Gift of art, architecture, hope

The Trivium, where nature and technology meet the arts

By Jamie Murphy and Brian L. Massey
Special to the Florida State Times

In the hamlet of Lloyd, just east of Tallahassee, a yellow, early-Victorian couch sits in the hallway of a unique castle-like building.
For its current owner, retired FSU Professor François Bucher, it's a cozy reminder of Princeton University - where he sometimes sat on the same couch in Albert Einstein's home and chatted with the physicist about the "nonsense of nuclear weapons, the speed of light and Gregorian chants vs. Jewish music."
Bucher bought the couch from Einstein's estate. It's now a revered icon of his Nautilus Foundation, a scholars' retreat he's woven into the untamed North Florida forest to keep alive the light of those long-ago musings about human existence.
Today, the foundation is Bucher's $3.1-million gift to FSU, the taproot of an avant-garde educational atmosphere, and Bucher's hope of salvation for an ever-more-crowded, polluted and chaotic world.
The foundation puts a forward-thinking face on the ancient concept of the scholars' village.
"We have created a kind of think tank, a place to promote creative thinking of ways to build a better world," said Bucher, who taught medieval art and architecture at FSU from 1978 until last spring. "The work and scholarship done here are focused on the future to ensure that our grandchildren will live in an acceptable world free from environmental hazards and pollutants."
It's after Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study that Bucher modeled the think tank he nurtures on 400 woodland acres 18 miles from Tallahassee. Here, he expects that some of the planet's brightest minds will live and work in a solitude not possible on a bustling university campus.
The scholars will share their thoughts, visions and hopes for humankind's future through seminars, research and publishing. But perhaps more important, FSU's Nautilus village will offer them freedom, quiet and time to ponder the world's pressing problems.
"This is very exciting for those of us involved in education of this type,"said Jerry Draper, dean of the School of Visual Arts and Dance, which will manage the foundation. He said Nautilus scholars will tackle such woes as urban ecology, nuclear weapons proliferation, pollution, global warming and over-population.
Before he came to FSU, Bucher spent time at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies. His collaborations there with such legendary thinkers as Einstein inspired the Nautilus Foundation, he said. An engaging philanthropist who speaks six modern languages plus Latin, Bucher earned his doctorate in his native Switzerland. Yet his career has been American: He's taught at the State University of New York (Binghamton), Princeton, Brown, Yale, the University of Minnesota and FSU.
At Yale, Bucher taught Draper. "He has phenomenal energy," Draper said, "a great sort of inner clock and way of working so that he can sort of dedicate one hour a day to a single project and three years later that project is accomplished."
There may be no better example than the Nautilus Foundation. It began in July 1980 with a covenant to protect the environment and opened officially in 1990.
Today, the foundation holds an observatory, an experimental audiovisual building affectionately called "the turtle," an open-air theater, and the Trivium - the home of Einstein's couch - named for the lower division of the seven liberal arts.
Now being built are the Quadrivium (for the higher division of the liberal arts) and housing for the scholars.
The "Trivium" studies in ancient Rome were grammar, rhetoric and dialectics. Bucher finds their modern counterparts in history, visual arts and communication through literature, drama and film. The Nautilus Trivium houses a library, seminar, study rooms, museum, auditorium, archive, trustees' room, guest room and director's quarters.
The "Quadrivium" studies were mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy. For Bucher, these find modern expression in architecture, urban design, theory and use of proportions, spatial organization and global ecology. This structure, being built from a design by Russian architect Georgi Stoilov, will house design studios, seminar rooms, a library and dormitory.
Also planned is a three-mile "Art Walk" flanked by large sculptures and pavilions for contemplative thought, which will underscore the symbiosis of nature, technology and the arts.
The Foundation's past projects reflect Bucher's vision of a world made better through creative thinking. For example, the 1990-91 exhibition "Nature, Humanity and Technology" featured his friend, the late Buckminster Fuller, a pioneer of urban ecology. Swiss architect Justus Dahinden led a 1992 symposium titled "Ecopolis City of the Future." The International Academy of Architecture cooperated on an international design workshop.
Bucher's gift also includes art, rare manuscripts and books, some dating back 400 years.
The gift, Draper said, "is included in François' estate plan" and will be deeded to FSU outright "as soon as the structure is in place to receive and manage the assets." Bucher's gift is one of the largest ever received by FSU's " capital campaign.
For the Swiss-born scholar from Lausanne, it's a way to ensure that "the ideals and the work of the Nautilus Foundation will continue long after I am gone."
Bucher accepted the university's invitation to watch the Clemson game from one of the plush new skyboxes, and to be honored onfield at halftime, but not without comment on the relative importance of football games and the intellectual life.
"I'd rather people give the Nautilus Foundation a million dollars than pay for sky boxes," he said.

