“Cornell was founded on the guiding principle of any person, any study and the Cornell alumni for whom these buildings are named – along with their individual experiences – are a direct reflection of this founding idea,” said Ryan Lombardi, vice president for student and campus life.
“The naming of Ganędagǫ: Hall in the North Campus Residential Expansion brings an important light to the history of our region and to the diversity of Cornell and our surrounding community,” he said.
The North Campus Residential Expansion is a tremendous addition to the campus experience and will play a significant role in shaping the future of Cornell housing for the first two years, beginning with next year’s first-year students, Lombardi said.
“Attaching these inspiring stories to spaces to where Cornell students spend their most formative years ties them to the university’s rich past from day one,” he said. “And it will remind them of the possibilities ahead as they become our future leaders.”
The North Campus Residential Expansion Building Naming Committee – chaired by Corey Ryan Earle ’07, visiting lecturer and principal gifts associate – considered 188 possible names before ultimately selecting the final three. The committee identified several guiding principles – such as giving preference to deceased Cornellians with inspirational, groundbreaking careers and who reflected the history of Cornell’s diversity – to help narrow the recommendations.
Pollack approved the committee’s suggestions.
The committee sought the names of alumni whose groundbreaking careers and global impact could energize Cornell students and articulate Cornell’s diversity. “We hope the future residents of these buildings,” Earle said, “will be inspired by the stories behind the names.”
Muhun Kang ‘21, the president of the Residential Student Congress and a committee member, said his group was charged with finding names that reconcile the ideas of Cornell’s founders to today’s values. “We thought about as Cornell’s founding commitment to any person,” Kang said, “and we wanted to choose names that reflected that inclusive philosophy.”
Barbara McClintock
McClintock (1902-1992) arrived at Cornell as an undergraduate in fall 1919 from Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, eager to study science.
A pioneering geneticist, she published the first genetic map of maize in summer 1931 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A half-century later, in 1983, she became the first woman in history to win an unshared Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her discovery of “mobile genetic elements,” known as genetic transposition – or, as she called them, “jumping genes.”