinderwater
Suzanne and Kip Knelman
Knight Foundation
Jim and Pam Knowles
Nicholas and Anastasia Kolas
Korn/Ferry International
Samuel S. Kortum
Peter J. and Linda R. Kreisman
Mark R. Kriss
Dorothy T. Kuether
Frauncee L. Ladd
Lam Research Foundation
John and Nancy Lambros
Trudy E. Lapic
Rosalind L. Laskin
Billie C. Lawton
DJ Leary and Linda L. Wilson
David S. and Julie Lee
Kaarle H. Lehtinen*
Mildred B. Leighton*
Leonard Street and Deinard and Leonard Street and Deinard Foundation
Leonard H. and W. Joyce Levitan
Marilyn and Drew Lewis
Liberace Foundation for Performing and Creative Arts
David M. and Perrin B. Lilly
Lynn Y. S. Lin
Leonard E. Lindquist*
Daniel T. and Helen E. Lindsay
Serge E. Logan
Lominger Limited, Inc.
Longview Foundation
Merle W. Loppnow*
Maureen Lowe and Carl McGary
Richard Luis and Juanita Bolland Luis
Carla Lukermann
Fred* and Barbara* Lukermann
Kathryn Lukermann Plaisance
Judy I. Lund and Neilan B. Lund*
William O. Lund*
Stephanie K. and Warren L. Lundsgaard
Terry E. Shima and Margaret A. Lutz
Joseph D. Lykken
Matthew A. and Suzanne L. Lykken
Warren and Nancy MacKenzie
Dorothy B. Magnus*
Phyllis Maizlish
Lester A. Malkerson*
Mardag Foundation
Erwin and Doris G. Marquit
Jacqueline G. McCauley
Virginia G. McDavid
James "Red"* and Edythe V.* McLeod
Ellen Messer-Davidow
Janice A. Meyer
Midwest Communications, Inc. WCCO-TV
Midwest Federal Savings and Loan
Minnesota State Council on Economic Education
Minneapolis Jewish Federation Community Foundation
Arthur H. "Red"* and Helene B.* Motley
Rolf and Ingrid Muehlenhaus
Marilyn J. and Malcolm H.* Myers
Paul B. Mulhollem and Valerie K. Cravens
National Italian American Foundation, Inc.
Jack and Cathy* Nelson
Richard F. Noland*
Eula* and Gil* Northfield
Mary Ann and Louis P.* Novak
Keith and Nancy Nuechterlein
Michael O'Rourke
Arsham H. Ohanessian*
Roger* and Mary Anne Page
Grace C. and Charles A.* Parsons, Sr.
Pearson Clinical Assessment Division
Personnel Decisions Research Institute
Pfizer Pharma GmbH
Phyllis and Irvin Maizlish Foundation
Wilma G.* and Wayne R.* Pierce
Laura D. Platt
Dottie* and Harold J. Pond*
Charles K. Porter
Porter Creative Services, Inc.
Edward C. and Jan Prescott
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and PriceWaterhouseCoopers Foundation
Ken* and Pat Puffer
Virginia G. Puzak
Ralph R. Kriesel Foundation
Harvey B. Ratner* and Barbara Ratner
George and Frances C.* Reid
Republic of Latvia
R. C. Lilly Foundation
Marcel and Sheila Richter
Norman F. Rickeman and Kathy Murphy
Donald John Roberts
Michelle E. Roberts
Robert G. Robinson*
Calvin J. and Caroline K. Roetzel
Rosenthal Collins Group LLC
Elizabeth E. Roth
A. L. Rubinger
Bruce P. Rubinger
Ronald K. and Carol B. Rydell
Robert W. and Janet F. Sabes
Sabes Family Foundation
Salus Mundi Foundation
Parker D. and Isabella Sanders
David B. Sanford and Frank D. Hirschbach*
Santa Fe Institute
David and Leena Santore
Rusdu and Nurdan Saracoglu
Donald C.* and Mary J.* Savelkoul
Richard L. and Maryan S. Schall
Jean Schlemmer
The Nick Schoen Family
The Schubert Club
Hertha J. Schulze
Jeff and Mary Scott
John T. Scott*
William F.* and Zoe W. Sealy
Securian Foundation
Miriam Segall
Michael R. Sieben
Kathryn A. Sikkink
Carol M. and John M. Simpson
Debra A. Sit and Peter H. Berge
Richard H. and Mary Jo Skaggs
Jonathan E. Smaby
Maureen C. Smith
Soka University of America
Southways Foundation
Charles E. Speaks and Family
Janet D. Spector
St. Paul Pioneer Press
Matthew and Terri Stark
Jane A. Starr
Lucille* and Del Stelling
Mary K. and Gary H. Stern
Eldon L.* and Helen H.* Stevens
Gretchen Stieler*
Hannah C. Stocker*
Winnifred Fabel Stockman*
Svenska Institutet
Craig and Janet Swan
Charles B. Sweningsen
Margaret J.* and Kenneth R. Talle
The Target Corporation/Target Stores
Joseph H. Tashjian and Sandra Kay Savik
Ming Li Tchou
Mildred C. Templin*
Tennant Foundation
Clarence L. Torp*
Luther P. and Lou R. Towner
Edward Trach
Travelers Companies and Travelers Foundation
Walter R. McCarthy and Clara M. Ueland
Unico Foundation, Inc.
Union Pacific Foundation
Unisys Corporation
Donald and Janet Voight
WM Foundation
Joyce L. and Daniel F. Wascoe, Jr.
Irving and Marjorie Weiser
Patrick J. Whitcomb and Patty A. Napier
Tod and Linda White
Delvina E. Wiik
Lloyd A. Wilford*
William Randolph Hearst Foundation
Elsie P. Worch*
Enza Zeller*

