Dr. Chelsea Specht is the Barbara McClintock Professor of Plant Biology and currently serves as the Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. She is a faculty member in the graduate fields of Plant Biology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a faculty fellow of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. She is also a member of the L.H. Bailey Hortorium and affiliated with the Herbarium and plant biodiversity collections. Chelsea’s research and teaching focuses on plant diversity and the evolution of plant form and function. She has an active lab with 5 current graduate students and 3 postdocs, all of whom engage in innovative research and demonstrate inclusive excellence through their lived experiences, actions and commitments to fostering a diverse and inclusive academia. 
   
   Dr. Specht moved from the University of California, Berkeley to join the Cornell faculty in July 2017. At UC Berkeley she served as a Faculty Equity Advisor for the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and served as Chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Student Demonstrations and Actions and the Committee on Diversity, Equity and Campus Climate. She was also part of a University of California-wide task force on Transforming Graduate Admissions funded by the Mellon Foundation, and with this group developed best practices for holistic graduate admissions that would support inclusive cultures for graduate programs by engaging faculty in the process of transforming admissions policies and mentoring practices. 
   
   Since 2017, Dr. Specht has served as the president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and is currently the Director for Diversity Equity and Inclusion for the Botanical Society of America. She is very interested in the role of scientific societies as agents of change, the importance of relational v. transactional approaches in DEI work, and the structural and organizational revolutions required to build an anti-racist and accessibility-oriented culture in STEM. She was named the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion for CALS in July 2019 and in this role has initiated and implemented a progressive mission for the CALS Office of Diversity and Inclusion: She supports departmental level efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion across the college; was a lead grant writer and serves on the steering committee for Cornell’s NIH FIRST award responsible for (a) recruiting 10 new faculty across multiple colleges and (b) developing and institutionalizing early career mentoring to support faculty recruitment and retention; serves on the Advisory Council for OFDD and for the Graduate School’s OISE; served a term on the Faculty Senate from 2018-2021 (CALS at-large senator); and served as the search committee chair for a recent CALS Cohort hire resulting in the hiring of 10 new faculty each of whom have established research programs that address science-based solutions to grand challenges in equity and inclusion.

 

I am interested in serving as Associate Dean of Faculty to work together with the Dean of Faculty and the Faculty Senate to promote the role of faculty in establishing sustainable excellence in research, teaching, extension and leadership across Cornell, and to build on our culture of inclusive excellence through shared governance. I am particularly invested in the role that faculty play as leaders of institutional transformation by implementing policies and practices that center integrative faculty development; by building long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders that enable us to extend our impact to marginalized communities and to institutions who serve students underrepresented in academia; by recognizing and rewarding innovations in diversity-based research, teaching and extension initiatives; by socializing best practices for inclusive mentoring, training, and classroom pedagogy; and by cultivating awareness, development and engagement amongst our students, faculty and staff. 

 

 

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Marilyn Migiel, Professor, Romance Studies (College of Arts and Sciences)

Marilyn Migiel received her A.B. in Medieval Studies (as an independent major) from Cornell in 1975 and her Ph.D. in Italian Language & Literature from Yale in 1981. Currently Professor of Romance Studies in the Department of Romance Studies, she has taught Italian language, literature, and culture at Cornell since 1986. She is known for her feminist readings of medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and for her studies of Giovanni Boccaccio’s work. Her last three books -- A Rhetoric of the “Decameron” (2003), The Ethical Dimension of the “Decameron” (2015), and Veronica Franco in Dialogue (forthcoming May 2022) – have received Modern Language Association prizes for outstanding scholarship in Italian. In 1995, she received the Stephen and Margery Russell Award for Distinguished Teaching in the College of Arts & Sciences. Her administrative and service record is extensive and includes: senior associate dean for arts and humanities (July 2016-August 2018); chair of Romance Studies (January 2015-June 2016); Director of Undergraduate Studies in Italian and in Romance Studies (12 years total); Director of Medieval Studies (1990-1993); Humanities Council (1991-1994); College Scholar faculty advisory board (1996-present); Faculty Committee on Program Review (2006-2009); University Appeals Panel (1998-2003, 2019-2024); A.D. White Professors-at-Large Selection Committee (2020-2023); Nominations and Elections Committee (2021-2024). She served as her department’s representative to the Faculty Senate in 1988-90 (when the Faculty Senate was the Faculty Council of Representatives), in 1991-2000, and in 2007-2011.

 

 When I was a first-generation college student, I benefited enormously from the top-notch liberal arts education I received at Cornell and from the academic, governance, and work opportunities I had as a resident of Cornell Branch of Telluride Association. I have chosen to stand for election to the post of Associate Dean of the Faculty because I am deeply committed to shared governance and I want Cornell to continue to be an institution characterized by intellectual and artistic excellence, cutting-edge research, teaching of the highest quality, and significant public engagement.
   
   If elected, I will work diligently to be well informed about faculty members’ views on issues of concern to them and I will assist the Dean of the Faculty as she/he represents the interests of the faculty to the Administration, the Trustees, employees, students, and alumni. 
   
   As I hail from a department that contains more RTE faculty than tenure-line faculty, and as I have had significant interactions with RTE faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences, I have seen first-hand the kinds of interlocking and differentiated challenges that University faculty and RTE faculty face. As Associate Dean of the Faculty, I would want to help the University Faculty be more aware of the concerns of the RTE faculty and vice versa.
   
   I will attend carefully to the Associate Dean of the Faculty’s other prescribed duties: chairing the Nominations & Elections Committee; serving as an ex officio member on each committee of the University Faculty and each committee of the Senate; supervising the maintenance of minutes of meetings and all records of the University Faculty and Senate; and supervising publications made in the name of the University Faculty. I am especially interested in helping the Nominations & Elections Committee promote broad faculty participation in governance.