Cyrus C. Taylor. Photo by Daniel Milner.
During Homecoming Weekend this fall, I had the pleasure of welcoming hundreds of alumni of the College of Arts and Sciences and our predecessor institutions. The weather was ideal, not just for the Homecoming Parade and the Spartan Tailgate, but also for a variety of tours and outdoor festivities. Again and again, alumni told me how impressed they were by the changes they saw all around them. They could hardly believe how beautiful the campus and its environs have become.
The latest stages in this physical transformation are especially exciting. The Tinkham Veale University Center, the scene of several “hard hat tours” during Homecoming Weekend, has entered its final construction phase. In October, we broke ground for the Wyant Athletic and Wellness Center. James C. Wyant (CIT ’65), the project’s lead donor, is a physics alum and a member of the university’s board of trustees.
Meanwhile, we have seen a comparable transformation among our neighbors in University Circle. The Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland recently observed the first anniversary of its opening in its architecturally innovative home. Uptown, a showplace among urban development projects nationwide, continues to grow and prosper. The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is about to complete an ambitious and widely acclaimed expansion, benefiting not only its many visitors but also the students and faculty members in our Department of Art History and Art.
In this issue of art/sci, you will find an article celebrating the longstanding collaboration between the university and the CMA. These two institutions are the beneficiaries of an extraordinary gift by Nancy and Joseph Keithley, who have created a $15 million endowment to enhance the joint doctoral program in art history and other educational and scholarly initiatives. This is one of the largest programmatic gifts to the humanities in recent memory; I know of nothing like it anywhere else in the country. We are deeply grateful for the Keithleys’ generosity and for their recognition of the importance of our partnership with the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Two years ago, it was my privilege at Homecoming to announce an anonymous $20 million gift to support promising research in the natural sciences. Like the Keithleys’ donation, this gift recognized one of the college’s areas of excellence and will provide us with the resources to build on our strengths. In another such area, we are continuing the fundraising and planning initiated by lead donors Milton and Tamar Maltz to establish a premier performing arts center at The Temple – Tifereth Israel, a worthy home for our remarkable programs in theater, music and dance. I hope that those of you who have not returned to campus recently will find an occasion to do so in the near future. I know you will be delighted by your surroundings—and, even more, by the incredible people you will find here.
Cyrus C. Taylor
Dean and Albert A. Michelson Professor in Physics