Associate Professor of Astronomy Jim Bell has been a Mars geek since he was a little kid growing up with a funny accent in Rhode Island. So he is truly living a dream now that he's the leader of the international team of scientists and engineers obtaining images from Mars every day using the Pancam instruments on the rovers Spirit and Opportunity. These amazing robotic explorers have uncovered exciting and dramatic evidence proving that there was once liquid water on the surface of Mars, perhaps for long periods of time, and that indeed it was once much more "Earth like" than it is today.

Jim's specialty is the composition and mineralogy of planetary surfaces, and he works closely with undergraduate and graduate students on a number of NASA space mission projects dealing with Mars, the Moon, asteroids, and comets. He teaches both the large introductory solar system astronomy course as well as smaller courses dealing with image processing and remote sensing as well as specific topical seminars in planetary science. He received his B.S. in Geology & Planetary Sciences from Caltech, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from the University of Hawaii.

Francine D. Blau is Frances Perkins Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Labor Economics. She joined the faculty in 1994. Before coming to Cornell, she was for many years on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University and her BS from Cornell’s ILR School. She has written extensively on gender issues, wage inequality and international comparisons of labor market outcomes. She is the author of Equal Pay in the Office and, with Lawrence Kahn, of At Home and Abroad: U.S. Labor Market Performance in International Perspective. She is also coauthor, with Marianne Ferber and Anne Winkler, of The Economics of Women, Men, and Work currently going into its 6th edition. She has served as Chair of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and is the 2001 recipient of the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award for furthering the status of women in the economics profession.

Fran grew up in New York City but loves the beauty and manageability of small town living in Ithaca and feels a special tie to Cornell, her undergraduate institution. She enjoys old movies, crossword puzzles, yoga and aerobics. She and her husband, fellow ILR School professor Larry Kahn, have two grown children.

Professor Boyd has been at Cornell since 1970. Prior to that he taught at the University of Michigan and at Harvard. He held a visiting professorship at MIT during his time at Cornell. He became interested in the philosophy of science while an undergraduate mathematics major at MIT, where he later earned a PhD in philosophy with a dissertation in mathematical logic. His original interests in foundational issues in philosophy of science have expanded to include interests in metaphysics (especially the metaphysics of kinds and and categories--like biological species and chemical compounds--and of causation), in epistemology (especially in competing notions of rationality and objectivity), in philosophy of biology (especially in issues about the foundations of biological taxonomy and about methods in sociobiology), in philosophy of mind and language and in the foundations of ethics.

He and his wife, Professor Barbara Koslowski (Human Development) share overlapping research interests in the ways in which positivist conceptions of science have distorted conceptions of objectivity, truth and rationality in philosophy, cognitive psychology and related disciplines, and in the literary humanities.

Professor Boyd's other interests include Marxist politics, early modern political history, vintage Omega wristwatches and early 18th c. New England furniture. He is trying to learn chemistry fast enough to be able to converse knowledgeably with his son who is a chemistry major (Oberlin '07). He would welcome help with chemistry from residents and fellows.

Dr. Richard (Rick) Canfield joined the Cornell faculty in 1990 and from that time has enjoyed mentoring many excellent Cornell undergraduates in research. As a student at the University of Puget Sound, a small liberal arts college, Rick studied psychology, mathematics, and literature.

He was a graduate student in developmental psychology at the University of Denver where his interest in the origins of mathematical knowledge led to a specialization in the perceptual, cognitive, and neuropsychological development of infants and young children. His current work focuses on how exposure to environmental toxins such as lead (Pb) and methyl mercury (MeHg) can adversely affect children’s cognitive development.

Growing up as a farm-boy in western Washington State, Rick spent his childhood milking cows, slopping hogs, and cutting and baling hay. He feels at home in the rural setting of upstate New York and is an avid motorcyclist who enjoys discovering small hamlets and beautiful vistas throughout the northeast. Rick also enjoys classic and contemporary movies, sports, and gardening. He rarely turns down an opportunity to play ping pong, and has been accused by some of being a gourmet cook.

