Six decades ago, Han Pyo Wook ’42 studied at Syracuse University before going on to a prominent career as a longtime South Korean diplomat. This spring, the Han Pyo Wook Lecture Series was launched at the Maxwell School, and Han’s son, Victor, was present at the inaugural lecture to receive a Chancellor’s Medal for distinguished service awarded to his father. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world,” Victor Han said. “My father wanted everyone here to know that when he speaks of college, it is Syracuse University he is thinking of.”
      In 1949, Han helped establish the Korean embassy in Washington, D.C., which was the Republic of Korea’s first embassy in the world. Han later served as an ambassador to the United States and several other countries, as well as the United Nations.
      The first speaker in the lecture series was South Korean Ambassador to the United States Sung Chul, a protégé of Han’s. In his address at Eggers Hall, Sung discussed Korea-U.S. relations and South Korea’s current policy toward North Korea. “We should neither overestimate the threat of North Korea, nor underestimate its destructive capabilities,” he said.

Two SU teams captured national titles in recent legal competitions.
      College of Law students Rebecca Secco, Christopher Jahnke, and David Reed won the National Tax Moot Court Competition in St. Petersburg, Florida. It’s the first time an SU team won the event.
      SU’s undergraduate mock trial team collected first place in its division and the overall championship at the Silver Flight National Intercollegiate Mock Trial Tournament in St. Paul, Minnesota.
      In addition to team honors, All-America honors went to Meghan Bashaar ’02 and Nita Narayan ’04 for their performances as an attorney and a witness, respectively. The team also included Dmitry Bam ’01, Erin Jolley ’01, Dave Burmaster ’02, Joyce George ’02, Iman Abraham ’03, and Elizabeth McElroy ’04.
      The team was sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences and funded by the Center for Undergraduate Research and Innovative Learning.

steve sartori

Cathryn R. Newton has been named dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Newton, the Jessie Heroy Page Professor of Earth Sciences and chair of the Department of Earth Sciences since 1993, became interim dean last July. She succeeds Dean Robert C. Jensen, who retired.
      “Cathy is an impressive scholar and educator with many wonderful accomplishments to her credit and a great love of our University,” says Vice Chancellor and Provost Deborah A. Freund. “Everyone was impressed with the breadth of her knowledge across the disciplines. She had enormous support from the search committee, the faculty, references, and every other constituency she worked with this year.”
      Freund noted that Newton was chosen from a strong and experienced pool of candidates. “Our campus should be proud that we grew one of our own to be such an outstanding candidate,” she says. “I look forward to working with her in what I am sure will be many great years as our dean.”
      In her new position, Newton will guide the college through the implementation of the University’s new academic plan. “I’m delighted and humbled to have been selected to lead the college just as a new academic plan is emerging under the leadership of Vice Chancellor and Provost Freund,” Newton says. “The challenges of academic planning are great, but so are the strengths we can bring to the academic plan. Whatever I can accomplish will be done primarily by those within the college, whose efforts I will encourage and support.”
      Newton joined SU as an assistant professor of geology in 1983. She received the 1991 University Scholar/ Teacher of the Year Award, and was selected as Outstanding Faculty Advisor in 1999 by the College of Arts and Sciences. She is well-known for her research in paleobiology, paleoecology, and ancient biogeography.