Lifetime gifts or pledges $10,000 - $24,999

3 H Industries
Aaron Copland Fund For Music
Ronald F. Abler
Harold R. Adams
John S. Adams
Russell B. Adams
Kenneth J. and Janet E. Albrecht
Douglas Allchin
James R. and Elaine W. Allen
American Broadcasting Co., Inc.
Craig and Nancy Wilkie Anderson
Mary A. Andres
Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation
Carolyn F. and Daniel J. Ansel
Stephen D. Ansolabehere
Lydia Artymiw and David Grayson
Catherine B. and Frederick M. Asher
Beverly M. and Stephen B. Atkinson
Achilles C. Avraamides
Moya A. and Alan Ball
Jenny Victoria Baker*
Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation
Robert L. and Linda M. Barrows
Merritt L. and Marilyn O. Bartlett
Baxter International Foundation
Northrup* and Myrtle* Beach
Paulina Beato
Charles H. Bell*
John W. and Inga H.* Benson
Robert and Margaret Berdahl
Linda Keillor Berg and David A. Berg
Nicholas E. Berkholtz
Frank and Toby Berman
Caroline A. Blanshard*
The John and Jane Borchert Family
Rick A. Borchert
Sharon L. and Carl A. Borine
Michael A. and Sally Bosanko
Lily T. Brovald
Sheila A. Burke
David R. and Sharon E. Burris-Brown
Jon H. and Roxanne D. Butler
Diane Camp and Paul Leutgeb
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell
Campbell Mithun
Andrew M. and Miriam A. Canepa
Howard C. Carlson
Georgia L. Carmean*
Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation
Allison H. Christensen* and Raymond L. Page*
Hsiao-Lei Chu and Nan-Kuang Chen
Heather M. and Matthew J. Clark
Classical Assn. of the Middle West and South
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
Parker M. Congdon*
Gus* and Shirley* Cooper
Crown Equipment Corp.
Claudia Drake Curtis
Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, Inc.
Gertrude W.* and Sophus M.* Dahl
S. M. Dahl*
Lenore B. Danielson
Julia W. and Kenneth* Dayton
DDB Needham Worldwide, Inc.
Beatrice Lofgren De Lue*
Amos and Sandra S. Deinard
Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation
Lois E. DeWitt
Hazel F. Dicken-Garcia
Douglas A. Dolliff*
Dee Gaeddert Dorsey and James E. Dorsey
Anna L. Downs and Paul Cohen
George Duncan and Sheryl Kelsey
Dunnette Group LTD
E.I. DuPont De Nemours and Company
E. K. Strong Memorial Foundation
Brian E. Engdahl and Raina E. Eberly
Embassy of Italy
George S. Emery and Lori S. Jennings-Emery
Emma B. Howe Memorial Foundation
Richard Engebretson
Patricia Hill Engel
Gail G. Engerholm
Emogene Becker Evans
Sara M. Evans
Fannie Mae Foundation
David L. and Susan K. Ferguson
John K.* and Elsie Lampert* Fesler
Kevin W. Finn and Michele E. Fraser
Finnish American Social Club
Robert C. Flink
Florence Kanee Fund
Florida International University Foundation, Inc.
F. P. L. Group Foundation, Inc.
Robert E. and Dorothy Flynn
Abraham Franck
Bonita and William Frels
Thomas L. Friedman
Henry E. Fuldner
Andrew L. Galaway
Aina Galejs
Francis C. Gamelin
Norman* and Edith* Garmezy
William and Beth Geiger
George or Lillith Burner Foundation
George W. Patton and Mary Burnham Patton Foundation
German-American Heritage Foundation, Inc.
