Cornell University Arts & Sciences ambassador shares advice for freshmen adjusting to college life.
The College of Arts & Sciences column emphasizes campus libraries, exploring majors, professor mentorship, community and balanced self-care.
A Cornell University student reflects on finding community and belonging across campus networks, including the College of Arts & Sciences. The personal column highlights how overlapping student organizations, friendships, and shared experiences make a large university feel connected and welcoming.
Jonathan Zhu, J.D. ’92, whose A.D. White Fellowship allowed him to attend Cornell, has established the Zhu Family Graduate Fellowships supporting humanities doctoral students at Cornell University. Each of the three 2025 fellows – who are pursuing art history, anthropology, and science and technology studies, appreciates that the fellowship’s financial support paired with release from teaching responsibilities allows them the flexibility to pursue research questions as they arise.
Cornell University Humanities Scholars traveled to Washington, D.C. to advocate for increased National Endowment for the Humanities and National Archives funding, meeting with congressional offices to highlight the impact of humanities programs on education. Their two‑day trip underscored how federal support strengthens community partnerships, language programs, and public humanities initiatives benefiting campuses and local organizations nationwide.
A viral plea by Cornell University alumnus Juan Uribe ’96 sparked “Big Red, Big Impact,” a mid‑March campuswide stem‑cell registry drive that added 1,350 new potential donors for his son Max and others in need. The weeklong effort, held across the Ithaca campus in partnership with the National Marrow Donor Program, aimed to expand lifesaving donor matches by engaging younger and more diverse participants.
Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Interior of Canterbury Cathedral, Canterbury
Sarah Mullally’s historic installation as the first woman Archbishop of Canterbury highlights rapid institutional change within Anglicanism. Cornell University sociologist Landon Schnabel emphasizes how incremental reforms built support for her swift rise.
Touch Of Light/Creative Commons license 4.0
The Pentagon, headquarters of the US Department of Defense
Anthropic challenges Pentagon designation as supply chain risk, sparking broader AI governance debate. Sarah Kreps of Cornell University highlights how the dispute exposes uncertainties in government–AI partnerships and future national security collaborations.
Since the early days of modern cosmic exploration, Cornell scientists have led the way, from guiding rovers through the red dust of Mars to searching for other life in the universe; and from modeling exotic stars to detecting the faint ripples of gravitational waves.
Danny Ventrella / NBC
One of Arora’s promo shots from the show.
Adi Arora ’26 of Cornell University impressed national audiences with his standout performance on NBC’s The Voice, earning praise from celebrity judges for his vocal skill and stage presence. The computer science major and a cappella singer continues to build momentum in his musical journey while representing the university on a prominent national platform.
New Cornell research identifies 45 potentially habitable rocky exoplanets using Gaia data and NASA archives, creating a catalog to guide life-search efforts. Authors are an undergraduate, two recent alumni and Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of the Carl Sagan Institute in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Cornell math professor Steven Strogatz appears in a new film, “Hunting Yellow Pigs,” that celebrates the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) and its unconventional approach to math education. The Cornell Department of Mathematics in the College of Arts and Sciences will host a screening with filmmaker Ming-I Huang on March 24 at 4 p.m. in Schwarz Auditorium, room 201 in Rockefeller Hall.
Cornell physicists and Google researchers wondered whether LLMs could understand scientific literature at the level of a specialist.
Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
Seth Klarman ’79 (left) and Bret Stephens discuss the state of journalism and debate in the U.S. March 6 in Klarman Hall.
Use of Christian apocalyptic language by commanders reflects a climate shaped from the top down, says one Cornell expert. Another adds: the belief that Christians should actively bring about the end times rests on a misreading of the Book of Revelation.
Jordan Leigh/Provided
With her Olympic medal—and rings tattoo—at West Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay.
Cornell’s Spacecraft Planetary Image Facility (SPIF), which manages print and online images taken by NASA missions, supports astronomy research and conducts dozens of outreach events every year.
Employees who are impressed by vague corporate-speak like “synergistic leadership,” or “growth-hacking paradigms” may struggle with practical decision-making, a new Cornell study into “corporate BS” reveals.
Researchers have found that quantum systems in a frozen state can be stabilized long enough to be a useful strategy for preserving information before it disappears.
Provided
Robert Sullivan on a Mediterranean cruise near Naples, Italy, in January 2024.
Robert John Sullivan, Jr., one of the world’s foremost authorities on aeolian processes -- how wind can carve and change a landscape -- died Feb. 15 in Ithaca.
Biodun “BJ” Jeyifo, a leading literary critic and cultural theorist known for his analysis of modernity and its attendant social and cultural crises, died Feb. 11 in Lagos, Nigeria. He was 80.
For the ancient Greeks, an image could be understood as a seal pressed on a material to leave a mark, as opposed to an inferior imitation (mimēsis), scholar Verity Platt argues in a new book.
Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
A historical marker for Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, was unveiled at 513 N. Albany St in Ithaca, where she lived during her first year at Cornell.
