Far Above... The Campaign for Cornell
- The Case for a Bold Campaign
- Campaign Priority 1
- Campaign Priority 2
- Campaign Priority 3
- Building on Success
- No Boundaries from the Start—No Limits on the Future
Imagine as Cornell University looks forward to its sesquicentennial...
Ezra Cornell
…Our faculty and students in the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology, Veterinary Medicine, and Engineering, and the Weill Cornell Medical College working in coordinated international teams to detect, control, and prevent dangerous, highly contagious zoonotic diseases, such as avian flu.
…Our leading-edge computer science programs operating from an information science campus that brings together faculty and students from such varied disciplines as computer science, music, cognitive studies, communication, philosophy, and art—a unique concept that will revolutionize education in these fields; while social scientists, humanists, and other scientists from across campus work together in research, teaching, and social spaces that promote cross-disciplinary collaboration and creativity.
…Our social scientists from schools as traditionally disparate as Law, Hotel Administration, Industrial and Labor Relations, Management, and Human Ecology collaborating on research into the emotions that affect economic decision-making, the influences that impact jury deliberations, and the factors that lead to poverty and inequality; holding conferences that draw the world's top scholars to Cornell; and establishing the university as a leader in the social sciences.
…Our undergraduate students living in residential communities that set Cornell apart from its peers—communities that encourage them to combine intellectual life with recreation and social networks, that help them build friendships not only with one another but also with Cornell's outstanding faculty, and where shared values take hold.
…Students taking advantage of significantly increased opportunities for civic engagement and field-based learning, including international exposure.
…Our faculty, staff, and students from the Colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Arts and Sciences, and Engineering supporting regional industries focused on the production and distribution of renewable energy and essential chemical reagents in ways that are environmentally sustainable.
…Our life scientists and their students in Ithaca, in Geneva, and at the Weill Cornell Medical College moving freely across disciplines, between older, historic facilities and the new Life Sciences Technology Building in Ithaca and Weill Cornell Medical College's clinical and research complex in New York City to develop nutritional plans, drug prescriptions, and medical treatments that are tailored to your individual genetic makeup.
…Our young planners and architects helping to define the cities, communities, and landscapes of the future in the buildings that express the imagination and sense of social responsibility characteristic of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning.
…Some of the world's best scientists and engineers working in a new Physical Sciences complex on East Avenue, teaching us new ways to see the world as they develop state-of-the-art, real-time imaging that will allow clinicians to see and repair cellular abnormalities without invasive surgery.
…Our humanities faculty teaching and conducting research in beautifully renovated buildings on the Arts Quad; and the arts and humanities programs offering new ways of learning that inspire our students to imagine as yet unforeseen possibilities, to appreciate beauty, and to hone their critical and analytical skills.
Imagine faculty, staff, and students from all over the world and the widest possible variety of backgrounds and perspectives working, competing at sports, and playing on one of the world's most architecturally and naturally beautiful and environmentally friendly campuses.
The Case for a Bold Campaign
Thanks to the work of many minds across the generations, our university has grown in 140 years from what was once farmland into a remarkable and unique community of scholars, educators, and students, with deep roots in tradition and a set of cherished founding principles; a world-class research institution known for the breadth and rigor of its curricula; and an academy dedicated to shaping young people into well-educated, thoughtful leaders and active citizens of the world. Singular among its Ivy League peers, Cornell has a land grant mission that imparts an uncommon sense of larger purpose to every endeavor and attracts faculty and students who are motivated by a commitment to using knowledge to make transformative contributions to the world. Our founders derived their goals for Cornell University from the challenges of their time. Today we face a similar confluence of changes, creating thrilling new opportunities for the unique blend of research, outreach, and service that defines Cornell's edge in the world and leading to a renewed approach to the nature and quality of the education we provide our students. Now it is our turn for bold action. We want nothing less than to make Cornell the best of its kind, a beacon among the world's leading universities. We want Cornell—the first truly American university—to lead as a model for all of higher education, into this new century. We want our students, the best from all walks of life across the globe, to learn on a campus that is unique in its breadth, depth, connectivity, and diversity. We want to expand Cornell's public mission by fully realizing a role we have already begun to play: land grant institution to the world. We want to take on the challenges confronting higher education today, for which Cornell is ideally—perhaps uniquely—suited, thanks to its singular history and makeup. To meet our ambition, however, we must call upon the full measure of our capacity and our imagination in three critical areas. First, we must review and update our curricula for undergraduate and graduate education, and provide an educational experience that allows students to combine professional ambitions with a capacity for creativity and whimsy, for analysis and reflection, for athletics and well-being, as well as a commitment to the public good. We must be able to make resources available so that any qualified student can attend Cornell, regardless of financial need, and so that our student population continues to reflect an increasingly global community.
