Carrying the torch forward: Ye family creates new award recognizing graduate teaching excellence

There's an old quote, often attributed to Winston Churchill, that says "we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."

Mao Ye, '11, professor of finance in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, first heard this quote from a Cornell trustee, and in doing so found a philosophy that guides his life.

Ye and his wife, lecturer of finance Xi Yang, '10, are the original donors of the Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award, and this year have created a new, complementing award: the Christine Ye Outstanding Teaching Award for graduate teaching assistants at Cornell.

For the past five years, the Cornelia Ye Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award has recognized excellence in teaching by both international and domestic graduate teaching assistants. The Cornelia Ye award now specifically honors international graduate teaching assistants, and the new Christine Ye award recognizes domestic graduate teaching assistants. Both of these university-wide awards will now also have an increased financial award for the graduate TA recipients.

The awards' names come from Ye and Yang's love for their daughters, Cornelia and Christine, who goes by Tina, and the awards themselves come from the couple's desire to give back to their alma mater - and in particular, to the graduate students whom, by virtue of being teaching assistants, will follow in their footsteps before moving on to research and teaching careers in their respective fields.

"When we came to Cornell, both of us relied on student scholarships and relied on the teaching assistantship," Yang said. "So, basically, our studies were supported by Cornell. It's so important to us to donate back to Cornell when we have the financial ability to do it."

Ye agreed. "Creating this award was to truly give back and show appreciation for the people who supported us through life. We also want to encourage people to support future graduate students at Cornell University."

Honoring graduate teaching assistants

Creating an award specifically for graduate students had been in Ye and Yang's minds since they were graduate students themselves. When Ye campaigned to join the Cornell Board of Trustees in 2006 as a student trustee, he included establishing recognition for graduate teaching assistants in his campaign promises.

Ye likewise expressed a desire to recognize the contributions TAs make to classrooms across campus. Before the Cornelia Ye Award was created, there was no campus-wide award or recognition for graduate teaching, despite the vital role TAs typically play in the courses they support.

"TAs play an absolutely important role in the classroom," said Ye, who believes "the quality of the TA actually decides the quality of the course. They're one of the most important parts of the course… The award is a way to honor them."

TAs play an especially important role in larger lectures, where they often lead discussion sections and guide problem sets for smaller groups of students to help answer their questions, keep them from getting lost or becoming just a number, and help them navigate and find success in the course. At the end of their graduate work, they often go on to become university faculty themselves.

"You can think of (the TAs) as a bridge between the professors and the students," Yang said. "Sometimes students are a little bit afraid to approach professors directly. They think that the professors (will think), if I ask a very simple question, they may think I'm stupid, but actually it's not a stupid question."

Yang added that the TAs are often closer in age to the students, which means they may seem more approachable. And because TAs have broad field-related knowledge but are not necessarily steeped in the nuances of the course material at the level of a professor who specializes in the field, they also often approach the material with more of a beginner's mind, having just learned or refreshed the material themselves, and thus are closer in understanding the students' thought processes in approaching the material.

"In some senses, TAs can better understand the students. The students can ask for advice, ask for tips, and ask a lot of questions from the TA," Yang said. "TAs play a very important role in the learning process, and I think that if TAs put a lot of effort in their work, they should be rewarded," Yang said.

Yang noted that, in the past, even if TAs did a wonderful job, there was no way to recognize their work.

"We wanted to create something for them so that they can show to others how hard they have worked in their profession. And, how hard they want to work in the future," she said.

These roles are also learning experiences for the TA - incoming graduate students have often not had the opportunity to teach prior to joining their program, and are mentored by the lead professor in charge of the course. In short, TAs learn the art of teaching as they practice it - a difficult role for any TA, but especially for international TAs, something that Ye and Yang know well.

Finding support as international teaching assistants

International graduate teaching assistants have another hurdle to clear: for many, they're not only learning about their new program, research and teaching responsibilities and life at Cornell, they're also learning to navigate the linguistic and cultural complexities of a new country, often in a new or non-native language.

