Human Ecology Magazine, Vol. 46 No. 2, Fall 2018

HumanEcology COLLEGE OF HUMAN ECOLOGY CORNELL UNIVERSITY VOLUME 46 NUMBER 2 FALL 2018

YOUTH FASHION SUMMIT Copenhagen | Denmark

BETWEEN TWO PRESIDENTS

GREEN DESIGN

Seoul | South Korea

Ithaca | NY

URBAN HEALTH New York City

CORNELL CHINA CENTER Beijing | China

FOOD DIGNITY

California | Wyoming | New York

UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING ON AFGHANISTAN Netherlands

EDUCATION INTERVENTION Malawi | Africa

INSIDE: HUMAN ECOLOGY’S IMPACT Regional, national and international influence

A Brilliant Way to Support Bright Futures Your support today will shape the future of the College of Human Ecology.

If you are over the age of 70 1/2, a gift from your IRA is a simple and tax-efficient way to give to the College of Human Ecology.

To learn more: Contact Kathleen Johnston ’07, Human Ecology Alumni Affairs and Development at kea29@cornell.edu | (607) 255-2817.

Gifts to the college play an integral role in fueling innovation, and transforming experiential learning opportunities for our students. Invest in Human Ecology by making a gift from your IRA today!

Also known as a Qualified Charitable Distribution, or QCD, a direct gift from an IRA reduces your adjusted gross income and qualifies towards your annual RMD.

CONTENTS

2

Features

MESSAGE FROM THE DEAN

26

3 INSIDE CHE

On the cover:

HumanEcology COLLEGE OF HUMAN ECOLOGY CORNELL UNIVERSITY VOLUME 46 NUMBER 2 FALL 2018

HUMAN ECOLOGY’S FUTURE

YOUTH FASHION SUMMIT Copenhagen | Denmark

Surge of new faculty hires sign of vibrancy and excitement as College grows.

BETWEEN TWO PRESIDENTS

GREEN DESIGN

Seoul | South Korea

Ithaca | NY

URBAN HEALTH New York City

CORNELL CHINA CENTER Beijing | China

FOOD DIGNITY

California | Wyoming | New York

UN SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING ON AFGHANISTAN Netherlands

EDUCATION INTERVENTION

30

32

Malawi | Africa

INSIDE: HUMAN ECOLOGY’S IMPACT Regional, national and international influence

ALUMNI

Cornell Marketing Group; Mark Vorreuter ; Provided

FOOD DIGNITY Collaborative project led by Human Ecology researcher, alumna comes to fruition.

44 DOMAINS

From local to global, we showcase the College of Human Ecology’s regional, national and international reach through research and realworld impact.

Cover photos: provided

Human Ecology Volume 46 | Number 2 | Fall 2018 ISSN 1530-706

— M E S S A G E

F R O M

T H E

D E A N —

Published by the New York State College of Human Ecology at Cornell University

Designer Soontira Sutanont Writers R.J. Anderson, E.C. Barrett, Stephen D’Angelo, Sheri Hall, Olivia Hall, Amanda Jaros, Susan Kelley, Lisa Lennox, Gary Stewart Reprints Permission is granted to reproduce material appearing in this magazine upon notification of the editor, provided that full acknowledgment is made of the source and no change is made without approval.

Printed in U.S.A. on FSC certified paper Third-class postage paid at Ithaca, N.Y. Change of Address To ensure uninterrupted delivery, write to Cornell University, College of Human Ecology, Box HE, Ithaca, NY 14853-4401, with old and new addresses. ©2018 Cornell University Diversity and inclusion are part of Cornell University’s heritage. We are a recognized employer and educator valuing AA/EEO, Protected Veterans, and Individuals with Disabilities.

12/1 24,950 QMC College Administration Interim Dean Rachel Dunifon Associate Deans Margaret Frey Karl Pillemer Assistant Deans Sandy Dhimitri Craig Higgins Amy Meckeler Jennifer Rouin Visit us online human.cornell.edu

IMPROVING LIVES BY EXPLORING AND SHAPING HUMAN CONNECTIONS TO NATURAL, SOCIAL, AND BUILT ENVIRONMENTS

TX_ED115F707F55

I

am excited to introduce the fall issue of Human Ecology magazine, my first such message as Interim Dean. As many of our readers know, I follow Alan Mathios’ extraordinary tenure as Dean. He leaves us a legacy of championing the success of the College and inspiring and empowering others to join the effort. I am delighted to lead the College and collectively carry our unique mission forward.

Now is a particularly exciting time of growth for the College, Dunifon and this transformation has a direct impact on our students.

We have recently hired an unprecedented number of faculty, which means our students are instructed and inspired by professors who are on the front line of innovation. Just this year alone, we have 15 new faculty joining our ranks, all top in their fields. We have also begun the final phase of renovations to Martha Van Rensselaer Hall with the support of capital funding from New York State. This major undertaking allows us to transform classrooms, labs and student development and support offices not only aesthetically, but functionally, by building more collaborative and flexible spaces where people can gather and interact.

As always, Human Ecology magazine brings our readers closer to what is happening inside the College as well as its impact on the world. It is never easy to choose which stories to include in one issue, just because there is so much to share about the work, activities and people that make the College the dynamic, driving force that it is.

Inside this issue, we are happy to feature some of the amazing work of our faculty, students and staff within the Human Ecology community, such as nutritional science work in New York City and the real-world impact it is having on urban communities; developmental cognitive research that is unlocking the complexities of the criminal mind; our renovation of Martha Van Rensselaer Hall; and a story about graduate students fighting back against mosquitoborne illnesses. As always, we also highlight several alumni who are impacting, influencing and improving lives in so many ways.

Sharing the College of Human Ecology story and experiencing people’s excitement about the College inspires me just as much as what I see happening here every day. I am particularly moved by the engagement and interest of our alumni, whether on their return to campus or when I have the privilege of meeting them across the country.

I hope you enjoy this issue, and please stay in touch.

Rachel Dunifon Interim Dean

Cornell Marketing Group

Editor Stephen D’ Angelo

ENGAGEMENT

Project 2Gen team meeting with state legislators

Project 2Gen goes to Albany Cornell Project 2Gen, an initiative of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR), held a daylong event in Albany on April 24, bringing together faculty, staff and students to share their research with state legislators. Participants engaged in nonpartisan, open dialogue about the opioid epidemic, the state of infant care, and improving Medicaid for vulnerable New York families.

Formed in the fall of 2017, Project 2Gen advocates a two-generation (2Gen) approach to research and policymaking to improve the lives of vulnerable children through addressing their needs together with the needs of their caregivers.

Inside CHE

BCTR Postdoctoral Fellow Elizabeth Day, who coordinated the event, said helping vulnerable children requires thinking about the full context of their lives. “There are so many layers of environments that children exist in. It’s important to support them in all of those layers, and that means supporting the people who live in those layers with them.”

Day’s experience as a graduate researcher and a fellow in U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s office gave her an inside perspective on how difficult it can be for legislators to get the information they need.

“Legislators need to be informed on a million different things. A researcher can maintain a much narrower focus and scan the entire research literature in a way legislators can’t. Researchers need to reach out and say, ‘I’m studying this, here is my perspective as an expert.’”

Cornell Project 2Gen Co-Director and Associate Professor of Policy Analysis and Management Laura Tach presented research on the two-generation impact of the opioid epidemic.

Tach said the, “event aimed to establish Cornell researchers as a source of independent, nonpartisan research and evidence about vulnerable families in the state. Our goal was not only to share information about the cutting-edge research happening at Cornell, but also to learn from legislators about the important issues affecting families and children in their districts.”

Day hopes to make this an annual event with an expanded network of 2Gen researchers statewide. “We want to be a resource for policymakers and if we don’t have researchers working on the area they need information in, we can connect them with researchers who are.”

– E.C. Barrett

Photos: Cornell Marketing Group

Conference takes multigenerational approach to youth development What can youth learn through interviews with older adults? How does immigration status affect the lives on youth and their parents? Can we better design towns and cities to meet the needs of children and older adults? How is the opioid epidemic affecting the well-being of children and teens?

These were among the questions discussed by Cornell faculty experts, Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) county leaders, 4-H educators and community partners at the eighth annual Youth Development Research Update, which took place May 30-31 in Ithaca. The event provided an opportunity for practitioners and researchers to learn from each other. It was sponsored by the Program for Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE) in the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR), College of Human Ecology.

This year’s conference, titled “CrossGenerational Approaches to Youth Development,” focused on research and programs that reach across generations.

“The idea is to connect people who are leading and running programs in the communities with faculty so they can apply

cutting-edge research to their programs,” said Jen Agans, conference organizer and assistant director for PRYDE. Within the conference, researchers presented on a wide variety of topics.

Matthew Hall, associated professor of Policy Analysis and Management, discussed his research showing that undocumented students are less likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college due to their immigration status.

And Laura Tach, associate professor of Policy Analysis and Management, discussed a new program called Cornell Project 2Gen that supports research, policy development and practice which address the needs of vulnerable children and their parents together.

Stephanie Graf, the CCE youth and family community program leader in Jefferson County, attended the conference and presented about her role in implementing Building a Community Legacy Together – a program that teaches youth to interview elders – in her community.

– Sheri Hall Tach HUMAN ECOLOGY 3

ENGAGEMENT

“From the jacquard loom to the current use of algorithm-driven design and fashion management practices, technology and fashion go hand in hand.”

– Katherine Greder

Career Explorations puts future in 4-H’ers hands

4 FALL 2018 2017

in the field of Fiber Science & Apparel Design.

Students made pocket looms that they used to weave binary code into small samplers, visited the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection to see examples of old punch cards and intricate jacquard woven fabric, and learned about the connection between 3D body scanning and coding.

“The reason we wanted to present this more tech-focused approach to fashion is because the industry is rapidly changing,” Greder said. “Many of the future jobs in the fashion industry will require a proficient command of computer-aided design and an understanding of coding.”

The Women in Science program, part of Career Explorations for 17 years, explored how social science can be used to investigate the question of why fewer women than men are found in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers, and exposed students to social science fields such as human development and psychology.

“One of the focuses of the program is how diverse science is; it’s not just chemistry or engineering,” said Caisa Royer, the Women in Science program leader and a graduate student in the dual J.D./Ph.D. program in developmental psychology and law. “For me, the primary goal is for students to start thinking differently about both science and their opportunity to become scientists, but also to help students get excited about college and the types of opportunities they will have in the future.”

Graduate students discussed their research, experiences in the academic world and love of their specific scientific studies, as well as potential careers in science disciplines and what types of credentials are

Greder (center), and “Dress Code” student participants

necessary to pursue these careers.

Wendy Williams, professor of Human Development and academic lead of the Women in Science program, said: “By focusing on social science questions and methods, my program shows students that not all scientists work in wet labs. Some scientists study human behavior, motivation, goals and attitudes, and answer questions about how human behavior can be understood and modified.

“By attending Career Explorations and spending time on the Cornell campus, these students get a feel for college life, and it is demystified for them,” Williams said. “If my program reaches young women and men and encourages them to apply to college, it will have done its job.”

The hands-on experiences at Career Explorations have been influential for many students.

Livingston County 4-H’er Serena Blackburn said she “had a really interesting experience” at Cornell’s Wilder Brain Collection: “I was able to hold a human brain, and being able to hold what was someone’s entire consciousness in my hands was a really eye-opening experience.”

Blackburn, who graduated from high school in the summer, said her participation at the Career Explorations conference the past two years helped her decide to study sociology at the State University of New York College at Brockport in the fall.

“I was looking at psychology and learned about sociology there – what it entailed, how it compared to psychology, the research areas, etcetera – and it influenced my decision to go into sociology.”

– Stephen D’Angelo

R.J. Anderson;Cornell Cooperative Extension

More than 500 middle and high school students from across New York gathered at Cornell’s Ithaca campus June 26-28 to participate in life-changing workshops taught by Cornell faculty, staff and graduate students during the annual 4-H Career Explorations conference.

“The goals of 4-H Career Explorations are for young people across New York state to have the opportunity to come to Cornell and learn about themselves, their peers, campus life and careers,” said Alexa Maille, extension associate with Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research. “We hope they have the opportunity to try out new identities and possibilities for their futures and discover pathways and people who can help them pursue their individual future goals.”

Dozens of scholarships were made available through the New York State 4-H Foundation and Cornell University.

The conference’s 27 programs connected youth to academic fields including engineering, animal science, astronomy, environmental science, food science, nanotechnology and human development, facilitated by the Colleges of Human Ecology, Agriculture and Life Sciences, Arts and Sciences, and Engineering, the Faculty of Computing and Information Science, and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. New this year was “Dress Code,” a program that allowed participants to explore the integration of fashion and computer science.

“From the jacquard loom, known as the first computer, to the current use of algorithm-driven design and fashion management practices, technology and fashion go hand in hand,” said program leader Katherine Greder, a doctoral student

Engagement

Extension interns share experiences with NY communities

Human Ecology 2018 CCE interns included:

Children’s Economic Decision Making Internship Location: CCE Cortland County, CCE Albany County, CCE Jefferson County Faculty: Gary Evans and David Just Student: Lucie Fan Choose Health: Food, Fun, and Fitness (CHFFF) and Choose Health Action Teens (CHAT) Health & Fitness Project Internship Location: CUCE-NYC Office Faculty: Wendy Wolfe Student: Rythika Francis

Cornell Marketing Group; Flaticon

Extension interns presented their research experience at the 2018 CCE Internship Reception

From New York City and Long Island to western New York and the north country, 28 Cornell undergraduates spent their summer making a Big Red impression all across the Empire State.

As part of the Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) internship program, the students gained valuable applied research experience while helping to fill the essential role Cornell plays in New York communities as the state’s land-grant university.

The 2018 internship projects, proposed by faculty and staff from the College of Human Ecology and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, ranged from tick management and local food communications to mapping opioid addiction resources and helping farmers respond to climate change. Faculty members and CCE educators oversaw and supported the projects while students administered them from local CCE offices.

“That dynamic allows students to grow academically while experiencing the breadth and depth of the work that Cornell and CCE do across the state,” said CCE Director Chris Watkins at extension’s internship reception, Sept. 21 at Cornell’s Biotechnology Building. “Student engagement with communities also enhances the campus and county relationships that are so critical both for Cornell and for CCE.” Kim Kopko, Human Ecology’s associate director of extension and outreach and CCE associate director, was faculty adviser for three interns this summer.

“The ideal internship experience for the students and the communities is one that yields a shared learning experience,” she said. “For the student, this includes immersion in the culture, issues and potential challenges facing a community, and implementing the project objectives with an understanding of the specific community context. For the community, it means having their needs understood by an intern who brings a community-based, applied educational lens to issues and challenges.”

Human Ecology interim dean Rachel Dunifon said, “I’ve had the opportunity to work with several CCE interns over the years on research and outreach projects in the area of family development and parent education. I have seen those students go on to do great things – and each told me how crucial their internship experience was in forming their current path.”

The Cornell Cooperative Extension Summer Internship Program has helped Cornell fulfill its land grant mission by engaging students in outreach since 2007.

Concussion and the Developing Brain Neuroscience Outreach Internship Location: Mainly Ithaca, with work in Watkins Glen (4-H Camp Hidden Valley), CCE Schuyler County and CCE Tompkins County Faculty: Valerie Reyna Student: James Kim Cornell Cooperative Extension Outreach for Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) Internship Location: CCE Madison County and CCE Wayne County offices Faculty: Rebecca Seguin Student: Erin Kehoe Examining the Affordability and Availability of Diverse Produce in New York City Bodegas Internship Location: CUCE-NYC Office Faculty: Tashara Leak Student: Athena Wong Managing Changing Parenting Education Needs for Jefferson County Families Internship Location: CCE Jefferson County Faculty: Kimberly Kopko Student: Rosaleen Morgan Shaping up: Exploring how spatial language promotes children’s spatial thinking Internship Location: New York City, CUCE-NYC Office Faculty: Marianella Casasola Student: Johanna O’Reilly For more information visit cce.cornell.edu/page/internships/2018

– R.J. Anderson HUMAN ECOLOGY 5

HONORS Professors and student receive awards for their passion, impact and legacy Shepley Named to Janet and Gordon Lankton Professorship Mardelle Shepley, Chair and Professor in the Department of Design + Environmental Analysis and associate director of the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures, has been named the Janet and Gordon Lankton Professor in the College of Human Ecology.

Appointed at the discretion of the Dean of the College of Human Ecology, criteria for the professorship instructed that an appropriate candidate will be a specialist in a field within one of the College’s eight content themes: sustainability; health and design; economics and federal policy; neuroscience; community and family policy; fashion and technology; public health and nutrition; and lifespan development.

“Being named to this professorship is heartwarming as it demonstrates to me that the College is confident in the research that I’m doing,” Shepley said.

According to Shepley, her research focuses primarily on the intersection of human health and well-being with environmental sustainability – what she describes as an art and science that seeks to demonstrate the relationships between objective and outcome.

Her current research examines the impact of the physical environment on violent crime, specifically, the mechanisms around how green space impacts people and how that then influences crime outcomes.

“Having recently completed a massive literature review to track down what we know about the impact of green space on frequency of crime occurrences, the money from this professorship puts me in a position where I Shepley

can recruit students to help me work on the next phases of work,” she said, which also including the impact of the physical environment on mental health more generally. “This would be actually making comparisons between environments that have green space versus those that don’t, and looking at the crime statistics.”

The Janet and Gordon Lankton Professorship in the College of Human Ecology was established through a challenge grant initiated by Joan Klein Jacobs ’54, and Irwin Mark Jacobs ’54, as part of a $10 million donation to the College of Human Ecology. The Jacobs Challenge inspired donors to establish named professorships with matching funds in 2014.

Janet K. Lankton, HD ’53, and Gordon Lankton MENG ’53, committed to establish the Janet and Gordon Lankton Professorship in the College of Human Ecology as part of the challenge.

Janet has had a lifelong interest in textiles, and in 2013 made a three year commitment to fund the annual field trip for Fiber Science & Apparel Design students.

Gordon, has had a long career in materials science, and has spent over 50 years with Nypro Inc., a plastics injection molding company, where he would become the company’s Chair. Throughout his career, he has also been recognized in the industry for his unique management style, with one trade paper citing him as a “technological humanist.”

–Stephen D’Angelo

Town of Dryden Supervisor Jason Leifer, Greta Sloan ‘18, Cornell Vice President for University Relations Joel Malina and Town of Dryden Deputy Supervisor Dan Lamb 6 FALL 2018 2017

Greta Sloan ‘18 Sloan has been named the 2018 winner of the Cornell University Relations’ Campus-Community Leadership Award this past spring.

The annual honor is presented to a graduating senior who has shown exceptional town-gown leadership and innovation.

