FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17, 2006
Media Contacts: Micki Leventhal, 312-344-7383, mleventhal@colum.edu or
Priscilla Hunter, 312-344-7805, phunter@colum.edu
NOTE: Digital photo of Linda Johnson Rice is available.
CHICAGO, IL - Business and civic leader Linda Johnson Rice, president and chief executive officer of Johnson Publishing Company, will be honored for her contributions to journalism, the publishing industry and American Culture on Sunday, May 14, when Columbia College Chicago on her the title, Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa.
Rice will receive her doctoral hood and degree during afternoon commencement for Columbia's School of Media Arts. Ceremonies are scheduled for 3:30 p.m. at the UIC Pavilion, 525 S. Racine. Rice will address the assembled graduates and their families after being introduced by Columbia Trustee Lerone Bennett, executive editor emeritus of Ebony magazine.
"For decades, Columbia College has remained an educational frontrunner with nationally recognized undergraduate and graduate journalism programs," say Johnson Rice. "Its graduates are talented and ready to tackle the challenges this industry brings. To receive an honorary doctorate degree is certainly a privilege. To receive an honorary doctorate degree from Columbia College, I consider an honor. I am also looking forward to sharing this special day with the most important honorees, the graduates.
"There is no one in publishing more deserving of this recognition," says Dr. Warrick L. Carter, president of Columbia. "Ms. Johnson Rice has done an outstanding job guiding and growing Johnson Publishing and the company's other business interests. Johnson Publishing is a national treasure that continues to be a strong and singular voice on behalf of the African American community.
"In an age of tumultuous media transformation, Linda Johnson Rice has a national reputation for maintaining the high ethical and professional standards of Johnson Publishing, and taking them to a new level," says Doreen Bartoni, dean of Columbia's school of media arts. "In her creative management, and her civic engagement, she is truly one of the key players of our Information Age. Our students are fortunate to have this opportunity to hear from her.
Columbia College Chicago, an urban institution committed to open access, opportunity and excellence in higher education, provides innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Founded in 1890 as a communications school for women, Columbia College Chicago was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a "hands-on minds-on" approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the current leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D. Columbia is aggressively pursuing this mission. Through the diversity of its students and graduates, the school brings a rich vision and multiplicity of voices to American culture. For further information visit www.colum.edu.
Biography of Linda Johnson Rice
Linda Johnson Rice is President and Chief Executive Officer of Johnson Publishing Company, Inc., publishers of EBONY and JET magazines, and the number one African-American publishing company in the world. Rice oversees the corporation's domestic and international business operations, which include Fashion Fair Cosmetics, the Johnson Publishing Company Book Division, and EBONY Fashion Fair. Prior to becoming CEO in 2002, she served as President and Chief Operating Officer, Vice President and Special Assistant to the Publisher, Vice President and fashion coordinator for EBONY magazine, and fashion coordinator for EBONY Fashion Fair. She has received the Robie Award for Achievement in Industry from the Jackie Robinson Foundation, the Trumpet Award from Turner Broadcasting, the Alumni Merit Award from the University of Southern California, and the Alumni of the Year Award from Kellogg Graduate School of Management's Black Management Association of Northwestern University and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Equal Justice Award. Rice has addressed numerous business, civic, professional, community and cultural groups, as well as dignitaries from the U.S. and foreign countries. Rice participated in President William Jefferson Clinton's Economic Summit, and served as a member of the United States Presidential Delegation to the Inauguration of His Excellency Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa. She serves on the Board of Directors of Bausch & Lomb, Inc., Kimberly-Clark Corp., MoneyGram International, Inc., and Omnicom Group, Inc. She is a member of the Magazine Publishers Association, the Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture, Board of Trustees of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Women's Board of the Art Institute of Chicago, Board of Directors of the United Negro College Fund, University of Southern California and Northwestern Memorial Corporation. She is the member of several organizations including the National Association of Black Journalists and the Young Presidents Organization. Rice holds a Bachelor of Art degree in Journalism from the University of Southern California and a Master of Business Administration degree from Northwestern University's J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17, 2006
NOTE: Digital photos of Buddy Guy are available.
