By the Book | FINISHED YOUR DISSERTATION? NOT UNTIL MINNIE EMPSON SAYS SO.

LABOR FOR FIVE OR TEN YEARS OF GRADUATE STUDY to produce a masterwork of scholarly genius, and the results will end up here: in a vast cinderblock warehouse three miles from campus. If there were windows, they would look out on the Cornell Orchards and the distant towers of the Vet college. Inside this storage fortress, the shelves reach forty feet to the ceiling. This is the Library Annex, the University's repository for books rarely opened, and its largest collection consists of some 56,000 theses--one for every doctoral or master's degree granted since Cornell's inception, printed on archival paper and bound in black. Most fill a few hundred pages, though a handful of particularly verbose authors go on for hundreds more.

Twelve thousand of these volumes--perhaps three million pages--have been added since 1993, the year Minnie Empson assumed her duties as thesis advisor, the University's official arbiter of academic bureaucracy. If you are a graduate student, the road to your degree runs through Empson's Caldwell Hall office. She scans each and every page, confirming that the formatting complies with University Microfilms International standards and the library's requirements for archival copies. Two copies of each thesis ultimately enter the University's library system--one housed in the Annex that serves as the document of record proving a student's successful degree completion, the other shelved by subject in libraries across campus.Microfilms make the documents accessible worldwide, to patrons of any library that subscribes to the service.

Empson also verifies that each student has passed an oral exam and collected the required faculty signatures approving the manuscript and abstract. "It's the last hurdle they have to get through--a lot of them are literally packed and ready to go," she says. "So if I say 'You have to fix this,' it's either do it from afar or change your plans. Some of them do, canceling flights to get it done before they leave."Without her OK, cap and gown--and coveted academic credentials--remain just out of reach. "We do try to make this a pleasant experience," says Empson, whose softspoken demeanor suggests she means it. "I want them finished as much as they want to finish the degree."

To that end, Empson offers informational seminars and provides electronic templates--complete with the proper margin settings, page number placement, and cover page format. Academic computer lab consultant Joanne Button provides free technology assistance from her post in CIT's Uris Library computer lab, and another employee helps students using DSpace, an electronic archive.

The process is far more technologically sophisticated than it was back in the days when every thesis was pounded out on a manual typewriter. But if you've spent the better part of a decade immersed in research, analysis, and writing, the rules that Empson enforces (figures must follow their first mention, for example, within the text rather than at a chapter's end) can seem fiendishly niggling. "They've done what they thought was the really difficult part and now they get off in these tiny details that are very frustrating," says Empson.

Jessica Ward, PhD '06, watched several friends scramble with last-minute paperwork, so she attended an informational session almost two years before she anticipated completing her degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. "The formatting and bureaucratic things were really painless," she says, "but I knew they would be stressful at the end." Now a post-doc at the Scripps Research Institute,Ward says that the hardest part was finding a typewriter to complete the thesis approval form, a document that includes both the manuscript title, which often changes at the oral exam, and the signatures of the full committee, whose members often disperse beyond campus after the exam. Like many students, Ward had the form signed at her defense and filled in the final title later. "But who uses a typewriter?" she says. "The first one I found, one of the letters didn't work. The next typed at an angle, so I had to keep adjusting the paper."

Cornell confers graduate degrees in January,May, and August, so there's a seasonal ebb and flow to Empson's work. As each submission deadline looms, the line of students snakes down the hallway. "It does get a little chaotic the last few days," admits Empson. "But nobody wants to lose their place in line, so they're hesitant to go far away." E-mail has helped ease the burden: Chie Ikeya '99, PhD '06, traveled to Myanmar as part of her research on gender in colonial Burma, drafted her dissertation in London, had an inperson consultation with Empson during a visit to Ithaca, and electronically submitted the manuscript from Seattle.

Grad students have long supported a bustling cottage industry of thesis assistance. The cadre of typists converting longhand manuscripts into meticulously formatted documents has disappeared, but for $15 to $40 an hour you can hire someone to draft custom illustrations, edit text, collect signatures, properly format electronic files, even nag you to schedule relevant appointments. "Students get to the point where it's nearly complete and then they have a tendency to wander off to do other things," says Carol Cook, who provides formatting and courier services in Ithaca. She started out as a typist in 1967 and averages more than 100 clients annually. "They're stretched to the breaking point when they call me, because they've let it go until the last minute, or the new semester is coming up and they'll have to pay more tuition."