Sloan, a Human Development major in the College of Human Ecology, has served as a four-year volunteer and most recently as co-president of Cornell’s Youth Outreach Undergraduates Reshaping Success program, which mentors youth in mobile home parks in the town of Dryden, New York.

Cornell Marketing Group ; Provided

Youth advocate Greta Sloan ’18 wins campus-community leadership award

Inside CHE

Developmental psychologist Charles Brainerd to receive APA award Charles Brainerd, professor of Human Development and Human Neuroscience, will receive the American Psychological Association’s G. Stanley Hall award for distinguished contributions to developmental science at the APA’s August 2019 meeting in San Francisco.

Regarded as the highest honor in the field of developmental psychology, the award is given to an individual or research team who has made distinguished contributions to developmental psychology in research, student training and other scholarly endeavors.

Brainerd’s research has had an impact on educational, developmental and cognitive psychology, and he is credited with major breakthroughs across his theoretical and empirical work.

“Chuck has done groundbreaking work in human memory and reasoning through experimental behavioral methods, mathematical models and neuroscience techniques,” said Qi Wang, professor of Human Development and department chair.

“He co-developed fuzzy-trace theory of memory, judgment and decision-making that has been widely applied in the law and in medicine. His work exemplifies the best integration of theory-driven experimentation and evidence-based translational research.”

According to the APA, the award is based on the scientific merit of the individual’s work, the importance of this work for opening up new empirical or theoretical areas of developmental psychology, and the importance of the individual’s work linking developmental psychology with issues confronting society or with other disciplines.

Brainerd’s current research centers on

the relationship between memory and higher reasoning abilities in children and adults, also focusing on false-memory phenomena, cognitive neuroscience, aging and neurocognitive impairment.

He has published more than 300 research articles and chapters and more than 20 books. His research covers human memory and decision-making, statistics and mathematical modeling, cognitive neuroscience, learning, intelligence, cognitive development, learning disability and child abuse.

Brainerd has been elected to the National Academy of Education; is a fellow of the Division of General Psychology, the Division of Experimental Psychology, the Division of Developmental Psychology and the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association; and is a fellow of the American Psychological Society.

The editor of the journal Developmental Review, Brainerd has served as associate editor for journals including Child Development and The Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Brainerd’s win of the 2019 G. Stanley Hall Award immediately follows the 2018 win of Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Human Development - something that the College of Human Ecology’s Human Development Department is immensely proud of.

“The fact that Human Development faculty have won this prestigious award two years in a row is one of many validations that the department is a leading force at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in developmental science,” Wang said.

Mark Vorreuter

– Stephen D’Angelo

In addition, Sloan is a Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE) scholar through Cornell’s Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research.

PRYDE partners with New York state 4-H programs to investigate youth development, and in recent months designed and conducted program evaluation on 4-H after-school programs in Tompkins, Seneca, Ontario and Warren counties.

Sloan recently finished her undergraduate thesis on cumulative risk in childhood ecological systems and severity of hyperactivity/ impulsivity.

“I found that the accumulation of stress on a caregiver, family conflict and factors associated with poverty were linked to

Brainerd

hyperactivity and impulsivity in a sample of youth at an East Coast behavioral health agency I interned at last summer,” Sloan said. “I was grateful for this opportunity, and care about these families.”

Sloan will be a Teach for America corps member this coming fall, teaching elementary school.

“Cornell students have a wide-ranging and positive influence on campus, in nearby communities and around New York state,” said Joel Malina, Cornell vice president for university relations. “We are grateful for the time, talent and passion that Greta has dedicated to helping youth throughout Tompkins County. She truly embodies Cornell’s public engagement mission.”

–Gary Stewart HUMAN ECOLOGY 7

HONORS

Clockwise, Alan Mathios posses with SUNY award winners Patricia Cassano, Tracey Thompson and Felix Thoemmes

Two Human Ecology faculty and one staff member have won State University of New York (SUNY) Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence for 2017. The statewide award recognizes faculty and staff at SUNY colleges who have consistently demonstrated professional achievements that sustain intellectual vibrancy, advance the boundaries of knowledge, provide the highest quality of instruction, and serve the public good.

This year’s winners in the College of Human Ecology are Registrar Tracey Thompson, Human Development Associate Professor Felix Thoemmes, and Nutritional Sciences Professor Patricia Ann Cassano.

“These recipients have been recognized for excellence in the areas of professional service, teaching and faculty service,” said Alan Mathios, who was acting dean of Human Ecology at the time of the awards. “Their dedication and outstanding contributions are a great source of pride not only for me, but for the whole College community. Most importantly, they advance our three primary missions of research, education and outreach at the highest level of quality.”

Thompson leads the College’s Office of the Registrar, which maintains academic records and helps undergraduates understand and complete requirements for graduation. He has played a critical role in developing reporting of student data, improving classroom management and space, and streamlining the functions of the registrar’s office to improve the student experience.

“Tracey is also regarded highly as a mentor and leader of people,” Mathios wrote in his nomination letter. “The registrar’s office has a 8 FALL 2018 2017

reputation for being an excellent place to work and to grow your professional career.”

Thoemmes won the Award for Excellence in Teaching for his rigorous and demanding courses in quantitative methods for social science research. He hosts a Methods Study Group for undergraduates and graduate students interested in learning more about social science research.

In his nomination, Mathios called him “one of the College’s most dedicated and talented teachers.” In fact, he received multiple nominations for the award from undergraduate and graduate students.

Professor Cassano, currently the interim director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences, won the Award for Faculty Service. In various leadership roles, she has spearheaded the development of the Division’s new strategic plan, worked to develop a new Division web site, and is working to develop a portfolio of online degree and certificate nutrition programs. She teaches courses in epidemiology and nutrition policy, including one course that is offered at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Cassano is an epidemiologist whose research focuses on nutrition and genetics, and specifically the role of nutrition in the etiology of respiratory diseases. She directs the annual Summer Institute for Systematic Reviews in Nutrition for Global Policy Making, which is a collaboration among the World Health Organization, Cochrane and Cornell.

–Sheri Hall

Cornell Marketing Group ; Mark Vorreuter

Three win SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence

Inside CHE

Ying Hua appointed director of Cornell China Center Ying Hua, associate professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Design + Environmental Analysis in the College of Human Ecology, was named director of the Cornell China Center, effective April 1, 2018.

She will work with the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs (OVPIA) to further craft and execute the university’s China strategy and provide academic and programmatic direction for the new Cornell China Center in Beijing.

“We’re so pleased to have Ying Hua come on board. As director of the Cornell China Center, Ying will serve as a crucial bridge between Cornell’s presence in the United States and China,” said Wendy Wolford, vice provost for international affairs.

Hua will chair the China Center Faculty Steering Committee and work closely with the Cornell China Advisory Board. She also will partner with OVPIA staff and the center’s executive director to coordinate and support college- and unit-level activity in the center, and administer research and other grants for China engagement.

“Ying has extensive experience collaborating with partners across

Cornell and in China; she will draw on those experiences to build out a dynamic center that supports students, researchers and alumni,” said Provost Michael Kotlikoff.

Her background in architecture, building science and behavioral science influences Hua’s research, teaching and advising. Her research goal is to inform the design, management and re-engineering of built environments and building-sector policymaking to enhance the quality of built environments, support the health and performance of their occupants, and mitigate the building sector’s impact on global climate change.

As an member of the China Green Building Council, Hua has actively promoted sustainable building policy, practice and education in China.

At Cornell, Hua is a member of the graduate fields of design and environmental analysis and of real estate. She is a faculty fellow of Cornell’s David R. Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures. She is a core faculty member of the Cornell East Asia Program of the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and also serves as co-director of Cornell’s International Workplace Studies Program.

Hua holds a Ph.D. in building performance and diagnostics from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.Eng. in building science and technology and a B.Arch., both from Zhejiang University, China.

– University News

Hua

Cornell Marketing Group ; iStock; Mark Vorreuter

Avery appointed Dean of the Flora Rose House Rosemary Avery, professor of Policy Analysis and Management, has always been drawn to student life outside of the classroom. In her thirty years as a Cornell faculty member, she frequently joined students in dining halls, organized off-campus kayaking and skiing trips, and participated in programming at Cornell’s dorms.

This fall, she is expanding her role in student life by accepting the position of House Professor-Dean of the Flora Rose House, part of Cornell’s Avery the West Campus Housing System that links students and faculty members in “living-learning” community.

The position involves living in the Flora Rose house and leading students, staff and faculty in developing an intellectual program and building an active community. After a year of shadowing the former House Professor-Dean, Avery moved into the house in this summer.

“The west campus communities – five separate houses in all – function as places students live, learn, interact, and immerse themselves in the life of the university and community at large,”

Avery said. “Emanating from my natural interest in holistic health and community engagement, I am slowly starting to shape the programming in the house around that vision. It’s early days yet and, while resources are always the constraint, we have an overflowing list of ideas we want to implement.”

The Flora Rose house, which opened in 2009, was the final house of the five in West Campus Housing System. It was named in honor of Cornell Nutrition Professor Flora Rose, whose research led to the development of the first fortified cereals. Rose was also integral in the founding of the College of Human Ecology.

Today, a sizeable staff at the Flora Rose House – including an assistant dean and graduate fellows who live in-residence, student assistants, an administrative manager, and dining and building staff – make it possible to create such a vibrant community, Avery said.

“I am still growing into my new role since it is still early days, but I am loving every minute of it!”

–Sheri Hall HUMAN ECOLOGY 9

GRANDFAMILIES

A new book by Rachel Dunifon dissects a less understood family type

Dunifon

According to Dunifon, grandfamilies face several challenges she is hopeful policies and programs can address. These include financial strain due to raising a grandchild on a limited budget during years in which many grandparents are no longer working, a very high rate of health problems among both grandparents and grandchildren, and repeated legal battles with the child’s parents.

A key take-away, Dunifon said, is that grandfamilies have many strengths. In particular frequent and genuine expressions of love and appreciation that the grandparents and grandchildren expressed to each other.

Grandparents are grateful for the opportunity to have such a special relationship with their grandchild, feel that raising their grandchildren keeps them young, and feel that doing so also gives them a valuable sense of purpose in life, she said.

In turn, “grandchildren very clearly appreciate that their grandparents rescued them from a very challenging situation living in their parental home and that they provide them with unconditional love and support – as can be seen in the title, which is a quote from one of the teenagers I interviewed,” Dunifon said.

Dunifon’s research focuses on child and family policy, examining the ways in which policies, programs and family settings influence the development of less-advantaged children.

She is co-director of Project 2GEN, which combines research, policy, and practice to address the needs of vulnerable children and their parents together. Recently, Dunifon and her colleagues were awarded the inaugural William T. Grant Foundation Institutional Challenge Grant for their project titled “Protecting Vulnerable Children and Families in the Crosshairs of the Opioid Epidemic: A Research-Practice Partnership”. She is also the coauthor or coeditor of several books, including “Research for the Public Good”.

– Stephen D’Angelo

GOLDEN YEARS? Retirement can bring health risks

Fitzpatrick

10 FALL 2018 2017

Most people think of their retirement as golden years when they will pursue hobbies and passions they did not have time for when working full-time. However, a study by Maria Fitzpatrick, associate professor of Policy Analysis and Management, finds that the post-work years may not be so idyllic.

Fitzpatrick recently published a working paper that examined the link between retirement and health. To do this, she and her coauthor, Timothy Moore of Purdue University, combined data on mortality from the National Center for Health Statistics, a longitudinal data set of all deaths in the U.S., and Social Security benefits records.

Since Social Security benefits are first

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Today, approximately 1.6 million American children live in what social scientists call “grandfamilies”– households in which children are being raised by their grandparents. A new book by Rachel Dunifon, interim dean of the College of Human Ecology and professor of Policy Analysis and Management, examines this understudied family type, analyzing their unique strengths and distinct needs.

The book, “You’ve Always Been There for Me: Understanding the Lives of Grandchildren Raised by Grandparents,” makes a significant contribution to the field of family studies and gerontology, shedding new light into the unique dynamics in grandfamily households.

“My goal is to increase our understanding of an important, but less understood, type of family, and to ‘get under the roof’ of grandfamily households by using a multi-method approach to interviewing teenagers and the grandparents who are raising them,” Dunifon said.

Grandfamilies are largely hidden in American society, flying under the radar of social service agencies, policymakers, and family researchers. This work is said to provide family researchers with a greater understanding of a unique family form, and also offers service providers, policymakers and the general public important information about the lives of an important group of American families.

“From a research perspective, it is important to broaden our understanding of what we mean when we say ‘family’ and to acknowledge not only the diversity of different family types, but also the many strengths that can be found in various types of families,” she said.

“From a policy and practice perspective, my hope is that we will better be able to develop policies and programs to support grandfamilies if we have a better understanding of what life is really like in such households.”

Dunifon traveled across the state of New York, with research collaborator and Senior Extension Associate Kim Kopko, to interview families in which grandparents were raising grandchildren. Able to recruit a diverse set of families with a wide range of experiences, the families interviewed were from New York City, smaller cities, suburbs and very rural communities.

Dunifon and her team worked closely with staff at community agencies throughout all stages of the research process, identifying important topics that should be examined, recruiting families, interpreting results, and then using the results to inform current and ongoing programs for families.

“In the vast majority of the grandfamilies I interviewed, the grandparents had been raising the grandchild since a very early age and planned to do so indefinitely,” Dunifon said. “So, grandparents are playing a crucial role in society by providing support, both financial and emotional, for their grandchildren.”

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EDUCATION INTERVENTION

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Schooling improves economic rationality, study finds There has been sustained interest across behavioral and social sciences – including psychology, economics and education – in whether people are born to be rational decision-makers or if rationality can be enhanced through education.

Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, assistant professor of Policy Analysis and Management, set out to answer this question and found that education can be leveraged to help enhance an individual’s economic decision-making quality or economic rationality. Kim’s findings are detailed in a study published Oct. 4 in Science.

“Using a randomized controlled trial of education support and laboratory experiments that mimic real-life examples, we established causal evidence that an education intervention increases not only educational outcomes but also economic rationality in terms of measuring how consistently people make decisions to seek their economic goals.” Kim said.

Kim and his colleagues examined this hypothesis by participating in a randomized controlled trial of education support in Malawi, arranged by a nongovernmental organization, which provided financial support for education in a sample of nearly 3,000 female ninth and 10th graders.

The researchers conducted a long-term follow-up survey that measured educational outcomes and decision-making quality.

Through financially incentivized laboratory experiments, the researchers evaluated consistency with utility maximization – an individual’s attempt to obtain the greatest value possible from a decision – as the criterion for economic rationality.

“We found that those who took part in the education intervention had higher scores of economic rationality, suggesting that education is a tool for enhancing an individual’s economic decision-making

available at age 62, many people retire when they reach that age. Fitzpatrick wanted to find out if there were also sudden changes in health at that age. She found an increase in mortality for men at age 62. The increased risk was smaller and not as clear for women.

Since both men and women are most likely to collect Social Security benefits at age 62, but only men are more likely to retire, the increase in mortality is likely not related to collecting new benefits, but

quality,” Kim said. “While we know that schooling has been shown in previous work to have positive effects on a wide range of outcomes, such as income and health, our work provides evidence of potentially additional benefits of education coming from improvements in people’s decision-making abilities.”

Traditional economic analysis assumes that humans make rational choices.

However, mounting evidence shows that people tend to make systematic errors in judgment and decision-making and that there is a high level of diversity in how rational individuals are.

Kim points out that most other research on improving the quality of decision-making target the reduction of decision biases in particular contexts of economic activities. For example, behavioral economists have urged governments and policymakers to intervene in markets and the context within which a decision is made, without restraining people’s freedom of choice.

A popular idea representing this position in behavioral economics is the so-called “nudges” proposed by Nobel laureate Richard Thaler. Nudges are a means of helping people make better choices that are often tailored to behavior in particular economic contexts.

“We take a different stand: Proper policy tools can enhance general capabilities of decision making,” Kim said. “Education can better equip people for high-quality decisionmaking for their lives.”

Kim says this is something policymakers can leverage to improve lives around the world.

“Governments must never neglect investments in human capital of their citizens,” he said, noting that Malawi is ranked one of Kim working with students in Malawi, Africa the lowest in the world in human capital - the economic value of citizens. “In addition, this evidence provides an additional rationale for investment in education in resource constrained settings such as Malawi and other developing nations.”

– Stephen D’Angelo

retiring from work, Fitzpatrick said.

“Retirement is a time of people’s lives when there is a lot of uncertainty,” she said. “The results from our study suggest that people thinking about early retirement should pay close attention to their health as they transition to retirement. They should be sure to take care of themselves, be careful in their activities, especially driving, and check in with a physician if anything goes awry.”

Fitzpatrick did find some limitations in the

data. Specifically, there was no way to tell if the increases in mortality continued in the long-term as people got older and no way to measure mortality rates when people retired at ages other than 62.

Fitzpatrick is director of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, Bronfenbrenner Center Milman Fellow and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

–Sheri Hall

HUMAN ECOLOGY 11

FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS Psychologists discuss why restricting speech rights is not the answer Colleges and universities across the country are struggling with the question of who decides what is acceptable speech on campus. When does a controversial topic become hate speech? When should it be allowed as free speech?

Two Cornell researchers say psychological science’s extensive study of bias offers an important lens through which to view these conflicts, as we strive to understand and reduce them.

There is no alternative to free speech, say co-authors Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams in “Who Decides What Is Acceptable Speech on Campus? Why Restricting Free Speech Is Not the Answer.” Their analysis appeared May 2 in Perspectives in Psychological Science as the lead article in the issue.

“There is no alternative to free speech, because every controversial topic has a substantial group of people who view it as hate speech,” said Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology. “If we define unacceptable speech in terms of topics students say should be banned because they make them feel marginalized or uncomfortable, then we remove all controversial topics from consideration.”

Added Williams, professor of Human Development: “Feeling discomfort and angst at hearing words is not a legal reason to shut down other people’s rights to say those things.”

Since the 1950s, psychological science has demonstrated that many types of bias can prevent opposing sides from accepting the validity of each other’s arguments, the authors say.

Selective perception makes opponents on an issue literally see things differently.

In 1954, researchers showed a film of a 1951 football game – Princeton versus Dartmouth, well-known for its competitive, rough play – to two groups: one of Princeton fans and the other of Dartmouth boosters. Each team’s supporters saw the majority of flagrant violations as having been committed by opposing players.

For people with selective bias, “it’s not just that they interpret their perceptions differently; they actually see different things,” Ceci said.

In “myside” bias, people look for evidence that supports their opinions and ignore or downgrade evidence that contradicts them. “Blind-spot bias comes from deep identification with a cause. We believe we are especially enlightened, while our opponents’ affiliation with the opposite side leads them to be biased,” Ceci said. Similarly, naïve realism makes people feel their views are grounded in reality but their opponents’ are not.

Ceci and Williams

These and many other biases explain why a sizable percentage of students favor banning nearly every controversial topic, the authors said.

