The November/December 2014 cover
I am very gratified that Cornell has finally joined the twenty-first century with the appointment of its first female president. As one of the first coeducational institutions in the U.S., it’s about time Cornell had a female president. You go, Elizabeth!
As a woman graduate of Cornell, I’m thrilled to welcome Beth and think she sounds great. I’ve listened to the video [of the press conference announcing her appointment] and have one suggestion: mention teaching as well as research. She rightly talked about developing the next generation of leaders and the search for truth, but I never heard the words, “great teachers and great teaching.”
Photo Finish
I agree that the picture of the Arts Quad in the mid-Fifties on page 41 of the September/October 2014 issue (“Campus Confrontation”) was terrific. But you didn’t identify the year it was taken, and I take issue with Charles Juran ’53, BME ’54, who wrote in the Correspondence section in November/December that it was taken in fall 1954.
In fact, I am also in that picture, in the group of four students standing in the lower right-hand corner. I am in a beige jacket, white shirt, no tie, behind the NROTC midshipman—and by fall 1954, I was already out to sea on a destroyer.
What was amusing is that the famous photographer Alfred Eisenstadt was standing at the top of a tall stepladder, on the walkway—and because everyone passing wanted to get in the picture, he was screaming loudly, “Get away, keep moving, look natural!”