Rawlings applauds Cornellians' strength in confronting serious issues

By Jacquie Powers

Cornell President Hunter Rawlings applauded members of the campus community last week for responding, over the past year, with strength and character to the serious issues facing the campus, the nation and the world.

President Hunter Rawlings receives applause before his State of the University message, Nov. 1. Robert Barker/University Photography

"If ever there was a time for Cornell and Cornellians to take on the essential work of the university and of the larger world, it is now, when much of what we took for granted in the past decade has been put into jeopardy," Rawlings said in his annual State of the University message Nov. 1.

Addressing members of the Cornell Board of Trustees and the Cornell University Council gathered in the Alice Statler Auditorium for their joint annual meeting, Rawlings said, "We have responded to the issues facing the campus, the nation and the world with serious engagement on the part of our faculty and students, including teach-ins, seminars and other fora for education and informed debate."

He noted that many today question the role and nature of the modern university, seeing it as "an enormous and widely dispersed organization which at its core no longer has a central idea." He quoted the president of Emory University, William Chase, who said, "In thus becoming more like the commercial world surrounding it, the university's role as an inspirational entity has been eroded."

But Rawlings said that while participating in a recent conference on "The Idea of the University," sponsored by the Cornell Society for the Humanities, he came to the conclusion that the "idea" of the university was captured by the conference itself.

"The 'idea' of a university is to create a place where critical issues are addressed with much greater depth of analysis and more rigorous thinking than elsewhere," Rawlings said. "The academy -- or to use Jefferson's term, the 'academical village' -- should be a place for creative thought, meticulous reasoning, informed dialogue, considered action and the kinds of arguments that are exemplary rather than routine." That, he said, is Cornell today.

He pointed to several examples of the strengths of Cornell's "academical village." When graduate students were asked to vote on whether they wished to engage in collective bargaining through the Cornell Association of Student Employees/UAW (CASE/UAW), he said, it was an example of the university at its best.

President Rawlings shakes hands with Jeffrey Estabrook, chair of the University Council, following the Council's tribute to Rawlings (which included the gift of a pumpkin) during the Trustee/Council joint annual meeting in Statler Auditorium, Nov. 1. Robert Barker/University Photography

"Cornell became a laboratory for civic procedure, for civil discussion and passionate debate. Both the pro- and anti-union groups conducted their campaigns with vigor and, for the most part, mutual respect. And when it came time to vote, a remarkable 88.4 percent of the 2,318 eligible graduate assistants voted."

Rawlings said the election results, which were strongly against representation by the UAW, do not mean that everything is perfect on campus, but rather, that Cornell is the right place in which to hold such educational discussions.

"Cornell did what it does best: It educated all members of the campus, including faculty members and administrators," he said.

He pointed to the review of Cornell's land-grant mission, under way for the past nine months, as another example of the strength of the university. Under the leadership of a Presidential Oversight Commission, five panels have focused on Cornell's outreach and extension efforts, not only in colleges that receive core funding from the state and federal governments, but also in engineering and across the university, especially in technology transfer and in K-12 education.

"The panels generated a high level of engagement by faculty members, staff members and trustees, which will form the basis of recommendations to be presented to the trustees early next year," Rawlings said. "Pay attention to that review. It is quite important."

He commended faculty members for their contributions to Cornell over the past year, including:

• Those in Near Eastern Studies, "who have gone beyond the demands of their scholarship and classroom teaching to help the Cornell campus consider complex and potentially divisive issues in a reasoned and responsible way. ... This is precisely the role humanists and social scientists can play in a first-rate university: to sharpen perceptions, deepen debate, bring evidence to bear on questions of great significance."

• Dean Antonio Gotto and his colleagues from both the Weill Cornell Medical College and Cornell-Ithaca for creating a new venture for health and education in Qatar, which has become one of the most progressive countries on the Arabian Peninsula.

• Dean Kent Fuchs, who came to Cornell last summer from Purdue University, and "is providing strong leadership to the College of Engineering while building interdisciplinary and cross-college involvement."

• Paul McEuen, professor of physics who last year came to Cornell from the University of California-Berkeley, and, with his colleagues at Cornell's Center for Materials Research, made news last summer by creating the ultimate in a miniature transistor -- a transistor in which electrons flow through a single atom.

• The universitywide Faculty of Computing and Information Science -- the FCIS -- which, "under the leadership of Dean Robert Constable, is another unit forging strong links to the College of Engineering and many other parts of Cornell. We can be proud of the boldness of Cornell's vision in creating an administrative structure to take full advantage of computing as a component in many different disciplines."

• Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the College of Human Ecology, who is the co-recipient of the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Applications of Psychology, one of four significant national honors he has received this year. "His research deals with two major topics: the competence of child witnesses and the "bioecology of cognitive development," which encompasses all aspects of the way intelligence develops in children."

Rawlings pointed to the New Life Sciences Initiative as another example of the university's strength. He said the initiative will involve seven colleges, several hundred faculty members and up to 60 departments, bringing ground-breaking research and economic development to Cornell and the region.

And, he stressed, undergraduate students are an important part of this "academical village." He pointed to the Frankenstein reading project. All freshmen were asked to read and participate in discussions of Mary Shelley's novel, written when she was just 18 years old. The project has generated ongoing excitement, not only among freshmen, but also among faculty and staff who assisted the discussions and in the Ithaca community, he said.

"Frankenstein is not just a reading assignment," Rawlings said. "It is really a step forward in creating the broader intellectual community we all want."

Rawlings thanked alumni for contributing to Cornell's future, both through active engagement with the university and with the world on Cornell's behalf, and through their remarkable generosity. He noted that Cornell alumni ranked number one in the nation, ahead of every other university, in giving by alumni to their universities last year.

In closing, he encouraged Cornellians to continue doing what they do best: carry their strength and values into the world. "Cornell's greatest contribution derives, not from the significant knowledge that its scholars and researchers produce, but from the women and men who carry its values with them into the world," Rawlings said. "Today the world needs what Cornell continues to create: character, above all else, that unique blend of theoretical and applied knowledge, fundamental inquiry and active public engagement that has been a hallmark of Cornell from its beginning."