“In such a climate, the heckler’s veto reigns supreme and any expression that is offensive to any subgroup on campus would be banned,” Williams said.

College experiences should involve challenging our beliefs, even when those experiences go beyond our comfort level, and no campus group has the right to determine for the entire community what can be discussed, the authors said.

Universities can take several steps to help students avoid the biases that prevent them from valuing other points of view and to reduce extremist views and confrontations, they said.

Just as colleges require that freshmen understand codes of conduct for sexual harassment, plagiarism and intoxication, they could require freshmen to understand the differences between free speech and hate speech, between First Amendment protections and speech codes, and the meaning of “evidence.”

Role-playing exercises could be woven into controversial seminars in which supporters of each side are asked to switch sides. And universities could organize civil debates on controversial topics.

Students should be made to understand they are entering a place that believes deeply in the importance of dialogue and free speech, Ceci said.

“Free speech isn’t just for opinions that we all share.

That kind of speech doesn’t need protecting,” he said. “It’s for expressions that can be vile and hateful and disgusting. That has to be part of the cultural understanding.”

– Susan Kelley

Survey: Banning Controversial Topics, on Campus from 3,000 Americans with university experience.* 40 percent would ban a speaker who says men on average are better than women at math

49 percent would ban statements that Christians are backward and brainwashed 49 percent would ban speech that criticizes police

“There is no alternative to free speech, because every controversial topic has a substantial group of people who view it as hate speech.”

– Stephen Ceci

41 percent would ban speakers who say undocumented immigrants should be deported 74 percent said universities should cancel speakers if students threaten violent protest 19 percent said violence is justified to stifle speakers who might make others uncomfortable 51 percent said it was OK to prevent others from hearing a speaker 10%

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20%

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80%

* Sources: Cato Institute

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51 percent would ban claims that all white people are racist

Inside CHE

RISKY BUSINESS

commons.wikimedia.org; Mark Vorreuter

Criminal behavior linked to thinking about risk, study finds For the first time, a study has shown a distinction between how risk is cognitively processed by law-abiding citizens and how that differs from lawbreakers, allowing researchers to better understand the criminal mind.

“We have found that criminal behavior is associated with a particular kind of thinking about risk,” said Valerie Reyna, the Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor of Human Development and director of the Cornell University Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility. “And we have found, through our fMRI capabilities, that there is a correlate in the brain that corresponds to it.”

In the study, published recently in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, Reyna and her team took a new approach. They applied fuzzy-trace theory, originally developed by Reyna to help explain memory and reasoning, to examine neural substrates of risk preferences and criminality.

They extended ideas about gist (simple meaning) and verbatim (precise risk-reward tradeoffs), both core aspects of the theory, to uncover neural correlates of risk-taking in adults.

“Using fuzzy-trace based riskychoice framing tasks completed in the MRI scanner, we examined neural covariation with self-reported criminal and noncriminal risk-taking,” she said. “We found that most people will show a framing effect, avoiding risk when they are going to win and seeking risk when they are going to lose. Criminals, on the other hand, reverse that framework.”

Participants who anonymously self-reported criminal or noncriminal tendencies were offered two choices: $20 guaranteed, or to gamble on a coin flip for double or nothing.

Prior research shows that the vast majority of people would chose the $20 – the sure thing. This study found that individuals who are higher in criminal tendencies choose the gamble. Even though they know there is a risk of getting nothing, they delve into verbatimbased decision-making and the details around how $40 is more than $20.

The same thing happens with losses, but in reverse.

Given the option to lose $20 or flip a coin and either lose $40 or lose nothing, the majority of people this time would actually choose the gamble because losing nothing is better than losing something.

This is the “gist” that determines most people’s preferences.

Those who have self-reported criminal tendencies do the opposite through a calculating verbatim mindset, taking a sure loss over the gamble.

“This is different because it is cognitive,” Reyna said. “It tells us that the way people think is different, and that is a very new and kind of revolutionary approach – helping to add to other factors that help explain the criminal brain.

As these tasks were being completed, the researchers looked at brain activation through fMRI to see any correlations. They found

that criminal behavior was associated with greater activation in temporal and parietal cortices, their junction and insula – brain areas involved in cognitive analysis and reasoning.

“When participants made reverse-framing choices, which is the opposite of what you and I would do, their brain activation correlated or covaried with the score on the self-reported criminal activity,” said Reyna. “The higher the self-reported criminal behavior, the more activation we saw in the reasoning areas of the brain when they were making these decisions.”

Noncriminal risk-taking was different: Ordinary risk-taking that did not break the law was associated with emotional reactivity (amygdala) and reward motivation (striatal) areas, she said.

Reyna points out that not all criminal reasoning is equal, and therefore, public policies around the legal system can be impacted by these findings through a greater understanding of human brain behavior to have a more just system, while helping better protect the public.

“There are social contexts for crime, impulsive people who are acting without thinking, and many other causes of crimes,” she said. “This study is showing us a type of person who is very carefully calculating the odds of getting caught, so the intervention for these few things are all very different.”

According to Reyna, you have to understand the problem to have the solution. The whole legal system has to be designed to distinguish this, she said, from prevention, to police activity to the judicial system and its decision-making.

“I think this can really give us insight into how to help young people, for example, and how to distinguish the vast majority who will not grow up to be criminals, how to think about their risk-taking – even when it does break the law – in fundamentally different ways,” Reyna said.

– Stephen D’Angelo

“We have found that criminal behavior is associated with a particular kind of thinking about risk. And we have found, through our fMRI capabilities, that there is a correlate in the brain that corresponds to it.”

– Valerie Reyna

HUMAN ECOLOGY 13

FINANCIALLY OVEREXTENDED An untold story of the foreclosure crisis: college costs

“We investigated a potential source of family financial overextension: the cost of sending children to college.”

– Peter Rich

14 FALL 2018

attendance and foreclosures among people of all incomes indicates the trend toward a sliding-scale system of college costs – in which colleges adjust the sticker price with grants, financial aid and other tuition offsets – still leaves a large cost remainder that many families find difficult to cover with income and savings alone.

“The findings expose an unexplored role that higher education costs may have had on household financial risk and resultant foreclosures,” they write. “This research also suggests that educational expenses may explain why some families with children were more likely to experience foreclosure during the Great Recession than childless households.”

According to Rich and Faber, these foreclosures are in excess of those explained by subprime lending and unemployment, with the analysis also accounting for other changes in economic, demographic and housing conditions, as well as state-level changes in tuition and student debt accumulation. They also used three independent data sets tracking individual households over time – the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979 and the American Housing Survey – to confirm the connection between college attendance and foreclosure.

The researchers highlight that even with sliding-scale tuition adjustments, the cost of college and the “expected family contribution” remain a costly source of financial stress. Parents use savings, earnings and loans – even borrowing against their home mortgages – to help pay for these costs. Thus, the burden of college attendance costs put some parents in a severe financial bind during the Great Recession, exacerbating the foreclosure crisis.

Rich and Faber’s research is a cautionary warning to parents and policy experts in the hope that greater understanding of the crisis will help prevent families falling into similar financial abysses.

“Our findings do not suggest that households’ decisions to send children to college were as consequential as housing or labor market dynamics in shaping the Great Recession, but it remains important to understand all contributors to the crisis that can overextend families and render us all vulnerable to future crises,” they write.

– Stephen D’Angelo

Freepik; Mark Vorreuter

New research is shedding light on a little-known factor in the Great Recession: its link to higher education.

“The Great Recession pulled back a curtain on various sources of financial risk and an increasing reliance on credit across the income distribution,” writes Peter Rich, assistant professor of Policy Analysis and Management, and New York University’s Jacob Faber in “Financially Overextended: Rich College Attendance as a Contributor to Foreclosures During the Great Recession,” published in the October issue of Demography. “We investigated a potential source of family financial overextension: the cost of sending children to college.”

From 2007 through 2009, the United States experienced the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression, made distinctive by a spike in foreclosures and an ensuing housing crisis spurred by an abundance of risky subprime loans in the early 2000s that left many households financially overextended and unable to cover mortgage payments.

This economic slowdown grew beyond the scope of subprime lending as unemployment soared, consumer spending tightened, the stock market plummeted and house prices dwindled – producing substantial financial duress to households across the country.

Although subprime mortgage lending and unemployment were largely responsible for the wave of foreclosures during the Great Recession, additional sources of financial risk may have exacerbated the crisis – including for parents with children in college who suddenly found themselves financially overextended and vulnerable to foreclosure as the economy contracted.

“We found that the rate of foreclosures in metropolitan areas across the country increased in the year immediately after college attendance increased,” Rich said. “We estimate that a 1 percent increase in college attendance among 19-year-olds from medianincome households nationally was associated with roughly 19,000 additional foreclosures in the following year after accounting for housing and job market dynamics.”

Additionally, the authors find that a connection between college

Inside CHE

A LIVING EXAMPLE MPA Student Honored at UN Security Council Meeting on Afghanistan

Mahboob meeting UN Security Council members in the Netherlands

Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) Masters of Public Administration student Elaha Mahboob and her sister Roya were lauded as “a living example of what has been achieved in Afghanistan” by the Netherlands’ Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs H.E. André Haspels in an address to the United Nations Security Council Meeting on Afghanistan on January 19.

A first-year CIPA student from Afghanistan, Elaha is focusing her MPA studies on science, technology and infrastructure.

While in college, she and her sister founded Afghan Citadel Software Company, the first female-owned IT business in

Afghanistan. Later, they co-founded a non-profit organization called Digital Citizen Fund (DCF), which focuses on educating women and children in developing countries via digital and financial literacy programs. As part of her work, Elaha mentors the first all-girls robotics team from Afghanistan, an effort spearheaded by DCF. During winter break, Elaha and her sister participated in a United Nations Security Council Meeting on Afghanistan, where they discussed how to best achieve long-term peace, stability and development in the country. There they had the opportunity to speak with the Netherlands’ Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs.

“We discussed the current situation in Afghanistan and how we can bring change by focusing on economic development and providing job opportunities for the younger generation,” Elaha said. “It was a great honor for me that our work and efforts in terms of empowering women and giving them access to education and technology was recognized and shared with the Council by Mr. Haspels.”

Haspels specifically gave credit to Elaha and Roya’s work, noting that, “Thanks to their organization [DCF], Afghan girls today can study in Herat, where they are learning to build robots for hospitals and farms.”

Haspels also acknowledged that there is still much work to be done in Afghanistan. “Roya and her sister reminded me of the many obstacles Afghans still face,” he said. “The security situation is still volatile. Access to justice is limited.” Moving forward, Haspel promised Afghanistan that the Netherlands would remain a committed partner in helping them achieve their goal of stability.

– Lisa Lennox

THIRD ANNUAL CURBx

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TEDx style event gathers undergrads to share their research with a general audience In their freshman year, twin sisters and Human Behavior, Health and Society majors Alisha and Natasha Nanji ’19 founded CURBx, a TEDx style event for Cornell undergraduates to share their research with a general audience. The third annual CURBx took place April 19.

The sisters got the idea after joining the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board (CURB), which hosts spring forums and panels throughout the year for undergraduates to formally present their work.

“We wanted more of an informal, casual setting where students could talk about their research in presentations featuring images, rather than reading from a paper,” Alisha said. “We think it’s essential for a scientist who has a deep knowledge of a topic to be able to break down and simplify the information so audience members can understand it, no matter their background or

education level.”

Natasha said they both view science as an act of collaboration, which requires the ability to communicate effectively across disciplines. “Even though an individual is working on discovering the newest cancer therapy, let’s say, a great amount of work occurs outside the lab. Whether it’s collaborating with other disciplines to learn about a topic such as tissue engineering or the effects of current government interventions, science is based on multidisciplinary work and collaboration.”

Grant Fabrizio CALS ’19 was voted one of two people’s choice winners for presenting his research on the impact of weighing participants – negative priming intended to reduce eating – before they eat in a social group, which tends to increase food consumption.

He wanted to present at CURBx because scientific communication is a crucial piece

Sisters and Human Behavior, Health and Society majors Alisha and Natasha Nanji ‘19

to research that is too often overlooked, he said. “People can be really into their research and love what they get to do and what they are learning about, but at the end of the day if you can’t communicate that information there’s really no point. CURBx is a great way to communicate heavy material and research and a good experience talking to a lot of people about research I’m passionate about.”

Some of those in attendance were members of the incoming freshman class.

“They were super excited about the research and coming to Cornell,” Alisha said. “They asked a lot of questions: how do I get involved in research? How can I present at CURBx? That gives us hope that they’ll sustain it after we leave Cornell.”

– E.C. Barrett

HUMAN ECOLOGY 15

MONEY MATTERS Why do we slack on saving? Blame the brain

Despite working hard, Americans are notoriously poor at saving money. The average American working-age couple has saved only $5,000 for retirement, while 43 percent of working-age families have no retirement savings at all, according to a 2016 analysis of a Federal Reserve survey. And as of 2017, people were saving less than 3 percent of their personal disposable income, a figure that has long been in a downward spiral, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Many factors are at play. But a new study by Cornell neuroscientists suggests that, to some degree, we can blame it on our brains in addition to our bills.

Humans have a cognitive bias toward earning, which makes us unconsciously spend more brain power on earning than on saving, according to the study. Moment to moment and day by day, our brains are less attentive to, and may devalue, saving. Over time, that could affect our future wealth. And the cognitive bias is so powerful that it can even warp our sense of time, the researchers show.

“Fundamentally it comes down to this: saving is less valuable to our brains, which devote less attentional resources to it,” said study co-author Adam Anderson, associate professor of human development. “It’s more than a financial problem of making ends meet. Our brains find saving more difficult to attend to.”

The paper, “Differential temporal salience of earning and saving,” was published July 20 in Nature Communications. Co-author Eve De Rosa is associate professor of human development and the Rebecca Q. and James C. Morgan Sesquicentennial Fellow. Kesong Hu, a postdoctoral fellow in Anderson and De Rosa’s Affect and Cognition Lab, is lead author.

In the study, the researchers created their own experimental

“Even without bills to pay, our brains put a thumb on the scales, making it easier for us to earn than save.”

– Adam Anderson

micro-economy in which individuals could earn or save money by responding to how different colors signified these opportunities. They also gave study participants a timing perception task with these same colors, measuring how quickly they processed colors as an implicit index of the potency of earning and saving for the brain.

In the economic task, participants could earn or save money based on how quickly and accurately they performed an activity involving color circles. In the temporal perception task, they indicated which of the color circles appeared first, when the circles were presented sideby-side with different delays between them.

In the first experiment, 87.5 percent of the participants earned more than they saved. And 75 percent developed warped temporal perceptions of the colors: They reported seeing earning colors appear on the computer screen first when, in fact, the savings colors did.

In subsequent experiments, this temporal bias occurred even when color associations with earning or saving were hidden and likely unconscious.

The researchers have termed this bias “savings posteriority.” Savings is treated as a later concern, biased in each moment by the brain to have less temporal priority. While we must earn before we can save, our brains may blind us to opportunities to save, in a way that fundamentally distorts our perceptions, they said.

“Even without bills to pay, our brains put a thumb on the scales, making it easier for us to earn than save,” Anderson said. That’s because the brain may be fundamentally inattentive to saving relative to earning. “Saving is so devalued and unattended that we perceive events associated with saving as occurring later in time,” De Rosa said.

The warped time perception may or may not be a mechanism for the cognitive bias to earn more than save, Anderson said. “At a minimum, it’s an indication of how strong this bias is, that it can even warp our perception of time,” he said. “Imagine what it could do to our bank accounts.”

Even when the researchers changed the economic task to ensure study participants received an equal amount of earnings and savings, the temporal bias persisted. And the bias against saving occurred whether researchers defined saving as preventing the loss of what the participants already earned or as putting away money for future use.

Either way, the results were the same: Earning beat saving.

The researchers point out that the bias is likely unconsciously learned, not necessarily one that has been handed down through evolution. That’s good news, De Rosa said: “If you’ve learned it, you can unlearn it.”

“Earning and saving may involve flexing different muscles; the more we pay attention to saving opportunities, the more we exercise that mental muscle,” said Anderson. Those who want to save more could start by trying attentional retraining – that is, practice paying attention to saving. The benefit is not so much in the everyday cash value of what one saves; it’s in building the brain’s capacity to pay attention to saving, which, like money in the bank, will increase over time.

“It’s practicing attention and intention to save, to strengthen the value of it for your brain. It’s not the amount of dollars that matters,” Anderson said.

Added De Rosa: “And you’ll probably see other avenues and opportunities as your brain learns to value saving.”

–Susan Kelley

16 FALL 2018 2017

Freepik; Mark Vorreuter

Anderson and De Rosa

Inside CHE

GREEN DESIGN Carnivorous plant inspires sustainable mosquito-control device

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The UPod Team: D+EA grad students Anna Gannett, Joey Sun and Paulina Villacreces

Cornell researchers are biting back at deadly mosquito-borne illnesses, using nature’s own tricks.

A team from the College of Human Ecology is a winner in a global competition that asked innovators to create radically sustainable environmental solutions inspired by the natural world. The team created a mosquito-control device that functions like a carnivorous plant.

The device, dubbed the UPod, was inspired by the carnivorous Utricularia vulgarisor or common bladderwort plant, which creates a water vacuum through its trap bladders by pumping water out and sucking in small insect prey in the blink of an eye. The device was created by graduate students Anna Gannett, Joey Sun and Paulina Villacreces, and their adviser, professor Kathleen Gibson, all from the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis.

Similar to how the Utricularia vulgarisplant traps prey, the solarpowered UPod pulls water and larvae into a tightly-sealed water chamber through a trap door that functions through a smart sensor mechanism. Larvae are crushed in the water chamber, then pumped out as new water and larvae are pulled in.

The UPod is one of eight project winners of the Biomimicry Institute’s Global Design Challenge, an international design competition that invites innovators to learn how to use biomimicry – the process of looking to nature for design inspiration – to develop solutions around climate change.

“In the scoping process of our project development, we identified the expansion of mosquito-borne illnesses as a global human health problem related to climate change,” the team said. “Through our research we were able to find that management of mosquitoborne illnesses is often in the form of chemical treatment or costly medication, but realized many people do not have access to these options and that these represent only short-term solutions.”

According to the team, higher average temperatures and increased precipitation due to climate change are contributing to the expanding threat of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, malaria and chikungunya. Current mosquito-control strategies can be harmful to people and the environment.

The UPod was developed to be an environmentally friendly, selfsustaining, reusable and affordable solution that helps individuals, communities and nations take control of larvae populations and prevent the spread of mosquito-borne diseases.

They continued, “Deaths due to mosquito-borne diseases and millions of dollars spent every year on costly medicine and mitigation practices provided the justification for the significance of this problem – we are really seeking to target the problem from the root cause.”

