In brief

By Jamie Kelly

Lacy-Salazar, Monagan retire

Carol Lacy-Salazar and Alfrieta Monagan
Carol Lacy-Salazar and Alfrieta Monagan

Each academic year ends with students graduating from Cornell, and beloved professors retiring after years of teaching and mentoring. This year, Spanish professor Carol Lacy-Salazar and anthropology professor Alfrieta Monagan were both honored at Commencement with professor emerita citations. The pair also were honored by the Cornell College Alumni Association a week earlier by being named honorary alumnae.
Lacy-Salazar, who taught at Cornell for 31 years, was recognized for her passion for helping students to study abroad, as well as her sponsorship of an annual Spanish play for 19 years. Monagan, who started teaching at Cornell in 1990, was recognized for her research into Caribbean culture and her advising.

 

 

Have you missed the classroom experience you got at Cornell? Maybe you don’t feel like you have as much of that combination of academic rigor and intellectual curiosity in your life as you’d like? Cornell has a remedy for this—the BlockTalks series. Faculty members give talks on topics they specialize in that are live-streamed on the Web. Alumni, parents, and community members can watch live and even ask questions. And if you miss the lecture, you don’t even get a deduction in your grade. You can watch it whenever you want by clicking the logo or visiting cornellcollege.edu/blocktalks
Have you missed the classroom experience you got at Cornell? Maybe you don’t feel like you have as much of that combination of academic rigor and intellectual curiosity in your life as you’d like?
Cornell has a remedy for this—the BlockTalks series. Faculty members give talks on topics they specialize in that are live-streamed on the Web. Alumni, parents, and community members can watch live and even ask questions.
And if you miss the lecture, you don’t even get a deduction in your grade. You can watch it whenever you want by clicking the logo above or visiting cornellcollege.edu/blocktalks

Thomas Commons awarded

We already knew the Thomas Commons was amazing, but it’s nice to hear it from someone else. The renovation of the building was one of five projects that won the 2015 Facility Design Award of Excellence from the Association of College Unions International. The award committee said this about the hub of student life on campus: “The project is a striking, sustainable building that meets the college’s goals and needs, while preserving spaces that host sacred traditions and memories. Breathing new life into Thomas Commons fosters what has always been Cornell’s strength: its community.” KSS Architects
We already knew the Thomas Commons was amazing, but it’s nice to hear it from someone else. The renovation of the building was one of five projects that won the 2015 Facility Design Award of Excellence from the Association of College Unions International. The award committee said this about the hub of student life on campus: “The project is a striking, sustainable building that meets the college’s goals and needs, while preserving spaces that host sacred traditions and memories. Breathing new life into Thomas Commons fosters what has always been Cornell’s strength: its community.”
Credit: KSS Architects

Bringing the gavel down on the competition

Cornell’s mock trial team completed another successful year with its fourth consecutive appearance in the American Mock Trial Association National Tournament. This year the program had first-place finishes at tournaments at Xavier University, Illinois State University, and the University of Iowa; second and third-place finishes at Stanford University; and numerous individual awards throughout the season.
Cornell’s mock trial team completed another successful year with its fourth consecutive appearance in the American Mock Trial Association National Tournament. This year the program had first-place finishes at tournaments at Xavier University, Illinois State University, and the University of Iowa; second and third-place finishes at Stanford University; and numerous individual awards throughout the season.

Puppets at an Exhibition

Puppet Kitchen
Eric Wright, one of Puppet Kitchen’s “head chefs,” helped create a world-premiere theatre piece with Cornell students and also performed with them. Credit: Jenny Nutting Kelchen

Puppet Kitchen, a New York City theatre troupe, spent the spring in residency at Cornell College. The group taught classes and helped the students devise a world-premiere show based on Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.”
The piece told a story of friendship, loss, and adventure. It used puppets, of course, and also projection, movement, and music. The show, which was featured in the Des Moines Register, was the latest part of a relationship formed in 2012 when Emily DeCola, a member of the troupe, came to campus to help students construct puppets for a production of “Avenue Q.”
This time she was accompanied by Eric Wright and Michael Schubach, the other two “Head Chefs,” and dozens of students spent the spring collaborating with them to create the production. DeCola directed “Pictures,” and Wright performed and helped create the puppets for the show. You can see a video created by Puppet Kitchen and Cornell students on YouTube.

Digital made physical

Michael Schupbach, a member of the Puppet Kitchen troupe, shows off the 3D-printed puppet skull he made with the theatre department’s 3D printer.
Michael Schupbach, a member of the Puppet Kitchen troupe, shows off the 3D-printed puppet skull he made with the theatre department’s 3D printer.

The future has arrived on Cornell’s campus, and it’s leaving its mark in the form of dozens of plastic objects.

The college bought a 3D printer as part of a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Academic Media Studio has been helping students and faculty create physical representations of their digital ideas. Some are whimsical, like a 3D-printed bust of President Jonathan Brand. Others are more scholarly, like vases and other objects from Zapotec tombs printed as part of art history Professor Ellen Hoobler’s ongoing research.

They’re all pretty amazing, though.

The theatre department also purchased a 3D printer and is using it to create props and scenery. Michael Schupbach, a member of Puppet Kitchen, the troupe that was in residency on campus this spring, used it to create a puppet skull. It was—of course—purple.

 

 

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