Members of the Cornell University Board of Trustees and Cornell University Council will arrive on campus Thursday, Oct. 31, for Cornell's annual Trustee/Council meeting.

The meeting of the more-than-700-member Council and a quarterly meeting of the Board of Trustees are scheduled on campus every fall so that the groups can attend joint sessions and hear President Hunter Rawlings' State of the University Address. The council is an advisory body made up of alumni and friends of the university who are elected by the trustees.

Rawlings' speech will be delivered Friday, Nov. 1, at 9 a.m. in Alice Statler Auditorium of Statler Hall, on campus.

The Cornell Board of Trustees will meet in open session Friday afternoon at 2:15 in the Trustee Meeting Room in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. The open portion of the meeting will include a report from Rawlings, a report on enrollment trends and a financial report on fiscal year 2001-02. A limited number of tickets for the full board's open session will be available starting at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 30, at the Information and Referral Center in the lobby of Day Hall on campus.

Several board committees will have open sessions. No tickets are needed for the open sessions of the committees:

• The Committee on Land Grant and Statutory College Affairs meeting, Friday at 10:30 a.m. in the Statler Hotel's Taylor A/B Room, will be open for discussion on a range of program and financial matters affecting Cornell's contract colleges.
• The Buildings and Properties Committee meeting, Thursday from 9 to 11:30 a.m. in the Yale-Princeton Room of the Statler Hotel, will be open for the first 30 minutes to hear status reports on ongoing projects.
• The Committee on Academic Affairs and Campus Life meeting ,Thursday at 1:45 p.m. in the Yale-Princeton Room, will be open for the first 10 minutes for presentations, including a report on an amendment to establish a new clinical professor title.

The theme of this year's meeting is "Year of the Student," and from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday, council members will be paired with students to attend class. Thursday afternoon at 2:30, Friday afternoon at 2:15 and 3:30, and Saturday morning at 9 and 10:15, council members can choose from a series of seminars offered by Cornell faculty on a variety of subjects. The seminars include "Accelerating Discovery, Improving Lives: Cornell and the New Life Sciences," "Bridging the Ivory Tower and the Real World," "Elder Care and Estate Planning," "Homeland Security: It's More Than You Think" and "Enron's Collapse: Political, Legal and Business Implications," among others.

A special panel from 3:45 to 4:45 Thursday afternoon in Statler Auditorium will address "September 11 -- Reflections and Concerns One Year Later." Isaac Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education and the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, will moderate. Panelists include Ross Brann, the Milton R. Konvitz Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies; Brett de Bary, professor of Asian studies and comparative literature and director of the Visual Studies Program; Walter LaFeber, the Marie Underwood Noll Professor of American History and Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished Professor; and Shawkat M. Toorawa, assistant professor of Arabic literature and Islamic studies.

On Friday at 10:15 a.m. council members and trustees can attend "Frankenstein: Monster Talk," a prelude to small discussion groups at 11:30. This year's freshmen read and discussed Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the New Student Reading Project, now in its second year. Many trustees and council members also expressed interest in reading and discussing the 19th century novel that concerns itself with the role of science in the modern world.

The newly completed laboratories at the James A. Baker Institute for Animal Health will be dedicated at 4:45 Friday afternoon. Prior to that, at 1:30, council members will be able to take a hard-hat tour of Duffield Hall, Cornell's new facility for nanotechnology and advanced materials research and teaching. On Saturday afternoon, trustees and council members can attend the Big Red vs. Princeton football game at 1 p.m. at Schoellkopf Field.