Two A&S professors — Jenny Mann, associate professor of English, and Jolene Rickard, associate professor of American studies and history of art and visual studies — were honored recently by the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly (GPSA) with Faculty Teaching, Advising and Mentorship awards. Michael Niemack, assistant professor of physics, received an honorable mention. Faculty members are nominated by current graduate students or alumni.
Malte Ziewitz, assistant professor of Science & Technology Studies and a Mills Family Faculty Fellow, was recently honored with a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program award, which will help him to investigate how ordinary citizens cope with being rated, scored and ranked by algorithmic systems.
Peng Chen, the Peter J. W. Debye Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology, is among three finalists for the American Institute of Chemists’ 2019 Chemical Pioneer Award.
The Simons Foundation’s Mathematics and Physical Sciences (MPS) division recently honored mathematics professors Irena Peeva and Yuri Berest with Simons Fellowships in mathematics.
While future effects of climate change are often in the news, an April 30 event will discuss how the problem is already affecting communities around the world, particularly in Africa.
The Africana Studies and Research Center is hosting, “Disaster: Cyclone Idai, Climate Change & Climate Migration,” a talk that will discuss impacts of climate change, climate migration and food scarcity and takes place at 4:30 pm in Lewis Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall.
While students from affluent school districts are often treated to field trips to museums or AP courses in art history, the same experiences aren’t always available to youth from low-income districts. This unequal access has prompted a new initiative developed by Ananda Cohen-Aponte, associate professor in the history of art department in the College of Arts & Sciences.
Who has the power to dream and to detain? What constitutes culture and national identity? What is citizenship?
These are some of the questions that members of Marginalia, an undergraduate poetry review society, grappled with during an April 18 poetry open mic night called “Radiant Voices: Citizenship.”
How does one “deploy love” in the process of critically engaging whiteness? George Yancy, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows’ 2019 distinguished guest speaker, will examine this question in “A Letter of love: An Encounter with White Backlash.” He will also address what it means for whiteness to be in crisis, which he argues is a positive way of beginning to undo it. The talk will take place on Friday, April 26, at 4.30 p.m. in HEC Auditorium (GSH 132).
The symposium – focusing on Turner’s activism and impact in shaping the black student movement – will be held from April 12-13 at the Africana Center, 310 Triphammer Road. The keynote address, scheduled for 11 a.m. April 13, will be given by John Bracey, professor in the W.E.B. du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Eliot Kang ‘84, the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation (ISN), will talk about his work and career path April 18 as the 2019 Arts & Sciences Career Development Center’s Munschauer Speaker.
The Berger Summer Internship Fund is again available to support undergraduate students in the College of Arts & Sciences pursuing unpaid or minimally paid summer internships.
While students in some fields easily find paid summer positions, others interested in non-profits, health care, government or other areas often need to take internships or summer positions that provide valuable summer career experiences but don't offer much in terms of a paycheck.
From visiting the Galapagos Islands to being immersed in the study of evolutionary biology to traveling to work in a lab in Kenya, Kelsie Lopez ‘21, a biological sciences major from Lindenhurst, New York has been busy during her first two years at Cornell.
Ishion Hutchinson, associate professor of English Language and Literature, was honored March 13 as one of eight winners of the annual Donald Windham-Sandy M.Campbell Literature Prize. The award offers $165,000 prizes in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama. Hutchinson, along with poet Kwame Dawes, received the prize for outstanding work in poetry.
Ibram X. Kendi, professor of history and international relations and the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, will deliver the Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture April 15. His book, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,” provides a complex background and exploration of the notions of racial superiority. The event will take place at 4:45 p.m. in the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium.
Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) recently honored Justin Wilson, assistant professor of chemistry & chemical biology, as one of 24 recipients of the 2019 Cottrell Scholar Awards for his research, “Capturing the Heavy Alkaline Earth Elements: Ligand Design to Sequester Radioactive Strontium, Barium, and Radium.”
"The College Scholar Program is the pinnacle of the liberal arts experience at Cornell...it allows students to leverage all of the expertise across all the departments in the College of Arts & Sciences and beyond."
Performers told stories from their lives and shared music, dance and poetry about being Latinx in Ithaca, in Habla/Speak, a bilingual collective creation performance.
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) recently honored Steven Strogatz, the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Applied Mathematics in the College of Arts & Sciences and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, as the 2019 recipient of the George Pólya Prize for Mathematical Exposition.
