April 23, 2004

No Longer a Safety School

Northeastern U. revamps its image and strives to crack the national rankings' Top 100

By AUDREY WILLIAMS JUNE

Steven A. Morrison, an economics professor at Northeastern University, once criticized the institution's administration for spending money to plant flowers and shrubbery at a time when faculty members were being asked to go without raises.

But officials at Northeastern were determined to soften the gritty urban campus, a collection of boxy buildings anchored in a sea of asphalt. And so, as Mr. Morrison says, "they started planting stuff where parking lots used to be."

At the