Thomas Pepinsky
Walter F. LaFeber Professor
Government
Suman Seth
Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science
History, Science and Technology Studies
Sarah Kreps
John L. Wetherill Professor
Government, Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity
Sabrina Karim
…
The Program on Ethics & Public Life will sponsor a public debate series this year, featuring leading scholars discussing a range of issues from ethical challenges arising from the pandemic to religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws to the role of the U.S as enforcer of international order. The series kicks off Oct. 1 with “Health vs. Economy in the Pandemic Control: What is the…
It’s one of Sarah Kreps’ typical summer projects – reading, researching and revising her syllabi to reflect new discoveries, ideas or news to make her classes come alive for students.
But this summer, more than ever before, Kreps and other professors throughout the College of Arts & Sciences say they are reworking class plans to include exploration of the impacts of the pandemic and…
Though the pandemic interrupted most in-person summer research, many Arts & Sciences students were able to secure fascinating opportunities in healthcare research during the summer. Chunlu Li’s ’22 summer position at the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection is helping doctors differentiate between various subtypes of lung cancer, aiding in both detection and treatment. Leone…
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Héctor ’20 and Joey Ibáñez ’23 headed home to Puerto Rico, they and fellow college student friends met people who were surviving on saltine crackers and a cup of rice. Since they were all stuck at home with time on their hands and a desire to help, Héctor and friend Isak Romero, a recent graduate of MIT, started making calls to raise funds and help alleviate…
Applications are being accepted for the second cohort of Klarman Postdoctoral Fellows in the College of Arts & Sciences. The three-year fellowships are available to early-career scholars conducting leading-edge research in any of the College’s discipline areas. The program is among the most selective of its kind in the country, offering independence from constraints of particular grants and…
Her summer internship at the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage is allowing Harper Tooch ’21 to combine her interests in anthropology, archaeology and art history to study the culture of Armenia. “Last spring, I took two courses on global heritage with Sabrina Papazian (a CIVIC postdoctoral associate in critical heritage studies), then went to her office hours and discovered…
Cornell’s Language Resource Center is hosting online conversation groups this summer for the first time, helping students practice their skills in four languages. The hourlong sessions – in Italian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish – happen weekly or every other week and are led by a facilitator, often a native speaker. That leader helps participants converse about topics including current events…
Visit the PBS American Portrait website, and you’ll likely see submissions that David Jansen helped gather from participants across the country. Jansen, ’22, is a performing and media arts major who’s working remotely as an intern for the show this summer. After interning at CUNY television last summer, Jansen landed the position with the PBS show, a national storytelling project that invites…
Jeffrey Palmer, assistant professor of performing and media arts, is celebrating the Emmy® nomination this week for his film “N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear,” as a part of PBS’ American Masters series. The PBS show was nominated July 28 in the category of “Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.” Palmer’s film explores the life and creative works of Momaday, a Kiowa and Native America…
When sophomores in this year’s Pathways Internship Program began their academic year last fall, hopes were running high for in-person internships in dream cities with organizations whose missions matched their own. Instead, many of the 16 students saw those internships canceled, but eight students are still working remotely, exploring careers they might want to pursue after college. La’Treil…
An incoming Cornell graduate student in astronomy is involved in recently-published work that may reinvigorate an older method of measuring the angular size of stars, using new technology and computing capability. Jonathan Davis is a contributing author to “Demonstration of Stellar Intensity Interferometry with the Four VERITAS Telescopes,” published July 20 in Nature Astronomy and the lead…
Twice a week, little Nereida Rucker logs on to Zoom to work with her tutor, Anabelle Perez ‘23, while her mom, Erica Marie Rucker, listens in. The sessions have helped 5-year-old Nereida start to count by 5s and move ahead in her reading and Spanish and they’re a welcome break for Erica, an employee of Weill Cornell Medicine. Perez is one of 70 Cornell students and recent graduates who is…
… that helped students prepare for the rigors of organic chemistry, a group of undergraduates is running a similar … of their fellow students this summer. With help from three chemistry professors and a chemistry grad student, the students offer three weekly …
While they say more needs to be done to secure permanent protected status for “Dreamers,” some Cornell faculty say they’re hopeful about the recent Supreme Court ruling, which ruled that the Trump administration’s move to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2017 was unlawful. "I am cautiously optimistic that this ruling, while restrictive in form, sends an important…
Two doctoral students in the field of government recently won fellowships for their research. Angie Torres, a second-year student, won a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support including an annual stipend of $34,000. Angie Torres “This fellowship will relieve me from teaching responsibilities for three years…
Austin Bunn, associate professor and Koenig Jacobson Sesquicentennial Fellow in the Department of Performing & Media Arts, will take over leadership of the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity July 1. The program, launched in 2017, offers a unique multidisciplinary curriculum to a cohort of 100 students, 25 in each class. “I started my career as a technology journalist, writing about…
Two recent humanities grads have started a summer program to help high school students develop their humanities research skills. Pre-Collegiate Humanities Research is a 10-week online class founded by John Yoon ’20 and Eliana Rozinov ’20, who both majored in comparative literature (Yoon also majored in German and was a College Scholar, while Rozinov had a double major in English and a minor in…
Following the success of on-campus networking events between students and alumni, the Arts & Sciences Career Development office is offering a Summer 2020 Virtual Career Conversation Series. The Zoom meetings will feature an alumnus either sharing their career story or talking about the way the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their industry and offering career advice, said Nicole Moss, Program…
Matthew Velasco, assistant professor of anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a 2020 Career Enhancement Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. The fellowship, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, creates career development opportunities for early-career faculty fellows with promising research projects. The program provides fellows with a six…
Two undergraduate students and six graduate students will begin studies and projects June 2 as part of the first summer practicum in the Rural Humanities scholarly initiative, a project funded for four years by a million-dollar grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The summer practicum, initially planned to take place in-person in Ithaca, has moved to remote learning, but students will…
Even though we can't be together in person, we are looking forward to "seeing" you at our virtual Reunion 2020, Friday and Saturday, June 5-6! We hope that you will be able to join us at one or more of these Arts & Sciences events! Register now at the Reunion website. Some of our highlights include: Arts & Sciences Update with Dean Jayawardhana, 3:30-4 p.m., Saturday: Join Ray…
Although Cornell classes have moved remotely for the semester, ten members of the Cornell Orchestra are still meeting weekly by Zoom with their mentees – elementary school orchestra students from Cayuga Heights Elementary School.