Second, with a generation of academicians poised to retire, and the increased emphasis on interdisciplinary study, we must embark on a broad and strategic recruitment program to attract tomorrow's best and brightest. And third, we must provide them with the very finest resources and facilities to work on tomorrow's challenges. Plans to do so are already under way. Some projects have already been completed; others are still on the drawing board. Bringing all this to life will entail capital and ongoing support in the form of restricted and unrestricted gifts. Adding to the urgency of our mission, we have chosen to pursue these goals at a time when American higher education faces a greater test than ever before. Governments at all levels are well aware of the crucial role of education in the global knowledge economy, and their leaders are doing their best to be good partners. Yet, their ability to respond is limited by their obligation to address the many pressing challenges confronting society today. As the land grant institution of the state of New York, Cornell University deeply appreciates the public support it enjoys—without it, Cornell would not be the university it is today.
From the earliest days, Cornellians have played the decisive role in bridging the distance between Cornell's financial needs and its intellectual aspirations. Now, even as we tap into the ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit of our university community for new strategies and better uses of existing resources, we also must turn to our generous alumni and supporters, whose strong loyalty and commitment to this great university is the envy of all our peers. By growing the university's financial security and securing the guarantee of its traditional mission, we will empower our leaders to respond boldly to new opportunities. This campaign will increase the university's access to greater flexible funding by doubling the amount of annual giving to the Cornell Annual Fund. Ultimately, Cornellians must build an endowment commensurate with the challenges of our time. Ours is the university's financial foundation. A healthy endowment leads to long-term financial growth and provides a critical buffer to downturns in the economy and reductions in government aid. It also helps us respond to changes in academic priorities and the need to create new and emerging disciplines to maintain our pre-eminence in teaching and research.The more the endowment grows, the less reliant we are on other sources of revenue like tuition and government aid. While our endowment is among the largest in American higher education, it is an uncomfortably small amount relative to the size of the task at hand, resulting in less than 1 0 percent of our annual income, and is the lowest in the Ivy League on a per-student basis. When, in 2015 , we observe the sesquicentennial anniversary of our founding, we will celebrate a university that is recognized as the leading academic citizen in an interconnected world. A destination for the most talented students and faculty on Earth, Cornell will be regarded as America's exemplary university. It will continue to be a source of transformative insight in disciplines that span the intellectual landscape. By securing the means to implement the priorities outlined in the following pages, this campaign will be vital to the realization of that vision.
Cornell aspires to be the best research university for undergraduate education. We want our students to continue to receive the very best classroom instruction, advising, and mentoring and to enjoy greater opportunities to conduct research with faculty, as early as freshman year. We intend to have one of the highest percentages of undergraduate courses taught by senior faculty among elite research universities. We aim to develop innovative approaches to teaching in and outside the classroom. This commitment by Cornell requires ongoing investments in our students and the experiences available to them. Our first task is to develop a financial aid program that broadens the economic range of our student body and attracts students who reflect the racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity of our increasingly international community. Cornell is one of a very small number of universities that remain need-blind in their admissions policies, and the economic diversity of our student body has long distinguished us from most of our Ivy peers who are now investing heavily in grant aid for the students from the neediest families. Keeping pace with them while sustaining our current commitments requires a significant increase in the amount of grant aid we can provide our undergraduates and their families, in addition to the fellowships that support graduate training.
