Lawrence
Today magazine, Summer 2007
In 2006, Lawrence established a visibility initiative called Focus On: Chicago, to expand the college’s presence in an important recruiting market and bastion of alumni support. Programs and activities were developed specifically to spread the word of Lawrence throughout the Chicago area (Lawrence Today, Spring 2006).
In 2007, the decision was made to not only continue the expanded activity in Chicago but to extend the effort to Minnesota’s Twin Cities. Like Chicago, the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area is a significant source of prospective students and has a high concentration of alumni.
In the photo above right, the Lawrence University Wind Ensemble under the direction of Assistant Professor of Music Andrew Mast presented a free concert at the James Lumber Center for the Performing Arts of the College of Lake County, Illinois, and theatre arts professor Timothy Troy led a discussion at the Suburban World Theatre in Minneapolis of the film, Brazil, a current Freshman Studies selection. (He is pictured at right at the theatre with Nancy Owens Fraser ’83 and Paul Fraser ’85.)
Additional activities in the Chicago area included a pre-game luncheon before a Lawrence-Lake Forest basketball game; a tour, guided by Wriston Art Center curator Frank Lewis, of “From the Trenches to the Street: Art from Germany, 1910s-20s,” an exhibition at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art that featured 17 works on loan from Lawrence’s La Vera Pohl Collection of German Expressionists; a presentation by Nancy Wall, associate professor of biology, followed by a tour of the exhibit “Body Worlds 2: The Anatomical Exhibition of Real Human Bodies” at the Museum of Science and Industry; a concert by the Lawrence Faculty Jazz Trio at the Merit School of Music; and a presentation/discussion by history professor Edmund Kern on “The Phoenix in Harry Potter: The Metaphoric Power of the Past.”
Alumni, prospective students and their families, and other friends of Lawrence in Minneapolis/St. Paul were invited to a concert by the Lawrence Brass and Kathrine Handford, university organist, at the Church of St. Louis, King of France, in St. Paul; a concert by Associate Professor of Music Karen Leigh-Post ’79, mezzo soprano, with alumnus organist David Heller ’81, at St. Olaf Catholic Church; two concerts by the Cantala Women’s Choir, conducted by Assistant Professor of Music Phillip Swan, with the student group Fanfare Brass and organist Handford, at Stillwater High School and Central Presbyterian Church; a Freshman Studies-style discussion of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and John Coltrane’s “Alabama,” led by English Professor Timothy Spurgin, director of the Freshman Studies program, followed by a viewing of the exhibit “Race” at the Science Museum of Minnesota; a special Lawrence night at the orchestra, when the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra performed a new work by alumnus Fred Lerdahl ’65; and a community-service project by students and alumni planned by the Lawrence group Students’ War Against Hunger and Poverty (SWAHP).
