by
October 13, 1995
After all the excitement of the past several days, it is good to be talking with a smaller and more intimate group of 800. I say that only half-facetiously because so many of you already seem like old friends. I know some of you, of course, from the trustee meetings we have attended together for almost a year now. I know some of you from conversations we've had during homecoming and at various Inaugural events. And I know many more of you, by name at least, from the walks that Elizabeth and I began taking around campus this summer, following the guidebook to the Plantations Path that Bob Cowie and his family underwrote. We have seen your names inscribed not only on campus buildings but on virtually every major planting and wayside bench. Our campus walks have made it clear to us, as do the impressive numbers of the Cornell Campaign and the enthusiasm you have brought here this morning, that Cornell is a university where alumni not only care very deeply, but where they work very hard to make Cornell a stronger place. Your interest and commitment mean a lot to me, as a new president, and I feel fortunate to have such a stronggroup of supporters and friends.
Yesterday I outlined my vision for the university -- a vision that calls upon all members of the community to collaborate to make Cornell, even more than it already is , a place for "the cultivation & improvement of the human mind" where we can "compose, out of our harmonies and dissonances, a symphony of humane discourse."
Today I want to give you a better sense of what the process of composition will require of us , to tell you about some of the things we are already doing to bring it about, and also to talk about where I hope we can go from here.
Cornell is fortunate to begin the task of composition from a position of enviable strength. You have already heard about the remarkable success we have enjoyed in the Cornell Campaign. It is my pleasure this morning to announce another major gift, on top of those we have already received. Peter and Nancy Meinig have made an additional commitment of $2 million to the Campaign in support of student financial aid, which remains a key priority in these final weeks. Their gift will support the "Meinig National Scholars," directed at students "who demonstrate leadership and are involved in community service." Peter and Nancy have already given so much to Cornell, through Peter's role as a Trustee, through their service as national chairs of the Tower Club, and through the many other ways -- financial and otherwise -- they have supported Cornell over the years. With this additional gift, with the energy and enthusiasm I can feel here today -- and with the hard work we will have to do over the next two and a half months -- I know we can finish the Cornell Campaign on a high note.
Cornell's strength also comes through clearly in the character of the student body. My 3,150 or so fellow freshmen were selected again this year from more than 20,000 applicants. They come from nearly four dozen different countries and an equal number of different states. Some 28 percent are minority students. By class rank and standardized test scores, they are among the strongest entering students we've had at Cornell. As I have talked with them and with other students -- on the Arts Quad, in their residence halls, at the Town Meeting we held last week -- I have found that they are articulate, intelligent, and eager to contribute to the welfare of the community and to Cornell. The desire to contribute is not just a noble sentiment for these students. They truly want to help, and they turned out in force a few weekends ago for the annual "Into the Streets" day of volunteer service. The enthusiasm of Cornell students is palpable, and we will continue to encourage it.
Another measure of Cornell's strength -- and the foundation on which so much else rests -- is the quality of the faculty. Despite increased competition for grants and a stable, or even shrinking, pool of federal research funds, Cornell's research expenditures for the past year reached a new high of $331 million, an increase of 9.9 percent over the previous year. Some Cornell research is very basic -- geared to understanding fundamental principles about how the world works. Some of it has direct relevance for our everyday lives. But all of it helps to define the kind of institution we are.
Those of you who were alarmed by the recent Harvard study that indicated being even slightly overweight could shorten your life will be heartened to know that Cornell's own weight expert, Professor David Levitsky, has also completed a study, to be published in January, which suggests that being moderately underweight may be an even greater health risk. Depending on where you fall along the continuum, that is either good news or yet another indication that sometimes you just can't win. But it does give an indication of the relevance that Cornell research often has to our every-day lives.
