It is the campaign for what Cornell -- and only Cornell -- can do.

As the land-grant university of New York state, Cornell accepts a formal responsibility to serve the public with outreach programs based in every Cornell college and professional school. As these flourish across state, national and continental borders, we are beginning to realize a role we have already begun to play: land-grant university to the world.

For example, researchers in the Department of Plant Breeding are working with scientists in Ethiopia to increase production of tef, an indigenous grain used to make the spongy pancakes that are a staple of the Ethiopian diet. Demand for tef has increased because of the country's growing population and the bread's popularity in restaurants abroad.

Fertilizer has failed to boost yields because it causes the fragile plants to collapse. Cornell-led research, funded by the McKnight Foundation, is the first attempt to understand and improve the cultivation of this relatively unknown grain through genetic mapping and modification.

Scholars in the College of Human Ecology are merging nanotechnology with textiles to develop filters that could protect against such harmful bacteria and viruses as the avian flu. Others in the college are working in Bangladesh to ameliorate that country's appalling level of infant and maternal malnutrition.

Closer to home, Cornell Law School's Death Penalty Project provides representation for defendants in capital cases. City and regional planners in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning are heading efforts to restore New Orleans neighborhoods decimated by Hurricane Katrina.

Enhancing and sustaining this kind of academic preparation is what our campaign is about. Gifts to Cornell will make much more possible within the individual colleges and, increasingly, in complex projects that call upon the skills of experts across fields.

In recent months, we have seen two $15 million gifts -- one to establish the Appel Institute for Alzheimer's Research at Weill Cornell Medical College and another to fund the Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at the Hotel School. Both hold enormous potential to benefit society, the former through better health and the latter through increased economic opportunity.

The Campaign for Cornell will solidify this university's ability to lead in one of its most important endeavors: Service to humanity, driven by the development and dissemination of useful knowledge. Or as Ezra Cornell would have put it: "Any person ... any study."

Bryce T. Hoffman is a writer for Cornell's Alumni Affairs and Development.