This year, more than 60 teams from 16 countries entered the challenge. Winning teams receive cash prizes and an invitation to the 2018-19 Biomimicry Launchpad, an accelerator that supports commercialization, and are eligible to win the $100,000 Ray C. Anderson Foundation Ray of Hope Prize.

The UPod team in itself is very diverse in terms of the member’s specialties, and together collaborated within these individual areas of expertise to put forward our idea. Gannett has a B.S. in Sustainable Development with a minor in Chemistry; Sun, a B.S. in Communication Studies and a minor in Graphic Design; and, Villacreces, a B.S. in Industrial Design with concentration in Product Design & Development and a minor in International Business.

According to the team, they have been empowered by the Design and Environmental Analysis program as it encourages a multidisciplinary approach to creative solutions that will directly improve the human condition.

“D+EA combines fields of design, sustainability, and human health to address complex problems,” the team said. “The program’s emphasis on the combination of research and design, as well as the system-oriented approach to problem solving, were crucial in our success. The evidence-based design process allowed us the tools necessary to create design solutions that are rooted in critical thinking, enhancing aesthetic intuitions.”

The team said they are excited to move forward with the competition and participate in the Biomimicry Launchpad to help bring their innovation to the market.

“We hope to be able to expand our project concept using expertise from a broad range of disciplines, from biologists studying vector-borne diseases to materials engineers working on sustainable products,” they said. “The momentum gained from working on the Launchpad program, in combination with the wealth of resources at Cornell, will help our team take the next steps in developing a product prototype.”

– Stephen D’Angelo HUMAN ECOLOGY 17

URBAN HEALTH

Leak Research Group is committed to education, equity and empowerment in nutrition

18 FALL 2018

encourage kids to buy them.

“The goal of all of my projects is to inform a program or policy,” Leak said. “Long-term, we’d like to get food distributors to make these kits so the storeowners don’t have to. City Harvest has already been in conversations with one of the two main distributors in the area, but the distributor thought it was too risky. We hope to provide them with the data to take this step.”

“Nutrition education programs tend to be centered on teaching facts about nutrition and diet, without thinking about a person holistically and acknowledging that food plays an important role in who we are and in our cultures.”

– Tashara Leak

Flaticon; Mark Vorreuter; Pexels

Youth from marginalized communities are at a higher risk for poor health outcomes such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and stress, and face numerous barriers to healthy food choices. This is a problem Division of Nutritional Sciences Assistant Professor Tashara Leak wants to address, partnering with community stakeholders to conduct research that investigates the intersection of adolescence, poverty, diet and health, while improving lives in the process.

Leak joined Human Ecology in July of 2017, arriving with a grant from the Duke-UNC U.S. Department of Agriculture Center for Behavioral Economics and Healthy Food Choice Research and a year to spend those funds. She teamed up with City Harvest, a food recovery organization committed to reducing hunger in New York City offering various programming such as their Healthy Retail Program.

City Harvest acted as a liaison for Leak by approaching stores who are participating in the Healthy Retail Program and asking owners if they would be willing to work with her in developing a healthy grab-and-go snack pack marketed to adolescents, dubbed the Corner Store Project.

This type of partnership with community organizations is the bedrock of Leak’s work.

“There is distrust between some communities and academic institutions, particularly when it comes to research, because too often researchers are perceived as going into a community, asking our questions, conducting our research and then leaving the community without leaving the community with something,” Leak said. “It’s our job not just to study problems, but to solve them. Having a seat at the table with these community organizations is part of that.”

Leak’s Corner Store Project team visited 34 stores in 30 days to find out how many fruits, vegetables, and whole grains were available for purchase. The aim of the study was to see if it was feasible for corner stores to sell healthy grab-and-go snack packs.

Leak’s research assistants then interviewed store representatives about their willingness to carry such a product, support they might need in the form of training or equipment for producing or storing the snack packs, and how much their customers might be willing to pay for such an item.

Next the research assistants surveyed youth stopping at the stores after school to ask them to rate vegetables and healthier snack items like popcorn and pretzels, and how much they would be willing to spend on a healthy snack. The research assistants also collected data on how much kids spent at the store that day.

Leak’s team is analyzing the data, but there have already been some encouraging conclusions. While only around a quarter of the participating stores already carried grab-and-go snack packs, the majority said they would be willing to try to sell them.

“This is why partnering with community organizations matters,” Leak said. “These stores were already working with City Harvest, so they were already invested in improving the quality of products available to their customers. If I had just tried to recruit stores that weren’t already partnered with City Harvest, I would have gotten a much different response.”

The team plans to complete their data analysis next spring, then apply for funding to make the snack packs and identify ways to

Inside CHE

Mark Vorreuter; Provided

Wong

Undergraduate research assistant and Global and Public Health Sciences major Athena Wong ’19 worked on the Corner Store Project with Leak, first in the development of study instruments and background research, and then in data collection and field research over the summer through a Cornell Cooperative Extension internship. Wong described Leak as passionate about her work and invested in her students as people, not just as assistants.

“I love the work she does serving underserved urban populations,” Wong said. “It’s important and refreshing. She’s very hands-on. She cares a lot about everything we’re working on and she takes a lot of time to really flesh out how we can go into these communities and do good rather than harm. It’s a big part of why I love working in her lab. Too often harm is done because an understanding of the cultural context isn’t there.”

For her flagship project, the Advanced Cooking Education (ACE) Program, Leak is partnering with 4-H to develop a pilot after school program for eighth-graders aimed at improving health outcomes for kids in marginalized communities and provide them with valuable skills in and out of the kitchen. The program will run in four Title I schools – schools with a high percentage of students from low-income families – in New York City beginning in the fall of 2019.

The program is another example of Leak’s style of research.

She asked a Title I middle school principal what his kids needed. The answer? More after school programs. Next, she connected with Andy Turner, the New York State 4-H program leader and assistant director of Cornell Cooperative Extension,

who told her of 4-H’s efforts nationwide to increase diversity among youth in their after-school programs.

ACE will run for sixteen weeks – eight sessions in the fall and eight in the spring – a longer period than most nutrition education programs in hopes of having a greater chance for a lasting impact. The program will also recognize the many barriers to healthy food choices, and it will incorporate ten hours of community service and ten hours of career counseling.

“Nutrition education programs tend to be centered on teaching facts about nutrition and diet, without thinking about a person holistically and acknowledging that food plays an important role in who we are and in our cultures,” Leak explained.

When students arrive for the weekly session, they will receive a healthy snack and begin with a mindfulness-based stress reduction exercise while slow, instrumental hip hop plays in the background.

“It’s an opportunity to acknowledge the stress of poverty and a way to give them tools to use throughout the day to breathe, re-connect with themselves and self-reflect,” Leak said.

The bulk of the program time will be spent learning culinary skills such as quick-cooking whole grains, blanching vegetables and knife skills. Students will work with a partner to prepare a fiber-rich dinner representing their diverse cultural and racial backgrounds, which they will take home to feed their families. “This will reduce the stress of parents because they don’t have to make dinner for that night and the parent will be more supportive of their child sticking with the program because they get something tangible from it,” Leak said.

Leak explained that many kids are already cooking at home, something she found while conducting a behavioral economics study aimed at encouraging kids to eat more vegetables through changes in their home kitchens. “Usually some life event happened that throws kids into this role – a divorce, a parent with a new job working second shift, a parent developed a drug addiction – and the kids had to step up and become the person who prepares food for their younger siblings.”

This means ACE has the potential to positively impact not only the eighth graders involved, but the younger siblings they feed at home as well.

The first three years of the program are partially funded through a $35,000 a year Hatch grant and a $30,000 a year Smith-Lever grant, but Leak estimates a full-scale three year study will require $1 million to $1.5 million in funding. At the conclusion of the pilot, Leak expects students to have improved health outcomes, eating habits and be more likely to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.

“If you’re doing this type of work, you need to be in a department that understands and supports your work,” Leak said. “It takes time and there are more variables than if I worked with mice in a lab. I feel fortunate to work in a Division with a director who supports that and in a College that is committed to extension and community-based work.”

–E.C. Barrett HUMAN ECOLOGY 19

DINING BEHAVIOR

Diners order slightly less when restaurants list calories

20 FALL 2018

350 Cal

120 Cal

“

Even if you’re an educated person who eats out a lot and is aware of nutrition, there can still be surprising things in these calorie counts.

” – John Cawley

250 Cal

50 Cal

In response, many cities, counties and states have passed laws requiring restaurants to include calorie information on their menus. And as of May, it is a nationwide requirement that chain restaurants with 20 or more units post calories on menus and menu boards, as part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010.

But not much is known about how this law affects consumer behavior.

To find out, the researchers conducted a randomized field experiment in two full-service restaurants. There was a wide range of calorie counts across the menus. In one restaurant, the number of calories in the appetizers ranged from 200 to 910. The entrees ranged from 580 to 1,840 calories, and the desserts from 420 to 1,150 calories.

Each party of diners was randomly assigned to either a control group, which received the usual menus, or a treatment group, which got the same menus but with calorie counts next to each item. At the end of the meal, each diner was asked to complete a survey that collected sociodemographic information and attitudes toward diet and exercise. In all, the researchers gathered data from 5,550 diners. More than 30 Cornell students - master’s students and undergraduates from the Hotel School and the College of Human Ecology - helped to collect and enter the data.

The study also found that diners valued the calorie information. Majorities of both the treatment and control groups supported having calorie labels on menus, and exposure to the calorie counts increased support by nearly 10 percent. “It’s clear that people value this information,” Cawley said.

And there was no downside for restaurants.

Their revenue, profit and labor costs were unchanged.

“It’s a cheap policy to put in place, and the fact that there is a reduction in calories ordered makes it appealing,” Cawley said.

The work was supported by Cornell’s Institute for the Social Sciences, the Institute for Healthy Futures, the Building Faculty Connections Program and the College of Human Ecology.

– Susan Kelley

Freepik; Pexels

Bye-bye artichoke dip. Heavyweight appetizers and fatty entrees may not get much love when restaurants list calories on their menus.

In a new study, Cornell researchers conducted a randomized experiment to see how calories counts on menus affect what customers order in fullservice restaurants.

They found that diners whose menus listed calories ordered meals with 3 percent fewer calories – about 45 calories less – than those who had menus without calorie information. Customers ordered fewer calories in their appetizer and entree courses, but their dessert and drink orders remained the same.

“Even if you’re an educated person who eats out a lot and is aware of nutrition, there can still be surprising things in these calorie counts,” said co-author John Cawley, professor of policy analysis and management in the College of Human Ecology.

Even the chefs at the restaurants in the study were startled by the high number of calories in some dishes, such as a tomato soup/grilled cheese sandwich combo. “They would have said it was one of the lower-calorie items on the menu,” said co-author Alex Susskind, associate professor of operations, technology and information management at the School of Hotel Administration.

The study, “The Impact of Information Disclosure on Consumer Behavior,” was released in August by the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-written with Cawley’s former doctoral advisee Barton Willage, M.A. ’17, Ph.D. ’18, who is now an assistant professor of economics at Louisiana State University.

The 3 percent reduction in calories implies an average reduction in weight of roughly one pound over three years, the researchers estimated. That is on average, with greater reductions among more frequent diners at restaurants, and less for those who eat out less.

The findings come at a time when most Americans don’t have a precise estimate of how many calories they’re eating, because one-third of their food is prepared outside the home. At the same time, the obesity crisis in America has reached epidemic proportions; the prevalence of obesity in adults has nearly tripled in the past 50 years, to nearly 40 percent of the population in 2016.

Inside CHE

EXECUTIVE EDUCATION Sloan launches EMHA program The Sloan Program in Health Administration will launch a new Executive Master of Health Administration program beginning in May 2019.

The distance-learning program – designed to provide management training for health care executives with five or more years of experience – will allow students to take classes online while continuing in their jobs. The 18-month program will include two weeks on the Ithaca campus and one weekend in New York City.

Admissions to the new program began this fall. Sloan hopes to enroll 32 students to begin the program in May. “We think there are a lot of talented executives and clinicians already in positions of responsibility who want to move up to positions of greater responsibility, but don’t want to leave their jobs for two years,”

said Sean Nicholson, director of the Sloan program.

Besides providing an opportunity for clinicians and health care managers to develop their management skills, the Executive MHA will benefit the Sloan program as a whole by connecting residential students, who are typically recent college graduates, with executive students who already have work experience.

“My hope is that the more experienced executives can offer mentorship to the less experienced residential students,” he said.

“There will be several opportunities each year for the students to learn from each other.”

Applicants to the Executive MHA will submit their undergraduate transcript, two letters of recommendation, and a personal statement, and then participate in a phone interview.

They do not have to take a standardized test, like the GRE. “We are looking at how applicants are performing in their current jobs, whether they are sincerely interested in health care, and what experience they bring to the table that can enhance the program,” Nicholson said. “We are looking for them to be co-teachers with us by sharing what they have learned in their careers.”

Sloan is looking for alumni to identify and encourage promising, young co-workers to apply to the new program.

Learn more at www.human.cornell.edu/sloan/emha.

–Sheri Hall

HumEc Reads Selected works from Human Ecology faculty and alumni

Pexels; Provided

Building Together: Collaborative Leadership in Early Childhood Systems Fiona Stewart ‘89

Better Apart: The Radically Positive Way to Separate

When’s Happy Hour?: Work Hard So You Can Hardly Work

Management Unleashed: Leadership Lessons from My Dog

Gabrielle Hartley ’92

Jordana Abraham ’11 with ‘Betches’

Diane Hanson ’68

Blaming Mothers: American Law and the Risks to Children’s Health Linda Fentiman ’70

Good Neighbors Joanne Fisher Serling ’88

Ottoman Dress and Design in the West: A Visual History of Cultural Exchange Charlotte Jirousek FSAD, Associate Professor

HUMAN ECOLOGY 21

BETWEEN TWO PRESIDENTS

Tae Hyeon (Ryan) Kim ’19 serves as interpretor during Trump South Korea visit

Kim flanked by U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-In

22 FALL 2018 2017

interpret their conversation and to witness the unprecedented meeting of the two presidents whom I have admired only through video footage or articles,” Kim said.

According to Kim, this opportunity has positively influenced the way he views the world.

“It was a great opportunity to share profound insights with two powerful individuals who have enormous knowledge and affection for our nations,” he said. “Seeing two presidents in person, looking into their eyes, and paying attention to their body gestures were all emotionally thrilling moments.”

Being part of the meeting reaffirmed his vision to devote his efforts to society with the knowledge gained from his PAM major at Cornell.

“PAM is an interdisciplinary major that provides knowledge in all aspects of contemporary social, economic and political issues,” he said. “We debate on alternative policies to find the one that maximizes society’s overall happiness.

“Throughout my academic career in PAM, I gained great insights and assistance from the PAM faculty who helped me to ponder earnestly about my future and taught ways to approach social problems through the lens of a policy analyst.”

After Cornell, Kim is planning on returning to Korea to pursue a career in law, wanting to devote himself to helping minorities and speaking for misrepresented populations. In the long term, he wants to play a positive role in changing geopolitics of Northeast Asia and in the future prosperity of both the United States and South Korea.

“There is a saying that one can see better from afar than inside,” Kim said. “I have been away from my home country physically for a while now, but my objective lens of policy analysis allows me to tackle social problems better than ever before.”

–Stephen D’Angelo

Provided

An undergraduate student in Policy Analysis and Management had an unforgettable opportunity last year in November: to serve as an interpreter between U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-In. After finishing his junior year at Cornell, Tae Hyeon (Ryan) Kim PAM ’19 went back home to South Korea to serve a 21-month stint of mandatory military service. Highly proficient in both the Korean and English languages, he became a bilingual interpreter at the ROK-US Combined Forces Command, Seoul.

In early November 2017, President Trump visited South Korea as part of his Northeast Asia Tour, becoming the first president in three decades to make an official state visit to the country.

Trump’s first stop was to visit and share a meal with selected soldiers at Camp Humphreys, a newly-built base not far from Seoul, the nation’s capital. President Moon Jae-In arranged to greet President Trump there as a warm welcome.

“A few days before this meeting, I was notified by my superior officer that I was selected to be seated in between President Moon and Trump and interpret their conversation between English and Korean,” Kim said. “The seats were assigned based on the recommendations and selection process of both R.O.K. and U.S. stakeholders. The fact that I attend Cornell University and major in Policy Analysis and Management probably was the reason for which I was selected.”

Kim said he initially felt little pressure in this role as military protocol personnel briefed him, expecting only casual conversation between the presidents and a selection of American and South Korean troops. However, after only moments of greeting soldiers, Kim said Moon and Trump began discussing various complex topics.

“Although it was quite challenging to accurately convey the heavy topics, it was certainly an unforgettable experience to

Inside CHE

FAMILY RECONCILIATION New project focuses on what brings families back together Have you reconciled with a family member? The recently launched Cornell Family Reconciliation Project wants to hear from you in hopes of better understanding the breakdown, and rebuilding, of family relationships.

According to research, more than one-fifth of adults report currently experiencing estrangement from a family member and most families live through an estrangement at some point.

Despite how often family

members are cut off from one another, there is little academic analysis on estrangement. There is also scarce professional guidance for families trying to heal a rift among its members.

The Cornell Family Reconciliation Project aims to fill this knowledge gap.

Over the past five years, the project’s research group at Cornell University has been conducting studies of people who have experienced estrangements in their families.

Sometimes, an estrangement

can be permanent, but in other cases, a reconciliation takes place.

“There is a lot of information available on how difficult estrangements are and what causes them,” said Karl Pillemer, professor of Human Development at Cornell and the director of the project. “However, what is lacking is the good news – how family members overcome a rift and reconcile.”

The goal of the research project is to help provide new knowledge about and possible solutions to family estrangements. Learning about how some families have reconciled with one another after a break-up, according to Pillemer, will provide invaluable information about this problem.

Because of this, the project is seeking individuals from across the country to contribute their stories of how they reconciled with family members after a rift. The researchers will study these reports about how an estrangement was resolved and offer solutions based on these real-life experiences.

“By gathering many reconciliation stories, we hope to contribute knowledge that is useful in resolving such family problems,” Pillemer said.

“We invite people to help us understand this complex problem by sharing their stories.

“The advice from people who have been through estrangement and reconciliation can help thousands of other families.”

Reconciled family members may share their stories on the Cornell Family Reconciliation Project web site. Also, those interested can participate in the study by volunteering for an anonymous personal interview (sign-up information is on the web site below.) Based on the data they collect, Pillemer and his research team will prepare materials designed to offer advice to estranged family members and to the professionals who work with them.

If you or your family has experienced an estrangement that came to an end and contact was resumed, or to learn more about the project, visit www. familyreconciliation.org –Stephen D’Angelo and Sheri Hall

Pillemer

DIGITAL ARCHIVE

Cornell University Marketing Group; Provided

Empathy project goes online

remain open for three months.