As a Carl Becker House Fellow and husband of Becker Dean Cindy Hazan, Rick will become a familiar face in the house.

Paulette Clancy is serving her second term as the Director of the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. She is the first female Director of the School and the first woman to Chair an Engineering department in the history of the College of Engineering. A native of London, England, she graduated with First Class Honors from London University and received a D. Phil in Chemistry from Oxford University. After post-doctoral research at Cornell and at London University, and a three-year appointment as the Associate Director of the Manufacturing Engineering Program, she joined the faculty in Chemical Engineering at Cornell in 1987.

Her research laboratory is one of the leading groups in the country studying atomic- and molecular-scale modeling of materials and materials processing. Her team’s particular strength lies in the prediction and insight that they can provide regarding the link between the choice of material and its subsequent properties, allowing them to suggest processing conditions and tailored materials to fulfill a desired set of constraints. Her research group is a national leader in the use of computer simulation as a tool to study materials such as inorganic semiconductors (e.g., Si), organic semiconductors (e.g., pentacene), metals (like gold) and natural gas hydrates as a clean energy source and greenhouse gas. Her focus has been to provide a fundamental understanding of material properties (static and dynamic) in bulk solid and liquid phases and at solid-liquid or solid-vapor interfaces.

She has played an active role as a Cornell advocate for increased representation among physical scientists and engineers of all ranks. She was, and is currently, the founding Chair of the Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) faculty in the College of Engineering at Cornell and an original co-writer of what became new Cornell policy for family leave. She is a “Safe Haven” counselor for the College of Engineering and a member of the Suicide Prevention committee. In 2003, she won the James M. and Marsha D. Mc Cormick award for excellence in undergraduate advising; in 2005 the Alice Cook award for services to Cornell women, reflecting a long-time love of advising students and promoting diversity. In 2007, she won the Zellman Warhaft award for the promotion of diversity in the College of Engineering.

For fun, she likes to convince an 1100-lb horse to dance with her; otherwise known as dressage. She has two daughters and two cats, but only one husband!

Robin L. Davisson, professor of molecular physiology, joined the faculty of Cornell University on July 1, 2006. Dr. Davisson had been a member of the faculty of The University of Iowa since 1998, where she taught neuroscience, cardiovascular physiology and genomics to medical, dental and graduate students. In addition to her traditional health sciences instructional activities, Professor Davisson created an innovative, widely recognized course at Iowa, “Survival Skills for a Research Career,” focusing on the full spectrum of communication, grant-writing and other skills required for a successful career in science. Recently she received the Outstanding Mentor Award (Biological and Life Sciences) from the University of Iowa Graduate College for her exemplary mentoring of undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students in the areas of research, teaching and career development.

Professor Davisson’s research focuses on the basic mechanisms of function, control and signaling in the cardiovascular system in health and disease. Her investigations employ the interdisciplinary approach of “functional genomics,” a new endeavor at the interface of classical physiology and molecular genetics. She has published numerous original research and review articles and book chapters, and has given invited presentations throughout the United States as well as in South America, Europe and Asia.

Professor Davisson earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Iowa in 1988 and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. She earned a master’s degree in psychology (1991) and her doctorate in pharmacology (1994), also from the University of Iowa. While a graduate student, she won a Norwegian Marshall Fund Award for Graduate Study Abroad. She completed a four-year postdoctoral fellowship in the Iowa Cardiovascular Research Center and the Center for Hypertension Genomics before joining the UI faculty as an assistant professor of anatomy and cell biology. She was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2004.

Professor Davisson has a longstanding interest in the fiber arts, including spinning, dyeing and knitting. She is also an avid runner, skier, scuba diver and a perennial student of the piano. She enjoys reading, cooking, gardening and spending time with her husband, David Skorton, and their two Newfoundland dogs Miles and Billie.

