Office of the President

2009 Reunion Weekend State of the University Address

by David J. Skorton, President

As prepared for presentation
June 6, 2009

Thank you, Pete, and good morning and welcome, everyone. What a spectacular weekend! It is such a pleasure for Robin and me to celebrate with you, and to learn from you what it was like to be a student on the Hill, whether it's been 1 year or 75—or even longer—since you earned your degree. It is a special honor and privilege to be at Cornell and to share with you all that Cornell is today—and also to share with you what I see as our responsibilities and aspirations, as one of the world's great research universities, going forward at a most extraordinary time of great challenge and, as in all times of challenge, opportunity.

I want to add my thanks to the presidents emeriti and their spouses and to Kip, who is celebrating his 70th Cornell reunion and at least that many years of outstanding service to Cornell. I want to thank the Board of Trustees and the Board of Overseers, and I want especially to thank Nancy and Pete Meinig for your friendship and leadership. Pete, as chair of our Board of Trustees, you are providing truly inspirational leadership to the university at a particularly difficult time for Cornell, our state, the nation and the world.

I want to thank my vice presidential colleagues on Cornell's senior staff and the academic deans for their extraordinary service during the past year. Would you all please stand so that we can give you a round of applause? Here's to my partners in leadership! I also want to thank the department chairs and vice provosts for their efforts and support.

This has been a year of unprecedented uncertainty and complexity for many institutions and individuals in our own country and around the world, and the challenges facing the global economy are likely to be with us for some time to come. As I look back on the past year at Cornell, I must acknowledge our own challenges as an institution, but I can also report exceptional cooperation, courage and wisdom in facing our problems and also a renewed determination to help solve—through the work of our faculty, students, staff and alumni—the daunting problems facing our world.

I continue to believe that colleges and universities have major roles to play in putting our economy and our planet on a more sustainable, peaceful and prosperous course because of our unrivaled capacity for education that leads to critical thinking and inquiry as well as idea creation and innovation. Now is the time for universities to step up to the challenges before us; now is the time for us to serve.

As we embrace a mandate for broader service, it is worth remembering the strengths we bring to the table; there is much good news to report. Our students continue to distinguish themselves on campus and beyond. Four of our rising seniors, for example, earned national Goldwater Scholarships this year. Another rising senior earned a Truman Scholarship. Cornell athletes had another exceptional year—winning Ivy championships in several sports and a national championship in women's gymnastics. And, with the Ivy championship already in hand, the men's lacrosse team came within a hair's breadth of its first national title in 21 years, losing to Syracuse by 1 point in sudden death overtime on Memorial Day.

We continue to attract record numbers of outstanding applicants—more than 34,000 of them for the 3,150 places in next fall's entering class. And, despite the financial situation, the Board of Trustees courageously supported our recommendation to take funds from our shrinking endowment to ensure that talented students from all backgrounds and economic circumstances can afford a Cornell education. Students from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less can now graduate from Cornell debt-free and for students from families earning below $60,000, we also have eliminated the parental contribution.

To help with this initiative, we've made some adjustments to our campaign aspirations, raising the goal for undergraduate financial aid to $350 million (from $225 million). I'm very pleased to report that gifts and commitments for undergraduate financial aid now total $150 million, with gifts ranging from $100 to $25 million, and all of these gifts, at any level, greatly appreciated and put to good use.

Cornell remains a science and technology powerhouse, as well as a major force in the arts and humanities, the social sciences, and professional fields, as reflected in several national and international rankings. As a university, we ranked #15 in the world last fall in the British Times Higher Education-QS World University rankings, up from #20 the year before. The Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences' graduate programs in the biomedical sciences all ranked in the top 10 (Chronicle of Higher Education). We were #1 in undergraduate architecture (DesignIntelligence Magazine)—a ranking we expect to sustain now that the Board of Trustees has given its approval to proceed with the construction of Paul Milstein Hall (more than a decade in the planning) for the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. Leading our efforts as chair of architecture, beginning in July, will be internationally acclaimed educator, designer and author Dagmar Richter, currently at UCLA, working with Dean Kent Kleinman. Our commitment to the arts will be further enhanced by a 16,000 square-foot addition to the Johnson Museum of Art, which was also authorized by the Board of Trustees at its recent meeting.

The basis of Cornell's stature as a world-class research university and of our attractiveness to so many students, postdocs and staff is our faculty. Although the current financial challenges have forced us to delay or discontinue some faculty searches, we are committed to maintaining a broad and diverse faculty. We now have some 135 current and emeritus faculty who are members of one or more of the national academies and other distinguished scholarly societies—including five elected this year. Three of our younger faculty members—Lara Estroff, Daniel Cosley and Maxim Perelstein—received 2009 Early Career Development Awards from the National Science Foundation. And another three young faculty members—Peng Chen, Liam McAllister and Adam Siepel—were selected as 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation research fellows.

