I have the honor of assuming the Harold Tanner Deanship
at a moment of exceptional opportunity as well as formidable challenge
for the College of Arts and Sciences. It is also a moment when
the Arts and Sciences community should pay tribute to Harold Tanner
(ILR, class of '52), for his generosity in endowing the college's
deanship and his leadership of Cornell's magnificent capital campaign
of the 1990s.
Thanks to the campaign's success, the university
and the college are approaching the end of the twentieth century
in a greatly strengthened position. Income from increased endowment
funds has already begun to flow into financial aid for our students
and into monetary support for our programs and faculty; these
direct benefits will, moreover, increase during each of the next
two years. The college's resources are a communal treasure. My
colleagues and I seek your counsel and your continuing generosity
as we devote ourselves to using these resources wisely.
At this moment in Cornell's history, Arts and Sciences
also stands to gain significantly from initiatives undertaken
by a dynamic new university administration. Its principal leaders
are two members of the Arts and Sciences faculty, President Hunter
R. Rawlings III (classics) and Provost Don M. Randel (music),
who was dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1991 through
1995. These colleagues have undertaken to establish university-wide
standards for faculty appointments and promotions; they have moved
to improve Cornell's standing in the social sciences by bringing
endowed and statutory programs into productive collaboration;
they have capped the university's fringe-benefit rate while imposing
a belt-tightening on our athletic programs and on the Division
of Alumni Affairs and Development; they have announced a plan,
at once bold and prudent, for addressing our long-standing campus
housing problems and for enriching the freshman experience; and
they have supported research initiatives that will consolidate
Cornell's national leadership in the development of interdisciplinary
science. All these major steps, plus many less spectacular, but
vital, measures, in a single inaugural year!
In the Cornell of the twenty-first century, the College
of Arts and Sciences will remain, I am convinced, the academic
and cultural center around which the university is constructed.
Cornell will continue to depend on us in this college, not only
for its Ivy League reputation, but for intellectual leadership
and for the preservation of fundamental values. All Cornell undergraduates
will continue to rely on Arts and Sciences for the basics of their
higher education: instruction in writing and critical thinking,
training in quantitative reasoning and the basics of modern science,
and appreciation of our cultural and artistic heritage. It will
still be in our classes and in extracurricular activities related
to them that students from all the colleges of the university
come together and experience the special qualities we derive from
Cornell's incomparable social and academic diversity.
Arts and Sciences will also remain Cornell's primary center for basic research in the traditional disciplines; and as such, it will continue to pioneer opportunities for undergraduates to participate in state-of-the-art research. Finally, for our own students, we shall remain the bastion of liberal education. By this we mean a course of study and experience that, in turning education into an exhilarating lifelong adventure, prepares our graduates to function effectively and thoughtfully in a rapidly changing world.
In coming issues of this newsletter, a number of
my faculty colleagues will join me in attempting to give you a
clear sense of the challenges we face and the directions we will
take as we prepare to enter a new century. We value your opinions
on issues and problems and hope that the newsletter's articles
will be a stimulus to dialogue within the larger college community.
Philip E. Lewis
Dean