Edna Dugan has been at Cornell for over eight years and working on the planning for the West Campus House System for about seven years. So, she's happy to be an Carl Becker House Fellow. She has a business background with a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Chicago, and liberal arts degree in history from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Edna has a great fondness for reading, playing tennis, traveling, seeing as many films as possible, and generally having a good time hiking the state parks in the Ithaca area. She would enjoy sharing favorite hikes with those interested, and enjoys seeing new films as they arrive at Fall Creek. It is actually a short walk from Carl Becker House to the Fall Creek Theater downhill and a just a little longer getting back up the hill!

Recently I completed my 30th year at Cornell, even though it seems like just yesterday was my first day. I like to tell people I started working here in 9th grade but unfortunately that's a long stretch of the truth. My 1974 arrival in Ithaca was directly from Penn State where I received my B.S. in Health and Physical Education. While at Penn State I was on the women's golf and basketball teams. As a lifelong resident of northern New York, I was thrilled to be working at Cornell and also be fairly close to home.

Upon my arrival, I was immediately assigned to coach women's volleyball and women's skiing, which were both relatively new teams at the time. For 14 years I had a blast coaching some of the most incredible women I've ever met in my life. I'm still in contact with many of them. Some even have children at Cornell, which makes me feel like a Grandmother some days!!

Throughout my coaching career I would hear my athletes talk during our long van rides to away games about the most fascinating classes, lectures and professors. I wanted in so I started taking a few classes at Cornell here and there. Before I knew it, I was on my way to another graduate degree - an MILR that I finally finished in 1987. (I used to tell people I was in "gradual" school because it took so long.)

Just as I finished my degree, I accepted a position managing Helen Newman Hall Recreation Center and the Intramural Sports Program. This eventually led to me becoming the Director of Recreational Services. This has been the perfect career for me these past 16 years, combining my graduate degrees in Education Administration and Human Resource Management with my love of fitness, recreation and outside activities. As a House Fellow, I'm hoping to engage the residents in Cornell's vast recreation programs and also provide them with opportunities to explore Cornell, Ithaca and Tompkins County's incredible trails, hikes and other outdoor activities.

Tom Fox '71 moved into the recently demolished Class of '17 Hall in 1967. During the next four years at Cornell he fell in love with hockey, genetics, and Ithaca, among other things. After graduate studies at Harvard he moved to the University of Basel in Switzerland for several years of postdoctoral work, and then a faculty position. He left Basel to return to Cornell in 1981.

Since then he has enjoyed teaching introductory Genetics, and leading a research group, that includes undergraduates, seeking to understand how the genes within mitochondria, fascinating intracellular organelles descended from bacteria, are expressed and regulated. Tom was born and raised on Staten Island and developed a lifelong interest in biology at the nearby Staten Island Zoo, renowned at the time for its collection of rattlesnakes.

He enjoys spending time in the woods, especially around campfires. He spends too much time reading the newspaper. His other dilettantish interests include the German language, music, and interactions between scientists and nonscientists.

Martha Haynes joined the Cornell faculty in 1983. A native of the Boston area, she graduated from Wellesley College and received her doctoral degree from Indiana University. She undertook her dissertation research as a graduate student in residence at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, VA.

Before coming to Cornell, she was a scientific staff member first at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and then at NRAO's Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia. After living in rural Puerto Rico and Pocahontas County, WV, she considers Ithaca a metropolis.

Martha and her husband, Astronomy Professor Riccardo Giovanelli, lead the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey, an on-going project to map 1/4 of the sky using the huge Arecibo radio telescope (featured in the films "Contact" and "Golden Eye") in a search for "starless" galaxies, objects which consist primarily of dark matter with a trace of gas (which ALFALFA might detect) but no optically visible starlight.

