By Larry Bernard
Alan J. Renaud has news for Cornellians: The weather's not so bad in Ithaca. It's not even that cold.
Winnipeg, Canada. Now that's cold. "Why, I go swimming in Ithaca weather," Renaud says with a wave of the hand. "Just kidding."
While the Cornell senior in applied and engineering physics may return to Canada after this summer to spend time with his parents, he won't be there long. After all, a doctorate beckons.
Renaud, 23, knows about adjusting to weather. Born in the Seychelles, a tiny African island nation in the middle of the Indian Ocean, his family moved to London when he was 2, Calgary, Canada, at 9 and finally to Winnipeg when he was 15.
But despite the weather, when he got accepted to Cornell five years ago, "It was one of the happiest days of my life," he said. Not only would he be the first in his immediate family to attend college, he was to attend one of the world's greatest universities and the one where his role model taught and preached the gospel of science:
Like many of today's students, Renaud was "turned on" to science through the influence of another Cornellian -- astronomer Carl Sagan, director of the Laboratory for Planetary Studies, whose television series Cosmos was shown around the world to the largest audience in public broadcasting's history.
"I always liked science as a kid," Renaud said. "But after seeing Cosmos, science became positively delicious. In the show, Carl Sagan used to mention a laboratory he had at Cornell, and I can remember thinking, 'what a university that must be!'"
On the Dean's List every semester with a 3.8 cumulative average and 3.9 in his major, Renaud studied engineering physics with eager anticipation. He enjoys being a teaching assistant -- he will TA an engineering co-op course this summer session and has been a TA for the introductory lasers course -- and is doing research in quantum mechanics with Alfred Phillips Jr., associate professor of electrical engineering.
Renaud has been a tutor at Cornell's Learning Skills Center and a facilitator in the Academic Excellence Workshop for introductory physics. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honorary society. He also is a Killam Canadian Fund scholar and a member of the Golden Key National Honor society.
"Alan fits my definition of an intellectual: He not only focuses on his field but also examines, without being required to do so, ideas and information outside that field, relating them to each other," said Penny J. Beebe, senior lecturer in the Engineering Communications Program, who taught Renaud. "His mind is alive, and he is interested."
What really set the stage for Renaud's Cornell years was getting accepted, after high school, into Shad Valley, Canada's premier and exclusive summer program in science, technology and entrepreneurship. There, he met another student who had applied to Cornell, and what previously had been fantasy for Renaud suddenly became in the realm of possibility. "Shad Valley inspired and motivated me, and made me reach for the stars," he said.
But first, a return to one's roots. The Seychelles is an island nation smaller than Tompkins County. Renaud has a large extended family there, 20 uncles and aunts and so many cousins he cannot keep count; he has not even met them all. The Seychelles, he said, is one of the most beautiful and exotic places in the world, with clean, gorgeous beaches, palm trees, tropical weather and beautiful people, with several unique species of plants and animals. For example, the nation boasts the world's largest tortoises as well as the world's largest nuts (the Coco-de-Mer).
Renaud visited in 1991, taking a year off after high school and spending about half of it there, encouraged by his parents: His father, Sonny, a hospital accountant, and mother, Wils, a former teacher now employed in hospital records.
"It was quite a shock meeting my extended family for what was really the first time," he said. "What a surprise it was to meet people who not only looked like me but acted like me, talked liked me, even laughed like me. There was a feeling of genetic familiarity."
At times confusing -- natives speak Creole patois, French and English, and television shows may be in any one of the three languages -- his visit was a humbling experience, too, as Renaud admits to having been somewhat conceited:
"I had felt like I was special coming from Canada, with all its good schools and everything, and I had thought the Seychelles was backward. But really, I was the backward one. Having a good education did not make me a better or a more clever person. I met my betters there," he said.
Now, however, he hopes to give something back. "Many of them are as equally capable as I. And they are hungry for opportunity," Renaud said. Too small to become a manufacturing center, "the Seychelles is going to have to invest in our one great resource: our people," Renaud said. He speaks of perhaps making an "island of consultants," a reservoir of experts who even could export knowledge around the world.
"If the Internet lives up to its promise, then the world's knowledge will soon be at our fingertips," he said. "Like some families have a tradition of becoming doctors, perhaps we could begin a tradition of service."
Such a plan cannot be made alone. So Renaud would look to his brothers -- Alfred, a computer science major at Yale, and Alex, an electrical engineering major at the University of Manitoba -- to help kick start the information revolution in the Seychelles, and perhaps spread it throughout Africa.
"You see," he explained with the fervor of idealism, "I represent the first generation from when most African countries received their independence. Our parents did not have these opportunities. There is so much to be done in the world. I want to make as much of a difference as I can.
"We need a new vision for the world. We have to blend ideas from different peoples, different cultures. And where there are obstacles, we will have to persist despite them."