In another field, Cornell plant scientists were recently honored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for their successful efforts to control a major potato pest known as the golden nematode, which can destroy up to 80 percent of the potato crop in areas it infects. For the past decade or so, the Cornell research team has worked to develop potato varieties that are resistant to the nematode -- a strategy that enabled potato growers to eliminate pesticides and other soil fumigants, saving taxpayers at least $1.5 million each year.
At the Cornell Medical Center in New York City, Dr. Willibald Nagler, the Anne and Jerome Fisher Physiatrist in Chief, and his colleagues have found that football players' foot and knee injuries are more likely and more severe when athletes play on synthetic turf. The issue is important because the National Football League Players Association recently surveyed its members and found 93 percent believe artificial turf is more likely to contribute to injury than grass. NFL stadiums are evenly split-- 15 with grass surfaces and 15 synthetic. All five of the fields rated best by players were grass while the five worst, according to the players, were synthetic.
Of course, there are many other Cornell research projects of note. Some of you know Professor Neal Zaslaw from his work with the Lincoln Center Mozart Bicentennial Celebration a few years ago and from his role as musical supervisor for the complete recordings of Mozart's symphonies on period instruments. Professor Zaslaw was recently named the Herbert Gussman Professor of Music at Cornell, and he is currently serving as editor of The New Kochel, the standard catalog of the works of Mozart-- the first American to be entrusted with that job.
In August, Nelson G. Hairston, Jr., professor of ecology and systematics, and his colleagues published an account of their successful effort to hatch the 330-year-old eggs of a tiny crustacean -- a copepod --that they had collected from the mud of a Rhode Island pond. The work is important because of its potential for providing organisms to re-stock lakes that have been damaged by human impact. I found it interesting, as well, because one of the article's co-authors was an alumnus who had worked on the project as a Cornell undergraduate.
Just few weeks ago, Robert A. Hall, Jr., professor emeritus of linguistics, released a new book about the notorious "Kensington rune-stone." Based on some 45 years of research, he has concluded that the chiseled stone discovered near Kensington, Minnesota in 1898 really does date from 1362 A.D. He contends that the stone is conclusive proof that Scandinavians reached the New World at least 130 years before Columbus. Professor Hall hopes that his latest publication "will close the book, so to speak" on whether the stone is authentic or, as widely believed, a hoax.
Exceptional faculty members doing path-breaking research is one of the reasons that Cornell ranked #13 overall and #3 in Engineering in the 1996 U.S. News & World Report guide to "America's Best Colleges." While we shouldn't take the guide too seriously -- it is a fairly superficial survey, subject to wide interpretation and dispute --our overall ranking this year is up two places from the year before, and it is certainly better to be going in that direction than the other way.
A more creditable assessment of academic quality is the recently released report of the National Research Council on doctoral programs at research universities. The study asked faculty members at U.S. universities to assess the quality of the faculty and the effectiveness of programs in their field at various research universities. The good news is that Cornell ranked overall in 6th place, in a tie with Yale.
Yet, in both these national reports -- favorable as they are overall -- there are clear indications that we need to improve. The U.S. News and World Report survey, for example, ranked institutions based on the quality of undergraduate teaching for the first time this year. Despite Cornell's strong showing overall, we were not among the top 25 institutions on that list. We also ranked lower than we would like in a survey of Cornell's 1994 graduating seniors conducted by the Council on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). In that study, which we have looked at in some detail, Cornell students were significantly less happy about the amount of faculty contact they had and about the size of their classes than students at many other COFHE institutions. For whatever reason, Cornell is not perceived as an institution where teaching is a priority -- and that is a perception we must change.
From what I have seen of Cornell so far, I am convinced that most faculty members do care deeply about their students and take a personal interest in their success . Early in October, I attended a reception for engineering faculty members at which the college's first Excellence in Teaching awards were given out. The awards, which were made possible through gifts from alumni, parents and friends, recognized faculty at every level -- from assistant professors to holders of endowed chairs.
