Nancy Wang ’24 and DALL-E3/College of Human Ecology
Nancy Wang ’24 used the AI DALL-E3 and the prompt “create a schematic of one layer of flexible battery, one layer of woven conductive thread, and one layer of textile” to create this image.
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Michell Chresfield is a scholar of the history of racial formation and identity-making in 20th century America. She is assistant professor of Africana studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Roger Theise for Cornell University
Misha Inniss-Thompson ’16, assistant research professor of psychology, gave the keynote address at the Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives’ annual Honors Award Ceremony on May 5 in the Statler Hotel.
Samantha Huanca ’23 remembers feeling overwhelmed on North Campus on the first day of her freshman year. As the first person in her family to go to college, she said, she could not look to relatives for guidance, only comfort.
“So I completely relied on myself that year,” she said. “And on the challenging days, I would tell myself, ‘Just fake it ’til you make it.’” That approach offered only…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Taylan Özgür Ercan ’25, left, president and founder of the Turkish Students Association and an economics major, and Majd Aldaye ’25, a computer science major
The refrigerator moved across the room in Majd Aldaye’s family home in Tartus, Syria, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake on Feb. 6 became one of the deadliest natural disasters of the century.
“My family and friends all woke up terrified at 4 a.m. The earth was shaking strongly for over a minute, the furniture was moving,” said Aldaye ’25, a computer science major in Cornell Engineering and in…
Provided by the family of Dr. Edward Hart
Martin Luther King Jr. and colleagues stand outside Anabel Taylor Hall on Nov. 13, 1960, during King’s first visit to Ithaca. Left to right: Kenneth Hagood ’60, a Cornell student organizer; Martin Luther King Jr.; the Rev. Joseph Lowery, a co-founder with King of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Dr. Edward Hart, an Ithaca ophthalmologist and chair of the Cornell Committee Against Segregation.
On April 4, 1959, Cornell President Deane W. Malott typed a letter on onion-skin paper to Martin Luther King Jr., inviting him to preach at Sage Chapel. The invitation included a $300 honorarium and accommodations at Willard Straight Hall.
Malott’s letter was the first in a series of formal, gracious correspondence he and King exchanged, comparing schedules and availability. And it was one of…
Alex McAlvay/New York Botanical Garden
A farmer holds multiple varieties of wheat and barley from his field in Kutabir District, Amhara, Ethiopia.
Morgan Ruelle, M.S. ’10, Ph.D. ’15, was living in the remote mountains of Ethiopia in 2011, researching his dissertation on food diversity, when he kept hearing about a crop that confused him.
The farmers repeatedly mentioned a grain called “duragna” in Amharic that had no equivalent in English. “They kept saying, ‘Well, it’s not really wheat, it’s not really barley,’” Ruelle says. “I was just…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Cornell Votes members Dana Karami ’23, center, vice president of operations; Patrick Mehler ’23, founding member and president; and Lauren Sherman ’24, incoming vice president of external operations, gather in Willard Straight Hall.
by :
Susan Kelley
Lindsey Ross Johnson
,
Cornell Chronicle
On Nov. 8, for the first time, nearly all Cornell students who live on campus will be able to vote on campus in a general election, thanks in part to Cornell Votes, a two-year-old nonpartisan student group that helped advocate locally and statewide for on-campus polling locations in New York.
“The ultimate inspiring thing for me is that students are a wildly untapped population in terms of…
Eight faculty members have been selected to receive Stephen H. Weiss Awards honoring excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring, President Martha E. Pollack announced Oct. 14.
“I’m delighted to recognize our outstanding faculty recipients of this year’s Weiss Awards for their undergraduate teaching,” Pollack said. “The awards highlight the pinnacle of exceptional teaching,…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Authors Michelle Cronin, left, and Tyler Hill are among the 14 authors from upstate New York participating in the Oñgwaga•ä’ Writers Workshop
Tyler Hill couldn’t find a children’s book about Native American kids who play lacrosse to read to his three children at bedtime. So he wrote one himself.
“Wormburner” follows the story of Canoe, a 10-year-old Native American boy whose life revolves around lacrosse. The title comes from a type of fast, targeted lacrosse shot in which the ball whips just above the ground’s surface.
“I wanted…
Two professors have won Cornell’s highest honors for teaching graduate and professional students.
