Live long and prosper

The primary reason for my trip back to NYC last Saturday was to attend the spring meeting of the Cornell Alumni Federation, at the Cornell Club New York. I'm a co-director of the Northeast region, covering the Cornell Clubs of Boston, The Berkshires, Hartford CT and New Hampshire.

The Federation... My oldest son thought it was so cool that I was a member of Starfleet. Realize that for Christmas my family got "me" the complete series DVD set of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which my sons have watched in its entirety -- twice. But what was really neat was when the Director of Alumni Programs greeted us at the new members orientation meeting with the Vulcan hand sign. Jennifer, you are one cool dudette!

Also at the Cornell Club was a meeting of C'AC, Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network (CAAAN) Advisory Committee. As a past C'AC member and current chair of CAAAN Eastern MA I was allowed to sit in on their meeting, which I did for a few minutes. Kyle Downey, Volunteer Coordinator for the Admissions Office, reported that Cornell had another solid admissions cycle this year, which was great to hear. Cornell continues to be one of the few universities in the U.S. to have a need-blind admissions policy. That means admissions committee members are not told how much, if any, financial aid each applicant needs. Another reason to be proud of Cornell.

Pragati Thakkar, CAAAN chair of the Boston/Cambridge committee, helped secure a grant to purchase CAAAN pins for all 7,000+ volunteers. By the way CAAAN is Cornell's largest alumni organization. I was given 200 pins to distribute across ten of the CAAAN committees in my area. How I'm going to do that, only god and the bartender know, as my father-in-law would say. Maybe I could use transporter technology...