A new season of podcasts from the Language Resource Center (LRC) celebrates 2019 as the United Nations International Year of Indigenous Languages. The global celebration kicked off with a seminar in New York City Feb. 1, showcasing the world’s ancient tongues and highlighting the need to conserve, revitalize and promote them.
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) recently honored Kate Manne, assistant professor of philosophy, as one of four winners of the 2019 Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) for her book “Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny.” The winners were announced Feb. 7 at the PROSE Award luncheon in Washington, D.C. during the 2019 AAP Professional and Scholarly Publishing Conference.
“I feel truly humbled by this recognition for my book,” Manne said.
Ruth Bierman Linnick '60 loved to travel, to learn and to teach, so her family and friends established the grant as a tribute to these lifelong pursuits.
Yessica Martinez was named to the International Literacy Association’s 2019 “30 Under 30” list, which celebrates rising innovators, disruptors and visionaries in the literacy field.
Maryame El Moutamid has been named an affiliate member of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS). Moutamid is a research associate at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science and an affiliate of the Carl Sagan Institute. Moutamid’s research concerns planetary ring dynamics and satellite orbital dynamics and their connections with giant planet interior structure.
Acclaimed poet Julia Kasdorf and award-winning documentary photographer Steven Rubin, co-authors of “Shale Play,” will be reading on Nov. 11 at 1 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books. This will be followed by the event, “F Word: Poems + Photographs of Witness from Pennsylvania’s Fracking Fields,” on Nov. 12 from 4:30 to 6 p.m. in 122 Rockefeller Hall.
The ability to work in a team and communicate effectively are some of the valuable skills Sophia Beaudoin ‘20 learned by being part of the volleyball team. Beaudoin says she was able to bring these skills into her internship with Senator Mark Warner in Washington D.C.
Graduate students from the Department of Performing Media Arts have been honored with multiple fellowships and grants over the course of the year. Recipients of awards include Caitlin Kane, Jayme Kilburn, Rosalie Purvis, Elaigwu Ameh, Kristza Pozsonyi and Sam Blake.
These grants, which support research, creative pursuits and teaching, give grad students the opportunity for peer academic review, funds to carry out projects and finances for travel.
Novelist Alice McDermott, a three-time Pulitzer nominee, will read from her work at Cornell on Thursday, Oct. 11 at 4:30 p.m. The Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading will take place at the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be followed by a catered reception and book signing in the English Lounge.
Noticing a plethora of recent cases where university officials resigned amid pressure from students and others, Naomi Li ’20 wanted to know more.
Li, an economics and sociology major, conducted research over the summer on the role of resignation in social narratives and social change to find out more about cases like Lou Anna Simon at Michigan State University or Tim Wolfe and R. Bowen Loftin at Missouri State University and the kind of justice activists hoped to achieve.
From attending a lecture by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to seeing the process of creating a bill, Simone Smith '20 was exposed to many different aspects of government while interning in Washington D.C this summer.
"Some of the issues I got to work on related to education, agriculture, labor and finance," said Smith, who interned with Senator Mark Warner (D-Va).
After taking a philosophy of mind seminar last year, Marlene Berke ‘19 began thinking about connecting her research to the philosophy of perception and epistemology.
“This course familiarized me with the current philosophical discussion about cognitive influences on perception, providing philosophical motivation for my studies about whether what we remember and expect might ‘leak’ into perception.”
Manufacturers often use silver nanoparticles in product packaging to keep out bacteria and insects, but there is little research so far about whether the particles are completely neutral in the context of our bodies.
Since freshman year, Emily Wang ‘20, has been combining social justice and healthcare by interning at the Ithaca Free Clinic. From working to start a non-profit to investigating patient outcomes, this biology major and Public Service Center Scholar is continuing her work this summer with the clinic’s chronic care program thanks to an Arts & Sciences Summer Experience Grant.
After taking a freshman writing seminar on visual depictions of women reading throughout history, Ellie O’Reilly’s ’20 passion for feminism, art history and English grew.
Thanks to a fellowship from Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program, Javier Agredo’19 is spending the summer studying Thai at the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute. Agredo, who has a passion for language documentation and preservation, has also had the chance to attend Gamelan performances, a traditional musical ensemble from Indonesia, and explore the city of Madison.