Looking over the list of awardees, I was struck by two things: first, teaching excellence is widely distributed across the engineering fields, and, second, those recognized for their teaching were, virtually without exception, also distinguished researchers. Putting an emphasis on quality in undergraduate education does not mean putting less emphasis on quality in research. Without world-class researchers doing state-of-the-art work, Cornell would be a lesser institution, no matter how gifted in the classroom or how committed to undergraduate education the faculty were. High-quality research makes high-quality teaching possible. It provides the substance that gives faculty members something of value to teach. When students and faculty work together in the lab, that experience constitutes both education and research -- simultaneously. The two go hand in hand at a university like Cornell.
One of my top priorities for the coming year is to find ways to link teaching and research more effectively so that students and faculty both participate in and contribute to the intellectual vitality of Cornell. With that in mind -- and with the help of Vice President for Student and Academic Services Susan Murphy -- we have come up with a few guiding principles:
As a campus, we are currently debating two reports whose recommendations could help us act upon these principles. The First-year Experience Committee, chaired by Dean of Students John Ford, has recommended that we extend the orientation experience for new students throughout the first semester of their freshman year by drawing on a broad network of faculty and Campus Life staff. The committee also recommended that we require all freshmen to take a one-credit course in "Cornell101." The course would organize new students into small groups which would meet with a faculty member four times during the fall semester and in between times participate in activities that would familiarize them with Cornell -- from visiting the Fuertes Observatory, to writing a short essay about a Cornell tradition, to attending a play at the Center for Theatre Arts or an exhibition at the Johnson Art Museum, to asking me or another campus administrator or faculty member three questions about our jobs.
Dean Ford and his committee devised "Cornell 101" to help smooth the transition from high school and encourage students to bond with each other, with faculty, staff and with Cornell. Along the way, we hope the activities will encourage students to appreciate four campus-wide values: community building,self-confidence, intellectual passion, and service, which are key to building an effective and intellectually vital community at Cornell.
The second report, which we hope will also help students participate more fully in Cornell's intellectual life, was prepared by the Residential Communities Committee, chaired by Professor Jennifer Gerner. The report offers four general principles:
The report offers a strategy for reducing the differences between West Campus and North Campus in terms of student mix -- by reconfiguring some of the living units on West Campus to make them more appealing to upperclass students, and by equalizing the influence of Greek houses on both campus areas. It proposes a greater rolefor Faculty-in-Residence and Faculty Fellows and closer linkages between these faculty programs and Campus Life staff.
While the committee was generally supportive of Cornell's program houses such as Risley, Ecology House, Ujamaa, Akwe:kon, and the Holland International Living Center, its opinion was mixed on the issue of student choice. The committee agreed that program houses were valuable as long as they had a real academic focus and emphasis, but it was divided on the issue of student choice, with some members of the committee believing that choice should be restricted in the freshman year.
The issues raised by these two reports are complex, but they are important for us to think about as a campus. With the help of the Student Assembly, we are gathering comments from students, faculty, staff and alumni, which will be factored in to the final drafts that the committees hope to submit by Thanksgiving. We hope to have a pilot versionof "Cornell 101" in spring 1996, and we expect that the Board of Trustees will take action on the principles governing Cornell's residential policy early next year.
Whatever specific changes we make in our residential policy and the way we structure the freshman year, our aims should be clear: to give students more contact with members of the faculty; to link the living and learning environments more closely so that they support and reinforce eachother, and to help make Cornell a more intellectually vital and ethical community than ever before.
Over 150 years ago, Ralph Waldo Emerson told another university audience, "Character is higher than intellect." He knew, as we all do, that it is easier to "know" something in the abstract than it is to put that knowledge into practice in one's own life. But if we can tear down the barriers that currently separate us -- students from faculty, West Campus from North, the classroom experience from the rest of Cornell life -- we may be able to bridge the gulf. In the bridging, we will increase the value of what students take away from the campus, and we will improve the quality of Cornell.
