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periodiCALS, Vol. 9, Issue 1, 2019

Learn about an expanded major, a broadened diversity program and new campus leadership in this round-up of news from the year.

Kevin Hallock named dean of SC Johnson College of Business

Economist tapped to lead business programs

Kevin F. Hallock
Kevin F. Hallock. Photo by Jesse Winter Photography

Economist and scholar Kevin F. Hallock has been named dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. His term extends through June 2024.

Hallock, a compensation and labor market expert whose term started in December 2018, served previously as dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR). Among his achievements, Hallock guided the school through a strategic planning process, made important investments in the student experience and student well-being and introduced an ILR initiative to bring together students, staff and faculty around a common theme.

Launched in 2016, the SC Johnson College of Business comprises Cornell’s three accredited business programs. It jointly administers the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management with CALS, and oversees the School of Hotel Administration and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Cross-college program in environment and sustainability launches

Major expands to offer humanities perspective 

Launched in fall 2018, our program in environment and sustainability is guided by a single principle: Understanding and resolving environmental problems require an interdisciplinary approach.

With that insight firmly in mind, the environmental and sustainability sciences (ESS) major has been broadened to include a brand-new concentration in humanities, opening opportunities for students to explore how art, literature, music and communication influence how humans perceive and respond to environmental issues. The expanded major is a cross-college collaborative effort available to students in both the College of Arts and Sciences  and CALS.

Bringing in the humanities perspective is crucial to helping society act on science, said Cliff Kraft, who directs the cross-college major and is a professor in the Department of Natural Resources. “Scientists often fall into this trap of thinking, ‘Here is the answer; now the world will go out and do it.’ But that’s not how humans respond,” Kraft said. “I think there are instances where through literature, through art, through music you can actually better understand how people interpret the environment surrounding them than using either the social or natural sciences.”

Deans of both colleges are making resources available to help faculty create new interdisciplinary courses in support of the ESS major.

Intergroup Dialogue Project broadens students’ worlds

Diversity program expands to all incoming students

Ikenna Onyekwere and Sarah Aiken at student orientation
Ikenna Onyekwere ’19 and Sarah Aiken ’18 joined other Intergroup Dialogue Project facilitators for a training session as they prepared for new student orientation. Photo provided

College is a time to connect authentically with people across cultures and identities. The Intergroup Dialogue Project (IDP), established at CALS in 2012, uses a structured process that operates on the premises that empathy can be learned and that students can practice creating a community in which people feel they can bring their full selves, without fear that they must change to be part of it.

IDP has become one of the main programs on campus to offer peer-facilitated courses and workshops that teach communication and collaboration across social, cultural and power differences to promote equity and democracy.

In the fall, for the first time, all of Cornell’s 3,325 incoming first-year students took part in IDP sessions during orientation. 

Experiential learning is a crucial component of the program. Participants reflect on their personal experiences while learning how they might be related to broader social and cultural structures, and everyone chooses a research topic related to their identity and to campus life.

 “CALS is an extremely diverse college and was the first on campus to make diversity coursework mandatory, which was an important move because it ensures a variety of perspectives are represented in the classroom,” says IDP director Adi Grabiner-Keinan. “This is crucial for learning about oneself and for engaging empathetically in a way that invites diverse perspectives in an effort to create shared meaning.”

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