MOUNT VERNON — It gave greater visibility to Grant Wood and was right for the Wright Brothers’ powered flight centennial, so Cornell College hopes its public art project, “Rams All Around,” will attract visitors to Mount Vernon to share in the college’s sesquicentennial celebration.

Large wood cutout rams — the Cornell mascot — were adopted by 73 individuals, organizations or businesses who have decorated and will display the animals on campus and throughout Mount Vernon for Cornell’s homecoming. Forty-two “community rams” will be displayed outside sponsoring businesses Oct. 13-19, during normal business hours. Maps identifying the sponsors are available at Mount Vernon City Hall or any of the sponsoring locations. Among the entries are Bridge Community Bank’s “Uncle Ram,” painted in a U.S. flag motif, and “Ulysses in the Fleece,” covered in white fur by sponsor Coldwell Banker/Lee’s Town and Country.

Thirty-one “campus rams” sponsored by college groups will graze on the Hilltop Terrace west of King Chapel from noon to 4 p.m. Friday, Oct. 17, and along Cornell’s pedestrian mall from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18. Campus rams include the admission office’s “Ram McNally,” dressed in maps, and “Earl N. Meyer,” sponsored by the chemistry department.

“We were looking for a fun, lighthearted project that would really bring campus and community residents together in celebration, and we were inspired by Cedar Rapids’ ‘Overalls All Over’ and ‘Fly Wright’ projects as well as other public art events in Chicago and Seattle,” says Jennifer Boettger, chair of the “Rams All Around” committee.

Sponsors reserved rams for $20 to cover the cost of materials. The college recruited several woodcutters — including Cornell President Les Garner and Mount Vernon resident and semi-retired appellate court justice David Hansen — to build the herd.

“The enormous enthusiasm and creativity given to this project speaks volumes about the Mount Vernon community and Cornell College as a whole. They have been amazing,” Boettger says.

Unlike other public art projects, the sponsors will retain their rams after homecoming. Some plan to display their rams for the remainder of the sesquicentennial celebration, or at least annually at Mount Vernon’s summer Heritage Days celebration.

MOUNT VERNON — A Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of electrical engineering and computer science will speak at Cornell College — which is marking the 20th year of its computer science program — as the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9, in Hedges Conference Room of The Commons. Admission is free.

Hal Abelson will lecture on “Universities, the Internet, and the Intellectual Commons,” which addresses how to protect the intellectual commons — the wellspring of ideas and innovation — against squabbles over who owns academic work, technologies for restricting the dissemination of knowledge and the impact of increasingly far-reaching intellectual property laws.

During his two-day campus visit, Abelson also will visit an introductory computer science class, meet with computer science majors and dine with students and faculty. This year the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program made available 14 distinguished scholars to visit member campuses. The purpose of the program is to allow an exchange of ideas between the visiting scholars and the resident faculty and students, contributing to the intellectual life on campus.

Abelson’s research at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory focuses on “amorphous computing,” an effort to create programming technologies that can harness the power of the new computing substrates emerging from advances in microfabrication and molecular biology. He is also engaged in the interaction of law, policy and technology as they relate to societal tensions sparked by the growth of the Internet.

Abelson is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, co-director of the MIT-Microsoft Research Alliance in educational technology and co-head of MIT’s Council on Educational Technology. He is founding director of the Free Software Foundation and of Creative Commons and serves as a consultant to Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.

He is the author of four books, including “Turtle Geometry,” written with Andrea diSessa in 1981, which presented a computational approach to geometry that has been cited as “the first step in a revolutionary change in the entire teaching/learning process.”

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College will stage the comedy “Noises Off” during the college’s sesquicentennial homecoming, with the opening performance Thursday, Oct. 16, at 7 p.m. in Kimmel Theatre.

Performances continue at 7 p.m. Oct. 17 and 18 and 2 p.m. Oct. 19. Tickets are $8 for adults and $5 for seniors and non-Cornell students. To reserve tickets, call 895-4293.

Written by Michael Frayn, “Noises Off” is about a British theater company performing a stereotypical British bedroom farce — although the Cornell adaptation shows a British bedroom farce being staged by an American theater company, using American references and jargon. The audience sees the production onstage and the goings-on backstage, thanks to scenic designer Scott Olinger’s two-story set that rotates on a turntable.

“It’s an interesting piece in terms of scenic demands to show off the capabilities of our new theater,” says director Mark Hunter, assistant professor of theatre and communications studies.

