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2025 Groat and Alpern Awardees

Scott Buchheit, M.S. ’77

A series of experiences during his ILR years helped Groat Award recipient Scott Buchheit build a deeper appreciation for different perspectives.

Scott Buchheit, M.S. '77
Read about Scott

Linda Gadsby ’88

The law, young people and providing educational opportunities are primary passion areas for Alpern Award recipient Linda Gadsby.

Linda Gadsby '88
Read about Linda

Alumni Stories

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Do Women in the U.S. Still Earn Less than Men?

Cornellians
Francine Blau ’66, an alumnae who’s an ILR professor emerita weighs in on the gender pay gap—how it has narrowed, and why it persists.
An illustrated image representing the gender pay gap. Credit: Ashley Osburn / Cornell University
Do Women in the U.S. Still Earn Less than Men?

Cheng-Cimini ’92 Is Ready to “Rewire”

After three decades as a human resources professional, Angela Cheng-Cimini ‘92 has decided to “rewire,” stepping away from her latest role as the senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Harvard Business Publishing.
Angela Cheng-Cimini '92
Cheng-Cimini ’92 Is Ready to “Rewire”

Fateh’s World View Cultivated at ILR

When Christopher Fateh ’13 first entered ILR, he didn’t want to limit his future by choosing a career path. The school gave him a well-rounded education and an appealing philosophy—that he could make a difference in the lives of regular people.
Christopher Fateh ’13
Fateh’s World View Cultivated at ILR

School violence reduction program led by 2007 alumna

Marie Schell ’07 is leading Maryland’s new Statewide Youth Conflict Coaching Pilot Program as project director and executive director of the Conflict Resolution Center of Baltimore County. 
Marie Schell ’07
School violence reduction program led by 2007 alumna

ILR’s EMHRM Program: “Best in Class”

Airbnb Global Talent Director Ruben Ponte says the Executive Master’s in Human Resource Management program emboldened him to help build the kind of company he would like his children to work at.
Portrait of Airbnb Global Talent Director Ruben Ponte
ILR’s EMHRM Program: “Best in Class”

ILRies Learn from NFL Pro

JC Tretter ’13 returned to the ILR School lecture hall Monday where he learned how to think critically, understand others’ perspectives and negotiate – skills he has wielded to help shape the labor-management dynamic in America’s most-watched sport.
JC Tretter '13 speaks in Associate Professor Adam Seth Litwin’s “Introduction to ILR” course in Ives 305.
ILRies Learn from NFL Pro

ILR Donors Make All the Difference

To Do the Greatest Good

The ILR community everywhere is continuing to do the greatest good. Each year, ILR alumni, parents and friends come together to support the ILR School to ensure all students have the resources they need to be successful. Each year, the school recruits and retains faculty who are outstanding educators and leading researchers.

Your gift helps ILR remain the preeminent school focused on work, employment and labor. ILR is proud to be developing the thought leaders and practitioners shaping the future of work, and your gift advances this mission.

Please read our ILR Case for Support here

Learn more about giving to the ILR School here.

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News

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Knowles '87 Helps Lead Ohio State To Football National Title

ILRie Jim Knowles '87 helped guide the Ohio State University to the College Football Playoff National Championship on Monday evening as the team's defensive coordinator. The Buckeyes defeated Notre Dame 34-23 in the championship game in Atlanta to lift the eighth-seeded squad to its ninth national title.
Jim Knowles '87 speaking to members of the Big Red football team during his time as head coach at Cornell.
Knowles '87 Helps Lead Ohio State To Football National Title

“Stories of Belonging” Highlights Journeys of Central Americans

A traveling exhibit highlighting the intersections of racism, dispossession and migration grew out of LR Worker Institute Executive Director Patricia Campos-Medina’s doctoral thesis.
Jose Urias is featured in "Stories of Belonging"
“Stories of Belonging” Highlights Journeys of Central Americans

ILR Panel Discusses Collective Bargaining in Women’s Professional Hockey

A discussion focused on the evolution of, and challenges facing, women’s professional hockey was hosted on Monday by ILR International Visiting Fellow Kelly Pike, ’03, Ph.D. ’14.
Kelly Pike, ’03, Ph.D. ’14, Digit Murphy, CALS ’83, Brianne Jenner, A&S ’15, and David Doorey
ILR Panel Discusses Collective Bargaining in Women’s Professional Hockey

Events

Labor Economics Workshop: Nuria Rodriguez-Planas

Nuria Rodriguez-Planas The effect of school peers on intimate partner violence: Evidence from peers’ genetic predisposition to alcohol consumption Using quasi-random variation in peer composition across grades within schools and genetic measures from the Add Health study, we analyze how high school peers’ genetic predisposition to alcohol consumption impacts women’s risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization in early adulthood. We find that a one standard deviation increase in peers’ average genetic predisposition to alcohol consumption raises females’ probability of being victimized by their partner by 4.5 percentage points, about three-fifths of the size (in absolute value) of the effect induced by a one standard deviation increase in parental socio-economic status. This effect operates primarily through social network formation. While exposure to peers with a high genetic predisposition to alcohol use does not influence the victims’ own drinking or risk-taking behaviors, it increases their likelihood of forming friendships with other females who binge drink. Notably, the influence of high school peer exposure on victimization diminishes by later adulthood. These findings illuminate how peer environments in adolescence can shape vulnerability to IPV through social network formation, though the effects appear time-limited.

