ITHACA, N.Y. -- "As a lobbyist, my job is advocacy. Like any advocate, if you have a good cause to promote, you are ahead of the game, and I have a great cause: strengthening and globalizing Cornell University," says Stephen Philip Johnson, assistant vice president for government relations at Cornell. 

Johnson has been working at the university since 1972 and advocating for Cornell to state or federal legislators since 1984. Now Johnson is switching his base of operations to Washington, D.C., and he and his wife Lorraine are shifting their primary residence from Ithaca to the nation's capital. Instead of traveling to Washington once or twice a month, Johnson will now commute to Ithaca every couple of weeks.

This is the first time that Cornell has someone in Washington as senior as Johnson, and he anticipates that a second professional lobbyist will join him soon. The purpose of the expanded office, which is conveniently located in the Hall of the States building -- down the hall from New York Gov. George E. Pataki's office -- is to forge stronger Cornell ties among government and nongovernmental agencies, alumni, policymakers and think tanks.

"It makes more sense to put the troops where the action is to make more connections and extend Cornell's reach," says Johnson. 

Lorraine Johnson, who has resigned as director of alumni affairs and development in the College of Human Ecology, will work part time in Washington for the college beginning in July, developing stronger ties with alumni and associations in that region.

As Cornell's most experienced lobbyist, Johnson starts his day by reading the New York Times, Washington Post, Ithaca Journal and Syracuse Post-Standard. Why the Post-Standard? "It offers a slightly different perspective than Ithaca -- even on Ithaca -- as well as on higher education and regional economic development," says Johnson. "These are complex issues of great importance to Cornell."

After the newspapers, though, no two days are alike. Recently, he accompanied Steve Tanksley, the Cornell Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Breeding and one of Cornell's leading plant molecular biologists, and Dan Fessenden, executive director of the Cornell Agriculture and Food Technology Park in Geneva, N.Y., to their meetings with various legislators in an effort to land appropriations for new buildings, one in Ithaca and one in Geneva, to enhance Cornell's New Life Sciences Initiative. 

Last week he coordinated a busload of Cornell undergraduate students' meeting with legislators and their staffs to push for increases in federal student financial aid programs. "The students put a personal face on the issue. It's one thing for me to show numbers, but it's another for students to say they would not be at Cornell were it not for the Pell and Perkins loans they get," Johnson says.

Other balls Johnson is juggling currently include getting a meeting with the deputy secretary of agriculture to increase the interest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in investing more in advanced supercomputing, in the hope that Cornell agricultural scientists will have more access to the supercomputer in the Cornell Theory Center; working with Maury Tigner, professor of physics and director of Cornell's Laboratory of Elementary Particle Physics, to obtain funds for further development of a full-scale Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) accelerator that would enable investigations of matter that are impossible to perform with existing X-ray sources; and keeping an eye on potential tax law changes that affect charitable giving to not-for-profit organizations like Cornell. 

Working with Vanda B. McMurtry, Cornell vice president for government and community relations, and Jacquie Powers, senior communications and legislative associate in the government relations office, Johnson recently was involved in helping to strengthen Cornell's connection with the prestigious Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington. The nonpartisan institute fosters research, study, discussion and collaboration on policy and scholarship in national and world affairs. In December 2004, Cornell President Jeffrey S. Lehman delivered a Director's Forum address at the Wilson Center, on the role of transnational universities in a world with transitional challenges. That connection also paved the way for more Cornell faculty members to spend time conducting research at the center, and more fellows from the center to visit and lecture at Cornell. 

Johnson, who grew up in DuBois, Pa., earned a B.A. from Pennsylvania State University (1967), "as all good sons of the Commonwealth do," Johnson says, as well as a master of public administration degree from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University (1969). An enthusiastic Buffalo Bills fan, Johnson tries to stays in shape by frequently jogging, pumping iron (albeit moderately, he adds), attending aerobics classes and walking.

"If I weren't in shape, I couldn't manage all the travel this job requires; it's physically demanding," notes Johnson, who says that his life tends to travel in squares, from Ithaca to Washington to New York City to Albany to Ithaca and so on. 

"I never dreamed I would have a job as close to the government as this without having to run for office or actually be in government," says Johnson. "It's fascinating to watch the theater of politics -- it's a show that never stops."

In addition to his new initiative, Johnson will continue to function as Cornell's liaison to various national and state university membership organizations and associations, to formulate responses to legislative inquiries related to the university in pressing issue areas, coordinate New York state requests related to Cornell's federal interests, coordinate and supervise federal and state lobbying activities for Cornell's government relations professionals in Ithaca, Albany and Washington, D.C., and staff the new trustee committee on government relations.