Kimmel Theatre opened in fall 2002 in Youngker Hall. The adjacent Armstrong Hall was renovated and reopened in August for music and theater.

“It’s a truly hilarious play that is well-celebrated for the quality of writing and sheer funniness. The types of plot complications in the play are just like those seen in the lives of the actors. It’s an astonishing feat of writing,” Hunter says.

“This is a kind of very broad farce, a physical comedy that our students have not had experience with in recent times. It requires such delicately calibrated teamwork that the cast must function as an organism. People are careening around a two-story stage with slamming doors and windows and axes being wielded,” he says.

MOUNT VERNON — Cornell College enrolled 410 new students for classes this fall, one of the three largest groups of incoming students in the college’s 150-year history.

The new students include 371 freshmen — the second-largest group of first-year students in 10 years — 34 transfer students and five international or foreign exchange students. Cornell’s estimated total enrollment is 1,114, a 10 percent increase over last year. The official enrollment will be calculated in October, after the college completes one full term on the nine-term One-Course-At-At-Time academic calendar.

The freshman class represents Cornell’s strongest academically: average grade point average of 3.53; an ACT score range of 23-29 for the middle 50 percent of the class; 28 percent in the top 10 percent of their class, 56 percent in the top 25 percent of their class; 25 valedictorians, nine salutatorians; 50 students who held a 4.0 or better grade point average.

“We are thrilled with the quality and quantity of new students, both first-year students and transfers, who chose to enroll at Cornell this fall,” said Jonathan Stroud, vice president for enrollment and dean of admission. “We are delighted in this group’s geographic and ethnic diversity. It is wonderful to already hear stories about the energy and talents that these students have brought to our campus.”

Twenty-five percent of Cornell’s freshmen are from Iowa. Illinois, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Kansas are the top five home states of Cornell’s non-Iowa students. The freshmen come from 32 states and eight foreign countries.

Cornell enrolled 419 new students in fall 1988, when the freshman class was the largest in history (395), and 410 new students in fall 1995, when the freshman class was 384. Cornell received 1,700 applications for fall 2003 admission, from all 50 states and over 40 foreign countries.

Founded in 1853, Cornell is an independent, liberal arts college included in Loren Pope’s “Colleges That Change Lives,” ranked among the “Best 331 Colleges” in the Princeton Review and cited for its “innovative, outside-the-box curriculum” in the 2004 edition of Kaplan’s “Unofficial, Unbiased Guide to the 328 Most Interesting Colleges.” Cornell is ranked as one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of colleges.

MOUNT VERNON — Kathleen Juhl’s upcoming performance at a Cornell College Music Mondays concert is hardly the first venture to Iowa for this Texas resident.

An acclaimed theater professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Juhl will read the works of top American and European novelists and poets during a multimedia performance featuring pianist Kevin Kenner, in a production called Hydra at Cornell’s King Chapel on Sept. 29.

Juhl was active in drama in junior high and high school in Tama/Toledo. She earned degrees in theater, speech and English from Iowa State University. During college she took a year off to perform with the Old Creamery Theater in Garrison, including a Midwest touring production of “A Dandy Yankee Doodley Doo” for the bicentennial in 1976.

Juhl arrived at Southwestern as a visiting artist in 1987. Two years ago her colleagues recognized her outstanding work in the classroom by naming her the Brown Distinguished Teaching Professor.

Juhl’s Iowa ties run deep. Her parents, Jackie and Phil Juhl, live in Waverly; her brother, Tim, is the longtime high school band director in Greene; Tim’s wife, Michelle, is the daughter of Norma “Duffy” Lyon of Toledo, the butter sculptress for the Iowa State Fair. Juhl has a niece attending the University of Iowa and a nephew attending Iowa State.

“I love Iowa, visit my folks and brother often, and am so excited to perform there after all these years,” Juhl says.

Over the summer Juhl performed at the Danish Immigrant Museum in Elk Horn in western Iowa as part of their Minnesota Days exhibit. She did a biographical performance piece, written by a relative, of her great-aunt, the wife of a Danish Lutheran minister who served churches in Elk Horn and Fredsville, Iowa.

“The stage manager for the show, the director and people who helped with many other aspects of the show were members of my family. It was a great event mostly because a whole busload of folks who were my great-aunt’s and great-uncle’s parishioners at the church in Fredsville came and saw the show,” she says.

