"Can we save the world? Clearly, no. Can we help the world? Clearly, yes." That was the mantra repeated by two Cornell professors, experts in Cornell's land-grant mission, in a presentation to the Cornell Board of Trustees, Oct. 19, in the Statler Hotel.

How Cornell's historic land-grant mission is still viable today in helping an increasingly globalized community was discussed by Ronald Seeber, vice provost for land grant affairs and professor in the ILR School, and Max J. Pfeffer, professor and chair of the Department of Developmental Sociology as well as co-director of the Community and Rural Development Institute.

After the passage of the Morrill Land Grant Act by the U.S. Congress in 1862, Cornell was established as New York's land-grant university to provide higher education to agricultural and industrial workers. However, globalization has changed the way the university applies its land-grant research. Although funding comes from New York state and is therefore focused on state problems, "our faculty is being called all the time and … calls [come] from around the world," said Seeber. This creates the problem of helping "those throughout the world but not diminishing those who fund us," he said.

Several trustees raised concerns about how the global land-grant mission would be implemented. In particular, they asked about funding and how research by faculty members could be "reined in" to implement the global land-grant mission. The "great thing about Cornell is that the faculty chooses what they study," said Seeber. He noted that if the research is for global purposes, then "we need to look for global funding." The next step in the land-grant mission will be to establish an implementation team, Seeber said, that will address these problems and find practical ways to make Cornell a global land-grant university.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences was recognized by Seeber as the "most important player in delivering our land-grant promise and mission." The 2006-07 CALS Land Grant Mission Task Force, co-chaired by Pfeffer, recently updated the land-grant mission statement to reflect the fact that the university's research, teaching and extension serves the state as well as "the nation and the world," the speakers noted.

Areas of research that apply to the global community include sustainability, including bio-energy and adapting to climate change, human health and infectious diseases, food safety, nutrition, social and economic policy as it applies to immigrant farmworkers and international aid. Most notably, Cornell Cooperative Extension, an educational organization founded in 1914 to apply "land-grant university research in understandable and useful ways to farmers and rural families," has greatly expanded its target populations to include consumers and urban households, Seeber said.

Jamie Smith '09 is a writer intern with the Cornell Chronicle.