Cornell faculty, staff, students and community members celebrated the 95th birthday of Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, by unveiling a new historical marker in front of 513 N. Albany St., where she lived while in graduate school.
Masi Asare of Northwestern University and arts journalist Billy McEntee have been named winners of the 2024-25 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism.
The Department of Music is honoring the late Steven Stucky, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and beloved Cornell professor, with a series of concerts.
Provided
Prof. Alexander Livingston talks with Upward Bound students over winter break during a pilot of the new summer program for high school students.
A Teagle Foundation grant will help fund the course and open pathways to higher education.
Tim Hipps/U.S. Army IMCOM Public Affairs, Creative Commons license 2.0
Paul Chelimo, USA (left) and Mo Farah, Great Britain, medalists in the men's 5,000 meter run, Rio Olympic Games
The first artist to win Album of the Year with a Spanish‑language album, Bad Bunny reflects the mainstreaming of Spanish language music and artistry, says professor Karen Jaime.
SXS Lensing/Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes Collaboration
A visualization from a computer simulation of two black holes
Eunice Bae is part of the three-person group researching “Quantum Entanglement of Skyrmion-Antiskyrmion Pairs.”
Joe Wilensky/Cornell University
Cornell's Center for Historical Keyboards is a world-renowned repository of vintage instruments, from pipe organs to fortepianos.
From midcentury melodramas to speculative visions of technology and the human body—and even a French coming of age story about crafting world class cheese—Cornell Cinema’s spring season offers a varied plate.
… While 2025 saw the celebration of Willard Straight Hall’s …
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptual Image Lab
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Pandora mission, which will help scientists untangle the signals from exoplanets’ atmospheres – worlds beyond our solar system – and their stars.
Tasked with studying exoplanet systems around small stars, the refrigerator-sized satellite is the first in NASA’s Astrophysics Pioneers program – small-scale missions designed to train early-career scientists, including Trevor Foote, Ph.D. ’24, a former member of the research group led by faculty member Nikole Lewis.
With the 2026 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, the American Astronomical Society recognizes Anna Y. Q. Ho’s pioneering investigations of extreme explosions powered by stellar death.
… party of leader Nelson Mandela, considered what a future free society would look like and how that goal should be … (with Nelson Mandela as president) and again in subsequent free and fair elections. But what makes it particularly … increasingly subject to apartheid laws restricting their freedom of movement. From the mid-1960s until the end of the …
A Cornell historian and military expert doubts a NATO military response to the US annexation of Greenland would not happen, Despite tough talk from European leaders.
Cornell Athletics
Derraugh coaching during the 2011–12 season
A former Big Red star himself, women’s ice hockey coach and A&S alum Doug Derraugh ’91 has led the squad to five ECAC championships.
Rick Ryan/Cornell University
Lead rigger Ed Foster guides the movement of the Prime-Cam support raft, a carefully choreographed step in preparing the telescope for shipment.
Based on poems by A&S alumna Tsitsi Ella Jaji, M.A. ’06, Ph.D. ’08, the songs by Shawn Okpebholo bring to life individual stories preserved by the Cornell-based Freedom on the Move project.
The region never fit easily among its neighbors, as regimes including the Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union tried to remake it in their image.
RephiLe water/Unsplash
Cornell chemists have found a way to encapsulate a molecule’s quantum mechanical information so they can feed that – rather than simpler structural information – into ML algorithms, providing up to 100 times more accuracy than the current most popular method
In a new book, Donald Campbell, Ph.D. ’71, professor emeritus of astronomy, recounts the history of Arecibo from construction to its last days under Cornell’s management in 2011.
Joel Muniz/Unsplash
Gratitude helps you live up to your best self and be a better member of society.
Gratitude not only makes you feel good, but it helps you live up to your best self and be a better member of society, psychology professor Thomas Gilovich has found.
Kathy Hovis
From left, Wilson Kan, Marian Caballo and Reya Babu are all graduating this December.
This month’s featured titles include fiction from A&S alum Thomas Pynchon ’59, an award-winning poetry collection and a study of a small town.
Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
Shami Chatterjee, associate professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences; James Cordes, the George Feldstein Professor of Astronomy; and doctoral student Sashabaw Niedbalski, on the roof of the Space Sciences Building next to the Global Radio Explorer Telescope.
Scholars converged at Cornell to talk about lessons policymakers and elected officials could glean from their research into the COVID pandemic to help deal with the next public health emergency.
Electrons can be elusive, but Cornell researchers using a new computational method can now account for where they go – or don’t go – in certain layered materials.
Provided
Caitie Barrett, an archaeologist who investigates everyday life, doing field work in Pompeii in summer 2025
Based on a 2018 conference co-organized by Caitie Barrett, professor of classics, and Jennifer Carrington, Ph.D. ’19, the book focuses on houses and households during a period when Egypt was ruled by Greeks and then by Romans.
Sreang Hok/Cornell University
Ligia Coelho, a Postdoctoral Fellow in astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences and fellow at the Carl Sagan Institute, holds a menstrual cup.
