Tellabs founder leaving
Birck has incurable form of leukemia
Michael Birck, a founder and chairman of Naperville-based Tellabs Inc., said Friday he has an incurable form of leukemia and will step down from the company next spring.
Birck, 74, made the announcement in a letter to shareholders, employees and customers. He said he has chronic myelomonocytic leukemia, a relatively rare form of bone cancer most often diagnosed in people over age 60.
“It is treatable, but it is not curable,” Birck said. “I have started treatment, which includes a series of chemotherapy sessions and frequent blood tests. I feel good, but I understand that this is something I must expect to live with from now on.”
Last month, Tellabs’ chief executive officer, Rob Pullen, died at 50 of colon cancer. Birck mentioned Pullen in his letter, calling this year “particularly difficult.”
“We have lost a dear friend and colleague, something that makes one stop and think about the big issues,” Birck said.
Tellabs makes networking equipment for companies such as AT&T and Verizon and employs more than 2,600 people. Birck has been its chairman since 2000. He helped start Tellabs in 1975.
Ornis Mala honed his computer skills developing databases, specialty apps and software systems at Lake Forest College, a liberal-arts school whose digital media design studies, specialized website portals and wider diversity outreach reflect the changing needs of today’s work force.
Mala, 23, a native of Kosovo in southeastern Europe, found Lake Forest College by searching the Web with help from his high school guidance counselor.
“I looked at professors’ websites and profiles, the student groups’ online postings and the college ‘news’ section of the website,” said Mala, who graduated in May 2011 with a bachelor of arts in computer science and economics.
He got a job one week after graduation as a consultant and project manager at Vtekh, an IT consulting firm. He is now a Federal Savings Bank software manager.
Last year, 40 percent of Lake Forest College’s applicants had no contact other than clicking on the website — no visits, no phone calls, no college fair and no printed materials — before deciding to attend the school. The trend first popped up in a 2010 Hobsons Report survey showing potential students relied on a campus visit and the college website, in that order, to decide where to apply for college.
Lake Forest hires high school juniors and seniors in the summer to troll the college website and offer ideas. More Sci-Tech talk on Twitter |
After a prospective student fills out an online form, the site pushes out tailored information that corresponds with the student’s intended major and minor, hobbies and other interests.
And the college uses a smartphone app available in English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese to give students a virtual campus tour.
“Kids are using their smart- phones and texting rather than using email,” said Admissions Director Bill Motzer. “We’ve refocused how we reach students, constantly updating the website and no longer printing more expensive ‘viewbooks.’
It’s a team effort. While the college offers technology-influenced degrees, campus diversity and internship programs that employers want, professors network with educators in China, Eastern Europe and other emerging nations whose students may more freely study abroad.
The result? The 1,600-student, four-year college has introduced finance as a major, boosted the popularity of digital media design as a minor, and doubled the number of students attending from outside of the United States in the past 10 years, boosting the international presence to 15 percent of the student body. The college, which has enjoyed a 33 percent jump in enrollment in the past decade, attracts students from 78 countries and 47 states.
Though Lake Forest has seen the percentage of students who qualify for Pell Grants — the federal grant for low-income students — jump to 33 percent from 25 percent four years ago— the school still offers full-tuition scholarships each year to as many as 25 qualifying poverty-level Chicago Public School students.
For 80 percent of on-campus students, the average amount of financial aid is $35,000 of the $47,000 yearly tuition. Of the $35,000, the average loan is $5,000, with the remainder in grants and scholarships.
Economics professor Enrico Moretti, author of
said a growing number of private colleges are changing their curricula to educate students in jobs that are fast-growing, such as graphics and Internet design.
“There will always be liberal arts education and people who want to study and teach history and philosophy,” he said. “But colleges are reacting to a changed labor market.”