Wow, a centennial

One hundred years. That’s a proud legacy for Case Alumnus, but also for the Case Alumni Association, as it symbolizes the importance and the impact of Case alumni through the decades. 

In the centennial edition, we present a sample of magazine covers from the last century. It’s fascinating to me how every cover tells a story. They tell us what was once important and how we’ve changed. They also remind us that life doesn’t always change so much. 

To help unite alumni on National Case Night in 1922, The Case Alumnus announced a concert by Case musical clubs that would be broadcast “by radio-phone” to Case Clubs around the country. I instantly thought of the Zoom conference calls that connect us in these pandemic times. 

The earnest students pictured on the cover in 1931, and 1999, do not look so different from students today — young and bright and self-assured. 

The founding editors shared that confidence. In the inaugural issue of October 1921, they promised to “tell you what the boys are doing, where they are and who they are.” They expected Case graduates to become people of achievement. They were right. 

Alumni who graced our cover over the decades include Frank Rudy ’50, inventor of the Nike Air Sole; computing genius Don Knuth, MS ’60, father of the algorithm; and Bob Herbold, MS ’66, PhD ’68, former chief operating officer of Microsoft. 

The cover of the Fall 1997 issue featured Ha Jin Cho, a scholarship student who illustrated the growing importance of women and cultural diversity at the Case School of Engineering, which today is nearly 35 percent female and made up of students from around the world. 

One of my favorite covers shows a younger Professor Malcolm Cooke, PhD ’05, showing off a boxy new CNC machine that represented the state of the art in 1999. The device would soon be outdated, of course, but no matter. Case kept innovating. 

Cooke retired last year as the inaugural executive director of Sears think[box], the university’s acclaimed innovation center, which he helped design and build. 

He never quit innovating.

 
Caseys never do. We hope to keep telling your stories for as long and as well as we can. 

Robert L. Smith
Editor
Robert.Smith@casealum.org