Brandeis Magazine

Guy Raz ’96, creator of National Public Radio’s “How I Built This” (downloaded over 2 million times a week and heard on more than 400 U.S. public radio stations), has launched another addictive interview podcast, “Wisdom From the Top,” available on the streaming platform Luminary. In it, Raz talks to leaders of big enterprises — NASA, Lego, Best Buy and others — who faced down failure and figured out how to turn their organization around.

Sue Berger Ramin has joined Brandeis University Press as its director, a newly created position. She will work closely with Brandeis series editors to acquire scholarly monographs and books in BUP’s areas of expertise, which include Jewish studies, and the humanities and the social sciences in general. Previously, Ramin served as associate publisher at David R. Godine, the Boston-based publishing house. She has also worked at Penguin Books and Macmillan.

Sarah McCarty ’16 has been awarded a Mortimer Hays-Brandeis Traveling Fellowship, which supports work in the visual arts. McCarty will live in Germany for a year to research supremacy ideology, and create a collection of video works, writings and social gatherings. Since graduating from Brandeis, McCarty has developed a site-responsive artistic practice through residencies in the U.S. and elsewhere, including seven months of living off the grid with scientists on a remote Pacific atoll inhabited only by seabirds.

In June, violinist Lizzy Joo ’22 was among the nearly 100 musicians who participated in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra’s 16-day tour of Brazil, performing nine concerts in eight cities. A series of master classes and side-by-side performances with local musicians gave the ensemble many chances to interact with colleagues across cultural and linguistic boundaries.

Three major works were recently added to the Rose Art Museum’s permanent collection, purchased with funds from museum endowments. The new acquisitions are Betye Saar’s mixed-media assemblage “Supreme Quality” (1998); Ralph Coburn’s multipart painting “Random Sequence Participatory Composition” (1962); and Joe Overstreet’s monumental sculptural painting “Untitled” (1972), from his “Flight Patterns” series. Of the 15 works added to the Rose collection this year, 67% are by women, and 53% are by artists of color.