The committee of 18 faculty members spent the past year engaging with more than 6,000 university stakeholders – including faculty, staff, students, administrators and alumni as well as government officials and external advisors – through town halls, webinars and one-on-one meetings, all to understand the range of perceptions about higher education, and Cornell specifically. 

“One of the things that we think is both unique and critical about this process, and which differentiates us from other efforts, is the level of engagement with our community inside Cornell and with stakeholders outside of Cornell. We really made a robust effort to engage in meaningful ways,” Avgar said. “The goal of the committee was, of course, to address the long-term issues in order for us to thrive and not just survive. But there’s also value in the year-long process that we engaged in, as a communitywide conversation about deep and important issues related to the university that we rarely have together in this kind of way.” 

The committee was charged with exploring three major disruptions currently faced by the university: rapid technological change, including the rise of artificial intelligence, fissures in the relationship between universities and the federal government, and the erosion of public trust in higher education. Additional challenges that surfaced include the fragmentation of learning experiences, weakening of bonds within the institution and concerns about the rising cost of education.  

To identify potential solutions for Cornell, each co-chair helmed a subcommittee that explored a different core mission of the university: undergraduate education, graduate and professional education, research and scholarship, and public impact. 

One of the immediate takeaways was just how vast and diverse the university is, the co-chairs said, and the need to make connections and reaffirm its distinctiveness. But increased coordination does not mean centralization, Sengers said. 

“We do not mean that we need one top-down story that everybody needs to follow. The goal is not to create a monoculture where all the diversity is gone, but rather to find ways that we can work together, collaborate, coordinate across the different things happening across the university, so that we can learn from each other and move in a similar direction,” she said. 

The diversity and the sense of rigorous deliberation and engaged discourse cited in the report were in many ways modeled by the committee itself.  

“This process required a disposition toward deliberative work: not papering over disagreements and differences, but genuinely engaging with them. And sometimes that’s really hard,” Sethupathy said. “Our goal is not to paint a rosy picture of what the university could be. Difficult conversations should be a feature, not a bug, of the university as we work through important questions.” 

Moving forward, the university will take action to address each of the report’s proposed commitments – to rigorous deliberation and engaged discourse; robust public engagement; research, scholarship and innovation; strongly connected community; and greater integration and coordination. 

“This moment is an all-hands-on-deck situation. We are going to need the commitment and the energy of the entire campus community if we are going to realize real change. And that’s hard to sustain,” Smith said. “The more people that get involved in renewing the university, the better: we need our colleagues to argue with us where we may be wrong, to agree with us where we’re right, and to bring their originality and creativity to solutions. To me, that level of engagement would be the ideal response to this report.” 

Bala thanked the co-chairs, the committee and the community members and external stakeholders who provided input. 

“Cornell has been dubbed ‘the first American university’ because of its pioneering commitment to intellectual breadth and opportunity,” she said. “At this critical moment, Cornell can and should help define a new model for the American university.”