ITHACA, N.Y. -- "You could be a bricklayer," adults suggested kindly to the husky youth, Kevin Wallace, although they didn't think he even had the brains for that. And teachers were less charitable, in the days before dyslexia-type reading and learning disorders were understood, Wallace remembers: "I asked the nun how I could make the letters hold still on the page, and she said the devil was working in me." Repeatedly punished without knowing why, he carried feelings of shame and confusion until age 28. Then Wallace confessed to his 7-year-old daughter the reason he told such marvelous bedtime stories but never read them: He couldn't read, a secret he withheld from employers, friends and even from Thea, his wife. Today, the other 76 graduates of Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine D.V.M. Class of '97 are in awe of a phenomenal power Wallace developed, while managing his learning disability. It is said he somehow absorbed so much information about veterinary medicine that he can read an ailing animal like a . Better, actually, than a book, of which he figures he has read two.
The Cornell Board of Trustees will meet in Ithaca on Friday, May 23, and Saturday, May 24. The full board will convene on Saturday, May 24, at 10 a.m. in the Trustee Meeting Room of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on campus.
Neil W. Ashcroft, the Horace White Professor in Physics at Cornell, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, among the nation's highest scientific honors. He was one of 60 new members recognized for distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.
April was not 24 hours old before three all-time snowfall records were shattered in the Northeast, according to climatologists at the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell. April's temperatures were cooler than normal and the month was also drier than normal.
D.L. Birchfield, a visiting lecturer in the American Indian Program at Cornell, has won the 1997 Louis Littlecoon Oliver Memorial Prose Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas, an association of American Indian novelists, poets, and playwrights.
From across the United States and Australia, high school teachers who most inspired 35 of Cornell's top graduating seniors will be honored by the university on May 21.
Twelve Cornell seniors who have been honored for their community service efforts will use their monetary awards to benefit others. Each year between 10 and 12 Cornell Tradition Fellows are honored for their community service work with a $2,500 Senior Recognition Award.
Cornell Law School tops the list of law schools in New York when it comes to the percentage of students who pass the New York state bar exam. According to the American Bar Association, which is publicly releasing state bar exam pass rates for the first time, Cornell Law School graduates topped the state in 1995 with a 96 percent pass rate.
For those students graduating this year, consider this: More than 83 percent of employment recruiters on college campuses believe that basic computer literacy plays an "important" or "very important" role in the hiring process of recent college graduates, according to a survey from Cornell.
In September at the United Nations, President Clinton and leaders of four other superpowers signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting the testing of nuclear devices around the globe. As of January, 140 nations had signed on.
The Cornell Law School will confer degrees on 232 students during convocation ceremonies Sunday, May 18, at 2 p.m. in Bailey Hall on the Cornell campus. Juris doctorates will be awarded to 191 students; 41 will receive master of law degrees and six will receive both degrees.
Edward T. Lu, a NASA astronaut and graduate of Cornell's School of Electrical Engineering (B.S. 1984), is scheduled to lift off into space on May 15 from the Kennedy Space Center.
