Campus & Community

Michael Shannon, the first African-American full professor of pediatrics in Harvard Medical School’s history, died on March 10, 2009, at the age of 55. At Children’s Hospital Boston, Shannon directed the largest pediatric emergency medicine fellowship program in the country and trained subsequent leaders in toxicology and emergency medicine.

Harvard hosts students from two Boston schools for some grounding in the importance and attraction of basic science.

Keeping Harvard fed is a mammoth logistical effort, almost a military operation. The 12 University-owned restaurants, 13 dining halls, and many catered events now serve about 26,000 meals a day — about 5 million a year. The numbers tell the story.

Kathryn Hollar, a chemical engineer by training, is director of educational programs at the Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where she teaches a program called “science for K to gray.”

Nine Harvard faculty members are among 72 newly elected National Academy of Sciences members and 18 foreign associates chosen in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

The following faculty members have been named full professors with tenure in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences: Stephen Burt, Peter Der Manuelian, David Howell, Martin Puchner, and Gu-Yeon Wei.

Classes are over, but the season isn’t for the Harvard women’s tennis team, which received an at-large bid from the NCAA Division I Tennis Subcommittee.

The Houghton Library recently awarded the 2010 Philip Hofer Prize for Collecting Books or Art to five Harvard graduate students.

Beyond touring the campus, sampling public service programs, and attending courses and colloquiums, Return to Harvard Day was about reimmersion into the fabric of everyday life in the Harvard community for 250 alumni and alumnae.

Peter Emanuel Sifneos, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, died at his home in Belmont on Dec. 9, 2008, at the age of 88. He was an internationally renowned pioneer in the areas of short-term psychotherapy and psychosomatic medicine.

Forty-five students, two race relations tutors, and a distinguished faculty member were honored by the Harvard Foundation for exceptional contributions to improving intercultural and race relations at Harvard College on April 30, as part of the annual Harvard Foundation Student/Faculty Awards Ceremony and Aloian Memorial Dinner, held in Quincy House.

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and NeighborWorks America are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2010 Edward M. Gramlich Fellowship in Community and Economic Development, Abigail Pound and Eduardo Andres Berlin Razmilic.

It was a fight to the finish for the Harvard softball team, but that wasn’t enough for the Crimson as the Cornell Big Red defeated Harvard on May 8, 3-2, to earn the 2010 Ivy League Championship.

A Southern student reflects on what his expectations were, and how the reality differed, when he moved to Cambridge from Arkansas to attend Harvard.

Gökhan Hotamisligil, the J.S. Simmons Professor of Genetics and Metabolism and chair of the Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases at the Harvard School of Public Health, will receive the prestigious Wertheimer Award from the International Association for the Study of Obesity in July in Stockholm.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded fellowships to six faculty members from Harvard.

Evelynn Hammonds, dean of Harvard College and Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies, was appointed by President Barack Obama to the Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The Woodrow Wilson Foundation recently announced Kedron Thomas, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology in the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, as one of 20 recipients of the Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for the 2010-11 academic year.

Harvard’s food service operations are a massive undertaking, producing 26,000 meals daily in ways that have to please many palates.

Martin Breslin, the Dublin-born director of culinary operations at Harvard’s Dining Services, lives for food.

Thanks to the generosity of Paul ’52 and Harriet Weissman, 50 Harvard College students will travel around the globe to explore their career interests and experience new cultures.

Associate Professor Monica Higgins has been promoted to full professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE). Higgins’ expertise is focused on areas of leadership development and organizational change, and her work straddles higher education and urban public schools.

William “Bill” Avison Meissner, former Harvard Medical School clinical professor of pathology and emeritus professor of pathology at the New England Deaconess Hospital, died on Dec. 6, 2008, at age 95. Meissner’s expertise was in thyroid, soft tissue, and oropharyngeal tumors.

What are the odds? It is statistically improbable that a Harvard teaching award open to all graduate students for the past four years would go to members of the same department. Adding to that improbability is the fact that the department in question is among the smallest at Harvard: Statistics.

The following services will be in effect at the University on Commencement Day, May 27.

Nancy Rappaport, assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has won the 2010 Julie Howe Book Award for her memoir, “In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide.”

A year ago, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) held a three-day international conference on the future of cities. “Ecological Urbanism” drew on disciplines as seemingly diverse as design, cultural history, medicine, economics, and literature.

Paul Charles Zamecnik, the Collis P. Huntington Professor of Oncologic Medicine Emeritus, died in Boston on Oct. 27, 2009, at the age of 96. During a research career that spanned more than 70 years, he made a series of scientific contributions that represented multiple fields of biochemistry and molecular biology.

Sherry Turkle, founder and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Initiative on Technology and Self, will give this centennial year’s Lowell Lecture, titled “The Tethered Life: Technology Reshapes Intimacy and Solitude,” on May 14 (8 p.m., Lowell Lecture Hall), hosted by the Harvard University Extension School.

Dean Michael D. Smith announced May 11 that five professors in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been awarded Harvard College Professorships in recognition of their outstanding contributions to undergraduate teaching, advising, and mentoring.