A second issue I want to address on campus this year is how we might create a greater degree of synergy among our programs. I mentioned a few minutes ago that Cornell had done very well overall in the National Research Council study of graduate programs, but there was considerable unevenness in our ranking across fields. In all but three of the 24 humanities, physical science, and engineering fields studied by the NRC, Cornell ranked among the top 10 nationwide. In contrast, no Cornell social science field was ranked in the top 10, and several were not even ranked among the top 20. One plausible explanation for Cornell's relative weakness in the social sciences is that the university's resources in this area are scattered across a number of programs. We have 103 economists on the faculty, for example, who are found in 16 different departments which span 9 different Cornell colleges.And the very strong social science programs in our statutory units -- such as Human Development and Family Studies in Human Ecology and Labor Economics in ILR -- were not factored in to the NRC ratings.
Such a diffusion of effort, which also can be found elsewhere in the university, leads to at least four kinds of problems:
I recognize there is a strong tradition of autonomy on the campus, which generally has served us well. We need to preserve that tradition in instances where it is clearly a strength. But we also need totake advantage of opportunities for greater cross-college cooperation in several areas, including undergraduate education. Our Provost, Don Randel, and Ron Ehrenberg, our vice president for academic programs, planning and budgeting, are discussing the logistics of doing that with the various deans, department chairs and key faculty members.
Exciting things are already beginning to happen. Until this year, for example, separate introductory microeconomics courses were offered by two departments, one endowed and one statutory, to fulfill requirements for students in the College of Arts and Sciences and three statutory colleges. Now a single course, being taught this semester by Professor John Abowd from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, will satisfy course requirements in both the statutory and endowed colleges. Participating units are contributing teaching assistants (TAs) to the effort and sharingthe cost of the course based on the origin of enrolled students and the extent of the resources they are contributing.
Focusing effort across college lines is more cost-effective for the units involved. It is also allowing Prof. Abowd to experiment with innovative uses of technology in teaching -- including making course notes available on the World Wide Web. A "help desk" staffed by TAs is available to field student questions about lecture notes, and eventually Prof. Abowd hopes to offer "virtual office hours" so that students in the course can meet with their TAs using video-conferencing facilities available at
locations around campus. The result will be even more access to the TAs for a longer period of time.
We are also making significant progress toward cross-college cooperation and greater synergy in the broad field of sociology. Four sociology-related departments -- sociology, rural sociology, human development and family studies and organizational behavior -- will begin discussions shortly on whether a common university-wide course, and perhaps a coordinated undergraduate curriculum in sociology, can be developed and whether something similar might be done at the graduate level. The departments have also agreed to cooperate in finding a strong tenured faculty member for the Department of Sociology this year, with faculty members from related departments serving at least in an advisory role.
The faculty is the single most important asset Cornell has, and we need to make our investments carefully and in ways that strengthen the totality of our assets. When we can hire at most 30 or 40 new faculty members university-wide each year, every appointment becomes precious. The approach being tried by Cornell's sociologists, if it issuccessful, could serve as a model for searches elsewhere at Cornell. This is an issue Provost Randel will be working on throughout the year, so that appointments are viewed not only in terms of their likely impact on a particular department or school, but on the whole of Cornell.
I have also asked Provost Randel to work toward developing more uniformity in tenure standards across colleges. I am not suggesting that we evaluate classicists by exactly the same criteria we use to judge computer scientists. Uniformity in criteria is not the same as uniformity in standards. I believe we can develop more consistent standards about the level, quality and distribution of effort required for tenure and promotion by instituting substantive tenure review at the Provost's level, andthat this, in turn, will improve the effectiveness, the efficiency and the academic quality of Cornell.
