Commencement comments

Members of the Cornell community comment on Hunter Rawlings' legacy

Hunter Rawlings greets the crowd of anticipatory graduates and acknowledges their cheers before giving his final Commencement address as Cornell president. Robert Barker/University Photography

During Cornell Commencement Weekend and following President Hunter Rawlings' final Commencement address, several faculty, students and staff members commented on what his eight-year tenure has meant for the university. Here are some of their comments.

"In a university that is widely recognized for excellence in research and graduate training, President Rawlings' support of the undergraduate learning experience has been refreshing. It is not easy to balance the different purposes of a large university with research usually leading the way. Deepening and broadening the undergraduate living-learning experience is also central and will pay rich dividends not only to Cornell but to the society at large."

-- Jerome M. Ziegler, professor emeritus in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management and a faculty marshal at Commencement.

"What makes Hunter Rawlings a great leader is his willingness to take big chances. The North Campus initiative was a big risk for him personally but in the competition for top students, Cornell needed to experiment with ways to make the undergraduate experience as wonderful as possible."

-- Jeremy Weinberg, a senior from New Rochelle, N.Y., who majored in policy analysis and management.

"Hunter has moved Cornell into the 21st century and helped position it to maintain its leadership position in American higher education. As a Cornell vice president, I learned an enormous amount about leadership just from watching him."

-- Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) and a former vice president at Cornell.

"President Rawlings has shown tremendous leadership in many facets of Cornell. ... However, his efforts in uniting all members of the Cornell community during a time of national crisis following the attacks of Sept 11 will remain as one of my hallmark memories of my experience at Cornell, for which I am grateful."

-- Umair Khan, a senior from New York City who majored in government and Near Eastern studies.

"I think that the emphasis that President Rawlings has placed on the development of undergraduate research has set the wheels in motion for Cornell to become the best undergraduate research university in the country, which is a legacy that will continue to attract elite students to our campus and further improve undergraduate education as a whole."

-- Adrianne Kroepsch, a senior from Parker, Colo., who was a Cornell Presidential Research Scholar who majored in science and technology studies.

"Many of President Rawlings' initiatives were huge and outward looking, such as the Weill Medical College in Qatar and eCornell, which was born in his administration. Others, while internal, were no less important -- it is thanks to him, for example, that staff salaries were improved in a large and comprehensive way."

-- Elizabeth Teskey, assistant to the head of technical services at the Cornell Law Library and an usher at Commencement.

"For Hunter, Cornell has to revolve around the world of ideas, and he cares most about how to make that world exciting, how those ideas can improve the campus and the larger society and how the campus can be designed so all the members of the Cornell community can be involved in that world in the way he is so fully involved. To me, his passion for ideas and intellectual exchange primarily explain how and why he has -- working so well with his group of committed administrators and the university's leading alumni and faculty -- so changed the campus, and why he has been such a highly successful president of Cornell."

-- Walter LaFeber, M.U. Noll Professor of American History Emeritus and the mace bearer at Commencement.

June 5, 2003