Martha regularly teaches two undergrad classes, Astro 201 and Astro 233, as well as several graduate ones. When not teaching or hunting "dark galaxies, she is a fan of black-and-white movies, mystery novels and spending time at their stone farmhouse in a tiny village in the hills of northern Italy.

Salah M. Hassan is Director of Africana Studies and Research Center, and Professor of African and African Diaspora art history and visual culture in the Department of History of Art at Cornell University. Salah teaches courses on African and African American art, film, aesthetics and contemporary art theory such as African Aesthetics; African American Art, African Cinema; Blacks in Film, and Introduction to African Art.

Salah is also an art critic and serves as editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art a Cornell-based publication, and consulting editor for African Arts. He authored and edited several books including Unpacking Europe; Authentic/Ex-Centric (2001); Gendered Vision;: The Art of Contemporary Africana Women Artists (1997) and Art and Islamic Literacy among the Hausa of Northern Nigeria (1992). He contributed to art journals, periodicals and art anthologies including: The Art of African Fashion (1998), Women, Patronage, and Self-Representation in Islamic Societies and Reading the Contemporary (1999), and Looking Both Ways (2003).

Salah curated several international art exhibitions such as Authentic/Ex-Centric (49th Venice Biennale, 2001), Unpacking Europe (Rotterdam, 2001-02), 3x3: Three Artists/Three Projects, David Hammons, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z (Dak'Art, 2004).

  Michael Kammen is the Newton C. Farr Professor of American History and Culture at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1965.     

In 1980-81 he held a newly created visiting professorship in American history at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Paris.  He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and served in 1995-96 as President of the Organization of American Historians.  He has been a Regents Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and served on the Smithsonian Council.    

His books include People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (1972), awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History; A Machine That Would Go of Itself:  The Constitution in American Culture (1986), awarded the Francis Parkman Prize and the Henry Adams Prize; Mystic Chords of Memory:  The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991); and Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture (2006).   

Mary Fainsod Katzenstein is the Stephen and Evalyn Milman Professor of American Studies and professor in the Government Department and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. She has written on feminist activism cross-nationally focusing particularly on the United States, Europe, and India. She is the co-editor with Carol Mueller of "The Women's Movements of the United States and Western Europe" (Temple University Press, 1987). More recently, she is the author and co-editor of "Faithful and Fearless: Moving Feminist Protest inside the Church and Military" (Princeton University Press, 1998) and with Judith Reppy, "Beyond Zero Tolerance: Discrimination and Military Culture in the U.S." (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999) and with Raka Ray, "Social Movements in India: Poverty, Power and Politics" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). Her current project addresses issues of movement activism, incarceration and citizenship in the United States. Her teaching interests bridge Comparative and American politics and largely focus on politics in India, gender issues, and the subject of incarceration and race. She has been teaching courses for the last few years at Auburn Correctional, one of several maximum security prisons in the Ithaca-Elmira area.  

Cathy Rosa Klimaszewski is Associate Director and Ames Curator of Education at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Ms. Klimaszewski grew up in a small town in Northern Pennsylvania in a family of six children, five girls and one boy. She has had an interest in art since childhood when she persisted in drawing on every available surface (including the sidewalk) and messing up the house with clay, tempera paint, and papier-mâché concoctions. As a grown person she worked as an artist and educator after receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University, before pursuing a career in museums. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in museum studies, also from SU, and enjoys bringing art and people together at the Johnson Museum. Her areas of interest in the museum field are public access, education, and textiles. She is married to an artist, Nicolai, who is Associate Professor of Art at Tompkins Cortland Community College; they have two children, Zoe, age 8, and Josh, 28. In addition to art and anything to do with museums, she is interested in gardening, cooking, reading fiction, films, theatre, singing, cross country skiing, and advocating for children and adults with special needs.

Vice-Provost Isaac Kramnick came to Cornell to accept a good job at one of the world's great universities with great students and to live in the wonderful city of Ithaca. He was an undergraduate and graduate student at Harvard, with a year at Cambridge University and before Cornell he taught at Harvard, Brandeis and Yale. His academic interests include the history of western political thought in general and in the U.S. and Great Britain from the 18th century to the present. He is also interested in church-state relations in the U.S.

