ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University President Hunter Rawlings assumed the chairmanship of the Association of American Universities (AAU) at its annual fall meeting held Oct. 20-22 at Emory University, after serving a one-year term as vice chair of the group.

He succeeds Robert Berdahl, president of the University of California-Berkeley. John T. Casteen, president of the University of Virginia, was elected vice chair.

Nils Hasselmo, president of the AAU, lauded Rawlings as a leader, saying, "I am delighted that Hunter is taking over as chairman of AAU and will continue to provide the outstanding leadership that he has brought to Cornell and to his tenure as vice chair of AAU. The times in which we live press us with a number of terrible and puzzling issues, and AAU's role of providing a forum and mechanism for frank discussions of important issues and taking collective action as appropriate is more crucial now that ever in our 102 year history."

Rawlings said, "I am honored to be chosen by my colleagues and look forward to beginning immediately."

Rawlings serves on the AAU's 11-member executive committee, which oversees the group's activities in federal government relations, policy studies and public affairs relating to research issues, including funding and undergraduate and graduate education.

Elected for the second time to the AAU executive committee in 1999, Rawlings joined the AAU in 1988 when he became president of the University of Iowa, a member institution. He became president of Cornell in 1995. In March 2002, he announced his intention to retire from the Cornell presidency on June 30, 2003, and to assume a full-time professorship thereafter in the university's Department of Classics. He will serve his AAU chairmanship until that date.

Casteen will assume the AAU chairmanship July 1, 2003. He echoed Hasselmo's sentiments that today's troubled times make AAU more valuable than ever. "We're tackling issues of academic freedom versus academic responsibility as we continue to encourage critical thinking and expansion and strengthening of international education throughout our campuses. We're also dealing with security and intensified scientific research post-9/11 and vexing matters of speeding technological development and intellectual property rights are among a plethora of topics facing us as university leaders," he said.

The AAU is an organization of research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Membership is institution-based and by invitation. Currently, 63 institutions, almost evenly divided between public and private, hold membership.

The organization was founded in 1900 by a group of 14 Ph.D.-granting universities in the United States, including Cornell under President Jacob Gould Schurman, to strengthen and standardize U.S. doctoral programs.

Rawlings also serves as chair of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents, the presidents of the eight universities in the Ivy League.