Localist event image for Labor Economics Workshop:  Nuria Rodriguez-Planas
Labor Economics Workshop: Nuria Rodriguez-Planas

Kheel Center Research Symposium

Join us as the 2023 Kheel Center Travel Grant winners present their research findings. The Richard Strassberg Travel Grant supports scholars conducting archival research at the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives in Catherwood Library. Catherwood, located in the ILR School, is part of Cornell University Library. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from the recipients and explore their work! Program information will be sent upon registration. Speakers: Hillary Dann, producer/researcher for historical documentaries: "The Investigation of NYC Public School Teachers in the 1940s and 50s." and Hella Winston, sociologist and investigative reporterBryant Etheridge: A Program of Social Reform: The National War Labor Board, Wartime Wage Policy, and the Origins of the Great Compression, 1942-1945Daniel Goldstein: "Luigi Antonini and the Italian anti-Fascist exiles: a symbiotic relationship?"Hunter Moskowitz, Phd Candidate at Northeastern University: “Practical Men: “White Patriarchal Skill in the Global Textile Industry.”

Localist event image for Kheel Center Research Symposium
Kheel Center Research Symposium

Labor Economics Workshop: Joseph Mullins

Joseph Mullins Designing cash transfers in the presence of children's human capital formation This paper finds that accounting for the human capital development of children has a quantitatively large effect on the true costs and benefits of providing cash assistance to single mothers in the United States. A dynamic model of work, welfare participation, and parental investment in children introduces a formal apparatus for calculating costs and benefits when individuals respond to incentives. The model provides a tractable outcome equation in which a policy’s effect on child skills can be understood through its impact on two economic resources in the household – time and money – and the share of each resource as factors in the production of skills. These key causal parameters are cleanly identified by policy variation through the 1990s. The model also admits simple and interpretable formulae for optimal nonlinear transfers in the style of Mirrlees (1971), with novel features arising when child skill formation is accounted for. Using a broadly conservative empirical strategy, estimates imply that optimal transfers are about 20% more generous than the US benchmark, and shaped very differently. In contrast to current policies, the optimal policy discourages labor supply at the bottom of the income distribution due to the costly estimated impacts of work on child development. The finding underscores the importance of reconciling results in the literature on the developmental effects of maternal employment. Finally, a counterfactual model exercise suggests that changes to the welfare and tax environment after 1996 had negative average effects both on maternal welfare and child skill outcomes, with a significant degree of redistribution across latent dimensions.

Localist event image for Labor Economics Workshop: Joseph Mullins
Labor Economics Workshop: Joseph Mullins

21st Century Business Models and the Protestant Work Ethic

2025 Milton Konvitz Lecture: Elizabeth Anderson, the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, will deliver ILR's 2025 Milton Konvitz Lecture. The public is invited to attend in person or live online. Please register if you plan to join us online. Please join us as Professor Anderson examines the contrast between profit-driven business models and the original Protestant work ethic, which emphasized fairness, community trust, and ethical labor practices. Drawing from 17th-century Puritan business principles, the lecture will explore modern challenges—such as private equity’s impact—and ways to improve professional and social services to create more fulfilling work for all. The Konvitz Lecture is made possible through the generosity of Irwin Jacobs (BEE ’56) and Joan Jacobs (BS HE ’54).

Localist event image for 21st Century Business Models and the Protestant Work Ethic
21st Century Business Models and the Protestant Work Ethic

Labor & Trade Economics Workshop: Jessie Handbury

Jessie Handbury Demographic Preferences and Income Segregation We study how preferences over the demographic composition of co-patrons affects income segregation in shared spaces. To distinguish demographic preferences from tastes for other venue attributes, we study venue choices within business chains. We find two notable regularities: preferences for high-income co-patrons are similar across racial groups, and racial homophily does not vary by income. These demographic preferences are economically large, explain much of the cross-group variation in exposure to high-income co-patrons, and correlate with movers’ neighborhood choices.

Localist event image for Labor & Trade Economics Workshop: Jessie Handbury
Labor & Trade Economics Workshop: Jessie Handbury

Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Eric Chyn

Eric Chyn

Localist event image for Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Eric Chyn
Labor & Public Economics Workshop: Eric Chyn

Meet our Team

Jennifer (Sellen) Dean

  • Assistant Dean, ILR AAD

Harlan Work

  • Gift Officer

Penny Lane Spoonhower

  • Assistant Director

Amanda DeLee

  • Program Assistant

Alyssa Cooper

  • Gift Officer