CHICAGO, IL - Buddy Guy began life as a sharecropper's son in Jim Crow Louisiana and has gone on to earn his place as a living legend in the music industry. His arrival in Chicago at age 21 - to follow his dream of "just working and being at the blues clubs at night to watch Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter and them play the blues" evolved into a vibrant career that continues to entertain, inspire and instruct fans, aspiring musicians, entrepreneurs and music scholars.
Guy's contributions to music, American culture and arts education will be publicly acknowledged by Columbia College Chicago on Sunday, May 14 when the college bestows on Guy the title, Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa.
Guy will receive his doctoral hood and degree during morning commencement for Columbia's School of Fine and Performing Arts and School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Ceremonies are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at the UIC Pavilion, 525 S. Racine. Guy will address the assembled graduates and their families after being introduced by Columbia Trustee Steve Devick, CEO of Lionbeach Music, Inc.
"This is the year I will celebrate 50 years being in Chicago and to receive this honor now means a great deal to me," says Guy. "I am very proud and again honored to receive this degree."
"I am really thrilled that we are acknowledging Buddy and his accomplishments this year," says Dr. Warrick L. Carter, president of Columbia. "As a professional musician, I hold Buddy and his work in the greatest esteem. As the president of Columbia - an arts and media college where we educate our students to celebrate a diversity of voices and to author the culture of their times - I can say that Buddy Guy represents the talent, vision, initiative and spirit we value in our students.
"Buddy Guy is one of the significant bluesmen of our time," says Dr. Rosita Sands, executive director of Columbia's Center for Black Music Research. "He belongs to that group of musicians who were more than songsters, they were devoted keepers of the history of their people and important transmitters of American culture and life. Following in the tradition of early blues musicians, Buddy Guy has proven to be a masterful communicator intertwining raw emotion and gutsy expression with harmonies, rhythms and vocalizing that tells the stories and effectively serves to translate the experiences and conditions of black people in this country. As one of the important bluesmen, his contribution to American music, and ultimately the world is certainly worthy of this recognition.
Columbia College Chicago, an urban institution committed to open access, opportunity and excellence in higher education, provides innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Founded in 1890 as a communications school for women, Columbia College Chicago was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a "hands-on minds-on" approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the current leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D. Columbia is aggressively pursuing this mission. Through the diversity of its students and graduates, the school brings a rich vision and multiplicity of voices to American culture. For further information visit www.colum.edu.
Biography of Buddy Guy
World renowned blues artist Buddy Guy is a pioneer of Chicago's fabled West Side sound and a living link to our city's halcyon days of electric blues. He was seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift "guitar"--a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother's hairpins. It would be nearly another decade before Guy would own an actual guitar--a Harmony acoustic that now proudly sits on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. In 1957 he moved from Louisiana to Chicago, and within months he had taken up residency in Chicago's fabled 708 Club. By the early 1960s, Guy was a first-call session man at Chess Records. As a session man, he backed the likes of Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Sonny Boy Williamson. By the decade's end, Guy was staking out new creative territory, cutting albums like 1967's I Left My Blues in San Francisco, his last effort for Chess, and 1968's A Man and the Blues for Vanguard. In the process, Guy, the purveyor of a stinging, attacking electric guitar style and wild, impassioned vocals, was capturing the minds of a growing number of rock musicians. His first three albums for Silvertone--the 1991 comeback smash Damn Right, I've Got the Blues (reissued in 2005), 1993's Feels Like Rain and 1994's Slippin' In--all earned Grammy Awards. Internationally acclaimed, five-time Grammy winner and inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Guy has firmly cemented a blues legacy that places him squarely in the company of his heroes who came before.