We need to sustain the initiatives that have already begun to change the culture of undergraduate life on the campus. With the creation of a north campus and new programs for first-year students, as well as the development of a residential initiative on west campus for sophomores, juniors, and seniors, we can offer students a more integrated experience in which learning does not stop at the classroom door but becomes a lifelong pursuit. A successful campaign will provide opportunities for undergraduates to pursue interdisciplinary research and field-based learning. To reach beyond our current level of excellence in fundamental disciplines and in key interdisciplinary domains, we must dramatically increase fellowship support for our best graduate students. Not only does their work prepare them to become the next generation of professionals in every field, it also provides an extremely valuable contribution to the research and educational projects that in turn are essential to retaining outstanding faculty and attracting the next generation of graduate students and postdoctoral associates, whose work comes to define the frontier of knowledge and the beginning of exploration.
Cornell University is blessed with one of the most accomplished faculties in American higher education. One of our greatest challenges over the next ten years will be to recruit and prepare hundreds of scholars and scientists to carry on that tradition of excellence. Many of our faculty hired in the 1960s and early 1970s will retire in the decade ahead. In total, Cornell will lose 600 faculty members—about one-third of our entire faculty body, including many of Cornell's most inspiring and exceptional teachers and scholars. This is a generational turnover that affects all of higher education, putting Cornell and its greatest rivals in close competition for top candidates. To prevail, we will need substantial new resources, including endowed professorships, state-of-the-art classrooms and labs, and additional office space. Moreover, successful faculty recruitment will depend on our ability to support the infrastructure for interdisciplinary initiatives, such as the Society for the Humanities, Biomedical Engineering, and the Institute for the Social Sciences, all of which reinforce Cornell's leadership in areas of traditional strength and enhance our potential in new domains. This will require program endowment and current-use funds to generate theme-based interaction among scholars from different departments and schools, and support for efforts to forge closer links between faculty on the Ithaca campus and researchers and clinicians at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Our faculty hiring through the next decade will be the most important of the past forty years. It will be a major factor in defining Cornell's intellectual character and driving our contributions to society in the years ahead. Successful renewal, recruitment, and retention of an accomplished, diverse faculty will enable Cornell to sustain and enhance our leadership in areas in which we have long defined the cutting edge of discovery, graduate training, and undergraduate teaching; significantly improve faculty and program quality in key disciplines in which we have great strength but have not led; and set the standard for interdisciplinary collaboration in areas of critical social importance.
Attracting and empowering the world's best faculty, staff, and students depend on our ability to provide an environment that fosters creativity and inspires twenty-first-century learning and discovery. Our success in pursuing new areas of scientific inquiry has created the need for specialized work areas, more laboratories, and new kinds of classrooms. Our historic older buildings, designed for the academic needs of the nineteenth century, need to be updated to accommodate contemporary learning technology such as laptop notebooks and multimedia presentations that help faculty bring whole new dimensions of sight and sound to their lectures. All of our academic buildings need to be designed to move students and faculty out of their disciplinary "silos" and into common areas that encourage collaboration. New buildings and the thoughtful renovation of our cherished older spaces also will provide faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students with powerful incentives to choose Cornell. Some of the new buildings are already completed while others are still being conceived. The Weill Cornell Medical College's Ambulatory Care and Medical Education Building, a thirteen-story complex in New York City, houses numerous specialty clinical programs, as well as world-class research and medical education. Researchers there will collaborate with the scientists at the new Life Sciences Technology Building on the Ithaca campus and a new Animal Health Diagnostic Center at the College of Veterinary Medicine that is in the planning stages. Milstein Hall, a new building for the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, is moving into the construction stage. A new Computing and Information Science campus, anchored by William H. Gates Hall, is on the drawing board, as is a new Physical Sciences complex. The final buildings for the West Campus House System will open within the next few years. Plans for renovating and expanding Helen Newman Hall will add greatly to the health and fitness options on north campus. On the historic Arts Quad, older buildings are slated for renovation, and the world-famous Johnson Museum of Art, designed by I. M. Pei, will be expanded according to a plan by the original architect, creating new ways for students to experience the world's artistic heritage. A well-planned building and remodeling program will advance our efforts to make Cornell a model for environmentally sensitive development and operation. It also will contribute to the university's considerable visual appeal for prospective students and faculty by preserving the natural and man-made features that make ours one of the most beautiful campuses in the world.
