Cover Story
NU Rules Late-Night
Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers and Robin Thede have changed the late-night landscape.
Spring 2018
Features
Why has Northwestern generated such a wealth of talent in the late-night news-comedy arena? While Stephen Colbert ’86, ’11 H and Seth Meyers ’96, ’16 H cite the influence of professors, and Robin Thede gives credit to the journalism program for teaching her to write, cross-pollination of students and classes in different fields may also be key.
Get ready to clutch your pearls! Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications graduate Robin Thede’s late-night show, The Rundown with Robin Thede, with its mix of political commentary, black cultural observations and a body roll or two, is quite possibly the stuff Emmys are made of.
Eli Finkel started out thinking he was writing a requiem for marriage. His book was going to be called The Freighted Marriage, a bleak warning that we are demanding so much from our spouses — that they be everything from our best friends to our romantic ideals to our social networks — that the institution of marriage is buckling under the strain.
Voices
He gushed about how he had upgraded to a multi-CD stereo, how he diligently kept track of the mileage per gallon he averaged in a notebook that he stored in his glove compartment. I smiled dreamily.
News
The first genetic mutation that appears to protect against multiple aspects of biological aging, including Type 2 diabetes, has been discovered in a community of Amish living in rural Berne, Ind., according to Northwestern scientists. Indiana Amish kindred (immediate family and relatives) with the mutation live more than 10 percent longer and have lower fasting insulin levels than individuals without the mutation.
Each year, international travelers return stateside with an average of $34.82 in unused foreign cash — that is, if they haven’t already spent it on useless airport trinkets. The total discarded foreign currency in the United States amounts to an astounding $1.56 billion, with $96 million passing through the city of Chicago alone.
Essi Rönkkö was exploring the Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary’s resources on mummy portraits when she made a startling discovery: The seminary had in its collection a young girl mummy with an intact portrait. Rönkkö, curatorial associate for special projects at the Block Museum of Art, was researching mummy portraits, which feature a lifelike painting of the deceased person incorporated into the mummy wrappings and placed over the face.
Researchers found that a group of middle-aged women looked about three years younger after they followed a 20-week facial exercise program.
It seems that sports commentary today often devolves into bite-size “takes.” Is there still room for the more nuanced columns you wrote throughout your career? One of the greatest things about the internet originally was that it allowed for longer takes, more well-developed stories that weren’t restricted by the amount of space you had in a newspaper.
Senior Hannah Kim shoots for more records as her storied wildcats career draws to a close.
Entertainment icons returned to campus in 1980 to celebrate the completion of the Theatre and Interpretation Center. Now the School of Communication is planning another grand gathering at the 2018 CommFest.
Louis Danowsky and Sam Wolsk first met in high school in the New Jersey All-State Jazz Ensemble, but their musical partnership took root at Northwestern. That partnership led to their debut album, Coalescence, and a performance at a high-profile New York club.
Alumni
In the early morning of May 3, 1968, approximately 100 African American students entered Northwestern’s business office, chained the doors and posted a sign on the revolving door: “Closed for business ’til racism at NU is ended.” Prepared to occupy the building at 619 Clark St. until the University met their demands, the students wanted an African American studies course, a black student union and other measures meant “to counteract the physical, emotional and spiritual strains we have been subjugated to,” as they had written in a petition to University administrators nearly two weeks earlier.
My Northwestern Direction
My Northwestern Direction
All Roads Point to Northwestern
My academic career trajectory has been like Sheridan Road: lots of twists and turns but eventually ending up in Evanston. I did my undergraduate degree at Loyola, on Sheridan Road in Rogers Park.
Impact
CommFest 2018 will bring celebrity alumni together with faculty and students to celebrate and support the School of Communication.
From an early focus on elocution and oratory to the rise of the dramatic arts, the School of Communication has grown considerably over the last 140 years and become a trendsetter in the field of the communication arts and sciences. Now two new initiatives will enhance graduate theater education at Northwestern and bolster the school’s long-standing contributions to Chicago’s flourishing cultural community.
The discoveries of tomorrow are already underway at Northwestern’s Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, which integrates research in chemistry, physics, mathematics, engineering and medicine to create a holistic understanding of molecular processes. CLP takes a transdisciplinary approach that opens up new areas of discovery and applies rapidly emerging insights toward new methods for preventing, detecting and treating disease — transforming science in order to transform lives.
Getting the opportunity to go to college is a dream that may never be realized by those with limited financial means, but through donor support, the Northwestern Academy for Chicago Public Schools is making such aspirations possible for some academically motivated students in need. Since 2013, the academy has provided personal enrichment, leadership development, college advising and cultural and civic engagement for qualified candidates who want to excel beyond high school.
People
In September 1993 the U.S. federal government laid out the first regulatory framework for an emerging technology now known as the internet.
In summer 2005, between his freshman and sophomore years at Northwestern, Alexander Pancoe ’08 decided he could no longer tough it out after months of suffering from excruciating headaches. He went to Children’s Memorial Hospital (now the Ann & Robert H.
Gerard Meagher clearly remembers one lesson from his time in the advertising program at Northwestern: be distinctive. Meagher continues to apply that advice as the marketing guru at the family-owned Old Town Bar in Manhattan.