“The mentors have motivated and challenged my children in their playing,” said parent Gretchen Ryan ‘97, whose sons Gabriel and Luka have mentors through the…
While they’d all rather be on campus with their friends celebrating the last days of the semester, students have found fun and challenging ways to make the best of their situation of remote learning. During the summer, James Robertson ’21 normally spends his evenings singing and playing piano in various New Jersey restaurants and BBQ joints. This spring, he’s moved his gigs outside, treating his…
Sophomores in the Milstein Program in Technology and Humanity were supposed to be spending the summer of 2020 living in the House on Roosevelt Island in New York City and taking a special set of classes at Cornell Tech. Instead, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that program has moved online, and although students and faculty are disappointed about not being together in person, they’re…
Destiny Malloy ’21 had a sweet internship lined up this summer near New York City, working in data analytics at L’Oreal. After COVID-19, it was converted to unpaid and remote. Adam Spaulding-Astudillo ’20 was in interviews for a job using his degree in ecology and evolutionary biology, but companies stopped hiring. Armaan Goyal ’22 had an internship lined up in Manhattan. It also went remote and…
As a college senior stuck home during quarantine with an interest in infectious diseases and past experience with the World Health Organization (WHO), Dalton Price ’20 thought it was completely obvious that he would sign up to help in any way he could during the COVID-19 pandemic. Price first tried to help WHO efforts in Colombia, as soon as word came from Cornell that classes would be online…
A group of 32 students from three colleges at Cornell will make up the first cohort of Humanities Scholars in a new program that will start in the fall, offered by the College of Arts & Sciences. The rising juniors, who come from the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Agriculture and Life Sciences and Engineering, are majoring or minoring in 20 different disciplines and have an interest in…
Thomas Nolan ’20, a Near Eastern studies and government double major in the College of Arts & Sciences, has been awarded a Fulbright teaching fellowship to work in the country of Georgia. Nolan spent some time in Georgia during the fall of his junior year, when he traveled around the region following an internship at the Vatican. “I loved it so much. Georgia is in this really interesting…
The more than 200 members of Cornell’s choral groups may not be able to sing together each week, but they are still spending time listening and sharing their love of music virtually, with a host of guest visitors this semester.Stephen Spinelli, director of the Cornell Chorale and Chamber Choir and acting director of the Cornell Chorus and Glee Club, thought up the twice-weekly listening sessions,…
An Ithaca theatre company is creating a live-streamed performance of a new work from six international playwrights, including a Cornell professor. The piece will premiere May 1.“Felt Sad, Posted a Frog (and Other Streams of Global Quarantine),” a production of the Cherry Artists’ Collective in Ithaca, is directed by Samuel Buggeln, artistic director of the collective, and Beth F. Milles, Cornell…
Jane Wang, professor of physics, has been awarded a fellowship from the Simons Foundation for 2020.The fellowships are given to outstanding mathematicians and theoretical physicists to extend academic leaves from one term to a full year, enabling recipients to focus solely on research for the long periods often necessary for significant advances.Wang’s research focuses on the physics of living…
Ding Xiang Warner, professor of Chinese literature in the Department of Asian Studies, was honored April 10 with a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.The fellowships were awarded to 81 scholars in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who have the potential to make significant contributions to knowledge in their fields. The awards range from $40,000 to $75,000 and…
During his online lectures on Wednesdays, Tyler Cross ’23 sometimes needs to dash away from his computer and into an ambulance. As an EMT with the Millburn-Short Hills Volunteer First Aid Squad in Millburn, N.J., Cross is continuing his work as a first responder while taking his Cornell classes remotely for the rest of the semester.“It’s not like New York City where they’re out all day on COVID…
Clara Liao ’17 stayed up late into the night for four days sharing her knowledge of biology by creating an animated hand-drawn COVID-19 video. The video is now part of a Yale University page, where Liao is a graduate student, and has been widely shared throughout the U.S. and Taiwan.
