I, too, want to thank everyone in this auditorium for helping to give Cornell another great year. Our Trustees, our Council, and our alumni at large have once again demonstrated their remarkable loyalty to this university. This year alone, Cornell alumni organized more than 800 events on Cornell’s behalf around the world and helped us raise $528 millionin new gifts and commitments. This is a new record for Cornell and one that puts us second in the nation in this dimension. I have heard it said that our alums’ relationship to Cornell is a lot like a marriage . . . but with two important differences: divorce is not allowed, but we still require perpetual alimony.

On campus, we began the new academic year with a great deal of momentum. We received more than 20,000 applications for the Class of 2004. Alumni volunteers contacted more than 9,000 of those applicants, and that personal touch, combined with Cornell’s growing reputation, gave us an outstanding yield. We admitted 400 fewer students than the previous year, but 51 percent of those we admitted said "yes" – up two percent from the year before -- and we once again over-enrolled. But since the overall quality of the class is even better than last year, we didn’t want to send anyone home.

We have had excellent response to our recognition programs -- the Cornell Tradition, the Meinig Family Cornell National Scholars, and the Cornell Presidential Research Scholars -- which provide incentives for nation’s very best students to attend Cornell. Students of color account for 29 percent of the class, and there are 398 children of Cornell alumni in the freshman class. Both of those figures represent increases over last year.

Cornell is a world-class research university, and we intend to maintain our position by building strength in strategic enabling research areas. We are now in a time of unusual opportunity and promise. The remarkable convergence of the physical and biological sciences across a wide spectrum of research is the most exciting intellectual development of the early 21st century.

As Tom Stoppard wrote in "Arcadia, "A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong."

Physics and biology have converged to create the discipline of biophysics. Computer science and biology are joining forces in bioinformatics. Engineering and biology have combined in the new field of nanobiotechnology. Chemistry and biology are uniting as chemical biology. These alliances promise to bring a new coherence to our understanding of the biological and physical world, to yield new materials, and to find application in everything from agricultural production to human health.

Thanks to faculty initiative and judicious investment, described in this week’s Cornell Chronicle, Cornell is well positioned for leadership in all these fields. Earlier this month we hosted a symposium on nanotechnology – the science of the very small – to celebrate the naming of Duffield Hall, where much of Cornell’s work in nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology, and advanced materials will take place. At the symposium, alumnus David Duffield, Class of 1963, MBA ’64, committed $7 million to the project as a challenge grant – above and beyond his original $20-million gift. We hope to begin construction of the $62-million facility next spring, pending various government approvals.

This fall, too, the National Science Foundation renewed its funding for the Cornell Center for Materials Research, agreeing to provide $20 million to the center over five years. New York State will provide an additional $400,000 a year to CCMR, as part of the renewal’s matching requirement, to establish an industrial outreach program for small businesses.

To further realize the opportunities available to us as the biological and physical sciences converge, we have entered into a tri-institutional partnership that joins Ithaca and our Weill Medical College in New York City with Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Together, we will pursue basic biological research in the areas of chemical biology, cancer biology and computational biology. The Weill Medical College, which has transformed its Whitney Pavilion into a major research facility, and the Ithaca campus, which offers unique facilities and other resources for research in structural biology, computational biology, chemical biology and related fields, will both be major players in the partnership. This is a $160-million program, half of which has already been furnished through a major private gift.

We are fortunate to have strong academic leadership as we seize opportunities for cross-cutting, interdisciplinary research. Biddy Martin succeeded Don Randel as provost on July 1. She is an able administrator, a great intellectual leader and a respected scholar of German studies and women’s studies, and she brings vision and consultative skills to Cornell’s top academic post. Don Smith, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, is positioning his college for leadership in the new biology through the appointment of distinguished faculty members -- including Michael Kotlikoff, chair of biomedical sciences, and David Russell, chair of microbiology and immunology -- who are playing an integrative role across the university. Susan Henry, the new Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Agriculture and Life Sciences, is bringing vigorous intellectual leadership to the college as dean and as a senior faculty member in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics.

Cornell must attract and retain the best faculty in the country if we are to maintain our intellectual leadership across a wide range of fields. Although faculty salaries have increased over the past few years, they are still not equal to what Cornell’s major competitors are offering. To address this problem, Provost Martin and I have put in place a six-year plan that will allow us to raise salaries in both the endowed and statutory colleges in order to bring them to a position of equality with our peers. We are also now studying staff salaries with an eye towards further improvements in the next few years, particularly within certain job classes.

