Attracting Top Faculty
An endowed professorship is a recognition of a scholar's worth from the scholar's own university. It confers a kind of satisfaction which no outside honor or award can match. It is also such a nice way to acknowledge a donor's generosity. And by guaranteeing some research support, it enables a researcher to be extra productive.
While the Institute for the Social Sciences' Small Grant and Faculty Fellows programs recognize the promise of rising stars and send a direct message to them that their work is valued, Cornell also must address an unprecedented challenge affecting its tenured faculty: the surge of retirements that has started and will continue over the next 5 to 10 years.
Up to 600 of Cornell’s most senior faculty will be retiring, including many in the social sciences. This means that the university must act immediately to assemble the next generation of life-changing teachers and world-changing researchers, and it must do so in an intensely competitive environment. To succeed, Cornell needs substantial new resources to attract and keep professors of the highest caliber.
The Social Sciences Initiative seeks to endow at least three senior professorships in departments where they will have the greatest impact.
These centralized professorships give the provost the flexibility to provide funding for a top social sciences faculty member whose presence will solidify the university’s leadership in a specific area of study and help attract junior faculty and top-tier graduate students.
Perhaps most important of all, the distinction of holding a named senior professorship represents one of the most powerful tools that Cornell can call upon to recognize, retain, and recruit the best faculty.