Heidi Gesell
Helen J. and William R. Gladwin
Marie K. and David L. Goblirsch
Stanley M. and Luella G. Goldberg
Gayatri and Zakkula Govindarajulu*
Kenneth L. Graham*
Greater Worcester Community Foundation
Greek Ministry of Culture
Lawrence and Ronya Greenberg
Willard A. Greenleaf
Jean M. and Edward M. Griffin
Dalos W. Grobe
Gustavus Adolphus College
Guthrie Theater
Helen M. Hacker
Herman F. Haeberle*
James J. Hahn
Milton D. Hakel
Patrice A. and Gerald P. Halbach
Mark Chatterton and Julia Halberg
Kathleen A. Hansen
Richard A. and Linda S. Hanson
Harcourt Brace and Company
Alfred and Ingrid Lenz Harrison
George Hatzisavvas
Casper H. and Mary Hegdal
Claire K. Hekman
Emily J.* and Walter W. Heller*
Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
Mary Kay Hicks
Wallace G. and Deborah B. Hilke
Michael and Judy Hopp
Graham B. Hovey*
John R. and Judith J. Howe
Zenas W. and Susanne L. Hutcheson
IBM Corporation
International MultiFoods Charitable Foundation
Barbara D. Jackson
Charlotte W. Januschka
Irene K. K. and J. Vernon Jensen
Jerome Foundation
Jacqueline Jodl and James Viceconte
John and Mary R. Markle Foundation
John Wiley and Sons
Earl L. and Beverly R. Johnson
Johnson and Johnson
Paul E. Joncas*
Marguerite G.* and Chester R. Jones*
KARE 11
KTCA/KTCI-Public T V
Peter R. Kann
Paul and Sarah Karon
Karon Family Foundation, Inc.
Diane Katsiaficas and Norman Gilbertson
Thomas A. Keller III
Michael and Helene Keran
Eva C. Keuls
Margaret A. Keyes
Kidder Peabody Foundation*
Judith M. Kirby
Solveig M. and Victor H.* Kramer
Steven Krikava and Linda Singer
John and Nanciann Kruse
KSTP AM/FM and TV
Sharon K. Thompson Kuusisto
Janice M. and Dr. Joseph J.* Kwiat
Dorothy E. Lamberton
Steven J. Lambros
Thomas and Anne LaMotte
Land O'Lakes Foundation
Lawrence A. and Mary J. Laukka
Fred and Catherine Lauritsen
David and Randy Lebedoff
Helga Leitner and Eric S. Sheppard
Lerner Foundation
Lilliput Foundation
Diane M. and David M. Lilly
Lincoln Financial Foundation
Lincoln Park Zoological Society
Russell C. Lindgren* and Anne Winslow Lindgren*
Janice O. and John D. Lindstrom
Howard and Roberta Liszt
John Y. and Marjorie C. Loper
Sidney Lyons*
David J. Madson
Mark and Charlie's Gay Lesbian Fund for Moral Values
Marquit-Grieser Fund
Martin Marietta Corporation Foundation
Andreu Mas-Colell
Lawrence J. and Andrea K. McGough
McVay Foundation
Robert and Wanda McCaa
Mildred McClellan
Aileen* and George McClintock
Sheila J. McNally
Mary Myers McVay
Christopher M. Meadows and Barbara Reid
Merrill Lynch and Co. Foundation, Inc.
Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic
Shirley P. Moore
Marion S. Moulton*
Mary N. Mullaney*
Joseph J. and Priscilla J. Nauer
NCS Pearson, Inc.
Nederlandse Taalunie
Jon D. Nelson
William C. Nelson*
New Pioneers
New York Times Co. Foundation, Inc.
Alice Park Newman
Charles N. Newstrom
Katherine and Stuart Nielsen
Earl and Judy Nolting
Steven Ruggles and Lisa Norling
Northwest Airlines
Monica B. Novak
Linda Odegard
Josep C. Oliu
Rhoda C. and Gregory L. Olsen
Craig N. and Elizabeth A. Ordal