Isaac grew up in a small farming community in Massachusetts and is cursed with being a life-long Red Sox fan, which makes him intimately aware of the inevitable triumph of evil in the world. i.e., the Yankees and other examples of power and privilege.

One of his hobbies is Cornell lore, derived from teaching here for 32 years. His program interests include anything political....church, state...films....Cornell lore.

Neema Kudva grew up in India and moved ten times before she left home (at that time, Calcutta) to study architecture in Ahmedabad, India. All that moving left her intensely aware of difference and being on the margins, a perspective that continues to inform her work as an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Neema is currently focusing on two research projects. The first looks at local level institutions such as NGOs that work with marginalized groups. She is specifically interested in how those organizations evolve, change, and respond to community needs. Her second project looks at smaller cities in the global South, places that urban theorizing and planning tend to overlook, even though they are the places where the majority of urban residents live. Most of all, Neema is focusing on learning how to juggle: teaching, advising, research, writing, and parenting!

Levitt served as Chair of the Theatre, Film, and Dance Department from l986 to l995 during which time he oversaw the final phases of construction of the twenty-four million dollar Schwartz Center for Performing Arts. Under his leadership the faculty redesigned the Department’s curriculum and production programs and added faculty and staff in order to fulfill the profile for the Department created by the new facility.

During his tenure as Chair, the Department embarked on many new initiatives funded by alumni, the NEA, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Gannet Foundation, New York Telephone, Aetna, and The Wallace and Mellon Foundations. Levitt originated many of the Department’s current programs including the unique mix of a Liberal Arts undergraduate education with a professional company of actor’s, designers and technical staff all working side by side in both the classroom and in production.

Dr. Levitt has had a distinguished career as a freelance director in New York and regionally, and has been involved with the development of dozens of new plays in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He directed for four seasons at Ft. Worth’s Shakespeare in the Park. Levitt’s production of The Puppetmaster of Lodz for Stageworks Theatre near Albany, New York in September of l997 was listed among the ” ten best productions” for the New York, Connecticut, and Berkshire regions.

Kaja M. McGowan is Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art and Archaeology. Her geographical areas of interest involve South and Southeast Asia with emphasis on Indonesia, particularly Java and Bali (both historically Indic in orientation) studied in relation to the subcontinent. Rather than see India and Indonesia, for example, as modes of influence between two points, her scholarly interests encourage studying the reciprocal relationships between neighboring countries in Southeast Asia. Her research explores the flow of ideas and artifacts along this highway -- architecture, bronzes, textiles, ceramics, performance traditions, and visualizations of texts like Panji Malat, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata -- artifacts that move and those that are locally produced. This accounts for the shaping of ideas and the development of styles across vast geographical and historical distances. Her work is governed by the complex ways in which the History of Art and Visual Studies intersect with Anthropology, Material Culture, Colonial and Post-colonial Theory, Performance, Gender and Religious Studies. Having first begun her study of Balinese performing arts as an undergraduate at Wesleyan University, one ongoing project has involved documenting the work of painters in Bali who experiment with depicting musical sound and the rhythmic motion of the dance in their work.

Natalie Melas received her BA from Brown University and her MA and PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and teaches in the department of Comparative Literature at Cornell.

Having grown up speaking three languages, Natalie added another four along the way and now finds herself searching for words in many different places. Her areas of interest include multilingual encounters and the intersection of art and politics, early twentieth-century English literature, Hellenism, Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean literature and philosophy, world literature. She is the author of All the Difference in the World: Postcoloniality and the Ends of Comparison (Stanford, 2007) and co-editor with David Damrosch of A Sourcebook for Comparative Literature (forthcoming, Princeton).

