So a couple of years ago, Hunter Rawlings declared that he would make Cornell the best research university for undergraduate education in the country. People oohhed and ahhed over it, and it even got mentioned in such things as the Fiske guide. President Skorton re-asserted this ideal in his inaugural address this September, in a provocative question asking whether or not all Cornell graduates should complete a research project before graduating. A very noble and worthwhile goal, I would add. But Skorton mentioned something else in his speech--the creation of the Lehman Fund to foster substantive interaction between Cornell graduate students and professors and institutions of higher education in China. To be fair, it is a very exciting and gracious gesture to the man who sought to make Cornell the "transnational university" of the future. But oddly enough, though, undergraduates cannot be the receipient of these funds... even though the university's mission is explicity geared towards research and the undergraduate experience. So why isn't the Jeffrey Sean Lehman fund for undergraduates as well?
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