The Tisch University Professorships

The faculty are at the heart of any great university. By attracting and keeping the very best teachers and scholars, a university ensures its ability to achieve and maintain preeminence—in a department, field, program, or college—and to provide its students a world-class education. Andrew and Ann Tisch have given Cornell University a special opportunity, the kind that arises rarely and has the power to transform. The Tisch University Professorships represent a strategic investment in Cornell’s most fundamental resource, its faculty. The gift comes to the university at a pivotal moment, when the challenges posed by an increasingly fluid job market are greater than ever before and there is intense competition, throughout academe, for “the best of the best.”

By creating a new class of endowed professorships, Andrew and Ann Tisch lead the effort to maintain and enhance the caliber of Cornell’s faculty today and far into the future. The Tisch University Professorships will recognize Cornell faculty who are conducting world-class research and scholarship, and whose work and impact will be advanced by additional support. They will also allow the university to attract premiere faculty who are at the height of their academic careers, and who will understand that in coming to Cornell as a Tisch Professor, they will have the resources they need to perform and succeed at the highest level.

The Tisch University Professorships will not only help to guarantee Cornell’s existing strengths in key academic areas, but also provide the Provost and the President with critical resources to pursue new initiatives, reimagine disciplines, and fortify emerging interdisciplinary fields. Thanks to the generosity of Andrew and Ann Tisch, Cornell now has a uniquely adaptable and effective tool to build programs—­in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, and a wide range of cross-disciplinary endeavors.