Boston College Front Row

A New England public school teacher until 1983, Janet Robinson worked in advertising at the New York Times and held a number of progressively responsible positions before becoming president in 2004. She spoke at the Universitys CEO Club in January, telling local business leaders and scholars that her company has made more changes in the last two years than at any time in its 156-year history. To achieve the goal of becoming a leading media company in the 21st century, the Times has had to revamp its business model, reinvent the craft of journalism, develop interactive relationships with its audience, and re-engineer operations and procedures. It has not been easy, Robinson declared. How could it be?

Is the term urban ecology an oxymoron? asks Eric Strauss, director of the Environmental Studies Program and science director of the Urban Ecology Institute, in his lecture at the Weston Observatory. With 75 percent of the U.S. population and half of the worlds population living in urban areas, the sustainability of urban ecological systems is of paramount importance, says Strauss, who suggests we must stop thinking of the city as a problem but as a solution with respect to environmental and social challenges.

Monster.com founder Jeffrey Taylor left the company in 2005 to found a new Internet site, Eons.com-an online community for people over age 50. There are 88 million Americans over age 50, with 12,000 more each day. This is a market thats been largely ignored, Taylor asserts. He believes the boomer generation will not retire, but graduate, and devotes his talk to this insights implications for his new enterprise. Prior to his talk, Linda Natansohn, Senior VP of Strategic Development at Eons.com, speaks about the growing market of seniors.

In this Lowell Humanities Series lecture, author Jennifer Haigh reads from her second novel, Baker Towers (William Morrow, 2005), which she characterizes as a family story set in a coal mining town in western Pennsylvania. She describes the circumstances that led her to write the book, which won the 2006 PEN/L.L. Winship Award, and responds to audience questions. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, Haigh is currently a faculty member of the Boston University Creative Writing Program.

Its been nearly 20 years since Prozac was introduced. Are we happy yet? A roundtable on psychotropic drugs-the good they do, and the concerns their expanding use raises

Keith Pecklers, SJ, Gasson Chair, describes 50 years of historical background, including discussions within the Vatican, that culminated in major liturgical changes approved in 1963. Fr. Pecklers is a professor of liturgy at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Rome and author of several books including The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America: 1926-1955 (The Liturgical Press, 1998) and Liturgy in a Postmodern World (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006).

As part of the New Directions Lecture Series, Michelle Stephens, associate professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College, explores the expression of black masculinity in performance through analysis of vaudeville performer Bert Williams, opera singer Paul Robeson, and author Frantz Fanon. She is currently working on a book about black transnational intellectuals, including Marcus Garvey and Claude McKay.

John Padberg, SJ, director of the Institute of Jesuit Sources, St. Louis University, discusses future challenges and responsibilities of Jesuits as they relate to the secular world and work with other Jesuits. This is the third of three lectures in the Center for Ignatian Spiritualitys Triple Anniversary Talks, commemorating the 500th anniversary of the births of St. Fancis Xavier and Blessed Peter Faber, and the 450th anniversary of the passing of St. Ignatius Loyola. Each program focuses on a theme pertinent to the legacy of one of these Jesuit saints.

Richard Notebaert became chairman and CEO of Qwest Communications International in 2002 after 30 years of experience at the Ameritech Corporation. He tells the Boston College Chief Executives Club what changes he made at Qwest after joining the firm when it was near insolvency. (Denver reporters had a betting pool on when the company would declare bankruptcy.) Notebaert describes refocusing the companys culture by emphasizing a Spirit of Service theme.

Emilio Mazzola, world language teacher at Newton North High School, presents an analysis and reading of the 15th canto of Dantes Purgatorio. Mazzolas commentary is in English; the reading from the Divine Comedy is in Italian.

This program is part of an ongoing public reading of the Divine Comedy organized by the Boston College Department of Romance Languages and Literatures and the Center for Italian Culture in Newton, Massachusetts.