From left, President Hunter Rawlings; Carolyn Chauncey Neuman '64, chair of the University Council; and Harold Tanner, chair of the Cornell Board of Trustees, acknowledge the audience following Rawlings' State of the University Address at the joint annual meeting of the trustees and council in Statler Auditorium Oct. 8. Charles Harrington/University Photography
Cornell President Hunter Rawlings announced last week that the university has received a $100 million pledge to help link the living and learning environment for undergraduate students on West Campus.
The $100 million gift was given to the university by a friend who wishes to remain private, Rawlings said in his annual State of the University message Oct. 8.
"This magnificent pledge -- only the second of this magnitude in Cornell's history and the first in support of undergraduate education -- gives us a solid path along which to develop the plans for the transformation of West Campus," Rawlings told members of the Cornell Board of Trustees and more than 400 members of the University Council gathered in the Alice Statler for their joint annual meeting.
"This is a tremendously exciting opportunity for us and one that will enable us to help Cornell undergraduates realize their full intellectual and social potential. We are moving rapidly to ensure that Cornell is indeed the finest research university for undergraduate education in this country," he said.
Rawlings has made the strengthening of undergraduate education in a research university context a hallmark of his administration. Last October he announced a major initiative in undergraduate programs, facilities and financial aid. The programmatic and architectural renovation of West Campus is a cornerstone of that plan.
The new pledge represents approximately one-half of the estimated cost to transform West Campus into a new, comprehensive living-learning community for sophomores and upper-division students.
Rawlings also reported success Friday on the primary cornerstone of the undergraduate education initiative -- the Scholarship Challenge Campaign. He said the university has raised more than $136 million toward its $150 million goal. He expressed confidence that the university would meet the Dec. 31 target date set for the goal, and thereby claim an additional $50 million in challenge funds, creating a $200 million additional endowment for student aid.
"With that endowment," Rawlings said, "we will be able to maintain our need-blind admissions and our need-based financial aid policies without compromising our ability to invest in academic programs and faculty, and we will be able to keep tuition increases in check."
Rawlings said the second cornerstone in the transformation of undergraduate education will be a comprehensive review of the undergraduate experience, undertaken as part of Cornell's regular, 10-year Middle States Association reaccreditation in 2001.
"We aim to create a seamless environment for undergraduate education where students can learn from faculty members who are world leaders in their fields, who develop and teach challenging courses, who advise and mentor students, and who make an effort to connect with them beyond the classroom," Rawlings said. "We will use our upcoming Middle States reaccreditation to determine how well we are doing on all these counts and how we can improve."
He said the comprehensive review, which is just getting under way under the leadership of Vice Provost Mary J. Sansalone, will look broadly at the curriculum, advising and the living-learning environment.
Rawlings noted that substantial progress has already been made on another cornerstone of his undergraduate initiative, the plan to provide a common living and learning experience for all entering freshmen on North Campus by 2001. He said this year more than 60 percent of freshmen are being housed on North Campus, compared with just 44 percent in 1997-98, and there are now four all-freshman residences on North Campus.
He also said that on North Campus, the renovation of the Robert Purcell Community Center was completed this summer at a cost of $12.5 million. The center's new dining facility, the Marketplace Eatery, recently was cited as the best dining hall in the United States by the hospitality industry magazine Food Management.
Rawlings reported that plans for West Campus are at an earlier stage of development, but already are generating excitement. "As you may recall, the report 'Transforming West Campus,' developed last year, recommended the establishment on West Campus of living-learning houses for sophomore and upper-division students under faculty mentors," Rawlings said. "It went on to urge, as its core recommendation, that Cornell develop a post-freshman-year living environment on West Campus that has faculty leadership from all of the undergraduate schools and colleges, so that we might create there a residential college atmosphere.
"I am delighted that Isaac Kramnick, the Richard Schwartz Professor and chair of Government and a Weiss Presidential Fellow, is leading a committee charged with translating the recommendations of that report into a programmatic plan for West Campus. One especially promising proposal is to combine ethics with writing for sophomores in learning houses on West Campus. ... The growing complexity of public life, and the increasing diversity of those with whom we live and work effectively, argue for a greater emphasis on ethics in undergraduate education."
Rawlings said that none of the exciting plans to transform undergraduate education "would be achievable without the support of our alumni and friends." He reported that for the fiscal year that ended June 30, Cornell received the largest amount of cash gifts ever raised for the university -- $341 million. That compares with $253 million raised the previous year and put Cornell second in its peer group, behind only Harvard.
Other results, he said, are even more impressive. For only the second time in history, Cornell is first, ahead of both Harvard and Stanford, in alumni and individual giving, with $272 million raised.
Rawlings pointed to other successes over the past year, including:
In concluding, Rawlings looked forward. "As we begin this millennial year, we are renewing Cornell's founding vision and reinterpreting it for the 21st century -- composing our vast resources in ways that make sense for that century, just as Ezra Cornell and A.D. White did in the 19th.
"Several years ago, a student at Cornell commented, in a remarkably prescient turn of phrase, that 'Cornell was not founded as a peer institution.' Cornell remains an institution without peers. We are unique in our scope, in our depth, and in our ability to bring together teaching, research and service in ways that enhance all three," Rawlings said.
"With your continued confidence and commitment, we will continue to combine practical and theoretical -- as A.D. White foresaw. We will continue to maintain diversity in people and programs -- harkening back to 'any person, any study,' Ezra Cornell's great vision. We will move assertively into areas of promise and need -- including advanced materials, genomics and information science, while creating at Cornell the best undergraduate experience available at any research university.
"We will remain a pace-setter in American higher education -- a national leader -- and, as we continue to quest for something better, we will face the new millennium with confidence rooted in 135 years of unqualified success. Thank you all."
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