We've also made progress in diversifying the faculty over the past decade, with outstanding appointments of academics in the early stages of their careers. We are not yet where we want or need to be, though, in terms of diversity—and we also face intense competition in retaining the best faculty as they proceed to the middle and upper levels of their careers. Maintaining and improving diversity among faculty and staff is particularly difficult in a time of reduced hiring, but we are aware of this and are meeting the challenge head on. To learn more about our diversity efforts, I invite you to attend the Cornell Mosaic Diversity Forum, featuring Deputy Provost David Harris, at 1 p.m. today in Malott Hall.

Cornell is addressing our financial difficulties with budget cuts, no raises, an external hiring pause, a construction pause, very substantial cutbacks in capital development, and other measures that will put us back on track to a balanced budget and a solid financial future. I especially want to recognize the 432 staff members who chose to participate in the staff retirement incentive program, which has helped us reduce our workforce while reducing the need for layoffs. These long-serving, talented and devoted individuals have been critical to the fabric of Cornell and will continue to be cherished members of our community. And I want to thank the hundreds of staff members and others in the community who contributed to our on-line suggestion box, offering ideas for cost savings and for improving our efficiency and effectiveness.

Without minimizing the financial challenges that still lie ahead, I remain very confident of our collective ability to re-imagine the university in ways that will not only get us through the immediate economic crisis, but also place us on a sounder long-term course, with our excellence undiminished, our commitment to student access preserved, and our focus on service increased. To lead us through this period of re-examination, Provost Kent Fuchs, who is completing six of the most challenging months imaginable for a new provost, is implementing a rigorous strategic planning process with the help of outside consultants that will touch every unit in the university and cut across the lines that divide us. Deputy Provost David Harris, who served with distinction as interim provost, also is an important leader in the planning process. This process will be rapid and efficient but also broadly consultative, and it will bring us to a point of focus on our highest priorities. How to live within our means and still renew and extend our excellence in teaching, research, creativity and extension to the world are problems of enormous dimensions. Ultimately, the university will have to maintain flexibility to pursue the kinds of bold initiatives that have kept us in the very top echelon of worldwide higher education.

I want to suggest to you this morning that Cornell needs to get this right, not just for our own sake, but because of our responsibilities—as the recipient of substantial public funds and as the land grant university for the State of New York—to contribute to the solution of the problems facing the larger society. What can we in higher education do to help? I see our contributions in three areas that have always been central to our mission: education, research and service.

This spring we dedicated the McGovern Family Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences, to be located in our new Weill Hall on the Ithaca campus. The McGovern Center will provide "one stop" affordable support for life science startups by tapping into the expertise of faculty and students in the Johnson School for advice on business plans and marketing; looking to the Cornell Law School for guidance on intellectual property and patent issues; obtaining leads on investors and venture capital from the Cornell Center for Technology, Enterprise and Commercialization and from alumni innovators—with the goal of bringing these ventures to the point where they can function independently and contribute to economic development—and new jobs—in the region.

Cornell's Institute for the Social Sciences, created in 2004 to encourage collaborations among social scientists across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, provides another model of what I have in mind. One of the institute's major thrusts is to bring faculty members together around broad themes that they investigate over the course of a three-year period through research, symposia and conferences, and the development of new courses. For example, the Evolving Family theme project, which ran from 2004 to 2007, led to the creation of the Cornell Population Program, an intellectual hub for demographic research and training at Cornell, with a major grant from the National Institutes of Health.

This year the institute is entering the public phase of its theme project on persistent poverty and upward mobility. The project team, under the leadership of Chris Barrett, the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Professor of Applied Economics and Management, combines the best thinking of those working on issues of domestic socioeconomic mobility with those working in low-income countries. Other team members come from multiple departments and colleges—from nutritional sciences to sociology, government and economics, to city and regional planning.

The Persistent Poverty Project reinforces Cornell's globally-recognized leadership in research focused on reducing chronic poverty and malnutrition. It complements longstanding efforts around the world by the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development and the Cornell Food and Nutrition Policy Program, as well as the new Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition, which aims to improve, even transform, the lives of the rural poor in India, and also exciting new initiatives under the Cornell Center for a Sustainable Future and by many other units across campus that embrace leading-edge research to benefit the world's least fortunate.

In these difficult economic times—indeed, especially in these challenging times—I believe that colleges and universities can and must play a more central role in helping countries that are struggling to meet the needs of their citizens by developing human capacity and achieving enduring improvement of the standard of living. I am hopeful that the project on poverty and inequality may also help unlock the next round of effective policy responses at home, as well as in areas far from Ithaca.

