1952

At a short meeting of available class officers at the conclusion of Class Officers Weekend in Hanover in late April, it was reported that Charlie Blakemore had resigned as class president and it was decided that Dick McDonough be asked to step into Charlie's shoes as acting class president until our next reunion in 1992. As previously reported, Charlie's advertising endeavors have taken him to Mexico City whence it is difficult to follow Dartmouth and 1952 affairs. Initial plans for a minireunion over Yale weekend this fall and organization for the 1992 reunion were other matters covered at the meeting. More details on these later. Mark the Yale weekend now.

The sequel to dinner with Jack Foster in Chicago recently was a nice article about Steve Lazarus sent by Jack. You may recall my reporting a couple of years ago of Steve's move in 1986 from Baxter Healthcare Cor- poration to assume the role of president and CEO of ARCH, the Argonne-Chicago Development Corporation, "an organization that focuses the efforts of the University of Chicago, the Graduate School of Business, and the Argonne National Laboratory on the task of bringing technological advances to the market place." Three years later, ARCH is flourishing, having grown from a two-person operation to one with a healthy complement of fall- and part-time staff plus some 40 M.B.A. student associates. Though a number of universities and research centers have teamed up in this kind of technology-transfer business, Steve describes ARCH as unique in two respects. It uses M.B.A. students "in the day-to-day tasks of commercialization" . . . and it has a stated mission of "developing new companies as it develops new products." Even with an array of technologies under development such as AIDS vaccines, cholesterol tests, artificial intelligence they consider the most important product of this schema to be the human one, the creation and development of expertise and management talent to provide the backbone for these new enterprises.

Thus far, three ARCH spin-off companies have developed from the university's research-in software products to lower health-care costs, optical devices for application to fiber optics and lasers, and math tools for primary school education. ARCH has negotiated licensing agreements for several of the lab's inventions, one of which is in the field of superconductors. In addition, a number of other spinoff companies are currently "in the pipeline." Knowing the vulnerabilty of new companies and new products, the people at ARCH are cautious though hopeful; as Steve points out, "We have an advantage . . . Because the basic research ... is being conducted at Argonne and the university,"it's just as if we took that line item and put down zero dollars." An $8.5 million capital fund campaign closed earlier this year is expected to enable ARCH to continue providing first-round funding for projects, launch more companies, and provide continued opportunities for students to gain product and enterprise experience.

On a sad note, we have learned since the last column of the deaths of Gene Brooks in Nashua, N.H., and Bernie Lewis in Portland, Maine.

Would appreciate news or articles about you or a classmate.

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