Moody-Adams

Kresovich

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Cornell University Provost Biddy Martin has announced that two distinguished vice provosts who inaugurated their positions will be stepping down and returning to the faculty, making way for two accomplished faculty members to step into those vice provost positions, effective July 1.

Michele Moody-Adams, professor of philosophy, the Hutchinson Professor of Ethics and Public Life and director of the university's Ethics and Public Life program, has been named vice provost for undergraduate education, succeeding Isaac Kramnick, who was the first person appointed to the position in July 2001. Stephen Kresovich, professor of plant breeding, director of the Institute for Genomic Diversity and associate vice provost for life sciences, will be the next vice provost for the life sciences, succeeding Kraig Adler, who, in August 1998, became the first person to hold the position.

"I am delighted that two such remarkable faculty members have agreed to serve in the positions which Isaac Kramnick and Kraig Adler helped define and in which each has served with such distinction," said Martin. "Cornell is fortunate to have all four of these dedicated and talented individuals as part of our community."

As vice provost for undergraduate education, Moody-Adams will be the provost's point person looking after undergraduate academic initiatives and concerns. Among the initiatives the office oversees are: the West Campus House System, the First Year Reading Project and the Alumni Mentoring Program (which Kramnick created). Moody-Adams will continue to oversee the Ethics and Public Life program in her new role.

"It is a pleasure and a very great privilege to be able to play a central role in shaping the undergraduate educational experience at Cornell," said Moody-Adams. "I'm looking forward to the challenges of this new position."

Moody-Adams, who joined the Cornell faculty in 2000, received her master's and doctoral degrees (1986) in philosophy from Harvard University and a bachelor's in philosophy from Wellesley College (1978). She was a Marshall Scholar at Somerville College, the University of Oxford, from 1978 to 1980, where she completed a second bachelor's degree in philosophy, politics and economics. She joined Indiana University as an assistant professor of philosophy in 1991 and became associate dean in 1998. Previously, she was assistant professor at the University of Rochester (1988-1991) and at Wellesley (1986-1988).

Kresovich's duties as vice provost for life sciences will involve promoting and administering the university's groundbreaking New Life Sciences Initiative by overseeing the hiring of new faculty, planning for new buildings, developing additional core research facilities and overseeing other elements in the comprehensive investment in the life sciences, including the Tri-Institutional Research Program. Kresovich will remain the director of the Institute for Genomic Diversity.

"Under the leadership of Dr. Adler and others, the New Life Sciences Initiative has made great progress for the better part of a decade," said Kresovich, who was named associate vice provost in January of this year. "As such, I am looking forward to working with our creative and energetic faculty as well as our supportive and foresighted administrators. This transition in leadership affords us the opportunity to reflect on how we might continue to build the life sciences to enhance both the historic and recently established strengths of Cornell for local, national and global benefits in the 21st century."

Kresovich joined the Cornell faculty in 1998 after serving as the supervisory geneticist at the USDA/ARS Plant Genetic Resources Conservation Unit at the University of Georgia. He earned his Ph.D. in physiology and genetics from Ohio State University in 1982 and conducted research at Battelle Memorial Institute and Texas A&M University. He had worked at Cornell previously, as a supervisory geneticist at the USDA/ARS Plant Genetic Resources Unit at Geneva, from 1987 to 1993.

A professor of biology, Adler includes as notable accomplishments during his tenure as vice provost: institutionalizing the new faculty search procedures pioneered by the Cornell Genomics Initiative (forerunner to the New Life Sciences Initiative); establishing several key life sciences advisory councils; and nurturing campuswide cooperation to achieve individual college and departmental goals in the life sciences and the associated physical, engineering and computational sciences.

Adler joined the Cornell faculty in 1972 and now plans to return to the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior to continue his teaching and scholarly research.

Kramnick, the Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government, says his proudest accomplishment as vice provost for undergraduate education is helping to move Cornell's new West Campus House System "from vision to reality." In August 2004 about 360 upper-level students became the founding student members of the Alice H. Cook House, the first of five houses being built as part of Cornell's West Campus Residential Initiative. Kramnick co-chaired the planning group, established in 1998, that fleshed out the living-learning house concept. In his current position, he helped bring the concept to fruition.

Also a Cornell faculty member since 1972, Kramnick said he plans to return to the ranks of "citizen professor" in the Department of Government, spending, he said, "more time teaching, more time with students and more time with my wife."