Cornell announced the creation of the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment, a new school within the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, in an article published by the Cornell Chronicle on Tuesday.
Stephen B. Ashley ’62, MBA ’64, the school’s namesake, gifted CALS an endowment of $55 million, which will go toward establishing the new school. Ashley’s endowment is the largest that CALS has received.
The new school will merge two existing CALS departments — the Department of Global Development and the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment. Focusing on environmental problem-solving, the school will instruct across the disciplines of ecological science, social innovation and community engagement, according to its new website.
“This investment to create the Ashley School is both timely and visionary, allowing us to bring together the expertise in agricultural, life, environmental and social sciences that underpin environmental and human well-being locally and globally,” President Michael Kotlikoff said in the Cornell Chronicle article.
600 undergraduate students, 140 graduate students and 107 faculty members will make up the Ashley School. The school will support the environment and sustainability undergraduate major, the global development undergraduate major, five undergraduate minors, four master’s degree programs and two Ph.D. degrees, according to the Chronicle.
Students currently enrolled in the existing programs will not be affected by the establishment of the new school, according to the Chronicle.
Prof. Richard Stedman, natural resources and the environment, was announced interim head of the Ashley School after teaching in the natural resources department and serving as the department’s chair.
Professors in CALS’ global development and natural resources departments were named interim section heads for the school. Prof. Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, global development, will be interim section head of the Global Development section, and Prof. Rebecca Schneider, natural resources and the environment, will be interim section head of the Natural Resources section.
CALS intends to add 10 new faculty members to the school, three of which will specialize in agricultural, development and environmental economics, according to the Dean of CALS, Prof. Benjamin Houlton, ecology and evolutionary biology and global development.
“[Ashley’s] vision will allow us to leverage research, teaching and extension to address many of the world’s greatest challenges — personifying our land-grant mission,” Houlton said in the Cornell Chronicle.
The endower, Ashley, holds a long history with Cornell. He earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree from Cornell, and served on the Cornell Board of Trustees for 16 years. For 10 years, he served as co-chair for Cornell’s Far Above capital campaign, which raised $6.3 billion for the University. In 2016, he received the University’s Frank H.T. Rhodes Exemplary Alumni Service Award, which the University called “the university’s highest award for alumni service.”
Ashley said that his family holds a “strong, multigenerational relationship” with Cornell, and that he met his wife through the university.
“I am delighted to be able to support this initiative, which has been so thoughtfully framed and structured,” Ashley said in the Chronicle article. “I appreciate how it creates even stronger collaborations between agriculture, environmental science, economics and research to positively impact communities.”
Varsha Bhargava is a member of the Class of 2027 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is a news editor for the 143rd Editorial Board and can be reached at vbhargava@cornellsun.com.