MOUNT VERNON — Hydra, a unique multimedia performance of music, painting and literature, opens Cornell College’s sixth annual Music Mondays series Sept. 29.

Music Mondays concerts are at 8 p.m. in King Chapel on the Cornell campus. General admission is $8 at the door.

Offering a sensual blend of elements featuring water as the central theme, Hydra spotlights acclaimed pianist Kevin Kenner playing works by Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, Ravel, Janacek and other composers. Waterscapes by Turner, Klimt, Chagall, Monet, da Vinci, Rothko and many others will accompany his music, while excerpts from top American and European novelists and poets will be read by actress Kathleen Juhl, associate professor of theater at Southwestern University, Texas. She is a 1977 graduate of Iowa State University and former performer with Old Creamery Theater in Garrison.

Kenner is an internationally known solo pianist and a professor to London’s Royal College of Music. “Kenner is a major talent. His recital revealed an artist whose intellect, imagination and pianism speak powerfully and eloquently,” wrote Washington Post critic Joan Reinthaler after a 2001 appearance. Twelve years earlier, Kenner took top prize in the International Chopin Competition and a bronze medal in the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition.

Duesseldorf critic Antje Olivier claims that Kenner’s Chopin style is “so musically definitive that all other standards are forgotten.” He has performed with world-class orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic and the NHK Symphony of Japan. Kenner returns to Cornell after a 1999 solo performance, collaborating now with Juhl.

The rest of the 2003-2004 Music Mondays schedule is:
Nov. 3: Emanuele Segre, classical guitarist
Feb. 9, 2004: Chanson, male a cappella sextet
March 15, 2004: The Peabody Trio

MOUNT VERNON — Famed Iowa artist Grant Wood, whose first public lecture was made at Cornell College in 1933, will make an encore of sorts Oct. 5 when Cornell unveils its sesquicentennial homecoming exhibition, “Grant Wood and the Iowa Landscape,” in the Peter Paul Luce Gallery in McWethy Hall.

The exhibition, just one of many special events planned in conjunction with Cornell’s ongoing sesquicentennial celebration, runs through Nov. 9 and features works by Wood, Marvin Cone and Lee Allen, a student of Wood’s at the University of Iowa, and local landscapes by former Cornell professors Charles Atherton Cumming, who started Cornell’s art department, Ellen Warren Van Pelt and Henry Albert Mills, Cumming’s successor in Cornell’s art department.

There also will be recent works by 17 contemporary artists who have focused their efforts on the subject of Iowa landscape in a rich cross section of approaches that include painting, drawing, photography and printmaking. These artists are: Richard Colburn, Fred Easker, Pat Edwards, Patrick Ellis, Barbara Fedeler, Helen Grunewald, Gordon Kellenberger, Diane Kunzler, Matthew McConville, Bobbie McKibbin, Virginia Myers, Genie Patrick, John Preston, Jon Stuckenschneider, Steve Tatum, Ellen Wagener and Marcia Wegman.

“One of the reasons we picked Grant Wood as the focus of the exhibition is because his work centered on small-town, rural Iowa, and by doing this he really celebrated a sense of place,” said Susan Coleman, McWethy Hall gallery coordinator. “This seemed to be such an appropriate subject for our exhibition, because Cornell, for the past 150 years, has celebrated the rural setting that has given our college such unique character and created so many opportunities.”

Wood gave what is believed to be his first public lecture at Cornell in 1933 at the invitation of Cornell English professor Clyde “Toppy” Tull’s English Club. Tull’s foster daughter, the late Signi Falk, a 1929 graduate, recalled, “The lights (in the building) went out, emergency candles were set up, and Grant Wood, extremely self-conscious, overcame his stage fright and gave a good talk.” During his lecture, Wood proclaimed, “We are on the verge of developing a real American culture here west of the Mississippi.”

Highlights during the five-week art exhibition include:

• A homecoming reception from 3 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 18, in McWethy Hall where refreshments will be served;
• The formal dedication from 9 to 11 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 25, of the Luce Gallery, which was built and endowed through a $1 million gift from the Henry Luce Foundation and named for Peter Paul Luce, a three-term member of the Cornell Board of Trustees;
• A special performance at 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 8, in the new Kimmel Theatre in Youngker Hall of “The Man Who Discovered Iowa,” an homage to Wood by Legion Arts founder Mel Andringa.