Empson's office provides contact information for a dozen such individuals. Thanks to computers, students do more of the work themselves than they did back in 1962, when Empson came to Cornell to work in the bursar's office. In thirteen years as the thesis advisor, despite having scanned every page of every manuscript that warranted a graduate degree, she's never actually read one--though several have been tempting. "By the time I get through the process, the manuscript has gone on to the library for cataloging and binding," she says. "But there were a number that I thought I'd like to go back and read because they looked so interesting."

-- Sharon Tregaskis '95

Manatee Man | BIOLOGIST WORKS TO PROTECT THE ENDANGERED SEA COW

aSK DAN ODELL '67 FOR A BUSINESS CARD AND HE'LL hand you a manatee. Not the herbivorous marine mammal, of course, which averages about ten feet long and 1,000 pounds. Rather, it's an artist's rendering of the sea cow floating above his contact information. But something is notably missing on Odell's card-sized creature: the scars. "Some manatees I've seen, they have dozens--it looks like railroad tracks going across their backs," says Odell, senior research biologist at the not-forprofit Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute in Orlando, Florida. "It's virtually impossible to find a manatee in the wild that hasn't been hit by a motorboat. They can sustain some incredible wounds and survive."

SeaWorld Orlando serves as a sort of manatee halfway house, where approximately two dozen of the fascinating, oddly shaped creatures are cared for each year before being released back into Florida waters or sent to other facilities.While the visiting hordes watch a half-dozen females and calves gliding through a lagoon at the Manatee Rescue exhibit, Odell passes through a gate into a quiet fenced-off area behind the scenes. He stops at the Beached Animal Rehabilitation Pool, currently home to a baby orphaned manatee about the size of a full-grown Labrador retriever. "They're coastal animals, almost strictly vegetarians," Odell explains."Here in Florida, they're occupying the same habitat that boaters do. But they can be hard to see because the water is often very turbulent."He points to a critical care pool a few steps away, where two large male manatees move through the shallow water like mini-submarines. Asked their names, Odell says that although each gets a field ID number, "there is a hesitancy to name animals unless we're sure they're going to survive."

Although Odell approaches his work with a certain academic distance, there is a hint of sadness in his eyes as he points out the creatures' backs, gashed and gouged with deep white scars. These distant relatives of the elephant have an air of sweetness and sorrow about them, and it might be said that one leads to the other. They are docile and curious, yet they also tend to be sluggish; although manatees can live in excess of sixty years, approximately one-fifth of Florida manatee deaths each year are caused by boat collisions. Says Odell, who has raised three children (two biologists and a chemist) with his wife, Terry:"My kids grew up helping me pick up dead manatees that washed ashore."

Odell glimpsed his first manatee at Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco in 1968, one year after receiving his degree in wildlife biology from Cornell (he earned an MA in zoology and a PhD in biology from UCLA). Since then, about half of his professional life--at the Marine Lab at the University of Miami, at SeaWorld Orlando (where he oversaw all research activities in the nation's SeaWorld parks), and in his current position at the research institute--has focused on the history and conservation of the marine giant.

While there are more than seventy-five species of cetaceans--whales and dolphins-- on earth today, there are only four species of sirenians: three manatees and one dugong. (A fifth species, Steller's sea cow, was hunted to extinction in the 1700s.) The Florida manatee, a subspecies of the West Indian manatee, is important to the state's ecosystem--it recycles vegetation and fertilizes vital sea grass beds-- as well as to its ecotourism industry: swimming with manatees is big business. But the animal's existence is precarious. Threats come from natural changes in their environment, such as cold snaps and red tides. But man-made threats are a greater danger--not only boats but also the destruction of sea grass beds and the emergence of coastal power plants, which have led these warm-blooded creatures to become dependent on artificially heated waters.

