In 1972, Kraig Adler came to join the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior and to become a faculty member at one of the world’s great universities. He had been an undergraduate at Ohio Wesleyan and received his masters and doctorate at The University of Michigan, after which he served on the faculty at Notre Dame before coming to Cornell. Kraig is from Ohio, where he developed a boyhood fascination with animals, especially amphibians and reptiles. Today, he specializes in the behavior of these animals, especially the sensory basis of their orientation and navigation. He has written or edited eight books and authored more than 150 scientific papers on these and related topics.

Kraig has served as chair of his department on two occasions and just stepped down as vice provost for life sciences, in which capacity he had responsibility for all life science programs on the campus. Over many years he has taught the freshman biology course for majors, for which he has been recognized with teaching awards at both Notre Dame and Cornell. He is the faculty advisor to the undergraduate Cornell Herpetological Club, an active group of undergrads dedicated to research and education concerning the biology of amphibians and reptiles. He is also a rabid fan of Notre Dame football and Cornell ice hockey and he likes fishing, polo, and book collecting.

I came to Cornell in 2001 and joined the faculty in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Having been at MIT as postdoctoral fellow and at Caltech as a graduate student, coming to academically diverse community like Cornell was a welcome new challenge. In the Chemistry Department, I teach introductory courses, mostly for non-majors and enjoy trying to make chemistry relevant to those not particularly enthusiastic about having to take it. In my research laboratory, I lead a team of students and postdocs trying to solve long-standing problems in synthetic chemistry. Specifically we are finding ways to eliminate toxic, heavy metals from reactions used in the pharmaceutical industry and are from reactions used in the drug industry and looking to develop cleaner, fossil fuel independent routes to ammonia.

Personally, I was born in Philadelphia and am a tortured sports fan, currently enduring the championship drought that has plagued the city since 1983. Here in Ithaca, I enjoy spending time with my wife Karen, our huge St Bernard Teddy and reading history.

Sharon Dittman found her way to her current position as Associate Director for Community Relations at Gannett Health Services by a somewhat circuitous route.  A graduate of Bucknell University, Vanderbilt University, and New York Theological Seminary, she began her life at Cornell in the mid-80s as protestant chaplain, working with Cornell United Religious Work.  In that role, she had the privilege of engaging with students about the experiences, values, challenges, and conundrums that shaped their lives.  Intrigued by what she was learning from and with students about the ways in which spirituality and sexuality seem to live right at the heart of human identity, Sharon moved from Anabel Taylor Hall across the street to Gannett, where she worked as sexuality health educator and eventually coordinator of Cornell AIDS Action.  Sharon's role has evolved over the years, and she now coordinates Gannett's patient advocacy program, health promotion department, and communication strategies.  Though she didn't plan to reside in one community for 20+ years, Ithaca and Cornell and Gannett have continued to give her opportunities to learn, grow, and thrive,  She loves biking, cross country skiing, hiking with her dog Magic, and exploring the back roads of the Finger Lakes.  She welcomes the opportunity to be in conversation with Carl Becker House students about those things that matter most to their health, healing, heart, and wholeness.

Advice she is still trying to follow: "Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not seek now the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." (From Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke)

Life at Cornell University began in 1983 as a Senior Staff Auditor in the University Auditor Office and has evolved to my current position of Associate Director of Systems in the Office of Financial Aid/Student Employment. I received my degree in Economics at Saint Bonaventure University in 1971.

I reached Saint Bonaventure by way of the Bronx, New York. While there, I was a member of their 1970 NCAA final four basketball team and a 1971 fourth round draftee of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

Having raised three young men to adulthood, I stay active competing in weekend Masters basketball tournaments, while serving as a faculty/staff advisor to the men’s basketball team at Cornell. Other activities include traveling, bowling and attending local sporting events for the future star athletes of the greater Ithaca area.

Jenny Graap '86 returned to her alma mater to coach the women's lacrosse program in 1997. The Big Red advanced to the NCAA Final Four in 2002 and Coach Graap takes great pride in the success of her program. As a DEA major in HumEc, Jenny found time outside of the Martha Van studios to play four years of both field hockey and lacrosse. She captained both teams in her junior and senior years and was a member of the Red Key Society. Jenny worked as an assistant buyer at Bloomingdale's in NYC after graduation and two years later began graduate studies at Penn State earning a MS in Exercise and Sports Science.

Jenny and her husband, Dan Allen (Freshmen Men's Rowing Coach) live in Fall Creek with Watkins, their Jack Russell terror... I mean terrier! Jenny and Dan enjoy water skiing, wake boarding, and kayaking on Cayuga Lake.

David Gries joined Cornell’s Department of Computer Science in 1969, in the era of main frames and punched cards. He has been here ever since, except for a two-year stint at the University of Georgia. He got his B.S. from Queens College in New York, M.S. from Illinois, and Dr. rer. nat. from MIT (the Munich Institute of Technology) in Germany, all in mathematics. He was at Stanford for three years before coming to Cornell.

