Hopkins has done well in the rankings. For the seventh straight year, Johns Hopkins Hospital was judged the best in the nation in U.S. News and World Report, which has also ranked the University 14th among 228 national universities, a move up from last year s ranking as number 15. The School of Public Health was ranked first and the School of Medicine, second. The Whiting School s graduate programs have moved solidly into the top tier, ranking 17th nationally. Money magazine put Hopkins fifth in the costly but worth it category.

Bert Vogelstein, Kenneth Kinzler, and Steve Laken of the School of Medicine have discovered a genetic mutation shared by about 700,000 Jews of European descent that appears to cause a common disease, colorectal cancer. This is the first time that a relatively common, preventable illness has been linked to a genetic mutation. The discovery is also significant in that the mutation appears to cause cancer by a completely new mechanism, which may lead to the discovery of other cancer-causing mutations that work in a similar way.

Andrew Cherlin, Griswold Professor of Public Policy in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, is directing a five-year study of the impact of welfare reform on children and families. Cherlin, economics professor Robert Moffitt, and a team of researchers from four universities expect to follow 700 families in each of three cities. They will study, among other issues, how well impoverished adults adapt to time limits on cash assistance and how the new policies affect the health and development of children.

Martha N. Hill, a professor in the School of Nursing and director of Hopkins s Center for Nursing Research, was elected president of the American Heart Association in July. With a background in disease prevention and behavioral science, she is the first nurse and the first non- physician ever to hold the AHA presidency. Hill focuses her research on preventing and controlling high blood pressure in young, urban, African American males.

James Neal, Sheridan Director of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, has been named the 1997 Association of College and Research Libraries Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. The award is given annually to recognize an individual who is making an outstanding contribution to academic or research librarianship and library development.

The School of Public Health is extending its global reach in a number of ways. Rewiring the computer network with high-speed fiberoptic cable has allowed the School to offer a vigorous long-distance educational program that not only can deliver imaginative academic offerings and enrichment to full-time students in Public Health, but also allows health care professionals all over the world to conduct most of their learning at home via the Internet. A $2.25 million grant from the William H. Gates Foundation to the Department of Population Dynamics to establish the Family Planning Leadership Education Institute will further enhance Public Health s long distance technology capabilities, linking up and supporting students around the world.

For several years, the Whiting School has participated in an international exchange program with Austria and Slovenia. Each summer, Hopkins engineering students work in corporations in Graz, Austria and in research institutes in Slovenia, through the University of Ljubljana. This fall, ten Slovenians and six Austrians are working with engineering faculty mentors on research projects.

The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies continues to take advantage of its location in Washington, DC by inviting prominent guests to the campus to talk with faculty and students. Among the policy and international affairs professionals speaking at SAIS have been House Speaker Newt Gingrich, House Majority Leader Richard Armey, and Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was the Nitze School s commencement speaker last May.

We are looking forward to a significant event next year, when the Peabody Symphony Orchestra makes its Lincoln Center debut, at Alice Tully Hall, in New York City on Saturday, May 2, 1998. You will be hearing more about this, and I hope that many of you will be able to join us on that festive occasion.

This month we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Writing Seminars with three days of special events, including readings by New York Times columnist Russell Baker ( 47) and others, a performance by actor John Astin ( 52), and presentation of the President s Medal to Writing Seminars professor emeritus John Barth ( 51, M.A. 1952).

The Applied Physics Laboratory s space programs have met with great success. On June 27, APL s Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous space craft had the closest encounter ever with an asteroid as it flew by the asteroid Mathilde, taking pictures from 750 miles at 22,000 miles per hour on its way to a January 1999 rendezvous with the asteroid Eros. The Advanced Composition Explorer space craft, designed and built by APL and launched on August 25, will study energetic particles coming from the sun, interplanetary space, and regions beyond for the next two to five years.

On September 9, the director of the U.S. Secret Service and I signed a Memorandum of Agreement on behalf of the School of Continuing Studies to assist the Secret Service Academy in providing quality education to special agents and uniformed division officers nationwide. This agreement grew out of the relationship between the Secret Service and the Police Executive Leadership Program of the School of Continuing Studies, now beginning its fourth year providing graduate-level education to law enforcement executives. Members of the Secret Service and police officials will participate in the newly established Mid-Atlantic Regional Community Policing Institute, funded by a $1 million grant from the Department of Justice.

Two of our alumni were awarded the prestigious MacArthur fellowships: Susan Stewart (M.A., Writing Seminars, 1975), who is a cultural and literary critic, poet, and professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, and Brackette F. Williams (Ph.D., Anthropology, 1983), who is an anthropologist focusing on cultural identity and social relationships.
In addition to the many achievements throughout the divisions, we have also made some significant improvements to facilities. Tod Williams, Billie Tsien and Associates, a New York-based architectural firm, submitted the winning design in the architectural competition for the student arts center on the Homewood Campus. The 50,000-sq.-ft. building will be located on the wooded knoll at the end of 33rd Street, adjacent to the Baltimore Museum of Art s sculpture garden.

Progress has been made on other facilities at Homewood. A program plan has been developed for a student recreation center. The University has also just purchased the Wilson Memorial Church building on the south-east corner of University Parkway and Charles Street, which will be renovated as an interfaith and community service center. Over the summer, we broke ground for permanent athletic stands on the north side of Homewood Field and completed renovations of the Homewood Apartments, on Charles Street, just south of the Homewood campus. Renovations of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library are nearly finished, too.

In east Baltimore, the cancer hospital facility is making good progress, and ground has been broken for our cancer research building. Faculty, staff, and students at the School of Nursing are looking forward to moving later this year into their new building, located at the corner of Wolfe and McElderry streets. The building is the first structure at Hopkins dedicated solely to nursing education and research.

Over the summer months, Peabody finished its renovation of the Conservatory s elegant North Hall on schedule, in preparation for the installation of a state-of-the-art concert organ this spring. And the School of Advanced International Studies completed a new student computer room, new classrooms, and improvements to the Kenney Auditorium.

As I mentioned in my last letter, the Trustees of the University and Health System created Johns Hopkins Medicine to bring the Health System and the School of Medicine closer together in this age of managed care. In January, Dr. Edward D. Miller, Jr., Professor and Director of the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, accepted the call to serve as first Chief Executive Officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, in addition to assuming the role of Dean of the Medical Faculty. Mr. Ronald R. Peterson, who previously served as Executive Vice President of the Health System and Hospital, is now President. We have made significant progress, working together as a team.

As we look to the new academic year, an immediate and very concrete challenge facing us will be to find new leaders for the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering. The Krieger School has been seeking a new dean since Steven Knapp agreed to serve as provost and vice president for academic affairs. Whiting School dean Don Giddens left Hopkins over the summer to return to biomedical engineering teaching and research at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

We are also seeking a successor to Eugene S. Sunshine, Senior Vice President for Administration, who served Hopkins so ably over the past ten years. Mr. Sunshine has taken a similar position at Northwestern University, his alma mater. To him can be attributed much of the success of the five year financial planning process, which brought Hopkins out of budgetary difficulties in the late 1980s and which has become a national model.

Although the calendar shows the new year beginning on January 1, for most of us the fall is a time of new beginnings. As you take on new things in your life this fall, I wish you all the best, and I look forward to writing to you again.

With warmest regards,

William R. Brody