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L. Steven Goldstein (B.A. ’73) is the new president and CEO of the University of Minnesota Foundation. He succeeds Gerald Fischer, who is stepping down after serving in the position for 18 years. Goldstein, who was volunteer president of the Alumni Association in 1989 and 1990, has been a trustee of the foundation since 2000 and vice president of strategic initiatives since 2005. In that capacity, he has focused on developing new revenue streams to support the U’s goal of becoming one of the top three public research universities in the world. Goldstein has worked extensively in advertising and media. He co-founded Colfax Communications and later became chairman of Internet Broadcasting, a national network of television Web sites. In 2000 he launched Quatris Fund, an early stage venture fund with a focus on Minnesota companies. Goldstein also has extensive experience as a volunteer in the private sector and is currently a trustee of the Bush Foundation. Fischer will remain active with the foundation in a part-time role as vice president, senior philanthropy adviser.

Jean Abraham, an assistant professor in the University’s School of Public Health Division of Health Policy and Management, is one of 10 senior staff economists to be appointed to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Abraham’s research specialties include health economics and policy, with a specific focus on issues of health insurance access by families, affordability of insurance coverage and medical care, consumer use of health care information, and the relationship between quality improvement and costs. The nonpartisan CEA was established in 1946 to provide the president with objective economic analysis and advice on the development and implementation of a wide range of domestic and international policy issues. Abraham began her one-year term in late July.

The Board of Regents has approved a memorandum of understanding on $27 million in mitigations necessitated by routing the Central Corridor Light Rail Transit Line through campus on Washington Avenue. The $27 million will be included in the total project budget submitted to the Federal Transit Administration. Major mitigations include $11.1 million for the Washington Avenue transit mall, $5.1 million for East Bank campus area street connections, and $4.4 million for environmental issues such as vibration and electromagnetic fields. The cost of community betterments, which will create better traffic flow around campus and in surrounding neighborhoods, are yet to be determined. Construction on the line, which will run between downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul, is scheduled to begin in 2010, with completion in 2014.

Professor Jonathan Foley has been named the first permanent director of the University’s new system-wide Institute on the Environment. He comes to the U from the University of Wisconsin, where he served as the founder and director of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, and was the Gaylord Nelson Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Atmospheric & Oceanic Sciences. Created in 2006, the institute brings together top researchers from the natural and social sciences, design, engineering, law, health, policy, and other disciplines to identify and solve major environmental problems. Foley began his new duties on August 25.

A $186.5 billion supplemental war-funding bill signed by President George W. Bush on June 30 contained a provision that restores funding to the NOvA high-energy physics project, which has significant University of Minnesota participation. NOvA, which stands for NuMi Off-Axis Electron Neutrino Appearance Detector, will allow scientists to study neutrinos, fundamental building blocks of matter that can help researchers discover how the universe was formed. In 2007, the Department of Energy awarded the University’s School of Physics and Astronomy $45.6 million to build the NOvA facility in northern Minnesota, but the fiscal year 2008 budget did not appropriate those funds and prohibited the Department of Energy from working on the NOvA project. The new provision will allow work to begin on an international physics laboratory in northern Minnesota.

Lee Munnich, director of the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety at the University of Minnesota, and his colleagues have mapped every road fatality in the nation so that Internet users can log on and learn how safe the routes they drive are. Their Web site www.saferoadmaps.org allows users to type in an address to see how many traffic fatalities have occurred on surrounding streets and then click to find out details such as whether speeding or alcohol were factors or if the driver was wearing a seatbelt. The researchers hope that their Web site tool helps lead to strong public policies that can save lives.