Black alumns are distinct but loyal

FSU grad Hansel Tookes III, at right, and U.S. Air Force
Col. Michael Mushala examine the F119 engine designed by Pratt & Whitney

By John S. Cole
FSU Communications Group

Segregation didn't create the need for the Black Alumni Association at FSU; integration did, its members say. For the first wave of blacks integrating FSU in the mid 1960s, the process, while peaceful compared to other Southern white colleges, was far from easy.
"My first year in college, it was clear that the welcome mat was not there," said John Marks, one of nine black students who enrolled at FSU in 1965. "We were not treated the same as other freshmen.
"Nobody tried to keep us out, but there weren't a lot of people welcoming us here."
That changed, Marks said, but while a growing number of white students greeted their new classmates with kindness and friendship, many of FSU's first blacks suffered grade discrimination, anxiety, threats and, most of all, loneliness.
Long after graduation, some black alumni remained bitter, refusing to visit the campus even for Homecoming or class reunions.
But through all the indignation, protests, triumphs and changes there was one constant - their support for one another.
"We kind of bonded together," said Marks. "We had ourselves; we looked out for each other."
Years later, that bond is still there, kept alive partly through the efforts of the Black Alumni Association, an organization dedicated to bridging the gap between FSU's black students and alumni, and the mainstream FSU community.
While the BAA is a chartered affiliate of the larger FSU Alumni Association, its aims and goals are much more specialized.
"We wanted to provide a framework for black alumni to meet formally and informally to discuss academic, social and other alumni-oriented issues," said Cassandra Jenkins, national president of the FSU Black Alumni Association.
The BAA focuses on issues important to blacks at FSU. Its doors are open to members of all races and backgrounds, Jenkins said, "as long as they are committed to the aims and goals of the Black Alumni Association.
Since its inception in 1983, the BAA has worked to improve the quality of life for black students at FSU, to ensure that blacks have a voice in university operations, to increase the number of black faculty and to get black alumni more involved in university activities.
Black Alumni representatives have served on countless selection committees, task forces and work groups put together by the university.
Jim Melton, president of the FSU Alumni Association and director of alumni affairs, said the BAA is an integral part of the alumni community.
"What they do is vital," he said. "It's another way we can relate to our alumni and, more importantly, a way our alumni can relate to us."
Over the years, the number of blacks at FSU has climbed, from one in 1962 to more than 3,000 last year.
Of those who graduated, many have enjoyed sterling success in post college life. They include astronaut Winston Scott, olympic medalist Kim Batten and Pratt & Whitney executive Hansel Tookes III, who received achievement awards from the Black Alumni Association in August.
Batten, a 1993 graduate in social work, won the silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the 1996 Olympics. In August 1995 she set the world record in that event.
Tookes, a 1969 graduate in physics, was a Navy pilot for seven years, achieving the rank of lieutenant commander. His flying career eventually landed him executive positions with aircraft companies Hamilton Standard and Pratt & Whitney.
Tookes is now president of government engine business at Pratt & Whitney.
Scott, a music major who joined the U.S. Air Force shortly after graduating in 1972, was one of six crew members aboard the space shuttle Endeavor in January. He is one of a handful who have walked in space.
Scott gave the school momentos from his foray in space.
During a break in his itinerary, the astronaut waxed nostalgic about his days at FSU, but also remembered what he called turbulent times.
"We didn't have any big problems," he said. "There was no violence, but there was still a lot of unrest. The members of the Black Student Union were very, very active in trying to get the university to recognize what we perceived as some unique needs."
Some of those needs were basic, he said, "like some black studies, some black history courses, some black products in the exchange, little things like that."
When it came to social activites and unwinding, blacks once again turned inward, Scott said.
"There were two sets of activities," he recalled, "You'd have the campus-wide activities and then the black students would quite often be off to ourselves doing our own things."
It was only natural, said Marks, for blacks to want to be around other black students.
"There is a natural affinity and attraction that students in groups have for each other," he said. "It's a part of our world."
In 1983, that attraction led a handful of alumni, including Marks, to plan a reunion for some of the school's first black students. The plans were soon expanded, said Jenkins, then a recent graduate of the School of Criminology's master's program.
"They opened it up to everyone," she said. "They didn't want to limit it, and a lot of people wanted to participate."
Most agree that blacks at FSU today enjoy an atmosphere that is far less hostile than that suffered by the pioneers.
But many black alumni point out that blacks still are heavily outnumbered by whites and continue to face challenges assimilating to life at the university.
So, having an organized group that black students and alumni can turn to, socially and academically, is just as important as it ever was, Marks said.
"There may come a time when (the Black Alumni Association) is not needed," he said. "But right now, it's a good idea."