As New York State’s land-grant university, we are strengthening our partnership with New York State. Governor Pataki has intervened on behalf of Cornell on several key occasions in the last several years. In addition to providing state support for the Cornell Center for Materials Research, the Governor has helped Cornell obtain capital equipment for the Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva, increased operating support for the Theory Center, our supercomputing facility, and provided $300,000 in annual matching funds for nanobiotechnology.

Last year, at Homecoming, the Governor (who is a Yale alumnus) made available $1 million to Cornell for the Genomics Initiative. And Yale went on to beat Cornell at Schoellkopf that day. This year at Homecoming, when we also played Yale, the Governor brought us a check for $10.6 million, which will at last enable us to begin renovations of Bailey Hall. I am pleased to report that the Governor did not take the check back when we beat Yale 24-23 in a spectacular nail-biter of a game.

With support from the Faculty Senate, Cornell moved this fall to capitalize on advances in information technology and our long tradition of excellence in extension and executive education by launching a Cornell-owned and financed distance learning initiative called eCornell. I want to thank Peter Meinig, chair of the Trustee Executive Committee, for his leadership in this area, and for his willingness to serve as chairman of the board of directors for eCornell. The creation of eCornell presents an extraordinary opportunity to extend the high-quality educational programs of Cornell to organizations and individuals far beyond our physical campus. eCornell’s first programs will be in the Hotel School, in human resources through ILR, in systems engineering, and in the Johnson School, all of which have strong national reputations and a good track record in executive education.

Cornell’s students, including undergraduates, benefit from the global reach of Cornell’s teaching and research and from the commitment we have made on the Ithaca campus to improving undergraduate life. Over the past five years, with your help, we have begun a major residential initiative to link living and learning in the experience of undergraduates. While you are here this weekend, be sure to visit the North Campus, where our new residence halls are transforming that campus for many freshman classes to come. We’ve successfully completed a Scholarship Challenge Campaign to ensure that talented students can continue to attend Cornell regardless of their financial circumstances. We have created a culture that values undergraduate participation in research and experiential learning – and we have encouraged students to seek out these opportunities.

We have given new visibility to athletics – intercollegiate, intramural and recreational – in the belief that a sound mind and a sound body are both important to student success and that athletics can help create a stronger sense of community on campus. Two weeks ago, Jon and Ginny Lindseth, both Class of 1956, were back on campus to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Lindseth Climbing Wall in the Cornell Field House. Jon is a trustee emeritus and a Presidential Councillor. Ginny is a member of the Cornell University Council and the Arts & Sciences Advisory Council. And they have supported Cornell in many endeavors – both directly and by mobilizing others – over the years. The Lindseth Climbing Wall, which Jon and Ginny funded a decade ago, remains the largest natural rock indoor climbing wall in North America. It is a centerpiece of Cornell’s Outdoor Education Program. Jon and Ginny have now extended their support of COE to a new level by endowing the Lindseth Directorship of Outdoor Education, which will be held by COE Director Todd Miner.

I am delighted to announce today a major new investment in our athletic programs. Hank and Nancy Bartels, both members of the Cornell Class of 1948, have agreed to provide $15 million in endowment funds, as a one-to-one challenge match, in support of our athletic programs. The gift is on behalf of their family, including their sons, Ken and Phil, Cornell Class of 1971, who is here with his parents this morning. In gratitude for their generosity, which comes at a critical time in the development of our athletic programs, we will be naming the Cornell Field House "Bartels Hall."

Hank and Nancy Bartels have already done a great deal to improve the undergraduate experience at Cornell. Since 1984, for example, they have made possible the Bartels World Affairs Fellows Program, which brings world leaders to Cornell each year for meetings with faculty and students and for a major public lecture, which undergraduates are encouraged to attend. The list of Bartels Fellows includes such luminaries as the Dalai Lama, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, and, just last April, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

Hank and Nancy are strong supporters of the Shoals Marine Laboratory, where both Bartels Hall and the directorship of the laboratory are named in their honor. Hank is on the Engineering College Alumni Council and has served several terms on the University Council. Nancy is a life member of the Council, and, as class correspondent for many years, she wrote the Class of ’48 women’s column for the Cornell Alumni News. Both Hank and Nancy have also made significant gifts to athletics. They endowed the swimming coach position, for example, and provided an endowment that will buy new shells for our crew program. We are grateful to them both for the magnitude and timing of their magnificent gift for athletics at Cornell.

Hank, Nancy, and Phil, please stand so that we can thank you and applaud you for your landmark contribution to Cornell Athletics and for giving us the opportunity to rename the field house as Bartels Hall.

The events surrounding this weekend – especially the dedication of Lincoln Hall this afternoon – give us an opportunity to focus on another vital aspect of Cornell: the arts and the humanities, particularly as they relate to the education of undergraduates. That the arts should occupy an esteemed place in a university should be no surprise. Plato said, " Music is the sovereign domain of education because rhythm and harmony find their way to the soul." Most of our students would agree. With our superb music faculty and with the reopening of Lincoln Hall – and the upcoming renovation of Bailey as a major performance space – Cornell will be a center for the performing arts for years to come.

