The Essentials

Sheryl WuDunn ’81, a Cornell trustee and former New York Times reporter and editor, and Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for the Times, received the 2009 Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement Aug. 19.

In a news release, the prize committee said that WuDunn and Kristof, who are married and shared a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the democracy movement and its suppression in China, were chosen in “recognition of their work chronicling human rights in Asia, Africa and the developing world.”

The two are frequent visitors to campus; they co-delivered the Olin Lecture during Reunion Weekend in 2006; and Kristof returned in 2008 to speak about the continuing struggle for human rights in Sudan and around the world.

- Lauren Gold

Cornell’s Department of Natural Resources has been ranked the fourth best college environmental program in the nation, with an A-plus grade for its “education, experience and research opportunities,” by TreeHugger.com. TreeHugger describes itself as “the leading media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream.”

The Web site touts the department’s diverse array of majors – from applied ecology and resource policy and management to environmental studies – and graduate degrees; and writes that its “off-campus, extension programs in fish and wildlife biology and management; ecology and management of landscapes; and environmental inquiry and youth education allow students and faculty to take their education to the local community.”

TreeHugger.com named Northland College, Ashland, Wisc., No. 1; the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse University No. 2; and the Program in Environmental Studies, Middlebury College No. 3.

Student and Army cadet Carolyn Evans ’10 finished ahead of nearly 500 other Army ROTC cadets in the Army Physical Fitness Test, held as part of cadet training in Fort Lewis, Wash. Passing the test is a prerequisite for becoming commissioned as a U.S. Army lieutenant.

Thousands of college students converge in Fort Lewis each summer to attend Army ROTC’s capstone training and assessment exercise, the 29-day Leader Development and Assessment Course.

Evans scored 366 points on an extended scale. “The maximum is 300, but because the Army is full of type A personalities, we’ve got to have a measure for those who far exceed the standard,” said Army Public Affairs Officer Maj. David Rudock. “So to recognize achievement and to show that [a] cadet or [a] soldier has put in so much more effort, we created this extended scale.”

Evans’ score is “awesome,” Rudock added.

Her achievement places her in the top 2 percent of her 500-person regiment. The test, which measures the students’ strength and endurance, consists of sit-ups and push-ups, each timed over two minutes, and a two-mile run. Scores are aggregated into an overall Army score.

Elizabeth Zandile Tshele, a graduate student of creative writing, earned an honorable mention in the first 2009 PEN/Studzinski Literary Awards, for her story “Snapshots.” Tshele is a poet and fiction writer from Zimbabwe. Writing as NoViolet Mkha Bulawayo, she was one of four honorable mention winners selected by 2003 Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J.M. Coetzee.

The awards were given by the South African Centre of the International PEN writer’s association for original, previously unpublished English-language short stories by African writers. The best entries will be included in a 2010 book with the working title “New Writing From Africa.”

Two marketing campaigns created by the Cornell Store and Gianfagna Strategic Marketing earned Silver Awards in the 2009 Communicator Awards. The winning Cornell entries, selected from more than 7,000 candidates, were the 2008 Commencement campaign and the 2008 “Rush” ad campaign for the freshman issue of the Cornell Daily Sun.

The Communicator Awards are sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from media, communications, advertising, creative and marketing firms. IAVA members include executives from organizations including Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, HBO, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Victoria’s Secret, Wired and Yahoo!

Assistant professor of communication Tarleton Gillespie earned the 2009 Outstanding Book Award from the International Communication Association (ICA) for “Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture” (MIT Press, 2007).

“Gillespie convincingly shows that the current debate over digital rights has been largely one sided,” said the award subcommittee, “with the corporations that stand to profit gaining increasing control over the law and increasing sophistication in ‘wiring shut’ the technology by incorporating hard-wired schemes to limit copying.”

One nominator said: “Thanks to his exceptionally thorough research, his fluency with the traditions of legal, technological and media scholarship, and his lively prose style, Gillespie has created a model of digital-era communication analysis.”

Gillespie accepted the award, which includes a $500 prize, May 23 during ICA’s 59th Annual International Conference in Chicago.

It was a landmark occasion when Justin Davis ‘07 presented the Cornell Black Alumni Association’s (CBSS) 2009 Student Leadership Award to Emma Ong’ayo at the Africana Studies and Research Center’s Graduation Ceremony May 24. For the first time since the CBAA’s inception, the award was made in collaboration with Africana and the Ujamaa Residential College.

The decision to present the award at Africana graduation (rather than at a smaller event during Senior Week) was part of a larger outreach effort to engage young alumni, said CBAA founding member Renee Alexander ‘74. Alexander’s doing some celebrating of her own. At 56 and after a decade of hard work, she just received a Ph.D. in education from Fordham University.

Cornell Lab of Ornithology birding teams set a new fundraising record for the annual World Series of Birding in New Jersey May 9. Supporters donated more than $200,000 for the lab’s bird conservation programs and student training. Longtime sponsor Swarovski Optik underwrote all team expenses.

Birding the entire state, Team Sapsucker (the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s team), tallied 221 species – despite losing precious time in the wee hours of the night to a flat tire in a driving rainstorm.  They placed third overall )the winning total was 229 species). The Cornell student team, The Redheads, won the Cape May County division championship with 187 species.

– Pat Leonard

Cornell Theater arts graduate student Lindsay Cummings earned the Marvin Carlson Award for Best Student Essay in Theatre or Performance for her essay, “The Dialectics of Affect in Naomi Wallace’s ‘One Flea Spare.’”

The $100 award was presented March 28 by Judith Milhous, Ph.D. ’74, during the theater arts symposium “Causes Célèbre” at the Schwartz Center. Nicholas Tobin Roth, a graduate student in English, earned an honorable mention for “(Hitch)cock on the Mind: Queer Paranoia and the Practice of Viral Paronomasia in Joe Orton’s ‘Loot.’” The award honors Carlson, who came to Cornell in 1959 as a graduate student, then joined the faculty and taught in the theater department for 20 years. He is a professor of theater and comparative literature at City University of New York.

New York-based composer Steve Reich ‘57, whose music is lauded for embracing the spoken word and non-Western rhythms, is the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for “Double Sextet,” a piece composed for two identical sextets of instruments, each made up of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone and piano.

The New York Times called “Double Sextet” “A major work that displays an ability to channel an initial burst of energy into a large-scale musical event, built with masterful control and consistently intriguing to the ear.”

“This is a richly deserved award to a man who may be America’s greatest living composer,” said Anne Midgette, chief classical music critic fo the Washington Post.

“Double Sextet” was premiered in May 2008 in Richmond, Va., by the Eighth Blackbird ensemble.