Raymond Craib, the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of American History in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Nadine Fiani, associate clinical professor in the Section of Dentistry and Oral Surgery in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), have each been honored with the Provost Award for…
Noël Heaney/Cornell University
Kofi Acree, director of the John Henrik Clarke Africana Library and curator of Africana Collections in Cornell University Library, speaks with gardeners outside the installation at the Cornell Botanic Gardens.
Plain grits, made by his aunt and grandmother, were the only thing Kofi Acree would eat as a baby. Now he makes grits for himself in all sorts of ways – with shrimp and tomato sauce, with cheese and eggs.
Foods like grits, made from corn, offer a connection to the plants enslaved people of African descent used to survive and thrive, Acree says.
“The fact that I’m carrying on something that…
Ryan Young / Cornell University
Fernando Santiago ’86 received the Cornell New York State Hometown Alumni Award on June 22, at a ceremony at the Genesee Valley Club in Rochester.
Fernando Santiago ’86 never had the chance to focus on academics in high school. He managed a pizza restaurant 28 hours per week to make ends meet.
At Cornell, all that changed.
“I’ll forever be indebted to Cornell and the kindness and goodwill of its donors who, decades and even centuries before, decided to provide a world-class education to students regardless of their financial ability…
Lindsay France
Marie Dorvilne, standing, helps Yanick Pierre-Louis, as her home care worker.
“Stop it, stop it!” Yanick Pierre-Louis, 68, slapped her knees, frustrated they wouldn’t stop trembling. Again, her body refused to do what she wanted.
She had just spent an excruciating 25 minutes walking, grimacing with each step, from her recliner in her Brooklyn home to her front door and back, leaning on her walker. Marie Dorvilne, her home care worker since 2017, walked behind Yanick…
Jason Koski/Cornell University
Riché Richardson, professor of Africana studies in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Juneteenth reminds Riché Richardson of the exciting church services she attended growing up, where the congregation celebrated the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year’s Day. Young people in her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, spoke to the congregation about the value of hard work, achievement and making a contribution to society.
“It was powerful to see seniors literally in tears…
In a finding that has implications for the 2022 midterm elections, Cornell researchers found Russia tried to distract liberal voters during the 2016 presidential campaign with a seemingly innocent weapon – tweets about music and videos – taking a page from its domestic disinformation playbook.
The strategy resembles techniques used by autocratic governments that control their national media,…
Lindsay France/Cornell University
Students and faculty engaged with the new Cornell Center for Cultural Humility are, left to right: Sanvi Bhardwaj ’24, event coordinator; Natalie Gosnell ’23, community outreach coordinator; Iman Alsmadi, first-year doctoral student, cultural humility trainer; Jerel Ezell, assistant professor of Africana studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, director; and Ru Liu, first-year doctoral student, cultural humility trainer.
Cornell and community members now have a new resource to understand and help break down barriers between people and facilitate partnerships to advance equity.
The Cornell Center for Cultural Humility facilitates culturally responsive research, practice and policy that is inclusive across race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, gender, religion and other markers of identity. The center…
Provided
Catherine Zhang '22 on the set of Jeopardy! National College Championship
Two Cornellians will compete on “Jeopardy!” Feb. 8, with episodes airing on ABC and streaming on Hulu.
Andrés Quijano ’22, a government major from San Juan, Puerto Rico, will compete at 7:30 p.m. Catherine Zhang ’22, a computer science and sociology major from Pennington, New Jersey, will compete at 8 p.m. on the “Jeopardy!” National College Championship.
“For as long as I can remember, I…
As the Taliban took control of Afghanistan this summer, 150 women – all students at Asian University for Women, trying to flee the country so they could continue their educations – circled Kabul Airport on rented buses for 64 hours.
“It was really risky,” said Diana Ayubi, because the Taliban were attacking buses and firing their guns, killing people. The students were at particular risk,…
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Lillie Steen ’23, an undergraduate in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in archaeology and art history, sifts through excavated soil at St. James A.M.E. Zion Church in Ithaca.
Khalil Hicks, age 11, straddles a 3-foot square trench and points his trowel at the spot where he and his fellow archaeologists discovered an unexpected treasure – right near the stone foundation of St. James A.M.E. Zion Church, Ithaca’s most important Underground Railroad station.
Hicks was on sifting duty that day. At first he thought the compacted dirt in his sifting tray held nothing…
A newly launched, major fundraising campaign aims to shape Cornell as the model university for the 21st century and beyond, building on its foundation of world-class academics, research and engagement.
