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Ithaca Is (Still) the Nation’s Top College Town

CU Has Record Year for Giving; Campus Copes with Series of Alleged Sexual Assaults; University Begins to Install Suicide Nets Under Bridges; CU Remains Fifteenth in Annual U.S. News Ranking; Dale Corson Remembered with Sage Chapel Service; Tata Named Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year for 2013; Progress Continues for NYC Tech Campus Project; Deans, Librarian […]

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CU Has Record Year for Giving; Campus Copes with Series of Alleged Sexual Assaults; University Begins to Install Suicide Nets Under Bridges; CU Remains Fifteenth in Annual U.S. News Ranking; Dale Corson Remembered with Sage Chapel Service; Tata Named Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year for 2013; Progress Continues for NYC Tech Campus Project; Deans, Librarian Appointed to Second Five-Year Terms; Award Match Initiative Gets $20 Million Boost; Fields Medalist Thurston Dies; Hip Hop Pioneer Afrika Bambaataa Is Visiting Scholar

college town 

Ithaca remains atop the list of best college towns, according to a study by the American Institute for Economic Research. The rankings weigh such factors as academic environment, diversity, cost of living, cultural amenities, transportation accessibility, per capita income, and unemployment rate. As in the previous survey (2010–11), Ithaca was rated number one among towns of fewer than 250,000 residents, followed by Ames, Iowa, and State College, Pennsylvania. This year Ithaca also topped the overall list—making it the number-one “college destination” among the 227 communities surveyed, all of which have student populations of at least 15,000.

CU Has Record Year for Giving

Thanks in large part to a $350 million gift—the biggest in Cornell history—the University has marked a banner year in fundraising. During the 2012 fiscal year, Cornell received a record $777.8 million in gifts. It’s the second time the University topped the $700 million mark; the other was 2007, when it received $300 million from Joan and Sanford Weill ’55. The $350 million came from Chuck Feeney ’56 and his Atlantic Philanthropies foundation to support the Cornell NYC Tech campus. The University also recorded two gifts of $25 million or more and fourteen of $5 million or more. The current campaign, Cornell Now, is set to end in 2015.

Campus Copes with Series of Alleged Sexual Assaults

This fall, the University dealt with a series of sexually related assaults on and around campus, including a reported rape. In early September, a female student reported being grabbed by a male assailant in the lower Hughes parking lot during the early morning hours; she struck him with a bag and he ran away. About an hour later, a man forced his way into a Collegetown apartment, attempting to touch the woman who answered the door; she was able to push him out. Shortly thereafter, another woman reported being raped on a staircase near the Suspension Bridge. One evening later in the month, a female victim reported being grabbed by a man on the Trolley Bridge; she was able to flee after striking him.

The incidents spurred a community forum in late September, as well as the creation of a working group to combat sexual assault. To date, no suspects have been arrested. “As we consider and implement changes at the university level, all of us as individuals also need to take prudent measures to ensure our own safety—measures such as walking in groups late at night and utilizing the Blue Light services,” President David Skorton said in a statement in early October. “Some have said that advocating for personal responsibility in the context of a violent and biased culture is tantamount to blaming the victim. I disagree. There is no substitute for taking personal precautions and prudent planning, and I urge all to do so.” Cornell Police, he added, “are pursuing their investigations with great care, professionalism, and all possible haste.”

University Begins to Install Suicide Nets Under Bridges

At the start of the semester, the University began installing suicide-prevention nets on bridges on and near campus. The nets, made of steel mesh, will replace the fences that have stood since a trio of student suicides—two on consecutive days—rocked the campus in spring 2011. The project, expected to be completed in January, is aimed to save lives while preserving the views from Ithaca’s iconic gorge bridges. Six bridges will have horizontal nets installed beneath them, extending out some fifteen feet from the railings; a seventh, the Suspension Bridge, will be wrapped in steel mesh, as its structure doesn’t allow for “below-deck” installation. According to project manager John Keefe, the fences will be removed once the nets are installed and a system of video and thermal cameras linked to University Police is up and running.

CU Remains Fifteenth in Annual U.S. News Ranking

For the fourth year in a row, U.S. News & World Report has put Cornell fifteenth on its list of best national universities. Rankings of Cornell’s undergraduate programs include first in engineering physics, fourth in agricultural engineering, and tenth in business. The magazine also rated Cornell tenth in economic diversity and twelfth in the category of “best value.”

Dale Corson Remembered with Sage Chapel Service

Nellie Corson

President Emeritus Dale Corson was honored at a memorial service in Sage Chapel in September. Cornell’s eighth president, Corson passed away in March at age ninety-seven. He served from 1969 to 1977—succeeding the embattled James Perkins, who resigned in the wake of the Straight Takeover—and led the campus during a time of anti-war protests and student unrest. “Every action he took reflected his devotion to truth, and the strong conviction that a university must be a place for discovery and preserving truth,” said chemistry professor emeritus Robert Plane. “He felt it was his job to see there was a stable, supportive environment for scholarship and learning.” Those in attendance at the memorial included President David Skorton, former presidents Frank H. T. Rhodes and Jeffrey Lehman ’77, and Corson’s wife of seventy-three years, Nellie Corson.

