Marsha Jean-Charles was 15 years old when she read a novel that would start her on the path to making Cornell history.“Breath, Eyes, Memory” is a semi-autobiographical novel by Edwidge Danticat. Like Jean-Charles, Danticat is Haitian-American and grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, a neighborhood known as Little Haiti.
As students began to line up for Cornell’s 2019 Commencement May 26, the morning skies that threatened rain gave way to rays of sunshine wriggling between the clouds. Families noshed on bagels, cream cheese and coffee in Collegetown before heading to Schoellkopf Field for the pomp and circumstance.
Tyler Barr learned about leadership under pressure while attending a summer program at officer candidate school as a midshipman in the Marine Corps ROTC program at Cornell.He called it “by far the most difficult six weeks of our lives,” as he recounted sleeping and eating very little while being pushed to his physical limits.
The arc of educational continuity and inspirational teaching was celebrated May 22 at the 31st annual Merrill Presidential Scholars convocation in Willard Straight Hall. Thirty-four seniors – among the very best of the Class of 2019 – honored beloved, guiding-light high school teachers and inspirational Cornell faculty members.
Thirty-three university staff members were recognized for earning academic degrees at the 23rd annual Staff Graduate Reception, May 20 in the Hall of Fame Room in Friends Hall.Two Cornell staff members are receiving bachelor’s degrees from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Nineteen are receiving Cornell master’s degrees, two are receiving doctorates, and 10 are receiving degrees in higher education from other colleges and universities.
Meredith Chagares ’19 began her senior thesis in history, literally, with a footnote – one that led her to do investigative work for “Anatomy of a Cover-Up: How and Why the United States Covered Up Japanese World War II Biological Warfare Experiments.”“I discovered about Japan’s experiments via a footnote while researching Nazi experiments,” she said.
One of the true treasures of the college experience is the freedom to follow your curiosity and see where it takes you. In no major is this more encouraged than for College Scholars in the College of Arts & Sciences, who, as sophomores, propose a project that combines their varied interests and craft their college curriculum to follow those pathways.
Keith Taylor, professor of Asian Studies, celebrates his 50th anniversary as a U.S. Army veteran this Memorial Day, service to the country that determined his academic career.
Jessica Chen Weiss, associate professor of government, offered insights into China’s digital authoritarianism – and its surveillance, influence and political control – in testimony May 16 before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
As a child, Maria Cristina Garcia’s family left Cuba for the United States to enjoy new freedoms that were lacking there. One of her first road trips as a new American was to see the Statue of Liberty and many of her photos from that trip show the statue in the background.
Active learning strategies transformed what could have been a class of slides and lectures this past semester into one in which students debated, created and thought critically about what statues mean, from antiquity to today.
Writer Toni Morrison, M.A. ’55, has been chosen to receive the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ highest honor for excellence in the arts. Three Cornell architecture alumni have also been named to receive 2019 Architecture Awards.Morrison earned the Gold Medal for Fiction. Two Gold Medals, in rotating categories in the arts, are awarded each year to those who have achieved eminence in an entire body of work.
Noliwe Rooks, professor of Africana Studies, American Studies and Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies, writes in this NY Daily News piece that New York City schools have not achieved the dream of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.
Anna Haskins, an assistant professor of sociology in the College of Arts & Sciences, recently received a research grant of $350,000 from the William T. Grant Foundation Scholars Program for her work on parental involvement in education.
Cornell student and faculty researchers and their community partners will use this year’s Engaged Cornell research grants to study Cornell’s socio-economic impact on Tompkins County, whether mobile research labs effectively engage underrepresented populations, and whether farmer-led research in Malawi influenced student learning and development.This year’s grants, 15 in all, were announced earlier this month by the Office of Engagement Initiatives.
Fresh off winning a Guggenheim fellowship, democracy scholar Suzanne Mettler, Ph.D. ’94, has just received another honor: a Radcliffe Institute fellowship.
Sociologist Mabel Berezin writes in this China Post opinion piece that populism has been a feature of modern politics for some time, especially in Europe.
Jessica Chen Weiss, associate professor of government, writes in this Washington Post opinion piece that even though China is rolling out nationalist propaganda in reaction to increased U.S. trade sanctions, Chinese leaders may actually be willing to find creative solutions for the current trade impasse.Still, she says, there are signs that anti-U.S. protests could begin.
Gretchen Ritter ’83, professor of government, has been appointed executive dean and vice provost of the Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences.
