ITHACA, N.Y. -- Jane Mt. Pleasant, Cornell University associate professor of crop and soil sciences, has been appointed director of the university's American Indian Program, which provides educational opportunities for Native American students and outreach activities. She previously directed the program from 1995 to 1999.

Mt. Pleasant, who took over the position July 1, succeeds Daniel Usner, who has joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

"It's wonderful to have Jane back as director. Her long experience with the American Indian Program and her dedication to it will certainly provide new energy and bring the program to even greater success," says Susan A. Henry, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Mt. Pleasant, a native American of Tuscarora ancestry, was born in Syracuse, N.Y. Her involvement with the program dates back to her undergraduate days at Cornell, where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1980 and her master's in 1982, both in agronomy. She earned her doctorate in soil science from North Carolina State University in 1987. She joined the Cornell faculty in 1987.

Mt. Pleasant has received research and extension grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She has been active in presenting information about sustainable agriculture and American Indian culture statewide through Cornell Cooperative Extension and 4-H programs.

"It is a great honor to serve the program again in this capacity. The American Indian Program has had a long history of successfully bridging the native and the non-native worlds, and that role is even more critical today," says Mt. Pleasant. "Today, Indian and non-Indian communities are involved in many potential conflicts in New York. Indian nations within the geographical boundaries of New York state continue to exert their sovereignty, in terms of land claims, gaming initiatives and taxation. Cornell can play a unique and essential role in helping these communities -- the Indian and non-Indian ones -- address and resolve critically important issues."

She notes: "The Indian problem in New York has not gone away. In fact, today it is probably more immediate and potentially disruptive than at any time in the past 100 years. We need people who can communicate across very different cultures and world views."

In 1998 Mt. Pleasant was given the Ely S. Parker Award, the highest honor presented by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society. She was honored for her effort to improve the welfare and well-being of the Indian community, specifically for her work as director of Cornell's American Indian Agriculture Project. She sought to preserve traditional Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) crops and varieties, to study indigenous agricultural practices for their relevance and potential contribution to agriculture today and to revitalize and enhance Indian agriculture in New York. The major focus of the agriculture project is studying the "three sisters" -- corn, beans and squash planted together in earthen hills -- as a model for sustainable agriculture.

The American Indian Program serves indigenous people locally and throughout the hemisphere. Native American students are recruited nationally to Cornell and then provided with extensive support services on campus to facilitate their success. The program's students develop leadership skills while having the opportunity to live at Akwe:kon, the residential program house on campus, located on the original homeland of the Cayuga Nation. Akwe:kon (pronounced "a-GWAY-gohn" -- "all of us" in the Mohawk language) offers students multicultural living in an eye-catching, eagle-shaped structure. (The Cayuga, Mohawk and Tuscarora were three of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.) The program also strives to provide the university with a contemporary and historical understanding of Native American issues through curriculum, outreach, scholarship and research.

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