Columbia College Chicago Media Contacts:
Micki Leventhal, 312-344-7383mleventhal@colum.edu or
Priscilla Hunter, 312-344-7805, phunter@colum.edu
Jive Records Media Contact: Lori Berk, 212-824-1885, Lori.berk@jiverecords.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 17, 2006
Media Contacts: Micki Leventhal, 312.344.7383, mleventhal@colum.edu or Priscilla Hunter, 312-344-7805, phunter@colum.edu
NOTE: Digital photo of Bernhard Sahlins is available.
CHICAGO, IL - Bernard Sahlins may not be a household name, but some of the institutions he created certainly are. Sahlins is the founder of the world-renowned The Second City, birthplace of improv comedy and launching pad for several generations of beloved Saturday Night Live comedians. He is also an award-winning playwright, director and producer.
Sahlins' contributions to arts and culture will be acknowledged by Columbia College Chicago on Sunday May 14 when they bestow on him the title, Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa.
Sahlins will receive his doctoral hood and degree during morning commencement for Columbia's School of Fine and Performing Arts and School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Ceremonies are scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at the UIC Pavilion, 525 S. Racine. Sahlins will address the assembled graduates and their families after being introduced by longtime friend and colleague Sheldon Patinkin, chair of Columbia's theater department.
"I have long admired Columbia College, both for the worthiness of its artistic mission and the superb skill with which it implements that mission, says Sahlins. "This is a unique institution. I am thrilled and delighted by this honor."
"Bernard Sahlins' accomplishments have contributed immeasurably to the growth of Chicago as a major theater town," says Dr. Warrick L. Carter, president of Columbia. "He is a true Chicago institution and is eminently worthy of this recognition."
"Bernard Sahlins has for many years been a major figure in the history of theater both in Chicago and in America," says Sheldon Patinkin, chair of Columbia's theater department. "In 1953 he became a producer of Playwrights Theatre Club, the first professional theater company in Chicago in many years. It featured such budding actors and directors as Ed Asner, Mike Nichols, Elaine May, Paul Sills, Byrne and Joyce Piven, and me. In 1956 he took over the empty downtown Studebaker Theatre and did a year of plays which included the Chicago premiere of Waiting for Godot and then in 1959, with Paul Sills and Howard Alk, he opened The Second City where Bernie remained as producer and, eventually, one of the directors until the 1990s. Among the many talents he hired are John and Jim Belushi, John Candy, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis and Bill Murray. Bernie was also one of the producers of the acclaimed TV show SCTV. Since retiring from Second City, he has remained an active presence on the Chicago theater scene, helping to produce the International Theatre Festival among other such enterprises, and now staging readings of verse plays for Poetry Magazine. His legacy to theater and, in particular, to comedy in America, is secure and clearly permanent."
Columbia College Chicago, an urban institution committed to open access, opportunity and excellence in higher education, provides innovative degree programs in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Founded in 1890 as a communications school for women, Columbia College Chicago was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a "hands-on minds-on" approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the current leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D. Columbia is aggressively pursuing this mission. Through the diversity of its students and graduates, the school brings a rich vision and multiplicity of voices to American culture. For further information visit www.colum.edu.
