Key university priorities addressed at workshop

Agriculture and Life Sciences undergraduate Mark Hale joins in the group discussion on "Cornell in the Marketplace" with Industrial and Labor Relations Professor David Lipsky, director of the Office of Distance Learning, at the Academic Leadership Series workshop May 12 at the Statler Hotel. Charles Harrington/University Photography

By Jacquie Powers

Some 350 faculty, staff and students spent a morning last week exchanging diverse perspectives and ideas on three priorities President Hunter Rawlings has determined are key to the future of the university.

The three priorities discussed at the May 12 workshop were: "Cornell in the Marketplace: Recruiting Cornell Students," "North Campus: The First Year Experience" and "The Graduate Experience: Discovering Best Practice." Rawlings and Provost Don Randel cosponsored the workshop, part of the ongoing Academic Leadership Series.

Rawlings noted at the opening session, in the Alice Statler Auditorium in the School of Hotel Administration, that "the Academic Leadership Series is a very important forum and one that we in the administration pay particular attention to. And while it is not a policy-making body, it does indirectly impact policy.... These discussions do result in actual change," he said.

Participants broke into small groups for an hour and a half, with each group discussing one of the three topics. At the conclusion, three group facilitators presented their discussion highlights and recommendations, to give participants a random sample of the ideas generated.

More detailed notes from each discussion group will be presented to the faculty senate and the administration for further discussion and possible action, Provost Don Randel noted.

Participants in the "Cornell in the Marketplace: Recruiting Cornell Students" discussion suggested, among other things, increasing the role of both faculty and students in recruiting, enhancing the role of faculty advising by formally evaluating and rewarding advisers, allocating regular organized discussion time immediately following big lecture classes and removing barriers to taking courses across colleges and majors.

Participants in the "North Campus: The First Year Experience" discussion noted that it is not just a first-year issue but will have a ripple effect over students' four years. But, they added, it will take time, and the culture of the campus will change one year at a time. Group members also said the initiative is an opportunity for entirely new kinds of academic endeavors, and it shouldn't be too course-oriented. They added, it is necessary to determine when it is appropriate to combine the academic and social worlds of students and when to keep them separate, to avoid becoming too intrusive.

Participants in the discussion of "The Graduate Experience: Discovering Best Practice" noted that graduate students have formidable financial constraints and that there are inequities in financial support for first-year graduate students in the humanities versus the sciences. They also suggested recruiting and retaining more minority faculty members. Excessive informal demands are placed on minority graduate students, and they should be rewarded for these efforts, they added.

In closing the workshop, Randel said, "We have talked about undergraduates, graduate students and faculty, and what we need to do is blur some of the boundaries that we somehow allow to arise among those groups.

"What has gotten Cornell University where it is, is a particular kind of imagination that has enabled us to accomplish things that no other institution has accomplished. And it is through forums like these that we ensure that our imaginations are, in fact, what will continue to drive us forward and not let us be bound by some artificial constraints -- that, in fact, will help us drill imagination right through necessity."