Because of strong resonance with the local community, the project has remained active with stopovers at Mann Library, Loeckenhoff, Burrow and Guimbretiere the Human Ecology Commons, Gates Hall and off-campus venues.

Since its launch in September 2016, the Cornell Along with Loeckenhoff, the project is Race and Empathy Project has recorded, archived and shared the everyday stories of Cornellians that managed by Anthony Burrow, associate professor of Human Development, and evoke racial empathy. The physical incarnation of Francois Guimbretiere, associate professor of the project – a cozy listening booth shaped like a Computing and Information Science. stylized ear – is showing wear and tear and will According to research, interracial have to be retired. conversations can be experienced as stressful, To continue fostering the ability to identify and which limits willingness to engage in them. understand the feelings of someone of a different background, the project has evolved into an online Yet powerful stories of racial empathy exist and, when shared, can provide opportunities presence. to celebrate one another’s joy and happiness “This online archive provides a record of the or lament suffering and grief. responses that we have gathered over the past The digital archive features thoughts and one-and-a-half years and makes them available to ideas gathered over the years, provides a a broader audience,” said Corinna Loeckenhoff, space for conversation and invites users to associate professor of Human Development in the listen to other’s stories, write a response and College of Human Ecology and of gerontology in share their own story—including alumni. Visit medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine. www.raceandempathy.com for details.

The project was funded through the Cornell Council for the Arts’ 2016 biennial and meant to –Stephen D’Angelo HUMAN ECOLOGY 23

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

Fiber Science major Hansika Iyer ’19 joined 112 university students from around the world to participate in the Copenhagen Youth Fashion Summit, a two-year collaboration of the U.N. Global Compact and the jewelry company PANDORA. Participants gathered for the first of two summits this past May to discuss ways the fashion industry can advance the U.N.’s sustainable development goals of health and well-being for all and gender equality for women and girls everywhere.

During the three-day summit in Copenhagen, students worked in groups to develop a list of changes that would help the fashion industry achieve the two Global Compact goals.

“We based our discussion on different forms of capital,” Iyer said. “My group focused on manufactured capital and how the introduction of technology and robots would impact jobs and health and well-being. How can the industry use technology to up-skill workers and create better conditions as opposed to taking away jobs?”

Iyer was one of ten students selected to present their sustainability demands to the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, a gathering of more than 1,300 international members of the fashion industry, government officials, NGOs, academics and the media, endorsed and endowed by the Crown Princess of Demark.

Hansika Iyer speaks at the summit During her portion of the speech, Iyer addressed the CEOs in the audience. “We expect you to go beyond profit motivations and redefine value as the health, well-being and equality of all humans,” she said. “The prosperity of this investment will manifest itself throughout your organizations.”

Over the next year, Iyer and fellow youth summit members will work on a case study for PANDORA to implement the ideas developed at the summit. The students will re-convene next May to present the results of the collaboration.

“I came away from the youth summit feeling hopeful for positive change in the fashion industry,” Iyer said. “It was amazing to go to an event on that scale and find everyone was passionate about the same thing. I had an incredible conversation with the editor of Vogue Australia, who is a pioneer of sustainable fashion. It was really interesting to learn about the issue from the people who are working on it in the industry.”

Iyer received the Alan D. Mathios Research and Service Grant from the Human Ecology Alumni Association to fund her travel to and from Denmark.

–E.C. Barrett

SIZING SAUDI

Susan Ashdown lends her expertise to national project

Ashdown in Saudi Arabia 24 FALL 2018 2017

Susan P. Ashdown, the Helen G. Canoyer Professor in the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design, recently visited Saudi Arabia to lend her expertise on the analysis of data collected in the SizeSaudi project, an anthropometric study currently being conducted in the Kingdom.

Led by Professor Moudi Almousa of King Saud University, the SizeSaudi national survey aims to help develop a national anthropometric data bank for Saudi adults using 3D scan technology. The project will develop a sizing system for Saudi males and females and body shape analysis.

Due to logistical problems scanning both men and women in the same

Provided

Hansika Iyer ’19 attends Copenhagen Youth Fashion Summit

Inside CHE

OUT OF SIGHT

Cornell University Marketing Group

New study finds harmful pesticides lurking in NY homes

Despite the existence of chemical-free methods to eradicate pests, Americans use more than a billion pounds of pesticides per year. These chemicals are mostly out of sight and out of mind to unsuspecting homeowners, who are typically unaware of how to prevent potential harm – something new Cornell research is addressing.

In “Common Pesticide Residues in Rural Homes of New York State,” published Sept.

22 in JSM Health Education & Primary Health Care, Joseph Laquatra, Mark Pierce, Alan Hedge, from the Department of Design + Environmental Analysis, and Ann Lemley, from the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design, examined the extent of indoor pesticide pollution in New York state rural homes.

Conducting pesticide analyses as part of a larger effort that studied pollutants in homes and childcare facilities, the researchers sampled 350 homes in Chenango, Columbia,

Essex, Franklin, Wyoming and Hamilton counties, looking for 15 potentially toxic pesticides commonly used in those areas’ agricultural practices, with a likelihood of accumulation in the interiors of nearby homes.

“We found that pesticide residues are ubiquitous in rural homes in New York state,” Laquatra said, noting that positive results for such chemicals were found in every house tested.

Particularly concerning to Laquatra and his fellow researchers is what is known about these chemicals and their potential harmfulness to humans, especially infants.

“Numerous health problems occur from exposure to pesticides, such as cancer, birth defects, leukemia and ocular [vision-related] toxicity, among a number of other health issues,” Laquatra said. “Households with crawling toddlers should be concerned, as toddlers will accumulate pesticide residues

study, this first stage included women only.

“I have known Professor Moudi Almousa for a couple of years,” Ashdown said. “She visited me here at Cornell when she was planning her anthropometric study, and I advised her on how to design the study. She asked me to visit her at King Saud University to assist with the analysis of the anthropometric data and creation of a size standard.”

Although the Saudi Arabian apparel market is the largest in the Middle East, there is no data or current size standards to accurately define the anthropometric size and shape of Saudi population.

In recent years, there have been requests from some of potential investors in the apparel industry and consumers to provide relevant size reference material.

Urgent need for such data bank comes with the country’s newly announced 2030 Vision to diversify the economy by welcoming

on their hands and then ingest them due to hand-to-mouth behaviors.”

Previous studies of pesticide residues in homes have highlighted entry routes for chemicals that include tracking with shoes, bare feet, clothing or animal fur; airborne entry; and soil gas entry. Adjacency and proximity to agricultural operations have also been cited as factors responsible for residential pesticide residues because of spray drift. Further, pesticides applied to gardens and lawns can follow these same transport routes into a home.

Once inside a home, according to research, pesticide residues accumulate in dust and degrade at a lower rate than they do outdoors because they are shielded from the effects of rain, sun and soil microbial activity.

According to the study, pesticide education programs could include home maintenance guidelines for prevention, and safe eradication, of accumulated pesticide residues, of which consumers may not be aware.

Emphasis, says Laquatra, should be placed on the importance of keeping the home clean.

“When building new homes or remodeling existing homes, install hard surface, easyto-clean floors, such as hardwood, tile, or resilient flooring. Keep floors clean,” he said.

“Have a home entry system that captures soil and pollutants at the door. This entry system should consist of a hard-surfaced walkway, such as a paved sidewalk, a gratelike scraper mat outside the entry door, and a highly absorbent doormat that will trap pollutants.”

These best practices, according to Laquatra, can have vast education and public policy implications to help minimize exposure to residents, not only in New York state but across the country.

–Stephen D’Angelo

foreign investments and creating 35 industrial cities under the umbrella of the Saudi Industrial Property Authority, where the government is encouraging the localization of many industries, including apparel.

“I have studied ready-to-wear sizing systems for 30 years, and the use of body scan data for 18 years,” said Ashdown, who worked on a similar project in Vietnam in 2009. “This project was very rewarding, working with and for Saudi women. And I enjoyed being a passenger with Dr. Moudi Almosa, one of the first women drivers in Riyadh!”

Leading apparel brands rely on data generated from projects like this to ensure sizing fits the general population of different countries across the globe.

– Stephen D’Angelo HUMAN ECOLOGY 25

HUMAN ECOLOGY’S FUTURE Surge of new faculty hires sign of vibrancy, excitement as College grows During the 2018-2019 academic year, 15 new faculty members will be joining the College of Human Ecology in each of its five departments at the assistant professor level.

Breakdown of newly hired faculty includes, Human Development – four new faculty; Design + Environmental Analysis – three new faculty; Policy Analysis and Management – four new faculty; Fiber Science & Apparel Design – one new faculty member; and the Division of Nutritional Sciences (a joint-administered unit of Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences) – five new faculty (three based in Human Ecology and two based in CALS).

A total of 12 new Human Ecology faculty members began their Cornell careers this fall, with three joining the College in 2019.

Hiring this number of new faculty members is significant for the College, said interim dean Rachel Dunifon, not only because

it’s the largest new cohort of faculty hired in a single year, but also because it is the most diverse.

“We have a total of 100 tenured and tenure-track faculty in the College,” Dunifon said. “To have 15 percent of those faculty join us in a single year is extraordinary, and a wonderful sign of the vibrancy and excitement of our College.”

These new faculty are at the cutting-edge of their fields, and will bring their expertise to Human Ecology classrooms, research labs and intellectual community, Dunifon said.

“I have had the pleasure of meeting with each of the new faculty this semester, and am blown away by their passion for their work, the breadth and quality of what they do and the impact they will have on our College,” she said. “Their innovations, collaborations and new ideas will set our path for years to come.”

Human Development Hobbs

The Department of Human Development is at the forefront of cutting-edge research on lifespan development, bringing together social scientists, psychologists and neuroscientists to understand and improve people’s lives.

Historically, the department has had a dual commitment to increase knowledge of human development through rigorous research and scholarship and to disseminate this knowledge beyond the classroom and into the real-world.

This was the kind of academic community William Hobbs wanted to be a part of. “My work is very collaborative, so I anticipate forming collaborations both within Human Ecology and with researchers in other fields such as in information science, government, sociology and communication,” he said, having already joined collaborations related to Cornell’s Translational Research Institute for Pain in Later Life.

Studying how people and social networks adapt to sudden changes, most of Hobbs’s work looks at health or politics and describes when and why people are resilient.

“For example, I’ve studied how people adapt after the death of their spouse or friend, how online communities reroute after government censorship and how public attitudes on the Affordable Care Act evolved after its implementation,” he said.

“The research informs how to design systems and policies that help people make the most of their lives and connections when faced with major changes, and when people tend to recover and adapt on their own, with some help from friends,” he said.

Similarly for Marlen Gonzalez, what attracted her to Human Ecology and Human Development in particular is its decidedly integrative and translational approach.

“I come from a clinical psychology background, but do nonclinical neuroimaging research and epigenetic research,” she said.

“At the same time, what I really care about is how the big things in society – neighborhoods, school policy, social relationships – impact these small scale neural and epigenetic outcomes.”

26 FALL 2018 2017

Gonzalez

ojalehto

The central question guiding Gonzalez’s research is, how do our developmental environments, and especially our social environments, shape our nervous system and biobehavioral strategies for coping in adulthood? If we think of our genes as variable, but flexible clay and our childhood environments as molds, then our adult characteristics and phenotypes, are the result of the interaction between these two features, she explained.

“While my methods are about looking at the bark of the trees, so to speak, I must also maintain the perspective of the forest and everything in between,” she said. “My work is therefore best when surrounded by people who also negotiate different levels of analyses with the expressed intention of both furthering knowledge and relieving suffering – that’s HD to me.” bethany ojalehto was drawn to the College’s and department’s dual mission of enriching basic scientific knowledge while also mobilizing that knowledge for the greater good.

“This dual purpose is integral to my research on environmental cognition across cultures, and I was excited at the opportunity to join an academic community where my work could grow and develop in both theoretical and applied directions,” she said. ojalehto’s work focuses on understanding how humans understand and relate to other living organisms and the natural world. As part of her research, she has directly studied the indigenous Ngobe community of Panama for nearly a decade. ojalehto investigates how cultural diversity and developmental change are associated with distinct modes of cognitive organization and real-world environmental decision making. Her work, as a whole, contributes to broad interdisciplinary research focused on the problem of how to improve human-environment relationships.

“By investigating how diverse cultural conceptual systems are linked to environmental decisions and human-nature relationships, my work brings a unique vantage point on the human dimensions of climate change that is grounded in an Indigenous perspective,” she said.

Cover Story

Barrow

Field

Aydemir

Johnson

Vacanti

Division of Nutritional Sciences

The academic field of nutrition incorporates knowledge across the physical sciences, life sciences and social and behavioral sciences. The Division is a shared unit of Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. This fall saw five assistant professors join its ranks, including Tolunay Aydemir, Joeva Barrow, and Martha Field, based in Human Ecology, and Elizabeth Johnson and Nathaniel Vacanti in CALS. Joeva Barrow is working to understand exactly how our bodies absorb and transport nutrients, and how these nutrients affect our genes, to find new treatments for some of the nation’s most pressing health problems including obesity, diabetes and mitochondrial diseases.

“My primary focus is on mitochondrial biology as it relates to mitochondrial diseases and obesity and associated metabolic disorders,” she said. “By investigating pathways that are aberrant in human disease, we can unveil novel therapy for the treatment of these disorders.”

Mitochondrial disease is a devastating series of disorders that currently have no effective treatment options or cures, she said. “Our research investigates metabolic pathways to identify novel factors that can be targeted for a therapy which is critical for these patients.”

Cornell is extremely interdisciplinary and collaborative, which is what attracted her to the College of Human Ecology and the Division of Nutritional Sciences, said Barrow. The nature of her work integrates molecular, human, community and international nutrition, and Cornell had excellent resources in place in order to ensure the success of this research program, she said.

According to Martha Field her research “seeks to understand how to use nutrition to improve human health and ultimately, hopefully, improve people’s lives.”

“My laboratory studies gene-nutrientenvironment interactions, and underlying molecular mechanisms, that lead to development of pathology,” she said. “I currently have three research focus areas that include the role of nutrition in maintaining mitochondrial DNA integrity and mitochondrial function, understanding the role of the blood-brain barrier in maintaining brain nutrient status, and understanding the role of specific gene variants in defining genetic predisposition to weight gain.”

Field said that she was attracted to the College of Human Ecology and the Division of Nutritional Sciences because of the breadth of on-going research and willingness of faculty to

engage in collaborative research.

Tolunay Aydemir hopes to leverage her primary research interest, metal transport throughout the body, to help people maintain good health and improve lives.

Centered on how zinc and manganese function within the body to regulate diverse cellular processes in health and disease, studying the roles played by individual metal transporters is necessary to gain an understanding of how trace metals influence normal physiologic processes and specific diseases.

“My research, using both mutant mouse models and cell level experimentation, focuses on understanding the transporter (ZIP14)mediated, targeted function of nutritionally essential trace metals, zinc, and manganese,” she said. “These studies will construct a base for identifying new therapeutic targets for treating metabolic disorders and motor dysfunction.

“I believe that DNS’s diverse research environment, and my interdisciplinary educational and research experience in nutritional biochemistry and metabolism will serve the field of nutrition well to study the roles of nutrients in health and disease,” she said.

Elizabeth Johnson focuses her research on defining how molecules produced by the gut microbiome can influence human health.

“Nutrition is an essential tool for improving human health and my research aims to define how we can use nutrition to influence the production of beneficial microbial metabolites that improve well-being,” she said.

“My lab aims to understand how small lipid molecules produced by beneficial bacteria affect human health,” she continued. “Additionally, we are interested in how the lipid composition of breastmilk is able to influence the development of the infant microbiome.”

Nathaniel Vacanti’s research is on proteomics, the study of the entire complement of proteins that is or can be expressed by a cell, tissue, or organism. He is working towards developing tools to analyze metabolic pathway utilization, applying these methods to identify dietary or pharmaceutical interventions in hopes of forestalling or preventing chronic diseases.

“Every day we make connections with natural, social, and built environments; many of which are adversely affected by the onset of chronic diseases, such as type II diabetes, obesity, and cancer,” he said. “I hope to see my research efforts maintain these healthy connections through early detection and lifestyle, dietary, and/or pharmaceutical interventions.”

Flaticon; Mark Vorreuter ; Provided

“ I am blown away by their passion for their work, the breadth and quality of what they do and the impact they will have on our College.”

– Rachel Dunifon

HUMAN ECOLOGY 27

“ Being among these amazing faculty members who all look at design as a problemsolving task and who believe in addressing the human quality of the built environment was a very big motivation.”

– Saleh Kalantari

Design + Environmental Analysis D+EA combines innovative design thinking with insightful design research to understand how our daily lives are impacted by the built environment.

Through multidisciplinary training in human-centered design, environmental psychology, ergonomics and facility strategy and management, it tackles problems from a systems view – people, Kalantari process and place – to create strategic sustainable and healthy futures by design.

Saleh Kalantari’s research promotes advanced technologies, innovative design approaches, and new analytical frameworks that can enhance the relationship between people and their created environment. This work has used virtual reality and biometric sensors to evaluate human responses to new designs and humanrobot interactions during fabrication processes.

Kalantari hopes that understanding these areas better will leverage design further to improve people’s lives.

“I am the director of Design and Augmented Intelligence Lab (DAIL) at Cornell where we explore the intersections of human ingenuity and artificial intelligence in design,” he said. “My lab incorporates interdisciplinary perspectives from architecture, computer science, and psychology to further develop our understanding of new design technologies and their effects on human well-being.”

Kalantari said that the strong focus that the department and Human Ecology has on analyzing and addressing contemporary social problems was a big attraction, as well as the multidisciplinary approach that allows faculty members to cross over departmental boundaries and create exciting new research paradigms.

“The Design + Environmental Analysis Department at Cornell includes faculty whose interests range from architecture, to the social sciences, to environmental psychology, to robotics, and we are all looking at different scales of design and different design media,” he said. “But at the same time, we all share this common commitment to building healthier and human-centered environments.

28 FALL 2018

“Being among these amazing faculty members who all look at design as a problem-solving task and who believe in addressing the human quality of the built environment was a very big motivation.”

In Jay Yoon’s view, D+EA’s exceptional ability to balance diverse research perspectives and embrace varied research efforts is critical to his research on “design Yoon for emotion and well-being” that integrates interaction design with knowledge of human behavior from social science and knowledge of well-being from positive psychology.

His research looks at how design and technology can contribute to facilitating long-term positive experiences and how those effects could be prolonged. More specifically, he has investigated how products can be designed to evoke distinct and nuanced positive emotional experiences and how designers can be supported to purposefully do so by developing design methods and tools.

“My research focuses on how products can be systematically designed to enrich users’ momentary, as well as long-term, experiences by means of emotions – building on knowledge and methods from user-centered design, positive psychology and persuasive technology,” he said. “My recent research revolves around designing for affective experiences and well-being with an emphasis on increasing designers’ emotional intelligence.”