An average day for Conan Gillis ‘21 starts with a math class in the morning, followed by a trip to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection at Kroch Library, where he might hold a letter by Thomas Jefferson or view a 1,000-year-old manuscript. In the evenings, he often participates in a fencing practice run by two Olympic-level fencers.
As an aspiring public servant, Natalia Hernandez ’21 wanted an internship that would allow her to see how national higher education policies can affect students locally. Through a summer experience grant, Hernandez ‘21 is spending the summer working in Washington D.C. as a government relations and communications intern at the National Council of Higher Education Resources (NCHER).
Allen Porterie ‘20 is spending the summer at the University of Notre Dame, where he is exploring the performance of black masculinity in theatre. Porterie, an English major with a minor in theatre, is studying how actors and directors frame the black masculine body on stage. Porterie began this work last summer at Louisiana State University's Pre-Doctoral Scholars Institute with Angeletta Gourdine, an associate professor of English.
After studying the criminal justice system and hearing the experiences of incarcerated family and friends, Benjamin Finegan ‘19, a government major, decided to spend his summer interning at The Urban Justice Center for the Corrections Accountability project (CAP) in New York City.
Governments and institutions play a critical role in advancing economic growth in the developing world, and researchers in macro and microeconomic policy design will gather later this month in New York City to explore that role.
Helping his supervisors brainstorm ideas on how to brand and promote artists such as Drake, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj is among the list of things Tristan Magloire ‘20 is up to this summer.
A government major, Magloire received a Summer Experience Grant from the College of Arts & Sciences, which has helped him to take on the position of social media and digital marketing intern at The William Morris Digital Agency (WMA) and Republic Records in New York City.
With the help of a Summer Experience Grant from the College of Arts & Sciences, Rachel Diao ‘19 will be able to take advantage of a research opportunity in Cologne, Germany this summer. Diao, a biological sciences major, is working with Dr. Adam Antebi, managing director of a lab at the Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing.
Students took creative approaches to thinking about the challenges of meeting energy needs in this year's Imagining Energy Futures Competition. Winners of the annual competition were announced on May 30.
Rachel Whalen's ’19 club, Poetic Justice, provides a safe space for high school students to express themselves through poetry and other creative means.
From left: Dana Bardolph, Danielle Vander Horst, Lindsay Petry, Elizabeth Bews, and Elizabeth Proctor
Cornell’s team won the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) Ethics Bowl on April 12 in Washington, DC. They were the first Cornell team to participate in the competition, which has been held for 14 years.
A professor from the University of Pennsylvania will visit campus April 19 to examine how writer Zora Neale Hurston’s work can be used to look at black life today.
Mitchell Duneier from Princeton will visit campus for a 4:30 p.m. talk April 11 about his book, "Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, The History of an Idea." The talk will take place in Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall.
A professor from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, will visit campus March 7 to deliver a lecture examining the history of activism among sexual minority groups in Zimbabwe. Marc Epprecht, professor of Global development studies, History and Cultural studies will offer “Reflections on the Struggle for Sexual Minority Rights in Zimbabwe” at 4:30 p.m. at the A.D. White House.
The Cornell Contemporary Chamber Players (CCCP) will host The Switch Ensemble for a five-day artistic residency Feb. 26 to March 3 that will include workshops, a lecture recital, a recording session and two concerts.
The concerts will feature pieces composed by Cornell graduate students and faculty, and performed by the Switch Ensemble.
The Creative Writing Program of Cornell’s English Department launches its Spring 2018 Barbara & David Zalaznick Reading Series with poet Julie Sheehan on Thursday, February 1, 4:30pm, at the Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall. Sheehan is the author of three poetry collections: Bar Book: Poems & Otherwise; Orient Point; and Thaw.
Mike Yunxuan Li ‘20, like many sophomores in the College of Arts & Sciences, has focused on classes he enjoys. From exploring fields that he is curious about to interacting with professors outside his main areas of interest, Li explained how he is making the most of his time at Cornell.
The program connects Latinx undergraduate students to graduate students to ease the transition to higher education, encourage community engagement and help students manage academics.
Six students were recently honored by the Department of Performing & Media Arts as winners of the Heermans-McCalmon writing competition for the best playwriting and screenwriting produced by students.
“Giving students platforms for artistic expression is so important,” Gloria Oladipo ‘21 said. “PMA students need platforms for their work in the same way that science students need labs to run experiments. Artists should be able to stand by their work and embrace it fully.”
