In 2003, David Atkinson ’60 wrote a memo to Susan Henry, then dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). In it, he said he had an idea.
David Atkinson
Atkinson, a successful financier and CALS graduate, had just been selected to join CALS’ Advisory Council. At the time, an explosion of new research made it “inevitable,” Atkinson said, that Cornell would need to respond to climate change, and that agriculture would play key roles in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in feeding a growing global population. The Advisory Council had a sustainability task force focused on New York state.
But Atkinson believed Cornell had the potential to offer something more powerful: an endowed, multidisciplinary center to address sustainability.
“I felt that Cornell, as the highest-ranked American university with a school of agriculture, was the place to do this,” says Atkinson. “Cornell’s advantage was its overall excellence in other disciplines, combined with an existing culture of encouraging faculty to work across their fields.”