Application of such research has covered multiple design contexts and business domains including a smart home service, an airport crew-center, a museum tour and a brand loyalty program, he said.

The application areas are diverse including healthcare, automotive, social media and home appliances, to name a few.

“There is substantial evidence that positive emotions are strongly associated with psychological and physical well-being,” he said.

“Given the fact that products evoke a series of positive emotions during usage or ownership, I believe my research can help produce design that is not only pleasurable in its own right, but also contributes to improving users’ lives.”

Cover Story

Policy Analysis and Management

Bottan

Leung

Reyes

Pauline Leung said that she was drawn to PAM because of the large number of data-oriented people working on important policy issues, and that her research is most aligned with the “social environment” aspect of the College’s mission.

“My research focuses on how governmental programs that are aimed at supporting vulnerable populations, such as the unemployed and low-income, affect individual behavior and well-being, and how the design of these programs can be improved,” she said. “My research is mostly focused on national-level policies, but many programs that I study, including low-income cash assistance, medical assistance, and unemployment benefits, are federal-state partnerships.” “ I was attracted to Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and the Policy Analysis and Management department in particular because of the rich intellectual community that fosters research on important social issues.”

– Adriana Reyes Adriana Reyes’s research also focuses on studying vulnerable populations, and is aimed at improving people’s lives by better understanding how social policies and programs can improve their health and wellbeing.

Her research focus is on family and health disparities across the life course. Her current work examines race and ethnic differences in intergenerational family relations, studying the financial and health consequences of living arrangements, economic transfers across generations and caregiving. She also examines race and nativity differences in health across the life course studying trajectories of health and mortality.

“My research is motivated by a desire to understand the social structure of inequalities and the mechanisms that sustain them,” Reyes said. “For example, I study living arrangements and family networks as strategies for dealing with social inequalities in conjunction with the implications of these social behaviors for inequality across generations.”

For Reyes, it was this focus on real-world impact and improving lives that influenced her decision come to Cornell.

“I was attracted to Cornell’s College of Human Ecology and the Policy Analysis and Management department in particular because of the rich intellectual community that fosters research on important social issues,” she said.

– Stephen D’Angelo

Flaticon; Mark Vorreuter ; Provided

Hoe

Within the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, faculty expertise converge in a variety of disciplines, including economics, sociology, demography, political science, public health and public policy. Research generally falls into one of three thematic areas: family and social welfare, health and consumer policy.

Through its varied focused areas and broad scope, the department is known as an interdisciplinary division by nature.

“My research is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing together issues in economics, statistics, policy, health care, and management,” said Thomas Hoe. “So it made absolute sense to join a department positioned in such a rich interdisciplinary environment, and full of likeminded researchers that I can interact with.”

Hoe is an economist that researches how health care policies influence providers, such as hospitals. A primary aspect of this is evaluating how responses to policies might ultimately affect patients, such as through their health outcomes when receiving treatment or their ability to access treatment in the first place.

Another example is his recently-conducted studies on emergency department regulations and inpatient department crowding.

“Improving the quality of health care provision is at the center of my research, and by improving policymaking in this area I would hope my research can directly shape people’s lives,” he said. “One dimension of my research that I try to emphasize is that we can learn a lot about health care policy by comparing systems in different countries. While the systems and politics may differ, often the fundamental questions and objectives we are aiming for are similar.”

For Nicolas Bottan, the mission of improving people’s lives is what drew him to academia in the first place, and then on to his current role within Human Ecology.

“I am a policy-focused researcher, interested in understanding the extent to which social comparisons are important in shaping people’s behavior,” he said. “I also work on various topics related to understanding social consequences of public policy.”

This, for example, would include delving into questions such as: Did legalizing video gambling increase crime in Illinois? How do different public policies or shocks affect the nonprofit sector?

What policies and programs are effective in improving learning in developing countries?

“I’m hopeful that by learning the answers to these questions I can contribute to shaping public policy both domestically and abroad,” he said. “I have many research interests in common with a lot of the faculty [at Cornell] and look forward to collaborating with them on future research.”

HUMAN ECOLOGY 29

FOOD DIGNITY

Collaborative project led by Human Ecology researcher, alumna comes to fruition

30 FALL 2018 2017

Blue Mounta

in Associates,

Wyoming

Dig Deep Farms, Oakland, California

fooddignity.org; pexels ; provided

From soup kitchens set up to feed people during the Great Depression to food stamp programs founded in the 1960, millions of Americans have relied on community and government organizations to provide them food.

Community-based organizations across the country, however, have been working to find better ways. In a seven-year-long project called Food Dignity, funded by a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, leaders of five community-based food justice organizations and academics from three universities collaborated to continue, expand and document those ways. Their goal was to strengthen local food systems and enable more people to not only choose what they eat, but how their food is produced and processed, and what role they wanted to play in the food system.

More than three dozen researchers and activists from diverse backgrounds and communities worked on the project, including two lead investigators associated with the College of Human Ecology. This year, the project collaborators published a full special issue of the Cornell-hosted Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

The concept of food dignity is complex, spanning beyond community gardens and school lunch programs, explained Christine Porter Ph.D. DNS ’10, associate professor at the University of Wyoming and the Food Dignity principal investigator who developed the idea for the project eight years ago as a Cornell doctoral student in Porter nutrition.

“Food dignity is not being handed an almost-rotten banana after having waited in line for two hours,” she said. “It is about finding what promotes dignity and what violates dignity. Not having enough to eat violates it. Being able to feed your family what you believe is healthy and right promotes dignity.”

Project co-lead Monica Hargraves, extension associate within the Department of Policy Analysis and Management and associate director of Evaluation Partnerships in the Cornell Office for Research on Evaluation, collaborated with community partners to develop innovative tools for representing the theories of change driving community-led work, and to evaluate their minigrant programs. In addition, nearly a dozen more Cornell Hargraves faculty, staff members and students contributed to the project.

“The premise was that community leaders and organizations are doing groundbreaking work; there is a lot that academics can learn from their expertise,” Hargraves said. “The idea was to form a larger partnership in which they were co-researchers with the academics.”

A central element was not only the research, action and education collaborators worked on, but how they worked together. As a participatory action research project, the community and academic organizations strived for establishing equitable partnerships. The project won an award in 2014 from CommunityCampus Partnerships for Health for its example of bringing together communitybased organization and academic institutions to improve social justice.

Not surprisingly, one of the key conclusions of the project is that community partnerships are key to creating a society where people have “food dignity.”

“The most radical and important thing the community organizations in this project accomplished was investing in leadership development and mentorship, investing in ideas and capacity, at the local level,” Porter said. “These investments are less visible than the actual products of their work, such as starting a multigenerational garden or a free summer lunch program for children. But we found they were the most important elements in promoting food dignity.”

Inside CHE

Different communities, different approaches A broad range of community organizations participated in the project. Dig Deep Farms was founded by community activists and the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office to build a network of foodrelated businesses that would provide access to food and jobs to local community members. The organization’s ultimate goal was to improve the quality of life for local residents and reduce crime rates in this urban area outside of Oakland, California.

More than 1,000 miles east, two organizations in Wyoming supported vastly different communities. The non-profit Feeding Laramie Valley offers a free summer lunch program for kids; delivers fresh, local vegetables to people who cannot afford them; and helps people with chronic health conditions start home gardens. Blue Mountain Associates of Wind River Indian Reservation started a tribal farmers market, supported dozens of gardeners, and helped people restore Indian corn and root cellars to the Reservation.

And nearly 2,000 miles east of Wyoming, East New York Farms! in Brooklyn, New York created urban gardens, started an internship program for local youth and launched two community-run farmers markets. Whole Community Project of Ithaca supported dozens of grassroots community leaders in remaking and diversifying the local

food system, from intergenerational gardening to incubating farms led by people of color.

Gayle Woodsum, the founder and director of Feeding Laramie Valley, also took a project-wide role by serving as the liaison and advocate for all five community organizations with the academic partners. Her role was challenging at times. But those difficult conversations and interactions are exactly what made the project successful, she said.

“If the Food Dignity research project ended up accomplishing anything at all, it succeeded in providing a five-year opportunity for a diverse array of activists, scholars, and students to dig at, uncover, and radically challenge both the notion and reality of truth-saying on topics that extend beyond its surface mainstay of community-generated responses to food insecurity,” she said.

The partnership itself was one of the project’s main achievements, Hargraves said. “There were rocky paths in the early years, but we were “Being able to feed committed to that struggle,” she said. “Working through different your family what you ways of communicating, believe is healthy and different priorities, different right promotes dignity.” ways of working, is hard, but – Christine Porter it is incredibly important for the quality of the work. That Ph.D. DNS ’10 ended up being as much an accomplishment as the food system work itself.”

fooddignity.org; pexels ; provided

Investing in communities In addition to the lessons learned about building community partnerships, the Food Dignity project reported its findings about some of the most promising ways to build more equitable and secure food systems. They found that working to provide food is more effective if it is used to improve communities overall.

“We are talking about food as a form of democracy,” Porter said.

“It’s about being a food citizen, a participant in shaping our society.”

The community food justice leaders invested most in people and communities, she said, with food as not just an end but as a means for community leadership and power development.

In other words, people working to improve food access and systems do and should focus on people and communities, more than on food or food systems. “Community leaders have a deep expertise you won’t find anywhere else,” Hargraves said. “The insights and strategies that drive their work are deeply grounded in their particular communities.”

The biggest conclusion, Porter said, was that supporting food

Whole Community Project,

Ithaca, NY

justice work requires investment. “If you think of these community organizations as cars, then they need fuel to power their dreams,” she said.

You can learn more about the Food Dignity project, including research findings, at www.fooddignity.org. The Food Dignity special issue journal may be found at www.foodsystemsjournal.org.

– Sheri Hall HUMAN ECOLOGY 31

HEAA PRESIDENT’S CORNER

Human Ecology Alumni Association Board members

Casanova and Peck

Greetings Alumni Association Members, This is our first letter as co-presidents of the Human Ecology Alumni Association Board of Directors. We are excited about the opportunity to continue the great strides that the board made under the immediate past president of Reginald White and prior leadership, Yvonne Distenfeld and Mark O’Hern. We have the added challenge of being two presidents, which we hope translates to twice as much impact, not half as much responsibility.

Before we talk about the future, we celebrate the accomplishments of the board over these past two years. With an actively engaged board, we have continued to grow our impact including: - Increasing the funded amount for the Dean Alan Mathios Research and Service Grant.

- Creating a new grant for Diversity-based research projects.

- Setting a foundation for an enhanced job recruitment initiative with the Career Development Office, facilitating connections with companies and our amazing students.

- Hosting a sold out student/alumni event in New York City last January with a star filled panel about women in media.

- Identifying and lauding alumni who are improving lives around the globe.

Rachel Casanova ’95 David Peck ’91 Co-presidents Human Ecology Alumni Association Board .

32 FALL 2018

around the country who are working on your behalf to support the interests of our alumni association and the College.

Pexels; Mark Vorreuter

The last few years have been especially purposeful as we supported Dean Mathios at the end of his tenure of 12 years of service. He is a true visionary and his impact and leadership will be forever felt, leaving a lasting impression on how the college will continue to develop under Rachel Dunifon as the Interim Dean. The aforementioned Dean Alan Mathios Research and Service Grant will allow us to further sustain student research endeavors As you can read on the website, “Innovation in research, design, and practice continues to be one of the key learning outcomes for our students.”

At our recent fall meeting in Ithaca, the board had an opportunity to meet with Dean Dunifon and we will continue to prioritize our efforts in support of her goals and initiatives. As an added bonus, Professor Keith Green, a joint appointment with D+EA and Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering, enlightened us with research from his Architectural Robotics Lab. There, he develops prototypes and evaluates cyber-physical environments, supporting and augmenting an increasingly digital society. It is always inspiring to hear, first hand, about the collaborative cutting edge achievements taking place at MVR! In alignment with sharing ideas first hand, we have made a commitment to supporting a number of engaging events during this year, which we will be communicating about in the next few months. In January, we are excited to be hosting a fireside chat in New York City with the President of ESPN, Jimmy Pitaro ’91, a Human Ecology graduate.

Stay tuned for more information.

Finally, as you consider a gift to Cornell’s Annual Fund, please do not forget to As a graduate check the box for Human Ecology. When you earmark your contribution to Human of Human Ecology, Ecology, it provides the College with additional financial support that improves the you are a member of the undergraduate experience, strengthens the masters and doctorate programs, and contributes to faculty excellence.

College’s Alumni Association.

We are humbled by the opportunity to support you as a member our Alumni You are represented by our Association and we look forward to connecting with you!

HEAA Board – volunteers from

Alumni Janet Ritchie Smith, MS ‘47, MPS ‘78

Glenda (Gale) Cargian ‘58

Lauraine (Serra) Warfield ‘47

Barbara (Urban) Mazza ‘58

Marilyn (Creason) Dilles ‘48

Phyllis Ann Yates-Marshall ‘58

Jane (Lawrence) Fosdick ‘48

Joan (Williams) Strand ‘58

Janet (Selke) How, MS ‘48

Margaret (Chamberlain) Beringer ‘59

Ethel (Bache) Schmitt Clark ‘31

Pearl (Breitmaier) Isenberg, MS Ed ‘48

Nancy (Willman) Burton ‘59

Esther (Dillenbeck) Prudden ‘37

Charlotte (Smith) Moore ‘48

E. Irene Downey ‘59

Anne DuBois Irwin ‘39

Virginia (Keeler) Smith ‘48

Albert W. Hellwig, MPA ‘59

Elizabeth (Luxford) Webster ‘39

Phyllis Borden ‘49

Anne Jackson ‘59

Alice (McFall) Zwanzig ‘39

Joan (Ince) Graves ‘49

Elaine Anne (Bushart) Sievert ‘59

Mary (Munson) Benson ‘41

Mary (Finn) Hauser ‘49

Lois (Tyler) Benning ‘60

Doris (Strong) Castor ‘41

Nancy (Knipe) Lemons ‘49

Jane Wigsten McGonigal ‘50, CALS PhD ’84

Jane Baer Hadlow ‘41

Barbara (Dewey) Sherman ‘49

Carolyn (Creamer) O’Connor ‘60

Shirley (Richards) Sargent ‘41

Laura (Cassedy) Bitter ‘50

Marjorie (Reynolds) Wilson ‘60

Dorothy (Newman) Seligman ‘41

Verda Mae Dale, MS ‘50

Joan (Hester) Young ‘60

Margaret (Whelan) Keenan, MS ‘42

Dorothy (Patterson) Dodds ‘50

Nancy (Tetzlaff) Claypoole ‘61

Gladys (Mckeever) Seebald ‘42

Caryl (Hirschhorn) Goldstein ‘50

Peter P. Komor ‘61

Kathryn (Fiske) Weikel ‘42

Pauline (Levy) Heil ‘50

Edwin C. Thorn, Sloan MPA ‘63

Jean (Short) Elling ‘43

Muriel (Randles) Miller ‘50

Ellen (Lipton) Farrar ‘64

Margaret (Smith) Potter ‘43

Ruth (Wicker) Sanderson, MS ‘50

Ann (Dubiel) Gemmill ‘64

Elizabeth (Kehoe) Quinn ‘43

Frances (Duncan) Stowe ‘50

Elaine (Kahler) Kennedy, MS ‘65

Martha (Edson) Baxter ‘44

Barbara (Kunz) Buchholz ‘51

Susan Lehrer Jones ‘65

Ruth (Caplan) Brunton ‘44

Roshan (Bharucha) Christensen, PhD ‘51

Jean (Scheufler) Johnson, MS ‘66

Virginia (Smith) Clifford ‘44

Jane (Grimm) Grant ‘51

Marian (Wood) Meyer ‘66

Barbara (Cross) Naylor ‘44

Barbara (Bell) Jutila ‘51

Betsy (Bierds) Schenkel ‘66

Carolyn Jean (Hendrickson) Cummings ‘45

Howard Shevrin, MA ‘51, PhD ‘54

Natalie Hirsch Lederman ‘68

Marion (Scott) Cushing ‘45

Yvonne (Tung) Feng, MFS ‘52

Kathryn J. Schwartz ‘68

Margaret (Gaffney) Van Waes ‘45

Barbara Schlang Sonnenfeldt ‘52

Jean (Philbrick) Strout, MA ‘70

Evangeline Pearl (Woodruff) Brown ‘46

Virginia B. White ‘52

Lester W. Berger, MBA ‘71

Cornelia (Clary) Burr, MS ‘46

Jocelyn (Adams) Bernholdt, MS ‘53

Maryann (Klein) Dicke ‘71

Ruth (Sergenian) De Angelis ‘46

Dorothy (Jack) Doyle ‘53

Marlynn (Lampert) Littauer ‘71

Ms. Carolyn (Usher) Franklin ‘46

Marilyn (Ellowitch) Frank ‘53

Christine M. Yackel ‘71

Charlotte Cooper Gill ‘46

Marguerite (Rounds) Mersereau, MA ‘53

Lt. Col. Mary Cooper Hoettels ‘72

Iris (Berman) Goodman ‘46

Lea (Paxton) Nixon ‘53

Sally E. Anderson, MS ‘74

Marion (Seel) Hackley ‘46

Helena T. Penalis ‘53

Marcie (Goldstein) Angel ‘74

Phyllis (Fish) Hughes ‘46

Stefan S. Frank ‘54

Cynthia Ann Davis ‘74

Mary (Marzolf) Langendorfer ‘46

Deborah (Kroker) Ineich ‘54

Linda R. Robinson ‘75

Sarah (Whitford) Morgan ‘46

Joan Weisberg Belden ‘55

Janet Sledge, MPA ‘77

Ellen (Degraff) Teller ‘46

Julie Rae (Mann) Friedman ‘55

Ann Lundgren ‘82

Virginia (Miller) Walkup ‘46

Vera (Steiner) Simon ‘55

Monika M. Woolsey ‘82

Margaret Schiavone Berens ‘47

Betsy (Borst) Stanton ‘55

Sandra K. Lamm ‘84

Dorotha (Potwin) Bridenbaker ‘47

Mary D. Zehner ‘56

Shari Fuller Rogers ‘85

Mary Lou Gedel ‘47

Eleanor (Zehner) Hibben, MS ‘57

Alyson M. Weiss ‘85

Margaret Newell Mitchell ‘47

Eleonore (Grassl) Ineson ‘57

Brian J. Smith ‘95

Margaret (Parker) Noah ‘47

Jean Davis Schlater Kennedy, PhD ‘57

Jeffrey M. Valla ‘05, MA ‘05, PhD ‘13

Ann Sheridan ‘47

Barbara Berger Knight ‘57

Danielle A Peress ‘06

Barbara (Bateholts) Smith ‘47

Norma (McClellan) Shehan ‘57

Drew Jonathan Stadlen ‘12

Provided

IN MEMORIAM

Doran

Rachel Doran ’19, a rising senior in the College of Human Ecology, passed away peacefully surrounded by family on Aug.17 after battling against several rare and life-threatening syndromes. She was 21 years old. A dedicated and passionate student, she was honored by the Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design as an outstanding student, receiving the Charlotte A. Jirousek Undergraduate Research Fellowship in 2017. Rachel also worked as a research assistant in the Cornell Costume and Textile Collection and curated the exhibition “Go Figure: The Fashion Silhouette & the Female Form,” which was displayed in the Human Ecology Building November 2017 – July 2018.