The five-year, $5 billion campaign, “To Do the Greatest Good,” is named for a note from founder Ezra Cornell about his reasons for founding the university. The campaign will focus on three…
Provided
St. James A.M.E. Zion Church is believed to be the oldest religious structure in Ithaca and one of the first A.M.E. Zion churches in the country.
Cornell researchers and students are poised to help shed light on the history of St. James A.M.E. Zion Church, the world’s oldest active A.M.E. Zion church.
A multidisciplinary team of Cornell students and faculty and local schoolchildren will begin an archeological dig Sept. 18 at St. James, to deepen the understanding of the church’s role in safeguarding enslaved freedom-seekers in the…
On July 15, 1776, the signing of the Declaration of Independence was front-page news in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. The newspaper ran the text in full and reported the declaration had been read to the Continental Army’s New York regiment, led by Gen. George Washington.
The paper also featured two freedom notices of a different sort.
One offered a reward for a 21-year-old…
Lindsay France/Cornell University
Jamila Michener, associate professor of government, says when enslaved people gained their freedom, they lacked the political and socioeconomic power to influence their lives. In many ways, Black people still lack that power, she says.
The woman who answered the door brandished a hammer in one hand and a pickax in the other.
Jamila Michener thought she had the right address a few years ago when she brought her two sons, then 8 and 5, to a children’s birthday party in Ithaca. When they knocked on the front door, no one answered for a while. A woman appeared briefly then came back a few minutes later, holding up the tools…
Cornell University has a new land acknowledgment, stating that its Ithaca campus is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫ', also known as the Cayuga Nation. The leadership of the traditional Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫɁ has endorsed the statement.
Faculty members, staff and students are encouraged to read the full acknowledgement at the beginning of gatherings and events and include it…
Jeff Palmer grew up taking long walks with his father in the Wichita Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma. Palmer’s father, a linguist and a native Kiowa speaker, told him ancient Kiowa stories about the granite-capped peaks and rolling hills around them.
An enormous butte known as Devils Tower was formed, his father said, when a boy turned into a bear and chased his seven sisters onto a tree…
Nicholas Sturgeon, Susan Linn Sage Professor Emeritus in the Sage School of Philosophy and an expert in the foundations of ethics, died Aug. 24 of complications from Parkinson’s disease at a local hospice. He was 77. Sturgeon was a professor in the Department of Philosophy, in the College of Arts and Sciences, from 1967 until his retirement in 2013. He focused on metaethics – the study of the…
This summer was going to be crucial for Areion Allmond ’21. With a major in biology and society, she had planned to live on campus in student housing to continue her research on the effect of the nutrient choline on children’s cognitive development. This kind of research can make or break a student’s chances of getting accepted into a M.D./Ph.D. program – which is Allmond’s goal. Her on-campus…
Navy Ensign Emily Ortwein ’20 had “one of the most special and exciting experiences of her life” May 22, the culmination of four years of rigorous military training. Traditionally, seniors in Cornell’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program receive their commissions together, in a spring ceremony in Barton Hall. This year, the ceremony was canceled for the first time, due to the COVID-19…
Historian Barry Strauss, who specializes in ancient and military history, notes that plagues and epidemics have often been linked to wars. The current pandemic will accelerate the use of computer models and big data in the field of history; however, he says, COVID-19 has taught us that models are only as good as the assumptions on which they’re based.
The pandemic will highlight the fragility…
In February, Longsha Liu ’21 was well aware that COVID-19 was coursing through China and around the world. His mother had been giving him regular updates about the virus’s spread in China, where most of his immediate family live – including his 77-year old grandmother, who continued to practice as a physician. So when Liu, a biological sciences major, and several classmates entered a health care…
Rachel Beatty Riedl, an expert in international studies, says Africa is the first place to look for an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, given Africa’s success in dealing with the Ebola virus.