Biography of Bernard Sahlins
Director, author and producer Bernard Sahlins is the founder of the world-renowned The Second City, where he also served as a longtime director and producer. Sahlins also co-founded The International Theatre Festival of Chicago and The Lithuanian International Theater Festival, and has directed and/or produced various shows in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London, and Toronto. He is also the co-creator and long-time producer of SCTV. Sahlins' directing credits include his own adaptation of The Mysteries for the Court Theatre, The Wasteland for the Humanities Festival & The Arts Club, The Cure at Troy for Steppenwolf Theater, and The Shoemakers Holiday, The Knight of the Burning Pestle and The Burial at Thebes for the Chicago Shakespeare, among myriad other productions. He has written and directed several works, including See the Light for the Museum of Science & Industry, The History of Comedy, Part 2 for the University of Chicago and A Woman for All Seasons, Jane Addams, and Dylan Thomas for the Illinois Humanities Festival. He has been a consultant for the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture and the Lithuanian National Theatre, The Disney Company, The Market Theatre: Johannesburg, The Museum Campus, USIS: Rumania, Lithuania, The University of Chicago arts programs, and The British Council. He is the author of Days and Nights at The Second City: A Memoir. Sahlins is the recipient of The Sergel prize for playwriting, The University of Chicago Professional Achievement Award, The Chicago Drama League's Professional Achievement Award, Joseph Jefferson Awards for directing and professional achievement, The Illinois Arts Alliance "Legend" award, and the Improv Festival Achievement Award. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Board of Directors for The Arts Club of Chicago, and the Board of Directors for the DePaul School of Drama.
Media contact: Priscilla L. Hunter, 312.344.7805, phunter@colum.edu or Micki Leventhal, 312.344.7383, mleventhal@colum.edu
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chicago, April 2006--As we are reminded to spring forward this time each year and loose an hour's sleep, to the next generation of aspiring fashion designers, the annual spring tradition signifies something more. With nervous energy and excitement, Columbia College Chicago's fashion design and fashion retail management students leap into spring to showcase their skills and talent in Fashion Columbia, the college's annual student-produced fashion show.
This year the producers are taking the show to the streets. Matinee and evening shows will be held under a tent (a la Bryant Park), at the corner of Wabash and Harrison Avenues, in the heart of Columbia's campus in the South Loop.
The runway-style fashion show begins with a matinee show at 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 11. A second evening show will be held at 7 p.m., followed by a cocktail reception. Tickets to the matinee are $35 general admission and free for any student with a valid student ID. Tickets for the evening show and cocktail reception are $60 general admission and $35 for students with a valid ID. To purchase tickets or for further information call 312.344.6280. RSVP's will be held at the door. Tickets may also be purchased with cash at the door the day of the shows.
Fashion Columbia showcases the work of the Columbia's fashion design students. The designs are the students' original creations from inception to the final hem. The show is produced by fashion design and retail management students enrolled in the Fashion Show Production Class, under the direction of Nena Ivon, Manager of Public Relations Special Events/Fashion for Saks Fifth Avenue. As faculty advisor to Fashion Columbia and a leader in Chicago's fashion community, Nena understands the impact this hands-on experience has on the students (particularly since the majority of the student producers and designers are already working in the industry) and the fashion industry. "Each year the students look forward to this event with a healthy anxiety, say Ms. Ivon. "The production aspect of the show will reflect the students' aesthetic interpretation of the designs and bring together a collaborative and cohesive product from two academic departments."
This year attendees can expect to see several menswear collections, women's high-end couture designed for the modern woman and contemporary collections using stretch corduroy and hand-screen printed silks dresses and tunics.
Twenty-two-year-old Colleen Wasilewski, a junior fashion design major from Oglesby, Illinois will use denim, cotton and soft flowing chiffon for her collection. "For this collection I looked to the night's sky for inspiration. I want the collection to feel as if it were a universe that is unreachable and dream oriented," says Colleen.
For the fourth consecutive year the student producers and Ms. Ivon will don garments during the shows designed specifically for them by fashion design students.
Columbia College Chicago, an urban institution committed to access, opportunity, and excellence in higher education, provides innovative practice and education in the visual, performing, media and communication arts to 11,000 students in more than 90 undergraduate and graduate programs. Founded in 1890 as a communications school for women, Columbia was revisioned in 1963 as a liberal arts college with a "hands-on, minds-on" approach to arts and media education and a progressive social agenda. Under the modern leadership of President Warrick L. Carter, Ph.D., Columbia is aggressively pursuing its mission to bring a richness of vision and a multiplicity of voices to the creation of culture through the diversity of our students and graduates. For further information visit www.colum.edu.