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Previous Events
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PREVIOUS EVENTS
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harvard club night the 5th Annual Harvard Club night at the Durham Bulls
took place on
Sunday, June 13 at 5:00 pm. The Bulls beat the Gwinnett (formerly Richmond)
Braves.
The Club reserved one of the new Terrace Boxes as part of
the ticket package. Our Terrace
Box provided an area for our alumni and guests to sit or stand and
socialize during the game. The game was well attended and fun for all.
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harvard Alumni invited to visit sas institute SAS is America’s No. 1 place to work! In a special visit just for the Harvard Club, alumni found out why SAS has
consistently ranked among Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For in America.
This year, Fortune ranked this Cary-based business analytics company as having
the country’s top work environment. Founded in 1976 by SAS CEO Jim Goodnight and
current Executive Vice President John Sall, SAS is now the world’s largest
privately owned software company. SAS employs about 11,000 worldwide and 4,200
in Cary. Quick bits about SAS: You can read more at:
http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/2010fortuneranking.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/bestcompanies/2010/snapshots/1.html
___________________ The Harvard Club of the Research Triangle was honored to
have Professor William (Bill) Ferris, internationally renowned folklorist
and author, be our guest luncheon speaker at the Radisson Hotel in RTP on
Thursday 25th, 2010. Also, William (Bill) Friday, President Emeritus of the UNC
System--in recognition of his lifetime of service to the citizens of North
Carolina - was present to receive the club’s newly created annual Roland Giduz Harvard Club of the Research Triangle Community Service Award. Bill Ferris is no stranger to our club, having
previously entertained us with his humorous stories and songs he collected over
the years growing up in Mississippi. But on the 25th, Bill delivered a
fascinating talk about his new book, Give My Poor Heart Ease, which documents
the stories and blues music of African-American musicians and their families
from the Mississippi worlds in which Bill grew up. After Bill’s presentation, he
autographed copies of the book. The Book…Give My Poor Heart Ease.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, folklorist William Ferris toured his home state
of Mississippi, documenting the voices of African Americans as they spoke about
and performed the diverse musical traditions that form the authentic roots of
the blues. Now, Give My Poor Heart Ease puts front and center a searing
selection of the artistically and emotionally rich voices from this invaluable
documentary record. Illustrated with Ferris’s photographs of the musicians and
their communities and including a CD of original music and a DVD of original
film, the book features more than twenty interviews relating frank, dramatic,
and engaging narratives about black life and blues music in the heart of the
American South. William
Ferris is the Joel Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate
director of the Center for the study of the American South at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A former Chairman of the National Endowment for
the Humanities, Ferris co-edited the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and is the
author of Blues from the Delta. Rolling Stone magazine has named him among the
top ten professors in the United States. For more on Ferris, please go to
http://history.unc.edu/faculty/ferris.html,
or view a brief interview with him at
http://www.youtube.com/uncchapelhill#p/u/6/DHNkldOVG8g.
___________________ Harvard professor and political philosopher Michael
Sandel delivered a lecture at Duke University on the
moral and ethical dilemmas embedded in contemporary issues such as
income inequality, affirmative action, same-sex marriage, torture
and terrorism. The author of a new book, “Justice – What’s the Right Thing to
Do?,” Sandel spoke at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, at Duke’s
Sanford School of Public Policy. The lecture and book signing in the Sanford Building’s Fleishman
Commons were free and open to the public. Sandel aimed to show “how contemporary public debate can be
deepened and enriched by an engagement with some of the big ideas of
political philosophy.”
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Pickards Mountain
Eco-Institute Outing On Sunday, October 11
starting at 2:00 pm the more than twenty Club members and guests visited the
Pickards
Mountain Eco-Institute in Chapel Hill. In addition to enjoying a
fabulous view from the mountain top (yes, there are mountains in
Chapel Hill!) attendees had a chance to see a wide variety of “green”
projects. Children will interacted with a
wide variety of farm animals, and everyone enjoyed a light supper
of quiche and salad.To view the original detailed event description,
click here.
___________________ More than 35 club
members and guests gathered at the
Integrative Health Center of Chapel Hill. Dr. Remy Coeytaux and
colleagues to hear about integrative medicine, including
acupuncture, mind/body therapies, women's wellness and more. Demonstrations and breakout sessions allowed for treatment
experiences and question and answer time. Light hors d' oeuvres were served.