In the LEED: The Human Ecology Building has been awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum status— the first on Cornell’s campus to be certified at the program’s highest level. The 89,000-square-foot building, which opened in 2011, was recognized for being developed on a sustainable site, limiting energy use and emissions, and more. Built to replace the structurally deficient Martha Van Rensselaer North, the $71.7 million building is located on Forest Home Drive.

Tata Named Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year for 2013

Ratan Tata

Indian industrialist Ratan Tata ’59, BArch ’62, has been named Cornell’s 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year. A University trustee, Tata leads a group of companies—including those in the automotive, steel, power, beverage, chemical, hotel, and telecommunications industries—that employ more than 400,000 people in India, with annual revenues of some $100 billion. Tata is also a philanthropist and a member of the Indian prime minister’s Council on Trade and Industry; his many honors include one of his government’s highest civilian awards and a spot on Barron’s list of the most-respected CEOs. In 2008, one of his family’s philanthropic trusts pledged $50 million to endow the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition.

Progress Continues for NYC Tech Campus Project

In the first arrangement of its kind between a university and a U.S. government agency, Cornell will team up with the Department of Commerce to speed commercialization of ideas generated on its planned NYC Tech campus. “What’s thrilling for me is that it’s not just the patent and trademark office, and even in a sense not just the Department of Commerce,” President David Skorton said at a news conference in October. “This is a conduit for the U.S. government to be working directly with the innovation community—so that we have city government in the City of New York, the federal government, the private sector, and academia all working together to figure what’s the right place for intellectual property in one of the areas of our economy that is growing like crazy right now.”

In September, the University announced a trio of tech-sector innovators who will serve as senior advisers to the campus: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs ’54, BEE ’56, and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. “Ensuring that the new campus is connected in the right way to the thriving entrepreneurial sector is important to delivering on the promise of economic growth that is at the center of this project,” Bloomberg says. NYC Tech’s first class of full-time students—those pursuing a one-year master of engineering degree in computer science—will matriculate in January at the program’s temporary site in the Google offices in Chelsea. The program’s permanent home, on Roosevelt Island, is scheduled to open in 2017.

Deans, Librarian Appointed to Second Five-Year Terms

Alan Mathios

Several academic leaders were reappointed to their positions this fall. Alan Mathios will serve a second five-year term as Human Ecology dean; a professor of policy analysis and management, Mathios was interim dean for a year before taking the post in 2008. Architecture, Art, and Planning dean Kent Kleinman will also serve a second term; an expert in twentieth-century modernist architecture, he came to Cornell in 2008 to lead the college. And Anne Kenney had been reappointed to a second term as university librarian. She oversees one of the world’s largest research libraries, with an annual budget of nearly $53 million.

Award Match Initiative Gets $20 Million Boost

A $20 million gift will support Cornell’s Award Match Initiative, which aims to attract top students by matching need-based financial aid offers from other Ivies. The gift comes from Arthur Wolcott ’49 and his wife, Audrey. Wolcott is a University Councilor, a longtime supporter of Big Red football, and chairman of Seneca Foods Corp., the nation’s largest processor of canned fruits and vegetables. Launched in fall 2011, the initiative also applies to offers from Duke, Stanford, and MIT. Among other goals, it is intended to give Cornell additional leverage in recruiting student-athletes; as athletic director Andy Noel notes, “For decades, an imbalance in the financial aid landscape within the Ivy League has been a serious challenge.”

Fields Medalist Thurston Dies

Math professor William Thurston, winner of the Fields Medal— considered the Nobel Prize of mathematics—died of melanoma in August. He was sixty-five. The Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Mathematics, Thurston won the Fields for revolutionary work in topology, which deals with the properties of a geometric object that remain unchanged when it’s bent or stretched. Department chairman Laurent Saloff-Coste lauded him as “a giant in mathematics.” Thurston’s survivors include his wife, Julian, five children, and two grandchildren.

Hip Hop Pioneer Afrika Bambaataa Is Visiting Scholar

Afrika Bambaataa

DJ Afrika Bambaataa has been named a Cornell visiting scholar, appointed to a three-year term by the University Library’s Hip Hop Collection and the Department of Music. Starting in November, Bambaataa—one of the founding fathers of hip hop and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominee—will make annual visits to campus to perform, speak to classes, and meet with students and community groups.

tubas

Tuba time: During Homecoming in September, ground was broken on Kite Hill for a dedicated home for the Big Red Band (seen here at a hockey game). Aimed to be completed by Commencement, the facility will have rehearsal space for at least 180 members.

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