Cornell President Hunter Rawlings will attend the summit meeting of the Council on Competitiveness at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 12 and 13. Also attending will be Vice President Albert Gore Jr. and Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Among the topics to be discussed at the two-day session are Rating U.S. Innovation: Do We Have What We Need? and National Investment Challenges. The meeting will come only two weeks after an international mathematics and science study showed American high school seniors to be among the industrial world's least prepared in mathematics and science.

The Council on Competitiveness exists to promote private-sector approaches to competitiveness. Its more than 140 members, all heads of their companies or institutions, represent a broad cross-section of American business, higher education and organized labor.

This will be Rawlings' first participation in the regional summit since becoming president of Cornell, and his attendance reflects his commitment to the university's role in bringing innovation to U.S. industry.

"I am interested in the importance of innovation within the science and technology community and the collaborative role that universities, industry and government must play," Rawlings says.

During the two days of meetings, Rawlings will participate in discussions of the issues affecting American competitiveness in the marketplace with company executives, labor leaders and politicians, including governors Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts, John Engler of Michigan and Zell Miller of Georgia.

Cornell also will be prominent among the 18 displays of U.S. technology that will be shown between the sessions. The display shared by Cornell and Xerox Corp. will illustrate the work of two pioneering workplaces, Cornell's Taylor Design Studio and Xerox's LX Center.

The display will feature live pictures from Cornell, on the World Wide Web, showing undergraduate students at work in the studio. The Cornell studio, recently renamed for Dean Lee Taylor, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who died last July, is frequently cited as an example of how to teach engineers the importance of integrating the workplace. The studio combines computers with design and manufacturing software, teleconferencing, presentation and manufacturing equipment, as well as meeting areas and space for project development.

The Cornell studio is one of the few places in the world where industrial innovation is taught to undergraduates. It was completed in 1996 at a cost of $400,000, provided largely by an anonymous benefactor. Outfitting of the studio with advanced computers and communications equipment was aided by a gift from Xerox.

One of the principal ideas behind the studio, says Albert George, the J.F. Carr Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is to "put an end to the idea that innovation only comes from the lone inventor." In today's world, he says, "the best solutions derive from teamwork and the efficient use of people, space and modern tools."