On Dec. 19, nearly 1,500 Cornell students celebrated their winter graduation in a virtual recognition ceremony viewed around the world – the first such event at Cornell, and a fitting end to what President Martha E. Pollack called “a semester like no other at Cornell.”
For six generations, Mohawk ironworkers have “walked the steel.” Indigenous people began ironworking in the 19th century, when they were hired to build railroad bridges in Canada. They helped craft the New York City skyline, working on projects including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the World Trade Center.
Courtney Cogburn, associate professor of social work at Columbia University and director of “1000 Cut Journey,” shared her story about creating the virtual-reality experience during a November webinar with students in the Milstein Program in Technology & Humanity.
A total of 17 entrepreneurial students from the College of Arts & Sciences were part of teams who shared plans for new businesses in two online December events — the Big Idea Competition and eLab Early Stage Pitch event.
Derrick R. Spires, associate professor of English in the College of Arts and Sciences, has won the Modern Language Association (MLA) Prize for a First Book for “The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States.” In the book, Spires examines the parallel development of early Black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship between 1787 and 1861.
For their final projects, students in Africana Studies professor Carole Boyce-Davies’ Black Women and Political Leadership course created a podcast featuring interviews with Black women in politics.
The White House issued an executive order this week requiring state and local governments to issue occupational licenses to workers who have received a similar license in another jurisdiction — as long as they are in good standing. The goal of the new order is to increase economic and geographic mobility.
Today, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced major changes to the way the city’s middle and high schools admit their students. Those changes include eliminating all admissions screens for middle schools for at least one year; eliminating a policy that allows some high schools to give students who live nearby first claim at spots in the school; and issuing grants to be used by schools to develop diversity and integration plans.