Honorary Alumni Award

2011 Recipients:

Ed Sauter and Jim Baty | Jonathan Brand and Rachelle LaBarge

Alumni Board President Allan Ruter '76, Jim Baty, Ed Sauter, and interim President Jim Brown

Ed Sauter and Jim Baty

Apr. 29, 2011

Ed Sauter and Jim Baty, the Alumni Association of Cornell College gratefully recognizes your commitment to maintaining the architectural and aesthetic integrity of Cornell’s campus and its position on the National Register of Historic Places, by awarding you today the status of Honorary Alumni.

We especially appreciate your partnership with the college on the renovation of Scott Alumni Center at Rood House and the renovation and expansion of Luce Admissions Center at Wade House. Through your professional skill you have heightened Cornell’s appeal to prospective students and their families. In addition, your local architecture—including Mount Vernon City Hall, Hills Bank & Trust, Southeast Linn Community Center, and the Cedar Amateur Astronomers Observatory—have added beauty and functionality to the community.

In presenting you with this award, we also acknowledge your leadership and community service, which has strengthened Mount Vernon, thereby strengthening the college.

Ed, you are a longtime member and past chair of the Mount Vernon Historic Preservation Commission and president of the Mount Vernon-Lisbon Community Development Group. Jim, we acknowledge your work with town’s annual Heritage Days festival, as a Parks and Recreation coach, and as a lay leader at Mount Vernon United Methodist Church—including as music leader for the multi-denominational vacation Bible school.

In addition to your local leadership, each of you are known in the concrete industry for running the Tilt-Up Concrete Association and the Concrete Foundations Association—both with hundreds of member firms internationally. Ed, you were recognized in 2005 by Concrete Construction magazine as one of the 10 most influential individuals in the concrete industry.

The Alumni Association now welcomes you as part of the Cornell College family and confers upon you the official status of Honorary Alumnus. Congratulations!

Rachelle LaBarge, President Jonathan Brand, and Alumni Board President Allan Ruter '76.

Jonathan Brand and Rachelle LaBarge

Oct. 15, 2011

Jonathan and Rachelle, we welcomed you into the Cornell community just three and half months ago, and already you have called us to a higher purpose and shown us examples of how we as a community will grow and thrive under your leadership.

Jonathan, we’re grateful that you’ve begun by listening and learning. You’ve taken the time to meet with each faculty member individually, to meet with each office staff as a group, to thoroughly read and absorb Cornell’s history, to get to know many current students, to greet dozens of families as they began their college journey during new student orientation, and to reach out to many alumni. From this starting point, you have created a strategic planning process that welcomes input from many voices and perspectives, and we look forward to our work together.

We’re inspired by your fierce conviction that the liberal art are not only relevant but crucial in developing citizens capable of meeting the challenges of our complex, fast-changing, global society. You remind us that the opportunities we offer students matter, and that Cornell has a unique and powerful approach to learning that should be trumpeted and celebrated.

We’re kept on our toes by your attention to detail, and we’re warmed by your personal touch. We’ve become accustomed to your insistence on excellence in the way we portray Cornell to the wider world, and we’ve also become accustomed to handwritten notes of thanks, requests for feedback on your work, and warm personal interactions, often given a touch of elegance with a few words in French.

And we’re happy that as a family you have found ways to engage in your new home beyond campus.  The two of you spent a morning shoulder to shoulder with first-year students on a local farm.  We’ve seen you and your children at the farmers market, in uptown stores and restaurants, attending high school cross country meets, walking in the Heritage Days parade, running in the Sauerkraut Days 5k, and contributing your input to community improvement projects.

For the gifts you have already brought to our shared lives together and for the many gifts yet to be revealed, the Alumni Association proclaims you as honorary alumni.