Homeward bound

Mark your calendars -- only two weeks to go until Homecoming weekend here at Carnegie Mellon. We have about 70,000 living alumni, give or take, which means that if every single one of them came to Homecoming, the population of the city of Pittsburgh would temporarily swell by 20 percent. (And we would need to order a lot more cookies.) Eight hundred of those alumni work at Carnegie Mellon as faculty and staff, and you can find a list of them by clicking here.

If you are planning to come back for Homecoming, you can find a schedule of events here. Highlights include:

• Professor of Rhetoric and Linguistics in the Department of English, Barbara Johnstone, will trace the history of the "Pittsburghese" dialect, talk about how it is changing and how people across the country are keeping it alive from 1 to 2p.m. Friday, Oct. 26.
• President Jared L. Cohon will address the campus community on Carnegie Mellon¹s current state and plans for the future from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 27 in McConomy Auditorium.
  
• The Fourth Annual Homecoming Chili Cook-Off, sponsored by the Carnegie Clan and the Office of Alumni Relations, gets underway at noon Saturday, Oct. 27 in the East/West Walkway and between the University Center/West Wing.  Sign up by emailing cmuchilicookoff@gmail.com with a team name and team members by Oct. 20.

And of course, on Saturday, Oct. 27, the Tartan football team takes the field against the Washington University Bears. The game starts at 1 p.m. at Gesling Stadium. Be there.

Jonathan Potts