To give another example, our university-wide Entrepreneurship@Cornell program aspires to "find and foster the entrepreneurial spirit in every Cornell participant in every college, every field and every stage of life." And Cornell students are doing just that. More than 100 Cornell undergraduates submitted entries for Cornell's "Big Idea" competition, sponsored by Entrepreneurship@Cornell. Among the top-ranked ideas were a rape-alert device that would contact police with the exact GPS location of the victim and a line of custom-made, premium clothing that would contribute to the economic development of rural villages in Peru. I have no doubt that Cornellians will continue to lead in this area through the commercialization of socially useful products and ideas.

Universities, as generators of knowledge and ideas, can also set us on a path to a more prosperous, sustainable future through research. For example, the Institute for Computational Sustainability, directed by Carla Gomes, associate professor of computing and information science and applied economics and management, was launched last fall with a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The new institute brings together computer scientists, applied mathematicians, economists, biologists, and environmental scientists at Cornell and other institutions to work on projects that can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of how we manage and allocate our natural resources.

Cornell faculty recently won federal stimulus package funding for three projects designed to meet the nation's long-term energy needs. We are especially gratified to have received $17.5 million in federal funding for one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers created by the U.S. Department of Energy. The center, to be directed by Héctor Abruña, the E.M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and co-director of the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute, aims to discover and design materials that will dramatically enhance the performance of fuel cells, batteries, photovoltaics and photo-electrochemical cells.

As we move forward, creative partnerships involving universities, government and the business community will be ever more important. And Cornell is providing leadership in this area as well.

Earlier this week in New York City, for example, I was privileged to attend the inaugural Cornell Global Forum on Sustainable Enterprise, which brought together key faculty, alumni and pioneering practitioners to discuss the creation of profitable businesses that simultaneously raise the quality of life for the world's poor, respect cultural diversity, and conserve the ecological integrity of the planet for future generations. Organized by Professor Stuart Hart and his colleagues in the Johnson School's Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise, the Global Forum aims to drive what Professor Hart has called "The Great Convergence"—the intersection of clean technology and business development at the base of the economic pyramid. Many constructive proposals emerged from the program, and we were all inspired to continue efforts in this area at the closing session, which featured a panel discussion—moderated by Charlie Rose—with former Vice President Al Gore, Ratan Tata '59, who was on campus yesterday celebrating his 50th reunion and delivering the Olin Lecture, and H. Fisk Johnson, who is here this weekend to celebrate his 30th Cornell reunion with the Class of 1979, and who, as chair and CEO of S.C. Johnson and Son, Inc., is carrying forward his family's commitment to corporate responsibility and sustainability, the Johnson School, and Cornell.

New York State Governor David A. Paterson has said that in a global innovation economy today's ideas are tomorrow's jobs, and he recently created the Governor's Task Force on Diversifying the New York State Economy through Industry-Higher Education Partnerships, which I am honored to chair. It is a privilege to be working with distinguished colleagues from various sectors within the state, including Daniel Doktori, the Governor's director of higher education, who is serving as the task force's executive director. I'm grateful to Steve Golding, who is transitioning after four successful years as executive vice president to lead this effort on behalf of Cornell, in partnership with Steve Johnson, our vice president for government and community relations.

We need to build on the synergies that already exist between higher education and industry in New York State to generate new jobs and economic opportunity through sustainable development and economic growth. Between now and December 15, when the task force will submit its recommendations, I invite you to share with me or with Daniel Doktori examples of university-industry collaborations that have been successful in your own state or region and which could serve as models of "best practices."

Cornell has always prided itself on its ability to combine theory and practice, insight and implementation, the creation of knowledge with its application, and for that ability we owe much to the university's deep and broad foundation in the liberal arts. As I assured our newest gradates at this year's commencement, the liberal education they received at Cornell—over and beyond their considerable skills in specific areas of study—will give them uncommon advantages in surmounting personal obstacles and in contributing to the solution of local, national and global challenges. I am committed to sustaining the quality and character of the liberal education that is so essential to Cornell and the role we can play in the world.

Our own Frank Rhodes, who, with Rosa, is joining in so many events this weekend, wrote in his book The Creation of the Future, "The research university provides an atmosphere of instruction and a context of learning that are distinctive, intensive, demanding, practical, professionalized, personal and unending. Learning becomes a lifelong quest; meticulous attention to detail becomes the benchmark. The results, for individuals and for society, can be transforming."

For 144 years now, Cornell University has been a beacon of hope—helping shape our nation and the world and contributing to the betterment of the human condition through our teaching, research, creativity and service. Now it is our turn. Thinking our way out of the current economic crisis and improving the prospects of people in our own community and nation and around the world—while also safeguarding the long-term health of our planet—is the great challenge and opportunity of our time. I welcome your interest and your ideas—and your participation.

Thank you for coming back to spend Reunion Weekend 2009 with us. In the time we have left, I'd be pleased to take questions and hear your comments.