We already know that focusing our resources can bring benefits in non-academic areas. Just a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a reception to celebrate the joining of ILR Press with the much larger Cornell University Press. The two groups had been meeting informally for several years to talk about the common problems they faced and to exchange ideas. But last winter, when the state announced major budget cuts that would affect the state-supported colleges at Cornell, they began to think seriously about how to combine their resources in ways that made sense for them both. The agreement, hammered out over the course of three evenings and fully implemented by June, saved the imprint of the ILR Press and maintained its independence while giving it access to the Cornell Press's worldwide marketing and sales force. It also gave the Cornell University Press a new market for its strong list of labor history and theory books among those who usually buy the very practical books on labor published by the ILR Press. Even though budget concerns were the original impetus for the merger, it is clearly bringing good results which benefit all involved.
As we begin the process of composing Cornell -- by achieving greater synergy, by engaging students more fully in the institution's intellectual life, and by holding ourselves, explicitly and consistently, to the high standards which the enhancement of academic quality and the cultivation of the mind require -- we should also remind ourselves what apowerful group of programs and what an extraordinary collection of people we already have. And if our well-intentioned efforts to offer students options has sometimes led to a lack of cohesion and the loss of a common commitment to the intellectual enterprise, it has also given us an incredible base of strength.
We have what no other institution I've known can claim to a comparable extent -- academic excellence and public mission. When Archie Ammons wins yet another national award for his poetry -- or gives a reading in Chicago for National Poetry Day -- but still drops by Goldwin Smith in the early morning to drink coffee and talk about poetry, politics and teaching with students and younger faculty; when Tom Eisner uses the knowledge gained through a lifetime of studying the natural world to champion the cause of endangered species in the corridors of Congress; when people in the Cornell Theory Center -- our supercomputer facility -- hold special workshops to give local teachers, administrators and school board members training in using the World Wide Web; when scientists from industry, government laboratories and other universities come to the Cornell Nanofabrication Facility to conduct research on the basic physics and materials of nanostructures and nanostructure fabrication -- work with application to technologies as different as optical communication, night vision devices, and analyzing the structure of DNA -- academic excellence and public mission are joined in a unique and powerful way.
I had my own personal epiphany about Cornell this summer at the New York State Fair. A group of us had driven up from Ithaca on opening day to join Governor Pataki in paying tribute to Dave Call for his 17 years of leadership in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and to tour the various exhibits that Cornell had set up at the fair. There were exhibits on hydroponic gardening and agricultural technologies, as one would expect from a university with one of the best colleges of agriculture in the nation. But the exhibit booth that caught my attention most was staffed by teenagers from Brooklyn -- young African Americans in the 14- to15-year-old range -- who were involved in a Cornell-sponsored program tohelp 8- and 9-year-olds in their neighborhood become better readers. As I talked with the teenagers about the project, two things struck me: the first was how proud they were to be teaching, and the second was how proud they were to be doing it under the name of Cornell.
Here were Cornell's "Permeating Ideas," as articulated by A.D. White: "First, the development of individual[s]... in all [their] nature, in all [their] powers, as being[s] intellectual, moral, and religious; secondly, bringing the power of the [persons] thus developed to bear usefully upon society."
Here, amid the blue cotton candy and the bovine barns, the ferris wheels and the scrambler, the sculpture made from butter, and the impossible games of chance, was clear evidence that Cornell was touching people's lives -- creating knowledge, sharing knowledge, putting it at the service of the public. For these particular youngsters, whose world before had been restricted to an inner-city neighborhood downstate, it had meant a sense of purpose, expanded horizons. . . and a chance.
I am excited to be part of that kind of enterprise. This is a place where knowing and doing -- intellect and character -- are linked, where one follows from the other and is enriched by the other. This is a place where the cultivation of the human mind for the sake of the individual, together with its moral improvement for the sake of society, remains the fundamental reason for being. It is a place already exceptional in the quality of its intellectual resources. With your help and support -- in these final, crucial weeks of the Cornell Campaign and long afterward -- it can also be a place of synergy, community and even greater strength.
I look forward to working with you to bring that about.
-end-