Kotlikoff to staff: Collaboration makes Cornell unique

Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff delivered his first President's Address to Staff on Jan. 9 in familiar environs - Yarnell Lecture Hall in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM), from a podium where he customarily has lectured about genetics - beginning his informal address by praising the uniquely collaborative nature of the Cornell community.

"A tight community with easy collaboration across departments allows us to do things that are stunning," Kotlikoff said.

Describing the "low fences" that enable unrestricted partnerships between academic departments, between faculty and staff, and between the Ithaca community and the university, he speaks with affection about his longtime experience at Cornell. Coming into the role of interim president as Cornell's longest-serving provost, Kotlikoff's time at Cornell spans nearly a quarter century, from founding chair of biomedical sciences in 2000 to dean of CVM in 2007 and university provost in 2015. Unlike most new university presidents, he gave his first staff address to a roomful of longtime colleagues.

"I've worked with so many staff and individuals critical to this university," he said. "Part of what makes Cornell unique is the fact that so many individuals in this community have been here for so long, evolving and growing throughout their employment at Cornell."

He took a moment to introduce the university's new provost, Kavita Bala, "known to all as KB," who stepped into the role on Jan. 1, her own tenure at the university beating Kotlikoff's by just a hair. Before her new appointment, Bala was dean of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.

"Both of us have significant history with this community and institution and that is an advantage," Kotlikoff said.

He described Cornell staff members who have "found their passion and shown their abilities through their employment here," speaking at length about Cornell's background as a land-grant university that enables a focus on many of the fundamental and practical challenges we face as a country and civilization - such as climate change and feeding a growing global population.

"Being the nursemaids to steam engines - that was the original criticism of Cornell University," Kotlikoff said, speaking of the university's early and revolutionary commitment to creating academic programs that would address real-world issues while building on a traditional liberal arts foundation. "Now everyone wants to emulate that."

He described Cornell as "the democratic Ivy," training more students from disadvantaged backgrounds than any of the other Ivy or Ivy-Plus universities.

Shifting gears, he enumerated the challenges on the horizon: financial headwinds, higher education's being in the political crosshairs, and the administration's efforts to highlight the contributions of universities to our society.

"The contribution that universities like Cornell make to attracting genius from around the world, and what these individuals bring to the institutions and the country, is an enormous advantage," he said, going on to describe what society loses when institutions like Cornell are damaged.

"Our cost, our 'eliteness,' have caused universities to be diminished in the consciousness of our society," he said, adding that congressional resolutions to increase endowment taxation are likely to hit Cornell next year.

Speaking about the year ahead, Kotlikoff said there would be efforts to harmonize systems across departments, to think about what functions could be performed centrally and what was best left to each individual unit. Staff will also see efforts to use artificial intelligence to make the Cornell community more efficient in its work, he said.

"We have one of the top faculties in the country on AI and we will be using that," he said.

Kotlikoff took questions from the audience following his speech, ranging from practical inquiries about the cost of parking to fair compensation and the perceived distance between faculty and staff.

"We tend in a university to have some divide between staff, non-tenured faculty and tenured faculty," he said. "What we should be doing is looking for talent, not labels."

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