We have already made a strong commitment to the visual arts through the renovation of Tjaden Hall for the Art Department. We are moving forward with plans for Milstein Hall, which will be the new home of the undergraduate program in Architecture.

Our commitment to the arts is reflected not only in new facilities, but also in our academic programs. The College of Arts and Sciences, after several years of discussion, is embarking on a new program in visual studies, which is now in its start-up phase. Building on connections that already exist at Cornell among art history, critical theory, the social and natural sciences and art practices, the college has developed an undergraduate concentration in visual studies that provides students with an interdisciplinary approach to visual art, new media (including digital works), performance and perception. The program will also take advantage of sophisticated new technologies produced by the "information revolution," the deployment of digital and electronic media, and consequent new paradigms of human cognition and perception. This is a promising venture, and it should enable a broader grouping for the study of art and architecture along with the study of media and culture – with the history of art as its core and with the Johnson Museum serving as a key resource.

The humanities also have a critical place in an intellectually vibrant university, and Cornell’s humanities programs are among the nation’s best. Earlier this fall, Cornell was selected by Time Magazine and the Princeton Review as "College of the Year," based on the strength of the John Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines. The Institute uses small seminars to help students think and write about specific academic areas – and it is unusual in that its seminars are taught by faculty members from 30 different academic departments, who emphasize writing along with the content of their disciplines.

The Knight Program at Cornell began in 1986, with a $5 million grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, with freshman writing seminars, which are now taken by virtually every freshman at Cornell. Like the Writing in the Disciplines courses, the freshman writing seminars are premised on the idea that students will learn to think and write clearly and creatively by writing about subjects that interest them and by viewing the act of writing as intimately bound up in the examination of the subject matter.

The Knight Foundation has been so pleased with Cornell’s program that it has supplied additional funding over the years, which has enabled the program to reach new audiences. It now includes 100 tenured faculty members, 3,800 students, and has become a national model for other schools.

We have also changed the way we treat foreign languages at Cornell.

Since folding the teaching of foreign languages into their respective literature departments in September 1999, we have been able to integrate language teaching more fully into the intellectual life of Cornell. Last summer, we moved language lecturers into quarters within the relevant literature departments to create communities where languages, literature and culture intersect. The old style language laboratory – where students sit in cubicles and respond to tapes or CDs while looking at images on a monitor in front of them – is being superceded by websites that students can use from their personal computers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That makes me feel a little ancient!

The college faculty is now considering an adjustment in its language requirement whereby students would be required to complete a course in the target language, thus making it clear that the true reason to learn a foreign language is to gain the ability to explore another culture, another body of literature, another way of constructing the world. That change would tie the language requirement in a meaningful way to the cultural breadth and historical depth requirements in the college curriculum.

Last May, a curriculum committee in the college, under the leadership of Professor Isabel Hull of history, reviewed the undergraduate curriculum and graduation requirements within the college. Its recommendations will be discussed at a series of open meetings this fall before they are presented to the faculty for formal debate.

On balance, the committee found that students, along with faculty members and alumni, agree strongly on the value of a liberal arts education, and that students, by the choices they make to fulfill the college’s distribution requirements, are now obtaining a broad liberal education at Cornell. As the curriculum committee noted:

There are two main reasons for championing the liberal arts: The original conception, associated especially with the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt, remains persuasive to most of our respondents and to the [committee]. This view holds that a broad education dedicated to honing critical skills, providing familiarity with different ways of reasoning and objects of study, and giving young people the opportunity to discover previously unknown talents and interests, is the best way to enable them to develop their individual potential … within the framework of a diverse civil society. The other viewpoint stresses the utility of acquiring fundamental skills such as critical thinking, writing, foreign languages, and so forth. The increasingly rapid changes in the modern world and its economy only strengthen the argument for a broad, non-technical education whose beneficiaries can adapt flexibly to altered circumstances. Starting from their different vantage points, both the idealist and utilitarian views form an overwhelming consensus in favor of keeping the liberal arts as the center of a college education.

This is a significant statement about the liberal arts curriculum and also about the role of a liberal arts education in preparing all students to be thoughtful, participating citizens in a democratic society. I endorse it wholeheartedly, because in an age of rampant careerism and commercialism, it is important that universities help students confront questions of individual and group identity, conflicting values, and social justice.

