Soundbites

Here is a sampling of quotations from Cornell University faculty, students and staff that have appeared recently in the national and international news media:

"MBA recruiting has been recessed, rather than depressed, in most areas of the country. ... But most metropolitan areas are recovering to a degree, and that's where the jobs are. ... the job market ... was difficult for the [Johnson School] class of 2003, but this summer there were more internship opportunities for first-years than in 2002."

--Karin Ash, director of the Johnson Graduate School of Management's Career Management Center, on the current job market for MBA graduates, in the MBA Insider section of Business Week Online, June 26.

"Ethanol does not increase energy security. It remains a fact that it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than you get out of it."

--David Pimentel, professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology, commenting on the environmental effects of producing ethanol while Congress deliberated whether to increase the amount of ethanol to be used as an additive in gasoline, reported by the Associated Press June 2. The article appeared on news sites for CNN, the Contra Costa Times, Sacramento Bee, Miami Herald and other news media.

"Up until the current recession, salaries for MBAs and lawyers were soaring ... and you had to compete with those salaries if you wanted to recruit faculty members to those fields. You don't have to pay law professors the same salaries as partners in large firms, but you do have to pay them enough to give up that opportunity."

--Ronald Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics, commenting on the pay gap between faculty in professional schools and those in other fields, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 30.

"I spend a third of my class talking about sleep. There's nothing more soporific than that. And I have them on the edge of their seats."

--James Maas, professor of psychology, who is described as one of five faculty "maestros" featured in an article on classes that are "Big, but Not Bad," in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 9.

"Robins are very choosy about where they live, and it is not just robins. There are well in excess of 300 bird species in New York state, and only a handful can make it in wide areas of New York City."

--Wesley Hochachka, research associate in the Laboratory of Ornithology, explaining why people see few robins in Manhattan, in Science Q&A in The New York Times, May 6.

"I didn't think they'd be that old. ... It's kind of amazing that for tens of millions of years they were engaged in their hunting parties when dinosaurs were walking all over them."

--Sean Brady, postdoctoral associate in the Department of Entomology, commenting on his DNA study of 30 army ant species around the world that reveals the ants evolved just once -- 100 million years ago, in an Associated Press article published in news media nationwide, including the Sacramento Bee, Philadelphia Daily News, Anchorage Daily News and Gainesville Sun, May 6.