Coleen Pantalone
Marcia Motley Patterson
June D.* and Theodore C.* Paulson
Marilyn K. H. and Steven W. Peltier
Personnel Decisions International
Elaine D. and Erland K. Persson
Pharmaceutical Research/ Manufacturers of America
Morton B. and Pauline Phillips
Photo Marketing Association International
Ellen F. and John S. Pillsbury III
Philip W. Pillsbury, Jr.
Pillsbury Company and Pillsbury Company Foundation
Polish American Congress
Polish National Alliance
Wayne E. and Virginia L. Potratz
Pragmatic C. Software Corp.
Prudential Financial, Inc. and the Prudential Foundation
Psi Chi
Sylvia A. Quast
Qwest and Qwest Foundation
Gwendoline L. Reid*
Joanne Wright Reierson and Lars A. Reierson
Harold E.* and Louise A.* Renquist
M. and J. Rice
Right Management Consultants
Charles* and Evelyn Ritz*
Harold and Ruth Roitenberg
Florane* and Jerome Rosenstone*
Falsum Russell*
Ruth Schaefer Trust
S. C. Johnson Fund
Florence Saloutos*
Donald C.* and Mary J.* Savelkoul
Eileen A. Scallen
Lili Hall Scarpa and Andrea Scarpa
Sage Ann D'Aquila Scheer
William W. and Mary A. Seeger
Stephen R. and Mary Jane Setterberg
Myrna H. and E. Joe Shaw, Jr.
Thomas J. Shroyer and Nan K. Sorensen
Marjorie Sibley*
John A. Simler
Simon Fraser University
Dennis A. Simonson and Pamela J. Alsbury
Joseph A. Sirola
Sit Investment Associates, Inc.
and Sit Investment Associates Foundation
George G. Sitaramiah*
Charles K. and Susanne M. Smith
SmithKline Beecham Corporation and SmithKline Beecham Foundation
Norma B.* and James A.* Smutz
Michael and Betty Anne Soffin
Eugene A. and Joan E. Sommerfeld
Frank J. Sorauf
Margaret Spear
Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.
Victor N. Stein*
Glenn and Mary Steinke
Edwin O. Stene*
James M. Sternberg
Lorraine Gonyea Stewart
Virginia and Frederick Stohr
Patrick J. Strother and Patricia Henning
Donald F. and Virginia H. Swanson
Kristin G. Sweeney
Paul A. and Lucienne J. Taylor
TCF Corporation, Bank and Foundation
Arlene A. Teraoka and James A. Parente, Jr.
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
Robert J.* and Clarine M.* Tiffany
Kenneth E. and Rachel Tilsen*
Hamilton P. Traub*
Jose Trujillo
Mary C. Turpie*
Twin Cities Opera Guild, Inc.
U.S. Bancorp and U.S. Bancorp Foundation
Robert A. Ulstrom
UNICO National Twin Cities Metro Chapter
Union Pacific Corp.
United Fund For Finnish American Archives
University of Minnesota Band Alumni Society
UPS Foundation, Inc.
US Bank
Mildred J. Vacarella
Michele Vaillancourt and Brent Wennberg
Stephanie Cain Van D'Elden
Veritas Software Global Corp.
Ceil T. Victor*
Neal F. Viemeister and Virginia M. Kirby
Lori A. Vosejpka
FlorenceMae Waldron
David and Mary Ann Wark
Jean Dain Waters
Gerhard and Janet* Weiss
Barbara and William Welke
Wells Fargo and Company
Wells Fargo Foundation
Dare L.* and William F.* White
Lawrence White
Wendy J. Wildung
Emily K. Wilson
Donald L. Winkelmann
John B. Wolf*
Milton P. Woodard*
World Population Fund
Xcel Energy
Yamaha Musical Products, Inc.
Mary L. and Jack Yanchar
E. W.* and Betty* Ziebarth
Gloria B. and Robert E. Zink