Gries’s computer science interests are in learning (and teaching) how to develop computer programs so that they are always correct (then, debugging is easy). This leads to interests in other areas, like logic for use rather than logic for study (logicians study logic, they don’t use it). In the past, Gries has sung in the Savoyards, sung barbershop, played basketball, softball, and golf, etc. He is interested in helping the environment —he has solar panels on his garage roof and owned the first Prius 2004 in Ithaca.

Robert attended Roosevelt University, for his bachelors and masters degrees, a commuter school with an excellent and diverse faculty, before diversity became fashionable, and the ivies raided them. He earned his doctoral degree in history from Northwestern University. He taught at the University of Illinois/Urbana-Champaign before joining Cornell in 1975.

He is interested in African American thought and culture, leaders and movements, and historiography. An avid jogger, he also gardens and enjoys most sports. He is willing to share his opinions on most contemporary issues and finds that engaging with young minds is challenging, refreshing, and rewarding.

Harris is a Chicago chauvinist and a White Sox fan, not a Cubs fan, whose followers are the "brie and wine" crowd from the Northside, not the "beer and sausage" working class from the West and Southside, who gave Chicago its reputation as the "city of the broad shoulders."

Kent received his Bachelor of Architecture Degree in 1969 from Cornell University, and a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Sculpture in 1973 from Yale University. In 1969-70 as a Peace Corps Architect he designed and built dispensaries, schools and small hospitals in the atolls of Micronesia.

His responsibilities as Dean of Students include: new student programs and the Carol Tatkon Center, student support, student activities, fraternity and sorority affairs, international students and scholars, oversight of the student union, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered resource center and university ministries.

As Professor in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, Hubbell was the Nathaniel & Margaret Owings Distinguished Alumni Professor and Chairman of the Architecture Department from 1993-1998. For 18 years he was Professor of Architecture at the University of Michigan and Chairman of the Architecture Program from 1985-93. He taught at Yale and has been lecturer, juror and critic at numerous schools in the East and Midwest.

Hubbell is a licensed architect and was President of Chrysalis Corp. Architects until 1984 when he formed K.L. Hubbell Inc, Architects.

These firms have won numerous national and regional awards and have been especially well known for their work in the area of fabric structures. Hubbell has completed a 5,000 seat covered river front theater for Chene Park, Detroit and his recent projects focus on the creation of public events facilities for the performing arts, including the design for a summer theatre for the Michigan Shakespeare Festival and the Jackson Symphony Orchestra.

Dr. Rebecca Stoltzfus landed in international nutrition after roaming through the disciplines of music, psychology and chemistry as an undergraduate. A semester abroad in Haiti got her “hooked” on travel, the wonder of other cultures, and the fresh perspectives of people who are not immersed in our technological, materialistic society. Dr. Stoltzfus enjoys working in international public health because it allows her to work with teams of people from disciplines different from her own, and to approach problems from a variety of angles. She is currently working on projects in Peru, Zanzibar, Nepal, and Zimbabwe.

Dr. Stoltzfus is Associate Professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Nutrition, President of the Society for International Nutrition Research, a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on General Parasitology and serves on the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine.

She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Human Nutrition from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Goshen College.

Dr. Tester is the Croll Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University and the H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For more than three decades he has been involved in chemical engineering process research as it relates to renewable and conventional energy extraction and conversion and environmental control technologies. His other appointments have included Director of MIT's Energy Laboratory (1989-2001), Director of MIT’s School of Chemical Engineering Practice (1980-1989) and a group leader in the Geothermal Engineering Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory (1974-1980).

He is currently a member of the advisory boards of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (chair), the American Council of Renewable Energy, Idaho National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has served as a member of the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust (chair) and the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. He was a member of the 1997 Energy R&D Panel of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), and has served as an advisor to the USDOE and the National Research Council in areas related to concentrating solar power, geothermal and biomass energy, and other renewable technologies and waste minimization and pollution reduction.

Professor Bik Tye accepted her first job as assistant professor at Cornell University in 1977. She quickly fell in love with Cornell/Ithaca and decided to set her roots to raise her family and build her career in this idyllic university town. She is married to Henry Tye, Professor of Physics, also at Cornell. She has two daughters, Kay, a neuroscience graduate student at the University of California, San Francisco, and Lynne, a senior at Ithaca High School. She received her Ph.D. degree from M.I.T. and her postdoctoral training at Stanford University Medical School. She received her undergraduate education at Wellesley College and graduated in the same class as our New York State Senator, Hillary Clinton. 

Bik was born and raised in Hong Kong. She keeps a close interest in the science and research in Hong Kong by serving on the Biology and Medicine Panel of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.

Bik’s hobbies include playing racquet ball, cooking, being a soccer and lacrosse fan of her daughters, going to movies and traveling. She once aspired to become a ballerina. She teaches a large lecture course - BBM332, Principles of Biochemistry, and she looks forward to meeting her past, present and future students in an informal setting at Becker House.