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Posted 10-19-99
CLEVELAND -- October 29 will be an important day for Case Western Reserve University and for the region, as David Auston is officially installed as president of Ohio's largest private research university. The inauguration ceremony begins at 2:30 p.m. Friday, October 29 in CWRU's Veale Convocation, Recreation, and Athletic Center.
The academic procession will include hundreds of participants -- members of the CWRU community, as well as representatives of colleges, universities, and academic organizations from throughout the country and other nations.
During his inaugural address, Auston will unveil his vision for the future of CWRU, Ohio's leading private research university. Auston's plans will have an impact not only on the CWRU campus, but on the region, since he has expressed strong interest in the University's role in economic development.
Malcolm Gillis, president of Rice University, will deliver a "call to service" for Auston, outlining the challenges and expectations that presidents of leading universities face. Auston was provost at Rice from 1994 until becoming CWRU's president in July. Gillis has been president of Rice since 1993.
The inauguration program also will include comments and greetings from representatives of CWRU's trustees, faculty, staff, students, and alumni. The event will be Webcast at http://www.cwru.edu/events/.
Auston is the fifth president in the history of CWRU, which was created in 1967 through the federation of Case Institute of Technology (CIT) and Western Reserve University (WRU). CWRU traces its roots to 1826, when WRU was founded. CIT was established in 1880 as the Case School of Applied Science.
Today CWRU leads Ohio's higher education institutions in many ways. CWRU is one of the nation's major independent research universities, and the largest private research university in Ohio. It ranks 12th among the nation's private research universities in federal awards to support research and development. CWRU received more than $169 million in 1997-98 from government, industry, and private sources for research and sponsored projects.
CWRU enrolls 9,600 students from all 50 states and 97 nations. CWRU is recognized for many of its outstanding programs and has acquired an international reputation for excellence in teaching, research, and scholarship. Through the College of Arts and Sciences, Case School of Engineering, School of Graduate Studies, and professional schools in applied social sciences, dentistry, law, management, medicine, and nursing, CWRU offers degrees in more than 60 fields. Around 70 percent of current freshmen were in the top 10 percent of their high school graduating class, and around 90 percent were in the top 20 percent.
Since 1990 CWRU has invested nearly $325 million in capital improvements as part of a comprehensive campus master plan. The result is a new library (which merges storage and delivery of traditional and electronic information resources), a new convocation and recreation center, and state-of-the-art facilities for biomedical research, engineering and science, applied social sciences, and executive education. Every building on campus is linked to the Internet through CWRUnet, the nation's first all-fiber-optic campus computer network.
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