During my 23 years at Cornell I have served both on Faculty Senate and as a School and College administrator. Those experiences feed my strong belief that our shared governance model is central to the university's strength. Faculty are key partners with senior University administrators as we together strive to safeguard and enhance Cornell's excellence in its many functions serving diverse stakeholder groups. Faculty do and must have substantive, high-level input into strategic policy and investment decisions. I have productively engaged with both Faculty Senate and University administration in multiple roles over the years and would be honored to serve on the University Faculty Committee.

 

 

I am quite concerned about the lack of influence of the University Faculty over university initiatives such as the decision to create the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management or the Cornell and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and now, the decision to continue negotiations with China over the creation of a joint degree program with Food Science despite the Faculty warnings that it includes an Chinese indoctrination program that abhorrent to academia.

 

Mariana Federica Wolfner is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Molecular Biology and Genetics, and a Stephen H. Weiss Fellow. She was an undergraduate at Cornell majoring in Biology and Chemistry, obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Stanford University, and did postdoctoral work at UCSD before joining the Cornell faculty in 1983. Mariana’s lab studies the function, regulation, and evolution of proteins that are essential for reproduction, primarily in insects. Their results are relevant to controlling insect-borne diseases and to understanding human infertility. Her work is collaborative and interdisciplinary, a feature that she enjoys. Mariana has mentored in research over 40 graduate students, 30 postdoctoral fellows, 90 undergraduates and several high school students. Her teaching includes evolutionary developmental biology and advanced genetics. Mariana has served in many capacities at Cornell, including Associate Department Chair, Director of Graduate Studies, Faculty-elected Trustee, member of FACTA, and on the Provost’s Life Science Advisory and Research Advisory Councils, and her department’s Diversity Council and DEI Committee. She actively mentors junior faculty in her department and beyond. Her interest in undergraduate and graduate education/mentoring and the student experience led to service on the General Committee of the Graduate School and on curriculum committees in the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of Undergraduate Biology and the Provost’s office, and to participation as attendee or presenter in workshops such as the Faculty Institute for Diversity and Early-Career Faculty Grants Mentoring Program. Mariana was a Rawlings House Fellow at Alice Cook House for 12 years. Outside of Cornell, Mariana is very active in her discipline. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, she has been an officer of many professional-society boards, held editorial positions at multiple journals, organized numerous conferences and served there as mentor to early-career attendees, and reviewed grants for federal and international agencies.

 

I am a biologist who is fascinated by genetics, evolution, and developmental biology.  While these are my scholarly and teaching passions, they are so in the context of the much broader intellectual landscape that is represented at Cornell. The collegiality and caring, and the collaborative and interdisciplinary thought that pervade the top-level scholarship and academics here at Cornell are very important. I would like to continue working with colleagues across disciplines to keep these unique features strong in the face of pressures that affect our university, colleges, departments, scholarship, colleagues, and students. I am eager to continue bringing my perspectives as a faculty member and current UFC member, community member, and former faculty-elected trustee to help Cornell be an inclusive, safe, supportive, and intellectually-vibrant community for its faculty, students and staff.