… Henriques, University of Lisbon, and Adam B. Langeveld , visiting scholar in astronomy (A&S) and CSI. The menstrual …
Provided
Kylie Williamson ’26 has been named Navy/Marines Student of the Year by Navy Federal Credit Union, a top honor in the Reserve Officers Training Corps system.
Kylie Williamson ’26 has been named Navy/Marines Student of the Year by Navy Federal Credit Union, a top honor in the Reserve Officers Training Corps system. Williamson is the first Cornell student to win the award.
Alexandra Bayer/Cornell University
Students on the first day of classes in fall 2025.
Praveen Sethupathy ’03, an A&S computer sciences alum who co-chairs a faculty task force exploring Cornell’s role in a changing educational, research, and social landscape, serves as co-chair of the Committee on the Future of the American University, a group of 18 faculty appointed by the provost to explore how Cornell can evolve to best serve future generations while pursuing its core mission of education, scholarship, public impact, and community engagement.
Salvant, a 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner, is an artist celebrated for bringing historical depth, dramatic flair, and exceptional musical insight to jazz standards and original works.
The novel, published anonymously in 1605, is "a very funny critique of court life that resonates for anyone dealing with very hierarchical institutions in which the exercise of power is often inscrutable and seemingly random,” says professor Kathleen Perry Long.
Adam B. Langeveld/Carl Sagan Institute. Adapted from NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech
Artist concept of a cloudy Earth-like exoplanet with colorful biota in the clouds.
Cornell researchers have created the first reflectance spectra – a color-coded key – of microorganisms that live in the clouds floating above Earth’s surface.
John Tomasi, the inaugural president of Heterodox Academy, will speak on “The University at a Crossroads – and How We Can Build Cultures of Open Inquiry” as part of a series of events organized by the Provost’s Committee on the Future of the American University.
… member in the initiative. “The intuition behind the DHI is that bringing those disparate projects together, even just … already working in the digital humanities space. They also visited Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania … undergraduates to do this research,” Thomas said. “You don’t need much money to get these projects off the ground.” …
Watt Family Photographs/McNeese State University
“Woods workers” posing with a large crane near Carson, Louisiana, 1920.
Stacey Langwick, associate professor of anthropology in the College of Arts & Sciences, will speak on "Healing in a Toxic World: Reimagining the Times and Spaces of the Therapeutic."
Author and historian Kevin Baker will examine the paradox at the heart of modern American sports: while there are more games and sports than ever before, access has become increasingly limited and costly.
Photo illustration by Ashley Osburn/Cornell University
A student chronicled her life in the ’50s and ’60s—then shared those memories with her daughter and granddaughter
A Saint Anthony statue that glows in the dark lights the way into poems that connect people beyond death, visit holy sites, consider Satanic bargains and consult astrology.
… then the dangers are relatively minimal. The Nevada test site is a well-known space, the ground absorbs the blast, … who filmed a movie in 1956 downwind of the nuclear test site and died of lung cancer). If they want to avoid doing …
… that the Dutch would have been engaging women directly, as first agents of the sanitary drive. But in fact, they were …
Patrick Shanahan
Cornell historian Corey Earle shared stories of remarkable women throughout Cornell’s history during an Oct. 25 brunch as part of the Trustee Council Alumni Meeting.
Cornell historian Corey Earle shared stories of remarkable women throughout Cornell’s history during an Oct. 25 brunch as part of the Trustee Council Alumni Meeting.
Five professors from across campus will advocate that their discipline is the most important to save for the future in the annual Apocalypse Debate Nov. 6.
Simon Wheeler for Cornell University
Reading on Libe Slope
This month’s featured titles include short stories, a fantasy book for tweens, and a scholarly look at Carmen adaptations – all by Arts & Sciences alumni and faculty.
Kelly Presutti/Provided
Ferrous agglomeration with porcelain shards and a French trading bead, 1788–2003. Musée Maritime de Nouvelle-Calédonie, Nouméa, LAP.030.52
La Pérouse’s expedition, wrecked in 1788, was intended to rival those of British explorer Captain James Cook and to bring the French renown in scientific knowledge. Through the visual materials related to the voyage and its wreck, Kelly Presutti tells a larger story about the enterprise of empire.
… On October 21, Sanae Takaichi was elected Japan’s first female prime minister, forming a coalition with the … reform as a return to tradition – but they don’t. The very first Japanese monarch ever to use the title tenno — now … to ruling conservatives like Takaichi. “Neither Japan’s first ‘emperor’ nor women who took the title in later …
A Nov. 13 event sponsored by the College of Arts & Sciences will feature reflections on the political and social context and consequences of the Covid epidemic.
Aleesha George, a doctoral candidate in chemistry and chemical biology, studies the optical and electronic properties of organic and hybrid materials under the guidance of Andrew Musser at Cornell.
Cornell University file photo
Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo, M.F.A. ’10, speaks at Cornell in 2012.
NoViolet Bulawayo, M.F.A. ’10, assistant professor in A&S, has won the Best of Caine Award as judges have chosen her short story, “Hitting Budapest,” as the best to have won the Caine Prize for African Writing in the award’s 25 years.