“My background is in molecular biology and I was finding it super hard to pick up key pieces of information…
A college student at home alone while his mom works in a hospital made a new friend last week — a 77-year-old widow also stuck at home. The pair commiserated with each other about their similar situations. A guitar player met another player and songwriter and were able to spend time singing and composing through Zoom.These four people were some of more than 600 who have signed up to connect with…
Last month, as Cornell faculty learned they needed to move quickly to remote instruction, Sara Warner, director of LGBT Studies and associate professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, realized she had more technical skills than some of her peers.“In our department, it’s hard to translate what we do to online teaching, especially the live, embodied participant experience,” she said…
By day, David Feldshuh is a professor of theatre in the Department of Performing and Media arts, but when he’s not at the Schwartz Center, four times a month, he dons his scrubs for shifts at Cayuga Medical Center’s Urgent Care Center, where he puts his M.D. degree to work seeing patients with all sorts of issues. During the current Covid-19 pandemic, he continues his work at Cornell (teaching…
Photo right: Kevin Davis, left, and Souvik Basu, two students in the Arabic class at Auburn Correctional Facility, get ready for the Cornell Prison Education Program commencement last spring, where they received associate's degrees from Cayuga Community College.Renelle Mensah ’21 is unsure what this summer might bring, with the uncertainty of COVID-19 hanging over the U.S., but she’s hopeful that…
When Ray Thompson ’21 was a freshman coming to Cornell from Alabama, he couldn’t wait to be in a quad with a bunch of roommates — he and his siblings all had their own rooms at home. But, Thompson ended up in a single room in Clara Dickson Hall and worried a bit about making friends.Soon, he found that the dorm was a very social place, he said, and he made connections in other ways at well,…
Applications opened March 18 for Summer Experience Grants, funding for Arts & Sciences students who need assistance to pay for travel, research and study this summer.
More than $500,000 will be made available to students, thanks to alumni donations, as well as funds from the Student Assembly. Students can use the funding to help with costs associated with unpaid or low-paid…
Joshua Johnson’s ’21 senior research project won’t be just on paper – he envisions kids walking through his senior project: a museum that helps them think more broadly about the term “classical civilizations.”Johnson, a double major in classics and Africana studies, is also a Rawlings Presidential Research Scholar and a javelin thrower for the Cornell track team. He’s taken lots of Latin (though…
The College of Arts & Sciences is gearing up for Giving Day on Thursday, March 12 and we hope you'll join in the fun!
Your gifts to our annual fund, undergraduate scholarship fund or any of our departments and programs help our faculty and students reach their full potential.
Thanks to the generosity of our alumni, parents and friends, the College of Arts & Sciences Annual Fund…
Lee Rosenthal ’87 knew he was in love with filmmaking when he found himself a college student and excited to wake up early. He was creating an 11-minute narrative movie for Professor Marilyn Rivchin’s filmmaking class at Cornell and he couldn’t wait to get at it.“I never had that experience before,” said Rosenthal, now president of physical production at Paramount. “Something about that movie and…
Chris Kitchen/A&S Communications
NY Times journalist Marc Lacey speaking with students
Marc Lacey ’87, national editor for The New York Times and the first Distinguished Visiting Journalist in a new College of Arts & Sciences program, spent the week of Feb. 10-14 on campus, sharing advice with students, visiting classes and learning about faculty research.“There’s not a single class I took at Cornell that I haven’t used in some sense or another as an editor,” Lacey said in a…
When Steve Israel served in Congress during the Obama administration, he was tasked with researching what voters are concerned about, and on what political candidates should focus.Among the most important findings: Tell candidates to stop using the phrase “American dream,” as it has no credibility.Israel, now director of Cornell’s Institute of Politics and Global Affairs in New York City and a…
When Mary Fessenden, Cornell Cinema director, sits down to think about what films to show each semester, she has lots of movies in mind, but she also works closely with professors to find ties to the classes they’re offering.
“In my course, one of the big questions is why and how Japanese pop culture — comics, games, and especially anime — grew into such a worldwide phenomenon,” said Andrew…
Cornell faculty recently approved four new minors available now to students in the College of Arts & Sciences. Students can start taking classes in and applying for those minors — in public service studies, media studies, migration studies and science communication and public engagement — this semester.Public service studiesThe public service studies minor is a collaborative effort between…
Benjamin Anderson's monograph “Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art” has been awarded the 2020 Karen Gould Prize in Art History from the Medieval Academy of America, an award given each year for a distinguished book in the field of medieval art history. Anderson is an associate professor in the departments of History of Art and Classics. His book addresses the reception of Greco-Roman…
Cornell’s Department of Music is collaborating with performers from Ithaca College and the community to offer Ithaca Sounding 2020, a multi-day, multi-venue event Jan. 30-Feb. 2.The festival and symposium will feature concerts, workshops, talks, presentations and readings focused on modernist and experimental concert music by Ithacans past and present, including keyboard composers Julius Eastman,…
