MSC, Intel finalist, quoted in NYTimes

Submitted by Jon06 on

I know we don't like MSC anymore, but I hadn't known she was an Intel Science Talent Search finalist. Kind of neat to see her associated with Michigan in this light.

“When I was a finalist in 1961, it was the Sputnik generation, when America was competing with Russia to get into space,” said Mary Sue Coleman, a former president of the University of Michigan and a current member of the board of the Society for Science and the Public, which administers the contest. “It was a national obsession. People in school cheered us on like we were star athletes. I got letters from the heads of corporations.”

The Larry Page/Michigan connection is also mentioned.

Ms. Coleman was a finalist in 1961 for researching drug-resistant bacteria. First prize that year was awarded to a study of bowing in the courtship behavior of the male ring dove.
She said she was “very aware” that Larry Page, co-founder and chief executive of Google, is a Michigan graduate and that Google might be a candidate. “This isn’t a huge amount of money for what it represents,” she said. “I assume another corporation will step up to this.”

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/technology/intel-to-end-sponsorship-of-science-talent-search.html

Jon06

September 9th, 2015 at 5:55 AM ^

She also shows excellent knowledge of the grades of awareness here, though we will need an expert to determine whether being very aware is the same as being fully aware.

Nitro

September 9th, 2015 at 1:39 PM ^

Not really.  Drug-resistant bacteria is a problem for humans only (and, really, only for humans that believe labratory chemical antibiotics to be the only option).  Given that the ratio of extinction to new species is presently 50,000 to 1 (it should be 1 to 1), studying ecosystem aspects addresses a much broader-scale problem for the planet. Studying drug-resistant bacteria is useful primarily to big drug companies.  It worked out for her on a personal level -- she didn't win first prize, but she's making far more money working for Johnson & Johnson;s goal of generating profits than the first place winner is probably making working for some non-profit environmental group's goal of helping the earth.

Unfortunately, the planet doesn't have the financial wherewithal that the chemical industry has to access the media and convince people of it's importance (and can't host "awareness" runs that allows the planet to spend other people's money on its R&D expenses). So, as resources get poured into studying and promoting uses of pesticide-resistant bacteria, pesticides cause the bee population to collapse.  We probably need to be correlating money and profits less with importance.

Nitro

September 10th, 2015 at 9:05 AM ^

Care to explain? Can you even? Or were you just feeling ornery because you didn't like what you read, but didn't have a substantive reason why, and so you decided to throw random insults on the screen because that's what the internet is for?

I don't even understand what you mean by rationalization. What am I rationalizing?

Actually, a better question is why am I responding to these "WTF!" and "Worst.Ever.Anywhere" buzzfeed-style posts with no substance?

MichiganTeacher

September 9th, 2015 at 6:01 AM ^

This is cool. Thanks. I've never been an MSC fan at all, but this is one thing that I can appreciate about her.

MichiganTeacher

September 9th, 2015 at 1:27 PM ^

Her fundraising wasn't anywhere close to good enough to offset her negatives.

Yes, she set a record for public universities at the time. But since then, other universities have raised as much or more, albeit taking a year or two longer. I'm not going to look it up right now but iirc Virginia and Texas are on that list. There are a dozen or two others in the multi-billion dollar capital campaign range too. And then you have some private universities who raised significantly more.

Our academic standings in many fields stagnated or declined slightly during her tenure. Physics managed to stay about where it always has been (top 15, 10-15 range) but that's a bit of a mirage caused in part by Gordon Kane's inflated reputation. Law has stayed T14 but I don't see it challenging for the top three anymore. Engineering isn't even the best in the B1G. Overall undergrad rankings are down slightly from where they were when I entered.

That academic stuff would make her at best a meh for me. But I also rank her very low for things like fostering the atmosphere that lead to the Zeinab Khalil vandalism. 

Then there's the athletics. Athletics are a huge part of the university to me, as I think they are to a lot of people here. And MSC, as we are seeing recently, ran big-time athletics into the ground.

MGoBender

September 9th, 2015 at 9:18 PM ^

Come on.  She ran the biggest capital campaign in the history of public universities at the time.  We are in the midst of the next big one - you can't compare her negatively to schools that more recently (in a better economy) made a bit more money over longer campaigns.  I mean, CUMONG MAN.

She did not run athletics into the ground.  Brandon did.  ANd he didn't even run them "into the gound."  Maybe he would have if he were retained.  But he wasn't and we're in great shape.

I don't know enough about particular subjects standings, but you seem to.  It'd be nice to know your sources on that.  Seems most academic rankings are seriously flawed in 1 way or another.  Stagnation in rankings should be expected.  Universities, nationwide, should not drastically change in their reputations and standings in such small time windows.  

Don

September 9th, 2015 at 7:56 AM ^

She was researching something that directly impacts the health and lives of millions, but the prize went to somebody studying courtship rituals in birds?

No wonder the Russkies beat us into space.

LKLIII

September 9th, 2015 at 8:40 AM ^

Odd last part of the obituary. Got married the day before he died of cancer. What's that about? Altruistic act of humanity? Or was there some pension benefit available to spouses or something? At any rate, it's good that prizes are still out there for the STEM courses. People can't be artists and philosophers until others are scientists and engineers first.




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sadeto

September 9th, 2015 at 10:32 AM ^

"People can't be artists and philosophers until others are scientists and engineers first."

A bizarre and easily disproved assertion. Perhaps you should visit Lascaux and then see if you can come up with examples of early humans crawling into deep caves with torches to draw engineering diagrams. Or maybe just do a bit of reading into the history of the philosophy of science. 

BornSinner

September 9th, 2015 at 10:53 AM ^

One of the dumbest statemetents I've ever read... Perhaps you should see how science philosophy and art were intertwined in the beginning with the likes of Da Vinci, Aristotle Plato etc... 

 

Put that Michigan education to use smh...

FrankMurphy

September 9th, 2015 at 11:24 AM ^

Why exactly are we not supposed to like MSC? I thought she did a great job as president, especially on the fundraising front. When I look at schools like UC-Berkeley that still haven't fully recovered from the recession and have had to raise tuition significantly and cut back on basic services like trash collection, I'm thankful that MSC had the foresight to lauch massive fundraising drives and minimize U-M's dependence on state funding. A university president should be judged on a lot more than just the job performance of her athletic director.