By most estimates, the waterways in and around Florida are home to only some 3,300 manatees. That's one reason why much of Odell's focus over the years has concerned data compilation as part of the Southeastern U.S. Marine Mammal Stranding Network, a large group of volunteers authorized by the federal government to pick up sick, injured, entangled, or dead marine mammals, most often on coastal beaches. John Reynolds III, who was Odell's first doctoral student at the University of Miami and currently serves as chairman of the federal Marine Mammal Commission, says that Odell has been one of the Stranding Network's major proponents. "The field of marine biology would be much poorer without Dan," says Reynolds, who co-authored a 1992 book with Odell called Manatees and Dugongs. "He is a broad-thinking scientist, a terrific organizer, and a humble person." In 1990 Odell's efforts earned him a Point of Light award from President George H.W. Bush. Manatees fall under the protection of several federal and state laws, notably the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and the Florida Marine Sanctuary Act of 1978. The last established boating speed limits in the state, a point of controversy between the marine industry and conservationists. Last year, representatives of Florida's boating industry successfully petitioned for a review of the animal's protected status by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which then voted to downgrade manatees from "endangered" to "threatened."While manatees remain protected by federal laws, the decision worries Odell. "I think the downside will be the perception that manatees are safe in Florida," he says. "It's a balance. If people want to keep manatees and their ecosystems intact, we're going to have to change the way we do business and change our lifestyle.We can't just keep exploiting them until they're gone."

-- Brad Herzog '90

More than Meets the Eye | THIRTY YEARS AGO, STEVE SHEARING '56 HAD AN IDEA. . .

oPHTHALMOLOGIST DR. STEVEN Shearing '56 recently traveled to India, where a friend introduced him to a well-known local doctor. The Indian physician began describing an artificial lens he had been using to cure hundreds of impoverished patients with cataracts--and what a blessing restored sight had been for them. The friend asked the Indian doctor if he knew who invented the lens. He didn't--and was told, "You're sitting opposite him!"

It's been thirty years since Shearing revolutionized cataract surgery with a thin plastic disc flanked by spring-like wires. But the impact of the Shearing Lens is still felt today. Lenses with the same basic design are now the most common type of artificial implant in the United States, with 2.8 million cataract operations annually. That number is sure to increase as the population ages.

Severe cataract cases are rare in the United States today. But thirty years ago, the condition, which clouds vision, made reading difficult and driving dangerous. People had cataracts surgically removed and their vision improved--but not by much. Afterward, "Coke-bottle" glasses offered further improvements but narrowed the field of view. "They caused what was called a jack-in-the-box phenomenon," Shearing says. "You didn't see something in your visual range and then it jumped out. People would fall down and break their hips."

Cataracts naturally develop when people reach their sixties and early seventies. They form in the eye's lens, a structure about the size and shape of an M&M filled with water and protein and wrapped in a cellophane-like bag called a capsule. Like a camera lens, it focuses light and images onto the retina at the back of the eye. But with age, protein cells accumulate, blocking images from the retina and turning the lens grayish-white. That color gives the condition its name, Shearing says. "It's as if you are looking through a waterfall."

Over the centuries healers have tried to treat cataracts with surgery, including attempts in the 1700s with an artificial lens that Shearing calls "a disaster." Then in World War II, British ophthalmologist Harold Ridley noticed that downed Royal Air Force pilots whose eyes had been pierced with splinters of plastic windshield recovered surprisingly well. In 1949, he tried a novel procedure: he took out the natural lens and replaced it with a plastic one. His gambit worked--but only up to a point, and many criticized his innovation. A decade passed before a few European ophthalmologists tried again, this time placing the artificial lens toward the front of the eye, either wedging it near the iris or sewing it to the iris itself. The technique was certainly easier than going deeper into the eye, as Ridley had done. But those implants often damaged the cornea. "There was a lot of debate in the early 1970s," Shearing remembers. " 'Is it dangerous? Should we work on this?'And that's when I came along."

The New York City native was setting up practice in Las Vegas while his wife, a lawyer whom he had met and married at Cornell, set up hers. (Miriam Mattinen Shearing '56 later became the first female chief justice of Nevada's Supreme Court.) By then, a small minority of ophthalmologists, including Shearing, had embraced Ridley's approach: putting an artificial implant where the natural one had been. But the implants available weren't up to the task.

As Shearing saw it, surgeons faced a dilemma. To insert an artificial lens, the surgeon had to go through the pupil--an exceedingly narrow opening. A lens big enough to fit into the capsule wouldn't slip easily through the pupil, and one small enough to fit through the pupil would bounce around inside the capsule.

