Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit

Syracuse University Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor honored by Carnegie Corporation with national Academic Leadership Award, $500,000 grant

Tuesday, June 17, 2008, By News Staff
Share

Kevin C. Quinn
315 443 8338

Syracuse University Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor has been named one of two recipients–along with Robert J. Birgeneau, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley–of the 2008 Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award, which celebrates outstanding individuals whose uncompromising commitment to academic excellence and bold, visionary leadership are establishing new standards for U.S. higher education. The award announcement was made today by Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

“With intellectual ferocity, creativity and sheer will, Robert Birgeneau and Nancy Cantor have created for their students an even deeper, more engaging academic experience aimed not just at sustaining America’s world-class system of higher education, but transforming it to equip students for success in a global knowledge economy,” Gregorian stated in announcing the award. “Recognizing that higher education is for many families the gateway to the American Dream–the principal means of achieving social mobility–Birgeneau and Cantor have each implemented programs in their respective communities to improve college readiness.”

The award recognizes leaders of institutions of higher education who have an abiding commitment to liberal arts and who have initiated and supported curricular innovations, including development of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs that aim to bridge the gulf between the theoretical and the practical. In addition, the award honors leadership that actively supports K-12 school reform, strengthens teacher education, and emphasizes community outreach.

SU and UC-Berkeley will each receive a grant of $500,000 “to be used for the express purpose, and at the discretion of the respective winners to fund work that contributes to each one’s academic priorities.”

“This award is simply breathtaking in its significance and generosity, and I gratefully accept it on behalf of the entire Syracuse University community,” Cantor says. “I take it to reflect the uncanny convergence of forces that we are experiencing at SU, as we leverage the historical and contemporary strengths of both our institution and our community, exploring together with our many partners what it means for a university to be a public good in a diverse, democratic society. My profound thanks go to the Carnegie Corporation for the opportunity that this award represents to deepen and broaden that exploration. Also, I am gratified to receive this award at the same time Bob Birgeneau is being honored, as I greatly admire his accomplishments at Berkeley and the academic and civic values that propel them.”

In making the award, the Carnegie Corporation recognized Cantor for elevating SU’s national reputation “through her ambitious Scholarship in Action campaign to build upon the school’s scholarly distinction; provide access and support to the best students from all socio-economic and cultural spheres; and better engage with the surrounding community, the nation and the world.”

The Carnegie Corporation also praised Cantor for:

  • playing “a key role in improving relations with the surrounding community and spearheading badly needed economic development in Central New York”;
  • for her commitment to diversity in higher education as illustrated by her involvement, while at the University of Michigan, in the defense of affirmative action in the cases Gutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger;
  • for her role in helping to found Imagining America, an initiative now hosted by SU that involves a consortium of 80 colleges and universities whose mission is to strengthen the public role and democratic purposes of the humanities, arts and design; and
  • for her leadership role in the Partnership for Better Education, an alliance of the Syracuse City School District (SCSD), Syracuse University, Le Moyne College, Onondaga Community College, the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and SUNY Upstate Medical University that assists SCSD high school students to graduate and successfully pursue higher education by providing new opportunities for quality instruction in the arts, literacy, science and technology, engineering and math.

The annual Carnegie Corporation Academic Leadership Award, established in 2005, was initially awarded every two years. Previous winners are Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University (2005); Henry S. Bienen, president of Northwestern University (2005); Don Randel, former president of the University of Chicago (2005); and Matthew Goldstein, chancellor of the City University of New York (2007).

The Academic Leadership Award is not simply an award; it is also an investment in leadership by the Carnegie Corporation and builds on the foundation’s long tradition of developing and recognizing leadership in higher education. The selection process is initiated by the corporation and does not depend on external nominators or recommendations. Honorees are reviewed and approved by a committee of the corporation’s board of trustees.

  • Author

News Staff

  • Recent
  • Maxwell Sociologists Receive $1.8 Million From the NIA to Study Midlife Health and Mortality
    Sunday, September 24, 2023, By News Staff
  • School of Education Faculty Publish ‘Lesson Study With Mathematics and Science Preservice Teachers’
    Sunday, September 24, 2023, By Martin Walls
  • Water Main Break Near Bird Library to Be Repaired Monday
    Sunday, September 24, 2023, By News Staff
  • University Musicians, West Point Band to Perform Together This Weekend As Part of Events Around Military Appreciation Day
    Friday, September 22, 2023, By Christine Weber
  • Turning Young Enthusiasts Into Scientific Researchers
    Friday, September 22, 2023, By Wendy S. Loughlin

More In Uncategorized

Syracuse Views Fall 2023

We want to know how you experience Syracuse University. Take a photo and share it with us. We select photos from a variety of sources. Submit photos of your University experience using #SyracuseU on social media, fill out a submission…

Phillips Appointed Interim Director at Lender Center for Social Justice; Director Search Committee Named

The Lender Center for Social Justice has familiar leadership for the 2023-24 academic year while a renewed search for a permanent director is conducted. Kendall Phillips, founding co-director of the Lender Center and professor in the Department of Communication and…

Syracuse Views Spring 2023

We want to know how you experience Syracuse University. Take a photo and share it with us. We select photos from a variety of sources. Submit photos of your University experience using #SyracuseU on social media, fill out a submission…

Awards of Excellence Honoree: Maxwell has Been ‘a Guiding Hand’ in Public Service Career

Standing before an audience of fellow Maxwell School alumni gathered in Washington, D.C., for the second annual Maxwell Awards of Excellence, CNN anchor Boris Sanchez ’09 shared the motivation behind his work as a journalist. Sanchez emigrated from Cuba as…

NASA Honoring Those Who Were Aboard Space Shuttle Columbia And Other Late Astronauts

Sean O’Keefe, University Professor in the Maxwell School, was interviewed for the USA Today article “Twenty years later, loss of space shuttle Columbia still teaches us lessons.” The article emphasizes how NASA’s Memorial Grove is used to honor late astronauts,…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2023 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.