Inside Uptown & 'Round About
NEWS BRIEFS
CONTENTS
- Take me to this brief:
Olympic sparks
- Alumni brighten 2002 games
Cancer free - New treatment defeats tumor
We finish first - Design, law, Web page
rank high
Record research - UC reaches $230 million
Center blossoms - Building healthier
communities
Comet chaser - Taking "Time"
for a photo
UC Corvette - Driving tomorrow's
designs
"What's this all about?" -
CCM offers feast of arts
"Movin' on up" - Overflow
frosh diverted to hotel
$121 million cut - Tuition increases follow
Quite eclectic - Popular retailer, UC
lead urban renewal
Congratulations - New leaders and
a notable Chin
"He's alive!" - Kitchen-ized
robot drawings come to life
UC in Playboy - Kicker, Playmate make
October issue
CCM everywhere - Alumni on TV, radio,
Olympics
| UC |  |
| Former Bearcat, New Jersey Nets' forward Kenyon martin at Paul Brown Stadium. photo/Lisa Ventre |
Olympic
sparks
The Olympic flame captured the attention of the world this winter in part
because of embers sparked by UC. Amy Lukas, DAAP '95, helped design not
only the "look" of the torch relay, but the entire games. Bill
Kavanagh, DAAP '78, produced celebrations for both the relay and the games.
And former Bearcat basketball star Kenyon Martin and other alumni carried
torches in their hometowns.
Lukas was the design project manager for the organizing committee's "Look
of the Games." Two and a half years ago, she and a team of 22 designers
began developing Olympic logos, street and building banners, gateway towers,
sports equipment, uniforms, mascots and even athlete imagery for 110 full-wrapped
buses. "The list seems endless," she says.
In January 2001, Kavanagh, the owner of an L.A. production company, started
working as manager of ceremonies in charge of special projects. First
he produced major torch celebrations along its 65-day journey, including
one on Dec. 4 for the flame's U.S. arrival in Atlanta with Muhammad Ali,
a Christmas event in New York at Rockefeller Center and its final stop
in Salt Lake City with Gladys Knight.
The bigger job was producing all the entertainment at various Olympic
venues, including the location featuring NBC coverage for the "Today
Show" and Jay Leno's "Tonight Show." "It's been an
amazing experience, but I'm a titch exhausted," Kavanagh said by
the eighth day.
As the games began, both Lukas and Kavanagh were also working on preparations
for the Salt Lake 2002 Paralympics in March.
Among those fired up for the Winter Olympics were UC alumni torch bearers:
The 6-foot-9 Kenyon Martin, now playing for the NBA's New Jersey Nets,
finished the final leg of the Cincinnati relay by lighting the ceremonial
Olympic cauldron in Paul Brown Stadium, and several days later, Clark
Beck carried the torch through downtown Dayton. Faculty members Barbara
Watts, associate dean of the College of Law, and Dr. Susan Schneider,
assistant professor of clinical opthalmology, also were torch bearers.
Cancer-free
Although the phrase "cancer-free" always rings miraculous, it
was even more so for Eugene Conrad. Late in 2000, he arrived at University
Hospital's Barrett Cancer Center to become the second person in the world
(and the first in this hemisphere) to receive a new treatment for his
rare form of cancer, one that lodged a tumor between two vertebrae in
his neck.
Untreated, the chordoma tumor easily could have damaged the spinal nerve,
leaving him paraplegic or worse. Furthermore, the odds of it recurring
after treatment were 50 percent.
After UC neurosurgery professor Harry Van Loveren removed pieces of deteriorated
vertebrae, Conrad received a new treatment called stereotactic Intensity
Modulated Radio Therapy. Five days a week for eight weeks, he traveled
from Dayton, Ohio, to receive a 20-minute blast of concentrated radiation,
computer-programmed to conform to the exact shape of the tumor. He then
rested for four hours before receiving another dose of radiation.
Seventy treatments later, he was pronounced cancer-free. In March he celebrated
the first anniversary of his last treatment.