Heritage Society (all future gifts to CLA)

Mark L. and Sharlene Rivi Alch
Joan Aldous
James R. and Elaine W. Allen
Harvey L. Anderson
Keith H.* and Martha S. Anderson
Neil P. Anderson
Dominick J. Argento and Carolyn Bailey-Argento*
Manouch and Lila M. "Peggy" Azad
Ayers Bagley and Marian-Ortolf Bagley
Beverly Balos and Mary Louise Fellows
Carol and George* Barquist
Robert Beck* and Corrie W. Ooms Beck
Earl C. Benson
Nicholas E. Berkholtz
Gertrude L. Berndt
Daryl Bible
Thelma Boeder
Lee A. Borah, Jr.
Sally Bordwell*
Richard A. and Nancy M. Borstad
Cheryl Lynne Hubbard Brown
Joan Calof
Carmen and Jim Campbell
James D. Catalano
William J. M. Claggett
Edward G. Clark, Jr.*
Walter T. Connett*
Harold and Phyllis* Conrad
Roy D. Conradi
Patrick Corrigan
S. M. Dahl*
Carolynne Darling
Donna C. Davis
Joyce Ekman Davis and John G. Davis*
Marjorie J. and Wendell J. DeBoer
Hannah Kellogg Dowell*
Jean M. Ebbighausen
N. Marbury Efimenco*
Jean M. Ehret
Joan A. Enerson and Kenneth M. Anderson
Donald E. and Lydia K.* Engebretson
Emogene Becker Evans
William E. Faragher
Judy Farmer
Ted Farmer
Harold D. and Mary Ann Feldman
Norma C. and John R. Finnegan, Sr.
Edward and Janet Foster
Katie and Rick Fournier
Alan P. and Yvonne G. Frailich
William L. French
Francis C. Gamelin
Thomas A. and Erica M. Giorgi
Helen J. and William R. Gladwin
Mary and Steven Goldstein
Natalie Ann De Lue Gonzalez
Sheila M. Gothmann
Andrea K. Goudie
Persis R. Gow
Norman E. and Helen Rachie Groth
Cathy J. E. Gustafson
Helen M. Hacker
Gail and Stuart Hanson
Susan M. Hanson
Gladys Lorraine Hefty*
Norma J. Hervey
Lawrence J. and Carol J. Hill
Dona M. and Thomas P.* Hiltunen
Gordon and Louella Hirsch
Lisa Vecoli and Marjean V. Hoeft
Joan Vivian Hoffmann
Grace E. Holloway
Jean McGough Holten
John S. Holten*
Deborah L. Hopp
Marc H. Hugunin and Alice M. Pepin
Leonid Hurwicz* and Evelyn Jensen Hurwicz
James J. Jenkins and Winifred Strange
Clayton and Jean* Johnson
Wendell J. and Elizabeth Josal
Dennis R. Johnson and Mary K. Katynski-Johnson
Clayton Kaufman
Joyce M. and C. Christopher Kelly
William H. and Madoline D.* Kelty
Beverly J. Kespohl
Terence E. Kilburn
Stephanie L. Krusemark
Steve and Sarah Kumagai
James M. Kushner
Sharon K. Thompson Kuusisto
Frauncee L. Ladd
Bruce A. Larson
Rosalind L. Laskin
Fred and Catherine Lauritsen
Billie C. Lawton
Michael C. and Lynda R. Le May
Jerry Ledin
Mary F. Lewis
Ronald L. and Judith A. Libertus
Benjamin Y. H. and Helen C. Liu
Serge E. Logan
John Y. and Marjorie C. Loper
Stephanie K. and Warren L. Lundsgaard
Kim Max Lyon
Warren and Nancy MacKenzie
David J. Madson
Thomas S. and Kaylen K. Maple
Carol K. March
David and Marilyn Maxner
Steven E. Mayer
Jacqueline G. McCauley
Stephen G. McGraw
R. F. "Pinky" McNamara
Valerie Meyer-DeJong and Mitchell T. DeJong
Lola M. Miller
Kathryn U. Moen
Carol C. Moore
Joseph P. Moritz
Marion S. Moulton*
Joseph J. and Priscilla J. Nauer
Sandra K. Nelson
Arnie and Judy Ness
Charles M. Nolte*
Earl and Judy Nolting
Margaret and John* Nordin
J. Douglas O'Brien, Jr.
Patrick A. O'Dougherty
Linda Odegard
William T.* and Jeanne A. Ojala
Amy L. Olson
John A. and Diane J. Opsahl
Roger* and Mary Anne Page
Darwin Patnode
June D.* and Theodore C.* Paulson
Deanna Freer Peterson
Carol L. Pine
Robert H. Putnam
Bruce and Sara Qualey
Marjorie A. Ransom
Harvey D. Rappaport
Ruth Willard Redhead
Armand A. and Madeleine S.* Renaud
Katherine* and W. Gardner Roth*
Robert P. Sands and Sally Glassberg Sands
David B. Sanford and Frank D. Hirschbach*
Eileen A. Scallen
Richard L. and Maryan S. Schall
Thomas D. Schoonover and Ebba Wesener Schoonover
General Dennis and Pamela Schulstad
Joseph E. Schwartzberg
Terry E. Shima and Margaret A. Lutz
Richard H. and Mary Jo Skaggs
Charles K. and Susanne M. Smith
Terrence L. Smith
Norma B.* and James A.* Smutz
Verlyn and Bette Soderstrom
Paul and Rose Solstad
Frank J. Sorauf
Glenn and Mary Steinke
Lorraine Gonyea Stewart
Tom H. and Arlene M. Swain
Raymond J. and Elvira A.* Tarleton
Thomas L. Thompson*
Stephanie Cain Van D'Elden
Joy Winkie Viola
Gerald Vizenor and Laura Hall
Phillip A. Voight
Donn L. Waage
Jean Worrall Ward
William D. Wells
Sandra K. Walberg Westerman
Patrick J. Whitcomb and Patty A. Napier
Marian W. and O. M. Wilson*
Marvin and Elayne Wolfenson
Max S.* and Cora R. Wortman
Tom and Liz Yuzer