To view the original detailed event description
click here.
___________________ Raleigh is the
largest state capital in the country without a law school. The woman
leading the charge to change that spoke to our club
Monday, May
11, 6:30-8:30 PM Melissa Essary, Dean of Campbell University’s
School of Law, spoke to the Harvard Club about leadership in
times of change and the law school’s pending move this fall from Buies
Creek, North Carolina to downtown Raleigh. This fascinating talk was given at a gathering of Harvard alumni
and friends over wine and hors
d’oeuvres at Wyrick Robbins Yates & Ponton – one of the Triangle’s
leading law firms. Longtime board member and former Schools Chairman
Sam Wyrick (Harvard BA ’66, Duke JD ’69) generously offered his law firm
as a gathering space. Click here to view
the original event announcement including a brief biography of Dean Essary.
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Professor Robert Lue,
Life Sciences Innovator at Harvard Each year our club collaborates
with the Harvard Alumni Association in selecting an outstanding Harvard
faculty member to speak to our club. This year, we were highly honored to
host Professor Robert Lue who has revolutionized the way life
sciences are taught and learned at Harvard. His presentation (including
creative visual effects) was of broad interest to all alums in our
area, with a special appeal to educators.
As Chair of the FAS’s Life
Sciences Education Committee, he led in the creation of a new
introductory Life Sciences curriculum, which now serves as an integrated
foundation for department course offerings in Molecular and Cellular
Biology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Chemistry and Chemical
Biology, and Biological Anthropology. As part of this broad revision, Rob let an
initiative to make innovative computing and visualization an integral part of
the curriculum as it evolves. Click here to view
the original event announcement. ___________________
Stephen Wiehe, President and CEO of
SciQuest While SciQuest is clearly one of the Triangle's biggest technology success stories, Steve's talk was more about leadership than about the merits of the business. Attendees heard the inside story of what it took to transform an e-commerce company, whose publicly traded shares had fallen dramatically in the burst of the dot-com bubble, into a successful solution provider. To view the original program description, click here. ___________________
THE GAME! Noon, Saturday, November 22: Harvard Club members and guests got together with alumni from Yale at Oh' Mulligans in Morrisville. We enjoyed good food, good drink and great fellowship while watching Harvard defeat Yale live from Harvard Stadium on high definition, big screen television. Thanks once again to the Yale club for graciously organizing this traditional celebration of Harvard supremacy. _________________________ Lunch with Harry Lewis, Harvard Professor and Former Dean of the College... November 13, 12-2 PM Harvard Club members and guests heard former Dean of Harvard College Harry Lewis discuss his new book, Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion (Addison-Wesley, 2008). If you have a cell phone, you also have a location-tracking device so your whereabouts can be tracked constantly and a microphone that can be turned on remotely and a radio that can beam your conversation away. If you use the Internet, you can be connected to people you would never have met, people who share your deepest interests and most unusual problems; you and your children can with equal ease be connected to scam artists and predators. You have at your fingertips the most powerful instrument of human enlightenment since the printing press, and the most flexible instrument of thought control ever invented. Will our children live in a world of greater understanding and enhanced freedom, or of manipulated information and pervasive monitoring? In Blown to Bits, Lewis and co-authors Hal Abelson and Ken Ledeen explore the peril and promise of our digital future. To view the original program description, click here. _________________________ Harvard Club Private Viewing of Historic Ackland Museum Exhibit... The exhibition Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art at the Ackland Museum on the UNC campus was a “don’t miss” cultural event. On Wednesday October 22 from 6-8 pm, Harvard Club members and guests were feted at a private viewing of this historic exhibition - with commentary provided by Emily Kass, the Ackland's new director and a specialist in American art. Mounted in celebration of the Ackland's fiftieth anniversary, Circa 1958 included approximately sixty-two works by fifty-seven artists drawn from more than fifty public and private collections, including the holdings of many of the artists themselves. For more information, click here. _________________________ HARVARD CLUB HAPPY HOUR... Thursday, October 16, 2008: More than a dozen club members gathered for an informal, no-host Harvard community social at Top of the Hill Restaurant and Brewery, in Chapel Hill. Organized by newcomer Kate Kohler, MBA '06 and club treasurer Rick Waechter, MBA '88, this proved to be a pleasant occasion, enjoyed by all who were able to attend. _________________________ PETER GOMES LUNCHEON... Monday, April 23, 2007: The Reverend Professor Peter Gomes regaled us at a luncheon program at the Radisson Hotel in RTP. Rev. Gomes lived up to his immensely impressive resume and reputation by simultaneously entertaining and enlightening a sellout crowd. You can read Rev. Gomes' impressive biography at the website of the Memorial Church of Harvard University. Rev. Gomes has spoken to our Club several times and never disappoints. We look forward to his next visit. Join us when he returns. _________________________ SCOTT ABELL, Harvard's Associate Vice President and Dean for Development for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, visited the Triangle to provide Harvard Club members with a candid update on what is happening at the University. We gathered at the Gateway Jazz Cafe in Morrisville on Tuesday evening, November 28, 2006, from 6 to 8 pm to talk face to face with Dean Abell. Dean Abell addressed recent events at the University, the interim leadership process, current research projects, and future initiatives including the Allston development project. His remarks were followed by an open forum. Refreshments and heavy hors-d'oeuvres were served. _________________________ THE GAME...Saturday, November 18: The Yale Club organized the 2006 Harvard/Yale Game TV party at Quinn's sports bar in Raleigh. The gathering was really a lot of fun, with a good representation of Harvard and Yale folks alike. _________________________ SOUTHERN SONGS BY YANKEES - A MUSICAL REVUE FOR THE AGES Bob Whyte performed his Southern Songs By Yankees show November 9, 2006, for a packed house of Harvard Club members and guests at the Radisson Hotel in RTP. A clever mixture of story-telling, humor, and music, Bob and his very talented sidekicks, singer Laura Jones, and piano player, Dan Wielunksi, took the audience on a Tin Pan Alley adventure featuring standards such as Swanee, and less familiar ditties like I’ve Got Those Red White and Blues. The show was structured to give the audience an emotional roller-coaster ride, moving from the snappy, saucy tunes of the 20s, such as Dinah and Hard Hearted Hannah, to the sweeter sounds of Georgia and Stars Fell on Alabama more typical of the somber depression era of the 1930s. Then the band cranked it up with Alabamy Bound and Mississippi Mud featuring a gutbucket, washboard, and kazoo band made up of audience volunteers including Phil Carl, Sean Witty and Grace Ueng’s 9-year old son, Nick. The show ended with a sing-along of Carolina in the Morning and a standing ovation for Bob, Laura, and Dan. Long time club members Jean and Tom Nuzum said it was the best Harvard Club event they had attended in years and hoped it would become an annual affair. Well, Bob? You can view an online "slide show" of the revue on the News & Observer website at the following link: http://www.newsobserver.com/1241/story/511703.html The November 19 News & Observer story about the show ("Dandy Yankee Tunes" by N&O Staff Writer Peggy Lim) can be found in the newsobserver.com archives. _________________________ DEAN THEDA SKOCPOL LUNCHEON MAY 9, 2006
We had the privilege and pleasure of meeting the Dean of the Harvard Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences at our final spring luncheon event on May 9th. Dean
Skocpol's presentation on African American Fraternal Groups in the U.S.
captivated an audience of thirty Club members and guests. Her upcoming book
about this subject promises to open the eyes of historians and others to the
essential role that these groups played in promoting the civil rights movement
and preparing the African American community to take its rightful place in
American society. _________________________
HODDING CARTER LUNCHEON APRIL 5, 2006 _________________________ LUNCHEON WITH PROFESSOR BILL FERRIS An enthusiastic crowd of Harvard alumni and their guests, along with our friends from the local Yale, MIT and Penn alumni clubs were in for a rare treat when they gathered on November 2, 2005 to hear Professor Bill Ferris help us begin to understand what makes the south so special and how the south gave birth to the blues, rock and roll and country music. He delivered his message in an entertaining way, with a sizable mix of storytelling and song. The event was held at the Radisson Hotel in RTP. Dr. William R. Ferris, Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of History
at UNC and former Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, is the
Senior Associate Director of UNC's Center for the Study of the American South. Ferris, wearing his Mississippi roots with pride, is quick to point out that
Elvis Presley, B. B. King, and Jimmy Rogers, pioneers of R&R, Blues, and Country
respectively, all came from Mississippi. He brings the art of storytelling into
his classroom, using the many compelling stories he has discovered during his
distinguished career. He has conducted thousands of interviews with musicians
ranging from the famous (B.B. King) to the unrecognized (Parchman Penitentiary
inmates working in the fields). |