“Before attending Cornell I didn’t see math as the intricate art it is,” she said, “but being exposed to math at such an advanced level at Cornell helped me push myself to think, to see mathematics on a deeper level and construct more concrete arguments.”
Four Arts & Sciences students are part of the delegation of faculty, staff and students attending the 23rd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP23) to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) this week in Bonn, Germany.
Professor Gerard Aching encouraged students to think of the ways that empathy (or the lack of it) has impacted people’s actions throughout history and affects our individual actions toward others during a Bethe Ansatz talk Nov. 1.
Raymond Bally ‘19, like every other first year student at Cornell, lived on North Campus freshman year. But a month after moving into his freshman dorm, someone handed him a quarter-card about volunteering to be a firefighter in Cayuga Heights.
The Department of English will host the Philip Freund Prize for Creative Writing Alumni Reading at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 2 in the Rhodes-Rawlings Auditorium in Klarman Hall.
The prospect of reaching out to alumni and industry leaders seems daunting to most students. For students who are more introverted, networking can be as hard as taking a prelim.
“History doesn’t repeat, but it does instruct” is the ethos of Timothy Snyder's new book, ‘On Tyranny-Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century.” Four Cornell professors will be holding a community read and public discussion of Snyder’s book that has been described as presenting “twenty lessons from the twentieth century adapted to the circumstances of today.”
How many people can say they can speak Latin? Erchen “Erial” Zheng ‘18, a senior classics major with a minor in history, is part of the growing number of scholars invested in learning Latin as a living language.
“I started learning Latin in high school,” Zheng said, “but I think my love for the classical world began much earlier when I was in the third grade. It started with Greek myth and then from there my interest grew bigger and bigger.”
Fifteen Cornell student delegates, including six from Arts & Sciences, worked on solutions to world problems in fields such as education and health care.
After spending a year helping human trafficking victims in Mumbai, India, alum Katharine Poor ‘16 is headed to Texas to work for an organization that aids refugees and undocumented immigrants.
Ten new Mong Family Foundation Fellows in Neurotech will work under the mentorship of faculty across Cornell to advance technologies that promise to provide insight into how brains work, as well as strategies to fix them when they don’t.
Chemistry major Cathy Ly ‘19 is spending her summer in Ithaca doing research at Cornell, thanks to the J. Emory Morris Fellowship she received from the chemistry department.
“I love doing hands-on work,” said Ly, “and being able to make invisible things tangible, to discover what isn’t immediately apparent to human eyes.” She’s interested in chemistry’s applications to astronomy and material science.
Yimon Aye, a Howard Milstein faculty fellow and assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, has been honored by the Eastern New York Section of the American Chemical Society as the 2017 Buck-Whitney Award winner. Aye has been invited to give a talk at the awards ceremony Nov. 15 in Troy, N.Y.
Zhangmin Abigail Chen ‘19, a College Scholar focusing on government and China & Asia-Pacific studies, is pursuing her interests in international affairs and non-profit management as an intern at the Carter Center’s China Program this summer.
The Carter Center, founded in 1982 by President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter, is a nongovernmental organization commited to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering.
The hometown of Roald Hoffmann, the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters Emeritus, has held an event, with lectures and music, to commemorate Hoffmann’s 80th birthday, which was July 18.
Colleagues are planning a symposium in August to celebrate the birthday of Jerrold Meinwald, Goldwin Smith Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, who turned 90 in January. The symposium will take place during the meeting of the International Society of Chemical Ecology in Kyoto, Japan.
On the famous list of the “161 Things to Do at Cornell” is spending a summer in Ithaca. From doing research with a professor to assisting with summer programs, students say spending a summer at Cornell can be a rewarding experience.
“This is my second summer staying in Ithaca,” said Alice Jenkins ‘18. “I would absolutely recommend staying a summer in Ithaca. It’s the best time of year to explore the beautiful nature in this area.”
Arts & Sciences student Emma Williams ‘19 is in Moshi, Tanzania for the summer studying the use of family planning among women of reproductive age. Williams, a biology and government double major, is also minoring in global health.
Four Arts & Sciences students are part of the delegation of faculty, staff and students attending the 23rd session of the Conference of the Parties (COP23) to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) this week in Bonn, Germany.
