University President Morton O. Schapiro shared his plans for increasing diversity, the future of financial aid and the identity of his favorite band with students and faculty at a LiveWired conversation Wednesday night, the first of its kind to occur at any university.
As the kick-off to inauguration weekend, the “Conversation with President Schapiro” held in Norris University Center, allowed students to participate online or in person. About 50 students attended in Norris, laughing, asking questions or doing their homework while Schapiro described his discovery of John Legend’s music or how he attempted to virtually paint The Rock.
Andrea Rosenkranz, president of Northwestern Class Alliance, and Claire Lew, ASG’s director of public relations, moderated the discussion.
“We’re doing this because President Schapiro really believes in connecting with undergraduate students,” said Lew, a SESP junior. “There are 8,000 of us here, and we can’t always fit in one room so having this LiveWire chat allows us to get to know each other better.”
Before opening questions to students, Lew and Rosenkranz asked Schapiro his reasons for coming to work at NU.
“This is Northwestern? I thought I was at University of Chicago,” he said, jokingly. “(Northwestern’s) a great school, fabulous students and an amazing research profile. It’s one of the great schools in the world, so why not?”
The chat featured informal questions and more serious ones like his plan to help students with financial aid. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of the economics of higher education, Schapiro said he cannot wait to get his arms around the financial aid packages at NU.
“We’ve been tweaking that formula, making it much more generous, so that the loan burden for people who graduate with loans is much less than it’s been throughout private higher education until recently,” he said.
One question taken from an online participant asked about Schapiro’s plan for increasing student diversity.
“The easy part is you can recruit a diverse population, but the real thing is what happens when they get here,” he said. “How do you create a single community where everyone feels it’s their community?”
To conclude the session, Rosenkranz and Lew asked Schapiro about his favorite movie, book and band.
“I was an enormous fan of the Grateful Dead,” he said. “I saw the Dead about 20 times, and there was never another group that touched me the way the genius of Jerry Garcia did.”
The origin of the live web chat came through The Herson Group, a company specializing in university events for schools such as Yale and Cornell universities. MJ Herson, principal of the Herson Group, said he tried to duplicate the experience of a live event.
“Northwestern is the first one to really have the guts to do it,” he said. “When they came to us to work on the inauguration, we knew about Medill and the Communication school, and we like to show rather than tell. So it seemed like this was the perfect match.”
Rosenkranz, a Weinberg junior, said she thought the event was a success.
“We had a great student turnout, and people were laughing and cheering,” she said. “From the (online) questions coming in, it seemed there were plenty of people online.”
Weinberg senior Anna Kelly said she attended the event after stumbling upon it while at Norris.
“I thought he made some good points about how he wants to change campus, and I was really impressed with his vision,” she said.
Lew said she wants to have more LiveWire chats take place with Schapiro.
“With so many students on campus, I’m sure he’d love to go around campus and have one of these chats,” she said. “But it’s not something you can do physically, so being able to do it via LiveWire chat is just awesome.”