Ye and Yang lived this experience, alongside the challenges of being new parents. They came to Cornell from China in 2005 and 2004, respectively, as graduate students, in economics and applied economics and management, respectively. Cornelia was born in 2008, when Ye and Yang were both PhD students at Cornell. They had planned to name their child after Cornell, but when they learned they were having a girl, Peter Meinig, the Chairman of the Cornell Board of Trustees at the time, suggested naming her Cornelia.

During their years as graduate TAs at Cornell, Ye and Yang found support with the International Teaching Assistant Program (ITAP). Yang credits the program with helping them with everything from polishing their English language skills and pronunciation, to learning about the culture and cultural norms and expectations of the U.S.

Ye also found support for what would be a particularly daunting task even for a native English speakers. As a student trustee, he was asked to deliver a speech at the 142nd New Student Convocation for the Cornell Class of 2011 and their families - up to 10,000 people, including 3,500 incoming students - without a teleprompter. The ITAP team helpe him prepare.

"It can be really intimidating, to stand at the podium and look out at the stadium - there were so many people," Ye said. "The staff of ITAP helped me to practice many times because it can be intimidating. It's like will I say something wrong, even with the script? Or what if I'm supposed to say one thing, but I say something different because I'm nervous?"

So Ye and the ITAP team members rehearsed - and rehearsed, and rehearsed - in the weeks leading up to the speech, which he delivered to a rousing and attentive audience of newly minted Cornellians.

Ye credits his experience with ITAP - the connections and relationships he made and support he found - along with his advisor, Maureen O'Hara, the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Management in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, with convincing him to become a professor, despite others' suggestions he go into business or consulting - or even politics.

"That's the reason I continue my career as a professor," Ye said. "It's because they changed my life. I want to continue the tradition to change other people's lives."

Looking forward and giving back

Beyond Churchill's quote, the Cornell campaign invective "to do the greatest good" resonates deeply with Ye, who sees it as an imperative whether one is admitted to Cornell or hired by it.

"I was admitted by Cornell, and I was hired back by the College, so it's a very high honor for me," Ye said. He returned to Cornell in 2022, after graduating and teaching for 12 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Part of this resonance is inspired by the culture of belonging he felt during his time as an international graduate teaching assistant at Cornell, and the welcome he received from his fellow Cornelians who elected him to be a student trustee in 2006.

"Think about it … I was a foreigner, with six months experience in the United States," Ye said. "I won that election. It's not a function about me. It's a function about Cornell. How open-minded people are. They elect a person from another country. Such open-mindedness, I think, fulfills Ezra Cornell's dream of really 'any person, any study,' and anybody can reach their potential. That's an amazing experience to me."

The importance of giving back is something that Ye and Yang strive to impress upon their daughters. While Tina will enter fourth grade next year and is enjoying her elementary school life, the lesson has landed on their eldest, Cornelia, now a sophomore at Ithaca High School. Cornelia is her class president and also works on Ithaca's Youth Common Council, which communicates with local policymakers to advocate and address youth and community issues and concerns.

"I think my parents have gone through a lot of hardship. Coming to America from China, especially during a time that was not super economically favorable for China, must have been such a difficult thing," Cornelia said. "And I think the gravity of doing that I'll never fully be able to comprehend. But I think actions that they take, like these, truly show their resilience and their ability to overcome hardship."

"I think that their willingness to set aside this money and give it to other people, should be a lesson to both me and my sister, but also a lesson to a lot of people about the importance of serving your community and doing what's best for the people around you, along with supporting yourself," she added.

In a sense, the Ye family has always been coming back to Cornell. Still, Ye is philosophical about the paths he didn't take.

"There are different ways of life. The beauty and the pity of a person's life is that we only live that once. We don't know what will happen if we take an alternative route. I always tell my students it's because of them that I only enjoy the beauty instead of pity, because they will fulfill the dreams I would never be able to fulfill in the true business world. So that's the reason I enjoy my teaching now," he said.

"As a faculty member, it's always exciting to be on this campus because I see many younger versions of me," he added. "So, when I meet some of my students, I feel I'm back to when I was a student here. The only exception," he says with a laugh, "is like some of them are better than me.

"So, I just want to carry the torch forward - all the positive impacts Cornell had on me, I want to give back to Cornell. As a college professor, that's my biggest fulfillment."