OCR Text |
Show Windy City's Sunshine Boys print journalism to join the faculty at the small liberal-art- s school and teach the career skills they had learned. They accepted, and the students are glad. it came to filling positions, Alexandroff, president of Chicago's Columbia College, decided that many of his semiretired friends were better put on staff than out to pasture. And so, in the late 70s, Alexandroff began inviting some pals who were veterans in broadcast and When sac- - f i y Old-bo- y network: Columbia's Ed Morris, Nat Lehrman and John Tarini to explain." His goal now: a starting doubles position. "He's an inspiration," says coach Grant Longley. "For someone his age, he's got the legs of a David Ba rboza 7i Salem An Enquiring Prof, at Tulane you're The next time in the as "Ten Things You Should Never Let Your Boss Hear You Say" (including "I have a hangover" and "You are overweight"). Koenig handles more than a dozen other media requests each month. On "Good Morning America" last December, he argued that the commercialization of Christmas made people happy, g while Pulitzer columnist Jimmy Breslin lamented the holiday glitz. "I was Tiny Tim," Koenig recalls. "He was Scrooge." Do fellow professors object to his exercise? "Not as much as you might imagine. Most want to know how they can get in on it." Prize-winnin- pop-cultu- checkout line and flipping through the headless-alien-babheadlines in the National Enquirer, you may y well come across Fred professor Koenig the paper's favorite academic expert. "I work with y re The list of Columbia's Retirement Club reads like a Who's Who of the Windy City communications world: Edward Morris, former general manager of WSNS-TV- ; Nat Lehrman, former president of Playboy's publishing division; Eric Lund, former assistant managing editor of the Chicago Daily News; John Tarini, former executive vice president of Lee King and Partners Advertising, to name a few. "We really lean out to these kinds of Burger King is an instructional laboratory, designed to teach students the technology and d management skills of the business. The lab, set up in the department in 1983 with a Burger King grant, looks like a regular link in the chain, complete with familiar logo and menu (its version of the Whopper is called a Stout). And who better to run the experiment than an assistant professor whose name is would we lie to you? James Buergermeister. "We felt the students could benefit from seeing how the system is set up," says the Buergermeister. fast-foo- home-economi- teachers," says Constance s Zonka, Columbia's director. "It's our unofficial program for recruiting what we think are the best teachers around." Students agree. "These people are invaluable," says Ginger Schneider, a student of TV department head Morris. "There's only one way to really learn a business like television and that's to work with professionals." But what these faculty have to offer most goes beyond the classroom. Says Jackie Grant, a student in the film department: "What you trade off with a strictly academic professor, you get back with contacts." public-relation- The restaurant is also a research lab where students experiment with delectables for possible marketing by the school. For a year Buergermeister and his classes have been striving to make a better turkey sandwich. The fillet has to be broiled in a certain way to make it palatable for the connoisseur, he says. Students have already come up with one innovation a burger-makinrobot. But summer jobs are safe, for now. Says Buergermeister: "It's not ready to replace the typical fast-foo- d g Jennifer Koberstein fi Stout social-psycholog- the writer on psycho-babble,- " says Koenig, claiming he just applies psychological theories to daily life. "There is nothing I've said in the Enquirer I wouldn't use in a classroom." Koenig, tenured at Tulane, has.worked for the paper for 10 years, ever since an Enquirer writer he met asked him to explain the boom in house plants. (Koenig said that people like living things, and plants are easier to care for than pets. ) Since then Koenig has helped out at $ 100 a pop on stories such OCTOBER 1987 Christopher Brown in New Orleuns Wisconsin's Edible Ed always have it You can't way in the Burger restaurant at the University of Wisconsin in Stout. For one thing, the place is open for only 90 minutes, four days a week; for another, it doesn't serve Whoppers. That's not due to local rebelliousness, but rather because this MARTY On the fast-foo- d track: SI'RINCKR-UNIVKRS- ITY OF WISCONSIN, STOUT Instructor Scott Anderson at Stout NEWSWEEK ON CAMPUS 35 |