Behind the scenes with Cornell Community Relations

Greetings, and thanks for reading “East Hill Notes,” now in its 18th year.

I told a local leader the other day that I’ve never been prouder to live in Tompkins County or to be a native Finger Laker (Canandaigua).

We’re engaged with daily collaborations with scores of friends and neighbors engaged in current events at every level. Like many of you, it has been six or seven days a week full throttle since March, and a daily learning experience. (It’s sort of like when I was an opinion page editor at a local paper for a decade, mostly last century.)

I asked my colleagues who manage and run Community Relations to give East Hill Notes an inside look at our team’s work in recent weeks.

Kate Brill: “I was not prepared to take on three full-time jobs simultaneously — Community Relations colleague, mother and homeschool teacher. My work in Community Relations continued to focus on making ourselves accessible, with a concentration on utilizing social media platforms to get important information out to the public.

“I’ve also continued to engage with my Leadership Tompkins class. At our first LT class, we had to pick a leadership quote that we thought resonated with us. I chose ‘Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.’”

Penny Givin: “The work I have been doing during this time has been focused on scheduling Zoom meetings that keep the Community Relations staff connected, as well as scheduling important meetings that involve both Cornell, city, town and other community members.

“I have also been scheduling Community Relations virtual office hours and many other meetings that involve discussions about COVID-19 and Cornell’s reopening in the fall. I work closely with Gary, Susan and Kate in keeping the community informed and connected while we are all physically distanced from our office in Day Hall.”

Susan Riley: “The past several months have provided our Community Relations team the opportunity to connect campus and community in a number of ways: continuing service with the United Way of Tompkins County, Downtown Ithaca Alliance, Human Services Coalition and the Chamber of Commerce boards of directors; organizing and facilitating local neighborhood meetings; attending regular meetings with Cornell’s Office of Emergency Management; assisting with the facilitation of Community Relations office hour sessions; [and] responding to neighbor issues and concerns.”

Kate Supon: “More than ever, the past months highlight that Cornell and Ithaca/Tompkins are inexorably intertwined. From my dining room table, my work focuses on information sharing, including: tracking local economic indicators of COVID; scheduling and conducting interviews for our weekly radio show ‘All Things Equal’ on COVID-related topics and racial justice; modifying Cornell’s 2020 Census reporting process to allow reporting on students both on and off campus, given historically low response rates off campus; [and] organizing ‘town halls’ to address local residents’ concerns, initially on COVID, now largely around student return.”

East Hill Notes are published the first and third Wednesdays of each month. Gary Stewart is the associate vice president of Community Relations at Cornell University. He is proud to be part of the best town-gown office in the United States and grateful for our shared communities.