Alice Pell

About

In 1990, Professor Alice Pell joined Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences where she joined the graduate fields of Animal Science, Nutrition, Microbiology, Global Development and Public Affairs. From 2005-2009, she directed Cornell’s International Institute for Food and Agricultural Development (CIIFAD), a university-wide program involved in sustainable agriculture and rural development in Africa, Asia and Latin America. She served on international panels supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the African Academy of Science, the Gates Foundation, the U.S. Academy of Science and the MacArthur Foundation. Pell was a STIAS fellow at Stellenbosch University working on the integration of agriculture and nutrition. From 2008-2013, she was Cornell’s Vice Provost for International Relations. Her research and teaching interests focus on integration of agriculture and nutrition to reduce under- and over nutrition. She won teaching and advising awards at Cornell and is a member of the Ugandan National Academy of Sciences.

A cum laude graduate of Harvard University in architectural science, Pell taught English, history, development studies and geography in Botswana for three years. She has a Master's degree in international education from Harvard and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Vermont in animal nutrition.

Appointments

• International Professor and Professor Emerita of Animal Nutrition
• Adjunct Professor, Global Development, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
• Dean’s Advisor for Global Livestock Health and Development, College of Veterinary Medicine

Academic Interests and Activities

International development, education and agriculture have been the foci of Alice Pell’s work from her years as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana to serving as Cornell’s Vice Provost for International Relations. She has first-hand agricultural experience running a diversified farm in Vermont and overseeing Cornell’s international programs. Her first appointment at Cornell was as a research-extension position in dairy nutrition that provided her with experience in community education and outreach. She was the Principal Investigator of an NSF-funded Biocomplexity project on poverty and environmental degradation in the Kenyan highlands, co-director of the African Food Security and Natural Resource Management Training Program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, director of an AID project on community forestry in Afghanistan, and director of the Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture and Development. These initiatives have given her experience administering interdisciplinary field research and development projects.

Since 2014, she has worked with universities in Africa and Latin America. She taught at Stellenbosch’s African Doctoral Academy, a continent-wide program to improve Ph.D. education. She has worked in South Africa as an Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Free State and the University of the Western Cape, and now as an adjunct professor at the University of Pretoria. She is a member of the board of trustees and head of the trustee’s Academic Committee of Zamorano University, a college of agriculture located near Tegucigalpa with an innovative combination of experiential and theoretical education.

Selected Research Publications

1. Schofield, P., D.M. Mbugua, and A.N. Pell. 2001. Analysis of condensed tannins: A review. Anim. Feed Sci. Technol. 91: 21-40.
2. Liu, J., T. Dietz, S.R. Carpenter, M. Alberti, C. Folke, E. Moran, A. N. Pell, P. Deadman, T. Kratz, J. Lubchenco, E. Ostrom, Z. Ouyang, W. Provencher, C.L. Redman, S. H. Schneider, and W.W. Taylor. 2007. Complexity of coupled human and natural systems. Science. 317:1513-1516.
3. Liu, J., T. Dietz, S.R. Carpenter, C. Folke, M. Alberti, C.L. Redman, S.H. Schneider, E. Ostrom, A. N. Pell, J. Lubchenco, W.W. Taylor, Z. Ouyang, P. Deadman, T. Kratz, and W. Provencher. 2007. Coupled natural and human systems. Ambio 36:640-649.
4. Levitt, E.J., D.L. Pelletier, and A.N. Pell. 2008. Revisiting the UNICEF malnutrition framework to foster agriculture and health sector collaboration to reduce malnutrition: A comparison of stakeholder priorities for action in Afghanistan. Food Policy 34:156-165.
5. Flavell, R.J. St. Leger, J. Gressel, R.J. Wall. 2008. Emerging technologies to benefits farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. National Academy Press, Washington, DC.
6. Rothman, J.M., C.A. Chapman, J.L. Hansen, D.J.R. Cherney and A.N. Pell. 2009. Rapid Assessment of the Nutritional Value of Foods Eaten by Mountain Gorillas: Applying Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy to Primatology. Int. J. Primatol. 30:729-742.
7. Levitt, E.J., R.J. Stoltzfus, D.L. Pelletier and A.N. Pell. 2009. A Community Food System Analysis as Formative Research for a Comprehensive Anemia Control Program in Northern Afghanistan. Food Security 1:177-195.