When Natalie manages to tear herself away from books, she takes pleasure in music, especially opera and world music, old movies, butterflies, cross-country skiing, Japanese gardens and, occasionally, quilting.

Simeon has been at Cornell University for 12 years in the division of University Communications, first as the editor of the Cornell Chronicle, then as deputy director of Cornell News Service. He has been the director of the Cornell Press Relations Office since its creation in 2005.

Simeon’s working career includes stints as a house painter, a carpenter and a freelance writer, as well as a writer and editor for Gannett News Service, and the city and metro editor for The Ithaca Journal. He holds an AB degree in English from Cornell, from which he obviously can't get away.

Simeon was born and raised in another college town - Princeton, N.J. - but he and his wife, Moira, have found Ithaca to be much more livable, diverse and beautiful. He is an amateur gardener, a professional sports fan (New York Yankees, Knicks and Giants) and a lover of music - from old-time to jazz.

Nick Salvatore is an historian who teaches in both the ILR School and the American Studies program in A&S. He is a biographer whose major intellectual interests revolve around the changing nature of ideas about, and the experience of, American democracy. He came to Cornell in 1981, from a small liberal arts college, drawn by the enormous resources (colleagues, students, and libraries especially) Cornell offers us all. He received his B.A in History at Hunter College in the Bronx (now Lehman College), part of the CUNY system; and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley—all in history. He enjoys different kinds of music, hiking (but decidedly not camping), a variety of sports, and conversations about politics. Nick lives here in Ithaca with his wife, Ann, and they have two grown children.

I like to remember I arrived in Ithaca in the middle of a snow storm in the beginning of February to begin my job at Cornell as the Associate Director of Cornell United Religious Work (CURW). That was the year we finally gave in and bought snow tires in May because we feared winter might truly not end any time soon. Well, that was nearly twelve years ago and not surprisingly, with that inauspicious beginning, life has gotten only better! I came to Cornell as an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, with a passion for interfaith engagement. As a seminarian, I had worked as a program coordinator for the Center for Women and Religion within the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) at Berkeley. This work involved the coordination of an interfaith network of women representing the nine seminaries comprising the GTU dedicated to and engaged with feminist scholarship and research in theology. Cornell's non-sectarian roots have everything to do with the rich diversity that has blossomed into CURW. Within our association are Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Pagan and Unitarian Universalist member groups. Chaplains from these communities meet regularly for interfaith dialogue and are committed to serving students of their respective traditions and to students of no particular affiliation.

Growing up as the daughter of a career naval officer, the first of seven kids, I attended eight schools before graduating from high school and moved 9 times before moving on to college -- no surprise that when I arrived on campus, I immediately gravitated to the field of sociology! I then completed a masters degree in Religion at Fordham University and, after working in the area of faith and justice work for five years, completed seminary work at the GTU in Berkeley.

I have loved for some time a line from a Mary Oliver poem: she asks her readers, "What do you plan to do with your one precious life?" I hope within my time as a fellow of the Becker House that I can be part of conversations with Becker residents where we get to explore the choices we are making in our lives as scholars, in our engagement in community life, and as citizens of the world within and beyond Cornell.

My large life is shared with my spouse, Bryan who is a local web designer, two children, Gaelen (11) and Aidan (8) and two miniature poodles (Shelby and Togepi) who love to masquerade as our other two children! Passions in my life include reading, yoga and jazzercise classes and singing in a local world music choir.

David J. Skorton, a seasoned administrator, board-certified cardiologist, biomedical researcher, musician and advocate for the arts and humanities, became Cornell University's 12th president on July 1, 2006.

President Skorton holds faculty appointments in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics at Weill-Cornell Medical College (WCMC) in New York City and in Biomedical Engineering at the College of Engineering on Cornell's Ithaca campus.