HUMAN ECOLOGY 33

ALUMNI AWARDS

Each year at Reunion, the College of Human Ecology Alumni Association (HEAA) honors a select group of students and alumni, recognizing their outstanding work and potential. We are pleased to announce this year’s winners of the Helen Bull Vandervort Alumni Achievement Award, the Outstanding Senior Award and the Recent Alumni Award.

Silton and White

Recent Alumni Award Nava R. Silton ’02 Nava R. Silton received her Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Human Ecology in Human Development in 2002 then went on to complete a master’s and doctorate in developmental psychology from Fordham University in 2009. While at Cornell, Nava was in the Kappa Omicron Nu Honor Society, the Psi Chi Honor Society, the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, and was on the Dean’s List. She also served as a Human Ecology Ambassador and a teaching assistant for the course Human Bonding in the Department of Human Development.

Her primary research interests include determining how best to enhance typical children’s sensitivity to children with disabilities, how to teach social emotional

34 FALL 2018

skills to children on the spectrum, and looking at the interface between religion and health.

She has taught both undergraduate and graduate psychology courses at Fordham University, Hunter College, and Touro College, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Marymount Manhattan College. Nava has written over three dozen peer-reviewed journal articles, over twenty chapters, book reviews and encyclopedia entries, and has edited five full textbooks. Her first two books discuss innovative technologies for individuals with autism and other disabilities, her third delves into creativity, her fourth into family dynamics and romantic

relationships, and her most recent explores the constructs of happiness, gratitude, kindness, empathy, and well-being.

In an effort to expand beyond academics, Nava has brought her research interests and knowledge to other mediums. She has worked at Nickelodeon, Sesame Street Workshop, and Mediakidz and has consulted for Netflix and The Autism Seaver Center.

She appears regularly on Fox 5 News as a Psychological Correspondent, as well as Good Day New York and NBC. Nava created the The Realabilities Educational Comic Book Series, which offers 11 comics and two instructional manuals for use in classrooms across the world. The series has been translated into Hebrew and Spanish and is currently being translated into Chinese. The success of Realabilities prompted Nava to write Addy & Uno, The First Family Musical about Disabilities, Bullying and Kindness, using Avenue Q style puppets that is now an Off-Broadway production in The Kirk Theater on Theatre Row. Realabilities and Addy & Uno fill a significant void in children’s media and literature so that individuals with disabilities can see themselves represented positively on-screen, and typical children and adults can become increasingly knowledgeable, sensitive, and interested in their peers with disabilities. Moreover, the comic series and show seek to promote the important values of kindness, friendship, empathy, and gratitude.

Nava served as a Volunteer for Special Olympics for five years, has run a Weekly Jewish Learning Program on the Upper West Side for 10 years, and has led a weekly visiting-the-sick program at Mount Sinai Hospital for the last twelve years. She is married to Dr. Ariel Brandwein, a Pediatric Intensivist at Northwell Health, and is the proud mother of three boys and a girl.

Provided

2018 HEAA

Alumni

The Helen Bull Vandervort Alumni Achievement Award Sandra Fluke ’03

Provided

Sandra Fluke, a 2003 graduate from the College of Human Ecology, found her passion for advocacy while at Cornell and still has her “I Stand With CWRC” sign from the rallies she joined her first year, opposing the defunding of the Cornell Women’s Resource Center. Sandra’s years at Cornell provided the springboard for her career in public interest advocacy for numerous social justice causes.

An interdepartmental major, Sandra studied in the Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program and the Department of Policy Analysis and Management, where she would later become a teaching assistant for a Human Sexuality course. While at Cornell, Sandra organized a teach-in against the Iraq war, focusing on the impact on women in conflict zones.

She was treasurer of the Society for Human Resource Management, on the National Dean’s List and Cornell Dean’s List, co-chair of Take Back The Night, a manager at a survey research facility in the College of Industrial & Labor Relations, and a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Sexual Assault and Violence Educators (SAVE), Cornell Democrats, and the Student Assembly Committee on Women’s Issues.

Her very first act of reproductive justice advocacy was organizing a counter-protest with Students Acting for Gender Equality (SAGE) against a very graphic and anti-choice group that was brought to Cornell’s campus.

She would go on to become president of SAGE. After Cornell, Sandra graduated cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center as a Public Interest Law Scholar with a Certificate in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies. She has devoted her career to public interest advocacy for social justice causes, such as gender equality, LGBTQIA+ rights and criminal justice reform, and minimum wage and higher education reform.

She also represents victims of human trafficking and domestic violence, as well as immigration clients.

Sandra came to national attention when she testified before members of Congress regarding insurance coverage for birth control and took on Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators. This led to a Ms. Magazine cover story and a powerful address to the Democratic National Convention in 2012. In November 2014, Sandra was a candidate for California State Senate. She is currently the California State & Western Region Director for a non-profit policy advocacy organization focused on legislation preventing climate change, increasing economic opportunity, and strengthening democracy through campaign finance reform and voter protection. A political partner with the Truman National Security Project, Sandra serves on the boards of the National Council of Jewish WomenLos Angeles and Emerge California, on the advisory boards of Equality California, West Hollywood Beverly Hills Democrats, LA Forward, Westside Family Health Center, and Hollaback, and is an Assembly District 50 representative to the Democratic Party of San Fernando Valley.

Sandra lives with her husband Adam Mutterperl, an executive producer and writer for television, and their dog Mr. President.

Fluke

Lesnick

Outstanding Senior Award Julia Lesnick ’18 Julia Lesnick’s goal is to support the resilience, growth, empowerment and recovery of young people and their families through applied research. As a Human Development major, Gender and Sexuality Studies minor, and Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement scholar, and feminist, her education and training focused on understanding and supporting youth across diverse identities through research aimed at social justice and community change.

Lesnick has worked as a researcher in Professor Jane Mendle’s Adolescent Transitions Lab since her freshman year. Through the lab, she works to support Mendle’s ongoing projects, recruit and train new research assistants, and is writing a senior honors thesis on girls’ experiences with social rejection. This research has been accepted for presentation at multiple conferences including the Society for Research on Adolescence, Society for Research in Child Development, and the Ivy League Undergraduate Research Symposium. It was awarded best psychology presentation from the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board and selected for presentation as part of President Pollack’s inauguration.

The goal of Lesnick’s research is to generate work that is meaningful, accessible and applicable for supporting youth development.

Her work and service specialize in domestic violence prevention, restorative justice and promoting child and adolescent mental health. This includes a collaborative partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension and local youth-serving organizations where she developed training resources and facilitated workshops for youthserving organizations to implement a trauma informed approach. She has also worked as a teaching assistant for the Cornell Prison Education Program, at a domestic violence shelter supporting survivors of intimate partner violence, and as a researcher in the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry.

On campus, Lesnick worked as a tour guide for Cornell Visitor Relations, and for Cornell Fitness Centers as a group fitness instructor. She was also a member of a Panhellenic sorority and played club field hockey.

HUMAN ECOLOGY 35

POWERFUL WOMEN

Gizelle Sabreen Begler ’08 teams up with apparel course for hijab design competition

Haute Hijab is one of the leading hijab companies in the United States

Fiber Science & Apparel Design Assistant Professor Denise Green ’07, teamed up with Haute Hijab Creative Director Gizelle Sabreen Begler FSAD ’08, to have students in her Color and Surface Design course compete to design a hijab for the world’s most powerful woman.

The winning designer would receive $150 and a chance at having their design produced by Haute Hijab, one of the leading hijab companies in the United States.

Green said she wanted the competition to offer students the opportunity to research and design for an unfamiliar market, while developing hand-painting techniques on silk and learning about how to scale their designs to larger production.

The project was also intended to educate students about the often-misunderstood hijab, Begler explained. “In the West, hijab has come to be associated with oppression and something women are forced to wear, but that’s not the case at all. For women who choose to wear hijab, it’s empowering. It’s saying: don’t sexualize me when you talk to me, talk to who I am as a person.”

As part of the project, Green’s students, none of whom identified as Muslim, were paired with students from the Muslim Educational and Cultural Association (MECA) for an interviewformat discussion about hijab. The design students asked the students from MECA about their aesthetic preferences, their relationship to wearing hijab, and the big question: what does being powerful mean to you?

The conversations between the design students and the students from MECA were a positive experience for all involved. Green recalled one of the students from MECA saying that people are often afraid to ask questions about the hijab and about Islam. She said the students enjoyed being asked questions about the hijab – why they wear it, what they like about wearing it, what don’t they like about wearing it – in a safe space where they could share openly about their experiences, both good and bad.

“As many of them pointed out, when you wear a hijab you become very visible and your face is displayed much more visibly.

That can be very dangerous in this country at this time. I think they appreciated being able to talk about that candidly and with people who were intending to design something that would hopefully meet their needs better than what they have now.”

The student designs were so impressive that the Haute Hijab team had a hard time choosing between them and in the end selected two winners: Architecture major Cornelius Tulloch ’21, and Monet Phisphahutharn, a fashion design exchange student from ESMOD Paris.

“We loved the designs but we also loved the design statements, they were really powerful. You see how they drew inspiration from what the students from MECA shared with them,” Begler said.

Tulloch’s design, an underwater scene, connected the way pearls are created under pressure with the public scrutiny of women who choose to wear hijab. “It isn’t too often that I get the opportunity to design for a community I do not know much about, but it was one of the most humbling experiences. For many of the women we spoke to I began to see that the hijab was an extension of themselves. I was inspired by the beauty, confidence, and presence that the hijab held for them,” Tulloch said.

While Green was pleased with the student hijabs, describing them as works of art, the interaction between her students and the students from MECA was the real prize.

“Watching as some of their assumptions and stereotypes got blown apart, was really awesome. They learned through engagement with students who are at the same life stage as them and part of this campus just as they are, but who have a very different experience being visible in the world.

That cross-cultural dialogue was the most valuable, exciting, and inspiring part of this project,” she said.

– E.C. Barrett

Denise Green FSAD ’07, assistant professor of Fiber Science & Apparel Design, was recently awarded the International Textile and Apparel Association’s Rising Star Award, recognizing her outstanding teaching, research, creative scholarship, and outreach in the area of apparel design. Green was identified for her development and teaching of courses in art and design, surface design, and anthropology of the fashioned body, as well as her work as faculty director of the Cornell Costume & Textile Collection.

36 FALL 2018

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Green

Alumni

SPECIAL NICHE

Based on community, Jenny Graap ’86 has built a dominating Big Red lacrosse program

The player

The high-per

Cornell University Marketing Group ; provided

The coach

One thing Jenny Graap FSAD ’86, loved about her time as an undergrad in the College of Human Ecology was the opportunity to make connections. At a big university like Cornell, Graap felt like she found “a special niche, an ability to connect on a smaller, more intimate level.”

She has worked to create this same feeling as the head coach of Cornell’s Women’s Lacrosse team. “I want our lacrosse program to also present that small family atmosphere, where people are caring for and looking out for each other,” she said.

She sought to create a program where students, coaches and staff are all “paying attention to and inspiring one another.”

Graap has spent the past 21 years building the Cornell community, and has tallied 200 wins as Cornell’s head coach along the way.

As an undergrad, Graap studied apparel and textile design while also captaining the varsity women’s field hockey and lacrosse teams. She went on to work at Bloomingdale’s in New York City, where she also took classes on sports marketing. After a few years there, Graap realized that she missed being deeply involved in athletics and began to shift her attention toward coaching.

She headed to Penn State, where she earned her master’s degree in exercise and sports science while assistant coaching the Nittany Lions women’s lacrosse team. This led to four years as head coach of women’s lacrosse at George Mason University.

In 1997, the head coaching position opened up at Cornell.

Intrigued by the idea of working at her alma mater, Graap made the decision to return to Ithaca.

r designer

formance wea

In the early 2000s, Graap enjoyed the opportunity to work with the fashion label DKNY to design Cornell’s lacrosse uniforms, which the team wore in their NCAA Final Four tournament. Though coaching and apparel design might not often overlap, this was an example of Graap’s experiences and expertise intersecting. “I want the athletes at Cornell to have the best of everything,” she said. “The best facilities, the best university, the best education. I want them to feel proud of their Big Red experience.” And Graap is constantly working to make that happen.

From the Olympic level to the college level, women’s sports often receive less attention and resources than men’s. It is an ongoing challenge, but one that is universal. In working to keep her program competitive, Graap never stops championing it.

“It’s part of the reason why the job stays relevant and exciting to me,” Graap said. “The landscape is always adjusting; the rules of the game are constantly changing…there’s so much innovation.” Whether it’s dealing with changes in safety gear, goggles and helmets or encouraging young women to build and believe in their own athletic abilities, Graap focuses on what her athletes need to succeed.

When she was a student herself, Graap knew she wanted a career that allowed her to influence people’s lives. She has found that work as a thoughtful and dedicated coach. “As I grow older, I hope that my experience continues to be helpful and empowering to my athletes,” she said.

If the past 21 years heading the women’s lacrosse program is any indication, Graap has nothing to worry about.

– Amanda K. Jaros HUMAN ECOLOGY 37

NUTRITION REHABILITATION Wendy Sterling ’99 is helping teens and athletes be their best selves

38 FALL 2018

Sterling discussing “No Weigh” on television

The plate-by-plate approach incorporates family-based treatment to have parents take control of the plate and model exposure to a variety of foods, rather than focusing on diet or weight, which, Sterling said, should not be part of the discussion with teens struggling with eating disorders.

“The plate teaches them from the beginning to fill their plate with what looks normal and balanced,” she said. “We guide the parents along the way to do that so that when kids transition back to a normal approach, they’re still just using a plate. It works. We can help people normalize their body’s functions and metabolism, while rebuilding their relationship with food.”

“No Weigh! A Teen’s Guide to Body Image, Food, and Emotional Wisdom”, also released in July, is geared toward teaching teens about connected eating, body positivity, balanced exercise and how to navigate puberty, emotions and stress, giving teens the tools they need to become confident with their body and food choices. Sterling co-wrote the book with a adolescent medicine doctor and therapist.

Sterling said she loves spending time working with adolescents and families, in part because treating eating disorders at younger ages improves the impact and efficacy of treatment. Her advice for parents who suspect their child might have disordered eating: “Trust your intuition and investigate. The sooner you catch it, the better the prognosis. There’s no advantage to tiptoeing around it.”

When she is not working in private practice or writing books about groundbreaking approaches to treating adolescent eating disorders, the mother of two whose husband is also a Cornellian (Peter Sterling ‘98), is busy coordinating three meals a day for the Oakland A’s players, both at home and on the road. One of her favorite things about working in sports nutrition is the ability to measure improvement.

“When athletes come in with a performance issue, it is often tied to nutrition,” she said. “We can go through and systematically evaluate their diet – the balance, consistency and nutrient timing – and get a sense of what’s going on. When we correct the imbalances athletes get faster, stronger with more explosive energy. We can use nutrition to elevate their performance. They’re excited and I’m excited. It’s just fun.”

– E.C. Barrett

Freepik ; Provided

Adolescent nutritionist and Oakland Athletics’ team dietitian Wendy Meyer Sterling DNS ’99 is having a big year with the release of two new books aimed at helping teens overcome eating disorders, connect to their eating, and rehabilitate their bodies.

Released in July, “How to Nourish Your Child through an Eating Disorder” offers an innovative guide for parents to manage food for a child struggling with an eating disorder. The plate-by-plate approach teaches parents and adolescents a no-numbers, no-counting and no-measuring approach to eating that Sterling and co-writer Casey Crosbie developed and honed in their own practices and their work with the Healthy Teen Project, a partial hospitalization program in Los Altos, California.

Sterling explained that previously popular approaches to treating eating disorders in adolescents relied too heavily on counting calories, which can aggravate the problem for kids who are already pre-occupied with numbers. For many years in her own private practice in New York, she utilized an exchange-based tactic that teaches kids to eat again by telling them they have a certain number of milks, vegetables, grains, proteins, and fats to spend as they wish for the day. While it was rewarding for a kid to figure out how a brownie or cookie could fit safely into their eating habits, Sterling said, it was hard for them to give up the exchange model.

“Eventually they need to transition off these exchanges, but they’re often still bound by those numbers, they aren’t learning to eat freely,” she said.

Alumni

THINKING BIG

Patricia Newman ’81 inspires children to dream through her writing Patricia Newman HD ’81 has a passion for conservation stories, fascinating aspects of the natural world and writing books that lead children on adventures of self-discovery.

“When I was an undergrad at Cornell, my classes reinforced that we are citizens of the world,” she said. “Our actions don’t simply impact people in our tiny spheres, but oftentimes, ripple all over the world,” In her writing, typically non-fiction for middle-grade readers, Newman tries to emphasize global citizenship to help children figure out their place in the world. By exposing them to exciting aspects of nature and science, she hopes to inspire them to think big in their lives.

“Kids in school are trying to figure out where they fit, who has similar problems, and who has the same questions,” she said. “When kids read, they often find answers within the pages of a book – whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. I’m trying to let kids in on the secret that they have a voice. What they think matters because they will be the future change-makers of our world.”

In her most recent book, “Eavesdropping on Elephants: How Listening Helps Conservation,” she takes readers deep into the forests of the Central African Republic, going behind the scenes of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Elephant Listening Project. Scientists research forest elephant communication and explore crucial conservation efforts that seek to keep the majestic animals safe from poaching, logging, mining and increasing human interference. Newman also includes QR codes that link to audio and video, allowing young readers to see and hear the elephants as the scientists did.

As a student at Cornell, Newman says she blossomed.

She studied Italian, French literature and children’s literature, along with the required classes for her child development major within Human Development.

“I’ve always been people-oriented, definitely kidoriented,” Newman said. “I remember listening to [Professor] Henry Ricciuti’s lectures about low birth weight babies and his research to help mothers in developing countries. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I’d really love to do something with that kind of impact.’”

After graduation, Newman taught remedial math to high school students and worked as a programmer for a computer software company. After moving to

Flaticon ; Provided

California with her husband, also a Cornell alum, she reunited with the University as the assistant director of its western regional office, visiting with prospective students and planning alumni activities. When her first child was born, she decided to focus on motherhood.

Reading to her children one day, both who would become Cornell graduates themselves, her mother-in-law told her that she should write her own books for children, and Newman took her seriously. Since then, she has written more than a dozen books, many of them about real people in the real world doing real work. She hopes these books inspire kids to find their own passion.

