Good Afternoon.

My name is Donna Goss and I serve as Chair of the Employee Assembly. If, by chance, I look remarkably like the person you just saw staffing the Buildings and Properties committee meeting, it’s because I am! I’d like to point out that many of our Employee Assembly members are in the audience today.

Like many other Cornell staff, I may also see you again on Sunday, as a Cornell Commencement volunteer. It’s THE most important and celebratory event of the year for us and hundreds of staff members volunteer their time to usher, hand out programs, post signs and make sure it doesn’t rain! (I’ve been carrying an umbrella, wearing a raincoat AND driving a dirty car all week!)

As a staff member, I’m particularly proud of the Cornell staff members who will be participating in this year’s commencement- as graduates. Through Cornell’s Employee Degree program, staff may enroll in classes to accumulate the necessary credits in order to earn a Cornell degree.

To honor this special group of graduates, the Office of Human Resources and the Employee Assembly sponsor an annual Staff Graduate Reception. President Skorton and President Carl Haynes of Tompkins Cortland Community College attended the celebration earlier this month and acknowledged the outstanding accomplishment of these 35 new graduates who juggled work, academic and family obligations to pursue their academic goals. Approximately 150 Cornell employees are enrolled in Cornell degree programs with another 250 tracking in degree programs at other institutions each year.

I would like to highlight a few of these extraordinary staff scholars.

IT consultant, Christina Bucko, wife, mother, and a former Employee Assembly member, completed her undergraduate degree in information system management under extremely challenging circumstances, including serving one deployment and 2 support missions totaling a 17-month tour of duty overseas in the Naval Reserves.

Through pursuit of an MBA at Cornell, Sunny Donnefeld, the Director of Distributed Support in the Office of Information Technology, realized the obstacles that administration has in trying to access students’ viewpoints. With the completion of this degree he has become much more in touch with student perspectives at Cornell.

Growing up on a farm near Albany, New York, Wendy Hoose ‘87, developed an early fascination for insects as she roamed the fields and woods. That love of dragonflies and other insects prompted Wendy to pursue and complete a graduate degree in entomology at Cornell. She plans to use the new credential to qualify for a higher level research position at Cornell with more scientific responsibilities.

In her role as the head of instruction and research services at the School of Hotel Administration’s Nestle Library, Mihoko Hosoi benefited greatly from the knowledge she obtained through the Master of Management in Hospitality (M.M.H.) degree program she completed. The experience helped her understand firsthand what faculty and students need from librarians to satisfy their research and coursework demands.

Susan Travis earned a Ph.D in human nutrition, her field of interest, and one in which she feels she can help make a difference in the world. Sue is currently a lecturer at Cornell as well as the community nutrition coordinator for the Dietetic Internship Program. Though she admits she didn’t fully appreciate the challenges that obtaining the degree would entail, she wanted to enhance her knowledge and skills- and found a way to make it work.

Jason Dale Woodward credits the support of his family, friends and co-workers in helping him achieve a balance between work, graduate coursework in engineering, and personal time. Grateful for Cornell’s Employee Degree Program, Jason, a senior web systems analyst at the Hotel School, looks for ways to give something back for all Cornell has given him.

These are some of our finest Cornell staff members. Please join me as I ask them to stand and be celebrated for their academic achievements.

Many of our graduates acknowledged the support they received from members of their work groups and other colleagues throughout the campus. The Cornell community is a caring community, a fact I’ve had the opportunity to experience very personally this week. On Wednesday, my ten-year-old Jack Russell terrier, whom I’d had since he was a pup, closed his eyes for the final time. To those who have not experienced the loss of a pet, it may be difficult to understand how the absence of a 15-pound dog can make a house feel so empty. But with my son away at college, Jax was the constant companion who would curl up in his bed under my desk while I worked through my graduate degree program. Through these past few difficult days, my Cornell family has supported me, sharing in my sorrow and, understanding that I had obligations I could not ignore, many reached out to help me.

Our senior administration understands both the critical importance of promoting a caring community, and the integral role that staff members play in the Cornell enterprise. In her first annual Academic State of the University Address, Provost Martin sent an important message when she emphasized the hard work that staff perform in support of university goals and initiatives. As a land-grant institution focused on teaching, research and public service, an educated staff provides Cornell the edge to achieve outreach efforts necessary to establish the university as a global educator.

Vice Provost for International Relations David Wippman spoke recently about international outreach and the opportunities for staff involvement there. We as leaders must focus more on connecting staff with the broader university mission. In this way, we create a Cornell community where every member feels value in the work that they do.

President Skorton, in particular has repeatedly acknowledged the important role of staff in supporting academic initiatives and providing administrative services. He recognizes and values our work at all levels. I believe we can find his attitude reflected in the following quote by John William Gardner, former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare:

“The most important moral of all is that excellence is where you find it. I would extend this generalization to cover not just higher education but all education from vocational high school to graduate school. We must learn to honor excellence, indeed to demand it in every socially accepted human activity, however humble that activity, and to scorn, shoddiness, however exalted the activity. An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. “