Wake Forest Magazine December 2000 - Past Issues - Wake Forest ...

9
C a m p u s C h r o n i c l e
and would introduce me to
someone else. It is a politically
divided country; people are so
far apart on the political spectrum
that I had to hide my
own political orientation in
order to get more interviews.”
Siavelis’ articles on Latin
American politics, including
electoral reform, voting behavior,
and democracy, have been
published in numerous textbooks
and journals and
presented at national and
international political and
academic assemblies. His
expertise in Latin American
politics brought him consulting
roles in the private sector
and with the U.S. State
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence
Research, which hired
him to brief several U.S.
ambassadors to Chile.
“I don’t think institutions
make everything happen, but
they are very important in
shaping decisions,” he said.
“My research tries to get at
how social movements interact
with the institution of congress,
the president, political
parties, electoral systems, and
trade unions—and where we
might find the balance between
them. For instance, if the president
is too powerful and marginalizes
the congress, that has
an impact on how people are
represented, how democracy
is allowed to live. I am interested
in how to enhance the
representative capacity of
these institutions.” Wf
—Sheridan Hill
Almanac
A miscellaneous compendium of news and facts
about Wake Forest University
◆ WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY RANKS twenty-eighth for
the second consecutive year among national universities in the
new edition of U.S. News & World Report’s guide, “America’s
Best Colleges.” The annual guide gives Wake Forest high marks
for its small classes, low student-faculty ratio, high graduation
and retention rates, financial resources, and alumni giving.
The Calloway School of Business and Accountancy also ranks
twenty-eighth among the nation’s best undergraduate business
programs in the guide.
◆ FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW, Calloway students
achieved the highest passage rate in the country for their performance
on the CPA exam. Of the twenty-five Wake Forest
students taking the exam, twenty-two, or 88 percent, passed
all four parts the first time. The closest university competitor,
Virginia, was more than 17 percentage points behind.
◆ IT HAS BEEN THIRTY-SIX YEARS SINCE Arnold Palmer
won his last major golfing championship, but he is still king in
the eyes of the golfing public. Palmer, a former Deacon great,
topped a field of fifty in a “Golf Personality Index” published
in the September issue of Golf World Business. With a score
of 76.3 on a 100-point scale, Palmer beat out Jack Nicklaus
(73.2) and Tiger Woods (67.6) for the top spot in the ranking,
designed to measure the relative appeal of golf figures.
◆ ALLEN MANDELBAUM, THE W. R. KENAN JR. Professor
of Humanities at Wake Forest and the Professor (per chiara
fama) of the History of Literary Criticism at the University
of Torino in Italy, is widely regarded as the world’s leading
translator of Dante. For that distinction, he has received the
Gold Medal of the City of Florence, which he accepted in
a ceremony on June 3 as part of festivities honoring the
735th anniversary of the great poet’s birth. According to
Mandelbaum, this was the first time a translator of Dante
had been so honored by the city where Dante was born and
lived. In addition to his Dante translations, Mandelbaum has
received the National Book Award for his Aeneid translation,
and he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his
translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid.
W a k e F o r e s t December 2000