Before coming to Cornell, President Skorton was president of the University of Iowa (UI) for three years, and a faculty member at UI for 26 years. Co-founder and co-director of the UI Adolescent and Adult Congenital Heart Disease Clinic at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, President Skorton has focused his research on congenital heart disease in adolescents and adults, cardiac imaging, and computer image processing. He has published numerous articles, reviews, book chapters, and two major texts in the areas of cardiac imaging and image processing.

A national leader in research ethics, President Skorton is charter past-president of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, Inc., the first entity organized specifically to accredit human research protection programs. He has traveled widely in Europe and Asia on behalf of both academic and community projects, and he has engaged in service to the community and to the state of Iowa, particularly in regional and state economic development.

President Skorton earned his bachelor's degree in psychology in 1970 and an M.D. in 1974, both from Northwestern University. Following a medical residency and cardiology fellowship at The University of California, Los Angeles, he went to UI in 1980 as an instructor. He was named assistant professor of internal medicine in 1981 and assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in 1982. He was promoted to associate professor in 1984 and to professor in 1988.

President Skorton previously worked as a professional jazz and R&B musician in the Chicago area. He continued to study and play saxophone and flute in Iowa City and hosted a weekly jazz program, "As Night Falls," on KSUI, the University of Iowa's public FM radio station.

Leonardo is the Executive Director of the Cornell Public Service Center, and as such a member of the Division of Student and Academic Services’ senior management team. He is co-chair of the Faculty Fellows-in-Service (FFIS) program, and member of the editorial board of the FFIS Working Paper Series. He is co-director of the Bartels Undergraduate Action Research Fellows Program and of the Cornell Urban Scholars Program. Leonardo is Cornell University’s liaison with the New York Campus Compact Advisory Board.

In addition to his Cornell’s responsibilities, Leonardo is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Tompkins County Public Library; a former member of the Board of the Tompkins County Human Services Coalition; a founding Board member of the Latino Civic Association of Tompkins County; a member of the Advisory Board of the Suicide Prevention and Crisis Service of Tompkins County; a Board member of the Tompkins County Living Wage Coalition, the Workers Rights Center of Tompkins County, and of The Village at Ithaca Project. He is also a member of ATTAC International, Chile’s chapter.

He has served as a commissioner of both the City of Ithaca Boards of Public Works and of Planning and Development. He has also served as commissioner of the Board of the Tompkins County Human Rights Commission, and as a member of the Board of Planned Parenthood of Tompkins County.

Charles Walcott came to Cornell in 1981 as Director of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He was an undergraduate at Harvard and a graduate student here at Cornell. He taught at Harvard, Tufts and Stony Brook before returning to Ithaca. His academic interests are in animal orientation and navigation and acoustic communication. Recently he has spent many hours recording the "yodel" of the Common Loon and why it is important in establishing and maintaining their territories.

Shelley Wong is an Associate Professor in both the Department of English and the Asian American Studies Program (a program in which she was the Director for many years).

Her primary teaching and research interests center on twentieth-century literature of the Americas, with an especial focus on Asian American and African American writing.  She has published on both prose and poetry within these fields.

Shelley is currently working on two book projects: 1) a comparative study of twentieth-century Asian American and African American literature entitled The Waiting Room; 2) a collaborative project with Cornell faculty members Natalie Melas (Comparative Literature) and Viranjini Munasinghe (Anthropology and Asian American Studies) entitled Race and Comparison: An Interdisciplinary Conversation.  

Before joining the Cornell English department, Dagmawi Woubshet received his PhD from Harvard University, where he specialized in African-American, comparative African Diaspora, and contemporary American literature and culture. He is currently completing a comparative study on the poetics and politics of AIDS writing in the United States, South Africa and Ethiopia.  He is also a co-editor of two forthcoming volumes: “Imaging Ethiopia: Monarchy to Modernity (with Salah Hassan and Elizabeth Wolde-Giorgis); and a special issue on Ethiopia in the journal Callaloo, and NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art.  A true itinerant, he splits his time between Ithaca, New York City, and Addis Ababa.