As David Skorton prepares to deliver his first commencement address, he looks back on his first year as Cornell's 12th president -- what he learned, how he felt and even a few surprises he encountered along the way.

Here are some of the thoughts Skorton shared in an interview with the Cornell Chronicle.

The thing that surprised me most this year was the level of engagement of the alumni. Partly, of course, I'm referring to financial generosity. But I also get a lot of feedback from alumni. In meetings people are very gracious and generous about Robin (Davisson) and me coming here, but there's a lot of give and take, too.

For example, I got a mixed set of commentary on the fact that we decided to ring 33 chimes [including a chime for the attacker] at the Virginia Tech memorial service. And I stand by that decision.

I was on the road about a quarter of the time during the year, holding 135 individual meetings at 110 events away from campus. On campus, I had a lot of contact with students, staff and faculty in open forums and individual and leadership meetings, but I wish I would have had more. I wish I could have doubled my visits to faculty in their own offices, studios and labs. Even though we had some open faculty meetings and student forums, I'm hungry to make more connections not just with elected leadership, but individual people on campus.

I'm satisfied with the rate of progress, although we're not there yet. I convened the first of what will become periodic meetings among senior staff here and staff who report directly to Dean [Antonio] Gotto at Weill Cornell. And we're going to meet three times a year to talk about issues common to the campuses.

We have established a momentum. Big efforts like the Global Health Initiative, along with the expanding day-to-day work between both our campuses, are enabling a growing number of promising collaborations.

In general, long-term investments in the endowment of course should, and do, support our core missions of education, research and outreach. On the other hand, there may be rare circumstances that rise to a higher priority, such as in the case with Sudan [over Darfur]. The broader issue of socially responsible investing is more complex than that, and I don't think the endowment should be a readily grabbed tool of social change. I think discussing socially responsible investing is always healthy.

We're somewhere around a third of the way there, or about $1.246 billion. Cornell has never done anything like this in terms of scope. There are so many places people can share their money these days, so many of which are worthy and can make a difference.

But Cornell is an entity that, by the nature of its land-grant mission, touches all the bases. I feel very passionately that if you invest in a student scholarship or a professorship, facilities or programmatic funds at this university, it will have very positive and wide-reaching ripple effects.

We will continue to have a leadership role in the environmental sustainability and development sphere as an educational and research institution, discovering and finding the answers to the many remaining questions. While faculty, staff and students are working to discover the long-term answers, there's another complex set of issues about what we should be doing to be good stewards of our environment. We have a huge hill to climb to figure out how to get to the goal of climate neutrality, even in 40 years.

Revising the Code of Conduct
Skorton said in his interview that on May 15 he had sent a letter to the University Assembly (UA) regarding its interim report on revising the Campus Code of Conduct. The letter accepted the UA's recommendation that the task of reviewing and suggesting revisions to the code be extended into the coming academic year, and asked for a final review by the end of 2007. The letter said the UA should ensure that the revised code is written as clearly and simply as possible; that procedures and penalties match the severity of the misconduct; and that the UA should further examine whether the code should apply to off-campus incidents.

I am very concerned about this. And while a lot of good things are going on in the area of mental health services on campus, we need to be doing the very best we can, not only for the most serious mental health problems, but for the lower-intensity issues as well. This is a high-pressure environment, and I do worry about these things.

In terms of security, I am concerned not only for students, but also for the custodian who is in an office running a vacuum and can't afford to carry a Blackberry. Or the grad student who is working in the lab at 2 a.m. and who may be more difficult to reach. I am concerned for all our students, faculty and staff.

We must have redundant, multiple systems of notification should an emergency occur. There are ways like text messaging that I barely understand. There are also the old-fashioned things like PA systems or sirens.

Then there's the touchier issue of gun control, which is controversial even on campuses. I'm concerned about one narrow focus, and that is the intersection between mental-health records on campus and the background check system for buying a firearm. That intersection is where I think we need to put some attention. How can we as a society lower the possibility of a distraught person buying a firearm? I am calling for a national discussion on this.