The University has hired a new CIO to take over for Peter Stein, who announced in January that he would be leaving this month. Mark A. Schmid, currently vice president and CIO of Windy City behemoth Boeing, will be taking Stein’s place.The U of C CIO sits at the helm of the Investment Office and manages the University’s endowment. The week before Stein announced his departure, administrators acknowledged that the value of the endowment had fallen some 25 percent since the fall’s economic turmoil began. (University officials have stressed that this is in line with peer institutions, whose endowments have all taken a blow. Harvard, for instance, announced today that it would lay off 275 employees due to recession woes. One of the more devastating rounds in Hyde Park occurred in February, when the University of Chicago Medical Center cut its staff by almost 5 percent – 450 employees.) You can see a chart of the fluctuation of the endowment’s value here. Schmid starts on July 6.Pictured above is the Boeing 787, which was slated for launch in fall 2007 but, two years of delays (notably December 2008 and, curiously, today) later, is still on the tarmac.