Building on Success
The Sciences
In the twenty-first century, life-changing discoveries will be made by integrated teams of scientists broadly representing biological, physical, engineering, and computational sciences. In each of these scientific domains, Cornell faculty and students (both graduate and undergraduate) must be at the cutting edge in both theory and practice. Across the Cornell campuses and around the world, our faculty must be leaders and innovators in their scientific disciplines as well as possess the ability to build multidisciplinary bridges. For example, high-resolution imaging technologies and nano-scale sensors are essential as we dissect the nature of the cell and its associated functions. If we are able to study critical processes in cells in real time, we will gain insights into the nature of life and how this knowledge can be employed to prevent disease or to slow aging. Cornell is recognized internationally for the development of synchrotron radiation, scanning electron microscopy, and two-photon microscopy, considered among the world's most important tools to elucidate the structure of molecules, materials, and cells. These imaging technologies, and the investigators improving them, are fundamentally important to life scientists as molecular insights resolve questions in medical, organismal, and environmental biology. In complement, computational expertise and approaches to perform molecular simulations and network modeling have wide value in many aspects of systems biology. Integrated life, physical, and computational sciences at Cornell, characterized by both quality and comprehensiveness, are an essential foundation of our research, educational, and outreach activities. Cornell is preparing to move to the next stage of challenges and opportunities by linking disciplinary excellence, multidisciplinary team building, and the identification of critical societal problems. By simultaneously strengthening both basic and applied sciences, we have the ability to establish the effective teams required to tackle problems of: (1) energy and environmental sustainability, (2) animal and human health, and (3) food and resource security. Gifted scientists want to work with equally gifted graduate students, who bring fresh ideas and insights to faculty research even as they are groomed for research careers of their own. We need fellowships to put graduate study at Cornell within reach of all talented students, as well as support to extend research opportunities to all undergraduates who want them.
The Arts and Humanities
Cornell has long had great strength in the arts and humanities, with outstanding programs in architecture, music, theater, literary studies, philosophy, languages, and history. Cornell's humanities fields rank in the top ten in the country. A number of our language and literature fields rank in the top five and became models for other universities when they broadened their missions to include more interdisciplinary cultural studies, including media other than literature and drawing heavily on history, anthropology, and philosophy to define their scope. Music and theater set the standard for an integrated approach to the creative arts, performance, criticism, and history. Philosophy combines with linguistics to offer one of the nation's best programs in philosophy of language, and with classics to distinguish us in classical thought. The Society for the Humanities has enlivened the campus with its programs for internal and external scholars and confers enormous prestige on Cornell's programs in the arts and humanities more generally. To preserve and enhance our leadership in the arts and humanities, we must find talented young scholars to succeed retiring faculty who are leaders in their fields—and do so at a time when our peer institutions will be looking to build their own faculty in these areas. Our goal is to attract the prospects who have the potential to carry the torch over the next several decades and who will help Cornell to maintain its position in the top five to ten in our literature and cultural studies fields, including English, German studies, Romance studies, Asian studies, and Near Eastern studies, and to move into the top ten in philosophy, classics, and linguistics. We will seek out individuals who can provide leadership in the areas of comparative race and ethnic studies; who promote collaborative work with other faculty and students, and will help to develop programs that can have an impact on the world around us. To achieve these aims, we will need endowments for professorships.
The Social Sciences and Professional Education
Cornell has enormous breadth in the social sciences and professional fields. We have the potential to move into the top tier in key social science disciplines and to reframe the line between basic and applied research. We have set a range of strategies in motion to realize that potential, in part by fostering interdisciplinary interaction. The new Institute for the Social Sciences has already lent prestige to Cornell's programs and helped recruit talented faculty who had offers from some of our strongest competitor institutions. Further progress will depend on our ability to continue attracting top scholars in the targeted fields and to supply them with the resources they need for groundbreaking research. Our goal is to achieve top-ten ranking in the fields of economics (which includes industrial and labor relations, and applied economics and management), sociology (which includes policy analysis and management), and government. These are leading candidates for substantial investment because of their social importance, the large number of lines currently allocated to these fields, and their significance to our professional schools, particularly our business programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Another goal we hope to begin to achieve by the time we celebrate Cornell's sesquicentennial is to make our Institute for the Social Sciences the most prestigious and productive of its kind, attracting scholars from all over the world. Areas of special focus include poverty and inequality, and environmental sustainability.