Open source software, a web of connections, a tool for meaningful collaborations, a powerhouse research tool — when Mitchell Baker thinks of the things that the internet gets right, those are at the top of the list.
“Egypt’s Nile,” the final episode of the “What Makes Us Human” podcast series’ fourth season, considers what the Nile River means to Egypt. This season the podcast asked "What Does Water Mean to Us Humans?" and showcased the newest thinking across academic disciplines about the relationship between humans and water.
On April 19, 1969, dozens of members of Cornell’s Afro-American Society and several Latino students occupied Willard Straight Hall for 36 hours to call attention to what they perceived as the university’s hostility toward students of color, its student judicial system and its slow progress in establishing an Africana studies program.
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.
The projects are part of the Milstein “Collab” class, which combines academic modules (on journalism, citizen science, data collection, privacy issues and so on) with co-curricular exploration.
Mary McDonald ’78 discovered her voice at Cornell.Originally a French horn player, McDonald joined the Cornell University Chorus, the women’s vocal ensemble, during her sophomore year and won an audition for free voice lessons.“I had never had formal voice lessons,” she says. “One day, I asked, ‘What about these notes up here?’”
Yunqui (Kelly) Luo has long been intrigued by the laws of nature.“As a kid, I loved to play with tools and understand the ways in which the physical world works around us,” she said. The physics labs at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology cemented her passion for research.
It’s a simple task for humans: Sort plants by the colors of their pots. For robots, though, it’s a much more arduous undertaking.In a project blending technical savvy with lofty ambitions, a multidisciplinary team of Cornell undergraduates designed and built an autonomous robot capable of recognizing and handling potted plants.
Each new observable provides different ways of confirming the theory of general relativity and offers insight into the intrinsic properties of gravitational waves.
Ready to cross a few items off your bucket list? If so, you might want to visit the list of upcoming trips planed by Cornell Adult University, many led by faculty in Arts & Sciences.
Cornell astronomer Jonathan Lunine suggested to Congress reasonable, practical steps – including baby steps back to the moon – to help Americans one day put boots on the oxidized dust of Mars.
Fake news is a threat to American democratic institutions, whether through online election interference or, in extreme cases, inciting violence. New research offers a roadmap for dealing with false information.
Before Clinton Ikioda ’19 came to Cornell, students and staff at his high school said he’d been admitted only to fill a diversity quota. Once he arrived, he felt constant pressure to prove he belonged – as well as a persistent worry that he didn’t.
With more than 5,000 international students, Cornell is a vibrant global community. The Office of Global Learning honored international students’ achievements May 2, sending the Class of 2019 off in style.Wendy Wolford, center, vice provost for international affairs, congratulates international graduates.
This is an episode from the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast's fourth season, "What Does Water Mean for Us Humans?" from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, showcasing the newest thinking from across the disciplines about the relationship between humans and love. Featuring audio essays written and recorded by Cornell faculty, the series releases a new episode each Tuesday through the spring semester.
Oskar Eustis believes that theatre can help people learn what it’s like to be a true citizen in a democracy – not what our country is experiencing right now, but in a true democracy — where people have conflicts, try to understand each other, compromise, empathize and come up with solutions.
The 2019 Cornell Undergraduate Psychology (CUP) Conference will bring together undergraduate students with diverse interests to share their research, meet other students and faculty and learn about the various kinds of psychological research being conducted across the Cornell campus. The conference will be held May 9 in the Physical Sciences Building Atrium from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
Maria Harrison, the William H. Crocker Professor at Boyce Thompson Institute and adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, and Mariana Wolfner, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the College of Arts and Sciences, are among 100 new members of the National Academy of Sciences, the academy announced April 30.
As humans, we have an insatiable desire to understand the cosmos and our place in it. How did the universe begin and how did it evolve? What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy? How will it all end? “These are the most fundamental questions one can ask,” says Steve Kang Hoon Choi, Cornell Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow. “If we believe greater knowledge betters our lives, then this is what drives us to study the cosmos.”
Jessica Zarkin studies the effects of violence on citizens’ perceptions and behavior in Latin America. A comparative politics PhD student in Government, Zarkin is trying to understand the connection between state institutions and citizens. Her focus is on security.
The Provost’s Seminar on Teaching and Learning brought nearly 75 faculty and instructors together to share and celebrate innovations in teaching at Cornell.