Making a career of weather

By Amy Welch
FSU Communications Group

The roar of a C-130 (Hercules) airplane muffles the sound of strong winds and fierce rain beating the metal of the craft. The crew inside waits for the brief moment of illumination - for the moon and stars to shine through the eye of Hurricane Edouard.
Edouard has a remarkably well-defined eye, and the crew is not disappointed. For a couple of minutes, the rain stops, the wind is calm and the sky shimmers with white light.
The six crew members, all Air Force reservists, fly into every hurricane that comes to the Gulf of Mexico or the southern Atlantic to gather information for the National Weather Service.
For Richard Henning, a member of the crew and a master's candidate in FSU's Meteorology Department, it will be a career.
Henning is getting experience that will help him move into the job he wants. For some, it's a television job, explaining and forecasting the weather for everybody.
In a slow market, FSU graduates have been unusually successful at landing jobs.
The best known is 1980 graduate Bryan Norcross, who reports for a CBS affiliate in Miami and often finds himself talking to Dan Rather on the nightly news.
But more recent graduates are also doing well. In Cheyenne, Wyo., Colin Toenjes forecasts the weather for audiences in Colorado, Nevada and Wyoming.
Toenjes, who graduated last spring, had forecasting tapes to show when he went job hunting. He had made the tapes, including the graphics, for FSU's Channel 47.
"The weather casting class at FSU and my other experience working with Channel 47 taught me the basics of how to be a TV meteorologist," Toenjes said.
Other graduates with Channel 47 experience are broadcasting the weather in Atlanta, Miami, Fort Smith, Ark., San Francisco and Chicago.
The jobs weren't easy to get. First, they had to make it through FSU's meteorology program.
"(It) was very difficult, and I think that accomplishing that and being determined to get that degree is the way life works," Norcross said. "It was good that it was difficult. I realized doing weather, and doing it well, is not simple."
Jon Ahlquist, an FSU associate professor of meteorology, gives credit for the department's success to Tiruvalam Krishnamurti.
"I'm confident saying (Krishnamurti) is the best in the world," Ahlquist said. "That's why he got that (International Meteorological Organization) award. He's just very good."
Between the academics in the classroom and the practical experience at Channel 47, job prospects can only get better, according to Donna Gabrielle, operations and program manager of Channel 47.
Gabrielle hopes this year to add live weather forecasts - now they're taped - to the students' repertoire.

FSU is most efficient

By Margaret Leonard
Editor in chief, Florida State Times

It may be the nation's number-one party school, but Florida State is also the nation's most efficient university, offering the best education for the money of them all, according to a recent study by U.S. News and World Report.
The magazine arrives at the annual ranking by surveying academic quality and dividing that score by the school's spending per student (from all sources, including tuition and tax dollars).
The rankings are published in the "America's Best Colleges" guidebook. Last year, FSU was seventh most efficient.
In another category, when quality was divided by the student's cost ("sticker price," the magazine calls it), FSU ranked eighth this year.
FSU Provost Lawrence Abele attributed the ranking to "hard work of our faculty and staff, as well as good management."
The good news about efficiency came just a week after FSU learned that it had earned the Princeton Review's "best party school" ranking, up from Number 2 last year.
Princeton Review (not affiliated with Princeton University) based the rankings on interviews with students about drinking on campus, hours of study and popularity of sororities and fraternities.
FSU President Sandy D'Alemberte said the party-school recognition isn't all bad. Princeton Review acknowledged that the "strong-willed" can obtain an "excellent education ... at a bargain basement price" at FSU. "One can easily feel overwhelmed at a school this size, but only if they allow themselves," an FSU student was quoted in the Princeton Review. "It's a friendly place, not to mention fun, plus there are excellent professors."