No Boundaries from the Start—
No Limits on the Future
Cornell's original charter committed the university to teaching "agriculture and the mechanic arts," but left open the option of pursuing "such other branches of science and knowledge… as the trustees may deem useful and proper." Over the years, the university has expanded its educational mission many times to meet new needs and circumstances. Cornell was less than a quarter century old when it added medical and legal studies to the curriculum, moves that came partly in response to growing demand for improved professional development. The desire to disseminate information about modern domestic and hospitality management methods led to the establishment of what are now the College of Human Ecology and the School of Hotel Administration, respectively. Upheavals in the labor markets during and after World War II created the need for a School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Down through the generations, Cornellians and friends have risen time and again to meet new challenges with spectacular success. With the confidence a fresh infusion of capital and financial security engenders, Cornell will fulfill our latest shared ambition: to rise among its peers around the world as the first-rate educator and world-class research university at the cutting edge of a rapidly evolving world of knowledge. Emboldened with the optimism and imagination a successful campaign will inspire, Cornell, a progressive employer who cares for today's family, will be the best place for faculty, staff, and students to develop their ideas, produce new knowledge, make discoveries, and communicate their results across geographical and generational divides. Cornell has a 140-year record of translating big dreams into actions that improve the lives of individuals and benefit whole communities, from groups of first-year students to villages on the other side of the world. If past is prologue, our trajectory is set for even greater levels of achievement. Join us, and together we will ensure that in 2015, when our leaders retrace our university's history of innovation and discovery and look to its future, their gaze will be upward and optimistic, and their imaginations free to pursue ambitious new visions of their own: with no boundaries to the worlds they may explore, and no limits to what they may achieve.
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Extension and Outreach
Professor of natural resources James Lassoie and colleague monitor ecological change in northwest Yunan Province as part of a program on sustainable development in China. The university's dedication to applied research and outreach extends to all people everywhere in the world, through projects to develop safe water supplies, sustainable farming practices, and improved health and nutrition.
Undergraduate Education
The transition from student to alumnus is an occasion for joy and tears—Cornellians as a group are well prepared for post-graduate life, but many admit that they hate to leave. The loyalty and affection felt by Cornell's 244,000 alumni is reflected in their generosity towards their alma mater. In a recent survey, Cornell ranked third among U.S. colleges and universities in gifts and bequests from alumni.
Tradition
A local landmark and Cornell icon since 1891, McGraw Tower houses the 21 bells that constitute the Cornell chimes. Student chimesmasters play three concerts daily during the academic year and a reduced schedule during the summer and semester breaks, making Cornell's set one of the most frequently played chimes in the world. (It also is one of the largest.)
Research
Duffield Hall is a large building facilitating a small science. Home of the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility and the Nanobiotechnology Center—and featuring a nanocharacterization suite housing three of Cornell's most powerful electron microscopes as well as laboratories supporting research in lasers, microelectromechanical systems, polymer chemistry, and advanced materials— Duffield Hall is designed to promote collab-oration among researchers from a wide range of fields.
Diversity
Cornell's commitment to attracting the best and brightest applicants has created a strong, smart, and diverse student population of 13,500 undergraduates and 6,900 graduate and professional students. Among the undergraduates, 85 percent graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, about a third describe themselves as students of color, and nearly one in 10 comes from outside the United States.
Urban Outlook
Founded in 1898, Weill Medical College of Cornell University is among the top-ranked clinical and medical research centers in the country. The college is located in Manhattan and is affiliated with New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the Sloan-Kettering Institute, and Rockefeller University. The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the College of Human Ecology, the College of Engineering, Cornell Cooperative Extension, and Alumni Affairs and Development also have programs in New York City.
Exploration
Opportunity, one of two Mars rovers outfitted with instruments designed at Cornell, sent back this self-portrait (right photo) as it explored sand dunes and outcrop rocks in Meridiani Planum. Designed to operate for about three months, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have performed well beyond their warranty period; as of summer 2006 they have been on the job for more than two years, transmitting invaluable information about the geological history of the Red Planet.