All of these events, including the art exhibition, are free and open to the public. Regular gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday.

MOUNT VERNON — Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack will be the guest speaker at Cornell College’s opening convocation Thursday, Sept. 4, at 11 a.m. in King Chapel.

At noon, following the convocation, Cornell students, faculty and staff will celebrate the college’s sesquicentennial with an all-campus picnic and birthday party on the campus pedestrian mall. The event will feature birthday cake, balloons and a rendition of the “Happy Birthday” song.

Cornell classes begin Monday, Sept. 1.

Founded in 1853, Cornell is celebrating its sesquicentennial with special programming throughout the 2003-2004 academic year.

MOUNT VERNON — Thanks to a gift of more than $2 million from the estate of a one-time student in memory of her newspaperman father, Cornell College will establish a scholarship program for students with an interest in communications.

Cornell has received 53,323 shares of Lee Enterprises Inc. stock — valued at $2,084,929 — from the estate of Betty Geer Dillon, who attended Cornell in 1942-43 and was the daughter of a 1914 Cornell graduate, Lloyd Geer. She was a former bank teller who died July 10, 2001, in Mason City. She was 77. Cornell had received a gift of $84,190 from her estate in July 2002.

Lloyd Geer was the editor of the Royal Purple yearbook and a member of the Cornell basketball team. He worked for Lee Enterprises at its newspaper in Mason City, eventually becoming the advertising manager of the Mason City Globe Gazette.

“He became successful in his career, active in the community and transferred a commitment to education and community activity to his daughter,” said Cornell President Les Garner. “We are honored to include Betty among those whose generosity has sustained a quality Cornell education for 150 years.”

The estate gift is one of the 10 largest single gifts to Cornell. It will go toward a scholarship program to benefit students with an interest in communications, the Lloyd L. Geer Scholarship and Loan Fund.

“Betty idolized him. He was a very nice man, very much in love with Cornell,” said her executor, attorney John Whitesell of Iowa Falls. “This is a wonderful gift that will benefit a lot of young people.”

The estate also distributed gifts of Lee Enterprises stock, valued at $1,563,687, each to North Iowa Area Community College, where Dillon graduated, and Mercy Medical Center Foundation, North Iowa, both in Mason City. Dillon asked that the community college use the money for scholarships and that Mercy use the money to support cancer patients.

MOUNT VERNON — Publications ranking colleges recently have singled out Cornell College as one of the nation’s finest and most distinctive colleges.

Cornell was cited as a top choice among “schools that offer an innovative, outside-the-box curriculum” by the 2004 edition of Kaplan Publishing’s “The Unofficial, Unbiased Guide to the 328 Most Interesting Colleges.” Cornell’s One-Course-At-A-Time calendar provides nine terms during which students can choose from more than 50 courses. Classes are capped at 25, with the average size 14. More than 90 percent of Cornell graduates finish in four years or less; two-thirds earn a double major or a major and a minor.

In the first edition of “The Best Midwestern Colleges,” one of five regional guides from the Princeton Review, Cornell is profiled among 150 “best in the Midwest” colleges. Cornell is also highlighted in the Princeton Review’s “The Best 351 Colleges,” 2004 edition.

Finally, Cornell is ranked as one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges in the 2004 edition of U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of colleges. Each year, the magazine releases a ranking of colleges in the following categories: best national universities-doctoral, best liberal arts colleges-bachelor’s (national), best universities-master’s (by region), best comprehensive colleges-bachelor’s (by region) and best specialty schools.

Cornell is also one of 40 colleges featured in Loren Pope’s books, “Colleges That Change Lives” and “Looking Beyond the Ivy League: Finding the College That’s Right for You.” The college is also annually included in “Peterson’s Competitive Colleges: Top Colleges for Top Students” and “The Fiske Guide to Colleges.”

“The hallmark of the Cornell College experience is the quality of faculty-student relationships on our close-knit campus,” says Jonathan Stroud, vice president for enrollment and dean of admission. “While this indicator of quality cannot be captured adequately in rankings in college guides, we are nonetheless pleased that the college’s place among the finest colleges in the country is being increasingly recognized in these types of publications.”

Cornell is an independent, liberal arts college of 1,100 students, affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Founded in 1853, Cornell is one of only two colleges nationally to have its entire campus listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Cornell is celebrating its sesquicentennial with several special events during the 2003-2004 academic year.

National recognition for Cornell