Eric Kaler, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Stony Brook University, New York, has been named the University of Minnesota's 16th president. He will take office on July 1, 2011, succeeding Robert Bruininks, who is returning to a faculty position after nearly a decade of service as president.

Eric Kaler
Courtesy of Stony Brook University

Kaler, 54, earned his Ph.D. at the U of M in 1982 in chemical engineering. He is only the second U of M alum to become its president.

"The University of Minnesota has held a special place in my heart," he said. "This is an institution with an amazing history of achievement and a central place in the hearts of Minnesotans, but there are some enormous challenges on the horizon. It is truly humbling and a true honor to have this level of confidence bestowed upon me. [My wife] Karen and I look forward to getting to know this university—and this state—even better in the coming months."

Asked at one of the on-campus public interviews what role he thought the liberal arts should play at the university, he said the liberal arts are "the reason there is a university....It's an absolute core competency, and we have to protect it. I will invest in it, and they will not wane. On my watch, that will not happen."

He also commented on the CLA 2015 Committee Report to Dean Parente. "I'm extremely impressed by the recent report by the College of Liberal Arts. It outlines a clear concept on how the liberal arts should be shaped in the 21st century. I share much of what [the authors] want to do. They're committed to doing things more efficiently."

Kaler's career has been called meteoric. He received his undergraduate degree from the California Institute of Technology in 1978, and after earning his doctorate in Minnesota he went to the University of Washington to become an assistant and then an associate professor of chemical engineering. In 1989 he moved to the University of Delaware, chaired its Chemical Engineering Department and became dean of the College of Engineering. In 2007 he landed at Stony Brook, a highly ranked research university enrolling some 24,000 students, as provost and vice president.

Last year he achieved one the highest professional distinctions in his field, election to the National Academy of Engineering. He holds 10 U.S. patents; his research interests are surfactant and colloid science, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics.

His honors include the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Curtis W. McGraw Research Award from the American Society of Engineering Education, and the American Chemical Society Award in Colloid or Surface Chemistry.

Kaler was interviewed on KSTP-TV: z.umn.edu/2vr