PUBLISHER'S LETTER
From the publisher
We all know that Cornell has been a global university for a long, long time.
From enrolling international students in the late 1800s and launching major international projects in the 1920s to realizing the recent success of trustee emeritus and alumnus Martin Tang's fundraising challenge for scholarships for international students, we are opening the world to our students more than ever before. It's no surprise that we sometimes call Cornell the "land-grant university to the world" – it's in our DNA.
Cornell has more than 180 active agreements with other academic institutions across the world; almost 2,000 students a year travel abroad to dozens of countries to study, conduct research and participate in service-learning projects. International students from 115 countries comprise 19.5 percent of total enrollment on our campus – the highest percentage in a decade.
And yet, we need and want to do more. As President David Skorton noted in his 2012 white paper, we need to continue to extend our global reach, internationalize the curriculum further, coordinate across colleges to facilitate global study and increase the number of students having international experiences to restore our leadership in an ever more interconnected world.
In this issue of Ezra, see how Cornell is responding to President Skorton's challenge and discover why – as Fredrik Logevall, vice provost for international affairs, describes it – it's crucial that Cornellians have an international mindset and a sense of "global citizenship."
Tracy Vosburgh
Assistant Vice President, University Communications
Editor's note: Ezra bid farewell to founding publisher Tommy Bruce in October, and we welcome AVP Tracy Vosburgh to the helm.