Shearing changed the game with the concept of compressibility. "I said, 'Well, let's spring-load it,' " he remembers, "so it's easy to get in, and then let the springs open to a remembered position."He hired a manufacturer to make a lens with two polypropylene wires that would hold it in place. In March 1977, he implanted the first Shearing Lens on an indigent woman whom he had treated in the past for free. It was a move that would be practically illegal today: federal regulations now require lengthy review of human experiments. "I thought a lot about that first case," Shearing says. "Who to do it on; was it fair?"He went ahead, deciding he would use a conventional implant if his posed any problem.

It didn't. The capsule quickly sealed around the lens, with little trauma. "It was the lens that changed everything," says Calvin Roberts, clinical professor of ophthalmology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "The surgery itself was technically more difficult--you needed greater skill. But with time, everybody converted."Other companies soon followed with innovations, and surgeons quickly discarded the Shearing Lens for improved versions.Medicare paid for the procedure, creating even greater demand for artificial lenses.

If Shearing's is a story of medical innovation, it's also a cautionary financial tale. The manufacturer, IOLAB, had insisted on an exclusive license. Concerned that IOLAB would not manufacture the implant otherwise, Shearing agreed. If you ask him whether he regrets that decision, he admits it was "a big mistake." IOLAB eventually terminated the contract, cutting him out of profits from subsequent generations of lenses.

Still, the lens did earn him patent royalties and an international reputation. Today, cataract surgery takes fifteen minutes on an outpatient basis; the newest lenses, which allow people to see both near and far without glasses, are based on Shearing's original design. Roberts compares the lens's influence to that of Henry Ford's Model T. "So, you say, it's been almost 100 years since Henry Ford. Haven't there been great changes?" Roberts says. "Well, there have--but cars still have four wheels."

-- Susan Kelley

Timesaver | REPAIRED SUNDIAL RETURNS TO ENGINEERING QUAD

on a sunny January afternoon, an elderly gentleman checked the time on the Engineering Quad's sundial. Then he compared it to his wristwatch, and again to an intricate pocket watch he had removed from a zippered red pouch. "Forty-five seconds off," he declared. He added the figure to a long list on a yellow legal pad.

This was no retiree just marking time. It was President Emeritus Dale Corson, checking the sundial he designed in 1979 with Richard Phelan, professor emeritus of mechanical and aerospace engineering. The sundial had been removed for repairs in August and reinstalled in December. Since then, he'd checked its accuracy four times. "We have to follow it for a whole year before we really know," he said, squinting into the sun. "We had it down to under twenty seconds in the shop."

The sundial is wound each day, like a watch, whenever a passerby--usually "the first student to roll along in the morning," Corson says--turns a knob on the granite base. That prompts a cam, pulleys, and cables to shift a large lateral arc engraved with lines representing minutes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. When the sun shines, a vertical cable casts a thin shadow on the lines to indicate the correct time.

The sundial was installed in November 1980; over the years, water had seeped into the base and rusted the mechanism. Some parts were replaced and others cleaned and rustproofed, says Cornell scientific-instrument maker Rodney Bowman. The bigger challenge was moving the six-foot structure to Clark Hall's basement machine shop and back. "This piece here," Bowman says, pointing to the arc, "that's at least 550 pounds. It's nothing that two guys could get hold of." A forklift, slings, and muscles did the trick.

The Quad and its sundial were both named in 1979 for Joseph N. Pew Jr. 1908. When the University unveiled its initial sundial design in the late 1970s, Corson protested. Sundials had caught his interest during World War II, when he learned celestial navigation while working for the U.S. Army Air Corps. Since then, the former Engineering dean had made many wooden and cardboard sundials, and he contended that the Pew sundial should be more than "a garden ornament." "I had so much criticism of it that they said, 'Well, you do it,' " Corson recalls. "And Rodney and I are still doing it."

During the three months of repairs, Corson used his home computer to calculate the coordinates--one for each day--for the complex curve that Bowman turned into the new cam. Once the parts were re-installed, he visited the machine shop weekly to make final calibrations. "It's as accurate as we can make it," Bowman said, as Corson left the Quad. "It's important to him."