Riedl directs the Einaudi Center for International Studies and is the John S. Knight Professor of International Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of…
Historian Lawrence Glickman says the simultaneous public health disaster and economic meltdown may lead us to rethink the country’s values. However, “given … how rare it is for fundamental transformations to happen, my money would be on this pandemic not fundamentally altering our basic structures of society,” he says. Glickman is the Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor of American…
Political scientist Gustavo A. Flores-Macías compares the economic consequences of COVID-19 to the 2008-09 recession. The pandemic, he says, will result in a poorer and more unequal U.S. society, and it highlights the importance of solutions that require collaboration across borders. Flores-Macías is associate professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences and…
Interdisciplinary scholar Noliwe Rooks discusses how people curate their home spaces, now that much of work and school is conducted from home via video conferencing. The pandemic has also underlined our need for human contact, she says. Rooks is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her work looks at how race and gender impact – and are impacted…
Jamila Michener, assistant professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences, discusses COVID-19 and potential changes in the role of the federal government. The pandemic may prompt people to re-examine investments in institutions, such as the public health system, on which we now rely, she says. Disinvestments in these institutions include the steady closure of rural hospitals for the…
Thomas Pepinsky, an expert on economic policy at Cornell University, discusses President Donald Trump’s decision to halt funding to the World Health Organization. He also talks about his new research, which finds Democrats are much more likely to report taking active steps to combat the spread of COVID-19. This “massive partisan difference,” he says, poses “a fundamental challenge to American…
Della Uran ’22 is nervous about taking classes online. Max Kelly ’20 struggles with loneliness.Lassan Bagayoko ’22 worries that some classmates no longer have access to on-campus resources like regular meals and safe housing. And Tina Ting ’20 mourns the loss of experiences she would have had during her senior spring.The coronavirus pandemic has challenged these Cornell students, as they’ve…
Cornell leaders have announced changes to the academic calendar (see below) and to policies related to drop deadlines and grading options.Below is the latest information; for the full list of frequently asked questions, visit the university’s coronavirus resources and updates webpage.The webpage now includes a new “teaching and learning” page, which has FAQs for faculty and students and resources…
It is 4 p.m., and Darryl Epps has just put in a full day at work. Yet his day is only half over.Meticulously groomed with a pencil-thin mustache and goatee, smart suit and silver tie pin, the 41-year-old Epps leaves the Fortune Society in Harlem, where he connects people who are formerly incarcerated with housing and other services. He drives two hours home to Staten Island, listening to…
The voices of 15 students are silent on a recent morning in a language classroom in Morrill Hall. But their faces, bodies and hands are communicating loud and clear.They tilt their heads, morph their mouths and hands into precise shapes, raise and lower their eyebrows, and shift their expressions as they direct their classmates to place a pencil in a cardboard box or turn a paper cup upside down…
Fresh off winning a Guggenheim fellowship, democracy scholar Suzanne Mettler, Ph.D. ’94, has just received another honor: a Radcliffe Institute fellowship.Mettler, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions in the Department of Government in the College of Arts & Sciences, will spend the 2019-2020 academic year at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, a school at Harvard…
How do people not only set goals for themselves, but also achieve them? Does the use of cellphones and social media help or hurt the quality of life of people in relationships? And how, why and when does diversity affect the performance of firms in the business world?These are a few of the questions Cornell social sciences faculty are answering this spring, thanks to funding awarded by the…
Suzanne Mettler, Ph.D. ’94, the John L. Senior Professor of American Institutions in the Department of Government, has been awarded a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.An expert in democratic institutions, Mettler is one of 168 artists, scholars and scientists receiving Guggenheim fellowships this year. The award provides six to 12 months of time in which Guggenheim…
An engineer-turned-sociologist whose career has been defined by interdisciplinary thinking is now leading a Cornell center that brings together economists and sociologists, from across campus and around the world.Trained as an engineer in Turkey, Filiz Garip, professor of sociology, has been named director of the Center for the Study of Economy & Society, an incubator for new ideas and…
The cities of China, the world’s most populous country, are growing at an eye-popping rate. Every year, 8 million rural Chinese – the equivalent of New York City’s population – move to urban areas.
China’s enormous cities, their divisions and future plans have been at the heart of five social scientists’ research for the past three years. These faculty fellows of the China’s Cities:…
Since January 2016, Cornell faculty members and administrators have been developing a vision for how to enhance the university’s excellence in the social sciences over the next 10 to 15 years. This effort, summed up in three faculty reports, is now complete.As a result, the university will create the Cornell Center for Social Sciences, Provost Michael Kotlikoff announced March 28. In addition, he…
Chinese Communist Party officials often invoke the outrage of the Chinese people when disputing a foreign government’s actions or demands. International observers are often skeptical of these claims about the overarching feelings of 1.3 billion people.But not much is known about what citizens of the People’s Republic of China actually think about their country’s foreign policy. A Cornell scholar…
Poor nutrition, inadequate housing, the plight of refugees, the extinction of species – the world’s problems can seem so overwhelming that people often tune them out. How can organizations trying to solve those problems persuade people to pay attention and take action?Make emotional appeals, with eye-catching statistics and human interest stories, according to a new study by a Cornell professor…
