Robert Barker/University Photography

Michele Moody-Adams listens to the many tributes to her during a farewell luncheon in Statler Hotel. Her daughter Katie and husband Jim Adams, associate professor of English, are in the background.

It was a bittersweet affair as dozens of Cornell faculty and staff members paid tribute to Michele Moody-Adams, vice provost for undergraduate education, June 4 in the Statler Ballroom. Moody-Adams will be leaving Cornell July 1 to become dean at Columbia College and vice president for undergraduate education at Columbia University.

President David Skorton noted her leadership of the New Student Reading Project, a legacy which, he said, includes the guilt he personally feels for not starting the selected book until midsummer. Also speaking were Moody-Adams' daughter Katie, Deputy Provost David Harris, Vice President Susan Murphy, senior lecturer in art Ray Dalton and Moji Olaniyan, executive director of the Office of Minority Educational Affairs.

A member of the Cornell faculty since 2000, Moody-Adams is also professor of philosophy, the Hutchinson Professor of Ethics and Public Life and director of the university's Program on Ethics and Public Life.

Her husband, associate professor of English James Eli Adams, Ph.D. '87, will also leave Cornell to be a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia.