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9/21/2012
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$2.00/SEPTEMBER 24 - 30, 2012
VOL. 33, NO. 37
CWRU med school plans take hold Grants mobilize vision of modernizing campus, building program By TIMOTHY MAGAW tmagaw@crain.com
Thanks to the history-making generosity of two local foundations, Case Western Reserve University is well on its way to entering the arms race among medical schools to provide their students and faculties with first-rate buildings.
The Cleveland Foundation and the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation each have committed $10 million to the effort — the largest grants in each of the foundations’ histories — to help finance a roughly 160,000-square-foot building on the site of the now-defunct Mt. Sinai Medical Center on East 105th Street in Cleveland. The university
hopes to break ground on the $50 million project in 2016. Case Western Reserve president Barbara Snyder called the School of Medicine’s faculty “the class of the field” but noted the 1950s-era facilities in which the school is housed “do not match the quality of the work and the people.” “We don’t have a physical pres-
ence in the community that matches that,” too, Ms. Snyder said. About half of Case Western Reserve’s peer institutions have planned for or built new facilities in the last five years, according to Dr. Pamela Davis, the medical school’s dean. While the school has had healthy enrollment in recent years, she conceded that some prospective students have tended to “draw back” once they saw the school’s current facilities. See CWRU Page 5
LAUREN RAFFERTY
Armed with data, test cases, Tribe looks to long term ‘Mid-term’ surveying continues as team conceptualizes ballpark’s future By JOEL HAMMOND jmhammond@crain.com
MARC GOLUB
From left, Cleveland State University freshmen Bryan Fox, Olivia Wulfhoop and Christian Cantu represent a class whose average high school GPA is 3.19, the best in the university’s history.
GPAs HAVE NEW VALUE State’s public universities shift recruitment focus from quantity to quality of student body, much like private college counterparts
By TIMOTHY MAGAW tmagaw@crain.com
N
ortheast Ohio’s public universities aren’t so much touting the number of freshmen flooding their campuses this fall as they are boasting about how much academic muscle those students can flex. The change in marketing emphasis is the result of a shift in recent years in recruitment strategies by public colleges as they seek to emulate their private school peers by attracting bright students who wield above-average ACT scores and high school grade point averages — and thus are more likely to leave college with a degree. “You’re going to improve in all fronts when you
For the last 2½ years, the Cleveland Indians have sent to season ticket holders, corporate sponsors and other stakeholders dozens of surveys about potential changes at 18-year-old Progressive Field. And, in light of those survey results, some changes already have been made, such as the conversion of a half-dozen luxury suites along the right-field line into the Indians’ Kids Clubhouse. Now comes the big stuff. Indians president Mark Shapiro said the team within the next 18 months will have a multiphase plan in place for long-term changes at Progressive Field. The plan will address ballpark capacity, which could decrease as seating areas are removed or consolidated; circulation, where the Indians will study how fans move about the ballpark; and the appropriate premium product mix, which would be the end result of all the surveys the team has done. It also will tackle the sticky subject of how to pay for the changes. See INDIANS Page 9
INSIDE Microloans meet demand Small business owners like Alison Musser (right) are taking advantage of microloan programs. Ms. Musser owns Babies Travel Too. PAGE 15 PLUS: Meet the interim CEO of BioEnterprise, Aram Nerpouni. PAGE 3
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