Dean Daryl Lund in his Roberts Hall office. Adriana Rovers/University Photography
When then-student Barrington Fields' final exam turned up missing four years ago, he and fellow students Yashieka Blount and Gary Stewart offered their professor the perfect excuse: The dean ate it.
Who wouldn't? After all, the Food Science 101 final exam project was the creation of an ice cream, called "Seduction," made from raspberries, white chocolate and a wisp of amaretto-almond flavoring. And the judge was ice cream-lover Daryl B. Lund, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell's New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
During his five-year tenure, Lund often turned up to judge food-science projects or to shovel dirt in planting a new kind of apple tree.
After his current term ends in August 2000, Lund will not seek a second. He plans to return to the faculty of the food science department and to update his textbook Physical Methods of Food Preservation. A search plan for his replacement is still in development.
Ever the champion of students, the dean always finds ways to meander down from Roberts Hall to wherever young people congregate.
"One of the most rewarding aspects of being dean is the interaction with students," said Lund. "They constantly remind you of the overriding mission of education within the academy. Working with students provided some of my most rewarding moments."
Last year he showed up unannounced at Food Science 101's final project presentation, judging and sampling all four of the student-developed ice cream flavors. After a few bites of "Slumber Party," a vanilla ice cream filled with chocolate-covered pretzels, caramel fudge swirl and fudge chunks, Lund told the class, "Hey, this Slumber Party's a good one!"
With hopes of a good grade dancing in her head, then-student Amy Hutton looked at the dean and asked, "Yeah?"
Yes, nodded the dean, "But, I've got no influence around here."
No influence?
Since coming to Cornell in August 1995, Lund has re-organized the budgeting process within the agriculture college and fulfilled an obligation to improve faculty support by providing more fundamental resources. As dean, he has pushed aggressively for an academic program review of all programs and classes offered by the college (see story, Page 1). It is the first such assessment undertaken by the college in two decades.
He has formalized a description of the resources of the college invested to carry out its teaching, research and extension missions. Lund also enhanced the college's planning process by strengthening the academic planning councils of the six program areas and supporting the establishment of the CALS faculty senate, a representative form of faculty government. He also encouraged the faculty in the Department of Agricultural, Resource and Managerial Economics to seek national accreditation for the bachelor's degree in business management and marketing.
Lund also has played a leading role in obtaining increased support for production agriculture in New York state, working with the New York State Council of Agricultural Organizations and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets. Tangible results include increased support for Cornell's New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva and an emerging sense within production agriculture that the state must aggressively plan for the future and invest in it.
As dean, Lund was one of the leaders in overseeing the reconfiguration of the Division of Biological Sciences into academic departments and ensuring that a high priority of the college is its commitment to improving faculty diversity.
He had quite an act to follow, succeeding David L. Call as the eleventh dean in the 131-year history of the college. He came to Cornell from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey at New Brunswick, where he had served as executive dean of agriculture and natural resources. Previously, he had been executive director of the New Jersey Agriculture Experiment Station and dean of Rutgers' Cook College.
The second largest college at Cornell University, agriculture and life sciences boasts about 400 faculty members and an undergraduate enrollment of about 3,200 students. There are about 1,000 graduate students in the college, which has an annual budget of more than $173 million, covering such areas as plant science, agricultural economics, atmospheric science, agronomy, entomology, fruit and vegetable science, ornamental horticulture, fundamental biological sciences and biotechnology.
Lund, 57, is a native of Menomonie, Wis., and he earned all three of his collegiate degrees from the University of Wisconsin at Madison: a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1963, a master's degree in 1965 and doctorate in food science in 1968.
Beginning his teaching career at Wisconsin as a research assistant and then as an instructor in food science, Lund became assistant professor of food science in 1968 and an associate professor in 1972. Five years later he was named a full professor, and in 1984 he was named chair of Wisconsin's food science department. In 1988, he became the associate director of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, concurrently serving as chair of Rutgers' food science department.
Under his watch, Cornell agriculture programs have continued to develop new fruit and vegetable varieties, and expanded research into biotechnology, especially functional genomics. His goal has been to keep Cornell's agriculture college among the first rank in the nation.
But look no further than Fortune Apple Tree No. 12 in the Cornell Orchards along Route 366 for something that puts a human dimension on the business of growing food. On May 3, 1996, the dean and plant scientists gathered in a light rain to plant Fortune apple saplings, a variety of a large eating apple developed at Cornell's agricultural experiment station. Lund, a newly minted grandfather, shoveled the dirt and planted tree 12 in honor of the birth of his grandson, Ryan Thomas England, in Fort Atkinson, Wis.
| Cornell Chronicle Front Page | | Table of Contents | | Cornell News Service Home Page |