Universities must reinforce their traditional role as independent thinker and critic, even as they collaborate with, and benefit from the support of, government and business. The humanities and the social sciences are especially well suited to this task. In the Age of Money, the commodification of nearly everything, and entirely too much information, we desperately need critique -- informed, disinterested, ethically-based, with the eye fixed steadily on long-term consequences.

In addition, the social sciences and the humanities have opened our eyes to other cultures and led in the development of gender studies and ethnic studies. These fields have generated a certain amount of contentiousness within the academy and in political life, but they are legitimate fields of intellectual endeavor in their own right, and they are invaluable in generating the breadth of understanding that enables us to live successfully across differences.

Finally, the social sciences and humanities perform a deep and essential role that goes to the heart of universities, and to the heart of individual women and men.

A work of art, history, or literature, when "read" by an informed observer, contains within itself a kind of knowledge that is different from other kinds that depend upon the incremental buildup of information: it has a human, moral dimension at its center.

Moral knowledge differs in fundamental ways from knowledge in many other areas of human experience, especially, perhaps, from knowledge of the natural world.

It does not consist of a body of facts, generalizations or "laws." It is, instead, a critical means of thinking about the most important choices we confront in our lives, the responses to which define us as human beings.

Moral knowledge develops slowly. It is informed through studies of other cultures, reading a poem or novel, attending a play, looking at a painting, or listening to music, all of which help us imagine what it might be like to have a life different from our own. History and literature are particularly useful in developing a moral imagination, because they confront us with characters, both real and imagined, who face poignant choices, the consequences of which we are able to read and interpret for ourselves.

In the final analysis, the development of moral knowledge demands that each of us answer the ultimate Socratic question: "Who am I, and what should I do with my life." In universities, we should not forget, a major part of our obligation is to help 18-year-olds answer that question.

Many Cornell courses already address ethical issues in great depth, and momentum is building on campus to encourage greater attention to moral reasoning in our future curriculum. In its review of the Arts College curriculum, the curriculum committee proposed including courses in moral reasoning as a way for students to fulfill their distribution requirements. Such courses, the committee noted,

aim to engage students in disciplined reflection on ethical issues concerning human action, character, and ways of life. Through a variety of genres that include philosophy, literature, and political debate, these courses introduce students to one or more ways of understanding and responding thoughtfully to ethical problems central to contemporary life. Their aim is to enable students not only to understand one or more traditional approaches to ethical questions but also to articulate, criticize, and defend reasoned moral judgments.

The appointment of Michele Moody-Adams as Hutchinson Professor and director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life is giving new leadership to our efforts to make moral reasoning a more central component of a Cornell education. But it is essential that we take a broader institutional view of this matter, one informed by the best thinking at Cornell, as well as elsewhere.

In a paper he recently gave to a conference several of us attended in Berlin, Phil Lewis, the Harold Tanner Dean of our College of Arts and Sciences, addressed, with his customary acuity and insight, the place of the humanities in the contemporary university. In recent decades, that place has become smaller and seemingly more peripheral, as the sciences, social sciences and professional schools have grown in scope, funding, and prominence, and all the disciplines have been driven further apart by specialization and professionalization. Universities have, to one degree or another, lost much of the intellectual cohesion they enjoyed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

It is now fashionable to lament this state of affairs but quickly conclude that there is no remedy for it in today’s world.

Dean Lewis asserted otherwise: he made a thoughtful call for a "change in the mission and structure of the [university] itself." In his words, the university should "assume an exemplary role in society and culture at large; it should undertake to position itself not simply as a research machine, but also as a micro-community devoted to exemplifying . . . humane and artful values and thus to building a research community that is compatible with them."

But this merging of the cultures of the arts and the sciences should not be confined to scholarship and research. It should also characterize our teaching, our curriculum. Dean Lewis called for "integrating the humanities and the arts with science and technology" in an "overarching collaboration that should permeate the whole of a university’s educational program."

That is, of course, a very tall order. But let me say this: if any university is capable of filling that order, it is Cornell. We have a great faculty in a wide range of disciplines. It is now our task to look afresh at the educational structure of the modern university, particularly by engaging our faculty in serious discussions about the role their disciplines can play in creating a new curricular synthesis. If we succeed, and I have some confidence that we can, Cornell will take a leading role in higher education’s search for a more cohesive paradigm for this new century.

A great university is more than the sum of its individually excellent parts. It is an intellectual feast of remarkable variety created by its individual members – scientists and humanists, social scientists and professional school faculty -- each of whom brings something important to the table. It is an intellectual community of extraordinary depth and breadth, where living and learning take place across a great diversity of backgrounds. It requires the concerted efforts of faculty and students, staff and alumni working together for its constant renewal. It is, in short, the kind of university we have in Cornell.

I am grateful to you for the role you have played – and continue to play—in Cornell’s success.