“Eavesdropping on Elephants is a great example of passion at work,” she said. “Scientists from Cornell split their time between their lab in Ithaca and the field in the Central African Republic. They work as fast and as hard as they can to make sure they get the appropriate kind of data to help national park officials manage the resources needed to keep the elephants alive.”

The education Newman received at Cornell gave her the wherewithal to understand the science, she said. “That understanding allows me to translate difficult concepts for fourth and fifth graders, while at the same time finding the right hook that will interest kids – the leaders of tomorrow.”

Newman’s books include the Sibert Honor title “Sea Otter Heroes: The Predators That Saved an Ecosystem,” “Bank Street College Best Book Zoo Scientists to the Rescue,” and Green Earth Book Award winner “Plastic, Ahoy!

Investigating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” She frequently “When kids read, they often find speaks at schools, libraries, answers within the pages of a and conferences about writing and conservation. Visit her at book—whether it’s fiction or www.patriciamnewman.com. non-fiction. I’m trying to let kids

in on the secret that they have a voice. What they think matters because they will be the future change-makers of our world.”

– Patricia Newman

– Stephen D’Angelo

HUMAN ECOLOGY 39

FUTURE INVESTMENTS NYC field trip encourages students to consider finance careers Knowing what to do with their new degrees can be a challenge for students.

This past April, alumni Peter Gingold PAM ’96, Jeremy Herz PAM ’98 and Michael Siegel PAM ’97, teamed up to organize, host and fund student travel and accommodations for a two-day finance field trip in New York City. The trip offered eight freshmen and sophomores in Policy Analysis and Management the chance to learn about various careers in finance.

Gingold, managing director of Angelo, Gordon & Co., remembers what it felt like to be unsure of the next steps. “I came from a small town outside of Syracuse,” he said.

“I didn’t know what it meant to work on Wall Street or be an investment banker or bond trader. That was foreign to me. I really wanted to provide an outlet for students who don’t have any understanding of Wall Street.”

The trip consists of an informal reception, meant to expose students to a diversity of ideas and experiences of finance alumni

living in the city, and then visiting the offices of each participating alumnus to learn about a variety of careers paths within the industry.

For Siegel, president and CEO of RBC Alternative Asset Management and a managing director at RBC Capital Markets, the trip was a way to encourage students to consider careers in finance. “The interdisciplinary programs at the College of Human Ecology provide students with an excellent foundation for careers in finance, but financial services is not a common career path for graduates,” he said.

Siegel said he was pleased by the quality of students who applied and were accepted for the field trip. “The students represented the College very well,” he said. “They were attentive, personable and asked thoughtful questions. Their preparation allowed for meaningful engagement with the RBC employees.”

Herz, managing director of the credit team for MSD Partners, said he is already looking forward to next year’s finance field

trip. “We got some great feedback from the students,” he said. “It was the first year of the program, so going forward we’ll make some modifications, but overall it was a good experience and students showed a lot of interest.”

Alumni considering hosting students for internships and externships, providing invaluable experiential learning opportunities for student career exploration, may contact heaad@cornell.edu for more information.

“As alumni, we have a responsibility to provide resources and help when we can,” Gingold said. “The students appreciate it, the school, the dean and the alumni affairs office really appreciate it, and it’s a great way to provide another resource to make Cornell even better than it already is. Many of us are successful post-Cornell and this is an easy way to give back our time and money to a really worthy cause.”

– E.C. Barrett

FASHION BUSINESS

Taking time out of a burgeoning career to pursue a Master’s of Business Administration degree comes at a cost. But a growing number of Fiber Science & Apparel Design (FSAD) grads consider a year or two of lost income and the price of tuition a worthwhile investment.

Take Susan Freeman FSAD ’13, for example. Even as a teenager working at a yarn store in Omaha, Nebraska, she knew that she wanted to pursue a career on the fashion industry’s business side. After graduating from Cornell, Freeman “I see FSAD and now immediately joined a rotational my MBA as the backbone training program at women’s clothing brand Eileen Fisher and and foundation that I will continued on the retail buying leverage to get me there team for the next four and a half in the next twenty or years. She frequently sought out thirty years.” special projects at the company – Susan Freeman’13 – inspired in part by her previous 40 FALL 2018

leadership and business experience in the Cornell Fashion Collective (CFC), which reinforced her desire to pursue an MBA. Once Freeman graduates from the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management in two years, she hopes to transition into consulting before eventually working toward becoming the CEO of a large apparel company.

“I see FSAD and now my MBA as the backbone and foundation that I will leverage to get me there in the next twenty or thirty years,” she said.

Brittany Lutz FSAD ’12 is on a similar trajectory. Like Freeman, the native of Glenmont, New York practiced her management skills as president of the CFC and began her post-Cornell career in New York City. After three years as a buyer at Bloomingdale’s, Lutz got a taste of an internal strategy role and realized an MBA would

Dede Hatch ; Flaticon; Pexels ; provided

Fiber Science & Apparel Design alumnae look to MBA to elevate careers

Alumni

DESIGN GIFT

Julie Salles Schaffer ’89 lets D+EA students flex creative muscles

Schaffer

Julie Salles Schaffer D+EA ’89 knows building design inside and out. The former interior design major has constructed a career in architecture on the foundation of creativity, flexibility and hard work – skills she hopes to nurture in current Cornell undergraduates through generous donations to the College of Human Ecology.

“My background in interior design is unusual for an architect,” said Salles Schaffer, who chose her Human Ecology major because – unlike pure design schools – it allowed her to flex her creative muscles while taking classes across a wide array of disciplines. “I consider the interior of a project to be as important as the exterior.

The inside and the outside inform each other.”

At her firm, Salles Schaffer Architecture, Salles Schaffer and a handful of employees have been applying this marriage of function and aesthetic to a wide-range of projects in Manhattan and beyond since 2001. Her designs for interior family spaces, offices, exterior projects, her family’s Connecticut vacation home, and even furniture, have earned her steady word-ofmouth recommendations, coverage in such publications as Architecture Magazine and Vogue, as well as the Matthew W. Del Gaudio Award from the New York Society of Architects.

Salles Schaffer attributes her success not least to a core lesson she internalized as a D+EA student: “I was taught to focus on what a client is really saying, know how to record it, and work it into the design,” she explained. “For example, many kitchen renovations require some intense understanding of the way my

Provided; Zach Silverstein

Designed by Salles Schaffer Architecture

take her further in that direction. She graduated from Columbia Business School in May 2018.

“In those two years, I often felt I was drinking water through a fire-hose,” Lutz said. “The MBA strengthened my knowledge of strategy, finance, operations and leadership, building out my personal toolkit for tackling complex business problems.”

Lutz has been applying these skills as a senior associate in the strategy practice of KPMG. “My position as a generalist allows me to work outside my retail comfort zone,” she explained. In her future career, she plans to serve in the leadership of a major company and start her own business.

That is where Josefina Hamren FSAD ’14 MBA ’18 is headed, as well, albeit it in a different industry.

After graduation, Hamren entered the tech sector via a product development consultancy and then location intelligence company Foursquare.

“FSAD’s cross-disciplinary curriculum prepared me

client lives. The cabinetry guts can be a puzzle to solve just as fascinating as regarding land on a site.”

In 1996, she earned a Master’s Degree in Architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and went on to work for architect Bernard Tschumi. “I learned the importance of developing and holding on strongly to a concept in your own work,” Salles Schaffer said.

Thanks to her recent donation to the department of D+EA, several students got to experience firsthand the flexibility required to make such original ideas jibe with outside requirements.

Under the tutelage of Associate Professor So-Yeon Yoon, undergraduates Brendan Elliott, Jialin Ke and Jonathan Pao were selected to create Pulse, an installation in an 8x8x8foot cubic space. It provided visitors with an immersive, therapeutic musical experience and awareness of their heart beat.

“The students had set out to do one installation in concept, and when the exhibit needed to be tailored to the experimental space, they learned to transform their initial plans,” Salles Schaffer said. “I’m happy that the show enabled the students to experiment with some interesting ideas about human perception and space and get some outside feedback on their work. I think it’s important to give back to Cornell and the department that taught me so much.”

– Olivia Hall

to thrive in an environment where I had to just as easily understand business concepts as I did engineering specs and user experience design,” she said.

Eventually she hopes to bring her multidisciplinary skills to bear in her own company.

Seeking an MBA, these FSAD grads may be in the vanguard of a growing trend, as their peers begin to recognize how this type of investment can pay off.

“FSAD’s cross-disciplinary “Many people in the fashion industry still curriculum prepared me to question the value of an MBA,” Freeman said. thrive in an environment where “However, my peers and I are seeing many retail I had to just as easily businesses struggle in the competitive and everunderstand business concepts changing environment and that there is definitely as I did engineering specs and an opportunity to further develop internal strategy user experience design.” teams to keep the businesses competitive and – Josefina Hamren profitable. So while many of my FSAD peers are still working in fashion, many have also switched into roles FSAD ’14 MBA ’18 like user experience design or are also thinking about pursuing their MBA.” – Olivia Hall

HUMAN ECOLOGY 41

TELEMEDICINE

Laura Stokes ’13 impacts women’s health through Pacify work

– Olivia Hall

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“We learned the practice of zooming out and considering the broad implications of interventions and policies. This is an essential skill for anyone in the field of public health.”

– Laura Stokes PAM ’13

Infant Health: There’s an app for that

Provided

Making health care not only widely accessible but downright fun may seem like a tall order. But that is exactly what Laura Stokes PAM ’13 hopes to accomplish at telemedicine startup Pacify.

Founded in 2014, the company applies the model of on-demand availability – popularized through ride-sharing services such as Lyft – to maternal and child health. Subscribers download the Pacify app onto their smartphones and connect to nurses, nutritionists and lactation consultants for live video consultations around the clock, in English or Spanish.

A Policy Analysis and Management major with minors in global health and inequality studies, Stokes serves as Director of Public Health Programs and forges partnerships with government agencies and non-profit organizations to bring Pacify’s services to low-income families around the country. Some 8,500 women have signed up for free access through five Medicaid and ten public health partnerships.

“I decided to join the Pacify team because I wanted to play an active role in integrating cutting-edge technology into the services that are provided to underserved communities,” said Stokes, who became the startup’s fourth employee in early 2015 – bringing with her an understanding of the barriers and the scalable potential of large, established institutions from first-hand experience as a public servant.

“The fieldwork I did in Tanzania as a global health student motivated me to enter the field of public health after graduation,” Stokes explained, noting that she became a public health associate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shortly after graduation.

There, Stokes worked with partners to implement policies that promote the health of children and families. She quickly identified lack of support for new and expecting parents as a major public health challenge.

Stokes frequently drew on her Cornell coursework. “In PAM, we learned the practice of zooming out and considering the broad implications of interventions and policies,” she said. “This is an essential skill for anyone in the field of public health.”

When she learned about Pacify from a friend, she took a chance and sent a message directly to the CEO. “I told him a bit about my work with CDC and asked if he would be open to piloting the app in low-income communities,” Stokes said.

The first state-wide Pacify program in Mississippi is one of Stokes’ proudest accomplishments and proved that app-based services could improve health outcomes in a convenient and cost-effective manner. The state’s department of health reported a ten percent increase in exclusive breastfeeding rates at three and six months just nine months after implementing the project. According to additional pilot studies, the app may produce $875 savings per birth due to prolonged breastfeeding, as well as 96 fewer emergency room visits per 1,000 enrolled moms.

“The opportunity to work with people at all levels of the public health system is very rewarding, as is feedback we get from parents explaining how a Pacify provider ‘talked them off a ledge,’” Stokes said. “I hope that Pacify shows how technology can be used to fill gaps in care and deliver services in a way that is enjoyable for both patients and providers.”

Alumni

GIVING BACK

“Throughout my career I’ve encountered a lot of people from the different Ivy schools and I think those from Cornell tend to be more well-rounded, down-to-earth, and generally just good people,” he said.

Herz said he had no clue what he wanted to do when he first got to Cornell and credits Human Ecology’s unique curriculum with providing students the opportunity to explore their passions.

“Human Ecology allows students to have an incredibly flexible curriculum, more so than any other school at Cornell, and being able to pursue what you like is extremely valuable,” he said.

“I was able to take classes in the art school and the agriculture school. I took a lot of advanced economics classes in Human Ecology, but also child psychology courses and accounting and statistics and a business law class. I got to explore the full range of my interests.”

Herz was recruited for his first job working at an investment bank when a Cornell alumus visited campus. In 2005, he earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Wharton School and has worked for the Quantum Group of Funds, Insight Capital and DLJ. In 2011, he joined MSD Partners, where he is managing director of the credit team.

“In my career and in my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to have mentors and people who have helped me out,” he said. “I consider myself very lucky and I’m at a place in my career where I can afford to give back. I feel good about being able to give back because at some point in my life I needed the help. That’s why I do it.”

Jeremy Herz ’98 Annual Scholarship Jeremy Herz PAM ’98 has been supporting Human Ecology both financially and with his time and service for years, first by conducting interviews with potential students and then by serving as chair of the Queens committee.

With the recently established Jeremy Herz Annual Scholarship, he will provide $10,000 a year for the next five years to a student in Human Ecology. “There are students in need, who would love to go to Cornell but don’t have the financial wherewithal to attend,” Herz said. “Hopefully this can help ease the Herz burden.”

When asked why he is so passionate about Human Ecology, Herz’s first response: the people he met. “Look at my wedding party, there were four people in it,” he said. “One was my brother and the other three were my closest friends from Cornell. Here we are twenty-some years later and they are still my closest friends.”

Smaller class sizes meant that Herz also developed relationships with some of his professors, connections he maintains to this day.

– E.C. Barrett

VITAL CONNECTIONS Lou Bergholz ’94 aims to help young people thrive

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There is one essential element that young people need to thrive: relationships with caring adults.

In his new book, “Vital Connections: Harnessing the Power of Relationship to Impact the Lives of Young People,” Human Ecology alumnus Lou Bergholz HD ’94 distills decades of working in youth and adult development into a collection of powerful stories and practical techniques for how to positively impact the lives of young people.

“There are three ways you help young people become successful,” Bergholz explained. “There

are formal activities, such a curriculum, there is culture, and then there are relationships. In all the research I’ve looked at, in almost every corner of the world, relationships consistently show up as the most protective factor for young people.”

In his book, Bergholz describes six practices for building relationships that he gleaned from working with young people across the globe.

These include designing a sports program for adolescent girls affected by complex trauma, implementing an after-school program in Gaza focused on mental health promotion and violence prevention, and working with Paul Newman’s global network of summer camps for children and families affected by illness.

Bergholz uses the same concepts about relationship building to work with corporations, schools and non-

profit organizations by promoting teamwork, communication and leadership. He does this through his business, Edgework Consulting, which he founded in 2001.

“The idea behind Edgework is that everyone has a comfort zone,” he said. “Just outside of that, they have a stretch zone where they are learning and growing. And beyond that is a panic zone. We help our clients to work at the edge of their stretch zone, where they are learning and growing the most. That’s where the name Edgework comes from.”

Bergholz credits the College of Human Ecology with much of his focus on helping people to become their best. He remembers experiencing an “aha” moment when coming across a Human Development brochure at Cornell’s Ithaca campus.

“I didn’t know what I wanted to study when I was applying to college,” he said. “I was sitting

in an Arts and Science information session when I saw a brochure about Human Development on the shelf next to me. I read [it], turned to my mother and told her this was what I wanted to do.”

“I soaked up every course, from “Close Relationships Across the Life Span” to “The Role and Meaning of Play,” he said. “I didn’t know it at the time, but studying the ways people grow and evolve over their life course would form the foundation of all my work. My degree was incredibly important in launching all that I do now.”

You can learn more about Bergholz and his work at www. loubergholz.com and his company at www.edgeworkconsulting.com – Sheri Hall

HUMAN ECOLOGY 43

Domains

MVR RENOVATIONS Sustainability by the Numbers

Human Ecology’s Facilities and Computing Services teams

MVR Hall renovations are in full swing, and in plain sight! Construction crews have broken ground and begun their work, and the relocation of a significant number of College faculty and staff across the University is complete. This surge has moved Human Ecology offices and labs to 12 sites on the main Cornell campus and two University satellite facilities in Ithaca.

Some impressive facts show that this was no small feat: • Roughly 7,500 boxes were moved over the course of 10.5 move days.

With a staff of four movers per move day, that’s 190 boxes per person per move day.

• Between June and August, Human Ecology Facilities spent over 550 hours

of design time in support of office layout. A single designer worked with the

team for 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week for 2 straight months.

Surge A location occupants

Clearing out several hundred offices has also been a massive sustainability opportunity for the College. Prior to the move, Human Ecology facility managers carefully crafted a waste and reuse plan, giving members of the College community the opportunity to discard unneeded items in a sustainable and responsible way.

Avoiding landfill is a key priority. Here are the outcomes to date:

eWaste: approximately 5,900 pounds of electronics recycled

Books: roughly 6,900 pounds of books donated or recycled

Paper: approximately 13,300 pounds of paper shredded and recycled

Thornwood location occupants 44 FALL 2018

This Phase three of the MVR renovation project as a whole, similar to past construction, is pursuing Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) gold or platinum status, which are the two highest achievements within the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.

LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.

This ensures consistency with each facet of the design and construction of the MVR renovation as it reflects a careful commitment to responsible stewardship and sustainability, including the surge and relocation portion of the project.

For more details around the MVR Renovations, see human.cornell.edu/ renovations – Stephen D’Angelo

Flaticon; Mark Vorreuter; Sheryl Sinkow

Furniture: 5000 square feet of product redistributed at zero cost to members of the College, University and Ithaca communities

Lauren Braun ’11 DEGREE:

Bachelor of Science, Human Development POSITION: President and Founder, Alma Sana Inc.

MY CORNELL CLASSES AND IMMERSIVE LEARNING EXPERIENCES REINFORCED THE FACT THAT PEOPLE DON’T HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO QUALITY HEALTH CARE. While living in Peru, I researched childhood vaccination rates and realized parental forgetfulness was a systemic problem resulting in lives lost and money wasted. By listening to parents’ needs, I designed a simple tool to help them remember the vaccination dates.

improving child health in developing countries.

Learn more about the College of Human Ecology at human.cornell.edu

Ithaca, New York 14853-4401

Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage Paid Cornell University

In 1938, Flora Rose chaired the Home Management section of the 7th International Management Congress held in Washington D.C., Sept. 19 to 23 under the sponsorship of the International Committee of Scientific Management. This Congress – the first to be held in the United Sates – brought together authorities on management as applied to industry, commerce, finance, the farm, and the home from about forty countries. More than 200 selected papers by such expert authorities formed the basis of discussions that more than 2,500 people attended.

Photo courtesy of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library